World Notes

DISASTERS Unraveling Taped Secrets

The team in Bombay trying to discover why Air-India Flight 182 plunged into the North Atlantic on June 23, killing 329, was being cautious. Declared Justice B.N. Kirpal, who is heading the Indian government investigation of the two "blackbox" recorders recovered from the seabed two weeks ago: "Explosion is one possibility. It may also be structural failure." But in Seattle, Jack Gamble, a spokesman for Boeing, the manufacturer of the 747 aircraft, declared that an explosion seemed a more likely explanation. His reasoning: if the plane had fallen apart slowly because of structural defects, there would probably be evidence of this on the tapes. But "both recorders go off line within one second," despite four separate power sources.

The analysis of the two recorders, one of cockpit voices during the final 30 minutes of flight, the other of data from 64 flight functions, is being carried out by a five-member team assisted by experts from the U.S. and Canada. The team's final conclusions about what caused the crash are expected in about three months.

BELGIUM Another Soccer-Riot Victim

In a country that has had at least 30 governments since World War II, Prime Minister Wilfried Martens had skillfully held together a coalition government for more than 3 1/2 years. The odds finally caught up with the popular Prime Minister last week in an unexpected crisis over the government's handling of the May soccer riot in Brussels that left 38 dead in a clash between English and Italian fans. Six Liberal Party ministers quit after Minister of the Interior Charles-Ferdinand Nothomb, a member of the Christian Social Party, refused to accept direct responsibility for the incident. Martens offered his government's resignation, but in a rare move by the country's constitutional monarch, King Baudouin refused to accept it. The King's reason: elections would have been in August, when most Belgians are away on vacation.

The feuding parties agreed to work together until new elections can be held on Oct. 13. Martens had survived previous challenges to his severe economic austerity program and his willingness to accept the deployment of U.S. cruise missiles. The coalition's soccer squabble could open the way for the opposition Socialists, who would probably reverse those policies.

ZIMBABWE The Spoils of Victory

Prime Minister Robert Mugabe proved last week that he meant to get even with his country's 100,000 whites, especially the 4,400 farmers, for their overwhelming support of former Rhodesian Leader Ian Smith in the general elections four weeks ago. In a move that one disbelieving farmer called "a prime example of cutting off your nose to spite your face," Mugabe dismissed Minister of Agriculture Denis Norman, who is white, from his Cabinet.

Under Norman's resourceful management, Zimbabwe has become one of the few African countries that not only feed themselves but produce surpluses that account for some 40% of export earnings. Norman had no ties to Smith's Conservative Alliance party, which won 15 of the 20 places reserved for whites in the 100-seat House of Assembly. Mugabe's party took 63 of the remaining seats. While praising Norman's performance, Mugabe said it had not been "appreciated by [the farmers] or they would not have voted for Ian Smith, who is an enemy of the people of Zimbabwe." Mugabe also dismissed John Landau, the white Deputy Minister of Trade and Commerce. That left Minister of State for Public Service Chris Andersen the only white Minister among the 25 in Mugabe's Cabinet.

ISRAEL Not Quite Jewish

Hundreds of Ethiopian Jews who made a dramatic exodus from their famine-ravaged villages to the promised land of Israel were on the march again last week. This time they were protesting a ruling by Israel's Chief Rabbis that Ethiopian Jews must be immersed in a mikveh, or ritual bath, to remove questions about their Jewishness. The Ethiopians, sometimes known as Falashas, have observed biblical Jewish traditions for centuries and are deeply hurt by the order. Said one elderly marcher: "Maybe it would have been better if we had stayed in Ethiopia. In spite of our suffering, at least there we knew who we were."

Although Israel officially acknowledges that the Ethiopians are Jews, its Chief Rabbis say that intermarriages during the centuries in which the Ethiopians were isolated from mainstream Judaism makes it difficult to determine the Jewishness of individuals. The Ethiopians say the rabbis' ruling is insulting because it casts doubt on the suffering they endured to sustain their identity. The Ethiopians' protest ended when Prime Minister Shimon Peres agreed to meet with them this week.

TURKEY Sex and the Singular Imam

The Prophet Muhammad's exhortations concerning sex are occasionally mystifying. "When a man calls his wife to intercourse," the Messenger of God advises at one point, "she must not resist him even though she might be on a camel." He also warns that too much conversation while engaging in sex might turn his followers into stutterers. Fearful that modern Muslims may have lost their founder's enthusiasm for sex, Imam Ali Riza Demircan, 39, the religious leader of Istanbul's Grand Piyale Pasha mosque, published an explicit two-volume Sexual Life According to Islam. Declares the book: "The women who deserve to go to heaven are those who say that they will not go to sleep until they satisfy their husbands."

The marriage manual quickly became a Turkish best seller. Authorities, however, banned the book, removed Ali Demircan from his mosque and charged him with defaming Islam and, more serious, misusing religion, which could lead to a 15-year jail term. The author's most serious offense, it is alleged, was suggesting a return to traditions outlawed by Kemal Ataturk, the founder of modern Turkey. As one example, the imam advocated redividing the home into a salamlik for men only and a harem for women.