8710b

8710b

=== Page 1 of 90

Ted Owens
RT 149, RR2
Box 2169
Fort Ann, New York
12827

Dr. Jeffrey Mishlove
48 Saint Frances Lane
San Rafael, California
94901

JUL 3 1987
12827
USA 39

Jeffrey

y reports... my UFOs brought Ann and, through tremendous. They told me that they that meshed with me. reason for bringing me and contacts and communication. lous reasons of theirs).
ast that there are three UFOs of what they have told me. his at all, from anyone. appeared over our barn barn containing 50 cows). .not only Beau. As you hey were seen by a scientist many other people.

Owens (PK Man)


=== Page 2 of 90

Jeffrey

Thursday, July 30, 1987

SCIENTISTS

As I have told you before in my reports...my UFOs brought me and my family here to Fort Ann and, through tremendous synchronicity, stopped us here. They told me that they had certain time windows here that meshed with me. They told me that their sole reason for bringing me and mine here was to make powerful contacts and communication.

I have also told you in the past that there are three UFOs over me at all times (for various reasons of theirs).

Herein is the documented proof of what they have told me. There can be no rebuttal on this at all, from anyone. Tuesday night two giant UFOs appeared over our barn (which is the Tom Fish dairy barn containing 50 cows). Beau saw them at 3 AM. But...not only Beau. As you will see from the newsclip, they were seen by a scientist and his friends..

Ted Owens (PK Man)


=== Page 3 of 90

Briefly

Post-Star THURSDAY 7/30/87

# Lights filled sky above Fort Ann

(here)

On a lonely Washington County road Tuesday night, a van full of people pulled over to stare at bright columns of light in the sky.

"There were five or six columns or clusters of light," said Larry Smotroff, Dean of Community Service and Continuing Education at Mattatuck Community College in Waterbury, Conn. "They were a bluish-aquamarine and they varied in intensity."

Smotroff said he and six of his friends were returning from a movie at Aviation Mall in Queensbury when they spotted the lights sometime between 11:30 p.m. and midnight. He said the movie, "Superman IV," stunk - but the lights were more impressive.

"We were taken back by what we considered quite some phenomenon," he said.

Smotroff, who holds degrees in Psychology and Communications, does not have a background in the hard sciences, such as physics. But he said he has a background in scientific research.

Members of the group watched the lights from the intersection of Route 149 and Buttermilk Falls Road in Fort Ann.

"We watched them for a good 12 or 15 minutes before we continued on our way," Smotroff said.

Smotroff, who said no one in the group had been drinking, said he had never seen any type of UFOs before. But he said he had recently seen a documentary film on the subject.

An operator at the Plattsburgh Air Force Base and a dispatcher for the Washington County Sheriff's Department said they had not received any reports of the lights.


=== Page 4 of 90

7/29/87

This morning my son, Beau (24) reported to me, greatly excited, that last night about 3 AM, something woke him up. He went to his bedroom window and looked out. Over the barn was a giant tube; vertical. There were two lights inside it. Then suddenly a second giant vertical tube appeared beside it. This second tube then changed form, into a square. (Ted)

and together they formed a "10", and inside the square it was very dark black.

Now the vertical tube was about a mile long and 50 yds. wide and the square was about 2 miles wide and 2 miles long

this all lasted for 1 min.

Then they both disappeared simultaneously.

Then the dogs started barking up a storm for a few minutes. (Beau)

----------

Added note: This morning, around 7 AM, when I walked from our house the long road out past the barn with 50 cows in it (to get my morning newspaper) the cows were wild inside the barn -- squalling and raising hell. Normally they are quiet. I wondered if a coyote was inside the barn. Lots of coyotes around us. (This happened before Beau woke up, came out of his bedroom and notified me re UFOs over the barn. Ted


=== Page 5 of 90

STaGe 1

BRIGHT
LIGHTS

Luminisante
Tube

Barn

WED.
7/29/87
(BOTTOM)


=== Page 6 of 90

STAGE 2 It changed into a small square and then it grew bigger

First small

WHITE OUTLINE

Dark INSIDE

then turning very large

WED. 7/29/87 (BOTTOM)


=== Page 7 of 90

STage 3 This Tube appeared on the left and after 1 minute it all disappeared.

WED 7/29/87 (Bottom)


=== Page 8 of 90

September 28, 1987

Scientists

Jeffrey

① My son, Beau, and I agree, at this point, that in the past year we have been "taken" at night by my UFOs, then "put back" again, at various times. Jerome (9), Teddy (16), Beau (24) and I have had the same dream (at different times). Dream: UFO lands in back of our home in this isolated location. Each one of us tried to fight off the aliens (about ten of them.) Each of us had an alien seize our arms from behind to hold us. Now, we have seen UFOs over our house and over our barn. (See file) And we were not the only ones to see them - our neighbors across the road saw them and so did town's people. Remember the Barney Miller case? He + his wife had like-dreams, were hypnotized, and the case was validated.

② My UFOs have given me a new code word and symbol - so that if anyone comes to me with the code then they are either aliens or humans sent by my UFOs.

③ Get a movie-tape called "Life Force," and play it on your VCR. It is from a book written by Colin Wilson - who wrote about my work in his non-fiction book, "Mysteries."

④ Years ago Dr. Rhine + Loue invited me to visit them in North Carolina. Rhine took me into a big barn. Suddenly, what sounded like 30-50 dogs went crazy. He had them in a separate part of the barn. Here, mysteriously, the owner of this dairy farm who'd gone broke - got new funds - and there are 50 cows nearby which have gone noisily crazy on various occasions, at night. Owens


=== Page 9 of 90

August 14, 1987

SCIENTISTS

I could have gotten this to you months ago...but no money for xeroxing and mailing. Even this will have to go out to you 2 or 3 at a time. Will take weeks and weeks to complete sending. Frankly, I need help. I am not Jim and Tammy Bakker. I am real. Working with the UFOs to help the human race and the earth itself. While they make and spend crooked millions, my family and I undergo hardship. There has to be something wrong with that formula. We need a thousand a month more than what we have, to make it, and for me to do my job. My sponsor covers the heavy bills like rent, electric, etc., but food, gasoline, etc., takes more. (God bless my sponsor for keeping me and mine in the ballgame to do what I have to do.) Last winter we almost froze, trying to keep the electric bill down...so if you can't send money, think about blankets, stuff like that. I asked for help once before (the first time I ever have...and there was no response.)

Now, look at page 1 of 3/31/87 file. UFO activity around our house and area lately has greatly increased. See enclosed separate file re us, plus other witnesses.

P. 2: See page 2 of 1/29/87 file...and notice how many rotten persons in top key positions of government have been eliminated since.

P. 3: The Soviets report a "green" mystery. In the late 60's when Chuck Jay was interviewing me for my book, he told me how his home, and everything in it, had inexplicably turned green one day. Also on 6/19 my sons and I observed 3 UFOs maneuvering over our house...one for 1/2 hour. On 7/23 I was working in my office/bedroom when a white-colored humanoid floated past the door while I watched in amazement. No head...just trunk and legs. That same morning Beau (24) came upstairs and showed me a strange triangle of three red dots on his lower abdomen, concentrically perfect, which had appeared overnight...and said that his head hurt. Also note the "Missile Missing?" newsclip...which says that if the national aviation agency did not "acknowledge the existence of UFOs" then there could be no UFO. Ha ha. Pretty much sums up the attitude of scientists and U.S. Government.

P. 42: (This page out of sequence, for a reason.) Note the "boa constrictor" clip. The night before, I dreamed that I was in a bathroom, looked up and there, curled around a waterpipe, was a 15-foot boa constrictor. I ran into the other room and brought my wife Martha to see the huge snake. There was more to the dream...but next morn this clip appeared in the newspaper. So I had a marvelous precognitive dream, in my opinion.

"7 charged"...after we moved way out into this almost-isolated location we discovered that three different men, connected with town thugs, were a threat to our family through house-burglary; Dan Fish, totally rotten son of our landlord...Dan Dio, thrown out of high school last year for doing dastardly things...and Seward Habshi, son of the Syrians in the house across the road (since have moved away). For the past several months Seward, a close buddy of Dan Fish, hung around our barn nearby, talking to Dan and gesturing toward our house. Next, I came home from town and found Seward (an ex-con) in our kitchen using our phone, with Dan Fish standing outside. I told Tom Fish, our landlord and a lieutenant in the Great Meadow State Prison in Fort Ann, about it...he warned us never to let Seward into our house. As you can see...at least he will be out of circulation for awhile.

Now


=== Page 10 of 90

2

Let me add that some time ago I threw Dan Fish out of our house for doing some very rotten things. He had conned his way into "friendship" with Beau and Teddy, so that he could slip around after we had gone to bed, in the small hours of the morning (he asked to be allowed to sleep in the recreation room), and do rotten things. But I caught him at it. (For instance, stealing most of the food in our refrigerator and hiding it outside in his car.)

My family desperately needs to get out of New York State...we are in great jeopardy here...for reasons that I cannot divulge. But it would cost four or five thousand to relocate...which we do not have...so we are pinned down here.

P. 4: On June 1 I phoned Wayne Grover in Lantana, Florida, and warned that something "big" was about to happen...and that the U.S. had "better go on the alert." On June 12 16 States were affected by a powerful earthquake. Note in the newsclip that my actual word "alert" is used...also applying to various nuclear plants. Then note the clipping re the "meteor" creating seismic waves setting off vibrations in the Earth. Go back a number of years in your files and you will see that I told you that my huge UFOs could dive toward Earth then zoom upward again, creating the same effect.

P. 6: I was wakened during the night by "cat" sounds underneath my bedroom window. I got up and went to the window. Clearly and unmistakably the sound of a feline said, in perfect English: "Open...open...open...open door...open...open...open...open...oooh!" And that was it. No more. We have been inundated here at this location and this house with UFO activity and phenomena for months. We have observed UFOs overhead time and time again, both day and night.

P. 7 -- Beau, Teddy and I have all had basically the same dream...we were captured by UFO aliens out in back of the house, in the dark of night. Based upon the Barney Hill experience...wherein he and his wife had no memory of having been captured by UFO aliens...yet the memory broke into their dreams...I sincerely believe that we were indeed captured whilst doing some of my research, out in the dark night in back of our house. We have been out there doing a lot of UFO research these past months. We have also been in the dark woods nearby, in the dark of night.

(Am moving right along, because much of this file is self-explanatory, if you will observe my markings and notes, combined with the newsclips.)

P. 20: While watching "23 Paces To Baker Street" on TV...in between some experiments that I was conducting...an English Bobby (policeman) raised his whistle to blow it.

I told my son Beau "Oh no! I hate hearing those shrill English whistles!" Before the Bobby could blow the whistle...which he'd raised to his mouth...all the sound went off on the TV set. As soon as the whistle had been blown the sound came on the TV again, and continued.

I told you some time ago that my UFOs and I are working daily to improve the human race by eliminating...in one way or another...bad, evil top key people...so that hopefully good, better people could be inserted in their place. See the cartoon on this page. Deaver, Meese, North, Nofziger, Poindexter, Casey...and some others yet to be weeded out.

[Signature/Symbol]


=== Page 11 of 90

Briefly

Puzzling pillars were the lights

Post-Star 7/31/89

The spectacle of the Northern Lights accounted for several people's siting of "columns" of lights at night this week in the Glens Falls area, according to an authority at the Schenectady Planetarium.

"It was quite a nice display and it lasted about an hour," Jane Mann, the planetarium's lecturer, said Thursday. Ms. Mann also said Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday nights have offered opportunities to view the lights in the northern sector of the sky, just under the Big Dipper.

Seven people reported seeing five or six columns or clusters of light in Fort Ann Tuesday night. Larry Smotroff of Waterbury, Conn., one of the sky gazers, said the lights appeared bluish-aquamarine and they varied in intensity. Smotroff's group watched the dazzling display for about 15 minutes from the intersection of Route 149 and Buttermilk Falls Road.

Usually the lights appear white with a tinge of green and sometimes beautiful red, Ms. Mann said. However, people have difficulty distinguishing colors at night, so the lights might have looked blue to those people, she said.

Predicting when the Northern Lights can be seen is very difficult, Ms. Mann said. The lights appear when sun spots -- relatively cooler regions of the sun -- throw off gaseous flares. The lights can be seen if the earth is in the path of those flares and the sun's gases mix with those of the earth's atmosphere, Ms. Mann said. "You're talking about a lot of chances. It's always a big if, a big maybe."

Siting of the Northern Lights is not limited to the summer season, she said.


=== Page 12 of 90

Scientists
1/29/87

2

P. 6: As I have told you, the U.S. is under attack by the Atlantic, Pacific and Gulf. Here you have the poisonous Red Tide attacking Texas and Gulf waters...then on p. 7 a deadly Brown Tide is attacking from the Atlantic side. Am certain that you will find this article, particularly, fascinating. Then on p. 8 bodies of water and The Sun Attack wiping out the oyster crop on a massive scale.

P. 9: The crooked Jackie Presser gets a tumor on his lung...and various bigtime mob bosses get put away. This is what my UFOs are currently working at...to eliminate the bad members of the human race in key positions of power and replace them with good humans. It is interesting, in a synchronistic way, that Judge Owen gave top Mafia bosses 100 years each. Remember some years ago when I produced a UFO over the heads of two policemen in a certain area of Virginia..(a demonstration for a scientist.) One of the policemen was named Owen. And if you have the green book that I wrote you can read about another of my experiments whereby Big Foot stopped a car, reached in and grabbed the woman driver by the hair. Her name? Owen.

P. 10: This clip is interesting because I gave a secret, unpublicized demonstration of my UFO powers in Ocala...attacking the Ocala newspaper building with various psi-force techniques to obtain various results. To my astonishment this clip appeared, relating to a UFO kidnapping an Ocala resident.

P. 11: Fort Ann is where we live, outside of town in a semi-isolated area just like this man. Burglars are attacking homes in this area. There only a handful of police here. Last week a man broke into a house near here and raped and robbed a young woman. After he walked out of her house she grabbed a pistol that she had handy and blasted him with it from a window. The police are tying the man into a number of rapes in this area.

The rest of the enclosed file deals with results from The Sun Attack.

Ted Owens (PK Man)

New address: Rt. 149, RR 2, Box 2169, Fort Ann, New York, 12827.

Phone: (512) 632-5192

Owens

PS: Nature now is thinning out the over-populated human race with cancer, AIDS, etc. When Nature has over-population under control, then it will supply the human race with answers to cancer, AIDS, etc., and these deadly illnesses will be stopped and controlled by humans. (If you have a ranch with enough grass to feed 1,000 cows - you do not allow the herd to grow to 3,000 cows.)

2


=== Page 13 of 90

Scientists
3/31/87

2

and Vermont. It is described herein on p. 6.
P. 7: Two more Russian space failures have occurred. My UFOs are indeed busy.
P. 9: Note that my UFOs are weeding out many "bad" people in key positions in order to get better people in. Also note all of the troubles the Navy and Marine Corps are having with military aircraft.
P. 10: In "The New Collective" note the changes for the better that have taken place at the top of our government...by weeding out undesirable, corrupt, crooked humans...and replacing them with better humans. This is not by accident or coincidence. The next few sheets deal with the UFOs "sun attack."

Finally...(1) This Spring, Summer and Fall I will be telepathing my UFOs to produce UFOs and alien living forms in this geographical area of upper New York State for police, scientists, and other "responsible" people to see...as well as my own family (who are presumably "not responsible" people...bit of sarcasm there.)
(2) A thought on my part. I believe that the reason that there are "gay" men and women is...because as the fetus is growing in pre-birth the hormone level in their body is too low for their developing brain to be able to differentiate the proper sex for that body...although the hormone level is adequate for the brain to assign proper genitalia to that body...and in post-birth this "uncertainty" as to the sex of that body is carried forward in that human's life and develops ultimately into a "gay" format.
(3) About 7 AM on 2/24/87 Teddy and I witnessed a "mother ship" and four smaller UFOs in the air over the huge field in back of our house...from the sliding glass doors of our dining room, which overlooks our back-field area and woods and further along, the mountains. Then, at 9 AM, same day, on the Donohue Show, TV, the show was about a giant UFO seen by many in upper New York state (our approx. area). The man on the show had been captured by the giant UFO and he described the experience. He stated that it had occurred two days earlier than the Donohue Show.
(4) My son Beau and I witnessed a stationary UFO near our house. It kept changing colors. (This was 3/14/87 at approx. 8:30 PM). At 8:45 PM Beau and Teddy found enormous 3-toed "Bigfoot" tracks in the snow in the field in back of our house...using flashlights.
(5) 3/22/87. Last night, for hours, our power was out. Earlier in the morning Beau had told me that during the night he had heard a UFO over our house...like a giant swarm of buzzing bees, sound. When it woke him he found that he was levitating up in the air of his bedroom and could not speak or move. He said that the bedroom walls glowed, like white light, in a diamond-shaped pattern.
(6) 3/22/87. In the afternoon Beau, Teddy, Jerome and I were driving to town. We had just left our house (out in the country in a semi-isolated location, ten miles from town.) From our van we all witnessed a cigar-shaped UFO in the air ahead of us. It had small, stubby fins. It floated along, making no sound, then stopped dead for a brief period, then just vanished completely...like a magician's trick. First it was there, then it was not there.
(7) 3/23/87 About 12:30 noon Beau and I drove to Price Choppers supermarket in Glens Falls to get supplies for the family. Suddenly all the lights overhead in my area went out, while all the other lights in the store stayed on. A girl employee smiled at me and said that she guessed the supermarket hadn't paid its electric bill. Beau and I drove back home and the light in the hall outside my bedroom flickered off and on as Beau and I watched.


=== Page 14 of 90

Alien in area

**Alien stranger had a message for all of us**

Editor: Post-Star 10/7/87

"Expose the Charlatan" goes up the familiar cry. Long and steady was the gaze of the stranger as he stood by my bed. His gnarled body with large protruding eyes told of a wisdom and age far beyond that of normal human beings. There had just been reports of a UFO sighted over Alaska by a Japanese pilot, and also on radar. Here he stood by my bedside and, though not saying a word, seemed to telepathically convey a message. Somber indeed came the words that the world had better do a turn around soon or thermonuclear warfare and destruction beyond repair was the future. ET had struck again. The starbird took to the skies and who would believe.

The Charlatan? Of over 1/2 million close encounters when asked about the Saviour, the little green men say he is one. The battle of science-super science Atheism vs. Religion goes on.

James L. Williams
Warrensburg

Why the UFO Base? selective catalytic converter

My UFOs will target it with OD powers from key pyramids, Stonehenge, etc., to block nuclear war, etc.

BASE

Tues approx. 7 AM

Loud noise like a thousand trains. Roaring noise. Our house shook and the walls made popping noises and cracking noises. (Not thunder or lightning cause weather was clear). Approximately 15 min. later this same thing repeated.

Owens

SCIENTISTS

As you can see from the above newsclip...a UFO alien appeared by the bedside of this man in nearby Warrensburg. The happening was exactly the same thing that happened to me in Philadelphia, years ago. And the alien told him what I have been telling you. Time is short...and the Base must be forthcoming very soon, if a nuclear war is to be avoided.

For years I have been telling you that I must have a UFO Base...but I did not know why my UFOs needed a Base. I just did what they told me. This morning, 10/7/87, they finally fill (typewriter broke down) filled me in on it. My UFOs will target their Base with other-dimensional Powers, drawn from key pyramids, Stonehenge, etc. These powers will flow through the Base and I will be used as a selective catalytic converter to reconstruct the powers, which will then flow from the Base around the world to create special effects and conditions (block nuke war between Russia and America; improve the human race; heal Earth, which humans have so badly damaged - and so on.

Owens

8
+2


=== Page 15 of 90

# DIARY OF A MAD PLANET:

## The 1985-86 visit of Halley's Comet.

"When beggars die, there are no comets seen; the heavens themselves blaze forth the death of princes," wrote a man calling himself Shakespeare (in Julius Caesar). Not quite right: this latest visit of Halley's Comet (HC) saw the death or fall of a few "princes" and a great many ordinary people, and includes the death of the 'officially' oldest man (see Paul Sieveking's INTO THREE FIGURES on p54).

But visually, HC could hardly be said to have blazed forth. Even from the best viewing locations HC was an unexcitingly faint smudge: one woman travelled 4000 miles to Peru only to complain bitterly about the "crummy fuzzball". [10,14 April 1986] Fort's comment on the much-feared and equally disappointing 1910 visit seems most apt. He wrote: "It was about as terrifying as the scratch of a match on the seat of some britches half a mile away." [Books, p141]

Nevertheless, in view of the widespread belief, which we ourselves accept until a more refined expression comes along, that astronomical and terrestrial events can be related in some ill-understood way, we thought we'd better monitor events during HC's visit.

### TIMETABLE

The crucial astronomical dates were:
**27 Nov 1985** - incoming HC closest to Earth.
**10 Feb 1986** - HC parhelion, closest to sun.
**11 Apr 1986** - departing HC closest to Earth.

The strain of forces in the HC-Earth relationship obviously does not suddenly switch on or off at these dates, but builds up gradually as proximity increases followed by the equally gradual release of tensions. Because this Earth is a dynamic system and we were looking for effects which themselves might be the result of long, slow or complicated cause-and-effect chains we expected to find more notable events in the withdrawal period (after HC had passed its 9-11th Feb parhelion). For this reason we widened our study period from September 1985 to May 1986.

Before we get to the listing proper, we have a few interesting notes...

### KEYNOTES

▶ 'Disaster', is an ancient word, derived from Latin roots (dis + astrum) meaning "an unfavourable aspect of a star or planet" according to the OED, and all that that implies is certainly applicable to HC's visit.

▶ During the proximity of HC we noted the deaths of Krishnamurti and L.Ron Hubbard; the assassinations of Sweden's premier Olof Palme and Zafer al Masri, a Palestinian mayor in Israel; the flight of 'Baby' Doc Duvalier from Haiti and Ferdinand Marcos from the Philipines; the erosion of Maggie Thatcher's invincible image, and ditto for the West's space technology.

▶ Of any event in this miserable catalogue, undoubtedly the greatest anxiety to the greatest number was caused by the explosion and meltdown of reactor No.4 at Chernobyl, in the Ukraine, on 26th April 1986, releasing a radioactive cloud which drifted south and west over Scandinavia, continental Europe, and changed direction to reach Britain at the begining of May. 23-freaks might like to know the blast happened at 1.23pm (or 23.23 Paris time), and the first bulletin issues by Soviet authorities the next day had just 23 words. The Chernobyl accident had been preceded in Britain by a serious leak at Sizewell in January 1986 which forced its closure until May. After Chernobyl other stories of leaks at at least one other British reactor in the preceding weeks came to light. At the close of April there was a fire at a heavy water plant in eastern India, and a non-nuclear accident at a reactor in Taiwan. In May a fire disabled the Heysham reactor in Cleveland; a leak was found at a new West German reactor; 5 men were accidentally irradiated at the French reactor at La Hague; a fire destroyed a cooling tower at the Browns Ferry reactor in Alabama; and another fire caused a leak at the Dounreay reactor. See HOT GOSSIP (below) for a few ephemeral comments on Chernobyl...

▶ In all the debates about Chernobyl, the long-term effects on the ecology of the region is hardly given a thought. The Ukraine straddles the main migratory routes of birds and insects who can travel as far south as Africa and all the way up to the Arctic circle. According to a Dutch environmental organization the nuclear cloud coincided with the annual northerly migration of many songbirds, especially nightingales, to their breeding grounds in Finland, where a great many of them have since died, their bodies containing high rates of radioactivity. [19,30 May 1986] The same source reports that 150 of 270 racing pigeons released in Marseilles failed to return to their hometown of Piacenza, in northern Italy. The Italian conservationist magazine Airone attributes this loss to aerial radioactivity (though we have to wonder why 120 of the birds could make the trek safely?).

▶ Concurrent with the nuclear circus was a series of disasters involving space programmes

26 / STRANGE DAYS


=== Page 16 of 90

# DIARY OF A MAD PLANET:

## The 1985-86 visit of Halley's Comet.

UFOs Sun Attack
UFOs Sun Attack/Fortean Times #47 Autumn 1986

"When beggars die, there are no comets seen: the heavens themselves blaze forth the death of princes," wrote a man calling himself Shakespeare (in Julius Caesar). Not quite right: this latest visit of Halley's Comet (HC) saw the death or fall of a few "princes" and a great many ordinary people, and includes the death of the 'officially' oldest man (see Paul Sieveking's INTO THREE FIGURES on p54).

But visually, HC could hardly be said to have blazed forth. Even from the best viewing locations HC was an unexcitingly faint smudge: one woman travelled 4000 miles to Peru only to complain bitterly about the "crummy fuzzball". [10,14 April 1986] Fort's comment on the much-feared and equally disappointing 1910 visit seems most apt. He wrote: "It was about as terrifying as the scratch of a match on the seat of some britches half a mile away." [Books, p141]

Nevertheless, in view of the widespread belief, which we ourselves accept until a more refined expression comes along, that astronomical and terrestrial events can be related in some ill-understood way, we thought we'd better monitor events during HC's visit.

### TIMETABLE

The crucial astronomical dates were:
**27 Nov 1985** - incoming HC closest to Earth.
**10 Feb 1986** - HC parhelion, closest to sun.
**11 Apr 1986** - departing HC closest to Earth.

The strain of forces in the HC-Earth relationship obviously does not suddenly switch on or off at these dates, but builds up gradually as proximity increases followed by the equally gradual release of tensions. Because this Earth is a dynamic system and we were looking for effects which themselves might be the result of long, slow or complicated cause-and-effect chains we expected to find more notable events in the withdrawal period (after HC had passed its 9-11th Feb parhelion). For this reason we widened our study period from September 1985 to May 1986.

Before we get to the listing proper, we have a few interesting notes...

### KEYNOTES

* 'Disaster', is an ancient word, derived from Latin roots (dis + astrum) meaning "an unfavourable aspect of a star or planet" according to the OED, and all that that implies is certainly applicable to HC's visit.
* During the proximity of HC we noted the deaths of Krishnamurti and L.Ron Hubbard; the assassinations of Sweden's premier Olof Palme and Zafer al Masri, a Palestinian mayor in Israel; the flight of 'Baby' Doc Duvalier from Haiti and Ferdinand Marcos from the Philipines; the erosion of Maggie Thatcher's invincible image, and ditto for the West's space technology.
* Of any event in this miserable catalogue, undoubtedly the greatest anxiety to the greatest number was caused by the explosion and meltdown of reactor No.4 at Chernobyl, in the Ukraine, on 26th April 1986, releasing a radioactive cloud which drifted south and west over Scandinavia, continental Europe, and changed direction to reach Britain at the begining of May. 23-freaks might like to know the blast happened at 1.23pm (or 23.23 Paris time), and the first bulletin issues by Soviet authorities the next day had just 23 words. The Chernobyl accident had been preceded in Britain by a serious leak at Sizewell in January 1986 which forced its closure until May. After Chernobyl other stories of leaks at at least one other British reactor in the preceding weeks came to light. At the close of April there was a fire at a heavy water plant in eastern India, and a non-nuclear accident at a reactor in Taiwan. In May a fire disabled the Heysham reactor in Cleveland; a leak was found at a new West German reactor; 5 men were accidentally irradiated at the French reactor at La Hague; a fire destroyed a cooling tower at the Browns Ferry reactor in Alabama; and another fire caused a leak at the Dounreay reactor. See HOT GOSSIP (below) for a few ephemeral comments on Chernobyl...
* In all the debates about Chernobyl, the long-term effects on the ecology of the region is hardly given a thought. The Ukraine straddles the main migratory routes of birds and insects who can travel as far south as Africa and all the way up to the Arctic circle. According to a Dutch environmental organization the nuclear cloud coincided with the annual northerly migration of many songbirds, especially nightingales, to their breeding grounds in Finland, where a great many of them have since died, their bodies containing high rates of radioactivity. [19,30 May 1986] The same source reports that 150 of 270 racing pigeons released in Marseilles failed to return to their hometown of Piacenza, in northern Italy. The Italian conservationist magazine Airone attributes this loss to aerial radioactivity (though we have to wonder why 120 of the birds could make the trek safely?).
* Concurrent with the nuclear circus was a series of disasters involving space programmes

26 / STRANGE DAYS


=== Page 17 of 90

of a number of countries, the most serious of which was the death of the seven American 'Challenger' shuttle astronauts early in October 1985. This was followed by the 'in-flight' destruction of a Delta satellite launcher, and revelations about careless manufacture and assembly of space vehicles and components, forcing a moratorium on all US space activities. NASA officials were said to be shocked and bewildered by "this...very uncanny, strange series of events." Then a French satellite launcher blasted off and blew up. Only the Russians had any success, performing the first link-up between two space stations (Soyuz T-15 and Salyut-7).

▶ In 1910 a second comet eclipsed HC in brightness. This visit of HC also coincided with a second comet, spotted by Chinese astronomers as passing quite close to HC, which they say happens "once in every 1000 years." [38,29 Sept 1985]

▶ In the week HC was closest to Earth (10th April 1986) a woman died in Yugoslavia after spending 24 years in a coma. It might be mere coincidence (whatever that is) that 'coma' is a the name of a comet's tail, and that the tail-end of this woman's life was spent in "the longest recorded coma in medical history". [2,16 April 1986]

▶ HC itself went through a strange transformation during 1986, depending upon which 'expert' observer you believed. On 10th January West Germany's Maxpap Institute of Astronomy said that Halley's tail had developed a dark spot which they believed to be a hole created by "solar, whirlwind-like forces". [33,1 Feb 1986] On 18th February HC became brighter because it had developed seven tails following an "outburst" at the nucleus 3-4 days previously, said the European Southern Observatory at La Silla, Chile. [35,22 Feb; 2,24 Feb 1986] By mid-April there is no mention of multiple tails. Worse, we are told by Sky and Telescope magazine that HC "lost most of its tail about March 21". [12,18 Apr 1986] Some astronomers implied this was expected: as the side of HC facing the sun warmed up HC spouted jets of gas and dust. This was just before the appearance of the seven tails. Far from being the bright star in a party dress, HC turned out to be "one of the darkest objects ever detected in the solar system", due, it is said, to the amounts of dust. [10,15 Mar 1986]

▶ The last solar flares in a long time - and in a period of sunspot 'peace' too (ie. not in the usual 11-point-something year cycle) - on 4th February. The flares caused severe electromagnetic interference, disrupting satellite communications, most forms of broadcasting, phone lines and even power distribution. They even interfered with data from the Pioneer 12 Venus orbiter, delaying by two weeks pictures of HC at its closest approach to the sun. Dramatic auroras followed in the Earth's magnetosphere on the 8th February and were seen throughout the northern hemisphere from points unusually far south.

▶ A record prolonged and extreme winter in China through to April/May, culminating in what must be the largest hailstones yet. In his new book, *The violent earth* (reviewed this issue), Frank Lane attributes the largest recorded hailstone to China, weighing "about 9 pounds" and falling in 1909. This is exceeded many times over by the 33lb stones that fell in Sichuan around the 19/20th May, and 11lb stones fell there on the 8th of May. But the most astonishing hailstone must be that which fell in Guangdong on 19/20 April; it weighed a record 60 kilogrammes (132 pounds). Heavy! April and May also saw many storms of giant hailstones in Bangladesh. Quite appropriate for an icey comet.

▶ Human behaviour did not escape this visit. For example: Michael Hoffman collected a depressing cluster of deaths via accidents and murders on Hallowe'en (30th October) 1985. Although the subject is too vast and varied for inclusion here, we do note several suicide waves (see 9 Sept; 1 + 4 Oct; 10 Feb; 26 Mar; 8 Apr.). For connections between HC and suicides see Loren Coleman's article on p68.

▶ We were surprised, ourselves, at the extent of what we call 'superlatives' (hottest, wettest, coldest, worst, etc) between our cut-off dates. April 86 piles catastrophe upon disaster as many thousands were made homeless almost daily. There were also some drastic reversals - regions suffering a bad drought which are then drowned in torrential rain. See NOT THEIR DAY on p16 for such an over-reaction to the rain dance of Dee-O-Det, medicine man to the Smoke Red tribe in Arizona.

### HOT GOSSIP

There was bound to be wild rumour-mongering in the wake of the Ukranian nuclear reactor disaster at Chernobyl. What little we got in the way of clippings showed that most of continental Europe got pretty excited as the radioactive clouds drifted back and forth overhead. For example an Italian hen laid a large egg - weighing 208g, with a 7cm diameter - and then stopped laying altogether, which was blamed on the radioactivity. *Le Courrier de l'Ouest* 9 May 1986.

The same paper for 26 May 1986 refers vaguely to "a great number" of rumours flying around Poland. A man claimed the milk in his fridge went "lumious"; another said the radiation made him suddenly lose his hair. Doctors in Rumania were swamped by anxious requests about methods of protection from radiation, while some hospitals there had to cope with numbers of children inadvertently poisoned by their parents, who had heard a rumour that a drink of iodine would do the trick.

Among the inevitable Chernobyl post-mortems is an obscure note of a divine piece of lexilinking. Writing in the *D. Telegraph* (28 July 1986, and citing the *New York Times*) Ian Ball

STRANGE DAYS / 27


=== Page 18 of 90

refers to a discovery that "with the uncanny speed common to rumour in the Soviet Union...had spread across the Soviet land, contributing to the swelling body of lore..." about the disaster. Ball reveals that the name 'Chernobyl' is the Ukranian word for the bitter herb wormwood which once grew in such abundance on the banks of the Dnieper that the region was named after it. What has fascinated, even shocked, "atheists and believers" alike is the discovery that 'wormwood' is specifically associated in the Bible with a catastrophically poisonous conflagration. Indeed, Revelations chapter 8, verses 10 and 11 reads:

"And the third angel sounded, and there fell a great star from heaven, burning as it were a lamp, and it fell upon the third part of the rivers, and upon the fountains of waters. / And the name of the star is called Wormwood; and the third part of the waters became wormwood; and many died of the waters, because they were made bitter."

Perhaps one day a folklorist will collect that "swelling body of lore". Meanwhile, says Ball, Bibles and Ukranian dictionaries are being pored over "thoughout Russia" by citizens wanting to verify this curious coincidence. In West Sussex, P.J.Edmonds, was likewise compelled and wrote to the Telegraph (1 Aug 1986) a confirmatory letter. He adds that "Chernobyl may also be translated as 'a black event'."

This last observation was made doubly interesting when Val Stevenson pointed out to us two entries in Barbara Walker's truly impressive Woman's Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets (Harper & Row, 1984 - reviewed in FT44). 'Wormwood' notes the herb was sacred to the Great Mother, and in Russia to pagan nymphs (Vilas). Continuing the female associations, wormwood was the chief ingredient of absinthe, first made by French witches. Via the German for wormwood, Wermut, we get the French word vermouth.

'Chernobog' sheds more light on Edmonds' "black event". Chernobog was a chthonian Lord of Death, a "black sun beneath the earth" in opposition to the heavenly White Sun. All of which seems very apt when we consider the narrowly averted prospect of the Chernobyl reactor burning its way into the earth below and thereby contaminating the water table and the nearby Dnieper River. The Ukranians, says Walker, still curse their enemies with "May the Black God exterminate you!" And he almost did...

# THE LISTING

The following listing is far from complete - for example we have not correlated it with Albert Thomas' regular listing of 'Worldwide Weather Disasters' in the Journal of Meteorology. It simply represents a random selection of the superlative phenomena and disasterous events that made their way onto our 'Halley heap'.

"Hide the cows and cover ponds and wells," advises this illustration in a 1983 Soviet civil defense manual. The melt-down at Chernobyl, on 26 April 1986, gave little chance to put it to its practical use.

### SEPTEMBER 1985

9 - Philippines, 68 Ata tribespeople are killed by shamaness who gave them poisoned food, see FT46 p18.

10 - London, a curious object falls from sky to smash on (but not through!) the glass conservatory roof of a house in Twickenham, not a meteorite as reported but "about 4ozs, duck-egg size, grey matter" which an 'expert' thought more like congealed soot. [31,13+20 Sept]

19 - Mexico City, hit by first of two quakes, 8000 dead.

