University Daily Kansan/Friday, January 20, 1989
7
Nation/World
News Briefs
BOTHA NAMES HEUNIS: President P.W. Botha of South Africa, hospitalized with a stroke that has weakened an arm and a leg, yesterday named a Cabinet minister and long-time political ally as acting president.
president.
Constitutional Development Minister Chris Heunis,
the senior-ranking Cabinet member, vowed at his
swearing-in ceremony to adhere to Botha's policies.
sitting in ceremony, Heinis, 61, served as acting president for several days last year while Botha visited Europe. He will remain in his new post until Botha either returns to office or decides to retire, at which point the Cabinet would elect a new president.
would elect a new president.
Botha, who turned 73 last week, suffered the stroke at his home on Wednesday and was taken to a military hospital in the Cape Town suburb of Wynnberg.
WAITE STILL HOSTAGE: It was two years ago today that Anglican Church emissary Terry Waite left his Beirut hotel to negotiate the release of American hostages and disappeared, presumably becoming a hostage himself.
What happened on his fifth mercy mission remains a mystery, but other Western hostages freed since he
vanished have reported seeing a man they believed was the 6-foot-7 Waite in an underground prison.
NO NEW TAXES?: Richard Darman, George Bush's designated budget director, told Congress yesterday that he would recommend a tax increase only if the nation faced a crisis so severe that there was no alternative.
Darman, at his confirmation hearing, sought to fend off those wanting to know whether Bush might circumvent his presidential campaign pledge to seek no new taxes, perhaps by using a different name.
NEW HOMOSEXUAL STUDY: At least 20 percent of American adult men have had one or more homosexual experiences and a minimum of 3.3 percent have such contacts with some frequency, according to a study by the National Research Council.
a study by Puryear, an analysis of data collected by questionnaires in 1970 and in 1987 an 1988 national survey, suggests that the minimum number of American men who have at least one homosexual experience is lower than the estimates compiled 40 years ago by famed sex researcher Alfred Kinsey.
Soviet arms to be reduced
The Associated Press
VIENNA, Austria — The 50,000 Soviet troops being pulled out of Eastern Europe will take the nuclear missiles and other arms under their control with them, the Soviet foreign minister said yesterday.
A NATO spokesman welcomed the announcement by Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze as "encouraging." U.S. arms negotiator Stephen
Ledgar said the speech was "very upbeat, very positive" but warned against reading more into the statement than the Kremlin intended.
Shewardnadze's speech came on the final day of a gathering that produced a 35-nation human rights accord. Shewardnadze said the document was the product of changing relationship between East and West.
Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev, in a unilateral move, announced in December that Soviet forces would be cut by 500,000 soldiers, including 50,000 stationed in Eastern Europe.
Shevardnadze said that the troops departing Eastern Europe would take with them "all their organic armaments, including tactical nuclear systems."
Killer hated everyone, police say
The Associated Press
STOCKTON, Calif. — Patrick Purdy, the gunman who killed five Southeast Asian children in a crowded schoolyard, had no grudge against any particular ethnic group, just "a hate for everybody," police said yesterday.
Thirdly other people were wounded in Tuesday's attack at Cleveland Elementary School, which ended when Purdy, a loner with alcohol problems and a fascination in all things military, killed himself.
those killed, were children of Southeast Asian refugees, but Capt. Dennis Perry said: "Through his lifetime, Mr. Purdy developed a hate for everybody."
Most of his victims, including all
"In a way, he beat us because we'll never know" why he did it, said Perry, chief of the investigation.