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University Daily Kansan
Nation/World
Thursday, Oct. 31, 1985
News Briefs
Helicopter crashes, kills 3 on Gulf Coast
PORT ARANSAS, Texas — A Navy helicopter on a training mission crashed yesterday on Mustang Island on Texas' Gulf coast, killing three people and injuring three others, authorities said.
Officials said the UH1N helicopter was based at the Naval Air Station at nearby Corpus Christi and was on a search and rescue training mission when it crashed at about 2:30 p.m.
The three who were injured were taken to hospitals in Corpus Christi, officials said.
Names of the dead were not released.
Soviets ram spv ship
STOCKHOLM, Sweden — A Soviet minesweeper rammed a Swedish spy ship monitoring Soviet naval exercises in international waters in the Baltic Sea, defense officials said yesterday. There were no injuries or serious damage.
The 1,400-ton Orion, a $10-million Swedish vessel bristling with top secret intelligence gathering equipment, was rammed Tuesday in calm, clear weather east of the port of Goland, the officials said.
The collision, the first such incident involving Swedish and Soviet warships, took place near a disputed economic zone claimed by both nations, a defense source said.
Challenger in orbit
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — Three Europeans and five NASA astronauts, the world's largest space crew, rocketed into orbit aboard the shuttle Challenger yesterday on a Spacecab research flight chartered by West Germany.
The mission, the first paid for and managed by another country, marked a key step toward full European participation in America's permanent space station, which will be assembled in orbit in 1993.
From Kansan wires.
Soviet hostages freed in Beirut
BEIRUT, Lebanon — Three of the four Soviet embassy staff members kidnapped by gunmen 30 days ago were freed yesterday night in Muslim West Beirut. Soviet and leftist militia officials said.
From Kansan wires
The bullet-riddled body of the fourth Soviet was found Sept. 30 on a garbage dump, two days after the group's abduction by members of the hitherto unknown Islamic Liberation Organization.
"They're all free and in relatively good condition," said a Soviet embassy spokesman who declined to be identified. He did not elaborate on their condition.
In Washington, State Department spokesman Joe Reap said the administration couldn't predict the fate of the remaining six American hostages in Lebanon.
without more information about the Soviet hostages — who held them, for what reasons, why and how they were released, etc. — it would be
simply speculation to read into their release implications for the American hostages." Rea said.
The kidnappers said in a statement to Western news agencies in Beirut that it freed press attache Oleg Spirin, commercial attache Valery Mirkov and embassy physician Nikolai Sversky "to prove our good intentions."
The statement by the Islamic Liberation Organization, thought to be made up of Sunni Muslim fundamentalists, made no mention of the slain Soviet, 32-year-old consular secretary Arkady Katkov.
The statement reiterated earlier claims that the Soviets were seized to force Moscow to pressure Syria, its main Arab ally, to call off an offensive by leftist militias against Sunni fundamentalists in Lebanon's northern port of Tripoli.
The statement, which acknowledged a cease-ire declared the day after Katkov's body was found, stressed. "We are waiting for all concerned to
The kidnappings were a serious embarrassment to Muslim militia leaders and Syria at a time when they were involved in talks with Christians aimed at ending Lebanon's civil war. The four were the first Soviet citizens kidnapped in West Beirut, which is controlled by the Muslim militia.
honor their commitments. In order to prove our good intentions, we have freed the Soviet spies so that others will honor their commitments in Tripoli."
At least 14 other foreigners, including six Americans, are still missing after being kidnapped in Lebanon.
In Washington, Sondra McCarty, a State Department press officer, said officials were attempting to confirm the Soviets' release.
"We also call upon those holding the American and other foreign hostages in Lebanon to release them forthwith." She said U.S. officials presumed that the six were all alive.
Sniper hits 10 in mall
United Press International
SPRINGFIELD, Pa. — A woman wearing combat fatigues opened fire with a semi-automatic rifle at a suburban Philadelphia mall yesterday, killing two people and injuring eight others, then was tackled by a passer-by and disarmed, police said.
Those slain at the Springfield Mall were a girl about 2 years old and a man in his 40s, Police Chief George Hill said. Besides the eight wounded by gunfire, he said, one person suffered a heart attack "because of the excitement."
The woman, identified as Sylvia Seegrist, 24, of Springfield, arrived at the mail at about p.m. carry-ons. She also used semi-automatic rifle, Hill said.