21 - England, several lumps of ice fell from the sky into a factory yard at Isleworth, Surrey. [31,27 Sept]

30 - USA, "largest Sept. snowfall ever" in northeastern Minnesota, record low temps. elsewhere in state, also "wettest Sept. since 1926". [12,1 Oct]

### OCTOBER 1985

? - Britain, "warmest" & "driest" October since 1978. [10,1 Nov; 8,20 Nov]

? - China, "earlier than usual" blizzards begin to white-out Qinghai province lasting through to March 86, during which time 34,500 herdsmen had to be rescued, million livestock animals die + unknown number of wild animals, 15,000 people treated for frostbite, snow-blindness etc. [21,6 Mar 1986]

1 - USA, Arapahoe Indians at Wind River, Wyoming, perform a sacred pipe ceremony after nine young men kill themselves in the two months since 3rd August. [12,11 Oct + 3 Nov] On 18 March 1986 there was another suicide. [12,20 Mar]

4 - Brazil, freak hailstorm devastates Itabirinha town, sheets of ice in streets 1ft

28 / STRANGE DAYS


=== Page 19 of 90

deep, 20 killed, 4000 homeless. [18,5 Oct]

4 - England, in the next two weeks 5 teenage girls, all pupils at a Slough, Berks, school, attempt suicide. [36,18 Oct]

5 - Puerto Rico, hundreds die in mudslide after rainstorm.

8 - USA, heavy snow on Wyoming, Minnesota, Utah, Oregon, Colorado, Idaho, N&S.Dakota, Nevada & Montana, record low temps in Montana. [12,9 Oct]

8 - Puerto Rico, hurricane Isabel causes floods & mudslides, 60+ dead. [12,9 Oct]

13 - Soviet Tadzhikistan, quake, 10 dead. [10,16 Oct]

16 - Argentina, 13 dead & 22,000 evacuated in two days of flood around Buenos Aires. [10,18 Nov]

18 - Philippines, typhoon Dot batters Luzon at 127mph. [10,19 Oct]

19 - USA, 4.0 R quake at White Plains, NY. [27,22 Apr 86]

20-21 - USA, White Plains, NY, 3.3 R quake. [27,22 Apr 86]

28 - USA, hurricane Juan sends 12 tornadoes into Florida, one sounded "like a train" filled with "spinning fire". [1,29 Oct]

NOVEMBER 1985

? - Britain, "coldest November since 1965", "driest autumn since 1978 (7th driest on record)" [10,2 Dec]. NASA says satellite measurements show more of northern hemisphere covered in ice and snow than at any time since monitoring began 20 yrs ago. [27,10 Dec; 8,13 Dec]

? - South Africa, drought in eastern Cape, Border & East London relieved by torrential rain & replaced by widespread flooding. [37,8 Nov]

12 - Venice floods, tide 4ft higher than usual. [10,13 Nov]

13 - Colombia, 23,000 die as Nevado del Ruiz volcano erupts burying town of Armero, "world's biggest mass grave". [Most papers through to end of Nov]. Last survivor rescued on 9th Dec (24 days later). [34,10 Dec]

15 - Russia, the Klyuchevskaya volcano in Kamchatka erupts. [10,14 Nov]

16 - Spain, Alicante, flash floods claim lives. [24,17 Nov]

17 - Italy, heavy cloudburst floods Naples. [15,18 Nov]

18 - West New Britain, a volcano on this Papua-New Guinea island erupts, lava heading for village. [20,19 Nov]

19 - Southern England, "lowest Nov. day temperature since 1968". [10,20 Nov]

27 - England, "large, luminous steel-blue object" seen and heard "roaring" through sky over Weston-super-Mare in night. [4,28 Nov]

30 - Siberia, report that eastern provinces are enjoying a heatwave. [38,1 Dec]

DECEMBER 1985

? - Britain, "mildest December since 1974". [10,31 Dec]

? - Brazil, commodity traders say the current crop of coffee has been hit by a "severe drought" in the country. [23,13 Dec]

2 - England, London's "warmest Dec. day for 25 years" [10,4 Dec], Bristol's warmest Dec. day "for 50 years" [4,3 Dec], mildest start to Dec for "30 years" [8,4 Dec]

3 - Venezuela, floods throughout country. [23,4 Dec]

4 - Colombia, 40,000 evacuated after eruption of Nevado del Ruiz volcano. [24,5 Jan]

8 - Devon, "freak" snowstorm at Plympton. [10,9 Dec]

12 - Israel, water level in Sea of Galilee "lowest in 37 years". [23,13 Dec]

17 - Leeds, drought, blamed on 2.4 R quake "three weeks" earlier. [7,18 Dec]

17 - Brazil, southern states in severe drought. [41,18 Dec]

19 - Nicaragua, volcano erupts, 100+ houses damaged. [23,20 Dec]

26 - England, many regions of West Country flood, then freeze in "colder than expected" for Dec. weather. [4,28 Dec]

30 - USA, Buffalo, NY, has heaviest monthly snowfall, so far 5ft 8ins, just 1/2 ins short of all-time monthly record in 1977. [8,31 Dec]

JANUARY 86

? - USA, Minnesota has 4-5 weeks of uncharacteristic warm weather following Christmas. [8,27 Jan]

4 - USA, 2.0 R quake at White Plains, NY. [27,22 Apr 1986]

5 - Colombia, the Nevado del Ruiz volcano erupts again, "acrid smell of sulphur" in air, "daily electrical storms", Guali River rises apx 1ft as glacial headwaters melt, "similar phenomena to 13 Nov 1985 eruption", precautionary evacuation of 7000. [15,10,6 Jan]

6 - Bangladesh & northern India, two weeks of cold weather, icy winds and severe night frosts claim 200 lives. India's Dal Lake freezes over, "first time in 20+ years". [23,7+8 Jan]

10 - Quebec, "small" quake of 3.0 R. [43,12 Jan]

11 - Quebec, "moderate" quake of 4.2 R. [43,12 Jan]

11 - Britain, "freak" storms cause floods and lightning damage. [24,12 Jan]

11 - Bermuda, three tornadoes that "came out of nowhere"

STRANGE DAYS / 29


=== Page 20 of 90

The temporary island off Iwo Jima. See 20 January 1986.
[© Arab News 22 Jan 1986.]

cause considerable damage. [3,12 Jan]

19 - Newfoundland, during evening, a green fireball which "lit up the sky like broad daylight", thought to fall "somewhere" in the state, light seen in Labrador and Nova Scotia. Some told police they heard an explosion about 7:30pm. [2,21 Jan]

20 - Japan, near Iwo Jima a new crescent-shaped island rises 15m above waves during next three days of activity from Fukutokuokanoba undersea volcano. [46,20 Jan; 2,21+22+26 Jan; 10,11,21 Jan]

25 - Peru, Lake Titicaca overflows, six towns affected, crops & cattle lost. [33,27 Jan]

26 - Southern England, "sunniest [Jan.] weekend this century". [10,27 Jan]

26 - Niigata, Japan, "worst avalanche in 30+ years". [2,28 Jan]

30 - Venice floods, "third highest this century", 100+ homeless. [2,2 Feb]

30 - USA, 5.0 R quake felt from Illinois & Ontario to Washington DC. [33,1 Feb; 2,27,2 Feb]

30 - Canada, foul-smelling slime fell from the sky onto the Elementary School at South Burnaby, BC, "three days in a row". [44,3 Feb]

31 - Southern France & northern Italy "paralysed" by huge snowfalls & high winds, 5 dead in France, powercuts. State of emergency declared in Turin, "worst blizzard since 1956". [2,33,1 Feb]

FEBRUARY 1986

? - Britain, "coldest Feb. since 1947", "second coldest Feb this century". Prolonged cold in France & Switzerland. Canals freeze over in Belgium. [10,1 Mar; 17,4+6 Mar]

2 - Australia, north Queensland swamped by hurricane Winifred, "the worst storm in more than a decade", 200+kph winds, floods. [33,10,3 Feb; 2,4 Feb] One-third of Australia's banana crop wrecked. [10,7 Feb]

4 - "Major" solar flares detected, "first in more than a year". [35,5 Feb]

4 - Berkshire, "huge fireball" lights sky over Windsor, no trace of a meteor or crashed plane. [7,5 Feb]

7 - India, western state of Maharashtra begins a week of hailstorms, "most severe in recent years", 11 killed, $3 million damage. [33,13 Feb]

8 - "Strongest geomagnetic storm since 1976" disrupts radio, TV and other communication media in northern hemisphere; follows a "series of powerful solar flares" earlier in the week. [12,9 Feb; 12,10 Feb]

9 - Northern hemisphere, Northern Lights visible from most countries; England, "best seen for 20 years". [7,10 Feb; 13,13 Feb]

10 - East Anglia, record low daytime temperatures for next few days. [5,10 Feb]

10 - USA, a high school teenager at Spencer, Massachusetts, shoots himself, the next day there are two foiled suicides and rumours of five other attempts among fellow pupils. [30,13 Feb]

11 - Italy, "heaviest snowfall for 21 years"; Austria, "heaviest snowfall since 1929"; pretty bad in Hungary & Yugoslavia too. At same time temperatures from Canada to Texas plunge to -25°C. [33,13 Feb]

12 - Alaska, quake. [33,14 Feb]

13 - USA, nine days of storms lash Pacific coast, "heaviest rain in 30 years", 35,000 flood refugees. [33,19+21 Feb] "A little over a week ago we were in the throes of a drought." [40,3 Mar]

15 - Fort Langley, Canada's "fifth rail accident in a week". [2,17 Feb]

15 - USA, "unexplained" blue flash lights up pre-dawn sky over southeastern Pennsylvania and south Jersey. Thought to be meteor. [28,16 Feb] An AP report of same date says flash was "multi-coloured".

16 - Switzerland, 3.5 R quake in Valais area of Alps in morning. [2,17 Feb]

18 - California, after "heaviest rain in 31 years", floods, avalanches, mudslides, etc, 12000 flee homes, 17 killed. [2,19 Feb; 25,19+21 Feb]

18 - USA, fireball in night sky (9pm) explodes leaving a red train with "all kinds of sparkles", blue, orange and green, seen all over Pacific

30 / STRANGE DAYS


=== Page 21 of 90

northwest coast. Astronomers say it was a "bolide". [25, 20 Feb]

18 - Japan, Tokyo & Yokohama brought to standstill by two days of heavy snow. [2,20 Feb]

21 - Bulgaria, 12pt Mercali quake near northeastern town of Strajitsa. [33,23 Feb]

22 - Pakistan, northern regions jolted by two quakes. [2,23 Feb]

23 - Sudan, death toll of measles outbreak in Kordofan province reaches 82, 400 still ill. [2,25 Feb]

23 - Britain, coloured "flares" in sky, seen as far apart as Mull and Southampton. "Meteorites," says Met. Office. [34,24 Feb]

27 - Belgium, sea freezing at Ostend. "Coldest Feb in local records". [2,28 Feb]

28 - London, "worst winter for more than 20 years" (in Feb. !), parts of Thames froze for five miles above Oxford sending dangerous icebergs downstream; British crops freeze in ground; deaths from hypothermia. [36,1 Mar]

MARCH 1986

? - Yugoslavia, "scores" of birds killed themselves by crashing onto houses in Zabljak, the country's highest town, 22 died together as they fell through an open window into a bathtub. [?,8 Mar]

1 - South Africa, locusts swarming over "a quarter of the land area", "one of the worst plagues in 20 years". [21,2 Mar]

1 - Britain, "coldest night for 50 years"; while USA has a heatwave. [39,2 Mar]

2 - Japan, "strong" quake shakes central and northern areas at 4:09pm local time. [33,17,3 Mar]

2 - England, block of ice crashes onto Potters Green Infants School in Coventry. [6,3 Mar 1986]

4 - China, Qinghai region, "worst blizzard in region's history". [21,17,6 Mar 1986]

![The surf freezes at Weston-super-Mare. See early February 1986. [© Nigel Tailby / Bristol Eve. Post.]]

The surf freezes at Weston-super-Mare. See early February 1986. [© Nigel Tailby / Bristol Eve. Post.]

5 - Brazil, a week of continuous rainstorms begin leaving 32,000 homeless in the northeastern state of Ceara. [17,13 Mar]

6 - South Africa, great many bolts of lightning raze grass-hut village at Waterburg during "freak" thunderstorm 5 killed, 6 injured. [17,7 Mar]

6 - Caspian Sea, a 6.7 R quake at 0006 GMT. [17,7 Mar]

8 - Peru, after 6 months of rain ("double the average") a water-logged mountainside slides over four villages, 6000 evacuated. [14,12 Mar] Lake Titicaca rises to the "highest level this century", 90,000 people in environs flee their homes. Presidential commission investigating rumours "that peasants sacrificed a human to end the rains." [21,21,9 Mar]

8 - Japan, a tiny island off Iwo Jima, created in late January by undersea volcano, has nearly vanished beneath waves. [21,9 Mar]

10 - Malaysia, thousands evacuated in Johore state after heavy rains cause floods and landslips. [21,11 Mar]

10 - USA, Ohio, Kentucky, Illinois, Indiana hit by total of 29 twisters in one day, thousands without power, at least 6 killed. [14,12 Mar]

11 - Brazil, northern region of Fortaleza, 40,000 homeless from floods following days of "torrential" rain. [14,12 Mar]

12 - Southwest Indonesia, a week of heavy rain causes Citarum River to burst, 50,000 homeless, countless farms, fishponds etc ruined. [21,13+14 Mar]

12 - Indonesia, "critical" outbreak of rabies, pogrom against stray dogs, 24,000 pets vaccinated. [21,13 Mar]

13 - New Zealand, "one of the worst floods this century" leaves hundreds homeless following torrential rain. "The region was just recovering from a massive drought last year." [17,15 Mar]

13 - India, epidemic of meningitis, mounting deaths and 600 hospital admissions over two months in New Delhi. [21,14 Mar]

14 - Madagascar, a two-day cyclone wrecks the country's "rice-bowl" [21,16 Mar]

19 - Saint-Denis de la Réunion, French Indian Ocean, the Piton de la Fournaise volcano begins a prolonged period of activity, 300 evacuated from southeastern tip of island. [21,22+26 Mar; 17,25 Mar; 2,28 Mar]

20 - Nigeria, outbreak of meningitis in northern state of Bauchi, 70 dead. [21,21 Mar]

21 - Central British Columbia

STRANGE DAYS / 31


=== Page 22 of 90

rocked by 5.7 R quake. [17,23 Mar]

21 - New York, temperature plunges to 8°. [*15,22 Mar]

22 - Southern Taiwan, two quakes 6.0 R at 12:45pm (0445 GMT, and 5.0 R at 1:25pm (0525 GMT). [17,14,23 Mar]

23 - Indonesia, Mt Lokon volcano in north Sulawesi spews ash and debris, river serving five villages diverted. [21,25 Mar]

23 - Japan, Tokyo region "lashed" by "worst spring snowstorm ever recorded" + strong winds, roofs collapse under 8ins of mushy snow. 13 killed, 215 injured in train collision. [14,27,24 Mar; 17,25 Mar]

24 - British Isles, "record-breaking gusts" of "freak" hurricane-force wind up to 145kph cause hundreds of accidents and 9 deaths. [4,24 Mar; 21,8,25 Mar]

25 - Irian Jaya, Indonesia, 6.6 R quake at 3:38am (1938 GMT). [17,26 Mar]

25 - Greece, area north of Athens, 5.7 R quake at 0141 GMT. [14,26 Mar]

25 - Tanzania, outbreak of cholera in northern province of Mara, 11 dead in 2 weeks. [14,26 Mar]

25 - Egypt, first of two sightings of Virgin Mary at Coptic church in Cairo. [32,14 Apr] See next issue of FT.

26 - USA, 3.1 R quake hits southwest Virginia at 11:36am. [12,27 Mar]

26 - USA, the 6th teenager to commit suicide in 2 years in Leominster, Massachusetts, suicide prevention worker says at least 50 youths attempted suicide in the city in 6 months. [1,30,3,28 Mar]

28 - Alaska, following weeks of monitored tremors and rising heat the Augustine volcano erupts for "first time in 10 years", clouds of corrosive ash. Swarms of small 1.5 R quakes rattle the area. Fears for quakes along San Andreas Fault. Rumbles and eruptions continue throughout following month. [12,27+28 Mar; 2,33,3,29 Mar; 27,30,31 Mar; 1,28 Mar+21 April]

28 - Constantine, Algiers, rocked by "mild" quake, 0257 GMT. [33,29 Mar]

29 - Aegean Islands, 6.1 R quake, felt on mainland. [2,31 Mar]

29 - San Francisco, 4.0 R quake. [12,30 Mar; 33,31 Mar]

29 - Alaska, more rumbles and ash clouds from Augustine Volcano. [3,30 Mar]

30 - San Francisco, "third quake in three days", 5.3+ R, at 3:56am (1156 GMT). "There was a rumbling and a roll, then an abrupt bump and a couple more rolls." [1,31 Mar; 33,7,12,27,3,1 Apr]

30 - Britain freezes over with gales, snow and hail for Easter. [8,31 Mar]

31 - Bangladesh, storm kills 16, injures 200. [33,6 Apr]

31 - Tanzania, Ifakara district, floods during the week, "heaviest since 1979", seven villages affected, 3000 homeless. [33,4,31 Mar]

31 - Alaska, the Augustine volcano has "biggest eruption in 10 years". [12,1+2 Apr; 2,27,30,2 Apr]

# APRIL 1986

1 - Peru, following "unusually heavy" rains Lake Titicaca rises more than 6ft, "more than at any time in the past century", floods destroy crops and villages, 240,000 homeless in Peru and Bolivia. [12,2 Apr]

2 - Oshima Island, Japan, 623 "minor" tremors in 26hrs, near Mt Mihara volcano. [33,3 Apr]

3 - Bangladesh, northeast coast, severe hailstorm kills 11, injures 42, much damage. [33,46,4 Apr; 10,5 Apr]

3 - India, Tripura state, on border with Bangladesh, cyclone razes five villages, 5 killed, 200+ injured. [33,4+6 Apr]

4 - Ethiopia, Wollo region, the appropriately named Awash River floods following torrential rains, 400 homeless. [2,6 Apr]

4 - Huntington Beach, California shaken by 3.8 R quake, 10:50pm. [33,6 Apr]

4 - Northeastern Aegean Islands, hit by 2 quakes, 5.3 and 4.7 R. [16,5 Apr]

5 - Bangladesh northeast coast, severe hailstorm kills 12, injures 100, and 50 missing as hundreds of fishing boats capsize. Giant hail "up to 1kg". [16,5 Apr; 33,6+7 Apr; 46,7 Apr]

5 - Cuzco, Peru, "Most devastating earthquake in 36 years", 5.5 R at 3:30pm followed by four more quakes in next three hours, 3000 homeless, many dead. [33,36,7 Apr; 2,8 Apr]

8 - Japan, teenage singing star Yukiko Okada jumps to her death from a 7-storey Tokyo building after a failed love affair, in next 3 weeks 33 teenagers, most of them girls, suicide mostly in the same way. [Numerous clippings on file.]

14/15 - Northern Bangladesh, giant hail "up to 2.2lbs" flattens houses and crops in Gopalganj & other districts, storm-winds reach 125kph, 100+ feared killed, 3000+ injured. [46,15 Apr; 9,22,33,42,16 Apr; 15,17,17 Apr]

16 - Alaska, a second volcano - the Pavlov Volcano - spews ash and steam three miles into the air. [12,18 Apr]

17 - Mount St Helens, Washington, belches clouds for first time in 10 months, with seismic activity. [12,18 Apr; 1,21 Apr]

18 - Alaska, volcano Pavlov explodes with "one of the most violent eruptions in its history", debris hurled 16km into air, Cathedral River blocked by debris and floods. [33,20 Apr]

19 - USA, twin tornadoes hit Sweetwater, TX, 1 dead, 90+ injured, 800 homes damaged. [12,20 Apr; 30,21 Apr]

19/20 - Wales, a huge block of ice falls in a field at Wiston, near Haverfordwest. 5lbs'

32 / STRANGE DAYS


=== Page 23 of 90

worth of ice was preserved by lady who heard the "whistling sound" of its descent (see photo), but most of the ice was left in the field. Brief reference to "coincident" icefall in Sussex. [45,24 Apr] Sometime in the following week another slab of ice fell at Mumbles, near Swansea, 12lbs of fragments recovered. [45,26 Apr]

19/20 - Southern China, the same weekend saw a spectacular hailstorm in Guangdong province, 6 killed, 510 injured, the hail was generally "giant" but the largest weighed 60kg (132lbs). [2,25 Apr]

20 - Bangladesh, a camp for 20,000 refugees of recent disasters destroyed by fire, 23 killed, 300 injured, remainder homeless again. [23,20 Apr]

20 - Eastern Sri Lanka, dam bursts, 100 dead, 30,000 homeless. [23,20 Apr]

22 - USA, 2.7 R quake hits White Plains, NY, at 2:28am, "fourth in six months". [1,27,22 Apr]

25 - Alaska, even as seismologists publish warnings of imminent eruption of Augustine Volcano, it blows its top for the second time, hurling car-sized rocks, ash and steam into the air, eruption lasts several days. [26,25 Apr; 25,26 Apr; 33,27 Apr; 12,28 Apr; 30,29 Apr]

25 - Greece, eastern region jolted by 5.2 R quake at 8:01am (0501 GMT), epicenter in Aegean Sea. [33,26 Apr]

26 - Northern India, state of Himachal Pradesh hit by two 6.0 R quakes at 9:05am (0335 GMT), 3 killed in Dharamshala. Same region was swept by a coincident storm, uprooted trees, flash floods, many homes destroyed. [33,28 Apr]

26 - Spain, a 4.3 R quake hits Granada. [33,27 Apr]

30 - Mexico City, just one month before the World Cup, hit by 7.0 R quake at 1:07am (0707 GMT) in areas still recovering from last September's 8.1 R quake. [1,26,4,30 Apr; 33,36, 19,1 May]

![Mrs Beryl Voyle of Wiston, south Wales, with some of the fallen ice she saved. See 19/20 April 1986. (© Western Mail.)]

Mrs Beryl Voyle of Wiston, south Wales, with some of the fallen ice she saved. See 19/20 April 1986. [© Western Mail.]

MAY 86

? - Elands Bay, South Africa, thousands of live lobsters driven ashore in early May. 70,000 were salvaged for processing. [37,9 May]

3 - Iran, severe floods in central Lorestan prov. [33,6 May]

5 - Turkey, village in souteast destroyed by quake, 15 dead. [36,19,6 May]

7 - Southwestern China, giant hail "up to 11lbs" storm kills 16, injures 125. [36,8 May]

7 - Aleutian Islands, "strongest tremor in area since 1957". Fearing tidal waves families evacuated along San Francisco coast, but wave is only 2ft high when arrives. Japan and Hawaii also get tidal wave alerts. [22,8 May; 15,9 May]

10 - Bangkok, 12ins of rain in 24hrs, "the heaviest in more than 500 years", paralyzes 90% of city. Thousands abandon cars in waist-deep water, 9 people electrocuted. [33,11 May; 1,26,12 May]

10 - Taiwan, 6.5 R quake. [46,12 May]

19 - Taiwan, two "strong" quakes hit north in quick succession. [46,20 May]

15 - Soviet Georgia, quake destroys 1500 houses, 2 dead. [46,16 May]

19/20 - Sichuan province, China, a "series of 143 violent hailstorms and hurricanes" throughout following week severely damage this agricultural region, 143 dead, nearly 10,000 injured, 80,000+ homeless. One hailstorm lasted 50 mins with hail up to 1.5kgs (3lbs). [29,23 May; 19,24 May] On this day a massive storm hits 13 districts of Sichuan, killing 102, three cities damaged, with record-sized hail up to "33lbs" [27,23 May]

20 - Solomon Islands, wrecked by cyclone Namu, "worst in several years", 90,000 homeless, unknown nos. dead. [17,21+23 May; 27,21 May]

25 - USA, south-east states hit by "worst dry spell in a century". [19,26 May]

26 - Bangladesh, cyclonic storm overturns riverboat between Dacca and Bhola, 1000 feared dead. [12,27 May]

And now... back to normal (whatever that is)!
RJMR

CREDITS & SOURCES

STRANGE DAYS / 33


=== Page 24 of 90

DIARY OF A MAD PLANET / continued.

SPECIAL THANKS to Ion Will who prodigiously provided most of the the clippings herein listed, and whose letters from 'somewhere east of Suez' kept us entertained with their perceptive commentaries on this world's chaos.

**KEY TO SOURCES**

■ 1 - Attleboro (MA) Sun-Chronicle. ■ 2 - Arab News. ■ 3 - Boston (MA) Herald. ■ 4 - Bristol Eve. Post. ■ 5 - Cambridge Eve. News. ■ 6 - Coventry Eve. Telegraph. ■ 7 - D. Express. ■ 8 - D. Mail. ■ 9 - D. Star. ■ 10 - D. Telegraph. ■ 11 - Detroit (MI) News. ■ 12 - Duluth (MN) News-Tribune + Herald. ■ 13 - East Hampshire Post. ■ 14 - Emirates News (Abu Dhabi). ■ 15 - Guardian. ■ 16 - Gulf Daily News (Bahrain). ■ 17 - Gulf News (Dubai). ■ 18 - Huston (TX) Chronicle. ■ 19 - Int. Herald Tribune. ■ 20 - Jersey Eve. Post. ■ 21 - Khaleej Times (Dubai). ■ 22 - London Standard. ■ 23 - Middlesbrough Eve. Gazette. ■ 24 - Observer. ■ 25 - The Oregonian. ■ 26 - Pawtuxet Valley (RI) D. Times. ■ 27 - Pawtuxet Valley (RI) Eve. Times. ■ 28 - Philadelphia (PA) Inquirer. ■ 29 - Plattsburg (NY) Press-Republican. ■ 30 - Providence (RI) Journal. ■ 31 - Richmond & Twickenham Times. ■ 32 - San Francisco Chronicle. ■ 33 - Saudi Gazette. ■ 34 - The Scotsman. ■ 35 - St Louis (MO) Post-Dispatch. ■ 36 - The Sun. ■ 37 - South African Digest ■ 38 S. Express. ■ 39 - S. Telegraph. ■ 40 - Time. ■ 41 - The Times. ■ 42 - Today. ■ 43 - Toronto Star. ■ 44 - Vancouver (BC) Province. ■ 45 - Western Mail (Bristol.) ■ 46 - Wolverhampton Express & Star.

# CORN CIRCLES AGAIN

More mystery circles of flattened corn have appeared, this time in a wheatfield at the Devil's Punchbowl, near Winchester in Hampshire. While the devil-associated-placename fanclub file this away, we note the arrival fits in with the end of June/early July appearance of similar circles during the last four years - see FTs 40p27 & 43p31. According to local researcher Pat Delgado, of Alresford: "similar rings have been recorded in this area, even in this same field, since the Second World War." The largest of the recent circles at the Devil's Punchbowl, measuring 68ft across, appeared during the night of 5th July - the smaller, 48ft, circle appeared between 7-8pm the next day. As you can see from the photo on the facing page, both circles have a distinctive outer ring, a feature never recorded for previous occurrences. "What you have is a disc of wheat all swirling in a clockwise direction, except for the [outer] four feet which swirls in an anti-clockwise direction. Then around that is a band of untouched standing wheat, for about five feet, followed by [the outer] flat ring four feet wide." described Pat Delgado. He added that the rings were too uniform and "perfect" to be part of a hoax. *D. Telegraph, Southern Eve. Echo 7 July; D. Telegraph 9 July 1986.*

The currently favoured theory - that travelling whirlwinds can touch down in fields near geological features (like Cheesefoot Head, in this case) creating the characteristic flattened swirl - owes a lot to the work of Dr Terence Meaden, editor of the *Journal of Meteorology*, and BUFORA investigator Paul Fuller, who has written a review of the phenomenon - see booklet reviews, this issue.

Supportive evidence for this came in a letter to the *Telegraph* (11 July 1986) from John Lewis, of Ross-on-Wye, Herefordshire: "I live on a ridge, quite steep on one side, and a couple of years ago we witnessed a small whirlwind starting at a nearby motorway, travelling along the line of the ridge, across a farmyard, causing havoc with some baling and then lifted on to a wheat field where it sort of bounced two or three times before dispersing in some trees. Where it touched the wheat field it produced the flattened circles."

Less than two weeks after the Hampshire pair, this ringed circle appeared at Bratton, Wiltshire. [Photo © FPL / Bob Skinner.]

POSTSCRIPT -- We later heard that another ringed circle appeared mid-July in a field below Bratton Fort, in Wiltshire - see photo above - and a fourth, again in Wiltshire. All of them sport an outer ring, and it makes us wonder if the appearances of these circles is subject to annual changes infashions. In 1984, for example, we saw at least two instances of a design of four smaller circles around a larger central one (see FT43 p31), a design which has not reappeared since.

34 / STRANGE DAYS


=== Page 25 of 90

Grim warning from beyond the star

# 'Halt all space probes or we'll destroy your planet!'

Weekly World News 9/22/87

A leading scientist says space aliens have warned the governments of the world to end all exploration beyond our own solar system -- or they will cause the Earth to stop spinning on its axis!

"If they make good on the threat, if they stop the Earth spinning, in a split second we would simply blow up," Dr. Andre Jubert, the famed astrophysicist, told reporters in Paris.

"I know the Soviet Union has taken the warning seriously. I hope and pray other countries, especially the United States, will too."

The expert -- who has close ties to space officials in the Soviet Union and America -- said the radio warning was received at various listening posts around the world in early July.

The aliens who beamed the signal obviously possess a super technology, he added, because the message was transmitted in a complex mathematical code.

"The message itself was short and to the point," said Dr. Jubert.

"The extraterrestrials have claimed territorial rights to all space beyond our solar system and forbidden us from exploring it with space vehicles such as America's Voyager probes.

"It's too late to call those ships back, of course. But the aliens made it clear that additional probes will be considered warships.

"And they will retaliate by destroying us."

Just how space aliens could stop our planet's rotation isn't clear, said the astrophysicist.

"But it would be negligent to think that they are bluffing," he continued.

"We must go on the assumption that they have the awesome power to make good on the mind-boggling threat."

Soviet and American space officials confirmed that Dr. Jubert has worked closely with the space programs in both countries since the 1960s but they refused to comment on the authenticity of his report.


=== Page 26 of 90

like to help but I simply don't have the authorization to discuss it," said one U.S. source. "I will say that Dr. Jubert is a respected scientist. When he says something, his colleagues usually listen."

The famous astrophysicist himself plans to petition the governments of the world to work on a global space strategy "before it's too late."

"There simply isn't any time to waste," he stated. "Concerned people everywhere will have to put pressure on their governments. We have to work together to make the powers that be ban these probes. If not, we are just asking to be killed."

-- LESLIE KNOLL

# They'll cause the Earth to stop spinning

![Artist's conception of the Earth's fate if the aliens make good on their doomsday threat.]

ARTIST'S CONCEPTION of the Earth's fate if the aliens make good on their doomsday threat.

Sept. 19, 1987 Scientists

In this article is confirmation of what my UFOs and I, as their representative, have been telling you all along. Perhaps you can believe the noted astrophysicist Dr. Jubert. My UFOs will not allow our human space work. I told before space shuttle Challenger blew up that such would happen, remember? It is documented. And I have told you that there is no time. I should be working from the UFO Base now, instead of struggling grimly where I am. What we have -- is a government of fools.

Owens


=== Page 27 of 90

# Researchers to use sonar in Loch Ness

Post-Star 6/18/87

LONDON (AP) -- A fleet of sonar-equipped boats will probe Scotland's murky Loch Ness next month in the most thorough -- and skeptical -- search for the elusive Loch Ness Monster.

"It will be the largest scientific expedition ever undertaken on the mysterious lake," said Operation Deepscan leader Adrian Shine, a 38-year-old salesman from London.

More than 20 motorboats equipped with state-of-the-art sonar equipment made by Lowrance Electronics Inc., of Tulsa, Okla., will sweep the 24-mile-long lake in an attempt to resolve the 1,500-year-old debate on whether the fabled "Nessie" exists.

The boats, lined up "rather like a chorus line" across the lake's one-mile width, will sail from one end to the other trailing "an unbroken sonar line through which very little should escape," said publicist Guy Pearse.

Shine, who has been researching fish and unidentified objects in Loch Ness in his spare time for 14 years, said he's not convinced there is a Loch Ness monster.

"We're a fairly skeptical outfit as far as monsters are concerned," he said. "It (the expedition) is not just another hunt for 'Nessie'."

The 10-day expedition will also have more mundane goals, like counting how many species of fish live in the 750-foot-deep lake and what causes its underwater waves, before the systematic inch-by-inch sweeps Oct. 9-11.

Each boat will have its own echo-sounder, emitting sonar pulses that will bounce off the lake bed or anything else in the water.

Pearse said, "The Lowrance equipment, which is used by anglers worldwide, is capable of separating fish as little as four inches apart, so whatever is below the surface of Loch Ness at whatever depth will not be able to avoid such a close-knit sonar sweep."

Two other power boats will follow the fleet with underwater TV cameras and still cameras to try to film any interesting sonar contacts and track any moving targets, Shine said.

Each one-way trip along the lake, the largest body of fresh water in Britain, will take about six hours, he said.

He would not estimate the cost of the operation, but he said the use of the boats had been donated. The 100 people who will crew them are volunteers.

The Loch Ness monster legend dates back to 565 A.D. when St. Columba, who brought Christianity to Britain, is supposed to have rescued a farmer from a monster's grip.

There have been more than 4,000 reported sightings in modern times and Nessie has been explained away as everything from an otter to ducks, tricks of light on the dark loch waters or a prehistoric dinosaur.

Shine's theory is that it's a large fish: "That is by far the most likely explanation."

A new theory, offered by Jon-Erik Beckjord, director of the Cryptozoology Museum in Malibu, Calif., is that Nessie is not a thing of substance at all. "It's an energy form, a form of energy that interacts with human beings," he said after leading a week-long expedition this summer, which photographed from shore what he believes is the Loch Ness monster.

Beckjord said the creature has a cat-like face and a 15-foot body that "looks like a cross between Haley's Comet and the Concorde jet."

cat speaks English?

6/17/87

See last part of newsclip. ① As you know, from my past files to you, I told you that my UFO aliens had no substance - were pure energy. ② I have told you in previous files that the Loch Ness creature is produced by my UFO aliens. ③ The "cat-like" remark is interesting. In this file, written earlier, I discuss a cat-like voice outside my window, instructing me to "open the door," in the early hours.

Owens

9/18/87

last night woke - then heard two cat sounds as if from amplifier. Then - felt two hands holding the sides of my head.

2 1/2


=== Page 28 of 90

A2-Post-Star, Glens Falls, N.Y. Saturday, June 27, 1987

# National Scene

## Briefly

### Jet encounters a swift object

CHARLESTON, W.Va. (AP) -- The National Weather Service doubts it was theirs and the Defense Department insists it wasn't theirs. About the only thing the Federal Aviation Administration can say about the object that encountered a Delta Air Lines jet at 29,500 feet is that no one is likely to find it.

The pilot of Delta Flight 1083, en route from Pittsburgh to Atlanta, told investigators an object that appeared to be a missile seemed headed straight for his Boeing 737 on Thursday morning before passing to the side and slightly below.

"The pilot described it as a rocket or a missile about 4 feet long, with fins that were each about a foot or a foot and a half in height," said Delta spokesman Bill Berry. "It went so fast that's all he saw. He didn't see it long enough to recognize any markings.

"He saw it. It was there. It was gone."

# Missile Missing? Call Delta

NY Times 6/27/87

CHARLESTON, W.Va., June 26 (AP) -- The National Weather Service doubts it was theirs and the Defense Department insists it wasn't theirs. About the only thing the Federal Aviation Administration can say about the object that encountered a Delta Air Lines jet at 29,500 feet Thursday is that no one is likely to find it.

The pilot of Delta Flight 1083, flying 60 people from Pittsburgh to Atlanta, told investigators that an object, which appeared to be a missile, seemed headed straight for his Boeing 737 before passing to the side and slightly below.

"The pilot described it as a rocket or a missile about 4 feet long, with fins," a Delta spokesman, Bill Berry, said. "It went so fast that's all he saw."

The aviation agency said it would probably never know what had the encounter with the jet 31 miles northeast of Charleston.

Kathleen Bergen, an agency spokesman, said it was left with two explanations: The official one is that it was a promotional balloon that escaped.

"Balloons can travel pretty far," she said. "We don't acknowledge the existence of U.F.O.'s."

# British jetliner diverts course to avoid UFO

6/28/87 Post-Star

LONDON (AP) -- A British Airways jetliner made a diversion over the Soviet Union to avoid what the crew reported as an unidentified flying object, an airline spokesman said Saturday.

The incident occurred in April, but first came to light in a front-page article Saturday in The Times of London.

Spokesman Alan Solloway confirmed that the crew of the Boeing 747 jumbo jet reported seeing a UFO over the Soviet Union on April 22 while flying from London to Bangkok, Thailand.

