News Digest, By The Associated Press
Concern for others tempers hostage s return
LONDON — American journalist
Charles Glass had a family reunion
Wednesday to celebrate his escape
from kidnappers in Beirut, but the joy
was tempered by concern for the 24
foreign hostages still in captivity.
Glass, who flew in Wednesday from
Damascus, Syria, also discounted theor
ies that his Moslem kidnappers, under
pressure from Syria, allowed him to
escape early Tuesday.
“I’m very proud of my wife and my
children and all they did for me and the
way they behaved. It’s what I was living
for,” the 36-year-old newsman said
after being reunited with his wife Fiona
and their five young children at a
secret location.
A few hours later his parents and
sister flew in from Los Angeles.
"Now I feel really sorry for all those
other guys still being held, and their
folks,” his father, Charles Glass Jr. of
Palos Verdes Estates, Calif., said when
he arrived at Heathrow airport.
The younger Glass said the captives
should be encouraged that Syria is
increasing presure to obtain their re
lease in hopes of improving ties with
the West. He met Wednesday with four
U.S. officials from Washington who
want to know if he can provide informa
tion about the other captives.
“Sadly, I did not see any of the other
hostages,” Glass told ABC TV’s “Good
Morning America” program. “None of
the other hostages were referred to in
my presence by the captors.”
He said at a news conference that he
thought especially of U.S. hostage Terry
Anderson and Anderson’s sister, Peggy
Say of Batavia, N.Y., who has campaigned
hard on the hostages’ behalf.
“It must be too much for her to see
yet another one come out and Terry is
still held,” Glass said. “Believe me, I
feel for Terry and Peggy so much that I
can hardly speak.”
Anderson, chief Middle East corre
spondent for The Associated Press, was
kidnapped March 16, 1985, and has
been held longer than any other foreign
hostage in Lebanon. He is one of eight
American hostages.
Glass was kidnapped June 17 in
Beirut by gunmen who identified them
selves as members of the previously
unknown Organization for the People’s
Defense. On leave from his position as
correspondent with ABC, he had gone
to Lebanon to work on a book about the
Middle East.
He was the first foreigner kidnapped
after Syria moved 7,500 soldiers into
West Beirut in February to quell fighting
among Moslem militias, and his capture
was taken as a deep affront in Damas
cus, the Syrian capital.
In Washington, a Reagan administra
tion official said U.S. intelligence be
lieves Iran ordered Glass’ kidnapping
and is in control of the other U.S.
hostages.
The U.S. official, who spoke only on
condition of anonymity, theorized that
Iran, under pressure from Syria for six
to eight weeks, arranged Glass’ release
to improve its standing in the Arab
world.
But Glass said on "Good Morning
America,” that if his captors had allow
ed him to escape, “it’s certainly some
thing that I couldn’t have known at the
time.”
"It would’ve meant that the Syrians
had somehow arranged for my guards to
stay asleep during the time I was
escaping, because everything else was
my own doing,” he said.
Glass said at the news conference
that this may have been politically
possible but not probable because his
guards had been harsher in the past
few weeks and had not altered their
routine.
He said he had loosened his ankle
and wrist chains over several days and
was able to slip them off after midnight
Monday.
In captivity, Glass made many
attempts to escape, and his guards
threatened to kill him if he tried again,
though they did not torture him, he
said.
Wind shear plagued airport
before Northwest plane crash
ROMULUS, Mich. — Potentially
dangerous wind shifts were recorded at
Detroit Metropolitan Airport just 30
minutes before the fiery crash of North
west Flight 255, which killed as many
as 158 people, federal investigators
said.
John Lauber of the National Trans
portation Safety Board said the condi
tion, known as wind shear, was recorded
by the airport’s computer-controlled
detection system a number of times on
one runway, promoting air traffic con
trollers to move all traffic to another
runway.
Such a sudden shift in wind can
cause an airplane to suddenly lose
sjJeed and has been listed as a factor in
several air crashes, including a fatal
1985 crash near Dallas.