Seergrist first shot at another woman at an automatic bank teller, but the bullets missed, Hill said. She fired at several other people outside the mall, killing a girl walking with her mother, Hill said.
Seegirst then entered the mall and began firing at random until a passerby, Jack Laufer, overpowered her from behind, and others kicked her rifle away, Hill said.
Fund may lose $300 million
United Press International
WASHINGTON — A congressional expert said yesterday that the Social Security trust fund would lose $300 million interest yearly if it sold assets to finance November benefit checks because the government couldn't borrow more money.
Treasury Department officials say it will be necessary to sell some of the trust fund's interest-earning securities if Congress does not increase the $1.8 trillion federal debt ceiling by tomorrow.
But they disagreed with the estimate of lost interest by Rep. James Jones, D-Oklah., saying it
would be closer to "tens of millions a year."
Jones, chairman of the House Ways and Means Social Security subcommittee, said the interest loss on $1.5 billion and $2 billion in the next five years.
The debt ceiling increase to $2 trillion is being held up by a Senate-passed balanced budget rider aimed at bringing the annual deficits to zero by fall 1990. The measure is hung up in a House-Senate conference committee.
fund to back $15 billion in payments to the principal. The beneficiary would be repaid, Treasury officials said, but there could be a loss of interest.
"If you don't make up that (interest) difference, it would cost the trust funds $300 million a year for the rest of the century." Jones told assistant Treasury Secretary John Nielehne at a hearing.
If there is no agreement by tomorrow, the Treasury Department said it would have to redeem long-term securities in the Social Security trust
Nienhieb said the government would attempt to "make the fund whole" by boosting deposits in the trust fund to make up for lost interest, but even if it did not, the loss to the fund would be "tens of millions of dollars instead of hundreds of millions of dollars."
NATO ministers back Reagan
United Press International
BRUSSELS, Belgium / NATO defense ministers, declaring their support for President Reagan at next month's superpower summit, called on the Soviet Union yesterday to comply fully with existing U.S. Soviet arms control treaties.
And the leaders of six other nations urged the United States and the Soviet Union to suspend nuclear tests for a year.
The appeal came in a letter from the leaders of Sweden, Greece, Tanzania, India, Mexico and Argentina three weeks before Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev meet in Geneva, Switzerland.
of the alliance's Nuclear Planning Group, issued a statement in which they announced their backing for Reagan
When they hadnausea used blocking for Reagan. "We declare that the president goes to Geneva with the full support and solidarity of the Alliance," the ministers' statement said.
Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger, who attended the meeting, told a news conference that the allies' support was "unqualified."
The NATO ministers, wrapping up a two-day meeting
Weinberger used his appearance at the meeting to outline the relative nuclear strengths of NATO and the Warsaw Pact nations, and to give details of alleged Soviet arms control treaty violations.
The ministers accused the Soviets of maintaining a "double standard" by skirting treaty obligations while the West complied fully with the terms.
Congress is at odds on budget
United Press International
WASHINGTON — House-Senate negotiators, at odds over the politically hot issue of when to begin spending cuts, failed to reach agreement on a balanced budget measure yesterday, bringing the government one day closer to fiscal chaos.
The Reagan administration yesterday threatened to shut the government down Nov. 14 if House and Senate leaders do not agree on balancing the budget.
The balanced budget measure, passed by the Senate but not the House, is attached to a bill to boost the national debt limit from $1.8 trillion to $2 trillion. Without the increase in borrowing authority, government officials say they will have to sell assets in the Social Security trust fund, at a possible loss of up to $300 million a year in interest, to get the cash to pay recipients tomorrow, and will run out of all financial maneuvering room by mid-month.
Budget director James Miller blamed House Democrats among the negotiators for refusing to agree to the Senate-passed Gramm-Rudman balanced budget measure which relied on an annual increase over the next five years, with the goal of eliminating the red ink entirely by the fall of 1990.
Late yesterday, House negotiators, led by Democrats, tried to get the conference to move up the budget-cutting targets. The proposal would require an estimated $10 billion in cuts during this fiscal year, which began Oct. 1, instead of delaying the cutting until after the November 1986 elections, as House Democrats charge the GOP-led Senate's measure was designed to do.
"Our speaker (Thomas P. O'Neill) said this (Senate bill) is the incumbent protection act," said Rep Thomas Downey, D.N.Y.
But Sen. Bob Packwood, R-Ore., chairman of the conference, said the House move was an effort to "choke this new process before it's had a chance to get started" and refused to let Senate conferences take a vote on it.
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