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About The Battalion. (College Station, Tex.) 1893-current | View Entire Issue (June 20, 1977)
e The Battalion Vol. 70 No. 127 6 Pages Monday, June 20, 1977 College Station, Texas News Dept. 845-2611 Business Dept. 845-2611 Briscoe vetoes ^no-pain’speeding k;ll United Press International lUSTIN, Tex. — Legislation to allow Texans to drive up to 70 Is per hour without fear of losing their license or paying auto [ranee penalties could have cost Texas $641 million in federal ray funds, according to Gov. Dolph Briscoe, scoe vetoed the “no pain” speeding bill Saturday along 24 other measures. e speeding bill would have prohibited tickets for speeds een 55 and 70 miles per hour from being used against a r’s record for determining auto insurance rates or suspend- driver’s license. Briscoe said it was possible Texas could lose $641 million in ral highway funding by granting an exemption to the 55 s per hour limit. “Additionally, proponents of the bill have not been able to demonstrate that the declining death rate on Texas highways in recent years is not attributable in large part to the reduced maximum speed limit, ” Briscoe said in his veto message. Other measures vetoed included bills which would have broadened the Open Records Act, restored voting rights for convincted felons and provided advances for travel expenses of state employes. Briscoe said he rejected the bill expanding the 1973 Open Records Act because it threatened a “person’s right to privacy from unwanted disclosure of confidential information.” The legislation would have permitted a public official to reveal any information at his discretion unless it was specifically made con fidential by law. Other bills vetoed by the governor included: V Legislation requiring ice at hotels and motels to be dispensed in sealed containers. Briscoe said if there are health problems in the use of self-serve ice machines, they cap be resolved with local ordinances rather than with a statewide law. V A proposal providing advances to state employes for travel expenses. Briscoe said the bill would create a fiscal liability for the state which may not be adequately covered in the appropria tion bill and would provide an opportunity for misuse of state funds. V Legislation allowing a district clerk to pay jurors on his own signature from a special account established by the county com missioners court. The governor said the bill does not provide adequate safeguards in removing control of county funds from the treasurer. Legislation permitting housing authorities in Dallas to com mission peace officers. He said i! Dallas law enforcement capabilities are inadequate, the city should expand its poliet force. V A bill eliminating the authority of cities to tax, regulate or prohibit coin operated billiard tables. V Legislation creating a new state agency to license and regu late speech pathologists and audiologists. cciver ^ Colorado girl attacked; r : officials withheld information DC r\ o a MS 7 United Press International DENVER — Reports of an attack ast July on a 13-year-old Girl Scout ere withheld so as not “to alarm jeople unnecessarily,” a Girl Scout ifficial said during the weekend. The girl from Boulder, Colo., was ittacked in her tent last year at the ‘lying G Ranch 35 miles southwest if Denver, according to Elizabeth layden, executive director of the )enver Mile-Hi Girl Scout Coun- Girl Scout official Cal Lowsma id earlier said there had been no ncidents at the camp since 1963, hen a 16-year-old girl was strang- ed in her tent. Lowsma’s statements came after he slayings of three Girl Scouts at a mt-Otf camp in Oklahoma last week. “It all depends on how you inter pret the ‘incident,’ ” said Ms. Hayden. “We didn’t know much and didn’t want to alarm people unnecessar ily,” Ms. Hayden said of the July, 1976, incident. Lt. William Flint of the Jefferson County Sheriff s Department, which investigated last year’s attack, said the girl had been sleeping with two other girls in a tent when the attacker started choking her. Flint said the girl struck the as sailant and made enough noise to wake up one of the other girls. Flint said the man fled when another girl turned on a flashlight. oviet’s criticisms on t change policy United Press International IVASHINGTON — Declaring that his |man rights policy “will not be nged,” President Carter has responded ply to a charge in the Soviet news ier Pravda that his campaign is de led to cover a new U.S. arms buildup. is campaign, Carter said, is an embar- ment to the Soviet Union “and to ler countries with totalitarian govern- |nts. ” Our commitment to human rights is lependent of other motives and will not changed,” said Carter on arrival at the ite House from a weekend at Camp |vid, Md., late yesterday, e said U.S. military strength “is obvi- ily a matter that has nor relation at all to human rights commitment, ’ and led: “How does it serve the cause of nan rights for the Soviets to be attribut- motives like this to us?” fhe Communist party newspaper said its weekly international review that any reports from Washington” concern weapons programs, which it saw as dence the United States is “preparing ground for another dangerous spiral of arms race.” Apparently the noisy campaign around man rights is called upon to cover up ite different designs than