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Nation/World
University Daily Kansan
News Briefs
Pipeline explosions force Texans to flee
MONT BELVIEU, Texas — A ruptured pipeline touched off three explosions and a raging fire at a gas storage area yesterday, forcing 2,000 residents of the southeast Texas town to flee their homes.
Mormon leader dead
Two men were listed as missing, said a spokesman for Chevron USA, which owns the Warren Petroleum storage area, about 30 miles east of Houston.
SALT LAKE CITY — Spencer W. Kimball, the president and prophet of the Mormon church since 1973 and one of its most energetic leaders until age and infirmity curtailed his ministry, died late last night. He was 90.
Kimbal died at his West Hotel Utah apartment of causes related to age, said church spokesman Don LeFvre.
Verdict challenged
ATLANTA - Civil rights lawyer William Kunstler contended yesterday that government investigators with evidence linking the Ku Klux Klan to the Atlanta child murders because they feared a "race riot" in the city.
Kunstler said he would seek to overturn Wayne Williams' conviction in the case based on documents that include statements from two police informants that a Klansman threatened 14-year-old Lubie Geter, one of the victims.
Lennon criticized
LONDON — Former Beatle Paul McCartney said in a published article yesterday that his one-time partner John Lennon was a "maneuvering swine" who has been idolized as "Martin Luther Lennon" since he was murdered.
Lennon, shot to death in December 1890 in New York, was no "holy saint," McCartney said in a serialized article in the weekly magazine Woman.
McCartney said Lennon was insecure, jealous, suspicious, and sometimes paranoid about McCartney's songs.
From Kansan wires.
Defector free to return to Russia
WASHINGTON — Former KGB defector Vitaly Turychenko, who says he was kidnapped and drugged by the CIA, is free to return to the Soviet Union, the State Department announced last night.
United Press International
Department officials decided to let Yurchenko return after interviewing him and deciding that he genuinely wanted to return home, as he declared Monday at a dramatic news conference at the Soviet Embassy.
Yurchenko, who spent 55 minutes at the department, brushed past reporters as he left. If he was going home, he clasped his hands in a
prizefighter's salute and said, "Yes,
pome."
In a prepared statement, State Department spokesman Charles Redman said, "As a result of that meeting, the United States government has decided that Mr. Yurchenko's decision to return to the Soviet Union was made of his own free will and that he is now free to leave the United States."
In New Orleans, Ukrainian-Americans seeking asylum for a Soviet sailor who twice jumped ship into the Mississippi River staged a rally and hunger strike yesterday in lawsuits in their efforts to free him.
They also threatened to gather a
flotilla of small boats to slow the vessel, Marshal Konev, after it is loaded with grain and begins its journey downstream through New Orleans later this week if seaman Miroslav Medvid is still aboard.
In Washington, a federal appeals court refused to block the ship, heeding State Department warnings that court interference could create an international incident.
Gorbachev_head_toward_their meeting.
The Ukrainian-American group said Medvid was dragged, beaten and threatened into signing the statement, and that the seaman was a victim of the "summit fever" in Washington, seeking to downplay international friction as President Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail
Redman said the State Department interview with Yurchenko, which was attended by six American officials, including a medical doctor, lasted a half-hour. Four Soviet officials accompanied Yurchenko.
The medical doctor, the statement said, found "no observable evidence" that Yurchenko "was under the influence of drugs which could affect his behavior or that he was not competent to make his own decision to return to the U.S.S.R."
At the same time, two broadcast networks gave a possible reason for Yurchenko's demand to return to his homeland.
Polish leader is expected to leave post
Wednesday, Nov. 6, 1985
Western diplomats said Jaruzelski, by deciding to step down as head of the government, was signaling the end of the Polish political crisis that led to the declaration of martial law and suppression of the free union movement in December 1981.
From Kansan wires
WARSAW, Poland — Prime Minister Gen. Wojciech Jaruzelski, who oversaw imposition of martial law that crushed the Solidarity union, is expected to step down today in favor of an economic technocrat, parliamentary sources said yesterday.
Jaruzelski's formal resignation was expected to be tendered during the first session of Poland's new Parliament, which was elected October 13.
Jaruzlski, 62, will be replaced as premier by Zbigniew Messner, deputy premier and a member of the party's ruling Politburo, the sources reported on condition of anonymity.
They said the move also was designed to strengthen the party.
Jaruzelski will keep his post as leader of the Communist Party and commander in chief of the armed forces, and also will probably take over the state presidency. The combined duties would continue to make Jaruzelski Poland's most powerful figure.