He said it was the first such case in the airline's history.

"We have had crews report seeing space debris burning, but we can't recall a UFO being sighted and being logged as a UFO," Solloway said.

"Usually, there is a scientific explanation for whatever was seen, but there doesn't seem to be a scientific explanation for this."

The Times said all five crew members reported seeing an object with twinkling lights fly directly toward them and then vanish quickly over the Kazakhstan horizon.

"It was definitely not an aircraft," the paper quoted First Officer Anthony Colin, 42, as saying. "Of that I am positive. None of us had ever seen anything like it before."

:05 PM 7/23/87

White humanoid figure passed in front of my office door, silently. I called Beau + we searched but could find nothing. Beau woke up with a strange triangle of red dots on lower abdomen + his hand hurt. I have odd multi-colored bruise on inside of top left arm. Entire house + I had "haunt" last night.

6/19/87

Around 11 PM last night my sons + I observed 3 UFOs maneuvering overhead. One, especially, for 1/2 hr.

Post-Star

# Soviets unravel green mystery

5/18/87

MOSCOW (AP) -- Spring came to the Moscow area with such force this year that it turned the sky and the rain green.

Radio Moscow reported Sunday that Soviet scientists had unraveled the mystery of a green sky and green rain noticed in the Moscow region on May 5.

It said an analysis indicated 80 percent of the sediment from the rain was pollen.

"This is explained by the unusually late spring this year," the radio said. "A great number of trees and bushes have bloomed ... within a very short period."

"The gusty wind raised masses of green pollen in the air which caused the extraordinary phenomenon," it said.


=== Page 29 of 90

6/1/87

Something BIG is about to happen! U.S. had better go on alert.

(Phone message long distance to Wayne Grover in Florida.)

# Meteor created seismic waves

Post-Star 8/14/87

NEW YORK (AP) -- A meteor streaking across the Canadian sky created an atmospheric shock wave that set off vibrations in the Earth, a new study says.

Seismic signals were detected from a meteor spotted above Yellowknife in the Northwest Territories on Sept. 19, scientists report in Thursday's issue of the British journal Nature.

"The signals cannot be explained by any earthquake, explosion or impact-generating mechanism," wrote F.M. Anglin and R.A.W. Haddon of the Geological Survey of Canada.

But they are consistent with seismic waves triggered by atmospheric shock wave, the researchers wrote.

# Alerts follow earthquake

Post-Star 6/12/87 (Call to Wayne preceding)

CARBONDALE, Ill. (AP) -- An earthquake that rocked 16 states caused low-level alerts at several nuclear plants without interrupting service, but seismologists warned Thursday that a much more severe jolt is inevitable.

"It will be ugly," said E. Erie Jones, executive director of the Central United States Earthquake Consortium. "There's going to be an earthquake before the turn of the century. But we're not prepared."

Only scattered property damage was reported Wednesday and no serious injuries, although it was scary for a time.

"I thought I was on my way to heaven," said Essie Anderson, a custodian at the 35-story Indiana National Bank tower in downtown Indianapolis. "When you are on the ninth floor and the building gets to rocking and reeling, you get to thinking."

Three nuclear plants in Illinois, two in Michigan and one in Minnesota declared "unusual events" -- the lowest form of alert -- because of the earthquake, said spokesman Jan Strasma of the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission in Glen Ellyn.

There were no reports of damage or disruption of service to any plant, and the declarations have been lifted, Strasma said.

"Unusual events largely are notification to governmental authorities that there has been some sort of incident or event with the potential to effect the nuclear plant, but which has not created a public hazard," Strasma said.

Four nuclear plans in Illinois did not report "unusual events," he said.

According to the National Earthquake Information Center in Golden, Colo., Wednesday's quake, at 6:49 p.m. CDT, was centered near Lawrenceville, Ill., 55 miles north of Evansville, Ind. It measured 5.0 on the Richter scale.

It was the Midwest's strongest earthquake since Nov. 9, 1968, when one measuring 5.5 struck just north of Harrisburg.

Wednesday's tremor broke windows and rattled walls from Kansas to South Carolina and parts of Canada.

# Mystery swirls around sightings

Post-Star 8/22/87

CHICAGO (AP) -- It's a mystery at 6,000 feet over the Windy City: In separate reports, one commercial airline pilot said he nearly clipped a flock of parachutists and another reported helium balloons near his plane.

But no one else saw the objects, on radar or on the ground.

"We don't have any substantiation of skydivers or helium balloons over Chicago, but we're still working on it because two pilots said they saw them," spokeswoman Marjorie Kriz of the Federal Aviation Administration said Friday.

The pilot of a Northwest Airlines Boeing 747 en route from Chicago to Tokyo told the tower at O'Hare International Airport shortly after noon Thursday that he passed "four or five parachutists and that he almost hit one," Ms. Kriz said.

The jet was flying at about 6,000 feet at the time, officials said.

About five minutes later, Ms. Kriz said, the pilot of a United Airlines jet reported "that he thought he saw helium balloons."

4


=== Page 30 of 90

Damage Minor but Widespread After Quake Is Felt in 16 States

NY Times 6/12/87

By The Associated Press

A strong earthquake centered in Illinois shook sections of 16 states and parts of Canada on Wednesday, breaking windows, tumbling chimneys and causing buildings to sway up to 700 miles from its center, officials said yesterday.

The quake also brought alerts at three Illinois nuclear plants and set off an alarm at a Minnesota nuclear plant, but it caused only minor damage and one minor injury. The tremor registered 5.0 on the Richter scale measuring the severity of earthquakes.

"It felt like somebody with big shoes was walking overhead, but nobody lives overhead," said Richard Horwitz of Chicago. "Our parakeet was chattering away and it just stopped."

The quake was centered near Lawrenceville, Ill., 55 miles north of Evansville, Ind., according to the National Earthquake Information Center in Golden, Colo. Trembling was reported felt from 10 seconds to nearly a minute.

Apartment Is Evacuated

Hundreds of students ran screaming from a building at a vocational college in Indianapolis and about 70 people were evacuated from a swaying 12-story apartment house in Columbia, S.C., 700 miles from the earthquake's center.

"I thought I was going to die and I thought, well, I'm in church and I can't think of a better place to die," said Betty Meyer, a Bible school instructor at First Christian Church in Bridgeport, Ill., where the quake cracked the bell tower.

The only injury reported was to an 18-month-old girl who was struck on the head by a bunk bed that was toppled by the quake. He injury required stitches.

A police dispatcher, David Hoffee in Olney, Ill., said there were reports of broken windows, fallen chimneys and a collapsed roof.

Nuclear Plant Alerts

After the earthquake, three nuclear power plants in Illinois declared "usual events," the lowest form of alert for a nuclear plant, a spokesman for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission Glen Ellyn said yesterday. They were the Dresden plant, near Morris; Quad Cities, at Cordova, and Clinton.

There were no reports of damage or disruption of service from the plants the spokesman said.

At the Prairie Island nuclear plant near Red Wing, Minn., the quake triggered a seismic alarm, but no damage was detected, said a spokesman for the Northern States Power Company.

The earthquake was felt in Kansas, Missouri, Minnesota, Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, Kentucky, Tennessee, West Virginia, Virginia, Pennsylvania, the Carolinas and several cities in Ontario.

It was the strongest in the area since one near Norris City, Ill., on Nov. 9, 1968, that registered 5.3 on the open-ended Richter scale, according to the United States Geological Survey in Washington.

"A 5 in the East is substantial," said Charles J. Ritter, a geology professor at the University of Dayton, Ohio.

A4-Post-Star, Glens Falls, N.Y. Thursday, June 11, 1987

National Scene

Briefly (Call to Wayne Grover preceding)

Quake rattles Midwest

Weekly World News 6/16/87

A strong earthquake rattled parts of 11 Midwestern states from Missouri to West Virginia on Wednesday evening, shaking buildings in downtown Milwaukee, Chicago and Detroit.

There were no immediate reports of injuries or damage.

"We've had a pretty strong earthquake," reported Bruce Presgrave of the National Earthquake Information Center of the U.S. Geological Survey in Golden, Colo. "We're still working it. We don't have a magnitude yet but apparently it was felt over a pretty wide area in the Midwest."

The quake was felt in Missouri, Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, Kentucky, Tennessee, West Virginia and Pennsylvania.

"We haven't gotten any official information, but we felt it here," said Dennis Dixon, a National Weather Service forecaster in Ann Arbor, about 40 miles west of Detroit.

Top celebs know UFOs exist!

You don't have to be a star to spot a UFO, but a growing number of celebs have had close encounters of all kinds.

A president and a senator have seen 'em. A heavyweight champ's eye-balled aliens over 20 times. A Beatle tried to photograph a spaceship from his apartment window.

Star Trek doc DeForest Kelley says a long time ago he saw "a long cigar-shaped object with green and blue flames coming out of its side."

"As it rapidly went by, I saw a red light flashing on its tail.

"It laid down a kind of jet stream -- then it was gone."

When Jimmy Carter was governor of Georgia he had a vision that so moved him he filed a report on the experience.

Senator and pilot Barry Goldwater's had a number of sightings.

For years he has been trying to get into legendary Hangar 18 at Wright Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio, where the ruins of an alien spacecraft and the preserved bodies of its tiny crew are supposedly under ultra-tight security.

Goldwater's never been allowed inside.

Muhammad Ali's seen them so many times he's stopped counting.

The Greatest spotted one once while jogging in New York's Central Park.

John Lennon also saw something in the park, but the pix he shot from his posh pad never came out, sez The New York Post.

Miami Vice star Philip Michael Thomas says he saw one when he was a kid. A saucer hovered over his head for a few startling minutes, then disappeared.

One TV actor, Dennis Weaver, was so impressed with extraterrestrial visits he set up a hot line that gives daily reports on UFO sightings around the world.

"I know UFOs exist and I believe they are manned," says Weaver. "We are being observed in much the same way that we might observe bees or ants."

The stars are coming out of the space closet with UFOs under their skin.

And for a two buck toll call you can hear a three-minute tape of up-to-date UFO bulletins.


=== Page 31 of 90

5/29/87
(5:30 AM)
Alien
Comun. in sound. Clear words.
"O-pen O-pen O-pen-O-pen Do-or-o-pen O-pen-O-pen Oooch!"

4/2/87
Last night, Bean & I heard a noise like a train up close. The walls shook. We looked out windows - but nothing visible

Ted Koppel's "Nightline" special re UFOs. Said people in the U.S. and elsewhere in the world are getting more & more interested in UFOs at this time.

Fri 5/29/87
5:30 AM
sounded like cat under my window. Loud & clear.
"O-pen, O-pen, O-pen do-or. O-pen do-or. Oh!"
then it stopped. I was wide awake.

Thurs 6/11/87
11 PM - 2 AM (2)
change from brilliant moonlight to inky blackness. Eerie quiet.
7:30 PM - 11 PM (1)
All power out in this area. Candles.
(3) About 4 AM pulsating, whirring noise of UFO over house. Lasted about half hour.
(4) strange tapping noises on my glass sliding doors.

6/22/87
(1) 4 nights last week colorful UFOs over house (9)
(2) Last night had exact same dream, step by step, as 6 mos. ago.
(3) Bean & I have "twin dreams."

6/18/87
Bean & Tolly have seen UFOs appear night after night over our house. Last night the STs told me, they were going to teach me a long list of things.

(6


=== Page 32 of 90

Ted

# Ship's crew menaced

WEEKLY WORLD NEWS
May 19, 1987

# by giant flying saucer

# UFO from the depths of the sea!

Beau + Teddy's matching UFO landing dream, 8/11/87.

Me and Jerome picked up by a UFO + 4 aliens, 8/12/87; dream.

A saucer-shaped UFO blasted out of the ocean and circled a Japanese freighter for 15 terrifying minutes last month before it returned to the water and vanished without a trace, Japanese newspapers report.

No one was injured in the April 17 incident, which reportedly took place in broad daylight 175 miles east of Kanazawa in the Sea of Japan.

The 165-foot-long freighter Taki Kyoto did suffer some structural damage, however, while riding out the towering swells that the UFO kicked up when it rose out of and later returned to the water, the press said.

"It was at least five times the length of our vessel and glowed like blue neon," Taki Usuda, the 54-year-old captain of the Taki Kyoto, told reporters at a belated press conference in Kanazawa.

"When it first came out of the water we couldn't believe what was happening to us. The swells in its wake almost sank us.

"And the needles on our instruments almost spun out of their casings. It was everything I could do to keep the crew from leaving their posts.

"Some of my best men were huddled below deck crying just like women and babies."

The enormous starship hovered about 50 yards off the freighter's starboard side for several minutes after it emerged from the ocean, said Usuda.

"It was terrifying," he continued. "The thing just sat there, motionless, in midair.

"We tried to radio for help but something was jamming our signals.

"Suddenly the UFO took off. It flew right over us and circled for at least 15 minutes.

"It really was like a nightmare. It was moving so fast all we could see was a blur."

When the UFO finally dived back into the water, Usuda radioed authorities, who scanned the area with ships and aircraft without finding so much as a trace of the alleged starship, the press reports said.

"Based on interviews with the Taki Kyoto's captain and crew, as well as the unusual structural damage the ship sustained, we do suspect that they encountered something very unusual out there," said coastal authority spokesman Hoshi Ishido. "Officially we're calling it an unidentified object, a simple UFO."

# Bizarre spacecraft leaps from ocean touching off tidal wave


=== Page 33 of 90

People
May 11, 1987

# Making Communion With Another World

America's fascination with UFOs booms again as three new books suggest that humanoids are here

Whitley Strieber's is a story that not every man would be bold enough to tell: On the evening of Dec. 26, 1985, says the novelist, he awakened in his Upstate New York cabin to find a strange being standing in the bedroom doorway. Sometime after blacking out, he found himself in a small, gray room full of quick little humanoids. When one of them brandished a hair-thin needle and informed him that it would be inserted into his brain, "I became quite simply crazed with terror," he reports.

With a "bang and a flash," the instrument was then fired into his brain. "I felt like weeping," Whitley remembers. "I recall sinking down into a cradle of tiny arms..." Taken into an operating theater of sorts, the distraught subject was probed and poked, and--finally--transported back into his bedroom where his wife, Anne, was sleeping peacefully. Paralyzed with horror, he buried the memory, which he later reconstructed under hypnosis. When "the confused swirl resolved into a specific series of recollections, I just about exploded with terror and utter disbelief," he says. The introspective author of pop-

CONTINUED

**Coming to terms** with the "visitor experience," says Strieber, has given him a heightened sense of his own spirituality.

**Sketches of humanoids** (left) and alien craft (top) were collected by UFO investigator Budd Hopkins from alleged victims of the aliens.

35


=== Page 34 of 90

An Indiana woman who drew her captors and their craft for Hopkins is still tormented by "visitors." "I feel like a freak," she says.

Author Gary Kinder (near his home in Sun Valley, Idaho) says he saw a spectacular UFO in 1972.

ular horror novels like The Wolfen and The Hunger, Strieber is hardly the sort to risk his reputation in the service of mere sensationalism; there are easier ways for him to make money than chronicling his bizarre encounters with what he suggests are intelligent non-human beings. But COMMUNION (Beech Tree Books/Morrow, $17.95) is a book that he says he had to write. "I want to dispel the stigma and the fear," he says. "I thought I was going crazy in an extremely embarrassing way. I became rather suicidal. I suffered with this, and it was a great relief to find that others had had the same experience. It's a very scary thing, but I want to let people know that they can cope if it happens."

Published early in February and currently second on the New York Times best-seller list, Communion seems to signal a dramatic new era in UFOlogy. This time around an increasing number of everyday folk are claiming not merely to have spotted saucer-shaped spacecraft, but to have had disagreeable encounters with creepy travelers

Hopkins' subjects typically depict their humanoid kidnappers as bald creatures with domed heads and insect-like eyes. These sketches are based on "encounters" in New Jersey (left) and Kentucky.

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=== Page 35 of 90

On the pop-culture front, the theme has emerged in one noteworthy context of late: The cliffhanger episode of *The Colbys* saw Fallon (portrayed by Emma Samms) disappearing into the sunset--not in a regulation plane crash, but in the bowels of a spacecraft that ambushes her car on a lonely desert road. "Richard Shapiro [the show's co-creator] has been aware of the recent interest in UFOs, and it was an effort to end the season on as provocative a note as possible," says supervising producer Bob Pollock.

There is no more controversial UFO tale than the one Gary Kinder, a 40-year-old writer based in Idaho, spent three years investigating. In the 1970s Eduard Meier--a Swiss caretaker offered films, tape recordings and shards of metal to support his claims of contact with emissaries from a distant star. Within the UFO community Meier is rejected as a fraud. Kinder still counts himself among the skeptics: In *Light Years* (Atlantic Monthly Press, $18.95) he presents Meier's story without making hard-and-fast conclusions about the evidence. "There were times when I'd be sitting there watching Meier, and I'd think, 'This guy is just a very clever con man,'" says Kinder. "... If the contacts are true, of course it's the biggest story ever. If [not], it's a fascinating story about how this one-armed, sixth-grade-educated caretaker in Switzerland has been able to fabricate highly sophisticated evidence."

The scientific establishment has yet to embrace the notion that aliens are walking among us. "I think those books reach the height of malarkey," says Paul Kurtz, chairman and founder of the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal. "It's possible there is life in outer space, but I know of no really hard evidence that we have been visited by extraterrestrial beings." Still a growing number of reputable scientists are refusing to dismiss people like Strieber. Research psychologist Dr. John Gliedman is a "sympathetic skeptic" and a friend who witnessed Whitley's struggle: "We should keep an open mind about what's happening to him and to others," Gliedman says. "I see no evidence that you're dealing with mental illness here. But it's not a pleasant experience; people who believe they've been abducted talk about it the way others might talk about a rape. They need to be given help."

**An artist** whose work has appeared in the Guggenheim Museum, Hopkins has had little time for painting or sculpture since writing *Intruders*.

from another Time, Space, or Universe. Often signalled by the appearance of a dazzling white light, these so-called "alien abductions" allegedly leave the victims with periods of lost time for which they cannot account and hazy memories of frightening medical procedures at the hands of their captors. Descriptions of the offending aliens are fairly standard: The childlike figures are said to have grayish-white skin and round, black eyes set in grotesquely oversize, bulbous skulls.

Aside from *Communion*, two other nonfiction books recently issued by major publishing firms claim to chronicle meetings with extraterrestrials. The more plausible, *Intruders: The Incredible Visitations at Copley Woods*, (Random House, $17.95) written by UFO investigator Budd Hopkins, offers up accounts of intimate, disturbing experiences that begin in childhood and engender psychic disturbances like the ones that Strieber suffered.

Strieber's account of "kidnappings" which may have begun when he was 12 has drawn serious reviews. And Middle America has risen up to declare that it, too, has witnessed weird things. On talk shows, callers check in not to poke fun, Strieber says, but to report their own close encounters. By this month readers had sent him more than 1,000 letters detailing everything from sightings of alien craft to crossbreeding experiments conducted by humanoids.

The Illinois-based Center for UFO Studies reports that requests for information have "increased greatly" in the last few months; membership in the 1,500-strong Mutual UFO Network, a Texas-based investigatory group, has increased by roughly 10 percent in the same period. And the public response to the November UFO sighting by a Japan Air Lines pilot has been such that the federal government now offers information kits on the incident; for $194.30, one receives a packet that includes Kenju Terauchi's drawings of the craft that he encountered.

CONTINUED

37

ILLUSTRATIONS FROM THE BOOK INTRUDERS BY BUDD HOPKINS ©1987 BUDD HOPKINS, USED BY PERMISSION OF RANDOM HOUSE, INC.


=== Page 36 of 90

Orson Welles's *The War of the Worlds* sparked an alien scare in 1938.

In *Steven Spielberg's* 1977 *Close Encounters of the Third Kind*, abducted

In *Invasion of the Body Snatchers* (above) aliens arrived via pod. Robin (Mork) Williams (below) was egged on by Mindy to have a child.

Elliot (Henry Thomas) formed a warm bond with his visitor--here, in the

38


=== Page 37 of 90

Budd Hopkins was the man whom Whitley consulted when the memories of his abduction began to haunt him. A successful painter and sculptor, Hopkins began to examine the UFO phenomenon after spotting an elliptical-shaped object hovering over Cape Cod in 1964. In 12 years he has recorded thousands of hours of interviews with more than 135 subjects. In *Intruders*, more than a dozen subjects describe kidnappings in which aliens perform skin grafts, probe orifices with needlelike instruments, appropriate sperm and ova and even present small hybrid beings that female abductees somehow know to be their own.

An abductee support group meets occasionally in the Manhattan townhouse Hopkins shares with wife April Kingsley, an art critic, and their daughter Grace, 13. When he saw Whitley last February, Hopkins says, "He was one distraught and disoriented man." Indeed--Strieber was undergoing a personality change so pronounced that his 17-year marriage was showing the strain. Hypersensitive, snappish, easily confused, he slept fitfully and felt as though he were being watched. Working was impossible--unable to concentrate for more than 10 minutes, he was wracked with chills and bouts of fatigue.

Whitley wanted to ignore the disjointed bits of evidence--his odd pains and inexplicable scabs, the UFO sightings near his country house, the confounding visions of "visitors"--but he presented them to Hopkins, instead. "As I sat there in that man's living room, listening to him tell me I wasn't alone, tears rolled down my cheeks," he wrote later, "and I went from wanting to hide it all to wanting to understand...."

Toward that end, Strieber subjected himself to a battery of physical and psychological tests. A neurologist found no evidence of organic abnormalities, and a polygraph operator found that Strieber fully believed his own stories. Dr. Donald F. Klein, Director of Research for the New York State Psychiatric Institute, took Whitley through a series of shattering hypnotic sessions in which he recalled his "abductions" in lavish detail. In an appendix to *Communion*, Dr. Klein pronounces the patient of sane mind, saying, "He appears... to have adapted very well to life at a high level of uncertainty." Whitley, his wife Anne, 40 (who is also a writer) and their son Andrew, 8, have come to terms with the fact that something surpassingly strange has touched their lives. (Andrew, he says, had dreams about being kidnapped by "little doctors" before he heard his father's story; Anne has witnessed unearthly lights and the like, but has no clear memories of being abducted.) Whitley continues to receive the occasional "visit" from the now-familiar humanoids, but the fear has abated: "I am beginning to have an awful lot of fun with this from an intellectual standpoint," he says. He is not at all sure that his captors are corporeal, or that they come from other corners of this universe: "I'm 80 percent sure that it is visitors, not necessarily from another planet, but from another aspect of reality, whatever that may mean," he says.

Even those in the business, as it were, occasionally find the quest overwhelming. Hopkins is unnerved by his discoveries: "These are not welcome inroads," he says. "The one thing I share with the people that this has happened to and with the skeptics is that none of us like this material, none of us want it, and all of us find it almost impossible to believe." Hopkins is resolute in defending the credibility of his witnesses: "They're not people who have regular psychotic episodes," he says. "In court, testimony from any one of these people might put somebody in an electric chair."

Strieber is determined to go boldly where no man has gone before. A *Communion* sequel is in the works, and he plans to publish many of the letters sent to him by fellow travelers who are willing to go public. He knows that there are those who cannot accept his story, but he stands by it. "Behind these perceptions," he says, "is some kind of great wonder. Anything that prevents us from having the joyous experience of discovering what that is is simply a waste of time."

--Written by Michelle Green, reported by Meg Grant and Kristina Johnson

humans landed in a luminous craft.

clutches of dastardly adults--in 1982's *E.T.*

After a Mexican abduction case, the "victim" drew this sketch of a hooded humanoid.

39


=== Page 38 of 90

WEEKLY WORLD

# NEWS

55¢

October 6, 1987

30587

VOL. 8, Issue 52

'They WERE in a spaceship,' says child psychiatrist

# CHILDREN TAKEN FOR RIDE IN UFO

Gentle aliens studied kids for three days! Top-secret photos inside


=== Page 39 of 90

# Children abducted by UFO

Four lucky children were taken aboard a UFO and shown the wonders of the universe on a three-day journey into outer space, civilian and military authorities report.

"Adults lie. Teenagers lie. But children this age are incapable of lying, at least like this," said Roderigo Ortiz, special investigator with the police department in Concordia, Argentina.

"From all appearances they did spend time on a genuine starship. They actually traveled into space and saw the sights like ordinary tourists.

"At one point they thought God was taking them to heaven as He -- whatever 'He' was -- stood behind the controls of the craft."

Newspaper reports of the amazing drama identified the children as 8-year-old Maria Molero, her sister Emma, 6, and brothers Jorge, 5, and Carlos, 3. According to the children and a half dozen eyewitnesses, a 75-foot, saucer-shaped craft swooped over the field they were playing in on August 9 and sucked them into the craft after hitting them with a burst of bright blue light.

"A great golden ship took us up in the sky and it was driven by God -- I know it was God.

"He wore golden robes and had long silver hair and was shiny all over," said Maria Molero, the oldest of the kidnapped kids.

"He was a nice man and told us to call him Lalar. He showed us the moon and other places in the sky and said they were the stars."

The other children confirmed her account and said they were scared "for just a little while. He scraped our faces with a little stick and stuck us with a needle but he didn't hurt us at all," said Jorge Molero.

"I liked the bedrooms because the beds were soft and way up high," added Emma Molero.

Little Carlos Molero, the youngest, said:

"There were a million buttons and lights. The man looked funny because he had a real big head and two big yellow eyes.

"He is our friend."

Because of the difficulties of interviewing children, authorities have yet to determine everything that happened during their three days aboard the spaceship. It does appear that they underwent some sort of medical testing, however, because needle marks and scrapes were still visible on their cheeks after they got home, officials said.

A military spokesman would neither confirm nor deny reports that a UFO was picked up on radar the day the children were abducted and the night they were brought home.

"We are investigating and the facts will be made public when they are known," he said. "The children are being interviewed now.

"We hope to have some solid information soon," the spokesman said.

The children's parents, Emilio and Carmen Molero, declined to comment on the incident, newspapers said.

UFO researcher Armando Azparen has not spoken to the children personally because the military has refused to answer his requests for an interview.

"But from what I have read in the newspapers," he said, "I believe that these children are telling the truth."

-- JULIO ENRIQUEZ


=== Page 40 of 90

Astonishing proof: Their faces are marked by alien probes

CIRCLES indicate needle marks left by aliens. Maria Molero, left, and her sister Emma flank brothers Carlos, left, and Jorge. Authorities say the children underwent physical examinations.

Authorities confirm: Starship whisks four youngsters on 3-day tour of our galaxy

GOVERNMENT INVESTIGATOR Roderigo Ortiz interviews the children about their encounter with alien beings.


=== Page 41 of 90

B2 THE COLUMBIAN
Tues., April 14, 1987
Vancouver, Wash.

# IN BRIEF

COMPILED FROM LOCAL, WIRE NEWS SOURCES

## THE NATION

### Four airliner near-collisions in one day worry controllers

WASHINGTON -- Four incidents during a 10-hour period in which commercial jetliners came within 500 feet of small, private planes are under investigation, Federal Aviation Administration officials say.

There were no injuries in any of the near-collisions, all of which occurred last Friday, but in two cases the pilots of the jetliners reported they had to take evasive action.

The four incidents involved a United Airlines Boeing 737 near Burbank, Calif., a Trans World Airlines Lockheed L-1011 near Newark, N.J., a Northwest Airlines DC-9 near Saginaw, Mich., and an American Airlines Boeing 727 over Chicago, the FAA confirmed Monday.

### Big drop in lead leads pollution improvement

WASHINGTON -- Emissions of the nation's principal air pollutants and their concentrations in the air declined modestly in most categories in 1985 except for lead, which showed a historic improvement in emission levels, the government says.

The Environmental Protection Agency's annual air pollution report shows a 48 percent reduction in lead emissions and a 32 percent drop in airborne concentrations. The drop-off followed the agency's 91 percent cut in the allowable lead concentration of leaded gasoline from 1.1 gram per gallon to 0.1 gram per gallon during 1985.

### Cargo jet crashes and burns in Kansas City

KANSAS CITY, Mo. -- A cargo jet crashed and exploded in a huge ball of flame, killing all four people aboard, while trying to land at Kansas City International Airport in mist and fog, officials said.

The four-engine Boeing 707, en route from Oklahoma City to Fort Wayne, Ind., smashed into a pasture about 1½ miles southwest of the airport Monday night. The Buffalo Airways Inc. plane appeared to have been improperly approaching the runway, spokesmen said.

### Tornadoes, wind rip Arkansas mobile home park

GREEN FOREST, Ark. -- Tornadoes and high winds ripped apart a mobile home park, injuring four people, and peeled the roof off an elementary school filled with children in rural northwest Arkansas.

The storm Monday afternoon appeared to have cut a 300- to 400-yard wide swath through the mobile home park, destroying five trailer homes and damaging eight.

### Strange light streaks across Southwest skies

LOS ANGELES -- A bright light streaked across skies in the Southwest, prompting scores of calls to government agencies, but officials were at a loss to explain the phenomenon. The object, which authorities said could be a meteor, was seen from Arizona to California and south of the Mexican border.

# Shark, cusk replacing scrod

By Lawrence Neumeister
The Associated Press

ORIENT -- People who grew up with scrod and flounder and took to shark and mussels are beginning to sample cusk, wolffish and even ocean pout, to the delight of fishermen who need the new sales to survive.

"People in this country have tended to like to eat a white, bland, boneless piece of fish. That's changing," said Ken Coons, executive director of the New England Fisheries Development Foundation in Boston.

"I see shark on menus these days and I never used to see it," said Jim Watenmaker, marketing director for North Atlantic Seafood Association in Cleveland, a trade association that conducts marketing studies and promotes fish.

The change in diet could come just in time for fishermen on Long Island, where a mysterious brown tide has virtually wiped out the once-famed scallop crop for three years and pollution has prompted a law that makes it illegal to catch more than one striped bass per day. Hundreds of fishermen have had to find other jobs.

"It's something these guys need to survive," said Chris Smith, cooperative extension agent for Cornell University assigned to Riverhead, of an effort to grow mussels.

Smith is developing ways for fishermen to plant baby mussels in waters around small islands off Long Island to create a share of a growing market that has already


=== Page 42 of 90

# Alien baby hatches from giant space egg

September 22, 1987 -- SUN -- 17

A BIZARRE BABY from outer space has hatched from a strange egg deposited on earth by UFO aliens, according to the stunned shepherd who claims to have watched the creature crack out of its shell and draw its first breath of life.

"The being was not of this world," states 52-year-old sheep tender Juan Silvo. "It nearly scared me to death when it hatched from its egg."

Juan says he was relaxing with a bottle of wine shortly after dusk one evening in a region of Brazil's Guiana Highlands when the night sky was suddenly illuminated by scores of bright flashing lights.

### Craft lands

"Many of our native legends tell of the flying disks with their multicolored lights," Juan explains. "They have been coming to this area for centuries, though I do not know why.

"On this particular night, I watched the craft descend from the heavens and land in a nearby clearing.

"Two odd creatures emerged from the spaceship and began hauling what appeared to be large rocks on board.

"The beings were no more than three feet tall with skinny limbs and antennae protruding from their foreheads. Despite their tiny size, they were able to lift and carry the rocks with ease.

"They must have loaded 10 or 12 rocks when they closed the door of their spacecraft, which then took off silently into the air and disappeared.

"I thought maybe the wine was making me hallucinate, but then I ventured to the clearing and found the space people had left two of the 'rocks' behind.

"Only they weren't rocks at all. They were large eggs with extremely solid shells.

"Then, suddenly, one of them burst open and a miniature version of the space people I had seen crawled out.

"I was so terrified I just turned and ran away as fast as I could."

The next morning, however, Juan returned to the scene and discovered the other egg still intact.

### Unknown origin

"The creature from the other egg was nowhere to be seen," he notes. "I wanted to tell someone of my experience, but I was afraid no one would believe me without evidence."

## Scientist tries to crack mystery of creature's origin

So Juan hauled the unhatched egg back to civilization and gave it to Dr. Julio de Jesus, a professor of genetics at a leading Brazilian university, for examination.

### 24-hour watch

"The egg is of unknown origin," Dr. de Jesus says, "but we are fairly certain it will eventually hatch because our tests indicate the presence of a living embryo inside.

"We are keeping a 24-hour watch on the object so we can be assured of witnessing the event when it occurs."

* DR. JULIO de JESUS is studying the strange space egg given to him by a shepherd from a remote outpost


=== Page 43 of 90

Space aliens helping savages build giant pyramid

Primitive savages are building a towering pyramid in the deepest reaches of the Amazon jungle -- with the help of superintelligent beings from another planet!

Incredibly, the towering monument is identical in every respect to the Great Pyramid of Cheops built in Egypt's Nile Valley more than 4,600 years ago!

The tribesmen, who live in crudely made thatched huts, have already completed three massive temples that are exact replicas of those found in the Mayan ruins at Chichen Itza and Uxmal in Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula.

Work on the pyramid was actually witnessed firsthand by South American bush pilot Alonzo Rohas, who said he lived among the savages for nearly a month after his plane crashed in the jungle north of Tarauaca, Brazil.

"I know there are people who think I've gone mad," the 39-year-old pilot said. "I couldn't believe it when I was seeing it with my own eyes for days on end.

"The pyramid is made of huge square blocks of sandstone and the temples are of stone. You just don't find sandstone or any other kind of stone in the heart of the Amazon jungle.

"The blocks must weigh four or five tons each and there are thousands of them stacked in the clearing where the pyramid is being built.

"The Indians told me the block supply is replenished from time to time by what they called 'the people from the Sun.' They even carved pictures of their spaceship into the blocks of the pyramid.

"The Indians move the blocks to the base of the pyramid on logs. The blocks are then raised into place by the alien spaceship."

Rohas said he stumbled across the bizarre building site after his single-engine seaplane developed a fuel problem and crashed.

One archaeologist said Rohas' story proves beyond a doubt that space travelers have been visiting Earth for thousands of years.

Rohas said he wanted to stay with the Indians long enough to see the space travelers when they returned to the village, but they made it clear they wanted him to leave.

"They escorted me to a river, put me in a canoe, pointed the way I should go. I was on my way home ... and I knew I had better keep going."

Rohas is trying to draw a map archaeologists can follow back to the jungle building site.

-- ROSE GRADY

ARCHAEOLOGISTS say this Mayan carving of a space alien is proof that flying saucers have been visiting the Earth for many centuries.

(this old pyramid at Uxmal is where my UFO bonded me with Xtolee and the Mayan powers and told me, what was with me, was severely burned and put into intensive care by the actors)

Witness confirms: primitive indians stacking five-ton blocks to the sky!


=== Page 44 of 90

NASA POSTPONES FLIGHT OF SHUTTLE

Delay to Mean Reduction in Launchings and Further Blow to Space Effort

NY TIMES MAY 21, 1987

By PHILIP M. BOFFEY
Special to The New York Times

WASHINGTON, May 20 -- The target date for launching the next space shuttle has been delayed until June 1988, four months later than previously planned, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration announced today.

The delay was attributed to the need to perform two major tests on the liquid-fuel main engines, as previously announced, and to obtain new tooling to improve the insulation seals for the solid-fuel booster rockets.

The postponement will contribute to a sharp decrease in the number of flights planned for 1988 and 1989. The space agency said that only three shuttles were now scheduled to be flown in 1988, down from the five flights announced last October. Seven flights are now scheduled for 1989, down from the ten planned last October.

Setback for Space Effort

The schedule reductions will further slow the nation's efforts to regain primacy in the international competition to explore and utilize space.

The announcement of a new target date had been expected ever since space officials acknowledged last month that the original target date of Feb. 18, 1988, could not be met. But some space analysts said today that even the new target date might be overly optimistic because it assumed that all scheduled tests of a newly designed solid-fuel rocket would be successful.

A solid-fuel rocket was blamed for causing the loss of the shuttle Challenger in January 1986. Investigators concluded that a poorly-designed joint in the rocket failed and allowed hot gases to escape, igniting the conflagration that destroyed the Challenger, killing its crew of seven.

"Safely returning the space shuttle to flight is NASA's highest priority," said Dr. James C. Fletcher, the NASA administrator. "Our revised plan for space shuttle recovery is ambitious and assumes that we will successfully complete our test and processing objectives."

'Prudent Thing to Do'

Rick Hauck, the astronaut who will command the first shuttle flight in 1988, concurred with the decision to delay the launching. "We would like to get back into space sooner," he said, "but I believe that this is the prudent thing to do."

