Belgium, Portugal to create joint air force
    BRUSSELS - December 3, 1997 09:23 a.m. EST - Belgium and Portugal
 announced their intention to set up a joint air force for peacekeep-
 ing and international rescue missions, military sources said
 Wednesday.
     Belgian Defense Minister Jean-Pol Poncelet and his Portugeuse
 counterpart, Jose Viega Simao, signed a preliminary agreement Tues-
 day while attending the NATO defende ministers meeting in Brussels.
     A final agreement is expected next year, the Belga news agency
 reported.
     The joint force will also be available for missions ordered by
 the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation, the Western European Union,
 the United Nations and the Organization for Security and Cooperation
 in Europe.
     Belgium signed a similar agreement in September 1996 with The
 Netherlands and Luxembourg. Their common air force is being used
 for surveillance flights in Bosnia.
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           Aviation pioneer Walter Addems dies at 98
     ATHERTON, Calif. -- December 3, 1997 06:59 a.m. EST -- Aviation
 pioneer Walter Addems, whose pilot license was signed by Orville
 Wright, died Nov. 21 of pneumonia. He was 98.
     Addems was a member of the Early Birds -- pilots who flew solo
 before Dec. 17, 1917. (Dec. 17, 1903, was the day the Wright
 brothers made their historic flight at Kitty Hawk, N.C.)
     The last surviving member of the group is George Grundy, 99,
 who lives in Leesburg, Fla., according to aviation historian Carol
 Osborne.
     Addems, who carried United States Pilot's License No. 101, flew
 solo for the first time in a glider in Oakland on July 15, 1916,
 Osborne said. He eventually became chief pilot for United Airlines,
 with the rank of captain.
     He barnstormed the country in World War I surplus planes during
 the early 1920s. From 1927 to 1930, he flew airmail for National Air
 Transport.
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   MIAMI (Dec. 3) - A woman initially believed to have fallen to her
 death from an airplane actually tumbled from an apartment balcony,
 but investigators are not sure if it was an accident, murder or sui-
 cide, police said Wednesday.
    The body of the unidentified woman was found Tuesday by residents
 of an apartment building near Miami's Biscayne Bay after they heard
 a loud bang.
    Police initially said the nature of her injuries, and the fact
 they could not find anyone in the apartment building who knew her,
 led them to believe she might have fallen from an aircraft.
    But a more careful examination of the body by medical examiners
 Wednesday found her injuries did not sustain the airplane theory,
 Miami police spokesman Delrish Moss said.
    "We decided it's not the case. The medical examiner was able to
 look at the injuries. It could not have been anything higher than
 the apartment building," he said. "Also there was no oil or trace
 grease on the body and the body temperature was not low, as it would
 have been at high altitude."
    Police initially said she died of "massive" injuries. The Miami
 Herald reported her body was nearly ripped in half.
    It would not have been the first time a body had fallen from an
 aircraft in Miami.
    On May 23, 1996, a teenage boy found in a Miami street the body
 of a man who apparently fell from the wheel well of an aircraft
 about to land at Miami International Airport. Police concluded the
 man, whose body was smudged with airplane grease, was a stowaway.
    Moss said the woman, in her late 30s or early 40s, still had
 not been identified and they did not know if she had fallen,
 jumped or been pushed from the balcony.
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        Italy airlifts 80 Albanian immigrants back home
 ROME - December 3, 1997 5:35 p.m. EST - A military plane airlifted
 80 Albanians out of Italy Wednesday, enforcing government orders to
 send thousands of illegal immigrants back to their Balkan home.
     The Albanians, who took off from the military airport of Ancona
 in northeast Italy, were among hundreds who were rounded up from
 refugee shelters by police and loaded onto buses earlier in the
 day.
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