University Daily Kansan / Tuesday, March 28. 1989
Nation/World
7
Nuclear activists mark anniversary
The Associated Press
HARRISIBURG, Pa. — Anti-nuclear activists marked the 10th anniversary of the Three Mile Island nuclear plant accident with renewed warnings yesterday that the health effects hidden and the lessons forgotten.
Scientists and nearby residents held news conferences at the state Capitol and a vigil was planned outside the plant late last night and for 4 a.m. today, the time the accident began.
"The so-called accident at TMI was an act of violence against mankind, an act of violence against the unborn," said Jane Lee, an activist from nearby Etters, referring to the March 28, 1979, incident.
The nation's worst nuclear accident occurred when a series of human and mechanical errors allowed the plant's 150-ton radioactive core to lose cooling water. Half the core melted and 20 tons of molten material raced to the bottom of the tank before being poured into a remaining pool of water. Radioactive gas was released to the atmosphere.
"This marks a decade of false denials and utright lies on the part of the utility that owns and operates
Three Mile Island . . . and on the part of the state of Pennsylvania, which has systemically obfuscated and hidden any real statistics about the deaths that have occurred in the state. Mr. Harvey Wasserman, who wrote a book, "Killing Our Own," about the health effects of nuclear power.
He said 75 percent of the nation's commercial reactors hadn't completed modifications required in the wake of the accident.
A spokesman for the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission said he could not immediately respond to Wasserman's charge.
Ernest Sterngell, a University of Pittsburgh radiation physics professor said information had been suppressed that would show that radiation from Three Mile Island increased infant mortality in Pennsylvania, New York and Maryland, and caused thousands of other excessive deaths by lowering people's immunity.
Deborah Baker of Midtown, who won a $1 million settlement from the plant owners' insurance company, said her own research has convinced her that she should be born his son, who was born nine months later, to have Down's Syndrome.
GUATEMALA CITY — Inmates who hold 626 hostages, most of them women and children who were on an Easter visit to jailed relatives at a prison farm, demanded an airplane yesterday to take them to Cuba, a prison official said.
Guatemalan prisoners want trip to Cuba
The Associated Press
At least seven people — four guards and three inmates — were killed and 20 were injured when 75 to 100 inmates seized much of the overcrowded prison farm Sunday. It is Guatemala's largest
Police, national guardsmen and soldiers surrounded the Pavon farm prison yesterday as
Guatemala's human rights director negotiated with the rebel prisoners.
Journalists outside heard riffle and machine gun fire Monday morning. There was no official comment.
Carlos Ramos Mocada, inspector-general of prisons, said the mutines had about 65 riffes and ammunition taken in a raid on the Pavon armory. He gave reporters the figures on how many prisoners were involved and said the prisoners controlled about 65 percent of the prison facility.
He said they were holding 154 children, 363 women and 107 men hostage. Prison spokesman
Conrado Monroy said the hostages included five workers, and an undetermined number of guards, worker and an undetermined number of guards.
Gonzalo Menendez de la Riva, the government human rights director, spent more than five hours in the prison negotiating with the inmates. He had no comment either when he entered or when he left at midafternoon to confer with the interior minister, Roberto Valde Validad.
Monroy told reporters the inmates demanded an airplane to take them to communist Cuba, but he gave no details.
News Briefs
NORTH'S BID REJECTED: The judge in the Iran-Contra trial yesterday rejected Oliver North's bid to have former President Reagan appear in court Friday as the defense's first witness but held out the possibility that he might be called later.
The Justice Department, acting on Reagan's behalf, opposes North's suboena.
North's lawyer, Brendan Sullivan, is trying to show that Reagan and his advisors approved North's actions. The fired National Security Council aide is charged with 12 crimes, including obstructing and making threats against Reagan, denying that he was involved in secretly assisting the contras.
North's lawyers have brought out at the trial that Reagan personally
approved a secret deal to slip $110 million in extra aid to Honduras to entice the country's government to back the contras.
BUSH DISCUSSES GUNS: President Bush discussed semi-automatic assault weapons yesterday with his top law and drug enforcement advisers, but White House aides said the president's decision was a decision on what to do about them.
EXECUTION OF JUvenILES: The Supreme Court was urged yesterday to find a national consensus "against
White House Press Secretary Marlin Fitzwater called the meeting the first session of the principals since this review had begun and said no decisions had been expected to emerge from it.
executing our young" and ban the death penalty for all juvenile murderers.
The high court is to decide by July whether imposing the death penalty on murderers who committed their crimes before reaching the age of 18 or were sentenced to the annual punishment" banned by the Constitution's Eighth Amendment.
The court's decision will affect 31 of the more than 2,200 death row inmates nationwide. Anti-capital punishment forces nevertheless are attaching enormous importance to the issue.
The justices were told that of the 36 states with capital punishment laws, only 12 ban the death penalty for killers who were younger than 18 when they committed their crimes. GANDHI ASSASSINATION: The
Indian government in New Delhi released a long-secret report yesterday that links Prime Minister Indira Gandhi's personal secretary to her assassination in 1884 and expresses concern that he was connected with the CIA.
The report, by a special investigative commission, also says that security officials were aware of the threat to Gandhi's life and could have prevented the murder. It had been kept secret on national security grounds since its completion nearly three years ago.
Home Minister Buta Singh, releasing the report to Parliament, said another special investigating team "unraveled a conspiracy, a larger conspiracy to eliminate Mrs. Gandhi."
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