However, Lauber said at a news
briefing that the preliminary reports
were not complete enough for investi
gators to draw a conclusion about what
caused the Northwest crash.
Lauber also said the cockpit recorder
chronicled the computer-generated
voice of a warning system chanting
‘‘stall, stall, stall,” only seconds after
the MD-80 took off Sunday night.
Investigators have determined the
plane reached an altitude of 100 feet to
150 feet before it began its final plunge,
he said.
As teams of investigators crisscrossed
the scorched crash site, grieving famil
ies waited for doctors and technicians
to identify the bodies of the victims.
Relatives of other passengers were
warned that some of the mutilated
bodies might never be identified.
“If you have a mass of body parts and
none of them have an identifiable item
on them it’s going to be impossible to
identify,” said Inspector Richard Stover
of the Wayne County Sherrifs Depart
merit's emergency management di
vision.
Officials disagreed about the number
of fatalities.
Dr. Werner Spitz, the Wayne County
medical examiner, said the death toll
could be as high as 158, figuring 152
were aboard the plane and “five or six”
were killed on the ground.
Northwest officials said they believe
155 were aboard the plane, and 154
were killed. Stover said he believed
three people on the ground were killed.
Spitz said about half of the bodies
had been positively identified and that
all of the bodies, which had been left at
the crash site so they could be surveyed
by investigators, were moved Tuesday
to a hangar serving as a temporary
morgue. Hearses were being hired to
come to the hangar Friday to pick them
up.
The 4-year-old lone survivor of the
crash showed improvement and rela
tives marveled at her good fortune at
the same time they despaired at the
loss of her parents and 6-year-old
brother.
Her grandfather said he had set
aside his grief over the deaths of his
son, daughter-in-law and grandson long
John Bruce/Dally Nebraskan
enough to come from Pennsylvania to
an Ann Arbor, Mich., hospital to identify
her.
Cecilia Cichan, of Tempe, Ariz., was
upgraded from critical to serious con
dition Tuesday afternoon at C.S. Mott
Children’s Hospital, spokeswoman Cath
erine Cureton said. The girl’s breathing
was being assisted by a respirator,
which may be disconnected Wednesday,
Cureton said.
Cureton said doctors expected Cecilia
to live. She was responding to stimuli
Tuesday and was unconscious, but no*
comatose, they said.
Cecilia suffered a broken leg, broken
collarbone, concussion and bums over
30 percent of her body. She underwent
surgery for the broken bones.
Cureton said no additional surgery
was planned except for possible skin
grafts on her burned arms and hands.
The girl’s identity had remained a
mystery until 24 hours after the crash,
when her grandfather, Anthony C» nan,
59, of the Philadelphia suburb of Maple
Glen, Pa., arrived at the hospital with a
son and another relative and went to
her bedside.
“After a few seconds, 1 knew it had
to be our little Cecilia.’’
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Officials scout out state
Hoping to claim an economic prize
dangled before 14 states, Nebraska
officials Wednesday showcased the
state to a U S West delegation that is
scouting possible sites for the com
pany’s $50 million research center.
Gov. Kay Orr and others greeted the
four member U S West Site Selection
Committee as the group arrived from
Denver to begin the daylong visit,
which was to include stops in Lincoln,
the Platte River State Park and Omaha.
After arriving about 30 minutes late,
the company officials were shuttled
from a Lincoln airport to the University
of Nebraska Law School, where the
(lay’s opening session concentrated on
the state’s education system.
From Lincoln the U S West officials
were to be taken to Platte River State
Park, where the second session dealt
with Nebraska’s business climate and
quality of life.
The final stop was scheduled in
Omaha, where the company repre
sentatives were to hear from Nebraska
business leaders.
U S West has announced it will
build the 1,500-job research center in
one of 14 states in its territory, touching
off an intense competition for the
facility.
Humans to try AIDS vaccine
WASHINGTON — In what they called
a first step on the long road to a vaccine
to prevent AIDS, health officials an
nounced the first human trials in this
country of such an experimental vac
cine.
