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University Daily Kansan
Nation/World
Thursday, March 6, 1986
News Briefs
4 die in jet collision over Pacific Ocean
SAN CLEMENTE ISLAND, Calif. — Two commercial Lear jets leased by the Navy collided over the ocean southwest of Los Angeles yesterday during a training mission, killing two veteran plots and their two passengers, authorities said.
Vega-1 nears comet
The planes were being tracked by personnel on the USS Gridley as part of a radar training session when the crash occurred, Petty Officer Rex Kramer said.
MOSCOW — The Soviet Vega-1 spaceship sped toward the core of Halley's comet yesterday where it faces a critical juncture in its mission to take the first close-up pictures of the comet.
U. S. and Soviet scientists at the Space Research Institute wait tensely for the craft to make the closest approach to the comet today, when it will pass 5,220 miles from the nucleus.
If Vega-1 survives a dust storm near the core, it will transmit data about the comet's composition.
Musician dead at 42
WINTER PARK, Fla. — Shocked family members and friends could not explain yesterday why Richard Manuel, 42, an original member of the critically acclaimed rock quintet The Band, hanged himself Tuesday in a motel bathroom.
Manuel, a native of Stratford,
Ontario, had performed with The
Band on Monday night in a lounge
next to the motel where he died.
Sob story continues
WASHINGTON — President Reagan held up a yellow T-shirt emblazoned with the letters "S.O.B." at a White House breakfast meeting with a group of reporters yesterday.
The back of the shirt read:
"Save our budget."
S. O.B. seemed to mean something different Friday when Reagan, apparently referring to reporters, said, "sons of bitches" near an open microphone.
Some reporters showed up this week with S.O.B. shirts, referring to "Sons of the basement" — those who work on the lower level of the White House press center.
From Kansan wires.
Aquino gives freedom to four
The Associated Press
MANILA, Philippines — President Corazon Aquino freed two former communist rebel leaders yesterday despite reservations from the military, and she paid her first visit to the palace in which Ferdinand E. Marcos lived for 20 years.
Meanwhile, attorney Lupino Lazaro said two men cleared in the 1983 murder of Aquino's husband, Benigno, had given sworn statements admitting involvement and implicating Marcos, his wife, Imela, and four former Cabinet ministers. Gen. Fabian C. Ver, Marcos' military commander, was among the 28 people acquitted earlier.
Less than an hour after their release from military prisons, the rebel leaders visited Aquino.
"I'm sorry for the delay," Aquino told Jose Maria Sison and Bernabe Buscayno when they were ushered into her temporary office. Two people alleged to be members of a rebel
Aquino had pledged to free all political prisoners held by Marcos, who fled the country a week ago, and the four were the last on the list. Most of the prisoners have not yet gone home because of required medical checkups and paper work.
assassination squad also were released.
Presidential spokesman Rene Saguisag said the four men were released after a "candid, cordial, and vigorous exchange of views" with military commanders, worried that they would take up arms again. Aquino's top军官 advisers had argued that the four men should not be freed unconditionally.
Sison acknowledged at a news conference a few hours after his release that he founded the Communist Party of the Philippines in 1968 and led the armed struggle against the Marcos government until his capture in November 1977. He had refused throughout his imprisonment to
Buscayno, who was captured in August 1976, allegedly commanded the party's New People's Army guerillas and was known as Commander Dante.
answer questions about his party role.
The two other men released were Alexander Birondo and Ruben Alegre. Both were arrested within the past two years.
Cardinal Jaime L. S, sin, archbishop of Manila, said in Rome that the estimated 12,500 insurgents might surrender this month because "there's no reason for them to stay in the mountains" since Marcos left. Sin, who led the nation's Roman Catholic bishops in support of Anuino, was on a visit to the Vatican.
Sison told journalists, however, that there is no certainty that the rebels would lay down their arms.
Saguisag said 517 political prisoners have been ordered released. The military says it has no more
such prisoners, but Saguisas said the government was checking reports by human rights organizations that up to 200 people listed as common criminals may be held for political reasons.
At the Malacanang presidential palace, Aquino waved from a window to people strolling on the park-like grounds and told officials accompanying her that the opulent, Spanish-style mansion looked like a hotel.
The new president has a temporary office on the seventh floor of a building owned by her family in Manila's financial district. She has said she will work in the palace, but not live there because the leader of a developing country should not live in luxury.
More members of the Supreme Court offered resignations yesterday, leaving only two or three of the tribunal's 13 justices resisting Aquino's demand that they quit so she can reorganize the judiciary.
New taxes called must for budget
United Press International
WASHINGTON — The Senate Budget Committee began discussions on the 1987 budget yesterday, and Democrats and Republicans acknowledged that new revenues would be needed to cut the deficit despite President Reagan's opposition.
