today ira
ORGANIZED CRIME in the U.S. will reap illegal profits exceeding $75 billion U.S. this year and cost the country more than 400,000 jobs, says a blue-ribbon panel. Page
THE POOR should be allowed to steal, a group of feminist legal experts suggests. Page
PITCHERS felt like members of an endangered species in major league baseball Tuesday. Page
Index
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Business........ .....2G.27
.....14-20
Entertainment .. .......23
Family ......... .......25
.......17
........2
The
Prince George
itize
East and West page 3
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Sadrack says
Skies should remain clear today and overnight with clouds and showers expected to move into the area Thursday morning. Today’s high is expected to be near 10, dropping to near -4 overnight, while Thursday’s high is expected to be near 7.
Tuesday’s high was 8, the overnight low was -4, there was no precipitation and 10.1 hours of sunshine.
A year ago on this date the high was 7, the overnight low was zero, there was no precipitation and
Details page 7
7.9 hours of sunshine.
Sunset today is at 6:47 p.m. and sunrise Thursday is at 5:39 a.m.
40c
Wednesday, April 2, 1986
HD
brief
"My wife doesn't like me working late at the office."
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LIBYAN TERRORISTS AT WORK?
by Associated Press
The explosion of a bomb aboard an Athens-bound TWA jetliner today came amid heightened security at U.S. and European airports because of Libya’s call for attacks on Americans following the armed conflict in the Gulf of Sidra off the Libyan coast last week.
No group has claimed responsibility for today’s attack, which killed at least three people. Greek authorities said the blast was caused by a bomb hidden in a piece of luggage aboard Flight 840 from Rome.
In many cities, airport precautions already were at high levels in the aftermath of the Dec. 27 Palestinian terrorist attacks at the Rome and Vienna airports in which 20 people, including five Americans, died, and the hijacking last summer of a U.S. passenger jet to Beirut.
Libya fired missiles at American aircraft partici-
pating in manoeuvres off Libya on March 24, and U.S. officials say the United States retaliated by sinking at least two Libyan patrol boats and attacking a shore installation.
Tu'o days later, Libya, which claims the gulf as its territory, called on Arabs to form suicide squads and become “human bombs” to strike back at American embassies and interests everywhere.
One example of increased concern about terrorism was the cancellation last week of a flight by two U.S. senators.
Senators Gary Hart of Colorado and Bennett Johnston of Louisiana were to have left last Friday on a 10-day trip to Israel, Egypt and Jordan but postponed their trip, Johnston said, because U.S. intelligence authorities had cautioned against it.
On Friday, a TWA flight to Bombay from New York was delayed during a Cairo stopover when the U.S. airline received a sabotage warning. No bomb was found.
by Associated Press
ATHENS (AP) — A bomb tore a hole in a TWA Boeing 727 today and blasted a man, woman and child to their deaths 10,000 feet above southern Greece, airport police said.
The plane landed safely but police said another child was missing and up to nine people were reported injured.
Officials said at least two U.S. citizens were among those injured on Flight 840, which was flying from Rome to Athens with 114 passengers and seven crew. The duty officer at the Canadian Embassy in Athens said he did not know whether any Canadians were on board.
“The blast was caused by an explosive device in a piece of luggage aboard the plane,” said Yiannis Kapsis, undersecretary for foreign affairs in Greece, in a statement. Earlier, airport police raised the possibility the blast was caused by mechanical failure.
A senior airport security official said a child was missing and seven other passengers were injured, including two U.S. citizens. However, a U.S. Embassy spokesman in Cairo put the number injured at nine and said five were U.S. citizens. The spokesman said the three dead were Colombians.
The explosion blew a hole almost
now hear this. . .
■ A reader points out the people who distribute Canada Pension cheques have come up with a novel way to cut their postage bill — mail cheques to four different people in one envelope Fortunately, the Guest Crescent pensioner who received the windfall was able to track down the other three persons and get their cheques to them.
three metres by one metre under the plane’s right wing as it flew near the town of Corinth.
The bodies of the three people were found on an unused Greek air force landing strip outside Argos, about 50 kilometres south of Corinth and about 100 kilometres southwest of Athens. “They
apparently had been sucked out of the plane by the blast," an official
said.
The U.S. Embassy spokesman in Cairo said in addition to five U.S. Citizens, two Greeks and two Saudi Arabians were injured. The plane had been scheduled to continue to Cairo.
Teachers' federation elects woman chief
VANCOUVER (CP) - Elsie McMurphy, a 39-year-old Saanich elementary teacher, was elected president of the British Columbia Teachers Federation Tuesday, the first woman to hold the two-year post since 1965.
McMurphy, who was the 28.000-member federation's first vice-president for the last two years, said she hopes she is the “first in a long line” of women presidents. She succeeds Fat Clarke, a 37-year-old Kelowna teacher.
