2
Nation/World
University Daily Kansan
Monday, Oct. 7, 1985
News Briefs
MOSCOW — The incurable and often fatal disease AIDS does not exist in the Soviet Union but medical researchers are seeking a cure should the illness spread to the Soviet Union, the workers' newspaper Trud said yesterday.
Soviet researchers seek cure for AIDS
It blamed sexual permissiveness in the West for the spread of the disease and said such practices were rare in the Soviet Union.
After four days of official silence about the military flight of Atlantis, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration issued a brief statement yesterday that America's newest space shuttle is scheduled to land noon CDT today on a desert strip at Edwards.
The report contradicted the admission last summer by a Soviet doctor that several cases of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome had been detected.
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — The space shuttle Atlantis will end its secret and apparently successful malden voyage today at Edwards Air Force Base in California, the space agency announced yesterday.
Shuttle set to return
"All systems on board the space shuttle Atlantis continue to perform satisfactorily," said NASA spokesman John Lawrence, reading an Air Force statement.
PLO mourns deaths
AMMAN, Jordan — An official of the Palestine Liberation Organization led thousands of mourners yesterday at the funeral of 31 victims of the Israeli bombing attack on PLO headquarters in Tunisia
PLO Deputy Commander Khalil Al Wazir angrily told mourners that the struggle against Israel for a Palestinian state would continue despite Tuesday's attack against the PLO base near Tunis that killed at least 73 people.
"The blood of the martyrs will not be shed in vain," Wazir said in a brief address before the burial at the Martyrs' Cemetery 13 miles south of the Jordanian capital of Amman.
From staff and wire reports
Israel raises doubts of claim
From Kansan wires
JERUSALEM — Israel raised doubts yesterday about Egypt's claim that a demented policeman shot to death seven Israeli vacationers along the Sinai coast. Officials said the gunman may have been an Egyptian soldier, whose presence in the area would violate the 1979 peace treaty.
The Jewish state also demanded to know why Egyptian soldiers failed to give immediate first aid to the seven Israeli victims who died and might have bled to death. Egypt denied any neglect toward the victims.
Egypt said a crazed policeman fired on a group of tourists and on his unifl Saturday at Ras Bourka, a coral-lined beach 27 miles south of the border checkpoint of Taba. One Egyptian reportedly was killed before the gunman was captured.
"We know he was a soldier. We have known for some time they have had soldiers in the area," said an Israeli government official, speaking on condition of anonymity. He also said Israel was checking reports that a machine gun was used.
Acting Foreign Minister Moshe Arens said Israel was investigating whether Egypt had stationed army troops on the Gulf of Aqaba coast in violation of the peace treaty, which allows Egypt to station only police with sidearms in the coastal region.
A senior Egyptian official in Cairo denied the gunman was a soldier and said he would be court-martialled by the General Security Police Force.
Prime Minister Shimon Peres demanded in a phone conversation with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak that Egypt conduct a formal investigation into the shooting, Israel Radio said.
Peres told Mubarak the entire nation was in mourning and it was regrettable that a hostile atmosphere was impeding the progress of peace, the radio said.
Mubarak cabled his condolences to Peres immediately after the shooting and assured him the officer would be court-martialed and measures would be taken to prevent a repetition.
"It's nothing at all." Mubarak told reporters in Cairo. "It's a man who lost his mind. It could happen anywhere."
Mubarak had no immediate comment on Israel's demands for a formal inquiry.
Israel charged that Egypt may have violated the 1979 Israeli-Egyptian peace accord by posting soldiers at the site. Israel captured the Sinai in 1967 and agreed to return it to Egypt in the Camp David Accords.
Officer killed in London riots
United Press International
LONDON — Hundreds of rampaging youths fired shotguns, hurled gasoline bombs and set cars on fire in bloody street fighting with riot police yesterday in the northern London suburb of Tottenham in which at least one officer was killed and 62 other people were reported injured.
Police said it was the first time rioters had used guns in a spate of violent inner-city rioting in the past two months in Birmingham, Liverpool and London.
One police officer who had been stabbed in the neck in the clashes died in hospital, a spokesman said, and rioters dropped a slab of concrete on a second officer's head, critically injuring him.
Officers and medics at the scene said at least three people — policemen and members of camera crews — were wounded by shotgun blasts and almost 59 others were injured by salvos of bricks, rocks and sticks in almost four hours of ferocious street fights involving hundreds of youths.
About 500 riot police sealed off the Broadwater Farm municipal housing project as hundreds of youths rampaged behind barricades of burning cars, and elderly residents of neighboring streets were evacuated.
