2
Nation/World
University Daily Kansan
Friday, Sept. 20, 1985
News Briefs
PHILADELPHIA - A federal appeals court yesterday cleared the way for the restart of the undamaged reactor at the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant, shut down after the nation's worst commercial nuclear accident six years ago.
CBS fires employees in drive to cut costs
NEW YORK - CBS News, hit hard financially by its battle to stave off Ted Turner's takeover bid and by poor business conditions, fired 74 employees yesterday and announced it would eliminate another 51 jobs in an attempt to cut spending.
The staff reductions were announced by Edward M. Joyce, president of CBS News, who said the 51 jobs were being eliminated through an early retirement incentive program and by leaving current job vacancies unfilled.
Tripoli battle ceases
The 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals refused a request by opponents to hold additional hearings on reactivation of TMI's Unit 1 reactor and ordered an earlier court order blocking the restart lifted at 4 p.m. Wednesday, Sept. 25.
BEIRUT, Lebanon — Muslim gunmen and pro-Syrian militiamen battled for control of Tripoli for a fifth day yesterday before a shaky cease-fire took effect. At least 77 people have died in the northern port city this week.
Court clears restart
Witch pickets for job
SAN DIEGO — Virginia Thompson thinks she was fired from her clerical job because she is a witch—and she took to the streets to protest.
Thompson, 42, picketed Wednesday in front of the County Area Agency on Aging. She said she had seen the abuse of her pagan religious beliefs.
Agency Director Dan Laver said Thompson was fired because of excessive absences.
From Kansan wire reports:
Weir freed to give warning to U.S.
From Kansan wires
WASHINGTON — The Rev. Benjamin Weir said yesterday that he was let go to warn that his Lebanese kidnappers were not willing to wait much longer for the freedom of 17 men imprisoned in Kuwait — the terrorists' sole demand for releasing their six other American hostages.
He said he was given no timetable for action.
Weir said he saw four of the six Americans before he was freed Saturday after 16 months in captivity. He said the four — Terry Anderson, David Jacobsen, the Rev.
Lawrence Jenco and Thomas Sutherland — all appeared well. But he said he knew nothing about the two others, Peter Kilburn and William Buckley.
Weir was told he would be freed only 90 minutes before his release. The four hostages he talked to hurriedly wrote letters for him to carry to their loved ones, hostage family members said yesterday.
Weir delivered the letters when he spent more than an hour with the family members after his first news conference.
Weir said that he felt fit, and that doctors confirmed that he was.
Wearing a yellow ribbon on his left lapel, the 61-year-old Presbyterian minister comfortably answered questions from reporters at a 50-minute news conference.
"A window of opportunity has been opened at least a crack and the opportunity for negotiations should be seized," he said. "I fear that opportunity may not last long."
He said he was expected to make this message known to the U.S. government.
The 17 prisoners in Kuwait were convicted of a series of bombings on Dec. 12, 1983, that included an attack on the U.S. embassy. Three have
been condemned to death by hanging, seven have a life sentence and the rest have terms ranging from 15 to two years.
The Kuwaiti government has refused to submit to pressure by Lebanon-based Islamic fundamentalists to release them.
Weir said that he conveyed the message to President Reagan in a telephone call on Wednesday and did not respond if did not respond in any specific way.
Reagan declined Wednesday to comment on the captors' demands, as relayed by Weir.
At the White House and State
Department, spokesmen issued virtually the same statement: "We will review Rev. Weir's suggestions, carefully and will continue to do everything possible consistent with U.S. policy to obtain the expeditious release of the remaining six hostages."
But, the spokesmen said the administration would not pressure other governments to make concessions to those holding hostages.
Weir said he contacted the American Embassy after his release and was flown back to the United States, arriving in Norfolk, Va., Monday evening.
AIDS cases may double in 1986
United Press International
WASHINGTON — As many as 500,000 to 1 million Americans may have been infected by the AIDS virus and more than 12,000 of them are expected to develop the deadly disease next year, federal health officials said yesterday.
Stars turn out for AIDS benefit p. 10.
That many new cases of AIDS would represent a doubling of the current cumulative toll since 1981 in the United States.
A report from the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta said more than half of the new cases of acquired immune deficiency syndrome are expected to come from states other than New York and California, the states now reporting the highest numbers of AIDS cases.