The two new tests planned for the liquid-fuel main engines, first announced by NASA last month, will include filling the shuttle's fuel tank with liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen for a simulated launching countdown and a firing in which the three main engines for about 20 seconds. Both tests will be conducted about six weeks before the first launching.

In another announcement, the space agency said that Morton Thiokol Inc., the manufacturer of the solid-fuel rockets, would conduct a test Friday of some of the components of the faulty booster rocket joint, supplemented by new sealing materials. Subsequent tests in the series will evaluate a wholly new design for the joint.

Four workers hurt in rocket mishap

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) -- Four workers were slightly injured and a jinxed space rocket suffered severe damage when a work platform struck the booster on the launch pad and ruptured a fuel tank.

The accident occurred as technicians were preparing to remove the Centaur upper stage of the Atlas Centaur rocket to fix a fuel leak, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration said. The leak is one of many problems that have plagued the rocket in the last four months.

"A workstand contacted the surface of the stage and caused a rupture of the hydrogen tank of the Centaur," a NASA statement said. "There were minor injuries to four General Dynamics Space Division technicians as they made a quick departure of the area."

Shuttle launch delayed

COCOA BEACH, Fla. (AP) -- The space agency said Tuesday it is delaying for several weeks the first post-Challenger space shuttle launch because it is adding two major confidence-building tests to the schedule.

Officials had set Feb. 18, 1988, as a target for resuming flights, but NASA said it is reassessing the date as a result of the extra tests. The agency said it would set a new date in a few weeks.

The added tests are a "wet" countdown test, in which shuttle Discovery's huge fuel tank will be filled with liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen, and a flight readiness firing, in which the three main engines will be ignited for 20 seconds while Discovery is locked on the launch pad.

The shuttle fleet has been grounded since the January 1986 Challenger explosion that killed the seven crew members.

"The tests will definitely affect our launch date by a number of weeks," Arnold Aldrich, director of the shuttle program, told the opening session of the 24th Space Congress here.

Aldrich told a news conference later that the two tests would delay the launch until at least April 1. But he acknowledged the flight could be much later.

Soviets test rocket booster

5/17/87 Post-Star

MOSCOW (AP) -- The Soviet Union announced Saturday it successfully tested a powerful new rocket booster that could be used to put a space shuttle into orbit, but a mock-up satellite carried by the launcher failed to reach orbit.

Vremya, the evening news program, said the vehicle's engines are the most powerful in the world, with a capacity of 170 million horsepower.

The official Soviet news agency Tass said the launch vehicle Energia blasted off from the Baikonur Space Center on Friday evening and that its two stages landed at predetermined points after their engines shut down.

A Western diplomat, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said Energia probably is the booster for the Soviet space shuttle program, which Western experts believe will be launched next year.

Space Effort Mired in Frustration

13


=== Page 45 of 90

Space Experts Detail Launching Failure

UFOs vs Space Work

BY DAVID E. SANGER

Special to The New York Times

WASHINGTON, May 14 -- Space agency officials today provided new details about a string of malfunctions, bad data and misjudgments -- some remarkably similar to those preceding the loss of the space shuttle Challenger -- that led to the destruction of an Atlas-Centaur rocket and its satellite payload two months ago.

Over the last three days, copies of a NASA investigative report on the March 26 accident have filtered through the halls of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and the Pentagon, prompting what one official called a "subterranean debate" over whether permanent lessons were really learned from the Challenger disaster.

Last week, apparently anticipating the results of the investigation, NASA formed a six-member study group to "insure consistent approaches and risk evaluations for all NASA launches" before another liftoff is scheduled.

The broad conclusions of the investigation, that NASA and the Air Force "missed the call" in deciding to launch the rocket, were described at a news conference here Monday. But participants in the decision gave their first detailed accounts in interviews over the past two days. The actual report has yet to be made public, pending a review by NASA headquarters officials.

$161 Million Loss

The rocket -- worth $161 million together with the Air Force communications satellite it carried -- was destroyed by safety officers after it was struck by four lightning bolts that crippled its guidance-control computer.

At first it appeared to be a freak, unpredictable accident. But in an interview today, the head of the NASA board that conducted the investigation, Jon Busse, outlined several "clear warning flags" that should have stopped the launching. Among them were these:

Officials did not have accurate reports about cloud conditions and the potential for lightning to strike because the Air Force plane usually employed for weather reconnaissance was grounded by bad weather in Tampa.

Several of the weather balloons sent up in the plane's absence did not reach their destination, and investigators now believe that some exploded because of unusually cold conditions in the clouds. Investigators concluded that, contrary to meteorological estimates from the surviving balloons, the depth and temperature of the clouds exceeded NASA's launching guidelines.

Despite extensive discussions through the day about nearby thunderstorms, according to the report, NASA's mission director at Cape Canaveral did not look at measurements taken from 21 sites around the launching pad indicating the electrical potential of the atmosphere. Air Force weather personnel did monitor the data, but apparently did not notice that it exceeded, by four to eight times, the maximum allowable electrical potential for launching a space shuttle. No similar regulation currently governs unmanned rocket launches.

Staff 'Believed We Were Safe'

In a telephone interview today from Florida, James Womack, the launching director for the flight and the senior NASA official in the blockhouse on March 26, said that "absolutely it was a mistake" to proceed with the liftoff. But Mr. Womack, a 30-year NASA veteran, quickly added that he and his staff "believed we were within the criteria, that it was safe to launch."

"When you have so many green lights," Mr. Womack said, "it is hard to get to another conclusion."

Critics of the agency's action -- including many senior officers in the Air Force, which lost a key communications satellite -- have contended in recent days that there are parallels to the faulty decisions that led to the Challenger's launching on Jan. 28, 1986.

Just as foot-long icicles on the Challenger's launching pad or evidence of safety-seal failure in cold weather should have warned against launching the shuttle, they contend, destroyed weather balloons and high readings from the devices that measure the potential for lightning should have been warnings against the 67th launching of an Atlas-Centaur.

However, while engineers specifically warned against the launching of the Challenger, there was apparently no such warning in the hours before the Atlas-Centaur left the pad.

"The questions that this leaves you with," said John Logsdon, a space expert at George Washington University here, "is whether the NASA organization has yet communicated its priorities about safety and caution back down into the bureaucracy. My guess is that so much attention has been concentrated on the shuttle in the past year, that they haven't looked at much else."

Report Still Being Studied

At NASA headquarters today, officials said they were still studying the investigation report. Adm. Richard Truly, who heads all space flight for the agency, could not be reached for comment, according to a spokeswoman.

Other NASA officials suggested, however, that the formation of the task force to assess launching procedures was the first response to the Atlas-Centaur investigation, which found disparities between rules for launching different rockets.

The space shuttle, for example, cannot be launched when the atmosphere's electrical potential, an indication of the likelihood of lightning, exceeds 1,000 volts per meter.

Just prior to the Atlas-Centaur launching, three sensors closest to the pad measured levels of minus 4,640 volts per meter; another sensor, farther away, was closer to 8,000. But none of the NASA officials were examining that data, apparently because there is no such launching limitation for the Atlas-Centaur.

"I'm not even sure we had access to that data," said Mr. Womack, the launching manager. However, Mr. Busse, who headed the investigation, said the data was fed to launching officials at another site.

"We would not have launched the shuttle under these conditions," said Joseph B. Mahon, NASA's deputy associate administrator of flight systems. "But I don't know why we don't have a similar requirement for unmanned launches. We're looking into that now."

Some wonder if NASA has learned any shuttle lessons.

NY Times 7/24/87

Russian on Space Trip

UFOs vs Space Work

Has a Heart Problem

MOSCOW, July 25 (AP) -- A Soviet astronaut who has spent nearly six months in space has developed a potentially serious heart problem and will be brought home next week, Soviet officials said Friday.

The announcement came shortly after the docking of a three-man Soyuz TM-3 orbiter with the Mir space station, where Aleksandr Laveikin and Yuri Romanenko have been living since early February.

Viktor D. Blagov, the deputy flight director, said at a news conference here that Mr. Laveikin, who is 35 years old, had developed an abnormal electrocardiogram at some point in the flight.

"It may be serious -- it may not be serious," Mr. Blagov said.

Tass, the Soviet Government press agency, reported earlier Friday that Mr. Laveikin, who is on his first space mission, would be replaced at the end of the six-day docking mission with one of the other, Aleksandr Aleksandrov, 44. The capsule carried two Soviet astronauts and Syria's first man in space, Mohammed Faris, 36.

The orbiter was launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome on Wednesday. At the end of its six-day mission, it will bring back Mr. Laveikin, Mr. Faris and the Soviet astronaut Aleksandr Viktorov, 40.


=== Page 46 of 90

# 9 lighting strikes might have hit doomed rocket

Post-Star 4/7/87
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) -- An unmanned satellite rocket launched last month may have sustained as many as nine lightning strikes before it broke apart over the Atlantic Ocean, a NASA spokesman said Thursday.

Officials reported earlier there was evidence of at least one lightning hit on the rocket's nose cone and that lightning was the leading suspect as the cause of the accident.

"Since then as many as eight additional locations on the nose fairing have been found which are consistent with damage normally caused by lightning," spokesman Hugh Harris said Thursday as he showed reporters recovered chunks of the shattered Atlas-Centaur rocket spread out on the floor of a hangar.

The $78 million rocket, carrying an $83 million military communications satellite, was launched in a heavy rainstorm on March 26 and began breaking apart 52 seconds after liftoff.

Harris also said weather gauges near the launch pad showed conditions were right for dangerous lightning at the time of liftoff. But he said data from these devices is used only for manned space shuttle launches. He said in the future these readings might be used for unmanned rockets.

He said a shuttle would not be launched if electrical charges measured by the devices registered as low as minus 1,000 volts per meter. Readings at the time of the Atlas-Centaur launch were as low as minus 7,360 volts per meter.

# SOVIET LAUNCHES MIGHTIEST ROCKET ON A TEST MISSION

## 'Energia' Will be Capable of Putting a Shuttle in Orbit, Russian Report Says

By FELICITY BARRINGER
Special to The New York Times
5/17/87
MOSCOW, May 16 -- The Soviet Union today announced the successful test launch of the world's most powerful rocket, capable of putting a 100-ton space shuttle into orbit.

The "Energia," launched from the Baikonur space center in Kazakhstan at 7:30 P.M. Moscow time (11:30 A.M. New York time) Friday, was propelled by "the most powerful engines in the world," a Soviet television reporter said on the evening news program tonight.

The Energia can lift five times more weight than the next-largest Soviet launch vehicle, according to United States experts on the Soviet space program.

### 'Strap-on' Engines

Eight liquid hydrogen engines, four of which hugged the rocket body in a configuration called "strap-on" by United States space experts, sent the 197-foot, two-stage rocket hurtling into the night sky atop a huge red column of flame.

The total weight of the rocket and its stubby dummy payload was more than 2,000 tons, the Soviet press agency Tass reported.

"This is a major breakthrough for them," said James Oberg, an author and expert on the Soviet space program. Mr. Oberg said that three previous Soviet attempts to send up a heavyweight launch vehicle ended in failure in the late 1960's and early 1970's.

### A Gorbachev Visit

Soviet Leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev, who made a three-day visit to Baikonur early last week, was reported to have told the Soviet technicians there not to "hurry" the launch of the "Energia." "Check and weigh everything," Mr. Gorbachev said, according to Soviet television.

Tass said that the engines of the rocket's first stage shut off according to plan, and that the first stage vehicle landed "in a pre-set area in the Soviet Union's territory."

The second stage landed as planned in the Pacific Ocean, Tass said, but the dummy satellite, which was to have gone into orbit, splashed into the Pacific as well because of "faulty operation of the onboard systems."

Despite that shortcoming, Tass said, Continued on Page 29, Column 1.

# NASA funding in question

Post-Star 4/21/87
ARLINGTON, Va. (AP) -- NASA may lack the money to make the first post-Challenger space shuttle flight in early 1988 because of the high cost of permanent improvements required, the head of the agency said Tuesday.

James C. Fletcher said the space agency has money problems in trying to recover from last year's explosion that killed seven crew members and brought the shuttle program to an abrupt halt.

"We just don't want to start the first flight and then have a big gap in the program," because of insufficient funds, Fletcher said. "We want to have a first flight and then continuation of several flights after that."

NASA had set Feb. 18, 1988 as a target date for the first flight, but said last week that a number of factors -- including a decision to fire the engines while locking the ship on the pad -- will cause a delay.


=== Page 47 of 90

Ariane rocket on the launch pad at the Guiana Space Center before operations were suspended.

Camera Press/Jean-Louis

# European Failures Leave Space Effort Mired in Frustration

NY Times BY EDWIN MCDOWELL 5/5/87

UFOS vs Space Work

KOUROU, French Guiana

LESS rain than usual has fallen during the current rainy season, but clouds far more ominous have settled over this tropical backwater on the shoulder of South America.

At the nearby Guiana Space Center, a narrow strip carved out of the edge of the jungle that is the home of the West European space program, engineers and technicians have been marking time for almost a year. That is how long the program has been on hold, ever since a third-stage ignition failure last May 30 forced ground controllers to destroy an Ariane 2 rocket and its Intelsat communications satellite less than five minutes into the flight.

The failure was the fourth in 18 launchings of the Arianespace program and the third involving a third-stage failure. So the whole program has been delayed until the problem can be found and corrected.

"There are still some problems with the third stage," said Gilbert Rotrou, director of operations for Arianespace, the commercial arm of the European Space Agency that manages and markets Ariane's commercial launchings.

"The best current estimates are that the next launching will not come before July and might be even later than that."

As a result, Arianespace is losing money, failing to take full advantage of the damage done to America's space effort by last year's shuttle disaster and in danger of losing ground to other competitors. And the lost momentum has made the space center, which once hummed with activity and excitement, a symbol of frustration and lost opportunity.

The launching timetable has been formally postponed once and informally postponed several times, and the waiting has started to tell on residents of this coastal company town, a former prison camp whose population of 8,500 has increased tenfold in 15 years.

"When Ariane has problems, the whole town is affected," said a fashionable young woman in the air-conditioned arcade of Kourou, the home for most of the 1,000 space center employees.

The arcade's boutiques, restaurants and sidewalk cafes, like those in the capital city of Cayenne 40 miles south of here, are well stocked with food and clothing imported from France. A penal colony for almost 100 years until the end of World War II, this French overseas department -- about the size of Maine and populated largely by Creoles, Europeans, Indians and descendants of escaped slaves -- is now the last remaining European possession on the South American mainland.

The general lassitude seems to have affected even the French Foreign Legion, whose volunteers help guard the space center.

The lethargy that has set in here is probably understandable, considering that the Ariane launchings were suspended at the worst possible time. After almost a decade of delays, failures and frustration, the European Space Agency -- founded by 11 nations in 1975 to free Western Europe from dependence on the National Aeronautics and Space Administration -- had finally managed to wrest half of the $1 billion-a-year commercial satellite launching business away from its American rival.

Launching only European satellites at first, in 1984 Ariane sent into orbit a communications satellite for the GTE Spacenet Corporation, then added the Arab telecommunications satellite network, and launched weather and navigation satellites for other nations -- including neighboring Brazil, which will launch four satellites on its own beginning in 1989.

The explosion of the American space shuttle Challenger, in January 1986, followed by President Reagan's announcement that NASA would no longer launch commercial payloads, left Ariane in a position to profit handsomely. That it has not was not from lack of trying.

Arianespace increased the price of each satellite launching by 40 percent, to about $50 million -- a rise it attributed largely to the exchange rate between the dollar and the European currencies -- but even then it could not accommodate all the private and government requests for space on Ariane. It scheduled more than a dozen launchings through 1986, and had completed four of them when disaster struck last May.

After that, the hobbled space agency could only watch from the sidelines as the Soviet Union and China began to gear up for commercial launchings. Meanwhile, such private American companies as General Dynamics and Martin Marietta have come that much closer to the day they will put payloads into orbit.

After last May's failure, several of the European Propulsion Society, the company that manufactures the rocket motors for Ariane, are reported to have been fired. But lately, at a plant outside Paris, the motors, owned by the French Government, has had more than ignition problems to worry about.

French authorities arrested five people in March on charges of spying on Ariane rocket technology, and Frédéric d'Allest, the Arianespace chairman, promptly implicated the Soviet Union in the espionage ring. Although Moscow just as promptly denied it, the incident recalled the news conference last year at which Mr. d'Allest refused to rule out sabotage as the cause of the failure last May involving Ariane 2 and the Intelsat satellite.

Postponements since that failure have cost Arianespace more than $80 million, officials say, and the program to overhaul the engine is expected to cost $163.6 million, according to Mr. d'Allest. The postponements have also delayed the launching of the Ariane 4, a much more powerful rocket whose first flight had been scheduled for mid-1986, and have taken a large toll in morale.

"You can't imagine the frustration and disappointment," said a dispirited veteran space center employee. "We took pride in operating on a shoestring, compared with NASA, but when that shoestring broke..." He finished the sentence with a shrug.

# Telescope dome kills astronomer

UFOS vs Space Work

TUCSON, Ariz. (AP) -- An award-winning astronomer known for his research on the age and size of the universe was crushed to death between a door and a 150-ton revolving telescope dome, authorities said Friday.

Marc Arnold Aaronson, 37, was crushed Thursday night in an accident at the Kitt Peak Observatory, said Lt. Edward Baumler, a Pima County Sheriff's Department spokesman.

Aaronson was leaving the 18-story building that houses the 4-meter Mayall telescope to check the weather when he was killed, Baumler said.

When the door leading outside is opened, the telescope's dome automatically stops turning, but the dome coasts five to 10 feet before coming to a full stop, authorities said.

# Briefly

Post-Star 5/2/87

UFOS vs Space Work

Post-Star 7/13/87

## Air Force aborts Minuteman test

VANDENBERG AIR FORCE BASE, Calif. (AP) -- An unarmed Minuteman 3 missile was destroyed Sunday over the Pacific Ocean because a problem occurred during the test, the Air Force said.

The intercontinental ballistic missile was well downrange from its launching point at Vandenberg when the problem was detected and range safety officers sent a destruct command to the rocket, said Lt. Col. Richard Hill, a base public affairs officer.

The missile was en route to a target at the Kwajalein Atoll, 4,200 miles southwest of Vandenberg. It was the 129th operational test of the Minuteman weapons system, Hill said.

(16


=== Page 48 of 90

Weinberger Letter on Allies' Role in Space Station Stirs Furor

By DAVID E. SANGER
Special to The New York Times

WASHINGTON, April 8 -- A letter written by Defense Secretary Caspar W. Weinberger earlier this week about the Pentagon's plans for possible military uses of the proposed space station prompted a string of protests today, along with warnings that American allies might be forced to drop their participation in the project.

In the letter, sent to Secretary of State George P. Shultz, Mr. Weinberger said that the United States "must be prepared to go forward alone" if its allies are not willing to give the Defense Department broad latitude to "conduct national security activities on U.S. elements of the space station."

Mr. Weinberger warned that the United States should not sign any agreement that allows its allies "approval or review" of military activity on the space station, or gives them an equal voice in the station's "management, utilization or operation."

The letter, which apparently took the Pentagon by surprise, began circulating just as the Reagan Administration was trying to quell fears from Canada, Japan and the European Space Agency that the space station was evolving from a civilian project into a military one. Space agency officials have said in recent days that the National Security Council was also drawing up a directive, to be presented to President Reagan, that would define the Department's role in the program progressed.

As a result, he said Mr. Shultz should beware of "paying too high a price for international cooperation" if he allows the allies to review or reject an American military presence on the station. Such a presence has met strong objections abroad, especially in Europe and Japan, among groups opposed to militarizing outer space.

Foreign participants in the space station program said it was too early to tell if Mr. Weinberger's position would threaten their participation. "The whole issue is under negotiation," said Ian Pryke, head of the European Space Agency's Washington office.

But Senator William Proxmire, a Wisconsin Democrat who has been highly critical of Pentagon efforts to put weapons in space, said today that it was crucial that the space station "remain an international effort."

"It seems to me that if they are going to contribute heavily to a multibillion-dollar effort," Mr. Proxmire said of the allies, "they have every reason to review it."

Today members of committees that oversee the National Aeronautics and Space Administration warned that if Mr. Weinberger's views were adopted, the nation's allies would probably pull out of the international project.

"Secretary Weinberger's letter sets conditions which will make it difficult, if not impossible, to achieve meaningful cooperation" among the space station's partners, said Norman Y. Mineta, a California Democrat who sits on the Space Science and Applications Subcommittee of the House Committee on Science and Technology.

Another member of the committee, Representative David R. Nagle, Democrat of Iowa, said he thought that if Mr. Weinberger's conditions survived "there would be a race to get the hell out" of the project.

Under the current plan, the European Space Agency is planning to contribute $2 billion in add-on modules to the station to conduct experiments in the fields of life sciences, materials processing and fluid physics. Japan is contributing $1 billion, and Canada is building a $1 billion "space garage" and servicing facility.

Until late last year the space station appeared to be an entirely civilian project. But then Mr. Weinberger said the Defense Department wanted to retain an option to use the facility, and outside experts say they expect it could become a key element in deploying a space-based system to shoot down attacking missiles.

Pentagon Goals Cited

In his letter, Mr. Weinberger said again that the Defense Department was exploring "potential roles for military man-in-space" on the space station. But he also went further, adding that the Pentagon's goals included "the development of space-based systems" and "the conduct of operational missions."

The letter became public as NASA was facing increasing questions over the cost of the space station. After estimates of its cost rose sharply in recent months, President Reagan approved last week a plan for a scaled-back station costing $14.5 billion in 1984 dollars. But in testimony, NASA officials disclosed that the figure did not include the cost of more than 30 space shuttle flights needed to get the station into orbit. When those costs are included, NASA officials said, the figure was closer to $20 billion.

The disclosure of the higher figure has prompted some charges that NASA was masking the true cost of the space station in an effort to save the project, which is already behind the schedule first set by Mr. Reagan.

But Dale D. Myers, NASA's Deputy Administrator, said today, "We have always estimated all programs not including launch costs." He insisted that "there is nothing deceptive" in assessing the station's cost without estimating the price of placing the hardware in space.

Problems With Soviet Spacecraft

MOSCOW, April 9 (Reuters) -- The Soviet Union's new Kvant space module failed today to link up completely in the second docking attempt with the manned space station Mir, and Soviet scientists were deciding whether the mission could be saved.

Tass, the official Soviet press agency, said the Kvant, described as a new type of space module, had functioned normally through every stage of rendezvous and docking before it tried to hook up with the Mir.

But analysis of information from the craft showed that the linkup was incomplete, and scientists were studying the data received to decide whether it would be possible to continue operations with the module, Tass said.

A first attempt to dock the module with the space station, which has been manned since Feb. 7 by Comdr. Yuri V. Romanenko of the Soviet Air Force, a 42-year-old veteran of three previous flights, and Aleksandr Laveikin, 35, a civilian, was aborted Sunday when the module's directional systems failed.

Docking Maneuvers Monitored

Tass said the two astronauts had cooperated with ground control in monitoring docking maneuvers controlled by automatic systems on the space module.

The module was launched March 31, carrying 1.5 tons of scientific instruments and equipment for use in experiments to be carried out in space.

A Soviet space expert said Wednesday that the new module, which weighs more than 20 tons, had enough fuel to try two more dockings after the first failed attempt.

The Kvant would be the first experimental module to link with the Mir, which Soviet space officials hope will become the world's first permanently manned space station.

Magazine says Khomeini sick

PARIS (AP) -- Iranian leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, 87, is suffering from a brain tumor and will undergo surgery in Austria in November, the French weekly news magazine L'Express reported.

The magazine, which appeared on French newsstands Friday, said authorities in Tehran, Iran, had contacted 80-year-old Austrian physician Karl Fellinger to help find a doctor to perform the surgery.

It quoted what it called informed Iranian sources, but did not identify them.


=== Page 49 of 90

New chief of NASA under fire

Post-Star 6/29/87

Orlando Sentinel

WASHINGTON - Administrator James C. Fletcher, appointed last year to rebuild NASA after the Challenger disaster, instead has hampered the agency's recovery through awkward political maneuvers and unpopular decisions, according to a wide range of space authorities.

Fletcher's relationships with several key members of Congress have deteriorated to the point that he has sought meetings as recently as last week to mend fences, conceding errors and weaknesses, and promising improvement.

The NASA chief admitted in an unusually candid interview with The Orlando Sentinel that the agency has suffered because of his inability to get along with a Congress that has scrutinized NASA more aggressively since the Challenger accident.

"I am not the great communicator one might expect," Fletcher, 68, said last week. He acknowledged that stubbornness and a lack of political acumen have affected his ability to run NASA since his first term as administrator in 1970-77.

He also said that, while heading an agency that has built its reputation on vision and bold conquests, he does not consider himself an inspirational leader.

"I am not going to be the charismatic leader people are looking for," he said. Rather, his intent is to build a team of strong managers beneath him who can strengthen NASA's core, Fletcher said.

The consensus among more than 35 legislators, scientists, space policy officials interviewed for this report is that Fletcher's weaknesses have been a private concern for months, and that confidence and support for him have eroded significantly.

As a result, they believe, NASA could face delays in financing and decisions about the space station and other projects critical to its progress out of the most devastating period in the agency's 28-year history.

NASA may be stalled, they say, until after the 1988 election when Fletcher plans to leave.

Key aerospace authorities say Fletcher's problems have been compounded by failure of the Reagan administration to establish clear and strong policies to guide NASA's future and to set aside enough money to see them through.

NASA "has simply been lost during the Reagan years," said Rep. Robert Torricelli, D-N.J., a member of NASA's budget authorization subcommittee, making a point with which Fletcher strongly disagrees.

Fletcher's stewardship has become such a congressional issue that Torricelli suggested in May that his colleagues formally complain to President Reagan.

Summer gives us a preview

By David Wasson
Staff Writer Post-Star 4/21/87

LAKE GEORGE - The weather was so nice here Monday afternoon, sunbather Frankie Waite said she was tempted to go for a swim.

But after wading no more than a few feet from the Shepard Park beach, Ms. Waite said she decided the water still was a little too cold for her. Only two weeks ago, there still was ice on the lake.

"At least I got a couple hours of sun today," she said, "and it was worth it."

Ms. Waite wasn't alone. Dozens of people, many of them in swimsuits, gathered in Shepard Park to enjoy Monday's unseasonably high temperatures.

The National Weather Service in Albany reported temperatures climbing into the 80s in Northeastern New York on Monday, with similar temperatures expected again today across the Glens Falls area. The official high in Glens Falls was 78 degrees Monday at Warren County Airport.

"It's just here," said meteorologist Kurt Hemmerich of the unseasonably warm weather. "I can't really explain it. The sun is getting pretty strong and the cool Canadian air is staying up there."

Tonight, however, forecasters predict clouds might begin accumulating with the chance of rain reaching 50 percent. High temperatures Wednesday are expected to be back at a more seasonable 60 degrees, Hemmerich said.

The recent 80-degree days are more common to weather usually experienced in mid-June, the forecaster said. The average mid-April high temperature for the Glens Falls area is 62 degrees, he said.

The warm weather and sunshine convinced bicycling enthusiast Henry Kohl to put away his corduroys and don his riding shorts.

"I got a little warm yesterday when I went riding," he explained while taking a break at the park.

The mid-April heat wave, he said, is a little surprising.

But Kohl, a retired merchant marine officer, said it didn't bother him. Monday's weather, he said, reminded him of sailing into the South Pacific.

Sullivan's Rexall owners Bruce and Sharon Kilburn said Monday they noticed more people beginning to roam Canada Street.

It seems to get a little busier each week, Mrs. Kilburn said. But most of the people seem to be from the Glens Falls area, she said, and very few are tourists.


=== Page 50 of 90

Northeast Region

Post-Star 6/29/87

# Vermont facing ozone trouble

BURLINGTON, Vt. (AP) -- Next to a country golf course here and alongside a tiny airport in Bennington, Vermont researchers are finding trouble in the air. It's ozone, a noxious substance formed in sunlight from man-made pollutants such as automobile exhausts, industrial emissions and unburned gasoline vapors.

The pollutant, like acid rain, is believed to be mostly created from outside the state and swept by wind into Vermont. In heavy concentrations, ozone impairs vision and breathing and has harmful effects on vegetation and wildlife. The state has checked ozone levels at five sites since 1981. It now is testing at two sites, the Burlington golf course and Bennington airport.

Vermont does not have a severe ozone problem. It is the only state in New England that has never recorded a federal violation of ozone. But this summer, some officials predict the state will reach and pass a sad milestone: the Bennington site may record Vermont's first federal violation for ozone levels. No violations are expected at the Burlington site, although relatively high levels have been recorded.

"The good news is we are not now above the federal standards," said Harold Garabedian, acting director of the state Division of Air Pollution Control. "The bad news is we are being affected by upwind states. If we just had our own emissions to deal with, we'd have even better air quality."

The ozone readings at the Bennington site, which the state first set up last summer, are believed by environmental officials to be affected by vehicle and industrial emissions in the Albany, N.Y., area, and possibly as far away as New York City.

Ozone readings at the Bennington site for June are the highest for that month ever recorded in Vermont. The federal standard for ozone violation is anything above 120 parts per billion; the Bennington site this month recorded readings in the 90s and low 100s, Garabedian said. Burlington has recorded readings in the 60s and 70s.

During the past six years, a normal reading has been in the 60s and 70s. Asked if an ozone reading in the 60s was a threat to human health, Garabedian hesitated. "We don't know. That question is still an area that people are researching," he said.

"We are not immune from the problems of ozone, particularly as it is a regional transport problem," Garabedian said. "The proximity to ... urban areas gives us a chance at going over the (federal) standard."

Other environmental officials think there's a strong chance for a violation. "So far we haven't recorded one," said Rich Perrault, a state air quality planner. "But we're taking bets around here whether we'll have a violation or not. I think there's a good chance."

If the state records a violation this summer, it must notify health and local officials; it also may broadcast a warning to people with respiratory problems to stay indoors. Garabedian said industrial areas in the Northeast such as New York, Connecticut and New Jersey clearly have an ozone problem. He said if the new federal Clean Air Act does not clamp down on emission levels, ozone problems only will worsen in urban and rural areas.

Surface ozone is much different than ozone in the upper atmosphere, 12 to 30 miles above the ground. In the stratosphere, ozone protects the earth from damaging ultraviolet rays from the sun.

The protective layer of ozone has become thinner during the past decade, while the amount of surface ozone has become more concentrated. There is very little exchange between the two kinds of ozone. Vermont and other states are monitoring the ozone close to the earth, under a requirement of the federal Clean Air Act.

NY Times 3/26/87

# Wedtech Scandal Brings Civil Suit

The widening net of the Wedtech scandal has so far brought criminal indictments to 19 people associated with Government favors for the South Bronx military contractor. Last week, it encompassed another kind of action, a civil suit for $3.3 million, against E. Robert Wallach, a San Francisco lawyer and friend of Attorney General Edwin Meese 3d.

The suit, brought by the new management of the Wedtech Corporation, charges that Mr. Wallach tried to defraud the company by conspiring with five former executives to be paid for services he did not perform and then trying to cover up the scheme. Martin R. Pollner, Wedtech's court-appointed lawyer, said Mr. Wallach received at least $1.25 million in stock and fees, 25 percent more than previously believed. Mr. Wallach issued a statement calling the charges unfounded.

Former executives of Wedtech have said they sought out Mr. Wallach because of his close ties to Mr. Meese. In 1982, Mr. Meese, then counselor to President Reagan, intervened with Army contractors on behalf of the then-obscure company after Mr. Wallach lobbied him to. James C. McKay, the special prosecutor in the Wedtech case, is also looking into whether Mr. Meese illegally profited from his links to the company.

Wedtech declared bankruptcy late last year. Mr. Pollner said last week "tens of millions of dollars" were to the Government for unfulfilled contracts, which it cannot pay.

NY Times 6/1/86

# Struck by Lightning

In Brooklyn, just 15 minutes later, lightning created a different sort of havoc in Prospect Park, striking Evella Owen, 35, and her husband, Keith, 40. Both were taken to Methodist Hospital, where Mrs. Owen was reported in critical but stable condition. Mr. Owen was listed in good condition.

At 4 P.M., a parks enforcement patrol officer, Robert Turner, was riding a horse on the East Drive, near the Prospect Park Zoo when a sudden thunderstorm sent hundreds of people on the huge Long Meadow scurrying for cover.

Officer Turner said he heard the crack of thunder and watched a lightning bolt hammer the crescent-shaped field as his horse, Benbow, started bucking.

While Officer Turner calmed the jittery horse, he was approached by two frantic boys shouting that the lightning bolt had struck their mother. The officer followed them to the edge of the meadow, where a crowd of 50 people had gathered around a couple lying on the ground.

The man was dazed but conscious, his pants burned. The woman was unconscious, and Officer Turner began administering cardiopulmonary resuscitation, while someone in the crowd held Benbow's reins. (SUN ATTACK)

NY Sun Attack

# Hot Turk Bites Howling Dog

ANKARA, Turkey, July 25 (Reuter) -- A heat wave gripping Turkey disturbed Kemal Pala, a gunsmith, so much that he bit his neighbor's howling dog, named Lassie, three times. The semi-official Anatolian News Agency said the dog's owner, Mehmet Ahoglu, reported the matter to the police in the western town of Biga. NY Times 7/26/87

Point out how the "bad guys" are being eliminated from top govt. (linked + spokes)


=== Page 51 of 90

Post-Star 8/2/87

RIGBY
COPLEY NEWS SERVICE
NY DAILY NEWS

DEAVER
MEESE
NORTH
ALAS POOR WHATSISNAME!
NOFZIGER
POINDEXTER

TOP OF THE HEAP

NASA struggling to recover from disaster

Quake rocks Adirondacks
Note: This area.
The Associated Press
Post-Star 9/27/87
An earthquake Saturday shook upstate New York's Adirondack region, but there were no reports of injury or damage.
"It's definitely an earthquake," said Waverly Person, a geophysicist at the National Geological Survey in Golden, Colo. "It's not large enough to cause any damage." The earthquake measured 3.5 on the Richter scale, making it a minor earthquake, he said.
The 1:44 p.m. earthquake's center was about 15 miles west of Saranac Lake, Person said.
The quake was probably felt for a 50-mile radius, said Frank Baldwin, a physical science technician for the National Geological Survey.

By Howard Benedict
The Associated Press Post-Star 8/2/87
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. - Eighteen months after the Challenger explosion, a troubled NASA is at a crossroads. Struggling still toward recovery from that disaster, the agency is also striving to reassert its leadership of the American space program.
Once the proud embodiment of the nation's civilian space effort, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration today lacks a bold vision of what it wants to achieve and is without a comprehensive national policy to guide it.
Critics and historians say the agency has been weakened by a reduced political commitment, indifference in the White House, underfunding, debates over manned vs. unmanned flight, the priority of military space projects and Pentagon assertion of space leadership, the intrusion of other government agencies into space policy decisions, and lack of vigorous leadership.
The result, says the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, is that the United States could become a second-class power in space, with the Soviet Union assuming unchallenged leadership and the Europeans, Japanese and Chinese moving up fast.
That could have economic, political and strategic implications well into the 21st century, according to a recent policy statement by the AIAA, a respected organization of space scientists, engineers and business people.
Others, too, are concerned. "The fact is, that currently NASA has lost the will to fly men in space," wrote Reginald Turnill, editor of the British publication Jane's Spaceflight Directory, in the 1987 edition.
The explosion of the space shuttle Challenger Jan. 28, 1986, which killed its seven crew members, ripped away NASA's aura of invincibility. The subsequent investigation spotlighted mismanagement, sloppiness and other flaws within the agency.

"23 Paces To Baker Street"
Bobby's whistle.
Sound off till put whistle down.
8/7/87
about 10:45 AM

(20


=== Page 52 of 90

# Commerce secretary dies

## Baldrige was in Luzerne rodeo July 17

Wire and staff reports Post Star 7/26/87

WALNUT CREEK, Calif. - Commerce Secretary Malcolm Baldrige, a onetime ranch hand who attended Yale and became a successful businessman before joining the Reagan Cabinet, died Saturday hours after the horse he was riding while cattle roping fell on him.

Baldrige, 64, died during surgery at John Muir Hospital here at about 3:50 p.m., said Dr. Naran Patel, a trauma surgeon at the hospital.

He participated in a rodeo held at the Painted Pony Ranch in Lake Luzerne July 17, finishing second in the team roping event.

Donald Baxter, a long-time area rodeo rider and judge at the Painted Pony, described Baldrige, who ropes the hind legs, or heels, of the steer in the team roping event, as an experienced rider.

