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University Daily Kansan
Nation/World
Thursday, Nov. 7, 1985
News Briefs
New war memorials approved by House
WASHINGTON — The House yesterday passed bills creating three new memorials in Washington, one each for women veterans, blacks who fought in the Korean War and soldiers who were in the Korean War.
Dan Fowler, the crane operator,
received a ticket Tuesday that
may cost him $198.50.
HOUSTON — A crane operator who used his crane to help save a man trapped in an overturned 18-wheeler later was ticketed because the crane was too large for the back of his truck.
The bills, each approved unanimously, were sent to the Senate.
The memorial for black Revolutionary War veterans will be constructed on the Mall between the Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial. It will be called Constitution Gardens. No sites for the others were specified.
Money to erect the monuments must be raised privately.
Rescue proves costly
Army officer shot
Police said they saw Fowler, 49,
and his crane stranded in traffic
after a tractor-trailer overturned
at about 8:30 a.m. on the entrance
to the La Porte freeway, trapping
the driver, Richard Henry
Clements, inside.
SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico — Assailants on a motorcycle shot and wounded a U.S. Army major as he rode his motor scooter to work yesterday. Groups advocating Puerto Rican independence took responsibility for the act.
Authorities said Maj. Michael Snyder, 37, was shot on a highway as he rode to his office near the army installation at Fort Bugham.
The attack, which also wounded a civilian, came a day after 150 independence supporters protested a visit to San Juan by FBI Director William Webster.
From Kansan wires.
Guerrillas sieze Colombian courthouse
BOGOTA, Colombia — About 25 left guerilla shots their way into the Palace of Justice yesterday, but three hours later troops stormed the court building, seizing the lower three floors and freeing more than 100 hostages.
The Associated Press
houses and all other Guerrillas of the April 19 Movement still held a large number of judges on the top two floors of the five-story structure, according to one of the hostages, Supreme Court President Allonso Reves.
He was contacted by telephone and said, "If the government doesn't cut off its attack there is no answer."
Bogota radio stations said preliminary
Reyes told radio station Todelar, "We are here with a large number of judges as hostages and it is a question of life or death that the gunfire stop. Please pass that on so the president will give the order to stop the attack."
reports indicated at least 17 guerrillas and one police lieutenant were killed and four policemen were wounded.
As the judge spoke, bursts of submachine gun fire could be heard from Reyes' office on the fourth floor of the building. Exchanges of gunfire continued as night fell.
Radio Caracol telephoned federal Judge Fernando Gonzalez before the army assault, and he said, "I think all 24 members of the Supreme Court are being held hostage."
It was not known whether Gonzalez was among more than 100 people who were freed and fled from the building during and after the army assault.
Radio stations said President Belisario Betancur's brother, federal Judge Jaime Betancur, was among those who escaped unharmed.
President Betancur met with his cabinet in an emergency session, but no details were given and it was not known whether it was negotiating with the guerrillas.
At least 15 guerrillas were killed when the soldiers launched their assault at 3 p.m., Radio Caroline
An anonymous person who telephoned the
radio played a tape recording which declared that M-19 guerrillas had seized the Palace of Justice in the name of peace and social justice.
The movement takes its name from the April 19, 1970 presidential election that dissidents said was fraudulent.
Last June, the M-19 rebels broke a truce with government security forces that had lasted for nearly a year.
Yesterday's attack came just a day after nine bombs exploded across Bogota, knocking out some electrical power and causing other damage, but no casualties.
No group took responsibility for the bombings, but officials blamed left-wing insurgents
President redefines goals for Star Wars
The Associated Press
WASHINGTON — President Reagan redefined his goals for the proposed Star Wars missile defense system yesterday, saying he would deploy the space shield unilaterally if other nuclear powers could not agree on a worldwide nuclear defense and disarmament program.
"If we had a defensive system and we could not get agreement on their part to eliminate the nuclear weapons, we would have done our best and we would go ahead with deployment, even though, as I say, that would then open us up to the charge of achieving the capacity for a first strike," Reagan said in an interview less than two weeks before his meeting with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev in Geneva.
The president's comments appeared to negate the terms he laid out in an interview with Soviet journalists last week in which he said he would not deploy a defensive system until offensive missiles had been dismantled. But Reagan denied there was any inconsistency in his separate descriptions of his policy.
"The terms for our own deployment would be the elimination of the offensive weapons." Reagan said to the Soviets. "We won't put this weapon — this system — in place, this defensive system, until we do away with our nuclear missiles, our offensive missiles. And if the Soviet Union and the United States both say we will eliminate our offensive weapons, we will put in this defensive
thing in case some place in the world a madman someday tries to create these weapons again." dead woman, identified by ABC as Svetlana Dedkova, plunged to her death from the 27th floor of a Toronto building in an apparent suicide.
