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University Daily Kansan
Nation/World
News Briefs
Ole Opry celebrates its 60th anniversary
NASHVILLE, Tenn. — The Grand Ole Opry, a hillbill barn dance that put Nashville on the entertainment map, began a three- 60th anniversary celebration yesterday with picking and singing by the legends of country music
EGLIN AIR FORCE BLA, Fla. — A doctor flying his twin-engine plane from Birningham, Ala. to Chicago, where it switched to automatic platoon.
Bill Monroe, a Country Music Association Hall of Famer and the "father of bluegrass," ticked off the celebration with a three-hour concert at Opryland, an entertainment park that grew up around the Grand Ole Opry.
Pilot sleeps in air
— then awoke over the Gulf of Mexico 100 miles south of his destination.
Air traffic controllers in Jacksonville contacted Eglin just after 7 a.m. yesterday and said they couldn't wake up the pilot.
WARSAW, Poland — Police appealed on Polish radio yesterday for help in locating a state transport company driver who disappeared with a van hauling 5 tons of chocolate.
Chocolate is rationed in Poland and only children between ages 2 and 18 are allowed to eat it.
Chocolate on the lam
Andrezey Noga, 24, loaded the $20,000 worth of chocolate on the van last month, but did not arrive at his destination.
'Straights'on ballot
HOUSTON — Eight anti-homosexual City Council candidates have won the right to place the designation "Straight Slate" beside their names on the Nov. 5 ballot.
The City Council unanimously voted Wednesday to allow the slate listing with the candidates' names, but chose not to add a provision which would have allowed voters to vote for all eight candidates by punching one spot on the ballot.
From staff and wire reports.
Soviet officials not released
BEIRUT, Lebanon — Muslim extremists said in a statement published yesterday that they would not free three kidnapped Soviet Embassy officials even though their main demand — a halt to fighting in Tripoli — had been met.
United Press International
Friday, Oct. 11, 1985
The Islamic Liberation Organization dropped the statement of overnight at the offices of the respected Mufti, a paper, which published the information.
A cease-fire was declared Oct. 3 between leftist militia assaulting Tripoli and Muslim fundamentalists in control of the city center, following attacks last week on at least 500 people were killed and more than half the 500,000 population fled.
The extremists kidnapped four Soviets on Sept. 30 from the streets of Muslim west Beirut, killed one hostage two days later, and said it would not free the others until Moscow persuaded its closest ally in the Middle East — Syria — to stop a
Syrian-backed assault on the northern port of Tripoli.
"Now that Syrian guns and missiles have stopped bombarding Tripoli, we must explain the real reasons which prompted us to do what we have done," the extremists' statement said.
"Suffice to say that a whole people is being held hostage and destroyed in Afghanistan," the statement said, drawing a parallel to the 1979 Soviet invasion and occupation of Afghanistan and the Syrian military
"We will continue holding the Soviet spies until we are satisfied with Syria's intentions," the statement said.
role in Tripoli. Syrian troops have moved into Tripoli to monitor the cease-fire.
"We thought a lot and examined ourselves deeply before taking this decision, but they forced us into something which we did not want and we had to work on it until we upheld us while we waited patiently lest they embrace God . . ." they said.
Government sources said the statement by the group had the effect of raising anxiety among the remaining Soviet diplomats in Beirut.
The abduction and killing has trigged a massive search by Beirut's pro-Soviet militia groups, and a
private radio station said Wednesday that a Soviet team had arrived in Beirut to coordinate the investigations.
The statement criticized Syria's role in Lebanon and said Darnascus was out to bring Lebanon's Muslims to their knees. Syria sided with the Lebanese Christians during the first years of the Lebanese civil war that began in 1975.
"After Syria failed to bring the Muslims to their knees politically during the years 1975-76, it resorted to its war machine," the statement said. "It is regrettable that some (Lebanese) leaders failed into the Syrian conspiracy. All we want is for them to wake up and be aware of the conspiracies against them."
Heart attack causes death of Welles, 70
United Press International
HOLLYWOOD — Orson Welles, who at 26 indelibly etched his name in motion picture history by producing, directing and starring in the epic "Citizen Kane," died yesterday at his home of an apparent heart attack. He was 70.
Senate refuses budget cuts
Another indication that Welles had a number of projects in mind at the time of his death came from actor Burt Reynolds.
Detective Russell Kuster said a chauffeur found Welles in an upstairs bedroom of his Hollywood Hills home about 10 a.m.
"There is no evidence of foul play," Kuster said. "It's obvious the death was of natural causes."
One of the last people to see Welles alive was Patrick Terrail, owner of Ma Maison, a restaurant where the actor ate almost every day and where he had dinner Wednesday night.
