ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Saturday, April 13, 1996 TAG: 9604150030
SECTION: NATL/INTL PAGE: A-3 EDITION: METRO
Gas shells beneath sea pose hazard
MOSCOW - Chemical-weapon stockpiles that the Allied powers seized from Nazi Germany after World War II were dumped in the North Sea and Baltic Sea, and they now pose a major environmental hazard, a newspaper reported Friday.
Soviet authorities discharged about 38,500 short tons of Nazi chemical weapons near Denmark's Bornholm Island and along the Latvian coast near Liepaja in 1946-47, the newspaper reported.
The United States and Britain dumped their share of the German arsenal in the Skagerrak and Kattegat straits, which connect the Baltic and North Seas, the newspaper said.
According to the report, experts said it takes about 50 years for such artillery shells and bombs to be corroded by water. They then could leak deadly toxic agents.
``The consequences of an environmental catastrophe of such a scale are beyond conjecture,'' the article said. - Associated Press
Foul vapor sickens Tokyo theatergoers
TOKYO - A woman who was told to change her seat sprayed a foul-smelling gas into a crowded theater in downtown Tokyo on Friday, injuring 28 people.
It was not immediately known what gas the woman used. She fled after the attack, and police said they had made no arrests.
The incident was the latest in a string of gas attacks, many of them pranks, that followed the March 1995 nerve gas assault on the Tokyo subway that killed 12 people. A doomsday cult is accused in that attack.
The woman sprayed the gas after an usher told her someone else had the ticket for her seat, witnesses told police. Several hundred people were in the underground theater in Shinjuku, a bustling section of Tokyo, Kyodo News reported.
Of the 28 people injured, 17 were taken to the hospital, complaining of smarting eyes and difficulty in breathing. One man was hospitalized overnight, police said.
- Associated Press
American among decorated Mir crew
MOSCOW - President Boris Yeltsin awarded medals to American astronaut Norman Thagard and 34 cosmonauts and space researchers Friday to mark the 35th anniversary of Yuri Gagarin's historic flight into space.
Thagard and German spaceman Thomas Reiter received special medals commemorating their visits to Russia's Mir space station. Thagard lived on Mir for nearly four months last year.
The crew currently aboard the Mir - cosmonauts Yuri Onufrienko and Yuri Usachev and American astronaut Shannon Lucid - were given the day off to celebrate Cosmonauts Day, which commemorates Gagarin's flight.
``Of course we are going to have a holiday up here,'' Usachev said in a space-to-ground news conference Thursday.
Gagarin, the first man sent into space, made a single orbit in 1961 and returned to Earth a worldwide hero. He was killed in a 1968 plane crash.
At the Kremlin ceremony Friday, Yeltsin said the space industry had the potential to boost Russia's market economy and raise living standards.
At a meeting of defense industry bosses Thursday, Yeltsin said Russia's space program was way ahead of the United States.
``Americans are lagging behind us,'' he told the ITAR-Tass news agency.
``They cannot even imagine the space engines manufactured here,'' he said. ``This is why the Americans cannot launch heavy spacecraft without us.''
- Associated Press
LENGTH: Medium: 69 linesby CNB