The Michigan Daily - Tuesday, May 22, 1984 - Page 11
Physicist Sakharov turns 63 in isolation

From AP and Uri
MOSCOW - Dissident leader Andrei
Sakharov, the brilliant physicist who
has clashed with four Kremlin ad-
ministrations, turned 63 yesterday in an
isolation imposed by authorities
seeking to sever his last, tenuous con-
tacts with the outside world.
Sakharov's whereabouts remained
uncertain 19 days after he reportedly
began a hunger strike in a bid to win
permission for his wife, Yelena Bonner,
to go abroad for treatment of a heart
condition and eye problems.
BONNER reported during the
weekend that Sakharov was taken on
May 7 from his home in Gorky, where
he lived in internal exile.
French Communist Party leader
Georges Marchais, interviewed Sunday
on French radio, said Soviet officials
told him Sakharov and Bonner were in
"completely satisfactory" condition
and that Sakharov was at a Gorky
clinic.
In Paris, Foreign Minister Claude
Cheysson disputed Marchais' report.
"Can we believe this information?"
Cheysson asked. "There is no means of
checking."

THE OFFICIAL press has provided
no word on Sakharov's fate. But it has
kept up attacks on Bonner and has con-
firmed that she is confined to Gorky -
a city closed to foreigners. It also said
she is accused of anti-Soviet slander, a
crime punishable by three years in
prison.
The incidents are the latest in a series
of conflicts that began in the 1950s when
Sakharov began grappling with what he
called "the moral problems" of his
nuclear research.
In 1953, at the age of 32, Sakharov
became the youngest man ever
nominated to the USSR Academy of
Sciences and his future seemed secure

- a lifetime of vital work, privileges
and honors.
BUT IN THE late 1950s, Sakharov
wrote later, "I began a campaign to
halt or to limit the testing of nuclear
weapons. This brought me into conflict
with Nikita Khruschev."
"Every day, I saw the huge material,
intellectual, and nervous resources of
thousands of people being poured into
the creation of a means of total destruc-
tion, something potentially capable of
annihilating all human civilization," he
wrote.
During his campaign for human
rights and against nuclear arms, which
won him the 1975 Nobel Peace Prize,

Sakharov found himself at odds with
Khruschev, Leonid Brezhnev, Yuri An-
dropov and now Konstantin Chernenko.
The battle led authorities to banish
him to Gorky, 250 miles east of Moscow,
in January 1980. Many fellow Soviet
scientists denounced him as a traitor
last year. And officials now are in-
vestigating charges against Bonner,
who has been his spokesman for the
past four years.
With each step, Sakharov's links to
the West became weaker. With his wife
confined to Gorky and with Moscow
contacts frightened to talk to the
Western press, a close watch on his
situation is not possible.

Alaskan police search for bodies

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) -
Troopers searched the brush - choked
banks of the Tanana River yesterday
for victims of a drifter who wandered
into Alaska and turned to murder -
bringing to 49 the number of people
killed in six mass slayings in the state
over the past five years.
The latest assailant was identified as
Michael Silka, a man with a record of

minor brushes with the law who drove
into Alaska about a month ago ina beat-
up sedan crammed with guns, am-
munition and personal gear.
SILKA, described as a "weird,
scraggly'' 25-year-old, killed a police
officer and is believed to have killed
eight other people in Alaska before he
was shot to death Saturday on the banks
of the Zitziana River, about 25 miles
south of Manley Hot Springs.
The series of mass slayings has led
residents to speculate that there's
something lethal in the combination of
frustrated people coming to the end of
the road at America's last frontier.
One psychiatrist said Silka, a native
of Hoffman Estates, Ill., may have em-
bodied a feeling of "the ultimate
frustration" and turned to murder
because he possessed an arsenal.

STATE ATTORNEY General Nor-
man Gorsuch said he believes Alaska
tends to-attract "more than its share of
the frustrated, those who are looking
for a pot of gold,,:a new start." And
when they don't find it, they sometimes
react irrationally, he said.
"We do see a fair number of people
who come here on a not-too-rational
basis," said Dr. Irwin Rothrock, a
forensic psychiatrist in Fairbanks.
"They come here thinking somehow
that when they get here that things will
change for them. When they get here
they find they have the same problems
here as they have elsewhere."
Officials believe Silka murdered
seven people at Manley Hot Springs in a
three-hour rampage.

New TV system lets
viewer partieipate
PORT WASHINGTON, N.Y. (AP) - For example, a demonstration
A new personalized television system newscast gave ACTV viewers the op-
unveiled yesterday could someday portunity to pick the stories they wanted
allow viewers to rearrange the order of to see and arrange the order of segmen-
segments on evening newcasts, choose ts, such as weather and sports.
commercials targeted at their age and
sex, or decide on the camera angle for "It only works on a pre-recorded
watching a football game. newscast," said Schaen. "Say if you
This new form of interactive TV was wanted a more elaborate story on
demonstrated at ACTV, Inc.'s studios Lebanon and the show had done a
here. Company president Lionel Schaen longer version, then you would have the
said ACTV works with existing cable option to see it." The ACTV version of
systems. The only additional equip- the program could not exceed the
ment needed is the "Smart Box," ac- regular broadcast, "so you'd have to
tually a microprocessor, and a remote- make up the time later in the broad-
control activator. cast," Schaen said.
"This will make cable TV really dif-
ferent because TV programs will be Freeman compared it to a magazine,
altered to fit the personal taste and in which readers choose articles from
desires of the viewer," said Schaen. the table of contents.
Schaen said the system would cost
subscribers under $10 a month. Current A sample music show allowed
plans, he said, call for testing with a ACTV viewers to choose camera
cable system by early 1985, with ACTV angles: a close-up of the lead singer,
becoming available to the consumer in shot of the band members or the disco
the middle of that year or early in 1986. dancers. A kids' show allowed children
HERE'S HOW the system works: to steer a fire truck and change the
Shows, available to all TV viewers, story line.
would be produced to contain several
versions. An ACTV viewer could choose The ability to direct coverage could
among these different segments by be applied to live sports eventsa or
pressing buttons. The viewer also could political conventions, Freeman said.
do nothing and see the general- Again, the program supplier has to
consumption version of the show. cooperate.
City residents want to
adopt Russian sister city

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(Continued fromPage 1)
the sister city plan will be accepted.
Vander said five Russian cities have
already responded favorably and 89
more are in the process of writing back
to their prospective American
partners.
"It sounds like the (Soviet) central
government has not made a policy
forbidding participation. That to me is

encouraging," she said.
Ann Arbor's four other sister cities
are in Germany, Japan, Belize and
Ontario. According to Cathy Jaskiewicz
in the mayor's office, the relationships
have prompted activities from letter-
writing to student sports exchanges.
Ann Arbor has had ties with Tubingen,
Germany for 24 years.

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