Shultz cautious after talks
From Kansan wires
MOSCOW — Secretary of State George Shultz met with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev for about four hours yesterday to discuss the Geneva summit and said afterward that "deep differences" exist between the superpowers.
Shultz said his talks with Gorbachev also touched on the drama unfolloiing over purported KGB defector Vitaly Yurchenko, who appeared at a news conference at the Soviet Embassy in Washington Monday saying he had been kidnapped in Rome by the CIA.
"We had a very brief discussion of it at the end," Shultz said, without revealing what was said about the case. "The charges that he (Yurchenko) has made are totally false."
"Perhaps there was some narrowing," Shultz teld reporters, saying there were "one or two things" the two sides agreed on. "But basically we have a lot of work to do."
Shultz met with Gorbachev and Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze for a total of 14 hours during his two-day visit and departed last night for Iceland and the United States, where he will brief President Reagan on the discussions.
The two days of meetings were described by Shultz as "frank and thorough."
The official Tass news agency, reporting on the Gorbachev-Shultz meeting in the Kremlin, said the talks had “passed in a frank and businesslike atmosphere” — language indicating there were strong differences.
"We have seen some positive developments," Shultz said afterward. "We also see that there are many serious differences between us, which I suppose only suggests the need for the (summit) meeting we anticipate."
Besides arms control, Shultz singled out regional issues and human rights.
During preparations for the summit, the first since 1979, the Soviets have focused attention on arms control issues.
Democrats get landslide victories
From Kansan wires
Gerald L. Bailies was elected governor of Virginia yesterday, keying a historic Democratic sweep that gave the Old Dominion its first black and first woman in state offices. New Jersey Republican Gov. Thomas KeanROMed to re-election by a landslide in the other off-year contest.
Neither governor's race was a close contest, leaving unchanged the Democrats' 34-16 domination of the nation's statehouses.
Democrats touted in advance as evidence of recovery from President Reagan's 49-state re-election sweep a year ago.
In Virginia, Ballies defeated Republican Wyatt B. Durrete to succeed outgoing Democratic Gov. Charles Robb in a race the
Douglas Wilder, a black, was elected lieutenant governor and Mary Sue Terry was elected attorney general by a landslide.
Kean, elected in New Jersey by the narrowest of margins four years ago, was leading in every county over Democrat Peter Shapiro. The governor was hoping for a victory with enough coattails to install a new Republican majority in the Jersey State Assembly, and thus bolster GOP claims of a nationwide political realignment.
Mayoral elections were on the ballot in 450 cities across the nation. But only in Miami, where Mayor Maurice Ferre trailed narrowly in the early vote, was an incumbent in trouble.
Houston Mayor Kathy Whitmeir took a slight lead in a tough reelection campaign in which AIDS was an issue. Democratic Mayors Ed Koch in New York and Richard Caligari in Pittsburgh swept to third terms.
Cleveland's GOP Mayor George Voinovich won a new term, while the first black mayor of Charlotte, N.C., Democrat Harvey Gantt, was reelected, as well.
Flooding devastates Virginias
United Press International
Floodwaters across Appalachia yesterday killed at least 19 people, and forced thousands to flee their homes, which in some areas were nearly submerged as the rainstorms dwindled to scattered showers.
Up to ten inches of rain in Pennsylvania, Virginia, West Virginia, Maryland and Ohio pushed rivers, and streams out of their banks, flooding streets, stranding residents atop their homes and knocking out power.
Rain continued yesterday evening, across much of New England, New York, western Pennsylvania and eastern Ohio, while scattered showers lingered from the Virginia to New Jersey and eastern Pennsylvania.
The number of deaths caused by the weather rose to 19 late yesterday, with seven people presumed drowned in the Roanoke, Va., area, and four killed in flood related accidents in the Shenandoah Valley, to the north.
Another six bodies were recovered, in West Virginia, one person died in, pennsylvania and a Maryland firefighter also is presumed dead.
The Roanoke River rose to a record thirteen feet above flood stage Monday night after more than six inches of rain fell in 24 hours.
"It was like a wild wall of water — all the way up over the gas pumps with cars floating in the middle." said Scott Kraft, of Roanoke, Va.
Four others were killed in flood related accidents in the Shenandoah Valley.
Near Mason's Cove, Va., searchers saved a shivering 4-year-old girl from a car in a rampaging stream. Two others in the car drowned.
"It's a miracle," trooper R. M. McCoy said. "She washed two-tenths of a mile downstream and landed on an island. When we got here, she was cold, but they wound up releasing her from the hospital and she is home."
Thousands of residents left their homes, officials said.
"This is probably the worst flooding that has happened here in modern times," said Tommy Fuqua, fire and emergency coordinator for Roanoke County.