Baxter said he had known the secretary for 20 years.

And, although there usually aren't many accidents in the team roping event, "one is as liable to get it as another," Baxter said before Baldrige's death.

"There's not much you can do," he said. "It don't matter what you are if a horse falls on you."

The commerce secretary, a member of President Reagan's Cabinet since 1981, arrived at the hospital via helicopter after the accident at the Jack Roddy Ranch in rural Brentwood, 45 miles east of San Francisco.

Baldrige, who had a lifelong passion for rodeo competition and was elected to the Rodeo Hall of Fame in 1984, suffered massive internal injuries including tears to the pancreas and heart when the horse fell on him about 1:15 p.m., doctors said. His heart stopped for several minutes after the accident.

During exploratory surgery, doctors discovered severe internal bleeding that they were unable to stem, Patel said, adding that the aorta and the large vein leading to the heart were both torn. About 1 1/2 hours into the operation, Baldrige's heart stopped and efforts to restart it through heart massage failed.

"He bled to death from the massive injuries and from the lack of coagulation (of his blood)," said chief surgeon Dr. Ronald LaPorta, one of four surgeons who operated on the secretary. "He was always in shock; he never got out of shock."

"The nation has suffered a great loss with the tragic and untimely death of Secretary Malcolm Baldrige," President Reagan said in a statement read by Leslye Arsht, White House deputy press secretary.

"Under his stewardship, the Department of Commerce played a key role in the rebirth of our country's prosperity and all of us owe a great debt to 'Mac' Baldrige," the president said.

Baldrige was attempting to rope a calf when his horse reared and both fell backward, with the horse falling on the commerce secretary "full force," said sheriff's Sgt. Larry Aulich.

Dr. Bert D. Johnson, a Stanford

# Dog days of summer continue

The Associated Press Post Star 7/23/87

U.S. Sun Attack

Sales of ice cream, ice and air conditioners sizzled and utilities reported record demand for electricity as a heat wave blamed for at least one death had people sweating again Wednesday from the Plains to the East Coast.

"This is one of the worst summers I can remember," said Harry Ochs IV, a butcher in Philadelphia's unairconditioned Reading Market Terminal. He said the only thing that keeps him going is "knowing that we'll be getting air conditioning in August."

"It's been a long, hot summer, and we still have August to go," said meteorologist Tony Sands in Cincinnati.

Highs in the 90s and above 100 and humidity well over 50 percent began late last week. And that is expected to continue into the weekend as a high pressure area over the Southeast pumps hot, wet air up from the Gulf of Mexico, National Weather Service meteorologists said.

"The humidity's awfully high," said Iowa state climatologist Paul Waite in Des Moines. "It drives the effective temperature up above 100 degrees, due to the combination of heat and humidity."

Some places have had temperatures above 100 even without taking the humidity into account. Baltimore hit 103 Tuesday, 1 degree short of the record, and Chadron, Neb., hit 104. Baltimore was up to 97 at 4 p.m. Wednesday but the humidity was down.

Chicago hit 90 at 3 p.m. Wednesday, making it the 13th day at or over 90 degrees there this month, and the 21st so far this year, leaving hundreds of overheated cars along expressway shoulders. The weather service said the average is only 16 days of 90-plus weather in a whole year.

New York City had a high of 92 Wednesday, giving it seven days of 90-plus weather this month, and the city was rushing to install a shipment of 473 new fans in shelters for the homeless, many of which had no fans.

(2)


=== Page 53 of 90

Meese
Post-Star 5/12/87
From Page A1

conclusion on this case."

The special prosecutor's investigation will focus on Meese's intercession, when he was White House counselor, in the Army's awarding of a $32 million, no-bid contract to the Wedtech Corp. Meese said last month that he interceded only to ensure that the firm got "a fair hearing" in its effort to win the contract.

Another Reagan confidant, former White House political director Lyn Nofziger, also is under investigation by McKay. The special prosecutor is probing whether Nofziger violated federal conflict-of-interest rules by lobbying on Wedtech's behalf shortly after leaving the administration.

In 1985, Meese invested $60,000 in a "limited blind partnership" with W. Franklyn Chinn, a San Francisco businessman who later became a director of Wedtech. Meese has said he doesn't know if Chinn invested any of the $60,000 in Wedtech.

Eastland disclosed that Meese notified Chinn on May 5 that he wants to end his participation in the partnership. Eastland said the partnership will be terminated on June 30.

"Whatever his money is, he will be reimbursed," Eastland said, adding that Meese has received quarterly statements from Chinn describing "what the bottom line is" but has never been informed whether any of the money was invested in Wedtech.

Four of Wedtech's former officials have pleaded guilty to conspiring to bribe federal, state and local New York officials in building the company's business and obtaining millions of dollars worth of military contracts. The company, a minority contractor, is reorganizing under federal bankruptcy laws.

The investigation marks the second time Meese's conduct has been examined by a special prosecutor at his request.

Meese was cleared of wrongdoing after a 1984 investigation of his personal finances, including allegations that he may have arranged federal jobs for two savings and loan officials who allowed him to fall 15 months behind in mortgage payments on his Alameda County, Calif. home.

Another long-time Reagan adviser, former White House deputy chief of staff Michael K. Deaver, also requested the appointment of a special prosecutor to review his lobbying activities after he left the administration. That investigation led to Deaver's indictment this year on perjury charges.

The new investigation of Meese is the latest in a series of probes of current or former Reagan administration officials. Those cases are being handled by seven separate special prosecutors, also known as independent counsels.

Fitzwater denied that the investigations show a pattern of impropriety.

"We see a pattern of very law enforcement that pursues investigations wherever they occur," Fitzwater said. He said he did not know whether Meese have discussed the attorney general's involvement in the Wedtech case.

# Most rivers pulling back in Northeast

UFO Sun Attack
Associated Press
Post-Star 4/8/87

Most rivers receded Tuesday in the flood-ravaged Northeast, where 3,000 people had been forced from their homes at one time or another, but rising water elsewhere threatened more evacuations.

Officials in Augusta, Maine, the state's capital, and nearby Gardiner and Hallowell estimated damage in that area alone at more than $30 million. Estimates for other parts of the hard-hit state were incomplete.

"The damage in Androscoggin County is in the millions, I just can't say how many millions," said Peter Gagnon, civil defense director in that county southwest of Augusta.

Maine Gov. John R. McKernan Jr. said damage estimates would still be ing prepared but were eventually total "tens of millions" of dollars.

New Hampshire officials said they couldn't make estimates until the water subsided and Massachusetts officials said they were too busy to be able to assess the damage.

David Dilley, meteorologist with the National Weather Service at Logan International Airport, said some sections along the border between Massachusetts and New Hampshire and Vermont had received up to 13 inches of rain in the past week. Average rainfall for the region for all of April is 3.8 inches.

New York Gov. Mario Cuomo on Tuesday declared a disaster in emergencies because of flooding in Schoharie, Montgomery and Ulster counties in the eastern part of the state.

In addition to the victims of a bridge collapse over the Schoharie River near Amsterdam Sunday, at least nine deaths have been blamed on the weather in the past week: four in Kentucky, two in Ohio and one each in West Virginia and Alabama, and one man drowned in Vermont and two men were missing in Massachusetts and feared drowned.

In Massachusetts, the Merrimack River apparently crested Tuesday, but was expected to stay well above flood stage at least until this morning, the New England River Forecast Center said. About 1,750 were evacuated from their homes along the river's banks in the state.

Eight Massachusetts towns declared states of emergency on Tuesday, bringing the total for the state to 34.

New Hampshire Civil Defense officials said 1,000 to 1,500 people had been flooded out since Saturday, and about 200 remained in public shelters Tuesday. An additional 30 people were evacuated Tuesday near the rising Merrimack River in Nashua, and some fled the rising Exeter River at Exeter.

An emergency release of water Monday from a dam at Keene, N.H., forced the evacuation of some communities along the Ashuelot River, and Cheshire County spokesman John Gifford estimated that more than 100 people spent the night in shelters.

At the peak of the Maine flooding late last week, 541 people stayed at Red Cross shelters, with an unknown number of others going to friends or relatives. And state officials said about 4,700 workers had their jobs interrupted because of those floods.

22


=== Page 54 of 90

7/29/87

# Contra abuses detailed

By Rita Beamish
Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON - Contra rebel forces have executed prisoners, forcibly recruited soldiers and killed civilians, according to the first report of a human rights association that Congress mandated as a condition of U.S. aid.

The report goes into a dozen incidents, including the deaths of eight Sandinista prisoners and eight civilians, the forced recruitment of four Mennonites, and the recruitment of 53 people by a since-arrested commander who the association said conscripted Nicaraguan Indians through "psychological pressure."

The report, obtained Tuesday by The Associated Press, also mentions ongoing investigations into other cases involving allegations of kidnappings and attacks on civilians including the deaths of children and unarmed individuals.

In all, investigators have concluded or are looking at 22 "major cases of alleged human rights abuse," the report said.

Among the cases investigated was the April death of U.S. citizen Benjamin Linder, who

![President and Mrs. Reagan, along with Vice President and Mrs. George Bush, attend a memorial service Wednesday for Commerce Secretary Malcolm Baldrige. (AP Laserphoto)]

President and Mrs. Reagan, along with Vice President and Mrs. George Bush, attend a memorial service Wednesday for Commerce Secretary Malcolm Baldrige. (AP Laserphoto)

The 64-year-old Commerce secretary would not have received those last winnings of $204.91 before he died in a freak horse accident last Saturday in California while practicing for a rodeo roping contest that evening.

Speaking at the memorial Wednesday morning, Reagan told members of Congress, past and current Cabinet members, presidential contenders and diplomats who attended, "The day I called Mac Baldrige to ask him to join the Cabinet, I was told by (his wife) Midge I would have to call back later. He was out on his horse roping and couldn't come to the phone. Right then I knew he was the kind of man I wanted."

In fact, he was roping at Paul Crotta's ranch in Connecticut when the president called. Asked if Baldrige was a good cowboy, Crotta, a man of very few words, said, "He was pretty good," considering his age and the fact that he didn't get all that much practice.

California cowboys Ron Poindexter and Bob "Rags" Ragsdale got to know Baldrige when the three of them rode the winter rodeo circuit back in 1969. They met up at Odessa, Texas, and toured together on a rush schedule where one would take turns cooking in the back of the camper while the others rode up front.

"I just idolized the guy as far as what he is ... a super person," said Poindexter, a cowboy in a gray suit who looked less like a cowboy than like the hundreds of Washington bureaucrats, lobbyists, journalists and high-ranking officials who filled the limestone National Cathedral to hear Reagan say of Baldrige, "The thing he liked about cowboys was that they didn't talk unless they had something to say and when they said something, they meant it."

"I'm told that Mac's staff had orders to interrupt him at whatever time of the day with calls from only two people. I was one, and any cowboy who rang up was the other," Reagan told the assembly that included one bureaucrat-mourner who read The Wall Street Journal while waiting for the ceremony to begin.

23


=== Page 55 of 90

Darkness struck NYC 10 years ago

MY POWER BLACKOUT

Post-Star 7/13/87

NEW YORK (AP) -- Half an hour after the lights went out, David Blake's phone rang.

"Mr. Blake, you better get over here right away," the excited caller told him. "They're breaking into your drugstore."

That was 10 years ago, on July 13, 1977, the night New York City and its northern suburbs lost all electrical power for the second time in 12 years.

When the lights went out across the Northeast in 1965, New Yorkers' poised response -- volunteers directing traffic, people throwing blackout parties and crime actually dropping -- became part of their folklore.

But the 1977 blackout would show the nation's largest city to be just a flash of lightning away from anarchy.

This quickly became apparent to Blake, who had left his home in Queens and was driving up Third Avenue in East Harlem toward his pharmacy.

"All you could hear was breaking glass and screaming and yelling," he recalls. "It was all darkness and confusion."

When he pulled up in front of his store at 103rd Street, he found that someone had chained the store's iron gate to a car bumper and yanked it up. The store's windows were smashed, its floor was covered with debris and most of the merchandise was gone. The cash register was sitting in the gutter.

Two police officers walked by. "You better get out of here," one told him. "This is a war zone."

The war began after lightning knocked out Consolidated Edison power lines in Westchester County. Alternate power sources were not tapped soon enough to stop the vast shutdown, and by 9:36 p.m. about 8 million people were without electricity.

Within an hour, civil disturbances were raging simultaneously in all five boroughs for the first time in the city's history.

Serious looting erupted in 31 neighborhoods. Hardest hit was the Bushwick section of Brooklyn, where a third of the 143 stores on a 30-block stretch suffered fire damage. In one four-block area, every major store was stripped clean. Fire damaged a Woolworth's so badly it had to be leveled the next week.

The crowds "were like bluefish in a feeding frenzy," Capt. Timothy Driscoll of the 77th Precinct would recall. "I've seen looting before, but this was total devastation. Smashing, burning ... as if they'd gone crazy."

In the Bronx, a crowd crashed through the plate-glass window of an auto dealership and drove off with 50 new cars, each of which had $2 worth of gas in the tank and keys in the ignition.

In Brooklyn's Crown Heights section, "it was like an ant colony," says Rabbi Yisrolel Rosenfeld. "When the lights went out, everyone just came down out of their buildings and into the streets."

Although most of the looters were black or Hispanic, and most of the property was owned by whites, race did not seem a motivation.

Maurice Phillips, the black president of a Bushwick merchants' group, says he had two choices: he could spend the night with his shotgun and dog in his dry cleaning business or in his clothing store.

He chose the former, and lost the latter to arson and looting.

The looting, a study by Robert Curvin and Bruce Porter of Brooklyn College subsequently found, had three stages: hardened criminals moved in first, followed by groups of wayward youths and, finally, by some normally more law-abiding members of the community.

Police could make few arrests in the first three hours. The Bronx, with a population of 1.3 million, was patrolled by only 86 cruisers and six beat officers.

By the time power was restored the following night, more than 1,700 stores had been looted or damaged and more than 3,000 people arrested, about six times more than usual. On the first night alone, 1,500 fire alarms were sounded, two-thirds of them false -- twice as many as usual. Property damage estimates ranged as high as $150 million.

The city, said Mayor Abraham Beame, had endured "a night of terror."

(24)

Explain post-psi-effect to Scientists.

de America

Recognized Pres. Chun.

Met at Cairo Hilton. Sat down w/ me. Told him N. Koreans were tough & disciplined S. Kor's soft & corrupt.

Suggestion To research on the possibilities of discover & trans. safely the handling of cherry and icing?


=== Page 56 of 90

# Time urged to assess damage to climate

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Humans are altering the climate faster than they can predict the consequences, and ways must be found to buy time to assess the damage, climate experts warned Wednesday.

"We appear to be entering a period of progressively rapid warming of the earth as a whole with no end in sight. The implications are profound. They will bring rapid and drastic changes in civilization," George M. Woodwell of the Woods Hole Research Center told a congressional panel.

"It seems to me that the minimum level of responsibility for our generation is to at least put some effort into understanding what we are doing," to the climate, added Stephen H. Schneider of the National Center for Atmospheric Research.

Part of this is a need "to find ways to slow down the rate of our changes to buy time to assess the consequences and adapt," Schneider told the House Science subcommittee on natural resources, agricultural research and environment.

The danger of raising the Earth's temperature through the so-called Greenhouse Effect was a particular topic of the session, which was called to consider funding the the National Climate Program, a research effort on the future of the planet's climate. The hearing took place as Washington sweltered through a heat wave with temperatures in the upper 90s.

The Greenhouse Effect, widely discussed in recent years, is a result of the increasing amount of carbon dioxide and other gases in the atmosphere. Though less than 1 percent of the air, carbon dioxide has increased rapidly in recent years.

Scientists link this with an increase in the air temperature, pointing out that carbon dioxide allows incoming radiation from the sun to continue warming the Earth, but blocks outgoing radiation from dissipating into space. The result, like a greenhouse protected by glass, is a rising temperature at the surface.

J.D. Mahlman of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration told the subcommittee that doubling the current carbon dioxide would raise the planet's average temperature by 1.5 degrees to 4.5 degrees Celsius -- 2.4 degrees to 7.2 degrees Fahrenheit.

# Break in heat wave may be on the way

Wire and staff reports

Take heart. Relief from the heat may be in sight.

The National Weather Service said Saturday the temperature would climb only -- only -- into the 80s in the Glens Falls area today, and that by early in the week, temperatures as low -- low -- as 70 are possible.

But on Saturday, the weeklong heat wave continued, steaming the starch out of local people and anybody living in the East. Hundreds of people took refuge at beaches, in pools, in air-conditioned shopping malls and bars and on couches in front of fans. At the Warren County Airport, a high of 86 degrees was recorded. The low was 68. And was it ever humid.

Even by noon Saturday, some cities had passed their record highs. The water of big Lake Erie hit 79 degrees at midmorning. That's the highest it has been in 61 years of record keeping.

In New York City's Central Park, the temperature hit 95 degrees. But the humidity was running at 49 percent -- lower than it has been in the past few days.

Chicago hit 90 for the ninth straight day. Washington had 96 degrees, Newark, 97.

Greenville-Spartanburg, S.C., passed a record of 95 at 12:30 p.m. and rose to 99. Providence, R.I., tied its record of 92, then rose a degree. Philadelphia tied its record of 95 and Charlotte, N.C., tied its record of 100.

America's official hot spot was 108 at the desert city of Needles, Calif.

Across the nation, seven deaths in five states have been blamed on the heat since July 17.

But the toll in Greece is much higher. Athens authorities said 260 people have died from the heat. A medical spokesman said no foreign tourists were among the dead. "Almost all of those who have died were elderly people who suffered from heart and respiratory problems," the spokesman said.

For the Greeks, no relief was in sight. Temperatures outside Athens soared to 104 degrees on Saturday. A record high of 109 degrees was established last week.

In the United States, the National Weather Service said parts of the Southeast would suffer a heat index -- a combination of heat and humidity -- of 105. A heat index of 79 is considered uncomfortable for everyone.

But cool air was moving into the East and Midwest from Canada. The clash between warm and cool air brought a severe thunderstorm watch for parts of New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Connecticut, Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont and Massachusetts.

If you looked hard enough Saturday, you could find cooler spots.

The peak of Mount Washington in New Hampshire, the Northeast's highest at 6,288 feet and known for some of the world's worst weather, reached only 61 on Friday, and the low Saturday was 54. "It is on the warm side of average," weather observer Chris Norcross said.

# Heat sizzles past 16th day

The Associated Press

The 16-day-old heat wave across the central part of the nation that has been blamed for at least 72 deaths continued Sunday, and Alabama health officials warned people to take it easy.

The temperature at the Kansas City, Mo., downtown airport hit a record 105 degrees at 2:35 p.m., while the city's international airport touched a record 102. St. Louis hit 100 by early afternoon and Little Rock, Ark., sizzled to 102. Concordia, Kan., tied its record of 105 at 2:15 p.m. and Toledo, Ohio, tied its record of 98 at 3:40 p.m.

Even the cool of the night didn't help as overnight lows stayed near 80 as far north as Chicago, southeastern Iowa and parts of Kansas.


=== Page 57 of 90

THE SUN ATTACK

# Pollution might make hurricanes stronger

UFO Sun Attack Post-Star 4/3/87

NEW YORK (AP) -- Some future hurricanes may pack up to 60 percent more punch if humankind keeps pouring carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, a new study says.

If the atmosphere's carbon dioxide content doubles, as forecast for the next century, the maximum possible intensity for hurricanes could rise 40 percent to 50 percent generally and 60 percent in the Gulf of Mexico, according to the study in Thursday's issue of the British journal Nature.

While only a few percent of hurricanes reach maximum possible intensity, "we would tend to think if the maximum intensity increases, the average would increase as well," said Kerry Emanuel, associate meteorology professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Projections for when the atmosphere's carbon dioxide content will double range from about the year 2035 to 2080, with the equivalent of doubling by 2050 if the effects of other trace gases are taken into account, according to the National Center for Atmospheric Research.

The carbon dioxide buildup, caused largely by burning of fossil fuels, has long concerned scientists because it could cause a significant warming of worldwide climate. The warming could mean higher chances for extended heat waves and coastal flooding from higher seas, as well as impacts on crop yields, scientists say.

Emanuel said his analysis assumes that the doubling of carbon dioxide will raise the temperature of ocean surfaces in tropical regions generally by about 2 degrees to 3 degrees centigrade, or about 4 degrees to 5 degrees Fahrenheit.

In an interview, Emanuel called that assumption "a big if." Estimates vary widely on how much ocean temperatures would really rise, he said.

**A warming in ocean surfaces increases the amount of heat energy that can be fed into a hurricane through evaporation, he said.** Evaporation can occur only until the air becomes saturated, and warmer ocean surfaces allow more heat to be transferred before saturation takes place, he said.

The projections came from a computer simulation of average August conditions. The 40 percent to 50 percent increase in maximum intensity of hurricanes applies to most current hurricane areas, such as the Caribbean Ocean, western Atlantic Ocean, the Indian Ocean and parts of the Pacific Ocean, Emanuel said.

The 60 percent increase is forecast for the Gulf of Mexico because of higher projected increases in sea surface temperatures, a result of its being partly sheltered and less susceptible to changes in ocean circulation, he said.

Richard Anthes, director of the atmospheric research center, said the projections generally are "a very likely result if the tropical oceans and the tropical atmosphere warms" as much as the calculations assume.

Those assumptions are plausible, Anthes said in an interview.

He also said **the link between sea surface temperature and greater intensity of hurricanes "is well known and supported by many previous studies." Hurricanes also could become more frequent in response to ocean and atmospheric warming**, he said.

While increases in hurricane intensity and frequency would occur gradually, "long-range planning should take into account these things," he said. "I think it's probably a real effect."

But Stephen Schneider, head of the natural systems group at the research center, said Emanuel's calculations should not be taken as forecasts.

"Whether it would apply to Florida or whether it applies to Japan, these kinds of issues are what we can't know at this stage," Schneider said. "It's an indication of quite a plausible outcome that is almost certain to happen at some places in some times."

Ask for money blankets etc. For help to survive.

# Edmonton recovery continues

UFO Sun Attack Post-Star 8/2/87

**Mobile-home parks take hardest hit**

EDMONTON, Alberta (AP) -- Rescuers searched for survivors in shattered homes and factories Saturday after the deadliest tornado to hit Canada in 75 years devastated parts of Edmonton and killed at least 25 people.

About 200 others were injured in Friday afternoon's twister.

"It seemed like the end of the world," said Ted Gartner, who was working in a mechanic's shop when the vortex struck.

Alberta provincial medical examiner Dr. John Butt said 25 people were killed.

There had been some confusion over casualties because of double-counting in the wake of the devastation. Earlier, the city's emergency planning officer, Bruce Wilson, said 27 people were confirmed dead and 200 hurt, and police spokeswoman Joy-Lynn Dorash put the fatality count at 35.

Hardest hit was the Evergreen trailer park on the city's northeastern edge, where 200 mobile homes were demolished, 150 were damaged and at least 13 people were killed, Wilson said.

Witnesses said the pillar of whirling black air was two blocks wide as it smashed its way northeast across the city and parts of adjacent Strathcona County.

A state of emergency was declared as rescuers searched collapsed houses, warehouses and overturned cars for survivors. Police used dog teams to comb the wreckage for signs of life.

Police Chief Leroy Chahley said extra patrols were sent to devastated areas after looting was reported.

Alberta Premier Donald Getty told reporters at a command post in a devastated industrial area: "There's no doubt about it, we've been badly hurt. One thing is the rescue operations are functioning extremely well."

Reporters said the twisters slammed cattle to their deaths on farms outside the city. Broken gas mains caused several fires, power lines were cut and some streets flooded by torrential rain and grapefruit-size hail.

Weather officials had forecast thunderstorms in this normally dry

(26


=== Page 58 of 90

THE NEW YORK TIMES NATIONAL NEWS SATURDAY, APRIL 25, 1987

NY Times 4/25/86

# Cattle Rustling Making Comeback as Tough

By ROBERT REINHOLD
Special to The New York Times

KINGSVILLE, Tex., April 17 -- The ancient trade of cattle rustling, once relegated mostly to Hollywood westerns, is staging a comeback across Texas.

And just as they have been for a century, the rustlers are being tracked down by a tough breed of private cattle rangers in white cowboy hats, men like Hap Roberts, Chick Saenz, Butch Davis, Slim Hulen and 28 others employed by the Texas and Southwestern Cattle Raisers Association. They are colorful vestiges of a bygone era, although they rely today more on a computer in Fort Worth than on their six-shooters to hunt down the outlaws.

Tough times in Texas are causing a new wave of thefts of cattle and horses, according to Steve Munday, spokesman for the association. There are no overall figures on livestock thefts, but Mr. Munday cites a sharp rise in stolen stock that has been recovered as evidence for the comeback of rustling. In 1986 the range detectives, who are deputized by the Texas Rangers, recovered 4,310 stolen or stray head of cattle, 62 horses, 25 trailers and 121 saddles worth a total of $2.8 million. This was double the value recovered in 1985.

# Times Hit Texas

# Thatcher: Support Gorbachev moves

By Edith M. Lederer
Associated Press Writer

LONDON -- Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher said Thursday her Soviet visit could help mark a turning point in history and urged Western nations to encourage Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev's new policy of openness.

Mrs. Thatcher told the House of Commons she didn't underestimate the differences between the Soviets and the West, especially on arms control, but declared the world was a "safer place" after her five-day trip and 12 hours of talks with Gorbachev.

"I believe it was a very significant visit at what could be a turning point in history," the prime minister said, shouting to be heard above the jeers from opposition socialist lawmakers.

"My visit took place at a most interesting and crucial moment in the development of the Soviet Union," she said, citing Gorbachev's points the way to the new openness and confidence which will be needed if we are to reach agreement on arms control and in other areas," she reiterated that short-range

4/14/87

Bean + I had identical dreams (again) last night. We both were in van. He had Tracy, girl. Orientals stopped him + attacked him. He threw a knife clear thru the leader + they ran. ->

Same night, in my dream, a car w/two men blocked my van on a country road. I got out. One man aimed a pistol at me. I got him with my Walther. Then a girl's voice rang out (I had no girl w/me). "Watch out behind you!" I turned. A man had a shotgun pointed at me. I got him, too. The dream woke me up and I saw an apparition hovering over my bed. Was a glowing cloud, sort of spider-webby. Slowly it faded away and I went back to sleep.

Tell of Enquirer tricks.

Post-Star 5/30/87

# Texas tops again in bank failures

HOUSTON (AP) -- Texas has set the national record for bank failures for the third year in a row with the collapse of the 27th bank in 1987, but officials say the state appears to be nearing the bottom of its economic pit.

Federal regulators closed Westheimer National Bank on Thursday, citing poor management and bad loans. With more than six months still to go, the closure smashed Texas' 1986 tally of 26 bank failures in one year, a national record for one state.

Texas also set the national pace in 1985 with 12 failures, compared to just three in 1984.


=== Page 59 of 90

# Long Spell of Warm, Dry Weather Worries Corn Belt Interests

UFO Sun Attack

By WILLIAM ROBBINS
Special to The New York Times
5/15/87

KANSAS CITY, Mo., May 14 -- A long spell of warm, dry weather is spreading anxiety across the most productive parts of the Corn Belt, as well as in markets where their crops are traded.

Though experts say it is too early for serious alarm, with some even citing reasons for optimism, a new forecast has further aggravated widespread concerns. The prediction Wednesday by a long-range forecasting team of the National Weather Service in Washington indicates that the long period of unusual dryness and warmth could last as long as another month.

The prediction includes most of the Corn Belt as well as several agricultural states farther west, where an unusually light snowpack has led to warnings of water shortages and a troublesome season of forest fires.

The temperature forecast was issued with probability factors ranging from 55 to 65 percent, "and that is an unusually high degree of confidence for us for this time of year," said Donald Gilman, the meteorologist who heads the long-range team.

Across most of Illinois and Iowa, the biggest corn producers, and to a lesser extent in neighboring states, the worries have been spawned by the same conditions that had permitted farmers to plant their crops early and proceed at a record pace, raising hopes for another bountiful harvest.

The continued warmth being forecast could speed evaporation of ground moisture and hamper seed germination in fields where young corn plants have not yet emerged. Germination is about one-third complete in the key states, statisticians say, adding that the coming week should determine how serious a problem farmers may face in the remaining areas.

The corn crop is watched closely by economists because it is the principal feed for animals raised for meat, and its price can affect not only producers' costs but also supplies and prices of meat for consumers.

"This has been one of our most prolonged periods of warm and dry weather, dating from last winter," said Michael Palmerino, a meteorologist with the Weather Services Corporation in Bedford, Mass. This winter and spring, he and others said, have not seen their match in the Corn Belt since 1931.

Mr. Palmerino cited precipitation data for this year that were far below normal in scattered test sites across several states, and average temperature readings that were several degrees above normal.

At Mason City, in north-central Iowa, for example, precipitation since Jan. 1 has totaled 3.8 inches, about 47 percent of the normal rate. Temperature readings have ranged from 14 degrees above normal in February to 4 degrees above in April.

'Dryness Spreading Eastward'

At other test sites precipitation ranged from 35 percent of normal in Minneapolis to 31 percent in Decatur, Ill., to 58 percent in Indianapolis. The temperature ranges moderated at the easternmost test sites.

"We've got widespread concern among farmers over germination," said Paul Waite, the Iowa state climatologist.

"Dryness in the west is spreading eastward," Mr. Waite said. "There is a lot of concern that this is going to be a hot, dry year -- more concern, perhaps, than statistics would support."

With only a hint of a laugh, Mr. Waite cited a totally unscientific sign that he said had caused concern in some circles. "By February," he said, "the natives observed the beavers were building dams at an unusual rate in eastern Iowa." He added, "I don't know how they are programmed, but the Indians and early settlers believed they were pretty good indicators."

The weather concerns come at a time when the Soviet Union has begun buying American wheat and speculation is rife over the size of Russian grain crops. That speculation has been generated by one of the coldest Soviet winters on record, which caused widespread crop damage, and a cold wet spring that has delayed planting.

The long-range forecast said abnormal heat was most probable for a strip of Western states where crops are smaller but where several are already facing warnings of water shortages, water-use restrictions and forest fires.

Those warnings have been issued for an area that includes Idaho, Montana, Utah, Wyoming and Nevada, and farmers in one, Idaho, have already been given restricted allotments of irrigation water.

"If you could paint the worst scenario we could envision, that is what is happening to us," Gov. Cecil D. Andrus remarked recently.

## Lawmakers urge Meese to resign

Reagan's buddy

Post Star 8/15/87

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Six Democratic House members on Friday called for Attorney General Edwin Meese III to resign, contending he tried to cover up the Iran-Contra affair.

The effort was organized by Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., who told a news conference that Meese intentionally misled Iran-Contra investigators and the American public and that he also has ignored ethics laws by filing a flawed financial disclosure form.

Justice Department spokesman Patrick Korten called the resignation request "just plain silly" and said it cannot be taken seriously.

"There's no reason for him to resign," Korten said. "He has not done anything wrong. These are partisan political shots. He has every reason to remain until the end of his term."

## Dolphin tests rule out some chemicals

Post-Star 8/15/87

Knight-Ridder

UFO Sun Attack

Laboratory tests apparently have ruled out one set of suspected chemical pollutants as the cause of the continuing dolphin deaths along the mid-Atlantic Coast, according to New Jersey environmental officials.

But as an answer to the deaths continues to elude researchers, the marine mammals continue to wash ashore. Thursday, five decomposing dolphins were found in Delaware, and four, including two fresh carcasses, were discovered on Virginia beaches.

The number of dead dolphins now stands at more than 150, according to National Marine Fisheries estimates.

The test performed by the New Jersey Medical Examiner's laboratory found no traces of xylene, hexane, carbon tetrachloride, methylene chloride or chloroform in the tissues of one of the dead marine mammals.

25


=== Page 60 of 90

# Record heat blasts Midwest

Post-Star 6/15/87

UFO Sun Attack

The Associated Press

Temperatures broke records as far north as the Great Lakes, climbing to 100 degrees in several cities, while heavy thunderstorms and tornadoes pounded the Gulf Coast from flood-weary Texas to Alabama.

Milwaukee boiled over the record barrier at 11:02 a.m. with a reading of 92 and continued on to 101, the first time the city has hit the century mark in 32 years.

Minneapolis hit a record 98; Alpena, Mich., on the shore of cool Lake Huron, tied its record of 94, while Marquette, Mich., on the shore of decidedly chilly Lake Superior reached a record 88.

That kind of heat is not unusual in Minnesota, but it's a month early, said Lyle Schaller of the National Weather Service in Minneapolis.

Temperatures also were in triple digits in Iowa on Sunday, with readings of 102 in Ames, 101 in Burlington and 100 in Des Moines and Mason City. The weather service said it was the first reading of 100 or higher in Des Moines since June 8, 1985. The Iowa State Patrol reported several highways buckled because of the heat.

Peoria, Ill., hit 99, erasing a record that had stood since 1897. Cities including Champaign and Moline reported readings of 101. In Springfield the mercury hit 100 degrees, breaking the 93-year-old record of 96, and Chicago's sweltering 99 degrees broke a 33-year-old record of 95 and drove sun and water worshippers to Lake Michigan's shores.

Elsewhere, Lincoln, Neb., broke its record of 100 by one degree. St. Louis, Mo., had a record 97, and Paducah, Ky., reached a record 100.

Not to be outdone, Tucson, Ariz., sizzled to a record 107 before lunchtime, and Phoenix hit 115, only tying a record.

Four elephants at the Topeka Zoo in Kansas were kept in the shade and hosed down frequently with water as the high hit 98 degrees, said assistant director Mike LaRue. "Animals do pretty well adapting to the heat," he said.

Temperatures hit 100 or more in at least six Kansas cities, with Baileyville in the extreme northeast the hot spot at 103. About 50 people among the roughly 45,000 attending the Tri-City Air Show in Augusta near Wichita, were treated for heat exhaustion, officials said.

At Lake Phalen, east of St. Paul, Minn., there were thousands of sunbathers, which is welcome. "The sand is real hot," 12-year-old Sheila Quinlan said Sunday when the temperature hit 98.

# Nancy in Sweden on drug crusade

Post-Star 6/9/87

STOCKHOLM, Sweden (AP) -- Nancy Reagan said Monday the Iran-Contra issue won't tarnish the accomplishments of the Reagan presidency, as she flew to Sweden and ran into two protests denouncing U.S. policies in Central America.

The American first lady left the president at the seven-nation economic summit in Venice to take her global crusade against drugs to Stockholm. She visited a Stockholm suburb trying to promote a drug-free environment and danced onstage at an anti-drugs concert.

On the flight, she faced a barrage of questions on the Iran-Contra affair. She has rarely discussed it in public, except to say that like the president she wanted the truth to come out.

Nor could she escape the Contra issue during her first hours in Stockholm.

About 150 protesters demonstrated outside the Grand Hotel where she is staying. They chanted "Nancy go home!" and threw eggs, blue paint and smoke bombs. One sign said "Nicaragua bleeds." Mrs. Reagan was inside during the demonstration.

<- where I stayed. O

# Rain keeps falling; More may evacuate

Post-Star 4/7/87

The Associated Press

UFO Sun Attack

More rain fell Monday on the soaking Northeast, where high water had forced more than 1,000 people out of their homes, and residents of some low-lying areas were warned they might have to join the evacuees.

The water had washed out or flooded scores of roads.

Snow that the same storm had piled into drifts up to 15 feet high in the central Appalachians was melting. And after a week of record cold across the South, the only record lows Monday were in the 40s in Florida.

Deaths blamed on the weather included four in Kentucky and one each in Ohio and West Virginia in traffic accidents; an Ohio man died while shoveling snow and an Alabama woman died of hypothermia, police said.

More than 1,000 people had been evacuated from their homes in New York, Massachusetts, Maine, Vermont, Connecticut, New Hampshire and New Jersey. But many of the estimated 500 who fled their homes in western Massachusetts' Berkshires were returning home Monday, Civil Defense officials said.

In Massachusetts, Gov. Michael Dukakis declared a state of emergency Monday, and officials said 800 to 1,000 National Guardsmen were on alert and could be mobilized within 15 minutes.

The continuing but easing rain on already saturated ground prompted authorities to close schools throughout central and southern New Hampshire and warn residents along some streams they might have to leave.

By midday Monday, however, streams, rivers and reservoirs in New Hampshire had stabilized or begun to recede, David Cass, a Civil Defense spokesman, said.

