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University Daily Kansan
Nation/World
Tuesday, Jan. 28, 1986
News Briefs
Haitians questioned after being rescued
MIAMI — Immigration agents were airlifted to a Coast Guard cutter yesterday to question 68 of the 71 Haitians who were rescued Sunday from an overcrowded sailboat foundering in the Atlantic Ocean.
Three refugees were taken ashore for medical treatment.
The Coast Guard used three helicopters and two cutters to rescue the Haitians from a 40-foot sailboat that had begun taking on water about 20 miles east of Fort Lauderdale.
WASHINGTON — Eastern Airlines and its pilots union, unable to break a deadlock in contract talks, began a 30-day cooling-off period yesterday, which is required by law before the 4,300 pilots are free to strike.
All of the Haitians except for one woman, who was hospitalized with a broken leg, were transferred to the Coast Guard cutter Dauntless.
Airline talks locked
The pilots said they would accept concessions if the country's third largest air carrier would make changes in its management. The airline wants to cut pay for pilots by about 20 percent.
AUSTIN, Minn. — Hormel fired union meatpackers yesterday in Texas, Nebraska and Iowa for refusing to cross picket lines set by workers who have been on strike against the company's flagship plant since Aug. 17.
Hormel fires packers
A substantial portion of workers in Ottumwa, Iowa, a few workers in Dallas and about 60 workers in Fremont, Neb., were fired, said Chuck Nyberg, senior vice president of Geo. A. Hormel & Co.
Ferraro's office OK
NEW YORK — Police yesterday discounted a Watergate-type burglary by an intruder who entered Geraldine Ferraro's office Saturday with a camera.
Nothing was missing from Ferraro's fifth-floor office in Queens and none of the files appeared to have been disturbed.
Parliament backs Thatcher
Political crisis avoided
From Kansan wires
LONDON — Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher won a parliamentary vote of confidence yesterday after battling to save her government from a Watergate-style scandal involving the financial bail-out of a helicopter company.
After a stormy three-hour debate in the House of Commons, the 143-seat Conservative Party majority rallied to her support and voted 379-219, in what amounted to a vote of confidence in her 7-year-old administration.
Thatcher's integrity had come into question over the deliberate leak of a memo supporting her stand in the dispute over whether an Americanor European-based partnership should buy out part of the Westland Co. Britain's only maker of belicoters.
She said an inquiry determined that the memo was leaked to the
news media as a result of a misunderstanding between officials of the Trade and Industry Department and bureaucrats at her office.
The leaked document was a memo from a high law officer, the solicitor general, to Michael Heseltine, defense secretary. In it, the solicitor general warned Heseltine that with regard to one of his statements about the rescue bids there were material inaccuracies that should be corrected.
Leon Brittan, trade and industry secretary, resigned Friday and took responsibility for the memo leak, which was designed to discredit Heselline.
Tatcher maintained that for 16 days after Britton leaked the memo on Jan. 6, she did not know of his involvement. The leak was a breach of Britain's Official Secrets Act.
Thatcher said its release stemmed from a genuine difference of understanding between her office
and the trade ministry.
"This was one of a number of matters that we could have done better — and that I regret," she said. The opposition erupted in laughter.
Politicians on both sides called on Thatcher to give a full and detailed explanation of her knowledge of the leak to avoid further and possibly fatal, political damage.
On Jan. 9, Heseline resigned, charging Thatcher with trying to muzzle his campaign to let a European consortium — rather than a U.S.-led group — take the lead in saving the financially ailing Westland Co.
Heseltine, who at the time of his Cabinet departure made a personal attack on Thatcher, gave a surprise speech yesterday in Thatcher's defense.
Heseltine said that Thatcher's speech was difficult but brave and that the political dispute over Westland should end.
Neil Kinnock, a Labor Party leader, opened the parliamentary debate and said Thatcher was on trial. He compared her decision to tough it out with Richard Nixon's attitude during the Wateregate scandal.
Thatcher accused the left-wing Labor Party of blowing the Westland affair out of proportion to divert attention from what she called that party's extremism.
At the debate, opposition legislators accused her of a cover-up involving the leaked memo, critical of Heseltine, that subsequently led to his resignation. He took responsibility for the news leak.
Neil Kinnock, a Labor Party leader, had called the emergency debate. He said it was to determine whether Mrs. Thatcher was involved in the leaking of the memo and whether she had lied in earlier statements to parliament.
Common Market backs arm sales ban
The Associated Press
BRUSSELS — The 12 European Common Market countries agreed yesterday to halt arms sales to countries clearly implicated in supporting terrorism in a formal declaration aimed at Libya.