But yesterday he told the White House correspondents of Western news agencies that if the U.S. research program, officially named Strategic Defense Initiative, were to come up with an effective system to defend against nuclear attack, the United States would call a meeting of all nuclear powers to see whether the United States could use that weapon to bring about the elimination of nuclear weapons.
If that conference failed to gain an agreement for mutual use of the defensive system, Reagan said, "we would go ahead with deployment."
Earlier yesterday, when asked whether he meant to give the Soviets veto power, in effect, over deployment of the proposed defensive weapons system, Reagan replied, "Hell no."
Reagan also said in the wideranging discussion that he suspected but couldn't prove that the defection and subsequent return of Soviet masterspy Vitaly Yurchenko and two other Soviet citizens were part of "a deliberate play" by the Kremlin in the days leading up to the Nov. 19-20 Geneva summit.
The president said he was perplexed by the three cases, but "we just have to live with it because there's no way we can prove or disprove" that the cases were orchestrated.
Death toll 36; floods persist
United Press International
Floodwaters that have killed at least 36 people surged through Virginia, Pennsylvania, Maryland and West Virginia for a third day yesterday, cutting off basic services in many towns and forcing thousands to seek higher ground.
The James River creep from low-lying areas of downtown Richmond, Va., through the warehouse district, sending rats scurrying to find dry ground. The nation's capital braced for flooding expected today when the Potomac River crests.
In West Virginia, looting was reported in several cities and thousands of dead chickens posed a health hazard. A circus featuring wild animals was trapped in an armory by the high waters.
The death toll stood at 17 in West Virginia, 16 in Virginia, one in Maryland and two in Pennsylvania, officials said. The flooding in the four-state area caused an estimated $220 million in property damage.
The rain that pushed rivers over their banks stopped yesterday and many waterways began to recede after cresting at levels that surpassed records from the 1800s, the National Weather Service said.
West Virginia Gov. Arch Moore declared a state of emergency in Clarksburg where floodwaters knocked out the water system. Businesses were closed but grocery stores and hospitals remained open.
Thousands of chickens killed in Pendleton County flooding posed a serious health hazard. "We are concerned about possible contamination," Moore said at a news conference yesterday.
Looting was reporting in Petersburg, Granville and Marlinton. Moore said.
More than 10,000 West Virginia residents were evacuated in three days of flooding that Moore said may have caused $100 million in damage. Families poured into some 30 shelters.
Police report Soviet's suicide
From Kansan wires
The wife of a Soviet trade representative based in Toronto died Tuesday, police sources said. The sources said yesterday that she committed suicide, and ABC News said she was thought to be the Soviet woman who ended her love affair with KGB agent Vitaly Yurchenko.
Canadian authorities refused to provide specific details of the woman's death and said there was no link between her and Yurchenko, the Soviet spy who left Washington for Moscow yesterday after slipping away from a CIA escort last weekend.
Canadian police sources said the
ABC quoted anonymous State Department sources as saying the dead woman was thought to have been having an affair with Yurchenko and then ended it abruptly, causing him to return to the Soviet Union.
Canadian government authorities said earlier yesterday that there appeared to be no link between the woman's death and American news reports that Yurchenko left Washington after the wife of a Soviet diplomat in Canada told him their love affair was over.
In another Soviet defection case in New Orleans, a federal judge left little doubt that he would refuse to order a Soviet sailor removed from his ship despite testimony the sailor clearly wanted to defect when he jumped ship last month.
In Washington, meanwhile, the Senate Agriculture Committee, which oversees the U.S.-Soviet grain trade, voted to prepare a subpoena to compel the defector, Miroslav Medvid, to appear before Congress.
In New Orleans, after a daylong hearing, U.S. District Judge Martin Feldman interrupted closing arguments to criticize lawyers who were trying to get Medvid back on American soil for more interviews.
UP IN THE AIR
ABOUT WHAT TO DO?
WE PROMISE NOT TO LEAVE YOU HANGING IN MID-AIR. IT WON'T COST A DIME TO WALK THROUGH THE DOOR TO SEE THE EXCITEMENT THAT THURSDAY NIGHTS HAVE BEEN GENERATING. YOU THURSDAY NIGHT PEOPLE SIMPLY LOOK MAHVELOUS.
$1.25 DRINKS ALL NIGHT LONG
23rd & Ousdahl