In Maine, the threat of renewed flooding was greatest along the Saco River, where 400 people who were evacuated from their homes late last week were still unable to return. The Saco was rising again Monday after being swollen with 4 inches of rain that fell in New Hampshire since Sunday, said Peter Lamontagne, civil defense director for York County.


=== Page 61 of 90

ar crashes into Grand Union

- where we shop. Same thing happened in Pa. where we were.

# 5 treated; 2 remain in hospital

Post-Star
By Michael Kilian and Eric Dexheimer
Staff Writers May 24, 1987

SOUTH GLENS FALLS -- Five persons were taken to Glens Falls Hospital Saturday afternoon after being injured at the South Glens Falls Grand Union supermarket when a car took a path one would have to see to believe and crashed through a doorway. The store was crowded with holiday weekend shoppers.

The automobile narrowly missed a pregnant woman and her 22-month-old daughter, hit a store employee and a customer, and then came to rest in the center of the store after slamming into a support pole, South Glens Falls Policeman Wayne Bruce said.

All the injured were taken by ambulance to Glens Falls Hospital, where two of them remained Saturday night.

The driver of the car, 73-year-old Hugh Sheeran of 31 Wilson Ave., South Glens Falls, told an ambulance attendant that he had passed out before crashing through the seven-foot wide set of doors on the left side of the store, Bruce said.

Just 15 days earlier, Sheeran drove an automobile through the door of a Stewart's Bread N Butter Shop, according to South Glens Falls Police records. The Stewart's store is four-fifths of a mile north of the Grand Union. Sheeran was not ticketed in the May 8 accident, Bruce said.

Mrs. Theresa Davis, 25, of R.D. 2 Michael Road in Moreau, suffered a long cut on her left buttocks that required stitches, according to Phil Davis, her husband. Mrs. Davis was treated and released at Glens Falls Hospital, a hospital official said. Davis said his wife's 7-month-old fetus appeared to be unharmed. Katlyn Davis, who is nearly 2 years old, received a minor scratch during the incident, her father said.

Patrolman Bruce said it was a "miracle" that Mrs. Davis and her 22-month-old daughter were not seriously injured. Mrs. Davis and Katlyn were between the two sets of automatic doors at the Grand Union on Saratoga Avenue when Sheeran's 1978 light brown Pontiac Phoenix crashed through, Bruce said.

When she saw the car approaching, Mrs. Davis pressed Katlyn against the front window of the store in an effort to protect her daughter from injury, her husband said.

Mrs. Davis apparently cut herself on glass or metal as she tried to extricate herself from the heavily damaged doorway after the car had passed, Davis said. Mrs. Davis works for the Grand Union supermarket in Queensbury as a bookkeeper.

home in Canton by National Guard trucks, said David Brown, director of civil emergency preparedness.

A 75-foot section of earth washed away at the edge of a retaining wall near International Paper Co.'s hydro-electric dam in Livermore Falls, Maine, said IP Energy Superintendent Dick Brophy. He said there was no danger downstream.

A hydro-electric dam in the early stages of construction on the Androscoggin River at Lisbon "is gone" said a police officer who did not give his name. He said no evacuations had resulted.

A historic covered bridge over the Piscataquis River was washed away at Guilford, Maine. Central Maine Power Co. cut off power to the area, for fear that live electric lines running over other bridges would be snapped if the spans washed out.

# Floods hit New England

Post-Star 4/2/87
The Associated Press
UFO Sun Attacks

Flooding in New England forced people from their homes, washed away a historic covered bridge and damaged two dams Wednesday, and farmers in the South endured a third day of record cold that already had devastated some peach orchards.

Maine Gov. John R. McKernan Jr. declared a state of emergency, allowing application for federal aid and mobilization of the National Guard, as flooding described as the worst in a half century increased around the state.

"The water in a convenience store is right up to the ceiling, which I'd say is eight to nine feet off the ground, and it's still rising," regional police and fire dispatcher William Murray said of a store outside Plymouth, N.H.

The flooding was caused by melting snow and a storm bearing 50 mph wind and as much as 5 inches of rain that cut power to thousands Tuesday after dumping more than a foot of snow in the Ohio Valley.

On the Plains, Kansas National Guard helicopters hauled more hay to cattle snowbound by last week's back-to-back blizzards, and some roads were still blocked by drifts up to 15 feet high. Schools reopened Wednesday in adjacent areas of eastern Nebraska that were hard hit by the snow.

At least 27 deaths have been blamed on the weather since the first of the storms hit the Plains last week.

At least 250 people were evacuated in Maine, including more than 100 moved from a nursing home.

30


=== Page 62 of 90

# Tornado, luckily, was slow

New York

CHEEKTOWAGA (AP) 8/1/87 a tornado that ripped through a populous Buffalo suburb late Thursday moved more quickly, many people who escaped injury would not have, officials said Friday.

As clean-up crews worked on some of the estimated $15 million damage from the 113-157 mph winds, state officials were considering whether to declare the area a disaster zone.

"We are estimating that in some areas, we had what is actually considered an F2 tornado," on a F0 to F5 scale, meteorologist Tom Niziol said Friday after touring the area. "That's quite significant."

He said the path is 1.5 miles long and 150 to 175 feet wide. Roofs are gone, trees snapped and uprooted and heavy damage was sustained in one 500-foot-long area of a residential neighborhood. An estimated 130 homes were damaged.

Niziol said one woman in the hardest hit neighborhood reported she watched the tornado lift her car 6 feet off the ground and move it down the driveway.

"We're estimating a 10 to 15 mph movement of the funnel itself and that is slow," Niziol said. "It certainly would give people enough time, actually a fraction of time, to take action if they saw the funnel."

At the Holiday Showcase Restaurant, shaped like a giant flying saucer, general manager Bob Monaco said he will have to lay off his 75 employees for up to three months while the devastated facility is repaired.

"It's an all-wooden structure, wood and glass, and all the wood beams are probably cracked," said Monaco.

But, he said, it could have been worse.

When the tornado touched down at 4:30 p.m., about 40 patrons and staff were in the restaurant, whose large glass windows faced the storm's approach.

Three managers, Al Cavagnarou, Mark Hilbrecht and Mike Schmitt began herding customers to the basement.

Schmitt kicked out the back kitchen door, which the others credited for saving the windows and preventing shards of glass from flying around.

"You could see it come over the trees. You could see it swirling, but it just looked like swirling leaves," said Cavagnarou. "It tore into Putt-Putt (across the street) and took their sign like it was a piece of paper. It just tore it up."

"As that crashed, I did like two circles," Cavagnarou said. "I didn't know where to go. I hit the floor. It was so loud. It was like putting your ear next to a jet engine. It was that loud."

"We had a party of four deaf people and we literally had to go over and pull them away from the windows. We had to point at what was coming," Cavagnarou said.

Miraculously, no serious injuries were reported.

"Had that thing been moving any faster, we would have been in bad trouble," he said.

![A huge tornado rips a half-mile swath through Edmonton, Alberta Friday afternoon. (AP Laserphoto)]

A huge tornado rips a half-mile swath through Edmonton, Alberta Friday afternoon. (AP Laserphoto)

Canada

# Tornado

From Page A1 8/1/87

motorists.

Mayor Laurence Decore said 27 people died in the city, and Jocelyn Tennison, spokesman for the County of Strathcona, just south and east of the city, said three were confirmed dead there.

Decore said 24 of the victims died in the Evergreen trailer park in the city's northeast. Canadian Broadcasting Corp. reporters said an estimated 200 trailers in the park had been flattened.

Witnesses said broken gas mains started several fires, trees were uprooted, power lines downed and streets flooded with a deluge of rain and hail.

Edmonton resident Tom Harding told Canadian radio station CISN the tornado was "just a massive roar, a deafening roar."

"The debris from around the funnel itself was half a mile in each direction," he said. "There's cars crushed like pop cans, there's buildings totally destroyed, people trapped in the buildings, its worse than a war."

He said major power lines were just "crumbled like matchsticks."

"There are a large number of accidents and five people presently trapped in buildings," said ambulance service chairman Joan Rossall.

Royal Canadian Mounted Police spokesman Bob Moffat said the twister touched down twice just south of Edmonton, a city of 530,000, Canadian radio reported.

Canadian Press quoted one resident in the suburb of Beaumont as saying her neighbors lost several cars, a mobile home and a motorcycle. "Gone with the wind," she said.

The city and Strathcona were declared disaster areas.

(31)


=== Page 63 of 90

# Protesters mark Chernobyl date

Hong Kong liaison

The Associated Press

Post-Star 4/27/87

From Japan to Sweden, where scientists first alerted the world to Chernobyl, demonstrators rallied Sunday on the first anniversary of the Soviet nuclear disaster that sent radiation drifting around the world.

The biggest protests were in Europe, where soaring radiation levels followed the April 26, 1986, accident, stirring feelings of panic and prompting authorities to discard vast amounts of suspect food and milk.

In the United States, protesters gathered outside nuclear power plants for demonstrations to mark the anniversary.

"Chernobyl made crystal clear the threat to our lives coming from every nuclear power plant," said Wes Crocheron of the Clamshell Alliance, an umbrella organization for anti-nuclear groups in New England.

Washington declared Sunday to be Radiation Awareness Day and urged people "to remember the tragedy in the Soviet Union is our tragedy as human beings and a warning to all nuclear power and weapons producers."

"America is overburdened with nuclear power plants and the odds are now higher for a meltdown in our country," Washington said in a statement.

The Illinois Safe Energy Alliance and several environmental groups planned to release hundreds of balloons at five nuclear power plants in the Chicago area to symbolize the widespread radioactive fallout from the Chernobyl disaster.

About 200 people demonstrated at the Hanford nuclear reservation near Richland, Wash., calling for permanent shutdown of the reservation's N Reactor, a plutonium-producing reactor that shares Family, a pro-nuclear activist group composed mostly of Hanford employees, which held a counter-rally a few hundred feet away.

The N Reactor was placed in "stand down" on Jan. 7 so that more than $50 million in safety improvements could be made. Although most will be completed by a planned July 7 restart, several key modifications will be unfinished.

About 75 people gathered on the common in Brattleboro, Vt., on Sunday, to listen to music and speeches about Chernobyl, and about the Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant several miles away.

"It's very unsafe for us to keep Vermont Yankee open one more day," state Rep. Micque Glitman told the gathering. "It's a gamble we can't win."

Vermont recorded the highest amount of radioactive rain of any state in the nation after Chernobyl.

WEDTECH

IRAN INQUIRY

ETHICS COMMITTEE

PROSECUTORS

MEESE

OF MEESE AND MEN

Post-Star 8/3/87

Another rotten Reagan "buddy."
(Deaver, North, etc.)
Owens 32


=== Page 64 of 90

Rains Put Wheat Farmers in a Bind

By WILLIAM ROBBINS
Special to The New York Times

HENNESSEY, Okla., April 1 - Heavy rains since last fall have left fields submerged or waterlogged in parts of Oklahoma, Kansas and Missouri, threatening the economic fortunes of thousands of farmers.

For many farmers the flooding ruined much of the winter wheat crop, which is sown in the fall for spring harvest, and it prevented many others from planting the crop. And the farmers fear the wet conditions may prevent them from planting other crops this summer.

"This is more like a land of lakes than farm country," Rodney Wanger, a local executive of the Federal Agricultural Stabilization and Conservation Service, remarked the other day, summing up the effect on farmers as "devastating."

The farmers say they are waiting to see whether the United States Senate passes a bill, already approved by the House, to provide relief.

Here in northern Kingfisher County, about 40,000 acres is still submerged under ponds left by floods that struck last October, and much of the remaining land is too waterlogged to support planting or harvesting machinery. Parts of neighboring Logan, Noble and Kay Counties are similarly affected.

Fraction of Crop Planted

Almost as severely affected are sections of southeastern and east-central Kansas, while a broad swath of Missouri from the southwestern to the northeastern sections has been so water-soaked that only a small fraction of the normal wheat acreage has been planted.

Missouri's wheat crop will cover about 900,000 acres, as against an average of about 2.5 million acres over the last five years. Plantings in Kansas and Oklahoma have been cut by about 7 percent.

The weather and resulting planting problems are one small part of the reason this year's national wheat crop will be sharply reduced, experts say. Across the country, according to a recent Agriculture Department report, wheat plantings will total 64.8 million acres, down 10 percent from last year. The main factor is that farmers have decided to plant less wheat so they can benefit from Federal programs designed to reduce surpluses.

But the overall reduction is not enough, the experts say, to reduce surpluses and lift depressed prices. As a result, they say, farmers in the waterlogged sections of the three states face the worst possible situation: skimpy harvests at best and low prices.

The resulting stress on farmers can be seen in the faces of Pat Cline and Vernon Breckenridge, who can look out over broad stretches of water where rich stands of wheat ought to be rippling in the breeze.

Mr. Cline looked up with a grim smile as a windmill spun busily overhead, futilely pumping to supply a submerged watering tank. "I haven't been able to get to that corral since last October," he said. "And I don't know when I'll be able to use it for cattle again."

Mr. Breckenridge said: "I'm real concerned. I've got debts like everybody else, and I can't pay them if I can't raise a crop."

The farmers here remember only too well when the troubles started. The rains came on Sept. 29 and continued intermittently through October. They were deluged with 20 inches that month.

"And every time it started to look like it was going to get better, here would come some more rain," Mr. Breckenridge said.

Tractors Sink In The Mud

When the rains started, he had already spent more than $40,000 to plant about 1,200 acres of winter wheat for the spring harvest. Now much of that is either under water or covered with silt, and the rest, Mr. Breckenridge estimated, "runs all the way from a stand of nothing to about two-thirds."

As a result of the persistent rains, the water table here has risen to levels just below the surface in many areas, leaving the land so soft that heavy equipment sinks, as three tractors did on a nearby farm. The drivers were trying to retrieve a tractor already submerged.

It is too late to replant ruined winter wheat crops, and now the farmers fear they may be prevented this summer from planting crops other than wheat.

Mr. Breckenridge and Mr. Cline are more fortunate than many of their neighbors. They were able to qualify for a special Government program that will give them subsidies to help make up for part of their crop losses.

Under the regular Federal wheat program, participating farmers receive subsidies that are expected to amount to about $2 a bushel this year. The total they receive is based on the average yield of their land. To qualify, they must agree to take a certain percentage of their land out of production.

Many cannot plant to qualify for a subsidy.

In California, nearly 9,000 firefighters battled major blazes in the forest neighborhood of Pocatello.

The catch is that to receive those benefits, a farmer must first have been unable to plant his crop.

The special program for disaster farmers was created by Congress and the count of the disaster. It was designed to provide help when the Government's regular programs for farmers failed to provide enough help. In the past, the disaster program has been used to help farmers when they were unable to plant a crop or when their crops were destroyed by natural disasters.

That program is one of those that were under attack in the House. Some percent of the members argued that farmers should be encouraged to stop planting crops that are in surplus.

The measure now before the Senate would make the program accessible and more flexible.

Meanwhile, the weather in this area is pressing the farmers. "We need a plemented period of dry weather and good."

Firefighters from across U.S. begin taking on stubborn Western blazes

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) - Firefighters called in from across the nation deployed in the forests of Northern California on Tuesday, battling hundreds of lightning-spawned fires that blackened 32,000 acres and forced evacuations in some mountain communities.

Three rural communities in western Oregon were threatened by fires surging through tinder-dry timber, while firefighters in Idaho slowly gained ground against a range blaze that menaced an affluent neighborhood of Pocatello.

In California, nearly 9,000 firefighters battled major blazes in the Stanislaus, Klamath, and Shasta-Trinity national forests and nearly 300 smaller fires, said Mike Milosch of the U.S. Forest Service in Sacramento.

Milosch said firefighters have controlled about 700 other blazes ignited by nearly 5,000 lightning strikes since Saturday.

"But we're probably going to get some more fires, with lightning activity expected to continue for a day or two," Milosch said.

It is the worst onslaught of its kind in California since the lightning-plagued summer of 1977, when a fire in the Los Padres National Forest blackened nearly 200,000 acres, according to fire officials.

The federal and state firefighters employed at least 48 air tankers, 296 fire engines, 31 helicopters, and scores of bulldozers in the latest battle, officials said.

A U.S. Forest Service firefighter, Bruce F. Visser, 34, of Mountain Center, was killed Tuesday when he was hit by a motorcycle near a fire line, said Harley Greiman, a forest service spokesman in the Klamath National Forest.

The unidentified driver was under investigation for felony hit and run, Greiman said.


=== Page 65 of 90

SOFT DRINKS

MIXERS

NY Times 4/5/87

Associated Press

Snowstorm Chills South as Heavy Rains Dampen East

Snow being cleared in Dormont, Pa., where up to eight inches fell. Storm left snow from North Carolina to New York State and temperatures reached record lows from Texas to Florida. Heavy rains in New York metropolitan region flooded roads and brought some rivers to flood stage. Page 36.

Rivers in Flood-Ravaged Northeast Start to Recede

NY Times 4/7/87

By The Associated Press

Most rivers receded yesterday in the flood-ravaged Northeast, where about 3,000 people have been forced from their homes since the flooding began last week.

Officials in Augusta, Me., and nearby Gardiner and Hallowell estimated damage in that area at more than $30 million. Estimates for other parts of the state were incomplete.

"The damage in Androscoggin County is in the millions, I just can't say how many millions," said Peter Gagnon, the county civil defense director.

Gov. John R. McKernan Jr. said damage estimates were still being prepared but would eventually total "tens of millions" of dollars.

New Hampshire officials said they could not make estimates until the water subsided, and Massachusetts officials said they were too busy to assess the damage.

Four Deaths in Kentucky

David Dilley, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service at Logan International Airport in Boston, said some sections along the border between Massachusetts and New Hampshire had received up to 13 inches of rain in the past week. The average rainfall for the region for all of April is 3.8 inches.

Four deaths in Kentucky, two in Ohio and one each in West Virginia, Alabama and Vermont were attributed to the past week's weather. Two men were reported missing and feared drowned in Massachusetts.

Massachusetts Civil Defense officials said the worst of the flooding there might not be over. The New England River Forecast Center predicted that the rising Merrimack River would not crest until today.

New Hampshire Civil Defense officials said 1,000 to 1,500 people had been flooded out since Saturday and about 200 were in public shelters yesterday. Thirty additional people were evacuated yesterday near the rising Merrimack River in Nashua and some fled the rising Exeter River at Exeter.

541 People Stayed in Shelters

An emergency release of water Monday from a dam at Keene, N.H., forced the evacuations of communities along the Ashuelot River, a Civil Defense spokesman, John Gifford, said.

At the peak of the Maine flooding late last week, 541 people stayed at Red Cross shelters, with others staying with friends or relatives. State officials said about 4,700 workers had their jobs interrupted, with 2,100 of those expected to be unemployed indefinitely.

In Ashfield, Mass., Police Chief Warren Kirkpatrick said yesterday that at least a half-dozen small bridges and more than half the town's roads were washed out.

Of more than 100 roads in Maine that were inundated or closed to traffic at flood peak, only eight remained closed yesterday, a state civil defense spokeswoman, Darla Chafin, said. Three bridges there were swept away.

About 25 roads remained blocked in New Hampshire and secondary roads were closed in Connecticut along the Housatonic and Connecticut rivers.

(34


=== Page 66 of 90

# Heavy rains grow deadly in Northeast

The Associated Press

Rushing waters from heavy rains chased hundreds from their homes in the Northeast on Sunday and swept away vehicles that fell into a swollen creek when a bridge collapsed in New York state, while 8-foot snow drifts in North Carolina kept would-be church-goers home.

The heavy, wet snow, wind and rain brought down power lines and left thousands of people without electricity. At least six deaths were blamed on the weather.

Apalachicola, Fla., had its sixth consecutive day of record lows at 38 degrees as chilly air toppled records from the Gulf Coast to Arkansas.

About 120 visitors to the aircraft carrier USS Saratoga, anchored four miles off Miami Beach, Fla., had to spent the night on board after high seas and wind kept them from returning to shore.

And a group of 448 Girl Scouts and leaders were snowbound Saturday night at the Center of Science and Industry museum in Columbus, Ohio. "We've been doing camp-ins for 17 years and this is the first time we've had anybody snowed in," said center spokeswoman Barbara Wolfe.

Four people died in weather-related traffic accidents in Kentucky, one each in Ohio and West Virginia crashes, and an Ohio man died while shoveling snow, police said.

A two-lane bridge collapsed with a car into the Nashua River at Fitchburg, Mass., Sunday when its supports were washed out, said Air Force Reserve Maj. Karen Bragaw at state Civil Defense headquarters in Framingham. Three people in the car escaped without injuries but the bridge collapse broke natural gas electrical lines, cutting power to about 200 homes, Bragaw said. Several other bridges in the state also gave way, she said.

Flooding also washed out or blocked roads elsewhere in New York and in Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Hampshire and Vermont, authorities said.

Snow depths Sunday included 18 inches at Boone, N.C.; 26.5 at Welch, W.Va.; 20 to 33 inches in southwestern Virginia's Buchanan County; and up to 36 inches in Letcher County, Ky.

"When I got up this morning and saw 3 feet of snow outside the door I wasn't about to go (to church)," said Jeni Gray of Boone, N.C.

Interstate 40 near the North Carolina-Tennessee border, closed since Friday, was reopened Sunday. About 1,000 travelers had been stranded between Asheville, N.C., and the Tennessee line, police said Saturday.

Snow drifts on U.S. 221 leading to the privately owned Grandfather Mountain park and zoo in western North Carolina were 8 feet high and wind gusted to 100 mph, said manager Tom Huskins.

"We can't even get to the animals to feed them," Huskins said. "We didn't get up there yesterday and we may not get up there today. We are getting concerned about them starving."

A drug store in Charleston, W.Va., collapsed early Sunday under the weight of more than 17 inches of snow, said Police Chief Kent Carper. No one was injured but only one wall was left standing and two cars parked alongside were crushed.

In eastern West Virginia, the Canaan Valley and Snowshoe ski resorts reopened Saturday and were crowded Sunday with people from as far away as Washington, D.C., and Tennessee, resort officials said.

Ohio highway crews had cleared most highways Sunday, but utility crews attempting to restore power to rural homes were blocked by drifts several feet high. By Sunday, 10,000 of the 154,000 people affected had electricity again.

Paramedics and rescue workers had to use snowmobiles, tractors and four-wheel-drive trucks Saturday to plow through drifts up to 10 feet high to reach a woman who had gone into labor in rural Licking County.

"It was a very difficult and very long run, and it was a very scary run for the people on the snowmobiles," said Harold Keller of the Johnstown Fire Department. Mary Cooper gave birth Sunday in Licking Memorial Hospital in Newark, about 25 miles from her home.

In Schoharie County, N.Y., west of Albany, at least 100 families were evacuated because of flooding, said Ron Connors, director of county emergency management.

"One couple was trapped in a trailer until this morning. There was no way we could get to them last night with the high wind and swiftly moving water," Connors said.

Several hundred people had to seek high ground Sunday in western Massachusetts, where more than 6 inches of rain fell, authorities said.

New rain in southern Maine kept people on alert Sunday following the worst flooding in state history. The Red Cross estimated that 2,300 homes were damaged and more than 800 National Guardsmen were on duty.

About 300 people were evacuated Sunday in Wayne, in northern New Jersey, as four rain-bloated rivers in the area spilled over their banks and sent water up to 4 feet deep onto streets and lawns after 3 inches of rain fell Saturday. Residents used canoes and rowboats to check their homes for damage.

About 80 families were evacuated along the lower Housatonic River in Connecticut, said civil preparedness director Frank Mancuso, and 15 people left the town of Plymouth as a precaution. The Housatonic was more than 10 feet above flood stage.

About 11,000 people in West Virginia were without power Sunday, down from up to 20,000, said Appalachian Power Co. spokesman Jack Shaver. Twelve counties told the Kentucky Disaster and Emergency Services office that nearly 12,600 homes were without power Sunday. National Guardsmen helped utility crews there cut down snow-laden trees and clear limbs hampering electrical service.

More than 5,000 customers remained without power Sunday in Michigan, where high wind downed trees and power lines, utility spokesmen said.

35


=== Page 67 of 90

Texas PR NY Times 5/30/87

# Heavy Rains Cause Flooding in Texas

A father and son being rescued after they tried to drive through a flooded street in San Antonio, where more than two inches of rain fell. Thunderstorms across the state knocked out power lines and flooded streets. More than six inches of rain fell in Austin. Rainfall eased in Oklahoma, where 10 days of rain caused flooding that left two people dead and kept up to 1,000 people from their homes.

# Travel Advisory

NY Times 4/12/87

# U.S. Steps Up Its Warning on Travel to Peru

The State Department has strengthened its warning against travel to certain areas of Peru because of violence by terrorists and cocaine traffickers.

The cities of Lima and Callao are under a 1 to 5 A.M. curfew because of bombings, many attributed to a Maoist organization called Shining Path.

Twenty-four hour safe-conduct passes are issued to travelers who arrive at Jorge Chavez Airport during the curfew, but the State Department said that even with a pass, travel during the curfew is dangerous.

Under the decree, anyone is subject to military or police inspection; Americans are advised to carry their passports at all times.

Most bombings have been directed at Peruvian Government and military installations and the power network, causing blackouts in Lima. The American Embassy and Ambassador's residence have also been attacked.

In southern Peru, the Government has declared several areas emergency zones because of violence, and the State Department advises visitors to avoid the regions altogether.

They are the departments of Ayacucho, Huancavelica, Western Apurimac, Western Huánuco and Western Pasco. Narcotics-related violence has made the Upper Huallaga Valley unsafe as well.

Tourist sites have also seen violence. Last summer a bombing on a Machu Picchu-Cuzco train killed seven tourists and wounded 40 others, and Trujillo and the Cordillera Huayuash, a hiking route in the southern Ancash-Northern Lima departments, have also been attacked.

The department said visitors to Macchu Picchu, Cuzco, the Inca Trail, Lake Titicaca, Huarás, the Cordillera Blanca and Arequipa should use caution. Hikers on the Inca Trail should avoid traveling alone, campers should stay in groups of four or more, and visitors should not display valuables. They should carry identification and money in shoulder holsters or money belts.

For more information, visitors to Peru can call the consular officer at the American Embassy in Lima, 44-36-21.

UFO Sun Attack Post-Star 7/3/87

lowing about five hours of work on the roof.

Stanley said his son and five or six neighbors pulled up loose roofing or tacked it down and covered the roof with polyurethane sheets while the roped-off storefront warned pedestrians to stay clear.

All the work was completed by late Sunday afternoon, he said, and he expected to remove the barrier before doors opened Monday morning.

Dick Trowbridge, spokesperson for Niagara Mohawk, said Sunday afternoon that all power had been restored to the 25 Fort Edward customers who lost electricity during the storm.

But he said about 50 customers were still without power in the Fort Ann area as a result of the same storm, and a storm late Sunday morning knocked out power to 25 to 30 homes in Greenfield in Saratoga County.

"It's not unusual with the kind of weather we're having," Trowbridge said. "We may have outages the next two days with this extreme heat."

# Heavy snowfall stalls travelers

The Associated Press

UFO Sun Attack

Travelers were stranded Saturday as unseasonably heavy snow continued to fall from North Carolina into parts of upstate New York, with 2 feet in places and drifts up to 10 feet atop one mountain, and temperatures again plummeted to record lows from Texas to Florida.

"It's like a white out," said Dee Allen, a police dispatcher in the Cleveland suburb of Brooklyn, where it was the second major snow storm in less than a week. "There's a lot of blowing and drifting snow. I guess I'm going to have to ski home." Post-Star 4/5/87

CORDILLERA BLANCA

Huarás

PERU

BRAZIL

Lima

Callao

Machu Picchu

Cuzco

Lake Titicaca

BOLIVIA

Arequipa

Pacific Ocean

Where I was

0 Miles 200

36


=== Page 68 of 90

## 5 dead identified as U.S. executives

Post-Star 8/4/87

ALEXIS CREEK, British Columbia (AP) -- The only business executive left in an inflatable raft after 11 others were pitched into a river during a whitewater trip said Monday there was little he could do as five companions died in the pounding rapids.

"I think you can kind of play it out in your mind what I was going through," said Jack Collins, president and chief executive officer of Clorox Co.

In a telephone interview from his Oakland, Calif., office, Collins described the Saturday accident that ended a Canadian wilderness outing by a group of friends that included several top officials of U.S. corporations. The five who died all were prominent executives in advertising.

Most had taken river trips before and about half had made a run down the same stretch of the Chilko River on Thursday, Collins said.

"We thought we were all pretty smart guys; none of us would have been there if we thought there was any danger of injury or dying," Collins said. "We looked at whitewater as sort of an ersatz roller coaster."

The Royal Canadian Mounted Police identified the dead as Robert V. Goldstein, 50, of Cincinnati, vice president of advertising for Procter and Gamble Co.; James Fasules, 63, Glen Ellyn, Ill., a former senior vice president of the advertising firm DDB Needham Worldwide; Richard T. O'Reilly, 65, director of the New York-based Media Advertising Partnership for a Drug-Free America Inc.; and Stuart Jon Sharpe, 37, and Gene Yovetich, 41, both Chicago residents and senior vice presidents of account management at DDB Needham.

O'Reilly also was president of a Greenwich, Conn.-based advertising firm that bears his name. The firm handled advertising for President Reagan's 1980 campaign.

RCMP officials declined to identify survivors, but Needham officials identified two as Michael Miles, president and chief operating officer of Kraft Inc. in Glenview, Ill., and Al Wolfe, 55, of Lake Forest, Ill., president of the U.S. division of Needham.

Collins said the other survivors were Earl Madsen, 49, a Golden, Colo., lawyer; Joe Morrison, an advertising and marketing execu-

NY Times 7/12/87

(Cartoon showing two men in a library setting, one reading a newspaper and the other sitting in a chair.)

"It's awful that so many people around the President did these things -- who in the world hired those people?"

# Tamil rebels begin surrendering arms

Peace From UFOs Post-Star 8/1/87

PALALI AIR BASE, Sri Lanka (AP) -- The main Tamil rebel group surrendered truckloads of weapons Wednesday under an agreement intended to stop a civil war that has taken 6,000 lives on this once-tranquil island of tea and spices.

Anti-aircraft guns and rockets were among the arms turned in by the rebels, who began fighting four years ago to gain an independent homeland in northern and eastern Sri Lanka for the Tamil ethnic minority.

Government-run Sri Lankan Radio said Vellupillai Prabhakaran, leader of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, announced that he was disbanding his 10-year-old guerrilla operation and enlarging the group's "political wing." Eelam is the name Tamils would give their nation.

India, whose Tamil community of 50 million is more than three times Sri Lanka's entire population, worked out the peace agreement with the Sri Lankan government. It provides for a single governing council in the two provinces where most Tamils live, but not for independence or a merger of the provinces.

Wednesday's turnover of arms began with the ceremonial surrender of Dilip Yogi, a Tiger leader dressed in a bush shirt and rubber thong sandals.

He placed his pistol on a table covered with a white cloth at a government military base in the Tamil-dominated Jaffna Peninsula, heart of the Tamil insurgency. Defense Minister Sepala Attygale, a former army commander, touched it in a symbolic gesture.

Prabhakaran was not present -- for security reasons, his aides said.

Attygale said: "Today is historic for the future of Sri Lanka. This surrendering of all arms signifies an end to the bloodshed that has affected our democratic society. We sincerely hope that from now on all Sri Lankans will live in peace in harmony in our own native land."

Yogi announced Tuesday in Jaffna City, 12 miles to the southwest: "We will surrender for the good of the Tamil people."

# Cowboys hurting already

Post-Star 8/3/87

Cowboys & Texas PK

THOUSAND OAKS, Calif. (AP) -- If the NFL regular season started this weekend, the Dallas Cowboys would have to field a team without six starters.

"The ways things are going, we might not have enough players to start the season," said defensive tackle John Dutton. "It's been brutal."

The roughest training camp in the Cowboys' 27-year history is taking its toll as Coach Tom Landry tries to find some answers after a 7-9 collapse in 1986.

The Cowboys are on a regimen of two-a-day practices -- three hours in the morning and three hours in the afternoon -- followed by a two-hour team meeting at night.

When the Cowboys held their annual Blue-White intrasquad game Saturday night, trainers held out 21 players with injuries. Wide receiver Karl Powe suffered a sprained shoulder on the last play of the game and will be lost three weeks.

The wide-receiver spot has been particularly hard hit, with Mike Sherrard and Ray Alexander lost for the season. Sherrard broke a leg and Alexander suffered a broken wrist.

Four other wide receivers have been sidelined on different days with injuries.

Mike Renfro, the starting flanker, has a pulled hamstring.

Rod Barksdale, obtained in a trade from the Los Angeles Raiders, is a candidate for Sherrard's split end job but also has hamstring problems.

Running back Herschel Walker will miss Saturday's exhibition game in San Diego because of strained ligaments in his right knee. He could be out three weeks.

(37)


=== Page 69 of 90

# States continue to fry; Relief finally in sight

Post-Star 8/4/87
By Roger Petterson
Associated Press Writer

The heat wave blamed for 80 deaths chased people from golf courses and kept power plants straining Monday for a 17th day in the eastern two-thirds of the nation, but a cold front over the northern Plains promised some relief later in the week.

"It's like living in the tropics, it's getting to be a way of life," said police dispatcher Nancy Bolyard in Moline, Ill., where the high Sunday was 101.

"Sometimes you feel like you're suffocating," complained John Morgan of Topeka, Kan.

Heat and high humidity also pushed back into parts of the Northeast after about a week's respite, with New York City hitting 90. Norfolk, Va., had a high of 97 degrees.

A heat alert urging people to take it easy and check on the elderly was extended to Tuesday in Alabama. And the Tennessee Valley Authority ordered its offices in seven states to turn off lights and turn down air conditioners to help ease an expected record demand for electricity.

Special School District officials in St. Louis County, Mo., closed the district's extended school year program Monday because its buses are not air conditioned.

Record highs Monday included at Paducah, Ky., 84 at Alpena, Mich., an Sault Ste. Marie, Mich., on nadian border between la' rior and Huron.

Kansas City, Mo., hit and Little Rock, Ark. Arkansas its fifth day above 100. Nearly every Missouri and Kansas hit 100 or better on Sunday and Kansas reached a record 105. Little Rock's overnight low was a steamy 81, a record.

Some horses taken to Indiana for the Pan American Games were being shaved to cope with the heat because they had grown their winter coats in South America, Marie Donnelly, a volunteer at the Hoosier Horse Park near Edinburgh, said Monday. Temperatures were in the 90s Monday and Evansville hit 97.

Business was down at the Pasfield Park Golf Course at Springfield, Ill. as the heat kept golfers at hor said employee Kirk Anderson. just burning up out there," he estimating that business was at least 50 percent.

The Southwest Missour Aging had heat shelter ties in the Ozarks, Winston Bledsoe. " were open over t' many of them we said.

In St. Louis was 103, alm baseball g' nals and were tr nesses To tre a'

# Nader study says Bork rulings are predictably anti-consumer

Knight-Ridder
Post-Star 8/7/87

WASHINGTON -- Judge Robert H. Bork, the controversial nominee to the Supreme Court, voted consistently and in close cases against consumers and workers and in support of government agencies and businesses, according to a study released Thursday by a consumer organization headed by Ralph Nader.

And when the cases pitted businesses against government regulators, Bork sided with the businesses every time, the study said.

The Nader study also concluded that Bork invariably ruled against demonstrators claiming rights of free expression, repeatedly favored property rights over individual rights, wrote antitrust opinions detrimental to consumers and small businesses, and, in criminal cases, voted for the prosecution 96 percent of the time.

"The White House has been selling Judge Bork as a moderate, middle-of-the-road justice. Our review shows that if you're looking for a moderate, you are not going to find one in Judge Bork," said Alan B. Morrison, one of 10 lawyers who worked on the 149-page study for Nader's Public Citizen Litigation Group.

The Nader study was similar to one recently completed by law review editors at Columbia University Law School. It found that Bork cast "liberal" votes in only 10 percent of 42 non-unanimous decisions compared to 31 percent for the typical appeals judge appointed by President Reagan.

The Nader review of Bork's judicial record concentrated on 56 decisions that divided Bork and other appeals judges during his five years on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia.

"In 48 of 50 cases (involving federal agencies)," Judge Bork voted against the underdog," declared William B. Schultz, the Public Citizen lawyer who directed the study.

The study strongly suggested that Bork used a double standard in applying his philosophy of "judicial restraint," a guiding principle that, in most cases, would prevent a judge from interfering with government decisions.

