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Off the Record
'Free speech is life itself
NEW YORK : Author Salman Rushdie in hiding for nearly three years since Iran, sentenced him to death for blaspheming Islam, turned up In New York on Wednesday in his first public appear ance in the United States since going Into seclusion, reports Reuter.
Rushdie. who spoke to Columbia University journalism students, was whisked In and out of the university with police escorts.
The writer asked the Invited audience of more than 300 students and profes
sors not to forget that he was still under an Iranian death sentence Issued by the late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.
"Free speech Is the whole thing, the whole ballgame." Rushdie told the assembly at Columbia s Graduate School of Journalism, "free speech is life Itself."
Khomeini, condemning the author's book The Satanic Verses", called on Muslims throughout the world to kill Rushdie on February 14. 1989.
This was believed to be Rushdie's first trip abroad and It was his first public appearance outside Britain since the death decree.
New York police said Rushdie left the podium and was escorted directly to the airport where he was flown out of the country to an unknown destination.
PM's first word begins with F
OTTAWA : Prime Minister Brian Mulroney cursed a liberal deputy during a debate Wednesday, according to several parliamentarians and others within earshot, and outraged opposition members demanded an official censure, reports AP
Winnipeg MP David Walker said the Conservative Prime Minister used the profanity during a Commons debate after Wajker charged that Mulroney was more interested in photo opportunities than In eradicating poverty among Canadian children.
"I wouldn't be willing to repeat in public what the Prime Minister said.' Walker said.
The first word begins with F and refers to sexual activity The second one refers to my lack of parents I have parents and 1 don't use the F word."
A spokesman for Mulroney denied he made the remark, and it was Impossible to verity because Mulroney's microphone was switched off and his remarks weren't captured by the parliament's electronic transcript service.
But several opposition MPs and a Canadian Press news photographer said they clearly heard Mulroney use the two words.
"We all looked at each other rather incredulously, not quite believing what we believed he had uttered." said Nelson Riis. House leader of the opposition New Democratic Party.
Only handbag makes the difference
MAASTRICHT. Netherlands : A year after succeeding Margaret Thatcher as British Prime Minister, the mild man nered John Major has won a Key diplomatic victory tn Europe : the battleground that precipitated her downfall, reports AI’.
In some ways, the European Community summit which ended early Wednesday with a far-reaching agreement on European union looked like a replay of the Thatcher years.
Britain was isolated with its longtime resistance to European union: the arguments with the pro-unton leaders of Germany. France. Italy and the rest dragged on Into the early hours: the summit teetered on the brink of collapse
The big difference was that in the end Major got his way. the 12-natton trade bloc got a historic accord—although well short of continental visions of a federal type Europe—and no tempers frayed.
The United Kingdom is very much the same." Dutch Prime Minister Ruud Lubbers, the summit host, remarked wearily when two flays of haggling finally ended in Wednesday's early hours. But. he added, this British "minister does not have a handbag."
The quip underlined the contrast In style between Major and Mrs. Thatcher, who during her 11 years In office was regularly depicted by cartoonists as pounding male colleagues with her trademark handbag
HIV-carrier deprived of comforts of bed
MOSCOW : When Andrei Plotnikov tested positive for the HIV virus, articles appeared in his home town newspapers warning that he was a danger to society, reports AP
Not tong after. Plotnikov was tn jail, wak dumped in a cell without mattress or pillow. His alleged crime : knowingly in feeling his homosexual lover with the AIDS virus.
Of course I'm scared." Plotnikov said sitting tn Moscow s Second Infectious Disease Hospital, where he was admitted for treatment. "I don't want to go back to prison and die there." He denied the charge
The healthy looking 26-year-old fa one of three Soviets who have been imprisoned under a law that makes It a crime to transmit knowingly the AIDS virus, a law that has counter parts in other countries. .
A number of people in the United States have been pn~ cutcd under various stale laws for knowingly tranamlttinx the virus
But AIDS activists say the Soviet law really exists to quarantine people who are HIV carriers and humiliate them, both as a punishment and as a warning to others to discourage them from high-risk activities