2
Nation/World
University Daily Kansan
Monday, Sept. 16, 1985
News Briefs Philippine theater bombed; 35 killed
There were no serious injuries and no danger to water supplies in the accident, in which 29 cars of a 100-car Southern Pacific train drenalied.
SAN ANTONIO, Texas — A freight train that derailed on a trestle Saturday night spilled as much as 200,000 gallons of sulfuric acid into a river, disintegrating thousands of fish and forcing about 300 people to evacuate, officials said yesterday.
PAGADIAN, Philippines — Three grenades hurled from a balcony into the lower floor of a crowded theater yesterday killed at least 35 people and wounded about 100 in a Mindanao Island town, a local radio station reported.
It blamed terrorists for the attack in the town of Lala, 500 miles south of Manila, but said it was not known whether the killers were Moslem extremists or members of the communist New People's Army.
The evacuations were ordered within one mile of the accident and will continue until at least 8 a.m. today, authorities said, forcing the closing of a nearby high school.
Workers built an earthen dam to contain the spill and dumped almost 1,000 tons of lime into the Medina River to neutralize the water.
300 flee acid spill
JERUSALEM — Israel prepared yesterday to celebrate Rosh Hashana, the start of the Jewish new year.
The new year 5746 begins today, a national holiday in Israel, where 83 percent of the population is Jewish. Observeant Jews attend synagogue. For others it is a vacation.
New year celebrated
Actually, the new year begins in what the Old Testament says is the seventh month. In Leviticus 23:24, God instructs Moses to tell the children of Israel, "In the seventh month, in the first day of the month, shall be a solenn rest, a memorial proclaimed with the blast of horns, a holy convocation."
South African clergymen call for strike
From Kansan wires
JOHANNESBURG, South Africa — Black and white clergymen called on South Africans yesterday to strike for one day in October to protest that government's racial segregation policies and a state of emergency that entered its ninth week.
The illegal call, made in a quarter-page advertisement in Johannesburg's Sunday newspapers, came as police said in a routine report on overnight racial violence that officers fired shotguns, wounding three men, when blacks attacked a police patrol.
Police said seven rioters were arrested in other nation-wide incidents of arson and stone-throwing.
On the political front, the white-minority government shrugged off criticism from white opposition newspapers that modest reforms of aparteid announced last week had come too late to head off limited U.S. sanctions.
South African business executives, under fire from President P.W. Botha for meeting exiled black guerrilla chiefs, were lauded by English-language newspapers for what one newspaper called, "doing this country a service."
Boha said last week that the government would restore South African citizenship to blacks considered citizens of independent tribal homelands, and that a presidential commission recommended scrapping "influx control" laws aimed at keeping blacks out of white areas.
The newspaper advertisement was signed by 13 church leaders, including Desmond Tutu, the 1948 Nobel Peace Prize winner and the Anglican bishop of Oxford, who included Anglican archbishop Philip Russell of Cape Town and Methodist Church leader Peter Storey, who are both white.
"For those who suffer under the pain and despair of the South African reality, we feel bound by God to visible and obedient actions of hope," the clergymen said in the statement, which was drafted Thursday after a three-day meeting in Pietermaritzburg.
They urged that on Oct. 9, "Chris
tians, rather than attending the places of their usual employment, should give the day to repentance, mourning and prayer for those sinful aspects of our national life which have led us to the present crisis."
The call exempted people employed in essential services.
Calls for politically-motivated work stoppages are outlawed by terms of a state of emergency declared by Botha on July 21 in an effort to yearlong race violence that has claimed over 700 lives.
About 200 of the riot victims have died since the emergency was invoked in 36 administrative areas and 189 of them were port Elizabeth, on the south coast.
More than 3,150 people have been
detained without charge under emergency provisions and an estimated 2,000 others have been arrested for arson, stone-throwing and rioting.
The churchmen, representing 47 unnamed Christian denominations, said they would send a delegation to see Botha with six demands, including an end to the state of emergency;
The delegation will also call for the withdrawal of police and soldiers from black townships and the release of political prisoners, according to the advertisement.
The Sunday Times, whose editor attended Friday's meeting in a remote game park in Zambia, said, "it must ... do some good."
Governor's trial to start
United Press International
NEW ORLEANS — Gov. Edwin Edwards, accused of using his influence to steer hospital and nursing home permits to friends for $10 million in profits, goes to trial this week on charges of federal racketeering and fraud.
After six months of legal maneuvering, the trial was scheduled to open today with the task of selecting 12 jurors and six alternates.