defense of ise rights,” Pravda said. Carter said the human rights campaign ramatizes the issue and has aroused the awareness of the human rights question by all national leaders. ” Carter scheduled a series of meetings this week to lay the groundwork for con verting the government to zero-based budgeting. After relaxing with his family at Camp David during the Father’s Day weekend. Carter will participate during the week in a series of budget meetings designed to help familiarize him with some of the spe cific needs of the various government de partments and agencies. The sessions, in the long run, will help Carter plan the strategy necessary in con verting the government to zero-based budgeting. Carter has a late afternoon meeting today with Democratic Party Leader Ken neth Curtis. A White House spokesman said it will be the first of regular monthly meetings between the two. On Thursday night the President flies to New York City for a Democratic Party fund raiser. His appearance, in part, is aimed at improving relations with leaders of the party. Carter and his family attended a private religious service at Camp David, along with some 30 staffers at the mountain re treat yesterday, a spokesman said. Mrs. Carter, after returning to Wash ington, then flew to Phoenix, Ariz. and the start of a weeklong trip that includes stops in San Francisco and Honolulu. Officers searching for Scouts’ killer say damp weather should aid efforts United Press International LOCUST GROVE, Okla. — Officers hampered by the death of a Pennsylvania search dog which suffered a heat stroke said damp, cooler weather yesterday would aid their efforts to track the killer of three Girl Scouts. “It’s raining a little today and that should help,” Deputy Sheriff J. D. Robertson said yesterday. “It’s nice and cool.” Earlier in the search, spray planes doused the Girl Scout camp with water, hoping to force the killer’s scent out of the trees and to the ground. One of three dogs flown in from Philadelphia last week to sniff the dry, brushy campground where the girls were strangled and beaten to death last Monday suffered a heat stroke Saturday and died later at a veterinarian’s clinic in nearby Pryer. District Attorney Sid Wise said he hoped to obtain another Rottweiler dog from Pennsylvania to replace the one which collapsed Saturday in 97-degree heat. United Press International WASHINGTON — Commissioner Donald Kennedy says his Food and Drug Administration’s plan to ban the use of saccharin may be delayed “possibly a couple of months” by the new study link ing the sweetener to bladder cancer in men. The FDA had hoped to impose the ban in August, but Kennedy said a delay prob ably will be necessary so scientists and the public have a chance to study and com ment on the new information, and possi bly broaden the ban. Meanwhile, he said, “if a male member of my family were drinking diet soft drinks which contain saccharin, I’d sure work hard to get him to stop. ” The study, to be published in the British Medical Journal, Lancet, was con ducted by the National Cancer Institute of Canada. It was the first finding that the use of artificial sweeteners increase the cancer risk in humans. Bladder cancer occurs in men four times more often than in women and the study drew no conclusions on how saccharin and other artificial sweeteners affect females. The animal had a temperature of 108 when it reached the clinic. The veterinar ian was able to reduce the dog’s tempera ture, but it went into shock and died. Wise and Mayes County Sheriff Pete Weaver said the dogs had aided greatly in the search for clues, including the location of a possible murder weapon, but declined to be more specific. Weaver described the object found as a “heavy* blunt instrument . . . something you would find around any residence.” The officers declined comment on a re port they had found a crowbar in the camp area. Weaver said the instrument apparently was one of several items taken in a burglary of an unoccupied farmhouse ad jacent to the camp, owned by Jack Shroff of Tulsa. Shroff said officers asked him whether a crowbar was missing from the farm. He said he told them a crowbar once had been on the farm, but he did not know whether it was there immediately prior to the slay ings. Kennedy said he did not know when the full study would be published but the pre liminary version he saw convinced him of a “greater certainty that saccharin is a human carcinogen.” He dismissed the risk in delaying a ban on the sweetener, however, because “al though we are somewhat surer that sac charin is a human carcinogen, we also understand its risk is cumulative, so I don’t think a couple of months plus or minus is going to have a very big effect on anybody’s cancer risk. ” Kennedy was convinced by earlier tests on rats that bladder cancer was linked to saccharin, but he said the new study may prove useful in convincing doubters, in cluding those in Congress. Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., and Rep. Paul Rogers, D-Fla., chairmen of health subcommittees in Congress, both have proposed an 18-month delay in the FDA saccharin ban. But both said after learning of the new study they would hold off any action on their proposals while study results are dis cussed. The Tulsa Tribune reported Friday the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation had administered a lie detector test to Shroff. A spokesman for the district attor ney’s office refused to confirm the report and would not say whether polygraph tests are being administered as part of the in vestigation. He said he would not be sur prised, however, since polygraph tests are a standard method of investigation. United Press International NAIROBI, Kenya — Gunmen tried to assassinate Ugandan President, Idi Amin during the weekend, the newspaper The Nation said today. Quoting “reports reaching Kenya, The Nation said Uganda’s military dictator has been missing since Saturday’s assassina tion attempt, and the army and police were mobilized to try to find him. There was no immediate independent confirmation of the newspaper story. Re ports from the Ugandan capital of Kampala were confused and imprecise. A diplomat reached by telephone said there had been a “shooting incident” Saturday morning on the outskirts of Entebbe, near the capital, but it was un clear if it involved Amin. The area men tioned is notorious for gunfights between rowdy army troops and civilians. “It wasn’t the quietest weekend in Kampala,” another diplomatic source said, but he gave no other information. An official at Amin’s Entebbe state house said by telephone, “We do not know where the president is. I haven t seen him since Friday. There are a lot of Muslim troops outside the state house, and Christians inside.” He would not clarify his remarks. Radio Uganda, which broadcast normal news programs, reported during the weekend that Amin had been presented with a huge Nile perch fish Saturday eve ning. The radio said Amin might attend a public ceremony in western Uganda to day. The girls -—. Lori Lee Farmer, 8, Michelle Guse, 9, and Doris Denise Milner, 10 — were slain in their platform tent during their first night at Camp Scott, a Girl Scout camp in the rolling lake coun try of northeastern Oklahoma. Authorities said two of the girls were beaten to death and the third was Strang led.They said all three were sexually molested. The diplomatic sources said there were a few more troops” around the Ministry of Information in Kampala today, but the city was otherwise calm. Reports routinely sweep East Africa of fresh cotip attempts against Amin, who has survived about a dozen documented at tempts on his life since he seized power six years ago. In its banner story, The Nation quoted Vice President Mustafa Acbisi as saying Amin had disappeared. The army was put on full alert to search for the 258-pound, 6-foot-6 president, the newspaper said. The Nation said two gunmen riddled Amin's car with bullets in the assassination attempt, which took place at TO a.m. Saturday at the Bayitabire trading center oil the outskirts of Entebbe. Influence — buying being covered up, Connally charges United Press International WASHINGTON - The South Korean influence-buying scandal on Capitol Hill could wind up as “the biggest coverup in the history of this country. Republican leader John Connally predicted yesterday. The one-time Democratic governor of Texas who switched parties and became- treasury secretary four years ago, said At torney General Griffin Bell decided to let Congress investigate itself. Bell immediately denied the charge. Connally. appearing on N BC s Meet the Press, was asked if the administration is pursuing the scandal “with the same vigor as Republicans were pursued during the Watergate period. He replied: "When this matter really begins to sur face and appears that it has any push at all, the special prosecutor goes out of busi ness. Attorney General Bell, while he is quick to indict an FBI agent for doing what he felt he was within the law in do ing. Attorney General Bell says, ‘Well, we better let the Congress investigate them selves. Suppose that had happened with respect to Watergate matters? That wasn’t satisfactory. It wasn’t satisfactory with the press, it wasn’t satisfactory with the Con gress. Tin y wouldn’t even let the Justice Department investigate Watergate. They created a special prosecutor. “Now y-ou have the Congress, through its ethics committee, investigating itself. And when they' were asked by one of the members the other day to have each of the members . state categorically and un equivocally that they' never received any gift, any present or anything of value from the Korean government, they wouldn’t even answer the cjuestion, for heavens sake I think it has all the potential of the biggest coverup in the history of this coun try. A Justice Department spokesman re sponded that there is no truth to that statement” that Bell is letting Congress handle the matter. Weather Partly cloudy and warm today and tomorrow wrtrt southeasterly winds 10 - IS mph. No rain. High today and tomorrow low 90s; low tonight ■in the mid-70s. In the long run An exhausted Bill Hill relaxes from the strain of competition after completing the 3.2 mile cross country race sponsored by the Texas A&M In tramural Department. Jim Ewing, a Texas A&M English lecturer, placed first out of 21 entrants with a time of 15:26.7. Casa del Sol, with a team comprised of Tom Walters, John Crompton and Roy Shilling, won team honors based on a team’s first three finishes. Canadian study may delay ban on use of saccharin Ugandan president missing Assassination attempt made on Amin s life Battalion photos by Steve Coble