The study found that Bork voted for the government in 26 of 28 divided rulings in cases filed by individuals and liberal public interest groups against the government. In contrast, he backed businesses in all eight split decisions in which businesses challenged government decisions.

(38


=== Page 70 of 90

# Bakker condemned by own denomination

Post-Star 8/8/87 (UFO "warning")

OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) - Members and leaders of Jim Bakker's denomination condemned the fallen evangelist Friday for his lavish lifestyle and for bringing "an emphasis on pleasure, prosperity and personal gain" into the religious community.

"We are deeply saddened, ashamed and repentant before God for these problems in our church family," said the Rev. G. Raymond Carlson, reading a statement from the executive presbytery of the Assemblies of God to a hushed national convention an estimated 15,000 people.

"Sadly, the convictions of holiness and personal piety have been eclipsed with self-interests and prosperity," the statement from the 13-member executive body said.

TV evangelist Jimmy Swaggart, who had pushed the charges against Bakker with officials, was to speak later to a foreign missions gathering.

Carlson, the 2.1 million-member denomination's general superintendent, said Bakker and his ex-PTL network colleague, Richard Dortch, spurned the church inquiry and their rights to appeal.

Both men, ousted afterward from the ministry, were to take part in the proceedings, either on a district level or on the national level.

"That door was left open to them throughout these proceedings," the account said. "Neither of them chose to avail themselves of these opportunities."

The massed church representatives, who only moments before had been singing and praying exuberantly, sat in silence as the brief statement was read. Afterward, there was no comment from the floor.

Bakker quit his television ministry in March after admitting a sexual encounter with a female church secretary, and the church in May revoked his ministerial credentials for adultery and alleged homosexual acts.

Dortch was deposed as a clergyman for arranging payments to the woman.

Urging church members to "seek the Lord in humility and repentance for his blessings and guidance," leaders of the denomination said in their statement:

"Creature comforts have become the idols of too many today. Even the religious community has been caught up in investigating finances of the PTL ministry as Bakker ran it, and a federal grand jury is scheduled to take up the case beginning Aug. 17.

Asked why none of the church delegates responded to their leaders' report, the denominational information secretary Juleen Turnage said:

"Our people are so sick of this thing, they feel it's been talked about too much and run into the ground."

The executive group, in their report, cautioned church members "to guard carefully against stating our personal opinions" on the Bakker case or similar matters. But that did not prevent individual delegates from talking to reporters.

# Soviet satellite to crash

Wichita Post-Star 8/10/87

UFOs - Space Work

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. (AP) - A Soviet satellite that never reached orbit after being launched Aug. 1 will crash into the south Pacific early Monday, military officials said.

Lt. Col. Ivan Pinnell, community relations officer at the North American Aerospace Defense Command, said Sunday that the satellite was expected to come to Earth about 1,500 miles east of New Zealand at 3:13 a.m. EDT.

The satellite was designed to pick up noises from outer space and had much scientific equipment on board, Pinnell said.

NASA

SOVIET SPACE PROGRAM

UFOs or Space Work Post-Star 8/10/87

39


=== Page 71 of 90

Reagan's Ability to Lead Nation At a Low, Critics and Friends Say

NY Times 6/28/87

By BERNARD WEINRAUB with GERALD M. BOYD Special to The New York Times

WASHINGTON, June 27 -- As Ronald Reagan nears his final year in the Oval Office, his ability to lead the nation has declined to the lowest point of his Presidency, according to Republican and Democratic legislators, Administration aides and friends of the President.

The growing consensus from a wide cross section of officials is that the prospects are dim for a resurgence of his Presidency without an arms control agreement with the Soviet Union or some other major achievement. Their assessment is that Mr. Reagan is unable to cope both personally and politically with a Congress controlled by Democrats as well as with the impact of the Iran-contra affair.

'Something's Gone Wrong'

"Something's gone wrong in the last six months or so," said one recent visitor to the Oval Office, who sees Mr. Reagan frequently. The comment reflected what some others, from legislators to confidants of Mr. Reagan and from White House officials to foreign diplomats, are also saying about him.

Although White House spokesmen and some Republican Congressional leaders sharply disagree, the mood of pessimism, most evident in recent months, goes beyond that which has traditionally encumbered a "lame duck" president.

It is a combination of changes both in the man himself and in the way he is being perceived, and it is attributed to several factors.

The Iran-contra affair, looming largest among these, is said to have seriously depressed Mr. Reagan in a deeply personal sense. The President's slippage in popularity, as reflected in public opinion polls, since the sale of arms to Iran and diversion of profits to the Nicaraguan rebels were disclosed last November has been troubling to Mr. Reagan because his favorable image among the American public had been something that energized him throughout his political life and provided a source of inner strength. Particularly troublesome is that polls show that more than half the public be-

Continued on Page 24, Column 1

Post-Star 11/1/87

AND I GUESS I SHOULD HAVE KNOWN ABOUT THE DIVERSION OF FUNDS TO THE CONTRAS... WE DID NOT TRADE ARMS FOR HOSTAGES!

AND I SHOULD HAVE BEEN MORE INVOLVED IN MY OWN ADMINISTRATION...

WELL, AT LEAST I WAS PROTECTED FROM POLITICAL EMBARRASSMENT!

OK, MAYBE WE DID A TEENY BIT...

Parapsychologists say something's out there

Post-Star 8/9/87

EDINBURGH, Scotland (AP) -- Scientists who investigate such mysteries as psychic spoon-bending, mind-reading and things that go bump in the night wound up an international conference Saturday saying there's something out there, but they aren't sure what.

"There is now enough information from research to suggest that some odd things do happen, but there's no cohesive theory as to why and how they happen," said American Professor Robert L. Morris of Edinburgh University.

Morris, 45, Britain's first professor of parapsychology, said that his science deals with "curious things that aren't explained."

"We don't know what the outcome of the many investigations will be and if it turns out that psychic phenomena are merely the application of known physics and biology, and can be explained in ordinary terms, well, that's fine," he said.

Morris, formerly of Syracuse University, joined 140 other scientists in the field to discuss their work at the 30th annual conference of the Parapsychological Association.

A note of caution about believing fantastic stories was sounded by Dr. John Beloff, a retired Edinburgh University psychologist who organized the meeting with Morris.

"I consider that excessive credulity does far more harm than excessive incredulity," said Beloff.

In one cited case, a Himalayan shaman or faith-healer persuaded one group of wheat seeds to germinate more abundantly than another group, seemingly by concentrating her thoughts on them, and under test conditions.

40


=== Page 72 of 90

# 'What's killing the dolphins?'

## Scientists investigate rash of Atlantic deaths

By Mark Jaffe
Knight-Ridder Post-Star 8/10/87

It began as a sad phenomenon - dead dolphin after dead dolphin washing up on beaches and in bays from New Jersey to Virginia. But it has now become a scientific mystery.

"What's killing the dolphins? Nobody knows. The whole thing has turned into one big detective story," Brian Gorman, a public affairs officer for the National Marine Fisheries Service, said last week.

Nearly 90 bottlenose dolphins have been found dead in the past month - 49 of them in South Jersey. Almost all the animals have had skin lesions, respiratory distress and fluid in their lungs, but there is no explanation as to what caused their deaths.

In an effort to answer the question, federal laboratories from Plum Island, to Madison, Wis., have been enlisted in the hunt.

Late last week, the mystery got its Sherlock Holmes in the person of John Geraci, a professor at the University of Guelph in Ontario, Canada. Geraci is a noted marine mammal pathologist.

He flew to Norfolk, Va., to direct the National Marine Fisheries Service inquiry. "In the field of marine mammal pathology, Geraci is one of the foremost, if not the foremost, expert in the world ... That's why we got him," Gorman said.

This weekend, the fisheries service, in cooperation with the Smithsonian Institution's Marine Mammals Center, began setting up a lab for Geraci and his crew.

"What they will be doing," Gorman explained, "is autopsies on these critters, some gross examinations, and sending tissue samples to other locations for analysis. One problem is that the weather is so warm and the water is so warm, if the animals are dead more than a few hours, they aren't very good for autopsies."

The only thorough autopsy to date has been performed by Douglas Roscoe, a New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection pathologist. Roscoe isolated a bacterium called Pasteurella multocida in the dead animal.

However, DEP spokesman James Staples said at the end of the week, "Roscoe still does not believe that the bacteria are causing the deaths. He is more inclined to think it's a virus. But he doesn't have an electron microscope, so other labs are going to have to do that work."

While answers are few, theories abound. The dolphin deaths have been linked to sewage pollution, industrial waste dumping in the ocean and radio microwaves from submarines.

Gorman said no cause had been ruled out. "It could be the result of a number of factors," he said, "including stress from the hot weather, a disease, a chemical in the water."

The continuing deaths have caused a lot of anxiety along the coast, said Bob Schoelkopf, director of the Marine Mammal Stranding Center in Brigantine, N.J.

"We've been getting all sorts of calls," Schoelkopf said. "Somebody came in with something they thought was 'plastic pollution' that might be causing the dolphins' deaths. It was eel grass.

"A woman in Ventnor (N.J.) called and said there was this mass of sewage pollution and that must be killing the dolphins. It was algae."

"The problem with almost every theory that can be drawn," said James Mead, director of the Smithsonian's Marine Mammal Center, "is that something doesn't fit. It is a frustrating puzzle."

In most years, about 13 dead dolphins are reported in the area between North Carolina and New Jersey. In the past month, however, there have been nearly 90 dead dolphins.

On Friday, the 49th dead dolphin in New Jersey was found at Stone Harbor. "It had been dead awhile," said the DEP's Staples, "so it was too rotten to do anything with."

Those animals found in better condition, including one in Delaware that died in the arms of a rescue worker, have been used to prepare tissue samples for a host of laboratories.

So far, most of these samples have been prepared by Schoelkopf and Roscoe. "It's good that Geraci is setting up a lab in Norfolk," Schoelkopf said, "because this way we'll get samples from a wider area."

The various labs will each be looking at a small piece of the puzzle. For example, the National Marine Fisheries lab in Charleston, S.C., will be testing for chemical pollutants. The U.S. Department of Agriculture lab in Plum Island, N.Y., will perform a virology analysis.

(41


=== Page 73 of 90

A stranded motorist stands on the trunk of his car after stalling in high water near Chicago Friday. Record rainfall in the Chicago area forced the closing of many roads. (AP Laserphoto)

# Chicago now wet windy city

UFD-2 Sun Attack Post-Star 8/15/87

CHICAGO (AP) -- A record 9.2 inches of rain soaked the Chicago area Friday, flooding homes and expressways, isolating O'Hare International Airport and knocking out power and telephone service to thousands of people.

At least one person died during the storm, which hit hardest in northern Cook County, which encompasses Chicago, and Du Page County to the northwest. Some 300 people fled their homes, and at least one hospital, in suburban Des Plaines, had to evacuate patients.

Gov. James R. Thompson declared the two counties disaster areas, authorizing state aid for residents.

The governor also activated 200 National Guard troops to provide security and aid in evacuation efforts.

Flooding closed the Kennedy Expressway leading out of Chicago to O'Hare, making it "virtually impossible" to reach the airport from the nation's third-largest city, said Marilyn Katz of the city's Department of Aviation.

American Airlines spokesman Steve McGregor said the airport was "an island just surrounded by water."

He said as many as 75 percent of American Airlines' flights would be canceled; United Airlines also suspended most operations until 8 p.m.

"A Herculean effort is being maintained by hundreds of people at O'Hare to keep it open, and it is open," said Federal Aviation Association spokesman Mort Edelstein.

One runway was open for landings, and two partial runways were open for takeoffs, he said, adding, "City crews and FAA personnel are working doggedly to get those runways cleared of water and water away from navigational aids."

Even the weather service couldn't escape the storm. "We're stranded," said meterologist Bob Collins, noting 3 feet of water surrounded the National Weather Service building near the airport and 6 inches of water had crept inside.

More rain was forecast for the weekend.

Collins blamed the storm on an unstable air mass that socked in the Chicago area, caused by cool air to the north and warm, very moist air to the south.

The same system dumped heavy rains on parts of Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, Wisconsin and Michigan, where another traffic death was reported.

(42)


=== Page 74 of 90

Post-Star, Glens Falls, N.Y. Friday, August 14, 1987

# Canadian woman finds neighbor's boa constrictor in toilet

my dream last night!

HAMILTON, Ontario (AP) -- When Laurie Lamothe looked into her toilet bowl and two eyes looked back, she knew she had a problem.

It turns out that a neighbor's pet boa has taken refuge in the drainpipes under the Lamothes' bathroom. The snake popped up one day in their toilet bowl.

"I looked down and saw this pair of eyes looking at me and a tongue going in and out," said Mrs. Lamothe. "I shouted to my husband, 'There's a snake in the bathroom!'"

Since then, the Hamilton Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals has removed the toilet in the Lamothes' 12th-story apartment and tried to lure the 6-foot-6-inch snake into the open by placing dead rats on the floor.

The snake ate one of the rats when no one was watching but disappeared back down the drain.

"It's still in the same place but we're pretty confident we'll get it out in the next day or so," SPCA official Robert Morrison said Wednesday.

The snake's owner will face a fine of about $40 for keeping an illegal pet in the 15-story building, unless he removes it from the city as soon as it is recovered, Morrison said.

Meanwhile, neighbors say they are nervous about using their toilets.

Mrs. Lamothe told reporters she has always had a fear of snakes. She said she was told that boa constrictors don't bite. "They just strangle."

# 7 charged in connection with rash of area thefts

By Scot Montrey
Staff Intern Post-Star
8/14/87

GREENWICH -- Four area teens and two men in their 20s were charged Wednesday and another man was charged Thursday in connection with "numerous burglaries and larcenies in the Greenwich-Middle Falls area," Washington County Sheriff's Department officials said Thursday.

The department, working with the Washington County District Attorney's office, arrested the seven, five of whom were issued tickets ordering them to appear in Greenwich Town Court this coming Tuesday, officials said.

The burglaries, according to Cpl. George Bell of the Sheriff's Department, are believed to reach back to November of 1986.

Michael Scott Sanders, 18, of Main Street in Middle Falls, was charged with third-degree burglary. He was arraigned before Greenwich Town Justice John Pemrick and released on his own recognizance to appear Aug. 18, Bell said.

Seward D. Habschi, 20, of Farley Road in Hudson Falls, was charged Thursday night with third-degree burglary, Bell said. He was arraigned in Jackson Town Court before Judge Francis Ackley -- no Greenwich justice was available at the time, Bell said -- and remanded to the Washington County Jail in lieu of a $500 cash or $1,000 bond bail. Habschi was scheduled to appear in the Greenwich Town Court on Aug. 18, Bell also said.

Peter Michael Perkins, 24, also of Main Street, Middle Falls, was charged with fourth-degree criminal mischief. He was issued a ticket to appear Aug. 18 in the Greenwich Town Court, police said.

Also charged was Harry James Sanders, 19, of Main Street, Middle Falls, on a charge of fifth-degree criminal possession of stolen property. He was issued an appearance ticket, police said.

Robert Lee Sanders, 21, of Main Street, Middle Falls, was charged with petit larceny. He was issued an appearance ticket, police said.

Dino Gabriel Facin, 27, of 37 Gray Ave., Greenwich, was charged with fifth-degree criminal possession of stolen property. He was also issued an appearance ticket, police said.

Also charged with third-degree burglary was a 14-year-old boy from Middle Falls. His case will be handled by the Washington County Family Court, officials said.

# President's helicopter in near-collision

The Associated Press
8/14/87

SANTA BARBARA, Calif. -- An unidentified airplane was involved in a near-collision with President Reagan's helicopter as it approached his ranch north of here Thursday, presidential spokesman Marlin Fitzwater said.

Fitzwater said the pilot of the small airplane was taken into custody as he landed at John Wayne Airport in Orange County, about 50 to 60 miles south of here, after being chased by another government helicopter.

He said the pilot of the presidential helicopter, Marine One, reported that the plane flew within 250 feet of the chopper and about 150 feet below it.

The agency has begun an investigation, said Russ Tornquist, an FAA spokesman in Los Angeles.

8/14/87 (Washington State)

# Elusive python still at large in Fruit Valley

There is still no sign of Sugar, a 10-foot Burmese python that slithered out of her Fruit Valley home Saturday night.

The snake belongs to Todd Lawer and Carol Stuber, 2105 W. 28th St. Stuber said the snake is not dangerous, but said people should not pick her up if they find her. Mike Jones, a Clark County Animal Control officer, cautioned that the snake could hiss and bite if scared.

Lawer and Stuber have distributed fliers about the lost snake through their neighborhood, asking people to call them at 693-9970 if Sugar is seen. They are offering a reward of at least $50 to anyone who finds her.

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=== Page 75 of 90

# More storms hit north Illinois

Post-Star 8/17/87

CHICAGO (AP) - New thunderstorms hit flood-soaked northeastern Illinois on Sunday, two days after a record downpour caused the Chicago area's second major flood in a year, and hundreds of people remained stranded in shelters.

Water receded in some areas to the north and northwest of Chicago, enabling homeowners to start cleaning up mud and repairing damage, officials said. But the western suburbs had to keep bailing out as runoff gorged streams.

"It's just backing up in the streets because it has nowhere to go," said Tom Mefford, deputy coordinator of the Du Page County Emergency Services Disaster Agency. "We're closing down some roads because of rain right now."

He said some volunteers used rowboats and motorboats to travel flooded streets in some western Chicago suburbs to rescue any residents still stranded in their homes.

Hundreds of people remained in temporary shelters in DuPage and Cook counties Sunday morning when thunderstorms began again, two days after a storm swamped the area with 9.3 inches of rain, the heaviest 24-hour rainfall in 100 years of record-keeping.

Sunday's storms, accompanied by high wind and some hail, were expected to dump an additional half-inch to 1 inch of rain on the area, said National Weather Service spokesman Len Whitcomb.

But Whitcomb said forecasters believed that Salt Creek and the Des Plaines River would continue to recede in the western suburbs.

By Sunday afternoon, Salt Creek had fallen 2.1 feet below its flood stage of 7.5 feet at Rolling Meadows, northwest of downtown Chicago, officials said. The Des Plaines River also was receding, but remained 3½ feet above its flood stage of 6 feet in the western suburb of Riverside.

American Red Cross assessment teams estimated that 3,025 homes were damaged by water, and 1,025 of them sustained major damage with at least 4 feet of water in the basement or 4 inches on the first floor, spokesman Fred Sabine said in Chicago.

Many of those homes were damaged by flooding last October.

Sabine said the agency had asked for 20 food vans to tour the flooded areas, in addition to a couple already in service, and 3,000 clean-up kits to distribute to residents. The kits contain a plastic pail, mop, sponges and a bottle of disinfectant detergent for scrubbing sludge-filled homes, he said.

Gov. James R. Thompson, decked out in Des Plaines Fire Department hip waders, toured the flood-ravaged areas Saturday after declaring both Cook and DuPage counties state disaster areas a day earlier. The declaration allows property owners to seek reduced tax assessments because of flood damage.

John Plunk, chief of operations for the state disaster agency, said damage assessment teams made up of state officials and members of the Federal Emergency Management Agency would tour the area Monday and inspect damage. If federal aid is granted, it probably would take the form of low-interest loans for repairing property damage, he said.

In Riverside, Cheryl Callahan arrived home from vacation Sunday morning to find her home surrounded and swamped by water.

"Washers and dryers can be replaced," she moaned. "It's all the photo albums and hand-made Christmas ornaments."

Another Riverside resident grumbled about the spectators driving around snapping photographs.

"They've been sightseeing all weekend," said the man, who refused to give his name. "Twenty-five cents a head, and you could pay for the clean-up."

At the waterlogged Butler National Golf Club in Oak Brook, officials postponed Monday's round of the Chick Evans 25th Annual Memorial Pro-America tournament. Most of the club's 160 acres were under water, they said.

TAKE US TO YOUR LEADER!...

GET SERIOUS! WE WATCHED THE IRAN-CONTRA HEARINGS!...

MIKE Luckovich
COPLEY NEWS SERVICE
Times-Picayune

Post-Star 8/17/87

43


=== Page 76 of 90

More storms hit north Illinois

Rock-Star 8/17/87

CHICAGO (AP) - New thunderstorms hit flood-soaked northeastern Illinois on Sunday, two days after a record downpour caused the Chicago area's second major flood in a year, and hundreds of people remained stranded in shelters.

Water receded in some areas to the north and northwest of Chicago, enabling homeowners to start cleaning up mud and repairing damage, officials said. But the western suburbs had to keep bailing out as runoff gorged streams.

"It's just backing up in the streets because it has nowhere to go," said Tom Mefford, deputy coordinator of the Du Page County Emergency Services Disaster Agency. "We're closing down some roads because of rain right now."

He said some volunteers used rowboats and motorboats to travel flooded streets in some western Chicago suburbs to rescue any residents still stranded in their homes.

Hundreds of people remained in temporary shelters in DuPage and Cook counties Sunday morning when thunderstorms began again, two days after a storm swamped the area with 9.3 inches of rain, the heaviest 24-hour rainfall in 100 years of record-keeping.

Sunday's storms, accompanied by high wind and some hail, were expected to dump an additional half-inch to 1 inch of rain on the area, said National Weather Service spokesman Len Whitcomb.

But Whitcomb said forecasters believed that Salt Creek and the Des Plaines River would continue to recede in the western suburbs.

By Sunday afternoon, Salt Creek had fallen 2.1 feet below its flood stage of 7.5 feet at Rolling Meadows, northwest of downtown Chicago, officials said. The Des Plaines River also was receding, but remained 3½ feet above its flood stage of 6 feet in the western suburb of Riverside.

American Red Cross assessment teams estimated that 3,025 homes were damaged by water, and 1,025 of them sustained major damage with at least 4 feet of water in the basement or 4 inches on the first floor, spokesman Fred Sabine said in Chicago.

Many of those homes were damaged by flooding last October.

Sabine said the agency had asked for 20 food vans to tour the flooded areas, in addition to a couple already in service, and 3,000 clean-up kits to distribute to residents. The kits contain a plastic pail, mop, sponges and a bottle of disinfectant detergent for scrubbing sludge-filled homes, he said.

Gov. James R. Thompson, decked out in Des Plaines Fire Department hip waders, toured the flood-ravaged areas Saturday after declaring both Cook and DuPage counties state disaster areas a day earlier. The declaration allows property owners to seek reduced tax assessments because of flood damage.

John Plunk, chief of operations for the state disaster agency, said damage assessment teams made up of state officials and members of the Federal Emergency Management Agency would tour the area Monday and inspect damage. If federal aid is granted, it probably would take the form of low-interest loans for repairing property damage, he said.

In Riverside, Cheryl Callahan arrived home from vacation Sunday morning to find her home surrounded and swamped by water.

"Washers and dryers can be replaced," she moaned. "It's all the photo albums and hand-made Christmas ornaments."

Another Riverside resident grumbled about the spectators driving around snapping photographs.

"They've been sightseeing all weekend," said the man, who refused to give his name. "Twenty-five cents a head, and you could pay for the clean-up."

At the waterlogged Butler National Golf Club in Oak Brook, officials postponed Monday's round of the Chick Evans 25th Annual Memorial Pro-America tournament. Half of the club's 160 acres were under water, they said.

TAKE US TO YOUR LEADER!...

GET SERIOUS! WE WATCHED THE IRAN-CONTRA HEARINGS!...

MIKE Luckovich
COPLEY NEWS SERVICE
Times-Picayune

Rock-Star 8/17/87

43


=== Page 77 of 90

FRIDAY, AUGUST 14, 1987

TED Columbian

# Reagan copter buzzed

## Airplane in near collision is from Vancouver

SANTA BARBARA, Calif. (AP) -- The Federal Aviation Administration today revoked the license of a former Vancouver pilot who flew a small airplane dangerously close to President Reagan's helicopter, the White House said.

The license of Ralph W. Myers of Lake Oswego, Ore., was revoked for "careless and reckless operation of an aircraft" and for violating the restricted air space over Reagan's ranch in the Santa Ynez Mountains, presidential spokesman Marlin Fitzwater said today.

The airplane was rented at Vancouver's Pearson Air Park.

Earlier, the Secret Service said no criminal charges would be filed against Myers, who flew his plane within several hundred feet of the president's helicopter Thursday afternoon, forcing the chopper pilot to take evasive action.

White House Chief of Staff Howard Baker said he spoke with Reagan today and the president "did not seem particularly upset" about the incident.

Asked to describe to what extent Reagan had been endangered, Baker said: "I suppose there's a fair amount of danger when a plane comes that close to a helicopter."

Secret Service interviews "showed there was no criminal intent on the part of the pilot or the passenger and subsequently no arrests were made," said Rich Adams, an agency spokesman in Washington.

He refused to disclose the pilot's explanation for how the incident occurred, but said, "The pilot was disoriented, according to him, and entered into a restricted airspace."

Reagan and aides with him did not notice the Piper Archer air-

Please see Plane, Page A2

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=== Page 78 of 90

# Storm pelts Fort Edward

(town by us)

By Eric Dexheimer and Michael Kilian
Staff Writers

7/12/87

FORT EDWARD - Violent winds and rains swept through downtown Fort Edward Saturday afternoon - cutting a narrow swath of destruction that tore the roofs off of buildings, uprooted trees and sent torrents of water streaming down roads.

Branches, leaves and tar roofing tiles littered Broadway Avenue in the village in the wake of the storm, which one resident described as "15 minutes of hell."

At least a dozen trees, ripped out of the ground by the high winds, lay on the ground, across streets and on top of crushed cars.

"It was dark, brown, like a twister. We ran," said a woman who had been caught in the 5:30 p.m. storm with several of her children.

"We couldn't see two feet in front of the car, I'll tell you that," Fort Edward Patrolman Mike Smith said Saturday evening.

A caller to The Post-Star said a tornado had passed through Fort Edward. But National Weather Service forecaster Joseph Palko said this could not be confirmed. Television Channel 6 in Albany also received a call reporting a tornado in Fort Edward, Palko said.

The weather station closest to Fort Edward is at the Warren County Airport. That station recorded wind gusts of up to 25 miles per hour, Palko said. The temperature dropped from 89 degrees to 75 degrees just before the thunderstorm, he said.

Tornadoes are not common occurrences in the Capital District region, Palko said.

Patrolman Smith said no storm-related injuries were reported.

"Just a lot of trees were down," Smith said. "We had two roofs blown off."

Ernest Stanley Sr., owner of E & A Imports in Fort Edward, was inside his auto parts store when the storm hit and lifted close to one-half of his roof tiles off the building and scattered them to all sides.

"It was just like a big suction," Stanley said, making a whistling sound with his mouth to approximate the noise made as his roof flew off. "I'll tell you, we could hear it."

"My dog was sleeping on the floor and flew straight up," he said.

A spot damage estimate by local construction worker Alexander Anderson put damages to Stanley's roof at $1,000.

Second and Hill Broadway curve, inside the lapsed duration of wood roof draped the street.

Patrolmen were down but that a by 8 p.m. tered power trees throughout Saratoga and Washington counties. A woman on Dean Road in Kingsbury said her power had not been restored as of 9 p.m. Saturday.

A Niagara Mohawk spokesman could not be reached for comment where we live

Saturday evening.

"It was raining so hard you couldn't see anything," Werner Fuchs, a New Jersey boater returning from Lake Champlain through Fort Edward, said. "All of a sudden the boat started bouncing back and forth and the (mooring) lines loosened."

Minutes later, Fuchs said, he heard cracking as two huge trees lurched to the ground just yards from where his boat was tied at the Yacht Basin.

Fuchs explained how "a waterfall of water" gushed off the embankment after running down the hill from Broadway and Main Street.

"I call myself extremely lucky," Fuchs said. "It was not funny."

Patrolman Smith said attempts to contact state waterways officials about removing the two trees from the canal had been unsuccessful. "It's (the canal) passable, but it's (the trees) something they're going to have to take out of there," Smith said.

Further up the street, the stump of a brick chimney on the top of another building stood in the midst of a pile of rubble, another structural victim of the storm.

# Full shuttle-rocket test to be postponed again

8/29/87

BRIGHAM CITY, Utah (AP) - A critical first full-scale test of the redesigned space shuttle rocket will be postponed still further while engineers sort out problems that caused the firing to be aborted three times, officials said Friday.

In a joint announcement, NASA and rocket manufacturer Morton Thiokol Inc. said engineers will conduct several countdown dry runs to test systems that malfunctioned on Thursday. This work is expected to take most of today.

A decision will be made tonight on a day for the test firing, the announcement said.

The statement said officials are working "at a measured pace and won't reschedule the test until they are satisfied that all problems identified yesterday are fully understood and have been resolved."

On Thursday, officials had said the test would be conducted today.

Thiokol engineers conducted three countdowns toward ignition of the test rocket on Thursday and were forced to stop short of the firing each time. Twice the countdown was carried to within seconds before it was halted.

The announcement said the final test attempt failure Thursday was traced to a miscommunication between two computers which are part of the test stand equipment.

Two other countdowns were stopped by a broken water main and by an electronic malfunction.

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=== Page 79 of 90

# Asia stricken with floods, droughts

Post-Star 9/3/87

BANGKOK, Thailand (AP) -- Asia's rice paddies and wheat fields -- vital in feeding half the world's population -- are being hit by drought and floods that have taken more than 1,000 lives and caused billions of dollars in damage.

The failure of Asia's monsoon, which normally waters fields during the second third of each year, has left parched a wide arc of the continent from Sri Lanka to the Philippines and northern China this year.

At least nine countries have been severely affected, and Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi said India was facing "the biggest calamity of the century."

In Bangladesh, the government says 20 million of the nation's 103 million people have been affected by what it calls the worst flooding in 40 years.

Reports of casualties compiled by The Associated Press bureaus over the past two months include the deaths of more than 200 people in floods, mudslides and typhoons in China. Typhoon Thelma and heavy rains that struck South Korea in mid-July left at least 350 people dead, and about 80 died as two typhoons struck the Philippines.

# 11,000 people fight fires

Post-Star 9/3/87

National Guardsmen were called out Wednesday and firefighters flew in from around the nation to help weary crews battling fires in four Western states that blackened 137,000 acres and forced some people to flee their homes.

More than 300 California National Guardsmen were summoned to help in hard-hit Tuolumne County along with aircraft and 90 trucks, said Guard spokeswoman Sgt. Carolyn Hamilton.

Lightning-spawned fires since Sunday had charred 89,115 acres of brush and timber in northern California, swelling by 20,000 acres in less than 24 hours.

"There are now 910 fires going," said John Carter at the joint state-federal fire information center in Sacramento, Calif. "We have 11,000 people fighting the fires."

Oregon had more than 600 fires, charring at least 31,000 acres.

The biggest single fire, in the central Idaho mountains, was a 32-day-old, 15,000-acre blaze being allowed to burn in extremely rugged terrain inside a wilderness area: Firefighters at Pocatello, Idaho, were close to containing a fire that destroyed one house and threatened others on the outskirts of the city.

Firefighters from several states were on their way to join the battle against the Oregon fires, including crews from Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, Tennessee and the Northeast. At least eight houses had been destroyed.

"We would definitely have to characterize the fire situation in southwest Oregon as in a blowup state today," said Ron DeHart of the Salem-based Oregon Unified Coordination Group, which coordinates state and federal efforts. "It does not look good. We were really hoping for a mistake in the forecast that calls for some winds ... Otherwise, we may be doing an eyeball-to-flames standoff."

# It gets pretty hot at the forest fire center

BOISE, Idaho (AP) -- The frenzy has eased somewhat at the nation's forest fire command post during America's greatest firefighting mobilization ever, a battle against fires that have burned more than 1,100 square miles of Western range and timber.

"It's settled down to a steady slog. We've contained 1,000 fires," said Arnold Hartigan, spokesman for the Boise Interagency Fire Center.

But scores still burn out of control, and Hartigan added, "Some areas will have flames until the snow flies."

Since moving to full alert late last month, 35 logistics specialists at the federal center have worked around the clock in 12-hour shifts at the heart of a 55-acre complex that serves as the nation's clearinghouse for fire information, supplies and firefighters.

The center has the authority to tap all available resources of the U.S. Agriculture and Interior departments.

"We gather intelligence from all agencies to prevent any one agency from tying up resources," Hartigan said. "We're like a giant hardware store. You call, we have it."

Lightning-sparked blazes went wild across the West beginning Aug. 28, and within a week Fire Center specialists dispatched over 22,000 firefighters and hundreds of tons of equipment and supplies, including over 1,000 bulldozers and trucks and dozens of air tankers and helicopters.

"It's unprecedented as far as the number of supplies, manpower and equipment dispatched," Hartigan said. "We were just bombarded."

An estimated $5 million a day was being spent in the battle against the fires, mainly in northern California and southern Oregon.

The frantic operations at the center have eased somewhat as firefighters slowly gain control, but there are still half-eaten pizzas and other remnants of meals eaten on the run.


=== Page 80 of 90

National Scene

Post-Star 9/10/87

# Justice Marshall: Reagan's civil rights record deplorable

Knight-Ridder

WASHINGTON -- Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall's stinging assessment of President Reagan's civil rights performance drew a sharp response Wednesday from the White House, where chief spokesman Marlin Fitzwater said the administration "would not back away from our civil rights record one inch."

Marshall, in a rare off-the-bench criticism of the president, said in a televised interview that Reagan ranked at "the bottom" among presidents in protecting and advancing civil rights.

"Honestly," Marshall said, "I think he's down with Hoover and that group -- Wilson. When we (blacks) really didn't have a chance."

the country" -- and cited the 1986 tax reform law that he said removed the federal tax burden from millions of low-income persons.

He also said that Reagan's proposals to help low-income families buy public housing facilities and to receive cash vouchers to pay for their children's tuition at better schools would help minorities.

The first and only black person to serve on the Supreme Court, Marshall said Reagan, as the "gatekeeper" of fairness and justice in America, had neglected his job.

"I don't care whether he's the president, the governor, the mayor, the sheriff," Marshall said. "Whoever calls the shots determines whether we have integration, segregation or decency ... That starts exactly with the president."

Fitzwater insisted that Reagan plained for years that the president has attempted to undercut minority hiring programs, school busing to achieve integration, the voting rights act and other efforts to help minorities. They also claim Reagan has appointed too few blacks and other minorities to high-ranking posts in the government and judiciary.

The Justice Department, for example, has joined several cases in federal courts to argue against affirmative-action employment standards, contending that employers should exercise total "colorblindness" in hiring and promoting employees.

Justice also sided with the Norfolk, Va., school board in its legal challenging the use of busing to achieve racial integration in its schools. And it has attempted to

Reagan's buddy

# Nofziger implicated in insider trading

Post-Star 9/10/87

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Former managers of Wedtech Corp. and ex-White House political director Lyn Nofziger unloaded $10 million of stock in a possible insider trading scheme, Wedtech's recently hired outside legal counsel testified Wednesday.

The scandal-plagued South Bronx defense contractor's top officers, including founder John Mariotta, also "looted" the corporate treasury and set up a slush fund to exploit a Small Business Administration program aimed at helping minority contractors, Martin Pollner told the Senate Governmental Affairs subcommittee on oversight of government management.

Relying on records supplied by Pollner, the panel said Nofziger, his lobbying partner Mark Bragg, and five Wedtech executives sold 1 million shares of Wedtech stock for $10 years; most of its prior government contracts were not profitable; and it was subsisting on money improperly obtained from public offerings of Wedtech securities and progress payments received from the Department of Defense," Pollner said.

The privately held company went public in 1983 in securities offerings marked "from the very beginning by material distortions of the financial conditions of the company," said Pollner. "More than one-half of the $162 million raised from the general public was raised in 1986, long after the time the company became insolvent."

Pollner said the company has paid more than $10 million in cash since 1982 to politically well-connected consultants, accountants and law firms to help it obtain government contracts and to maintain its

# Firefighters losing control of last Western blazes

Post-Star 9/10/87

The Associated Press

Thick smoke and changing weather hindered efforts Wednesday to contain the last big forest fires still burning in the West, where more than 1,000 square miles are charred and some fires were spreading again.

"It's sad to see Mother Nature doing this," lamented California National Guardsman Dennis Berry.

A layer of cool, humid air that had been holding dense smoke close to the ground and not fanning the flames in northern California and southern Oregon appeared to be lifting, with temperatures climbing, said California fire information officer Steve Smith.

There was a chance of thunderstorms in Oregon, which would kick up wind, said Kathy Aplin of the Oregon Unified Coordinating Group.

In Washington, steep terrain allowed burning logs to roll past firebreaks on the Olympic Peninsula.