Edwards, his brother, a nephew and five business associates have been accused of conspiring illegally to acquire and sell hospital permits from the state for at least $10 million in profits. The indictment returned on Feb. 28 listed 50 various counts of racketeering and mail and wire fraud.
The charges carry a maximum prison sentence of 245 years.
that Edwards joined the scheme to pay his gambling debts.
Subpoenas have been issued to about 12 employees of gambling casinos, bits of evidence have been sealed and several news reports concluded that the governor lost heavily at the gaming tables in Las Vegas and Lake Taheo.
285 years.
There are signs the prosecution might try to prove
Neither side has commented in detail on the reports because of a gag rule imposed by U.S. DISTrict Judge Marcel Livaudault Jr. But Edwards said the gambling reports were "off the mark."
The sealed evidence "is just not nearly as sinister as some think," he said.
The indictment said Edwards used his position to steer hospital and nursing home construction permits to his friends, while secretly holding stock in their health care companies.
British talk of Moscow expulsions
Moscow's explosion of blood had a spokesman for Thatcher also had
Foreign Secretary Sir Geoffrey Howe and Home Secretary Douglas Hurd had no comment when they emerged from Thatcher's office amid speculation the British would expel more Soviets in response to Moscow's expulsion order Saturday.
LONDON — Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and two Cabinet ministers held what were described as "urgent" talks yesterday on Moscow's expulsion of 25 Britons in retaliation for Britain's expulsion of 25 accused Soviet spies.
From Kansan wires
no comment on whether a decision was reached. Sources said Britain's next move had been decided, although it was being kept secret to spring on the Soviets without notice.
Thatcher met for an hour yesterday with Howe and Hurd, who is in charge of law and order and thus "has concerns with security," a Thatcher spokesman said.
The sources said if more expulsions were to be ordered, they likely would be announced before the prime minister left this afternoon on a five-day trip to Egypt and Jordan.
"They discussed the situation," the spokesman said; "Obviously they
wanted to discuss the matter before the prime minister leaves, and it is fair to call their discussions urgent because the foreign secretary said he was giving urgent consideration to the matter.
"But other than that, there is no information on what was decided."
The scale of the Soviet reaction surprised London and damaged Anglo-Soviet relations, government sources said.
Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, whose government Saturday ordered 25 Britons to leave Moscow, apparently wanted to demonstrate his toughness.
Unconfirmed reports say American is free
From Kansan wires
BEIRUT, Lebanon — U.S. officials in Beirut and Washington said yesterday that they could not confirm the claim by an anonymous telephone caller that the Rev. Benjamin Weir, one of seven Americans kidnapped in Beirut, had been freed.
The caller told the Reuters news agency in Beirut yesterday that Weir was released Saturday night. The caller, who said He was speaking on behalf of Islamic Jihad or Islamic Holy War, a group which claimed in previous calls to be holding the seven Americans, spoke in Arabic and hung up when asked for details.
Reporter in west Beirut news offices said they did not recognize the caller as someone who previously had delivered statements purporting to be from Islamic Jihad, which says it is holding seven missing Americans and four Frenchmen.
Cameron Hume, political officer at the U.S. Embassy in Beirut, said, "We have absolutely no such information."
In Washington, Edward Dijerjean,
White House spokesman for foreign
affairs, said the White House would
have "absolutely no comment" on
the report of Weir's release, and said
he did not expect any statement on
the issue before today.
whether the U.S. Embassy in Beirut had other information about the status of Weir or the six other Americans.
He refused comment on what measures the administration was taking to confirm the report, or
President Reagan, returning to the White House by helicopter from the presidential weekend hideaway at Camp David, Md., told reporters, "No comment," when asked about Weir. White House spokesman Pete Roussel said the president was aware of the report of Weir's release.
Senior police officials in Beirut and officials of Amal, the dominant Shiite Muslim militia, also said they had no word Weir was freed.
Weir, 61, a Presbyterian minister originally from Salt Lake City, was kidnapped in Muslim west Beirut on May 8, 1984. Weir was named a missionary in Lebanon in 1953 and worked in partnership with the National Evangelical Synod of Syria and Lebanon.
The other kidnapped Americans are: William Buckley, 57, a political officer at the embassy in Beirut; Peter Kilburn, 60, a librarian at the American University in Beirut; the Rev. Martin Lawrence Jenco, 50, a Roman Catholic priest; Terry A. Anderson, 37, chief Middle East correspondent for the AP; Thomas Sutherland, 44, acting dean of agriculture at the American University; and David Jacobsen, 54, administrator at the American University Hospital.
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