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About The Battalion. (College Station, Tex.) 1893-current | View Entire Issue (July 3, 1979)
Battalion a certain L f vi ssiii ( i ro Pages 'V s that dynamically J tlon > andthaiy Tuesday, July 3, 1979 College Station, Texas News Dept. 845-2611 Business Dept. 845-2611 Weather Sunny and warm with a high in the mid 90’s and a low in the mid 70’s. Continued warm and sunny throughout the week. blacks who y 'S in the SWc] etes . generally ' an their i plication 1 occupies a st be better, er to be consiJ audis decide to boost orldwide oil exports United Press International In a move that could provide relief from worldwide oil shortage, Saudi Arabia 1 • Bdecided to boost its oil production, the ri 1 llblM press agency said Monday. ” tllj But the report did not specify how much ;tra oil will be produced, or for how long, [he Saudis currently produce about 8.5 [ion barrels per day — about 35 per- of total OPEC production, il analysts note that if Saudi Arabia in- sed its exports by 1 million barrels per iy — and if no other major producers |reased their production —- it would considerably to ease the tight oil to fight. I CJ1 ’, no Denver, ( can’t be defer ling, f m weight. They n. This to mr at this assomei image. market conditions which have existed for the past six months. The total world oil shortfall has been es timated to be between 1.5 million and 2 million barrels per day. The report from Jiddah, Saudi Arabia, quoted official sources as saying the in creased oil output would provide the funds necessary to speed up the implementation of the country’s five-year economic de velopment plan. “Saudi Arabia today (Monday) decided to raise temporarily its daily (oil) output within the framework of its policy, to provide enough cash to spend on de- ^ justices will leave J to box in li I SS "ourt term open United Press International ******§* WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court Monday took a rare procedural step i Bowing it to act this summer on challenges to the administration’s authority to Bthhold federal contracts from violators of wage-price guidelines, i TT T mThe high court issued all remaining opinions of its regular 1978-79 term before k I .1 . Bjourning Monday, hut Chief Justice Warren Burger announced in the courtroom pi.it the term will technically remain “open” until October when the new one opens. lOne official in the court clerk’s office said the action was so rare that “I’ve never Beard of it happening.” ■ The announcement on the last day of the court’s regular term leaves the justices ■eway to act during the summer, if it wishes, on an AFL-CIO appeal challenging President Carter’ authority to withhold federal contracts from violators of its voluntary arti-inflation guidelines. JAU.S. appeals court has ruled in favor of the administration on the issue. But the Tquestion is so important for the president’s inflation-fighting program that both sides |aske d the high court to act quickly on it. ■ The full court rarely hears arguments and rules on a case during the summer. The ■st time it did so was in 1974, when it heard arguments on whether President Richard ■ixon must give up his Watergate tapes on July 8 and issued an 8-0 ruling July 24 -Brcing him to do so. ■ The AFL-CIO has been sharply critical of the guidelines program, and brought the J* Biginal suit challenging the president’s authority to use this means to enforce it. It Kgued the program infringes on the collective bargaining system. H Under the administration’s program, companies declared to have violated the fjfuidelines are ineligible for government contracts exceeding $5 million. Companies Bfceking such contracts must certify they are in compliance. & Austin! In between classtime Phil Stallings, a junior geophysics major, has this frisbee in hand. Stal lings and friends spin the disc most every day around noon in front of the Academic Center and welcome anyone interested to come out and join them. Battalion photo by Clay Cockrill velopment projects in the country in ac cordance with the five-year plan,” the agency said, quoting official sources in the Saudi royal court. Before last week’s OPEC meeting and the Big Seven energy summit in Tokyo, Saudi Arabian oil minister Sheikh Ahmed Zaki Yamani had said the Saudis might in crease their oil production to 9.5 million barrels per day if the major Western con suming nations made serious moves to wards conservation. Saudi Arabia has a sustainable oil pro duction capacity of about 10.5 million bar rels per day. In another oil development, Kuwait, the world’s seventh largest producer, said Sunday the 2 million barrels of oil it pumps a day will now sell for $19.49 a bar rel, but did not say what, if any, surcharge would be added to the new base price. Despite its temporary move to east the oil shortage, Saudi Arabia has warned along with radical Libya that the West faces a cutoff of supplies unless the United States can force Israel to resolve the Pales tinian issue to their liking. Yamani, in an interview with Newsweek magazine released Sunday, warned that unless Israel is forced to withdraw to the pre-1967 lines and allows creation of a Palestinian homeland, desperate Palesti nians may interrupt the flow of oil from the Middle East. In Kuwait, Libyan strongman Moammar Khadafy defended his threat to halt his country’s exports of 2 million bar rels of oil a day as a legitimate political weapon, though he said there were no immediate plans to so. “The use of oil by Arab states against those nations who fail to respect the Arab nation, and side completely with its enemy (Israel), is a legitimate action,” Khadafy told a news conference in Kuwait. The twin warnings came as President Carter told the nation that last week’s 24 percent price increase by the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries in creases chances of serious recession, higher inflation and unemployment all leading to a curtailment of economic growth. Yamani told Newsweek the United States must be prepared “to face the con sequences” — a cutoff of Middle East oil — unless it acts to pressure Israel to allow a Palestinian homeland. He was asked what could curtail the flow of Middle East oil, priced at $18 to $23.50 a barrel last week by OPEC. Dancing in the sky Steve Dault of Conroe, Texas took