McMurphy defeated Richmond teacher Margaret Woodlands on the first ballot, by 421-231.
“I think the No. 1 priority is to work to enhance the status of the teaching profession and I think that involves improving conditions for kids and teachers," McMurphy told reporters later.
McMurphy said she did not think that being a woman president would have an immediate impact on the federation.
“But I hope it will signal to many of our members, both men and women, the fact that there is a desire to see more women involved,” she said.
Increasing the participation of women in the federation is not an easy task, said McMurphy, who has three children.
“There is still a wide range of
social conditions that militate against the involvement of women in leadership positions,” she said. “Our society still expects women to carry a number of burdens.”
She said she hopes the federation might help change society by leading the way with ways of supporting women as leaders, such as day care, homemaker pensions and seniority rights for women on leave.
PENTICTON (CP) - Although teachers in nine provinces have the right to strike, B.C. Education Minister Jim Hewitt said today those provinces are “out of step.”
Hewitt, the MLA for Boundary-Similkameen, said he was opposed to teachers having the right to strike.
“I think the other provinces are out of step.” Hewitt said.
Delegates to the annual B.C. Teachers' Federation annual convention voted earlier this week in Vancouver to seek the right to strike.
The minister also said teachers are adequately paid.
Hewitt said teachers must recognize that the economy can only afford to pay them at a certain salary level.
Citizen photo by Lisa Murdoch
Dancers come in all sizes and ages, as this trio from Sonia Fabian Dancers proves while taking part in the Prince George Dance Festi-Tiny trio va* Vanier Hall. From left, Amber Evans, 4, Carrie Davis. 5, and Alexandra Sears, 3, give their best for judges. Contestants from toddlers to young adults have come from as far as 800 kilometres away to perform solo or in groups. Results, page 8.
SURGERY AT PGRH
Waiting list to shrink
The long-awaited opening of a new operating room at Prince George Regional Hospital is finally going to happen because of a local-ly-produced program to train operating-room nurses.
Bank of B.C. closes 19 branches
by Canadian Press
VANCOUVER - The Bank of British Columbia — which bills itself as Canada's Western Bank — is closing recently acquired branches in Alberta. Saskatchewan and Manitoba.
It plans to “concentrate its major efforts in the British Columbia market and to reduce its operations in England and the Prairie provinces,” the bank said in a news release.
One full service branch will be
retained in Edmonton and another in Calgary, but 19 other branches will be closed in Alberta. Saskatchewan and Manitoba.
The bank bought Pioneer Trust Co. branches in Saskatchewan and Manitoba in February 1985 after the Regina-based company closed.
It is closing its London. England, office, and “future United States lending activities will relate only to servicing the needs of the bank's Canadian domestic customers."
The bank said it has more than
200.000 customers in British Columbia.
“Given events of the last seven months in the financial industry and their effects on financial institutions in Western Canada, the prudent short term strategy for our bank is to consolidate its operations," bank chairman Edgaar Kaiser said in the nfws release.
Kaiser also said Dale Parker has been promoted to president and chief executive officer of the bank.
Parker. 50, ;oined the Bank of B C. in May 1985 in the newly
created position of president of Canadian banking operations. He had worked for the Bank of Montreal for 32 years.
At the time. Parker said the bank’s focus would continue to be broad in Western Canada rather than taking a "narrow market approach.”
Kaiser said Tuesday he wants the bank to achieve “a stronger and more competitive position in British Columbia and the Pacific Rim."
The fifth operating room is expected to open at the end of April - the same time six operating room lurses will complete an on-site course offered at PGRH by the British Columbia Institute of Technology (BCIT).
The course was the first one ever offered off campus by the BCIT facility in the Lower Mainland-
PGRH has been using only four operating rooms largely due to lack of trained personnel as well as government spending restraints which went into effect in the early 1980s.
Although the Ministry of Health has not given it’s formal blessing to the opening, hospital administrator Allan Husband considers a verbal agreement the hospital has as an indication of acceptance for the plan.
Husband says the additional operating time should provide surgery for about 1,500 to 1.900 daycare cases annually and will reduce the elective surgery waiting list, now hovering around 1,900.
Coal mine production
slashed
Citizen news services
VANCOUVER — Low coal prices and worldwide oversupply are forcing Byron Creek Collieries near Sparwood in southeastern B.C. to cut production by 35 per cent and lay off 150 of its 250 workers.
The open-pit thermal coal mine is all but abandoning the export spot market, general manager Joe Aiello said Tuesday.
Production will drop to 650,000 tonnes a year from about one million.
Aiello said Byron Creek, owned by Esso Resources Canada Ltd., is the first major southeastern B.C. mine to pull out of the export market.
Meanwhile, Denison Mines, which operates the Quintette coal mine in northeastern B.C., said a third round of negotiations with its Japanese customers is scheduled for next week.
The Japanese steel mills are seeking price and volume cuts from Quintette.