Missions

There is a glaring (obviously unintentional) omission in your story "Blue Helmets Heading for Gulf Border Duty" (April 12). Relative to its population, the Republic of Ireland has contributed more officers and men than most nations to peacekeeping missions throughout the world under the aegis of the United Nations. Long may this peace-loving nation maintain the good work! LEO NEALON Huntington Beach

The Senate on Thursday confirmed the nomination of Vernon A. Walters to succeed Jeane J. Kirkpatrick as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations by voice vote and without debate. Since 1981 Walters, 68, has served the Reagan Administration as ambassador-at-large, visiting more than 100 countries on diplomatic missions that often were cloaked in secrecy. He speaks eight languages and has served as an interpreter for four presidents.

The Soviet news agency Tass, reacting angrily to a U.S. demand for staff cuts at Soviet missions to the United Nations, accused the Americans on Saturday of using the world organization for intelligence purposes. "The United States intensively exploits the fact that U.N. headquarters is located in New York for espionage purposes," Tass said. Earlier, it said that the Reagan Administration, seeking to force changes in U.N.

Retired Air Force Gen. Lew Allen Jr., who during his multifaceted career headed the National Security Agency, was Air Force chief of staff and shepherded the Jet Propulsion Laboratory through a crucial period when budgets were at an all-time low and new space missions didn't seem imminent, has died. He was 84. Allen died Monday in Potomac Falls, Va., his family announced. No cause was given. Allen led the laboratory in La Cañada Flintridge during a period that saw the launches of the Galileo mission to Jupiter, Magellan to Venus, the Voyager 2 flybys of Uranus and Neptune and the Infrared Astronomical Satellite to Earth orbit.

The U.S. Forest Service said Thursday it has scrapped a rule that bars night flying to fight wildfires and plans to start nighttime helicopter missions next year to battle blazes in the Angeles National Forest and other federal lands in Southern California. “We have made this important decision very carefully,” Forest Service Chief Tom Tidwell said in a statement. “We have studied night operations from every angle - risk management, business and operations - and we have concluded we can conduct night operations safely and effectively.” The new policy, brought on by scrutiny of the disastrous 2009 Station fire, reverses a prohibition on night flying adopted in the 1970s for safety reasons.

I am an eighth-grader at Aliso Viejo Middle School. Last year, when we spent a brief two weeks studying the space program in science, we learned all about the first mission into space. We followed the triumph of Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin as they took that famous first step, and the missions to the moon following Apollo 11. After that, things seemed to come to a standstill. All we did was go around and around the Earth like a carousel. We put a space station up, but after visiting it a few times we just let it fall back into our atmosphere.