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University Daily Kansan
Nation/World
Wednesday, Feb. 26, 1986
News Briefs
U.S. cruise missile crashes in Canada
VANCOUVER, British Columbia — An unarmed U.S. cruise missile strayed off course during a test flight yesterday and crashed into the Beaufort Sea. It was the second crash of a cruise missile in less than five weeks, and Canada immediately suspended testing.
The missile crashed moments after it was launched from the wing of a B-52 bomber for a 1,500-mile test flight across northwestern Canada. An earlier missile missle ran out of fuel and crashed 35 miles from its target Jan. 22.
College drops charges
HANOVER, N.H. — Criminal charges against 18 Dartmouth College students arrested in an anti-apartheid protest have been dropped at the college's request, school officials said yesterday.
The students were arrested Feb. 11 when they tried to stop workmen from removing an anti-apartheid shanty from the campus green. Their cases will be turned over to a college disciplinary panel, Dartmouth spokesman Alex Huppe said.
Gerber to delay suit
BALTIMORE — Lawyers for Gerber baby foods agreed yesterday to delay a $150 million lawsuit against Maryland Gov. Harry Hughes and seek a compromise with state health officials who banned the company's strained peaches.
The agreement came after the Food and Drug Administration reported only two specks of glass were found in 17,800 unjared jars of Gerber baby food and said reports of glass in the food stemmed mainly from breakage and publicity. The FDA called the findings consistent with good manufacturing standards.
FBI balks at arrest
NEWARK, N.J. — An armored car driver wanted since 1984 for stealing more than $370,000 tried to surrender to the FBI earlier this month and was turned down, his lawyer said.
A lawyer for Allen Edwin Tildsley, 45, said Tildsley tried to surrender but was unable to persuade the FBI to arrest him.
From Kansan wires.
Engineers say they knew of danger
The Associated Press
WASHINGTON — Morton Thiokol engineers testified yesterday that company managers overruled their fears that a cold-weather liftoff might doom the Challenger, and sources revealed that investigators have uncovered a pre-launch protest from the manufacturer of the space shuttle.
situation.
Managers of Morton Thiolok, which makes the rockets that launch the shuttle into space, reversed their company's initial opposition to the launch, and skeptical commission members questioned them intensely about their justification for that.
The company's own engineers said they were almost unanimously opposed to the launch, one recalling he warned last summer that such a catastrophe could happen.
Roger Boisjoly, a Morton Thiolok engineer who deals in booster rocket structures, said he did all he could to stop the launch on the night before
The Associated Press
WASHINGTON — NASA Administrator James M. Beggs, under indictment for fraud and on leave from his post, resigned yesterday to let President Reagan name a new chief for the embattled space agency.
White House spokesman Albert
R. Brashear said Beggs' letter of resignation was received yesterday afternoon and that Reagan would move quickly to name a successor.
Presidential spokesman Larry Speakes had hinted that Reagan would not ask for Begg's resignation but would accept it if offered.
Leading contenders for the job
are said to include former NASA Administrators James C. Fletcher and Thomas O. Paine.
lift-off. "I expressed deep concern about launching in low temperatures."
During his tenure, Beggs was a strong promoter of the shuttle program. He took a leave of absence after being indicted on fraud charges stemming from his duties as an executive of General Dynamics Corp.
Testifying before a presidential investigating commission, Boisjoly said that not a single engineer in a private caucus of company officials on the eve of the space shuttle launch was in favor of going ahead the next morning.
nearly five-year-old shuttle program. The shuttle exploded 73 seconds after launch on Jan. 28, destroying the ship and killing all seven in its crew.
The engineer said he had expressed concern about launching after a night of sub-freezing temperatures. He said that when the rubber-like Oring seals between segments of the booster rockets were cold, they would not fit properly into their seats.
Meanwhile, sources said, a protest against the launch came from Rocco Petrone, president of the space division of Rockwell International. The sources said Petrone expressed fears that ice might fall from the space
Last month's Challenger launch was the coldest in the history of the
shuttle's external fuel tank and! damage Challenger's fragile tiles.
Petrone is a former NASA launch director and his involvement was to be disclosed today or tomorrow as the presidential commission summoned Rockwell officials
Boisiyol said a Thiokol engineering superviser, Arnold Thompson, tried to sketch for Morton Thiokol management their concern with the seals.