The ministers did not specify which countries would be affected by the ban, but Dutch Foreign Minister Hans van den Broek said all Common Market countries planned to halt arms sales to Libya.
sell arms or to start selling to that country," van den Broek said.
He said that, although the declaration on terrorism mentioned no nations by name, "The countries that are guilty of state terrorism will feel that this is aimed against them."
European arms producers — Britain, France, Italy, West Germany and the Netherlands — already have policies against such sales. Belgium says it has no formal embargo but it has sold no arms to Libya for four years.
British representative Linda Chalker said, "There is no doubt at all that it was Libya that this text refers to."
"My understanding is that no country wishes to
A joint arms embargo by the Common Market would have little practical effect on Libya. The key
The formal declaration said the Common Market "decided not to export arms or other military equipment to countries which are clearly implicated in supporting terrorism."
Some of the smaller Common Market countries, such as Denmark, export no arms.
Wind, dead battery hamper shuttle flight
United Press International
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — Thwarted yesterday by a balky hatch, a frozen nut, a dead battery and high winds, NASA took another gamble on the weather and prepared to launch shuttle Challenger's schoolhouse mission this morning.
Space agency officials aimed for a 8:38 a.m. blastoff of the flight that would make high school teacher Christa McAuliffe America's first private citizen in space and allow her to teach millions of school children from her high-tech orbital classroom.
Officials gambled that an Arctic cold front barreling across central Florida would not disrupt launch plans, despite temperatures which are expected to fall into the 20s at the spaceport.
Launch crews devised ways to avoid the hatch problems, and, compounded by a stripped nut on a hatch handle bolt and a dead battery in a drill needed to remove the nut, delayed the liftoff after wind gusts reached unacceptably high levels.
Technicians drained Challenger's fuel tanks of half a million gallons of superolcd liquid hydrogen and oxygen, recycled the countdown clock
and began the nightlong process of counting down toward today's launch target.
Forecasters said the weather should be fine except for the extreme cold.
Shuttle operations chief Robert Sieck said that if the freezing temperatures force another cancellation, it would be Thursday before another launch could be tried.
McAuliffe's flight on Challenger's has been delayed twice before by weather and three times by postponements in the flight of Columbia that preceded it.
37-year-old social studies teacher from Concord, N.H., the first private citizen to fly in space. It will be the 10th launch for Challenger and the 20th flight in the shuttle program.
McAuliffe's presence on the crew has overshadowed the primary goals of the flight — the launch of a $100 million shuttle communications satellite and the deployment of a $3 million science station to study Halley's comet.
The flight will make McAuliffe, a
Plans called for McAuliffe to conduct two lessons broadcast live to schoolrooms across the country by the Public Broadcasting System on the fourth day of the mission.
Clifton C. Garvin Jr., Exxon chairman, said he was disappointed by the justices' action and that it continued a trend of unfavorable judicial rulings to the oil industry over price controls.
As of a result of the court action, Exxon will be required to pay an $895.5 million judgment, plus accrued interest, which makes the total about $2.1 billion. The company said the money will come from available resources and short-term borrowing.
The development will not affect Exxon's 1985 earnings, since it has been putting away money to pay the penalty and interest just in case it lost, officials said.
The court refused to hear an appeal brought by Exxon seeking to overturn the judgment, making it the largest monetary judgment in United States history to be upheld on appeal.1
Because the court concluded it is impossible to identify the ultimate victims of Exxon's action, it ordered the money be distributed to the states.
WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court refused yesterday to disturb a ruling that orders the giant Exxon Corp. to pay more than $2 billion as a penalty for overcharging for oil during price controls in the late 1970s.
The money will be deposited by Exxon into the U.S. Treasury, and then will be given to the states based on estimates of energy consumption during 1975-81. ]
Most consumers of gasoline and heating oil will receive no cash. States must spend the money on energy conservation — such as weatherproofing hospitals and schools — and on helping the poor pay their home utility bills.
At issue was a complex, two-tier pricing mechanism to hold down infiltration in crude oil prices without eliminating economic incentives for increasing production. The system set a ceiling for the price of oil which already was being produced, referred to as old oil, and allowed higher prices for new oil.
KZR 106 DAY SPECIALS
Jungry Jose's Taco Cafe'
845 Massachusetts 10 a.m.-10 p.m.
Oil group must pay $2 billion
From Kansan wires
2 tacos for $1.06 or
1 sancho for $1.06 or
1 burrito for $1.06
*FREE dish of ice cream with laser gold card
2 locations:
Listen to KZR 106 all Hall for more details on today's 106 day.
A. J. Cromer Southern Hills Mall 9 a.m.-8 p.m.
The Paper Place rediform notestix memo pads for $1.06 stuart hall yellow tablets 3 for $1.06 other 106 day specials in the Women's Store and Children's Gear.
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