Banner Graphic, Volume 15, Number 112, Greencastle, Putnam County, 12 January 1985 — Page 2

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The Putnam County Banner-Graphic, January 12,1985

Army probing for cause of Pershing missile malfunction

HEILBRONN, West Germany (AP) The U S. Army was trying today to find out what ignited a fire on a Pershing 2 missile that killed three U S. soldiers and injured at least seven during a routine training exercise. ‘‘lt appears like it was just an accident,” said Maj. Michael Griffon, a spokesman for the 56th Field Artillery Brigade. “The reason for the fire is still unknown.” He said “there was no explosion and no nuclear weapons involved” in the fire at the “Red Leg” missile site outside Heilbronn in the south of the country. Brig. Gen. Raymond Haddock, the unit commander, told a news conference that it was the first time such an accident had happened and he had ordered an investigation. The fire broke out in a missile parts storage area while an equipment training exercise was being conducted under the supervision of a captain, Haddock said. The missiles are stored separately from their warheads and Griffon said, “there are no warheads in the area" of the fire. Haddock said the engine of the missile’s first stage had ignited without warning. Earlier, Griffon had said the missile’s solid fuel propellant had ignited and burned. The Pentagon identified the three dead today as Sgt. Todd A. Zephier of Wagner, S.D.; Staff Sgt. John Everett D. Leach, of Salem, Mo.; and Pvt. Ist Class Darryl Shirley of Irving, Texas.

Banner-Graphic “It Waves For All” USPS 142-020 Consolidation of The Daily Banner Established 1850 The Herald The Daily Graphic Established tBB3 Telephone 653-5151 Published daily except Sunday and holidays and twice on Tuesdays by LuMar Newspapers, Inc. at 100 North Jackson St., Greencastle. Indiana 46135. Entered >n the Post Office at Greencastle. Indiana, as 2nd class mail matter under Act of March 7.1878. Subscription Rates Per Week, by carrier ‘l.lO Per Month, by motor route *4.95 Mail Subscription Rates R.R. in Rest of Rest of Putnam County Indiana U.S.A. 3 Months *15.75 *16.00 *17.25 6 Months *30.30 *30.80 *34.50 1 ' tear *59.80 *60.80 *69.00 Mail subscriptions payable in advance . . not accepted in town and where motor route service is available. Member of the Associated Press The Associated Press is entitled exclusively to the use lor republication ol all the local news printed in this newspaper.

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The 35-foot missiles weigh 7 tons and measure 40 inches in diameter. Like the Pershing 1-A missiles they replaced, the Pershing 2s are propelled by a two-stage solid fuel rocket. The missiles are transported on large flatbed trucks, which would serve as their launchers in wartime. In Washington, White House deputy press secretary Bob Sims said President Reagan “is aware of the incident. He is distressed and expressed sorrow at the loss of life.’ Sims said Reagan received updates on the accident but said he wanted those on the scene to “describe what’s happened.” The president said the mishap would have no impact on continued deployment of the weapons. The 572 medium-range Pershing 2s and cruise missiles being deployed by NATO are designed to counter Soviet SS-20 nuclear missiles aimed at Western Europe. “The accident occurred within a small U.S.-controlled area. At no time was there any danger to the German civilian population,” said Griffon. The missile base outside Heilbronn is one of three Army installations in south Germany where Pershing 2s are being deployed. The Pershing 2s are stored at the heavily guarded bases and taken into the field in guarded convoys for periodic training without nuclear warheads.

Mail-order marriage Magazine generating 1,000 letters a day from men

HONAKA’A, Hawaii (AP) - Cherry Blossoms and Lotus Blossoms, magazines which arrange correspondence courtships, are doing a booming business linking Asian women seeking “physical, financial and emotional security” with American men seeking wives, an editor says. From their mountaintop home on the island of Hawaii, John Broussard, 60, and his wife, Kelly Pomeroy, 45, have helped arrange such courtships for the past 10 years. They began with Cherry Blossoms and added Lotus Blossoms to handle overflow requests. A third catalog,

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Her companion may not be faster than a speeding bullet or able to leap tall buildings in a single bound, but he is (under those Clark Kent clothes) Superman after all to Jennette Kahn. Ms. Kahn is president

