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About The Battalion. (College Station, Tex.) 1893-current | View Entire Issue (Oct. 18, 1985)
ooo< G.W. Patou’s xxx) DIARY Of A LOST GIRL BROOKS \AGGI inema/ # SUNDAY r OCTOBER 20 601 Rudder $1.50 T exas A&M Flying Club COME LEARN TO FLY WITH US Interested people are urged to attend our meeting April 16 at the Airport Clubhouse. For more information Call Don Read 696-9339 7:30 P.M. Page 8/The Battalion/Friday, October 18,1985 World and Nation Achille Lauro Victims recount hijacking of Italian liner Associated Press GENOA, Italy — “They brought chocolate to the children,” one crew member said, treasuring the one bright fragment in a black memory of terror and murder aboard the Achille Lauro. Those who had skipped the land tour were having a lunch as lazy as the ship’s pace along the Egyptian coast. 1 heir jaws froze at the chil ling, staccato sounds outside. But they soon moved again, because it couldn’t be gunfire, just someone playing a joke with firecrackers. Then pirates with automatic weapons pushed the ship’s officers through the door and fired into the ceiling. It was 1:15 p.m. on Monday, Oct. 7. The nightmare cruise had be gun, and one of the terrified people in that room would die. When the Achille Lauro docked Wednesday night in Genoa, its home port, it carried 313 crew members and 19 passengers. Most of the more than 800 passengers on the cruise had left for a brief lour of the Pyr amids before the ship was hijacked; or they had gotten off in Port Said, Egypt, after the hijackers surren dered. This is what happened, based on interviews by The Associated Press and of ficial reports: The maitre d’hotel, Siro Amicone, was sitting with the chef when the hi jackers arrived, clutching hand gre nades, and began shooting holes in the ceiling with Kalashnikov auto matic rifles. “We had thought someone was kidding, maybe with those firecrack ers that you use on holiday," Ami- cone said, sitting in the same dining room 10 days later. He pointed to the ceiling where some bullet holes remained, despite repair work to get the ship ready for its next cruise. “I started to stand up. then they started to shoot at the ceiling and to shout at everybody to put their hands up and to shut up, ’ he said. “We all sat down.” Susan Shaw of Durban, South Af rica, said, “We saw the officers com ing in with their hands over their heads and the terrorists with their machine guns out behind them and we realized it was for real. We all dived under the table.” More than 600 passengers had gone ashore at Alexandria for a sightseeing tour that was to rejoin the ship at Port Said. Most of the 500-odd people caught aboard by the hjijackers were crew members who regularly make the 12-day run to ports in Egypt, Israel, Cyprus, Greece and the Italian island of Ca pri. It was nearly seven hours before Italian authorities learned that the ship had been hijacked. A coastal ra dio station in Goteborg, Sweden, had picked up a ship-to-shore con versation indicating the 24,000-ton vessel was in pirate hands. Foreign Minister Giulio Andreotti then l>egan nu king diplomatic con tacts — with the United States. Black man scheduled to hang says apartheid will not survive Associated Press JOHANNESBURG, South Africa — The mother of a black man sen tenced to die for a murder he claims he did not commit says her son would sing a hymn of praise to anti apartheid guerrillas on the way to the gallows today. Benjamin Moloise’s last message to the world Thursday, delivered with a clenched fist raised, was “W’e shall overcome.” The white-minority government has dismissed pleas for a new trial and rejected calls from abroad to spare the life of the 30-year-old upholsterer, who also writes poetry. The hanging would be the fifth in South Africa of a member or self- proclaimed supporter of the African National Congress, the main guer rilla group fighting the government. Riots were reported in mixed-race townships around Cape Town, and in the huge black city of Soweto out side Johannesburg, where stone throwing youths fought street battles with police firing tear gas. Witnesses says Michael Hornsby, correspondent for The Times of London, was wounded by police shotgun fire in Soweto. Colleagues at the scene says the wounds were not serious. Police reported no deaths Thurs day, but more than 750 people have “We shall overcome, and tomorrow I will spill my blood for those who re mained behind. ” — Benjamin Moloise, sup porter of the African Na tional Congress. died