this picture at Cain Pool at Texas A&M while participating in the High School Communications Workshop held on campus last week. The picture was made by overex posing the sky, thereby underexposing for the de tails in the people and trees. A&M_ ^professor says^ it may reach U.S. Mexican oil spill could be largest By ROBIN THOMPSON Battalion Staff A Texas A&M University civil en gineering professor, one of the few experts on oil spills, said the current spill in the Gulf of Mexico could “very likely” become the largest in history. The Ixtoc I well, off the coast of Mexico in the Bay of Campeche, has been spilling oil into the ocean since June 3. Dr. Roy Hann, head of the Oil Spill Technical Assistance Program, recently visited the spill. “It looks like a witch’s cauldron boiling out in the ocean, with more oil coming out every day,” he said. If the oil continues to flow at its present rate, it can cause severe damage to the shrimp industry and to beaches it comes in contact with, he said. “Oil can get stored in the beach and be a source of pollution for a long, long time.” There is a chance, Hann said, that the oil could reach the United States by currents which come up as far as Padre Island. The spill could “severely affect” the shrimp industry, Hann said, be cause the Campeche Bay is one of the largest shrimp pools in the world. However, Hann said he knows more about the spills than the ecological problems that result from them. If Mexico asks for assistance, Hann said, his team will tell it what technology and equipment is availa ble to control the spill and clean the shore, if it reaches the beaches. In conjunction with the oil spill program, Hann has done extensive research on oil spills all over the world including the Amoco Cadiz spill in 1978 in which 223,000 tons of oil were lost. “It was a result of seeing how many nations were unprepared that planted the seed for this program,’’ Hann said. One part of the program, for the United Nations, involves presenting one-week spill prevention courses in various countries. So far Hann has conducted courses in Columbia and West Africa with future ones to be held in Italy and Singapore. “We teach them the technology to prevent spills in the first place and how to deal with them when they actually occur,” he said. The program also offers technical assistance at the time of the spill and provides detailed documentation of what happened, Hann said. “This is important for research and for court cases.” Hann has also used his research to develop a graduate course on the control and clean-up of oil spills. Austin loses bias suit appeal United Press International WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court let stand a lower-court ruling Monday that the Austin school board intentionally dis criminated against Mexican-Americans in drawing up its desegregation plan. The decision returns the case to a U.S. district court judge for a hearing on just what sort of plan is required to remedy past discrimination. Litigation on school desegregation in Austin has been going on for nearly 10 years. Austin has 81 schools and about 59,000 students, of which 15 percent are black and 23 percent Mexican-American. Blacks and Mexican-Americans are concentrated in the northeast part of the city. In 1970, the United States filed suit charging segregation of Mexican- Americans in Austin schools and saying past segregation of blacks by law had not been fully remedied. The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals three times has ruled the Austin school board guilty of intentional discrimination against Mexican-Americans. It twice overruled a trial judge on the issue, while affirming his findings that the school board had failed to eliminate the last vestiges of a state-imposed black-white school system. On Dec. 6, 1976, however, the Supreme Court set aside its orders requiring im plementation of a “comprehensive tri- ethnic” desegregation plan which would involve extensive cross-town busing. It told the appeals court to look more thoroughly into the reasons for racial segregation in Austin. It noted a recent ruling said the mere fact of racial dispropor tion does not necessarily mean intentional Fourth of July celebration scheduled at Tiger Field A crowd of more than 10,000 is expected in and around Tiger Field in College Station Wednesday for the annual Fourth of July celebration and fireworks show sponsored by the College Station Noon Lions Club. An evening of family fun, food, clowns, singing and fireworks is planned, said Bill Lafield, chairman of this year’s event for the local Lions Club. In addition, a special program tracing the history of the U.S. flag from colonial days to the present is planned. Events begin at 6:30 p.m. with various games for everyone over age 6. These include sack and two-legged races, tug of war and an egg toss. During the evening, clowns will be handing out balloons to children and concession stands will provide food and drinks. “We don’t have an exact time for the beginning of the fireworks,” Myron Koehler, assistant chairman for the celebration, said. “We will pace the program in order to coincide with the onset of darkness. ” U. S. Congressman Phil Gramm will be the featured speaker, followed by a commu nity sing-along. discrimination has occurred which must be remedied. The 5th Circuit, after dutifully reconsid ering the case, once again on Nov. 21, 1977, ruled there had been intentional dis crimination against Mexican-Americans. It carefully explained the logic it used to reach that result in hopes of meeting the Supreme Court’s standards. The appeals court said it was apparent the school district “historically had used neighborhood schools to accentuate and to perpetuate segregation of blacks and Mexican-Americans. ” It also said Austin had taken an “exten sive series of actions” involving locations of new schools, assignment of faculty and drawing of student attendance zones over the years that had “the natural, foreseeable and avoidable result of creating and main taining an ethnically segregated school sys tem.” Relying on a 1977 decision, the appeals court ordered the trial judge to consider what impact intentional discrimination had on racial distribution of the school popula tion. It said if there was a system-wide im pact, the scope of the remedy must he system-wide.