Femina, became available in Europe in November, featuring women who are older, perhaps have children and are self-supporting. Broussard said the three magazines generate about 1,000 letters a day from interested men. For $275, a subscriber gets three issues of Cherry Blossoms and Lotus Blossoms, their name and address sent to all women who appear in a catalog and a hand book on “how to write to Oriental ladies.” A single back issue costs $4 The process begins when a subscriber writes to his favorite woman. If the match is good, she writes back, they fall in love through a correspon-

and publisher of D.C. Comics, featuring the Man of Steel's exploits. The Clark Kent figure adorns her New York City office. (N.Y. Times photo).

dence courtship, meet, get married and live happily ever after. Well, not always. Some of the hitches do have glitches. Like when a man married a 26-year-old Chinese college graduate living in the Philippines, only to have her run away after 10 days in the United States. Broussard, a former professor at Everett Community College in Washington, said the publications provide a service to people around the world who want to marry, but are unable to find a mate in their own country.

Bride suffocates i

Suicide follows airport death

LOS ANGELES (AP) An Iranian man told his roommate he had “lost everything,” then killed himself after finding his bride had suffocated in a suitcase during an attempt to smuggle her into the United States, authorities and the roommate said. The 5-foot-tall woman’s bruised body was discovered Monday in a large suitcase that revolved around a luggage carousel at Los Angeles International Airport so long customs agents finally inspected it, authorities said. “I lost everything,” Majmoud Ayazi, 31, told his roommate the day he bought the gun authorities say he used to kill himself in a car parked outside his apartment near California State University in Sacramento. The woman was identified Friday as Kataun Safaie, 20, of Iran, said Los Angeles County coroner’s spokesman Bill Gold. Ayazi, her husband of three weeks, was found dead Thursday of a self-inflicted gunshot wound, said Bob Bowers, chief deputy for the Sacramento County

Nun accuses rebels of killing civilians

MANAGUA, Nicaragua (AP) An American Roman Catholic nun held by an-ti-Sandinista rebels for nine hours has accused the rebels of killing thousands of civilians and charged such attacks are on the rise. Speaking at a news conference in Managua, Sister Nancy Donovan, 52, a Maryknoll nun from Waterbuy, Conn., said the killings of “thousands of innocent people” have taken place over the past four years. “The attacks have been made on civilian, not military targets, and they are increasing,” said the small, gray-haired nun. In Washington, her charges were denied by Adolfo Calero. president of the Nicaraguan Democratic Force, who said in a statement the Maryknoll order has a history of supporting the leftist Sandinista government in Nicaragua. The force has an estimated 12,000

world

Priest kidnapping a message to all Americans in Beirut?

c. 1985 N.Y. Times News Service BEIRUT, Lebanon An anonymous caller asserted on Friday that the kidnapping of an American Roman Catholic priest here this week was part of a campaign to force all Americans to leave Lebanon. The caller said he represented Islamic Holy War, a shadowy group that had previously claimed responsibility for a series of bombings in Lebanon, including the truck bombings of the American Embassy and the American and French Marine barracks. The caller said that if all Americans left Lebanon, the abducted priest, the Rev. Lawrence M. Jenco, would be freed, along with four other Americans who have disappeared here in the last 10 months. Although it had been widely assumed here that at least three missing Americans were being held by what is believed to be a loosely organized cell of Shiite Moslem zealots, this was the first formal assertion by a group that it had carried out the kidnappings. While it was impossible to verify the authenticity of the claim, staff members at the Beirut bureau of The Associated Press, where the call was received, said that the same individual had previously called on behalf of Islamic Holy War. Western intelligence sources have said they believe that the kidnapped Americans were being held hostage for the release of some or all of the 17 men, three of them under death sentence, convicted in the truck bombings of the American and French Embassies in Kuwait in December 1983. Most are Shiite Moslems from Iraq, alliliated with the Iranian-backed underground organization A 1 Dawa, or the Call. Jenco, the director of the Catholic Relief Services operation here, which helps refugees and other war victims, was kidnapped on his way to work on Tuesday morning by at least eight gunmen. Church officials said that the 50-year-old priest, who is from the Chicago area, had a severe heart problem and required special