"Last night Orson was in great good health and in fine spirits." Terrail said. "He had just done the Merv Griffin show. He was talking about renegotiating his contract with Paul Masson and about directing a segment of 'Amazing Stories' for Stev in Spielberg."
United Press International
WASHINGTON — The Senate, one day after approving a broad plan for balancing the budget, yesterday overwhelmingly refused to include Social Security and defense in the cuts, and rejected a tax increase.
Sen. Bill Bradley, D-N.J., moved to require a 5 percent cut of the military budget and to impose an 18-cent-a gallon federal gasoline tax. He said he knew his amendments wouldn't pass, but was just trying to make a point about the kinds of specific actions that would be required under the very general balanced budget measure.
"How serious can this body be about deficit reduction, when one day after voting for a balanced budget, it votes not to do anything about defense or Social Security or taxes," Bradley said.
The tax on gasoline, diesel and other fuels, was turned down 89-9. The military spending cut was rejected 89-7, with even Bradley voting against it.
Sen. Lowell Weicker, R-Conn., supported Bradley's attempts.
"Sometime this body is going to have to do more than pass some words on the floor of the Senate," he said. "It's time we had some vision."
The Senate approved the Republican-sponsored balanced budget move Wednesday after agreeing to go along with an emergency move by the Treasury to avoid a fight to increase the federal debt ceiling. The threatened budget measure is an amendment to the devel- ceiling legislation.
Treasury can keep the government going for the rest of the month with funds from the Federal Financing Bank, officials said, without congress-
sional action, but Senate GOP leader Robert Dole of Kansas was not happy about the arrangement.
"We've been up here beating our brains out on the deficit and what they've done is give the House time to kill the package," he said.
Dole accused the Treasury of "pulling the plug" on GOP efforts to balance the budget by 1991 and taking the pressure off the Democratic House to act.
But House Speaker Thomas O'Neill said he expected some kind of balanced budget bill to emerge from the House this year "because the feeling is out there."
O'Neill, D-Mass., criticized the Senate for its "haste" in acting on the GOP budget proposal, but declined to declare his upright opposition, saying he did not know what changes the Senate was making in the plan.
Mudslide forces evacuation of shantytown
whether to seal off the disaster site outside Ponce to avoid an outbreak of disease.
The Associated Press
"We don't have much time," Hernandez Colon said.
PONCE, Puerto Rico — The National Guard ordered everyone out of Malmeyes shantytown yesterday after officials in Puerto Rico said they were considering making a common grave of the mudslide that was thought to have buried up to 500 people this week.
Dr. Gliodano San Antonio, the Ponce region's health department director, said decomposing bodies, covered by mud, rocks and splintered homes, were creating a threat of water contamination,
Gov. Rafael Hernandez Colon said a decision would be made soon
typhoid fever, mosquito-borne diseases, tetanus and diphtheria.
A 30-hour tropical deluge triggered the avalanche Monday morning that toppled about 400 wood and tin shacks in the hillside shantytown outside Ponce.
The tropical depression, subsequently upgraded to Tropical Storm Isabel, hit the Florida coast yesterday after crossing the Bahamas.
President completes tax stump
United Press International
CHICAGO — President Reagan ended his tax reform road show yesterday with speeches blaming the "national media" and Congress for his failure to produce a nationwide ground swell of support for his attempt to overhaul the federal tax system this year.
Reagan's well-orchestrated final appearance in his grassroots税 reform effort was overshadowed by questions about the U.S. position in the war of an Italian cruise ship by terrorists who killed an American passenger.
More than four months and 19 cities after taking his tax reform bandwagon on the road in late May, he has been making a demonstration during his Midwest appearances.
He spoke at a Catholic boys' high school in the working-class Democratic wards represented in Congress by Rep. Dan Rostenkowski, man who has emerged as his chief ay in the tax debate on Capitol Hill.
Reagan defended his plan at Gordon Technical High School and, earlier, at the Kitchens of Sara Lee, the $8 billion-a-year food products manufacturer, as "a sure recipe for a vibrant, surging economy into the 21st century."
Speaking to employees at Sara Lee's national baking headquarters in suburban Deerfield, Reagan said he has been "all over the country, stumping for tax fairness" for months and has found enthusiastic support at each stop.
In a play on the Sara Lee slogan — "Nobody doesn't like Sara Lee" — Reagan said, "In fact, it wouldn't be too much of an exaggeration to say, nobody doesn't like America's fair share tax plan."
"But the truth," he said, "is that many people don't know the real story about our tax overhaul, because for the last month, our fair share tax plan hasn't been given much space by the national media."
But, Reagan said he was heartened by a USA Today poll that showed increased popular support for his tax plan.