In California, 76 firefighters have been injured, dozens suffering from smoke inhalation, said Art Wirtz at the Sacramento fire command center. An additional 30 firefighters had been injured in Oregon. Three have died in vehicle accidents, two blamed on the dense smoke.

Smoke continued to prevent the use of aircraft to drop water and fire retardant in Oregon, fire spokesman Ron DeHart said. Fog grounded water-dumping aircraft Wednesday in Washington.

The smoke was so bad in some parts of northern California that doctors equated breathing to smoking more than three packs of cigarettes a day.

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=== Page 81 of 90

# Leaves begin to paint New England's palette early this year

By John Donnelly
Associated Press Writer

MONTPELIER, Vt. -- The annual show of brilliant fall foliage has opened early in northern New England, and foresters suspect dry conditions are responsible for the splashes of color.

But tourism officials said Wednesday the colors that draw an estimated 3 million "leaf peepers" to the region will last as long as usual -- mid-October in southern parts -- even with the early start.

Vermont and New Hampshire have had an unusually dry summer, which foresters say puts additional stress on trees and could be a factor in bringing out the color a week or two ahead of schedule. Maine, which has had fewer reports of early foliage, has had an average amount of rain this year.

"Because we've had an unusually dry summer, the roots of trees trying to draw nutrients have had a very difficult job," said Conrad Motkya, Vermont's director of forests. "To me, common sense says there is probably a relationship there with color, too, causing the leaves to turn a little early."

The early oranges, yellows and reds on hardwood leaves in the north woods are startling natives.

"There are colors all over, from the valley floor to the tops of the mountains," said Arlo Sterner, a county forester in Wolcott, 30 miles north of Vermont's capital.

Sterner, 61, who is one of Vermont's 30 volunteer spotters who give foliage reports twice a week to the state during the season, said he has never seen foliage come so early.

"This year, it happened all of a sudden," he said. "It seemed odd to us because it shouldn't happen for a couple of weeks and here it is, bingo. I think it's the dry weather and the trees are a little bit stressed. When they get stressed, they show color early."

In Vermont's northeast corner, another spotter, forester George Buzzell of Orleans, said Wednesday foliage was at 40 percent in high elevations. In the valleys, he put foliage at 10 percent to 25 percent.

Buzzell predicted that because Vermont's soil conditions were so varied, the foliage season would not be shorter.

"I feel if the weather is kind and not much heavy wind, we should be in for an extra long treat of good color this fall," Buzzell said.

Tourism officials hope the early foliage is big business for New England.

# Shuttle rocket cracks after test

HUNTSVILLE, Ala. (AP) -- A NASA official said Saturday that a five-foot-long section of the redesigned shuttle booster rocket cracked after a test firing, but the trial run was still "totally successful."

Gerald Smith, manager of the booster program at the Marshall Space Flight Center, said the crack was caused by a defective cooling system that is used only in ground tests.

"It occurs after the test," he said. "It has nothing to do with the actual design or the performance of the motor."

Marshall spokesman Ed Medal said the problem would in no way change NASA's plans to launch another shuttle flight in June 1988, although the damaged rocket segment could not be used in future tests.

The crack was caused by molten propellant residue described as "aluminum slag," which the cooling system failure allowed to "just sit there and cook" after it collected in the booster during the test, Smith said.

"The problem occurs only in horizontal ground firings," said Medal. A rocket in flight expels the residue through a motor nozzle, he said.

"These segments, after we test, can be recycled and used again. In this case it will not be," said Smith, who called the test "totally successful."

# Reagan proud of pact

## Soviet calls it success for all

By Terence Hunt
AP White House Correspondent

WASHINGTON -- President Reagan, trumpeting a long-awaited breakthrough in arms talks, announced an "agreement in principle" Friday to ban all U.S. and Soviet intermediate-range nuclear missiles, setting the stage for the first superpower summit in America in 14 years.

It would be the first nuclear arms pact in Reagan's presidency and the first ever to ban an entire class of nuclear weapons.

The tentative pact was thrashed out in three days of intensive talks between Secretary of State George Shultz and Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze.

Shevardnadze called it "a common success for all mankind, for all civilization." Shultz said it was "an important beginning" in arms control.


=== Page 82 of 90

# Agencies fear another Ethiopian famine

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Relief agencies are gearing up to ship emergency food supplies to Ethiopia, where officials said Thursday they fear a summer drought could create a famine similar to the one in which nearly one million people died in 1984-1985.

"What we are facing is a resurgence of a very severe situation," said Charles La Muniere, director of emergency operations in Africa for the United Nations in New York. "We have to begin to fill the pipeline now."

Officials knew that a drought in June and July coupled with locust infestations would probably cause problems.

The concern has turned to alarm recent weeks after a U.S. Agency for International Development team toured the country, reporting massive crop losses in some areas.

"If the worst scenario came to, we could experience crop losses as much as 1984," La Muniere said.

The goal of the United Nations, he said, is to help the Ethiopian government ensure that people will not be forced to relocate into food camps similar to the ones that attracted worldwide attention three years ago.

An AID official, speaking on condition he not be identified, predicted the impending famine will be "smaller but still of the same order of gravity."

Roughly 7.5 million Ethiopians, nearly one-fourth the population, were at risk of starvation in 1984-1985 famine, he said. The death toll from that event "could be as high as a million," he said.

But officials do not know the number of people who might be in trouble later this year because the Marxist government of Ethiopia has not turned over figures from its survey.

"We weren't able to pin that down," the AID official said. Spokesmen from private voluntary organizations also complained about the difficulty of getting accurate information from Ethiopia.

A spokesman at the Ethiopian Embassy did not return a telephone call to answer questions.

Food shortages should be quantifiable once people begin to harvest crops between mid-September and mid-November, officials said. Although rains have started in Ethiopia, they have come too late to save crops in some places, particularly Eritrea and Tigre, two northern provinces where separatists have waged an insurgency against the central government for years.

Eritrea's crops apparently are a "write-off," according to the AID official, who said that "Tigre is almost as bad."

Other areas where food shortages are expected to become a problem are: Wollo, Hararaghe, Sidamo, Shoa and Gama Gofu, officials said.

Even without a drought or locust plague, Ethiopia would experience a grain deficit of 190,000 metric tons.

But George Wirt, a spokesman for CARE, a relief organization also has long-term development projects in Ethiopia, said shortages are expected to exceed that.

Center, called the situation extremely critical, primarily in California and southwest Oregon.

"In the national park situation, we're very fearful that they might get into the giant sequoias, which are an irreplaceable resource," he said.

California, Oregon and Idaho bore the brunt of the fires. By mid-day Thursday:

* 12,975 firefighters were battling 1,116 fires which had burned more than 204,000 acres in California.
* 3,500 people fought fires totaling 52,000 acres in Oregon.
* 600 firefighters contended with 23,000 acres of range and forest fires in Idaho.

Wyoming.

The fires were started by thousands of lightning strikes spawned by late-summer thunderstorms.

"It continues to be a critical situation," said LaVon Perez of the U.S. Forest Service in California. "The forecasters say we're not going to get as many lightning strikes today -- but they said that yesterday, too, and we had more than 1,400 additional strikes -- and we are expecting winds of 20 to 35 mph, and they tell us it will not begin to cool until the weekend."

An estimated 8,000 persons were evacuated from nearly a dozen rural communities in California, more than half of them in Tuolumne County near the north-central part of the state. Plans were being made for possible evacuation of five small Siskiyou County communities as a series of timber fires which have been burning uninhabited areas since the weekend approached homes along State Route 96 near the Oregon border.

Clayton said the biggest single fire consumed 22,000 acres in Lassen National Forest in Modoc County. However, a complex of 17 fires had roared over 30,000 acres in Mendocino and Lake counties and another series burned 38,000 acres in Tuolumne and Mariposa counties.

Five large fires were contained in the last 24 hours, Clayton said, including a 3,750-acre blaze in Modoc County.

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=== Page 83 of 90

To be free, you must care

Post-Star 9/2/87

The opposite of love is not hate but apathy, and thus the best evidence of people's lack of patriotism is not active opposition to a particular policy but indifference to all public policy issues.

Former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Jeane Kirkpatrick, put it well, as she often does.

"In Paradise Lost," she said, "Dante reserved the lowest rung of Hell for those who do not care -- for those who, confronted by great questions, are uninterested; who, faced with great deeds, are unmoved; who, offered great opportunities, feel no challenge; who, endowed with freedom and power, make no use of it; the kind of men who, observing a battle between tyrants and those who would be free, remain indifferent."

Great questions, great deeds, battles between tyrants and those who would be free, and freedom and power are all on the plates of Americans today. If you cannot feel the excitement and challenge of these times, then you are a dead soul indeed.

I don't think many Americans have dead souls but many of their leaders do, as do much of the intelligentsia. Thus, there are two Americas -- one made up of ordinary people who still have ideals and aspirations and convictions and the other made up of people who are, for all intents and purposes, nihilists.

The nihilist believes in nothing, aspires to nothing. His psyche is rooted in death, not in life. He cannot distinguish any longer between the heroic and the bizarre, between inspiration and stimulation. He is unmoved by everything and seeks only to distract and amuse himself until death, which he sees as the end of all human activity, relieves him of boredom.

To such people it really is a matter of indifference whether people are free or ruled by tyrants so long as they themselves are not personally inconvenienced. They have lost the capacity to laugh or to cry. "What can I do?" is their standard response to any problem, not as a real question, but as a statement of intention to do nothing.

These people, when they see the Mona Lisa, speculate that her mouth is closed because her teeth were probably rotten or that the model was a whore or a peasant. Without a price tag, they have no idea what the value of anything is. They have become a slough of stagnant water off the mainstream of humanity's struggle toward a better existence.

It ought to matter to every American whether a child who comes into this world is free to seek his or her highest dreams or is born into slavery.

It ought to matter to every American whether a family which works hard can gain from that labor or be robbed of it.

It ought to matter to every American whether people are free to follow their conscience in a search for God or whether they will be commanded at gunpoint to believe only what the holders of the guns decree.

It ought to matter to every American whether people can sit down at their evening meal or chat with their neighbors without fear, or if they must hourly dread the official visit.

That is what the American Constitution is all about. It is not about words or legalisms or court cases or precedents or lawyer's arguments. It is about human freedom and that is what is worth fighting to gain and to keep and to share.

Freedom, not corporate interests or the soiled machinery of government, is worth dying for because freedom is the breath of life.

And freedom, not competing economic systems, is the core conflict in the world today and slavery, not war, is the great menace threatening free people everywhere.

Let the nihilists worship death, let the special interests fight like dogs over scraps of money, let the cowards cringe before slavemaster's weapons, but let us, the American people, celebrate and defend freedom. Let us fear its loss more than death and cherish its existence more than wealth.

Charley Reese is a syndicated columnist

Charley Reese

This is one thing my UFOs and I are working to bring about.

Soviet Tells U.S. It Plans to Ease Laws Curbing Jewish Emigration
Hong Kong Pratt 9/20/87

DAVID K. SHIPLER
Special to The New York Times

WASHINGTON, Sept. 19 -- Soviet officials told the United States this week that several important regulations used to prevent Soviet Jews from emigrating were being eased, and that an amnesty was possible for some political and religious prisoners, according to Richard Schifter, Assistant Secretary of State for Human Rights and Humanitarian Affairs.

In addition, he said in an interview, "I was left with the impression that the abuse of psychiatry was being ended."

No Increase Is Promised

He noted that the Soviet authorities announced several weeks ago that psychiatric hospitals now under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, which is in charge of the police, were being transferred to the Ministry of Health, where they may be less useful for incarcerating dissidents.

But Mr. Schifter added that the Russians had made no commitment to increase the rate of emigration by Jews. Since April, about 800 Jews have been permitted to leave each month, more than during recent years but considerably fewer than the 51,000 who left at the peak of emigration in 1979.

The issue has enormous political weight in Soviet-American relations. It was raised this week by both President Reagan and Secretary State George P. Shultz during their talks with Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard A. Shevardnadze in Washington. Detailed discussions were held by Mr. Schifter and Yuri Reshetov, a deputy director of the Soviet Foreign Ministry's department of humanitarian and cultural affairs.

Rights organizations have already begun planning large demonstrations for the expected visit here by Mikhail S. Gorbachev, the Soviet leader, later this year for a summit meeting with Mr. Reagan. Signals and hints of improvement in the rights field, such as those provided this week, and some gestures expected in the cases of a few prominent individuals are seen by American officials as part of a Soviet effort to defuse some of this protest.

Mr. Schifter and others in the State

Continued on Page 23, Column 1

(5¢)


=== Page 84 of 90

# Young hackers spend summer in NASA computers

By Girard C. Steichen
Associated Press Writer 9/16/87

FRANKFURT, West Germany -- Computer hackers broke into NASA's worldwide data network throughout the summer and gathered secret information on space shuttle projects and rocket failures, West German media said Tuesday.

News reports said young West Germans gained regular access to at least 20 computers of the U.S. space agency and had the ability to paralyze the entire network.

The ARD television network said a flaw in the network's security system allowed the hackers to enter the network from May to September.

Hackers are computer enthusiasts who often try to break into private computer systems for the challenge or for criminal gain.

The NASA system connects more than 1,600 computers worldwide that share information on space research, nuclear physics and molecular biology, ARD said in a report broadcast Tuesday night. The network includes U.S. atomic research facilities in Los Alamos, N.M.

In Washington, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration said in a statement that the tapped network provides unclassified information to university and industry researchers.

"We know of no classified information which can be accessed through the network," the statement said.

The statement said NASA uses a number of computer networks with varying degrees of security to provide "appropriate individuals" with access to data.

The Hamburg-based magazine Stern reported information similar to the ARD report in an advance telexed to news media Tuesday.

"When I saw 'Welcome to the NASA headquarters ... installation' on my screen, I was a little shocked, to say the least," the magazine quoted one youth as saying.

The Hamburg-based "Chaos Computer Club" said in a statement to news media Tuesday that the youths turned to the club for help when they realized the enormity of their discovery.

The statement said the hackers penetrated the network to show the "unbelievable weaknesses" of the security system and had no interest in the secret data.

The reports did not say how many hackers were involved or where they lived.

Stern said the youths obtained NASA memos to employees on daily space shuttle program updates and on how to deal with the media.

The magazine, quoting one youth's records of computer transactions, said the hackers were able to read users' electronic mail and had the ability to paralyze the entire network.

See HACKERS: Page A6

From Page A1

In one of the most serious security breaches, the hackers obtained NASA information on space shuttle projects, computer security studies and rocket boosters, the television network said.

Scientists in at least eight other countries besides the United States are linked to the computer network. Stern said the system is called the "Space Physics Analysis Network," or SPAN.

Michael Butz, a spokesman for the West German Interior Ministry, said his office had no information about the incidents. The Interior Ministry supervises many police functions in West Germany.

In addition to the NASA computers, the hackers gained access to computers at some of Europe's most sophisticated research institutions, including the European Space Agency in Darmstadt, West Germany; the European Nuclear Research Center in Geneva, an the European Laboratory for Molecular Biology in Heidelberg, West Germany.

Lennart Philipson, director of the molecular biology laboratory, said the institute is re-evaluating its use of the computer network.

"We are considering whether we should restrict our exchange of data with other institutes, even if that might hinder our research," Philipson told ARD.

The hackers said they gained access to the NASA computers by asking for files stored under such keywords as "shuttle," "challenger," and "secret," ARD said.

Under those categories, the hackers said they saw data reports on "Shuttle C Study Contracts," a "System Security Study" on computer security, and a study on "Booster Rocket Incidents," the television network said.

# Reagan adviser resigns to write

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Beryl W. Sprinkel, a conservative economist who muted his criticism of the Federal Reserve Board to serve as President Reagan's top economic adviser, on Friday became the second high-ranking administration official to resign within a week.

Sprinkel, 63, cited "personal reasons" and a desire to return to the private sector. His resignation takes effect in late November.

In an interview, Sprinkel said he would return to Flossmoor, Ill., a Chicago suburb. He said he had no specific plans as yet, but hopes to be a corporate consultant, do some "public speaking," writing and possibly some teaching.

Economists said they did not think Sprinkel's departure as chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers will signal any change in administration economy policy. He has held the post since April 1985.

(51)


=== Page 85 of 90

Dole leaving post to join campaign

Post-Star 9/15/87

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Elizabeth Dole announced Monday she is resigning as transportation secretary and plans to "do everything I can" to help her husband, Sen. Bob Dole, R-Kan., win the presidency next year.

After meeting with President Reagan for nearly 15 minutes, Mrs. Dole told reporters she will leave the Cabinet Oct. 1 and begin full-time campaigning for her husband with a 12-state swing through the South.

"I want to be a major part in the campaign and do everything I can to be helpful," she said.

Some Dole strategists have been pushing for weeks to get Mrs. Dole, an energetic and popular campaigner, more actively involved. She has been one of the most sought-after speakers in the Reagan Cabinet and in recent months has spent much of her time on the road. Dole is expected to declare his candidacy later this year.

At times, Mrs. Dole has been considered possible vice-presidential timber, and during the 1984 Republican convention, there was some talk -- sometimes only half in jest -- of a "Dole-Dole" ticket.

"I've been for a Dole-Dole ticket just for economy purposes," the senator sometimes joked in speeches. "We could have one house, one limousine and one airplane."

In Wisconsin, Vice President George Bush said he wasn't worried about Mrs. Dole's campaigning skills. "Listen, have you met my wife? She's good, she's tough, she's able. I have a secret weapon myself," Bush told reporters.

In a letter to Reagan, Mrs. Dole said the decision to leave the Cabinet came "after considerable soul-searching" but added that "the need to elect a successor who can build on your administration's remarkable record of achievement has persuaded me to leave office at this time."

Reagan called Mrs. Dole "invaluable" but said he understood why she was leaving.

Her departure creates a major Cabinet vacancy with only 16 months left in Reagan's term.

The Transportation Department has been in the spotlight amid rising complaints from airline travelers and concerns about air safety. Her resignation comes only a few months after a change in leadership at the Federal Aviation Administration, part of her department.

An early name to surface as a possible successor to her was Patricia Goldman, a moderate Republican who is vice chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board.

James Burnley, the department's deputy secretary, is expected to take over as acting secretary, but sources said he is unlikely to remain on permanently and reportedly already has discussed taking a job outside government.

Mrs. Dole, a Harvard-educated lawyer from North Carolina, became transportation secretary in February 1983, succeeding Drew Lewis, who quit to return to private business. She had been special assistant for public liaison at the White House.

Mrs. Dole has had a long history in government, beginning in the 1960s as a staff assistant in the old Department of Health, Education and Welfare. Later she worked as legislative assistant to President Johnson's consumer affairs adviser and then executive director of the President's Commission on Consumer Interest. In 1973, she was appointed to the Federal Trade Commission.

Two years later she married the senator from Kansas.

In 1979, Mrs. Dole resigned from the FTC to campaign in her husband's unsuccessful bid for the 1980 Republican presidential nomination. After Dole withdrew from the race, she worked for the Reagan campaign and after the election was appointed to the White House job where her duties included dealing with issues of importance to women.

As transportation secretary, Mrs. Dole headed a department with 107,000 employees and a $27 billion budget. She reminded people she is the first woman to head a military service: The U.S. Coast Guard is part of her department.

52


=== Page 86 of 90

Quake rocks
S. California;
At least 6 die

By Sue Manning
Associated Press Writer

LOS ANGELES -- A severe earthquake and 16 strong aftershocks rumbled across Southern California on Thursday, destroying buildings, damaging hundreds of houses, closing freeways and setting off dozens of fires. At least six people were killed and more than 100 injured.

The U.S. Geological Survey said the quake registered 6.1 on the Richter scale, making it the strongest to hit the Los Angeles area since the 6.4 Sylmar quake of 1971 that killed 64 people.

The tremor sent thousands into the streets as buildings were temporarily evacuated amid widespread power outages. Landmark buildings dating to Spanish colonial times were damaged, shattered glass and other debris rained into the street and a tall plume of smoke from a shopping center fire rose south of the downtown area.

Damage was worst in Whittier, the closest suburban area to the epicenter. The quake destroyed 30 downtown buildings, mostly businesses, said J. Sonny Morkus, Whittier's emergency services coordinator. Marsha Andersen, a spokeswoman for Presbyterian Intercommunity Hospital, said 50 to 60 people were treated for injuries.

The quake hit at 7:42 a.m. PDT and lasted 15-to-30 seconds depending on nearness to the epicenter, which was about 10 miles south-southeast of Pasadena at the north end of the San Gabriel Valley.

Related stories, more photos -- A8

See QUAKE: Page 2

Ulcer keeps Sessions from being sworn in

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The hospitalization of FBI Director-designate William S. Sessions was called off Thursday after the former federal judge, suffering from a previously undiagnosed bleeding ulcer, became ill and fainted in the aisle of a Washington-bound jetliner.

Sessions, whose scheduled installation at FBI headquarters was put off indefinitely, was stricken Wednesday night on a flight from Dallas to Washington National Airport. FBI officials accompanying the 57-year-old Sessions drove him from the airport to George Washington University Medical Center, where doctors found a small bleeding ulcer in his small intestine. Sessions took aspirin on an empty stomach, triggering the on-board attack, Dr. Allen Ginsberg of the hospital staff told a news conference. Ginsberg said Sessions will be hospitalized two to three days and "should be ready to go to work next week." Sessions, however, may take a rest for a week or more before taking the oath of office, federal law enforcement officials said.

"From a medical standpoint he could be sworn in as early as tomorrow (today) or Saturday" and will take medication that will allow him to resume a normal workload by reducing acid secretion in the stomach and allowing the ulcer to heal, said Ginsberg.

Asked whether the ailment would affect his performance as FBI director, Ginsberg replied: "Absolutely not."

Confirmed by the Senate only last Friday, Sessions was told Tuesday by Attorney General Edwin Meese III that he would be sworn in Thursday, his wife Alice told syndicated columnist and television commentator John McLaughlin, who happened to be aboard the same plane as Sessions.

Sessions had been trying to get things organized and had had only one meal Wednesday, McLaughlin quoted Mrs. Sessions as saying.

Friday, Oct. 2, 1987 Post-Star, Glens Falls, N.Y.


=== Page 87 of 90

# Antarctic ozone investigation

UFOs Sun Attack P-Star 9/26/87

PUNTA ARENAS, Chile (AP) - A six-week investigation of a worrisome hole in the Earth's ozone layer was a success, say U.S. scientists who probed the Antarctic stratosphere in a jetliner and a converted spyplane.

Their findings were awaited anxiously by industries fearing more restrictions in the production of commonly used chemicals and by environmental groups predicting catastrophe if the protective layer continues to thin.

An initial "end of mission statement" revealing partial results is scheduled for release Wednesday at news conferences in Washington and the Chilean capital of Santiago. Detailed findings won't be published until 1988.

Scientists said Thursday the statement was being drafted in long meetings in Punta Arenas, a windblown city on the icy Straits of Magellan where the operation is based.

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration, which is directing the project, has imposed a news blackout, and the scientists refused to discuss their findings. Still, they called the operation a success.

"I think we have certainly accomplished every mission objective that we had," said the project manager, chemist Estelle Condon of NASA's Ames Research Center at Moffett Field, Calif. "We have assembled a massive data base."

Ozone, a form of oxygen, forms an invisible layer in the atmosphere that filters potentially harmful ultraviolet radiation from the sun.

The ozone layer has been thinning worldwide for years. Since the early 1980s, an especially dramatic reduction of up to 40 percent or more has been noted over Antarctica in September and October.

About 180 scientists, engineers and other support personnel were involved in the biggest investigation to date of the atmosphere, Mrs. Condon said.

Operating out of a Chilean air force hangar at the city's airport, the group conducted 12 flights in NASA's ER-2, a version of the U-2 spyplane specially equipped for research.

It made another 11 flights in a DC-8 loaded with additional scientific gear and capable of carrying up to 30 scientists. Scientists hoped to get at least one more flight in before Sunday, when they must pack up for the return home.

The researchers carried out thousands of experiments, samplings and measurements of chemical and atmospheric conditions.

Mrs. Condon said the information will require months of intense evaluation. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is under court order to come up quickly with a plan for protecting the ozone layer.

Publication of detailed findings is planned for early next year, "which

# 16 Bermudans hurt in Hurricane Emily

UFOs Sun Attack P-Star 9/26/87

HAMILTON, Bermuda (AP) - Hurricane Emily blew boats out of the water, flipped cars and tore off roofs Friday, injuring at least 16 people with its gusts of up to 112 mph as it raced across Bermuda and into the Atlantic.

Forecasters were stunned that Emily gained strength even as it picked up forward speed.

No deaths or serious injuries were reported, said Bryan Darby, Bermuda government spokesman.

"We've been very lucky," Darby said. "It was a swift, sharp punch."

Power was cut off over about 90 percent of the island but by early afternoon workers had restored electricity to Hamilton. Darby said he expected the entire island to be back on full power today.

Of Bermuda's 57,145 people, about 25,000 live in Hamilton, the capital.

At midday, the center of Emily was near latitude 34.5 north, longitude 61.5 west, or 235 miles northeast of Bermuda, the National Hurricane Center in Coral Gables, Fla. reported.

Emily had sustained winds of near 95 mph and was expected to keep moving northeast at 40 to 45 mph through Saturday, said the center's acting director, Bob Sheets.

He predicted Emily would weaken by late Saturday as it moved over the colder waters of the North Atlantic.

The center was also monitoring a tropical disturbance east of the Windward Islands and an area of disturbed weather off the West African coast.

"Neither one is showing any signs of development," Sheets said.

Bermuda was hit with maximum sustained winds of 90 mph and gusts of up to 112 mph, said Commander Frank Bub of the U.S. Naval Oceanography Command Facility in Bermuda. The storm moved through the island with a forward speed of 40 mph to 45 mph.

"What has taken place in the last 12 hours defies our knowledge and the concept of meteorology," center forecaster Bob Case said early Friday. A storm moving forward at that speed should have weakened in force, not strengthened, he said.

Emily's eye passed over Kindley Field in Bermuda at 7:45 a.m. EDT, according to the center.

The roof of the airport terminal was blown off and the airport was closed until 10 a.m. Saturday, Darby said.


=== Page 88 of 90

# Drought and fear of famine darkens future for Ethiopia

Post-Star 9/25/87

ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia (AP) -- Unexpectedly, the rains have failed Ethiopians this growing season, and barely three years after enduring one of the worst droughts and famines in history, they could be heading for another calamity.

Their fields of grain are parched again, in a break with the cycle of drought that came with near unfailing certainty every 10 years.

"We didn't expect this," said David Morton, director of operations for the United Nations World Food Program office in Addis Ababa, the capital.

"The cycle did seem like a 10-year one. Now it's much more unpredictable. We just didn't expect this."

Famine looms again.

The government says that because of the drought afflicting the northern, central and southern parts of the country, it needs nearly a million metric tons of emergency food aid for 1988 and that a fifth of it must be here by January to avoid a famine that some experts estimate could affect 5 million of the country's 46 million people.

The situation so far does not appear as severe as the 1984-85 drought and famine that killed hundreds of thousands of Ethiopians. The United States gave sent 900,000 tons of food worth more than $400 million in 1984-85 and is arranging for more aid to meet any new crisis, although its relations with the Marxist government are poor.

The government and foreign donors now are better equipped to deal with drought because of an early warning system. And many of the dozens of non-governmental relief agencies that rushed here in 1984-85 stayed.

"It's not just institutions and structures in place, it's people," said James Cheek, the U.S. charge d'affaires in Ethiopia. "We don't have to invent the wheel again."

Just as important, Cheek added, is the government's frankness about the problem.

"The government is not trying to cover it up," he said. "It was certainly perceived to be doing that during 1984-85."

Despite the head start, it won't be easy to overcome the current drought. In the brief time since the previous famine, Ethiopia's Red Sea port of Assab, which is the beginning of the food pipeline, has slipped into disrepair. And the mean terrain of Africa's most mountainous country, which is twice the size of Texas, has sidelined most of the hundreds of vehicles brought in to haul food during the 1984-85 famine.

Ethiopia in early September asked donors for 950,000 metric tons in emergency food assistance for 1988. Though the government did not say how many people were in danger, donors and workers at relief agencies estimated they could number at least 5 million.

The drought in 1984 was followed the next year by a famine in which the number of fatalities range from 250,000 to 1 million. The lack of reliable data on Ethiopia's population and normal mortality rates prevent a more precise count.

TO QUOTE DONNA RICE, "i MAKE NO EXCUSES, i JUST WEAR THEM."

PLAGIARISM
CHEATING
ROBT. KENNEDY SPEECHES
BIDEN

ANOTHER ONE CAUGHT WITH HIS PANTS DOWN..

J.D. CROWE
©87 THE TRIBUNE-SAN DIEGO
COPLEY NEWS SERVICE

Post-Star 9/25/87
UFC Elimination


=== Page 89 of 90

# Aftershock jolts S. California with more damage, one death

By Richard De Atley
The Associated Press

LOS ANGELES -- A sharp aftershock from last week's severe earthquake jolted Southern California before dawn Sunday, causing at least one death and dozens of injuries, damaging buildings, knocking out power and sending jittery residents into the streets.

The quake, centered in suburban Rosemead about eight miles northeast of downtown Los Angeles, registered at 5.3 on the Richter scale of ground motion, said Don Kelly of the U.S. Geological Survey in Golden, Colo.

At the California Institute of Technology the quake was measured at 5.5, according to a spokesman, Robert Finn.

"It was pretty wild," said Mark Rosenker, who was on the 18th floor of the Century Plaza Hotel in Los Angeles. "Let me tell you, it does get you up."

The 3:59 a.m. quake was the 22nd aftershock registering more than 3.0 since Thursday's quake, which measured 6.1 on the Richter scale and caused six deaths and more than $75 million in damage.

Sunday's shock, centered about two miles west of Thursday's, was felt 40 miles west of Los Angeles in Ventura County and 100 miles south in San Diego. It was followed by three tremors measuring 3.0 or more within four hours.

Power outages occurred in numerous areas, and many residents, some in bathrobes, gathered outside apartments and houses, waiting for more shocks. Others, camped out in a downtown parking lot, said they had been there since Thursday.

"We are glad we stayed out here," said a man who identified himself only as Hector. "At least here we feel safe."

Mildred Robbins, 66, of Arcadia, was pronounced dead at 5:14 a.m. at Arcadia Methodist Hospital after going into full cardiac arrest, said administrative supervisor Terry Pisenti. Efforts to revive her failed.

Pisenti said the heart attack was attributed to the quake.

More than 60 other quake-related injuries, mostly cuts from broken glass, bruises from being hit by falling objects and anxiety-related chest pains and breathing problems, were reported at area hospitals.

"All the lights went out. It felt like the sky was falling. I thought the whole house was coming down," said Marta Jimenez of suburban Montebello.

The Jimenezes moved a mattress and cushions onto their lawn and set up camp, listening to a portable radio. Many neighbors did the same.

"You never know when there will be another one," said Dora Nunes.

In suburban Whittier, where hundreds of homes were damaged and 30 buildings collapsed Thursday, residents who had been in overnight shelters were evacuated to a lighted baseball field.

"Psychologically, these people are in pieces. They were already upset and this has really done them in," said Frank Sapien, Red Cross shelter director. "I think a lot of the people are in some state of shock."

Among the injured was a 91-year-old Pasadena woman who suffered a possible ruptured disc in her back when the quake knocked her into the bathtub.

A man was brought to Huntington Memorial Hospital in Pasadena for a six-inch bite on his arm that occurred when he tried to comfort his distraught German shepherd, said nurse Lisa Ryken.

California Medical Center, about a mile south of downtown Los Angeles, sustained some structural damage and power to the complex was lost. The center was operating on emergency power, said nursing supervisor Elizabeth Adams.

The quake required that an "unusual event" be declared at the coastal San Onofre nuclear power plant, midway between Los Angeles and San Diego, but the two operating reactors were not damaged, said Southern California Edison spokesman Dave Barron.

Several communities that suffered damage Thursday reported numerous new problems ranging from shattered windows to collapsed buildings. Much of the damage was in commercial areas.

In industrial Vernon, the second floor of an old brick industrial plant that had been damaged Thursday collapsed when Sunday's tremor hit.

In suburban San Gabriel, the bell tower at the old San Gabriel Civic Auditorium collapsed through the roof and part of the structure's facade crumbled. The building had been extensively damaged Thursday.

Two bridges over the San Bernardino Freeway in Alhambra were closed, although one was reopened after a few hours when it was determined the structural damage was less severe than thought.

Alhambra police reported 15 buildings suffered substantial new structural damage, including the city courthouse and a building that was knocked off its foundation. Two apartment buildings were evacuated because of leaking gas, and residents were ordered out of the Rex Hotel, an old brick building.

Bill Adkisson, 48, of Whittier, said the aftershock finished off his chimney, which was already damaged, put new cracks throughout the house and pulled away a porch railing.

"I knew it was coming because my cat woke me up just like he did on Thursday before that one hit," Adkisson said. "I went for my mother first because she gets excited, and then we went outside."

Employees were busy sweeping up broken dishes in a Bob's Big Boy kitchen in Whittier.

"This is the second time. It's just getting to be too much," said Manager David Santaviez.

Chunks of concrete fell from a bridge over the southbound lanes of the Pasadena Freeway, closing two lanes. Small rockslides occurred elsewhere along the freeway which runs northeast from Los Angeles. The eastbound 91 Freeway was closed due to buckling of the roadway, the California Highway Patrol reported.

Hundreds of reports of broken water lines and leaking natural gas flooded into police and fire departments in several communities.

The Richter scale is an open-ended gauge of energy released by an earthquake as measured by ground motion recorded on a seismograph. Every increase of one whole number means that the ground motion is 10 times greater.

A quake with a magnitude of 5 can cause considerable damage in a populated area; a magnitude-6 quake can cause severe damage.


=== Page 90 of 90

State of emergency is declared

The Associated Press

Post Star 10/5/87

A freak snowstorm shocked eastern New York with up to 20 inches of snow Sunday, knocking out power to an estimated 735,000 people and closing many roads and at least one airport.

Gov. Mario Cuomo declared a state of emergency in Albany, Columbia, Dutchess, Green, Montgomery and Rensselaer counties. The state of emergency also applies to contiguous counties.

Peter Slocum, spokesman for the state Disaster Preparedness Committee, said the declaration will allow the state better mobilize its resources.

Two people in Columbia County apparently died beneath fallen trees -- one in the town of Chatham and the other in Copake.

The victims' names were not immediately available. Columbia County Deputy Jan Lear said he believed one was in a car at the time.

Motorists in Columbia and neighboring Dutchess County were warned that virtually all roads were closed. Both counties declared states of emergency.

Authorities in the Albany area and Columbia and Greene counties set up temporary shelters in firehouses, nursing homes and other facilities.

"We've got old salts here saying they have never seen it this bad," said Ray Hull, a spokesman for Niagra Mohawk utility.

The storm began early Saturday evening in the Catskill mountains and then spread through most of eastern New York. It left sticky, wet snow clinging to leaves and caused limbs and trees to fall, blocking many roads.

It was the most severe snow storm this early in the season in recent history, according to National Weather Service forecasters.

"In all my years here, I have never seen anything like it," said Columbia County Director of Emergency Management Martin Tuczinski, who has lived in the area 50 years.

Tuczinski said impassable roads, outages at local radio stations and assisting with the disaster relief, Wescott said.

Deputies, fire officials and highway crews set up roadblocks preventing vehicles from traveling on roads determined to be too dangerous, he said. Many roads were blocked by fallen, snow-laden trees and limbs, Wescott said, and officials were trying Sunday to clear the roads.

The trees and limbs also tangled in and tore down utility lines, officials said, cutting off power to thousands of people across southern Washington County.

The Sunday snowstorm is the earliest that Wescott said he can remember during his nearly 30 years in Washington County.

Today, however, temperatures across the Glens Falls area should reach the mid-60s, according to the National Weather Service in Syracuse. (The Syracuse office was contacted when repeated calls to the service's Albany office went unanswered.)

Clouds probably will begin to accumulate again on Tuesday, said meteorologist Steve Francis, and a chance of showers is reported for Wednesday and Thursday.

In Cambridge and Greenwich, meanwhile, nearly 1,000 people there were expected to spend Sun-

where we live

[Hand-drawn symbol of a circle with a lightning bolt through it]

[Map Graphic]

SAN GABRIEL MTS.

Other faults

10/5/87

Major aftershock

San Andreas fault

20-mi. radius area with most damage from first quake

Los Angeles

Pasadena

CALIFORNIA

Los Angeles International Airport

Downey

Elsinore fault

Epicenter of first quake

Whittier fault

20 miles