"In the absence of vaccine or therapy, the incidence of AIDS in the United States is likely to increase during the next few years." six AIDS specialists from the CDC said in a published in Science magazine.
"A couple of years ago, the doubling time was every six months." Jaffe said in a telephone interview. "The last doubling occurred in about 10 months and we're projecting the next doubling in about 12 months."
But Dr. Harold Jaffe, one of the authors of the report, said the rate of increase in the number of AIDS cases is gradually slowing.
Infection by the AIDS virus does not necessarily mean a person will develop the deadly illness, which attacks the body's natural disease-fighting power. A five-year San Francisco study of homosexual men
whose blood contained evidence of AIDS infection found 5 percent to 10 percent actually develop AIDS.
On the basis of that study, the CDC officials estimated in the Science report that there is an "annual attack rate of from 1 percent to 2 percent of those currently infected with the virus."
While there is an infection-to-AIDS ratio of 28 to 1 in the San Francisco group, the CDC officials estimated the ratio throughout the nation, where the virus has not been around as long, is closer to 50 to 1 or 100 to 1.
That ratio and the current AIDS toll of about 13,000 was used to arrive at the 500,000 to 1 million infection estimate. Jaffe said.
The report said the new cases of AIDS are likely to develop in people most at risk for developing the disease — homosexuals, intravenous
drug abusers and people who received contaminated blood products before a new blood test became available.
In addition, the report said heterosexual partners of AIDS patients or those at increased risk of developing AIDS were at higher risk themselves of developing the disease, as are babies born to women with AIDS.
The report said the risk of developing AIDS is "extremely low" — about one in a million — for those who are unemployed members of a high-risk group.
In most AIDS cases in the United States, the virus appears to have been transmitted through sexual contact, contaminated drug needles, administration of contaminated blood, or passage of the virus from infected mothers to newborns.
Zappa disputes music rating scheme
United Press International
WASHINGTON — Raucous rock 'n' roll star Frank Zappa told a Senate committee yesterday that proposals by parents' groups to label or rate records containing explicit lyrics are "the equivalent of treating dandruff by decapitation."
haired leader of the heavy metal band Twisted Sister, in telling the Senate Commerce Committee that labeling or rating systems are unworkable and could lead to censorship.
Zappa, best known for raunchy rock songs like "Suzy Cream Cheese" and "Don't Eat the Yellow Snow," joined pop singer John Denver and Dee Sniper, the long-
Zappa, who was conservatively dressed in a black suit and tie.
Kappa, whose songs frequently are banned from radio air waves, quoted the First Amendment and then invited the committee for holding the hearing.
That prompted Sen. Slade Gorton, R-Wash, to tell Zappa his statement "beorish" and "insulting" to the parents' group urging labels.
"The Parents Music Resource Center proposal is an ill-conceived piece of nonsense that fails to deliver any real benefits to children, infringes the civil liberties of people who are not children and promises to keep the courts busy for years," said
Wages up for U.S.A. in August
Denver said, "I'm opposed to any kind of rating system, voluntary or otherwise."
The latest report showed a wider-than-usual divergence, with the 1.2 percent increase in personal purchasing of goods and services, three times the month's growth in pre-tax income.
He said the number of records containing objectionable lyrics is so small that "it's not going to affect our children to a degree that we need to be fearful of."
WASHINGTON — U.S. personal income inched up 0.3 percent in August, spending soared and savings plunged, government economists said yesterday.
Snider defended his music, saying that he is a Christian who does not smoke, drink or use drugs and that his music reflects his personal beliefs.
What was left, savings, turned out to be the smallest percentage of disposable income on record with a national savings rate of only 2.8 percent.
United Press International
Most major record labels last month agreed to place a sticker saying "Parental Guidance: Explicit Lyrics" on appropriate albums.
But a large Social Security benefit increase in July served to exaggerate the slowdown in income growth in August, a special factor that made it harder for analysts to calculate the effects on the gross national product.
Today's scheduled release of the quarterly "flash" estimate of GNP growth is anxiously awaited on Wall Street and foreign exchange markets as the most informed guess yet about where the economy is headed.
"My guess is if there is going to be a surprise it is going to be on the high side rather than the low side," said economist L. Douglas Lee of the Washington Analysis Corp, forecast firm.
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