in 14 months of violence against apartheid, the race laws that guarantee privilege for South Afri ca’s 5 million whites and deny rights to its 24 million blacks. Mamike Moloise, 53, says after her final visit with her son: "I found him stronger than ever . . . ready to die.” Moloise was convicted of killing a black policeman, Warrant Officer Philipis Selepe, who was cut down by automatic weapons fire outside his home in Pretoria in 1982. Moloise admits helping plan the murder and being in the area but claims he merely accompanied the killers to counter their suspicions that he was a police agent. The ANC, which has its head quarters in Lusaka, Zambia, says it ordered Selepe slain for his role in arresting guerrilla saboteurs butMa- I loise was not the killer. "Those who are leading him to his I death must feel the blows of our an- E ger . . . We shall not forget,” the | ANC said Thursday in a statement | issued in Lusaka. Appeals for clemency came from I the governments of the United 1 States, France and West Germany, I and from the European Economic I Community and United Nations. Last year's Nobel Peace Prize win- | ner. South African Anglican Bishop | Desmond Tutu, says he had sent an i urgent telex to President P.W. Botha | asking for the hanging to be called | off. “It will only aggravate the situa- t tion in this country,” Tutu says. Moloise’s lawyer, Priscilla Jana. | says of her last meeting with herdi- 1 cm Thursday morning: “He seemed absolutely confident E that this country will be freed from E the shackles of oppression.... Aswe | parted, he stood up, raised his I clenched fist and says to tell the | whole world that, ‘We shall over- | come, and tomorrow 1 wil( spill nty I blood for those who remained be- I hind.’ " Harrison Ford is John Book. A big city cop. A small country boy. Tbey have nothing in common ...but a murder. WITNESS FRI & SAT OCT. 18,19 7:30 & 9:45 Rudder Theatre $2.00 w/TAMU ID MIDNIGHTl Rudder Theatre Starring (in diabolical order) EILEEN BRENNAN • TRUMAN CAPOTE • JAMES COCO • PETER EUR ALEC GUINNESS • ELSA LANCHESTER • DAVID NIVEN • PETER SELLERS MAGGIE SMITH • NANCY WALKER • ESTELLE WINWOOD By the time the world's greatest detectives figure out whoduxuiit„.you could die laughing! M U.S. economy up by 3.3 percent; growth falls below expectations Associated Press WASHINGTON — The U.S. economy, boosted by an automobile buying spree, enjoyed a moderate rebound m growth during the sum mer, but the pace was still substan tially below the increase forecast by the Reagan administration, the gov ernment said Thursday. The gross national product, the broadest measure of economic health, grew at a 3.3 percent annual rate from July through September, the Commerce Department said. This represented an upward revi sion from an initial estimate of 2.8 percent growth made a month ago. It was also three times faster than the weak 1.1 percent growth rate turned in during the first six months of the year. However, the administration was forecasting a rebound to growth of around 5 percent in the final half of 1985. Commerce Secretary Malcolm Baldrige called the smaller upturn good news, but conceded it “would be difficult” to achieve the kind of growth needed to hit the administra tion’s target of 3 percent expansion for the entire year. Many private analysts said the country will more likely achieve weak growth of around 2 percent this year, a rate that some analysts have termed a “growth recession,” a time when the economy expands at such a sluggish pace that unemploy ment rises. In a possible ominous sign for the future, the Commerce Department also said housing construction fell a sharp 9.3 percent in September to an annual level of 1.58 million new | starts, the slowest pace since lastOc- j tober. Analysts were surprised by the j drop, which included a 10.4 percent f decline in single-family startsanda 7.6 percent fall in apartment con struction. Some suggested that builders’ fears of interest rate in-, creases may have contributed to the downturn. The GNP report showed that in flation remained well under control. An index which measures the same | marketbasket of goods increased at I an annual rate of just 2.9 percent in I the third quarter, the slowest pacein I 13 years. Prices as measured by this I index had risen at a rate of 3.9 per- I cent in the second quarter. 2 TIME TONY AWARD WINNER JOHN CULLUM Cyrano y de Bergerac The passionate / tale off adventure and romance MSC - TOWN - HAUL October 21,1985 8 p.m. Rudder Auditorium 845-1234 Visa/MC