Scientists said they have begun
soliciting the 81 volunteers who will
take part in the test, which will run
from six months to a year, and that the
first subject could be vaccinated as
early as next month.
The prototype vaccine, made by Micro
GeneSys Inc., a drug and biological
products firm in West Haven, Conn., is
the first of several similar candidate
agents to win approval from the Food
and Drug Administration for clinical
trials.
The tests, which will be conducted
at the National Institutes of Health
Clinical Center in Bethesda, Md., are
designed solely to determine the safety
of the potential vaccine and whether it
raises any kind of immune response
against the virus that causes AIDS,
officials said.
Dr. Anthony Faudi, spokesman for
the center, told a briefing that the first
test will involve 81 healthy volunteers,
including 75 homosexual men, who are
not infected with the virus that causes
acquired immune deficiency syndrome.
In Brief _
Company to sell North videotape
CHICAGO — A home video company plans to sell avideotape of Lt. Col.
Oliver North’s appearance at the Iran-Contra hearings to people who were
unable to follow the 30-plus hours of testimony on television.
“You can’t get an in-depth look at Oliver North in 90 seconds on the
news each night,” said Jaffer Ali, vice president of sales at MPI Home
Video.
More travel Nebraska highways
The number of travelers on Nebraska highways in July was well ahead of
the levels last year, according to a state Department of Economic
Development official.
On Interstate 80 east of Overton in central Nebraska, traffic last month
increased 9.1 percent from July 1986, said Peggy Briggs, director of the
Travel and Tourism Division of DED.
West of Seward in eastern Nebraska 1-80 traffic rose 10.8 percent, and
east of Chappel in western Nebraska, it jumped 16.2 percent, she said in a
news release.
British say Hess strangled himself
BERLIN — Rudolf Hess, the last member of Adolf Hitler’s inner circle,
apparently strangled himself with a length of electric cord after nearly
half a century in prison, British officials said.
Hess died Monday in a British military hospital in West Berlin at the age
of 93. He had been in prison since a bizarre “peace flight” to Britain in
1941 and, for 21 years, the sole inmate of cavernous Spandau near the
hospital.
Eugene I. Bird, once the top American officer guarding Spandau, told
The Associated Press the one-time Nazi deputy fuehrer tried to commit
suicide on four other occasions.
Gunman fires on street in England
HUNGERFORD, England — A gunman wearing combat fatigues opened
fire on a shopping street Wednesday and killed at least nine people and
wounded 14 others before fleeing on foot, police said.
Thames Valley Chief Constable Colin Smith said police chased the
gunman. Four hours later officers surrounded a dead-end street outside a
school and were heard calling on the man to surrender.
Such random violence is rare in Britain, where firearms laws are strict
and most police officers still go unarmed. Violent crime is relatively
uncommon In the picturesque Hungerford area, popular for its antique
stores.
Lincoln ag forum unlikely
LINCOLN — No presidential candidate officially has agreed to attend a
forum on agricultural issues the day before the FarmAid 111 concert In
Lincoln organizers say.
With RSVPs for the proposed Sept. 18 forum coming in slowly or not at
all, Lincoln Mayor Bill Harris said Nebraskans must face the fact that
agriculture is not a topic the candidates want to address.
“Agriculture is receiving the silent treatment," he said. “The president
came into the state last week and didn’t even mention agriculture in his
remarks. Nobody wants to rassle that 600-pound gorilla."
Police use pedal-power on patrol
SPRING LAKE, Mich. — Police Chief Leon Langeland admits his latest
twist in fighting crime will not increase arrests of fleeing felons or
speeding motorists.
But putting an officer on “pedal patrol” may deter petty thieves and
vandals who have plagued the village recently.
An officer began patrol Tuesday night on a $270 10-speed bicycle the
village recently purchased from a local bike shop.
Langeland said the bicycle will allow the officer to approach
undetected in cases where a police car’s engine and headlights might tip
off criminals.