suitcase

coroner’s office. “As we put it together, it appears he decided to try to smuggle her over here in a suitcase,” Bowers said. “The Romeo and Juliet story has come back in all this,” said Ayazi’s roommate, who goes by the single name of Hadi. “It was the devotion that his wife had for him that they wanted to go to the United States in this kind of situation,” he said Friday night in a telephone interview. The discovery of Ayazi’s body and information from his friends helped officials identify the young woman. Ayazi had been on leave from Campbell Soup Co. in Sacramento since October, when he went to Iran. Three weeks ago, he marred Ms. Safaie. The couple flew to Frankfurt, West Germany, where Ayazi, who had studied and worked in the United States for eight years, tried to get his wife a visa from the U.S. Embassy. He apparently was told it could take a year, so they decided to smuggle her in a huge suitcase, Bowers said. When Ayazi went to get Ms. Safaie at Los

guerrillas fighting the government in northern Nicaragua. “We question the authenticity of the reports, given the history of open Maryknoll Order support for” the Sandinistas, the statement said. The U.S. Congress voted last summer to end funding for the guerrillas, but the rebels say they have received millions of dollars in donations from private sources and other governments. Sister Donovan said she was neither harmed nor mistreated during her captivity last Tuesday by the guerrillas, also known as “contras,” and would return to her pastorage in San Juan de Limay, a village about 95 miles north of Managua. She has been a Maryknoll nun for 30 years, and has spent 29 years in Central America and the last five in Nicaragua. The nun said she heard reports after her release that the rebels who held her had ki’led 14 civilians in ambushes along the

medicine. The anonymous caller on Friday said: “After the pledge that we have made to the world that no Americans would remain on the soil of Lebanon and after the ultimatum we have served on American citizens to leave Beirut, our answer to the indifferent response to this ultimatum was the kidnapping of Jenco. “We announce that Mr. Jenco is in good shape. We have allowed a cardiologist to examine him on Wednesday, and he is in good shape.” Then the caller ended his message with an ominous indication of the tensions within the Shiite community between Nabih Berri. the moderate leader of the Amal organization who this week helped secure the release of a kidnapped Swiss diplomat and more militant factions. “Finally, we address a special warning to Mr Nabih Berri that he will bear the responsiblity of any intervention to release any of the Americans we hold because we are the stronger and we shall remain the stronger, “ he said. Asked by an AP employee what the conditions were for the release of the hostages, the caller replied: “All Americans should leave Lebanon.” Asked if this included newsmen, the caller said: “No, newsmen are exempt. We shall release all five we are holding without any conditions if our demand is heeded.” When asked if all five were still alive, he said: “Inshallah,” or “God willing.” In addition to Jenco, the Americans who have disappeared here are Jeremy Levin, the chief of the Cable News Network bureau; William Buckley, a political officer of the American Embassy; Benjamin Wier, an elderly Presbyterian minister; and Peter Kilburn, a 60-year old librarian at the American University of Beirut with several serious medical problems. Meanwhile, in west Beirut on Friday, a car bomb went off outside a branch of the Bank of Beirut and Arab Countries, killing three passers-by and wounding 14 others seriously.

Angeles International on Monday, “he said he opened the suitcase and she was dead,” Hadi said. “He removed all identifying labels from the baggage and returned to Sacramento,” Bowers said. Ayazi told friends at the Sacramento airport that his wife was still in Germany, but they saw he was “in shock. ... He was obviously not the same guy we knew. We asked him and asked him, and all he said was, ‘l’m just dead. I lost everything,”’ Hadi said. “He told me what happened about four or five hours before he killed himself. He asked me if I promised and swear not to tell anyone for a couple more hours until he made up his mind. “He was crying. He said, ‘I don’t know what to do. I’m afraid. I’m ashamed. What do I say to my wife’s family? ’ “I was giving him hope. I said do not think about suicide. Think about positive things. ... You just made a mistake. It’s going to be all right after a couple of years.”

road where she was detained Tuesday. But she said she didn’t see anyone killed and she didn’t say where she heard about the killings. She said the dead reportedly included nine construction workers, two employees of the Natural Resources Ministry, two coffee pickers and a truck driver. In a recent interview, Calero was quoted as saying: “There is no line at all, not even a fine line, between a civilian farm owned by the government and a Sandinista military outpost. What they call a cooperative is also a troop concentration full of armed people." The nun said she was first detained when the pickup truck in which she was riding with a refugee family and an 18-year old youth was stopped a few miles out of San Juan de Limay by five armed members of the Nicaraguan Democratic Force. After 10 minutes she said, they were all allowed to go on their way.