"Every time the police charge the mob they are being pelted with firebombs and paving slabs," caretaker Andrew Sansom said by telephone from his apartment or the housing project. "Things are being thrown by people on the balconies. The atmosphere is explosive."
It was the second inner-city city to erupt in eight days in economically depressed neighborhoods in Britain.
Police said about 400 youths overturned and set fire to several cars and pelted police with rocks and gasoline bombs from behind barricades of other automobiles.
U.S., world economies sluggish
From Kansan wires
SEOUL, South Korea — This year's economic prospects are gloomier than expected earlier for both rich and developing countries, according to an International Monetary Fund report released yesterday. But American officials still predicted a bright economic future.
The report was released as the fund's policy-making body met yesterday in preparation for this week's big IMF-World Bank meeting in Seoul, which is expected to lead to the formation of a new agency
designed to steer more investment to the Third World.
"There have been increasing signs of hesitancy in the pace of world economic expansion in the first half of this year." "World Economic Outlook" said.
Treasury Secretary James Baker told the governing panel of the IMF- World Bank that new U.S. proposals to solve the Third World debt crisis did not include more money.
The United States must put its own economic house in order before it can help developing countries grow, he said.
Baker, who will open the formal session of the 40th annual meeting of the IMF and World Bank tomorrow by outlining new U.S. proposals, told the 22-member governing committee that Washington remained firmly committed to phasing out a temporary increase in access to IMF lending resources enacted in 1861.
The report said U.S. gross national product increased at an annual rate of only 1 percent a year in the first half of 1985 while growth in other industrial countries was "generally subdued."
Female agent killed in Phoenix shootout
From Kansan wires
PHOENIX — The first female FBI agent to die in action apparently was shot by two fellow agents who thought she was the girlfriend of a robbery suspect they captured, Ruben Ortega, police chief, said yesterday.
Robin Ahrens, 33, was fatally wounded at an apartment complex Friday night moments after agents arrested Kenneth Barrett, 27, for the Sept. 27 robbery of an armored car courier in Las Vegas, Nev.
Ahrens was shot in a barrage of gunfire by two agents who mistook her for Barrett's girlfriend, the chief said.
FBI spokesman Jack Smythe said Saturday he would not comment on whether Ahrens was shot by other agents until an investigation was completed.
A statement released by FBI agent Herb Hawkins yesterday morning said the FBI investigation was continuing. Police Sgt. Tony Kruczynski said a city investigation also was under way.
Miss Ahrens died almost seven
hours after FBI agents arrested Kenneth丹 Barrett, 27, a suspect in a Sept. 20 robbery of an armored car at a Las Vegas, Nev., department store. In the Nevada incident, a shot was fired that barely missed several customers, and a California police officer was shot and wounded several hours later.
FBI agents moved in to arrest Barrett as he left the Silver Creek Apartments at about 11 p.m. Friday. He had been described as armed and dangerous and was thought to have wounded a California police officer after fleeing Las Vegas.
There was a struggle and a gun discharged, Ortega said. Some of the 12 FBI agents at the complex ran toward the scuffle.
While helping subdue Barrett, two agents saw a woman with a gun emerge from a dimly lit passageway between two buildings and opened fire, Ortega said. The woman was Ahrens.
Ahrens, a former teacher, was hit in the hand, arm and one eye.
Crime tallies for 1984 are lowest in 12 years
From Kansan wires
WASHINGTON — The estimated number of crimes in the United States dropped to the lowest level in 12 years in 1984 but the number of violent raps, robberies and assaults remained about the same, the Justice Department reported yesterday.
The number of violent crimes excluding murder, however, rose 0.9 percent from 5,903,000 in 1883 to 5,954,000 in 1884. These incidents included assaults, armed robbery and rape.
The department's Bureau of Justice Statistics estimated the number of crimes nationwide at 35.5 million in 1984, 1.5 million fewer than in 1983 and the lowest level in the 12 years records have been kept.
The newest read-out on crime in America was in a report entitled
"Criminal Victimization 1984," issued by the Bureau of Justice Statistics, an information-gathering arm of the Justice Department.
Preliminary National Crime Survey victimization figures for 1984, released in April, had indicated that overall crime incidents totaled 35.3 million compared to 37 million in 1983. The bureau's crime survey does not include incidents of murder and manslaughter. Its results are based on interviews at six-month intervals with people living in about 60,000 randomly selected households. Altogether, about 128,000 people 12 and older were asked whether they were victims last year of various categories of crimes.
Although the survey does not include murder, it is regarded by many criminologists and law enforcement officials as a broader and more reliable gauge of crime.