University Daily Kansan
Friday, Jan. 31, 1986
Nation/World
News Briefs
Star Wars facility to be in White Sands
WASHINGTON — White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico has been chosen to house a huge Star Wars research facility to test the ability of lasers to down objects in space, the state's senators said yesterday.
The senators described the Free Electron Laser Uplink Experiment facility as an effort to demonstrate the technology that would be part of an integrated ground-based missile defense system. Congressional sources stressed the project was purely research and development.
S. Africa ends ban
JOHANNESBURG, South Africa — Law and Order Minister Louis le Grange yesterday overruled his Cape Town police chief and lifted a widely-contended ban on posters, bumper stickers and T-shirts bearing political messages.
Le Grange's order came on the eve of a important speech to Parliament by President Pieter Botha, who was expected to outline plans to reform the white-minority government's policy of racial separation, known as apartheid.
The government has come under increased pressure to reform apartheid, with some countries, including the United States, enforcing economic sanctions. More than 1,100 people, most of them black, have been killed in a 17-month wave of racial unrest.
Mars trip possible
NEW YORK - The United States should join in the Soviets' preparations to send cosmonauts to Mars, scientist and author Carl Sagan said in a published report released yesterday.
Sagan predicted the Soviets could arrive at Mars as early as 1992, but only to circle the planet and not to land on it. He noted a 1992 mission would mark the 500th anniversary of Christopher Columbus' discovery of the New World and the 75th anniversary of the Russian revolution. He also said it would cost less than what it took to put a man on the moon.
From Kansan wires.
Reagan to continue dream
United Press International
WASHINGTON — President Reagan spoke at a gathering of conservatives last night, and before extolling conservative virtues, he said the deaths of the seven Challenger astronauts would "strengthen the resolve of America to pursue their dream of the stars and beyond."
"We must continue," Reagan said in prepared remarks to a "Who's Who" gathering of the conservative movement. "Other brave Americans must go now where they valiantly tried to lead — a fitting place, I have always thought, for Americans — the stars and beyond."
It was Reagan's first public appearance since Tuesday's shuttle disaster.
Reagan mentioned the disaster at the outset of his speech and noted how appropriate it was to honor the shuttle crew at the dinner.
But the bulk of his speech was devoted to a free-wheeling defense of the conservative principles he has championed for the past 20 years.
In keeping with its strident conservative tone, he contrasted the openness of the American space program with the secrecy of its Soviet counterpart.
Reagan asserted that such a tragedy would be permanently disheartening and a fatal setback to any such program in some closed societies.
"Not so in a democracy, not so in America," he said.
After his remarks on the shuttle tragedy, the president gave the familiar refrences he has sounded to conservatives since the 1960s.
He began with a rallying call to about 2,000 political warriors for the election in November and warned against "the danger of growing soft with victory, of losing perspective when things go our way too often, of failing to appreciate success when it occurs or seeing danger when it looms."
Reagan urged the gathering, the 13th annual dinner of the Conservative Political Action Conference, to
reject the status quo and know how much was left to be done.
He listed right to life, prayer in the public schools, enterprise zones and aid to anti-communist insurgents as areas still needing attention.
"The liberals haven't changed a bit," he said. "They are still looking at America's defense budget with lust in their hearts. A lust to strip it bare and use funds for more of their social experiments."
The forum was the same one in which Reagan last year hailed his 1984 landslide re-election as the manifestation of a turn from left to right and described rebels fighting to overthrow the Marxist-led government of Nicaragua as the moral equal of the U.S. founding fathers.
Earlier in the day, Reagan had a symbolic meeting with Jonas Savimbi, the charismatic leader of rebels battling the Soviet- and Cuban-backed government of Angola, who will be feted by the conservatives today.
Lower deficit expected in '87
United Press International
WASHINGTON — The Congressional Budget Office now expects a $178 billion deficit in fiscal 1987, a lower figure than earlier estimates, which could lessen the severity of Gramm-Rudman cuts, congressional sources said yesterday.
The CBO revisions, which will be officially released next month, closely parallel new projections by the administration's Office of Management and Budget, which earlier had predicted deficits in excess of $200 billion for fiscal 1987.
Under the Gramm-Rudman
balanced budget law, the deficit in fiscal 1987 must be no more than $144 billion — meaning a $34 billion reduction if the current deficit projections hold up. Gramm-Rudman requires a gradually declining deficit until the budget is balanced by fiscal 1991.
Congressional sources, who confirmed the figures first reported by the New York Times, cautioned that the figures are preliminary but were unlikely to change significantly before their official release Feb. 18.
One congressional aide also warned against the belief that the revised number would make it any easier to
reach the Gramm-Rudman level or subsequent levels.