The deliberations were the first under the constraints of the Gramm-Rudman balanced-budge law, which requires that the current deficit of more than $189 billion must be cut to $144 billion in fiscal 1987
Senate floor and say, 'If you do all these things there will be no automatic cuts.'
If the target is not met because Congress and Reagan cannot agree on what programs should be reduced, automatic cuts are scheduled to kick in, though that part of the law faces a court challenge.
"There is no way to get to the $144 (billion) . . .
unless we have some revenues," said committee
chairman Pete Domenici, R-N-M. "$12 billion to
$20 billion will be needed . . so we can go to the
Sen. Lawton Chiles, the panel's top Democrat, concurred.
"We will have to look at revenues and their role in reducing the deficit," said Chiles, D-Fla. "That might not make us popular. But it doesn't necessarily make us wrong."
None of the senators would name specific taxes they would like to raise. But there is general opposition to an increase in individual income tax rates, and many senators prefer more limited levies.
Reagan has steadfastly remained opposed to tax increases, though his budget contains "user fee" increases for some government services and a continuation of the 18-cents-a-pack cigarette tax.
He maintains that his budget meets the deficit target of $144 billion without new taxes by cutting large areas of government spending — except for
the military, which would get an 8.2 percent increase.
But last week, the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office said Reagan's budget did not meet the Gramm-Rudman goal for 1987 because it underestimated military spending by $14.5 billion.
Under CBO estimates, Reagan's budget leaves a $159.7 billion deficit.
Along those lines, the committee agreed to use the CBO's estimates as a starting point for the deliberations, which are expected to take about 10 days.
Domenici said any taxes called for by the budget committee would have to be approved by the finance committee before they could be enacted.
Separately, Senate opponents of a balanced-budget amendment to the Constitution said Wednesday that they were about four votes shy of being able to defeat the proposal.
Thousands rally at S. African funeral
The Associated Press
JOHANNESBURG, South Africa — At least 30,000 black mourners, joined by hundreds of whites, turned a mass funeral for 17 black riots victims yesterday into a vast demonstration of opposition to apartheid.
The throng packed a soccer stadium in Alexandra, a squalid black township wedged among the richest white suburbs of Johannesburg. In the crowd were black activist Winnie Mandela and diplomats from seven Western nations, including the United States.
Among clergymen of all races was the Rev. Beyers Naude, 70, an Afrikaner whose spiritual journey from faith in apartheid to the struggle for black rights has made him a symbol of white liberalism.
Mike Beea, president of the Alexandra Civic Association, told the mourners, "No one is free in this country as long as the black man is
not free. We are simply saying,
'dismantle apartheid.'
Police with rifles guarded all entrances to Alexandra and searched incoming cars, including that of Betsy Spiro, political counselor of the U.S. Embassy. The police stayed well away from the stadium, but a helicopter circled overhead.
Because most other forms of protest are banned, the crowd — which some estimates put at 50,000 or more — transformed the service into a
huge rally against apartheid. Apartheid is a racial policy that reserves privilege for South Africa's five million whites and denies rights to its 24 million blacks.
Black-power chants and songs filled the air between defiant speeches in which the riot victims were praised as the latest martyrs of the fight against white rule.
The coffins were lowered into the pale, sun-scorched ground of a nearby hillside cemetery.
Rebel aid proposal defeated
United Press International
WASHINGTON — The House Intelligence Committee voted yesterday against spending $100 million to bolster rebels in Nicaragua, rejecting administration warnings that the rebels may be snuffed out without U.S. arms and supplies.
After a closed committee session, an aide told reporters that it had voted 9-7 in closed session against renewing and expanding assistance to the rebels, who are battling the leftist Sandinista government of Nicaragua.
The vote was viewed as the first congressional test of President Reagan's latest plea for aid to the rebels, or contras.
The aide said nine of the 10 Democrats on the committee voted against, while all six Republicans joined by Rep. Dan Daniel, D-Va, supported it.
About an hour later, in an expected party-line split, the House Foreign Affairs subcommittee on the Western Hemisphere voted 8-5 to report the proposal unfavorably to the full committee, which is to vote on it today.
Reagan, escalating his rhetoric in the political battle over the aid, denounced the Sandinistas as "criminals and lunatics" earlier in the day and warned his opponents, "If members of Congress hide their heads in the sand and pretend the strategic threat in Nicaragua will go away, they are courting disaster and history will hold them accountable.
"If we don't want to see the map of Central America covered in a sea of red, eventually lapping at our own border, we must act now. Nothing less than the security of the United States is at stake."
Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger told the House Foreign Affairs Committee if the contrasts are crushed by Nicaraguan forces armed with Soviet weapons and aided by Cuban troops, the United States may have to send combat forces to Central America.
In addition to the intelligence and foreign affairs committees, the House Appropriations and Armed Services committees also must vote on the aid request. Companion committees in the Senate, where Reagan enjoys more support, also are working on the measure, but no action has been taken.
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