Boisjoly and Thompson said they both warned their management last summer about a potential catastrophe
Another Morton Thiolok engineer testified that he was absolutely positive that top NASA officials would be told of his deep opposition to launching Challenger.
the engineer, Allan McDonald, learned later that Jesse Moore, the NASA official with final say over the launch, never heard of McDonald's fears of the effect of cold on safety seals.
Court OKs theater isolation
United Press International
WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court yesterday extended cities' power to curb adult theaters, ruling 7-2 that such establishments may be isolated in undesirable parts of town.
The decision in the case from Renton, Wash., a suburb of Seattle, amplified a 1976 ruling in a Detroit case that permits cities to limit the number of adult theaters in one area.
Cities may regulate adult
theaters by dispersing them, as in Detroit, or by effectively concentrating them, as in Renton," Justice William Rehnquist said for the majority.
The court's action came a day after the justices struck down a measure from Indianapolis that sought to fight pornography by defining it as discrimination against women.
"The Renton ordinance, like the one in (the Detroit case), does not ban adult theaters altogether, but merely provides that such theaters
may not be located within 1,000 feet of any residential zone, single or multiple-family dwelling, church, park or school."
However, Justice William Brennan, joined by Justice Thurgood Marshall, said the ordinance was unconstitutional
David Utevsky, a Washington lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union, which opposed the Renton ordinance, called it a de facto ban on adult entertainment because it sets 95 percent of the city off limits to adult theaters.
Governors at odds over tax plan
United Press International
WASHINGTON — The nation's governors, who strongly disagree with key cuts in President Reagan's budget proposal, failed yesterday to agree on an alternate plan built around their taking over the federal gasoline tax.
At a White House meeting Monday, the governors denounced Reagan for dumping more than $1 billion in Medicaid costs onto state budgets. As an alternative, some of them told Reagan the federal government should pay all Medicaid costs while
ue states paid for transportation projects other than the interstate highway program.
But the governors, at the winter meeting of the National Governors' Association, voted 17-15 against a proof provision asking that Congress turn the 9-cents-a-gallon federal gasoline tax over to the states.
The hastily drafted proposal was beaten by a coalition of governors from big states, who were afraid of losing federal funds for subways and other mass transit projects, and other governors, mainly from the West, who feared their legislatures
would never approve state imposition of the tax.
Gorbachev criticizes Reagan, U.S. policies
but leaders of the governors' conference said the idea was in keeping with their plan for federalism — turning more programs over to the states with the means of paying for them — and they predicted it would come up again.
Reagan's budget proposal would reduce the federal share of Medicaid costs by $1 billion and cut another $1.1 billion by limiting open-ended federal grants to states. The cuts would be partially offset by a $300 million one-time payment.
United Press International
MOSCOW — Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev opened the 27th Communist Party Congress yesterday with a scathing attack on U.S. foreign and domestic policy and a rejection of President Reagan's arms reduction proposals.
Gorbachev, addressing his first congress since becoming general secretary of the Communist Party almost a year ago, said he saw no point in meeting for talks with Reagan unless there were chances an agreement could be reached.
Gorbachev admitted that previous Kremlin leaders made mistakes in politics and called for an economic rebirth during his daylong speech to 5,000 party delegates of the congress, which meets every five years. Some 150 foreign delegations attended, headed by leaders such as Cuban President Fidel Castro and Poland's Wolcine Jarzuelski.
Documents prepared for the 10-day meeting cover policies that will guide the Soviet Union through the year 2000. Major personnel changes were certain during the meeting.
Although calling for peaceful superpower co-existence, Gorbachev painted a dismal picture of life in
America as culturally impoverished and rife with unemployment. The country is ruled by a military, industrial complex that is "gorging itself on the arms race beyond reason," he said.
the 54-year-old Soviet leader contrasted what he called Soviet progress in culture, economics and society with decadence, poverty and unemployment in the West, singling out only the United States by name.
He accused Washington of merciless exploitation of developing countries through political maneuvering, blackmail, military threats and intimidation.
Gorbachev rejected Reagan's latest arms proposals, which were outlined in a letter and delivered during the weekend.
He said there were some positive elements in the proposals, but they were "swamped with reservations, linkages and conditions which in fact block the solution of radical arms, reductions."
Gorbachev noted that he and Reagan agreed during their summit last fall to meet this year in the United States.
united states.
"But there is no sense in holding empty talks," Gorbachev said. "We shall not remain indifferent."