He said the CBO projections assumed no real growth in military spending as well as an assumption that nearly $12 billion in Gramm-Rudman cuts scheduled for this spring would be permanent.
If the CBO had included a 3 percent increase in military spending, the amount President Reagan plans-to request in his 1987 budget, the deficit would be about $186 billion.
The first swipe of Gramm-
Rudman, the $11.7 billion in cuts
across much of government, goes into
effect March 1.
Kissinger debating governor's race
United Press International
ALBANY, N.Y. - Former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger said yesterday that at the urging of New York GOP leaders he was considering seeking the Republican nomination to run against Democratic Gov. Mario Cuomo.
statement released by his New York City office.
"Republican leaders in New York have urged me to run for governor. I had not previously considered standing for elective office, I'm compelled and I feel I own them consideration of it," Kissinger said in a
Anthony Colavita, New York State Republican Committee chairman, said he recently met with Kissinger to discuss a possible candidacy.
"I was asked to keep our conversation confidential and I will do that, except to say that if he chose to run, I would be delighted." Colavita said.
So far, the Republicans have no candidate to run against Cuomo, who is frequently mentioned as a potential 1988 Democratic presidential candidate.
Cuomo, who plans to run for re-election but has not yet announced his candidacy, received a 79 percent approval rating in a recent public opinion poll. Cuomo's term expires in January 1987. He was elected governor in 1982.
Kissinger, 62, who was national security adviser under President Richard Nixon and secretary of state to Nixon and President Gerald Ford, was first recruited into government service from Harvard University by Nelson Rockefeller.
Oklahoma City man arrested for shootings
The Associated Press
OKLAHOMA CITY — A trucking company employee went on a shooting rampage in a residential neighborhood and then at work yesterday, killing three people and wounding four others, including a little girl and a man he locked in a car trunk, police said.
Cyril Wayne Ellis then went to suburban Del City and called police from the home of a relative's friend to say he was tired of running, said Oklahoma City police Capt. M. T. Berry. He surrendered to Del City police who found him sitting on the porch.
The shootings occurred in less than an hour and over a distance of about three miles on the eastern side of the city.
Ellis, 24, of Oklahoma City, was booked into the Oklahoma City Jail on two charges of murder and one of assault with a deadly weapon, Berry said. He said additional complaints quite likely would be filed.
Ellis later was taken to a hospital because of fainting spells. Other inmates reported that he was hitting his head against walls, Berry said. Ellis was treated for hyperventilation and returned to the jail, said Detective Ken Smith.
Police say they know of no motive and have not determined a connection between the man and the victims except that four were co-workers at Consolidated Freightways. No weapon has been recovered, said Smith.
Police learned of the first shooting at 6:45 a.m. after Ellis apparently shot a man and locked him in the trunk of the car, Berry said. The man was taken to Oklahoma Memorial Hospital, where officials said a shooting victim in his 30s was in critical condition and undergoing surgery.
Six minutes later, authorities were called to a house a few blocks away where they found a woman's body and a wounded girl in the yard, Berry said.
The child, who Berry said was between 9 and 12 years old, was hospitalized in critical condition at Children's Memorial Hospital, of officials.
At 7:21 a.m., police were called to Consolidated Freightways, where Berry said officers were told the gunman chased employees through the parking lot and fired at them. Two people were killed and two were wounded.
Miami policeman shot in Haitian refugee riot
United Press International
MIAMI — A policeman was shot during a riot that erupted last night when 400 Haitian refugees poured into the streets after a rumor that Haitian President Jean-Claude Duvalier had been arrested.
Miami police called out 40 to 50 riot-equipped officers to back up 20 units already present in a four-block area around 54th Street and North Miami Ave., said John Shannon, Miami police spokesman.
"It started out as a peaceful demonstration, and it's turned into a full-fledged riot," he said. "We are calling out a field force. We are going up there and cleaning it out."
An unidentified officer was shot in the lower arm and was taken to Jackson Memorial Hospital in good condition, Shannon said.
He said the demonstration started after apparently false rumors about
Duvalier's detention swept a neighborhood of Haitian exiles.
"They are overturning cars and looting," he said.
Witnesses at the scene said the demonstrators rode around the area in cars, firing guns into the air and chanting slogans calling for the fall of the Dualier government.
At the peak of the riot, one reporter warned on his radio, "Be careful when you are with the cops, they are, the targets."
Violent anti-government protests erupted in at least seven towns in Haiti yesterday, with demonstrators burning tires and parading symbolic coffins of Duvalier and his wife in widespread unrest.
The Haitian government reported the deaths of five people it said were trampled or suffocated Wednesday in a raid on a warehouse of the U.S. aid group CARE in Cap Haitien.