Page 6/The Battalion/Wednesday, May 22,1985
Funky Winkerbean
by Tom Batiuk
cam x see 4>oor
DRIVER'S LICENSE
DRIVER'S LICENSE?
BOX I WAS XOST
MARCHING DOWN
XHE HIGHWAY WITH
/V\A> BAND /
WE'RE PRACTICING
FOR THE MEMORIAL
DAO F^RADE ' I
HAPPEN TO BE THE
BAND DIRECTOR AT
WESTVIEW HIGH
SCHOOL /
OK AO ... THEN LET'S 1
SEE POOR TEACHING
CERTIFICATE !
Economic growth poor
in first quarter of 1985
Associated Press
WASHINGTON — The U.S.
economy weakened substantially
during the first three months of the
year as a battering from foreign
competition held growth to a mea
ger 0.7 percent annual rate, the gov
ernment said Tuesday.
While the Reagan administration
held out the hope that falling inter
est rates will lead to a rebound, some
private analysts expressed fears that
the current slowdown will be more
severe.
On the inflation front, the Labor
Department said consumer prices
rose a modest 0.4 percent in April
despite a jump in gasoline costs. For
the year, consumer inflation is run
ning at an annual rate of 4.2 per
cent, only a slight deterioration from
.last year’s 4 percent level.
Part of the reason that inflation
has remained docile has been the
pronounced slowdown in economic
growth.
The Commerce Department said
the 0.7 percent growth rate for the
gross national product — the broa
dest measure of economic health —
was the weakest performance since
the end of the 1981-82 recession.
T he report represented a sharp
downward revision from two earlier
estimates of first quarter perfor
mance. Before the quarter ended,
the government predicted growth of
2.1 percent, revising that figure to
1.3 percent last month.
The weakness was centered in the
U.S. industrial sector, where pro
ducers have been losing sales both at
home and abroad because of the
high value of the dollar .
Treasury Secretary James A.
Baker 111, testifying before a Senate
Appropriations subcommittee, said
the first quarter “was a good bit
slower than we anticipated . . . and
we are going to see a less strong sec
ond quarter” than expected.
However, he said it would still be
possible to achieve the administra
tion’s forecast of 3.9 percent growth
for the entire year, predicting the
economy would strengthen consid
erably in the second half of the year.
But a variety of private econo
mists said the administration’s
growth target is no longer achieva
ble, contending that growth for the
year will likely be between 2 percent
and 3 percent, a substantial drop
from last year’s 6.8 percent pace.
Roger Brinner, an economist at
Data Resources Inc., a private fore
casting firm, said the economy lum
bered into a growth recession in the
second half of 1984, which will last
until the middle of 1986. A growth
recession occurs when the GNP is
growing at such a slow pace that it
can’t keep unemployment from ris-
ing.
While an inflation measure tied to
the GNP rose at an annual rate of
5.6 percent in the first three months
of this year, the fastest rate since
1982, many analysts said this figure
overstated the underlying inflation
rate.
They said the Consumer Price In
dex was giving a more accurate pic
ture of inflation. In April, the gov
ernment said the CPI rose 0.4
percent following a 0.5 percent
March rise.
The country’s terrible trading
performance — the 1984 deficit was
SI23 billion — has been blamed on
the strength of the dollar and ana
lysts said even with the recent de
clines it will take at least a year be
fore the trade picture will start to
improve.
Insurers say day care cases
on abuse led to rate hikes
Associated Press
Child day care centers nationwide
face the prospect of no liability in
surance or dramatically higher rates
because insurers have labeled them
badrisks after several widely publici-
zedsexual abuse cases, officials say.
The insurers’ changing attitudes
threaten the existence of many of
the nation’s 25,000 to 30,000 li
censed child care centers, which
serve about 2 million children of
working parents, child care experts
warn.
“Either they’re being dropped (by
insurers) or the rates are going sky
high,” said Ted DeWolf. director of
child cat e licensing for the Michigan
Department of Social Services.
One center in Philadelphia, for
example, was able to renew its cover
age, but its premium increased 47
percent.
Child care officials said insurers’
exaggerated fears are causing them
to write off an entire industry be
cause of a few isolated but dramatic
abuse cases.
“Once the initial paranoia is over,
maybe some rationality will return,”
said Roger Neugebauer of Red
mond, Wash., editor of the quarterly
“Child Care Information Ex
change.”
“I think it’s unfair of the industry
to deny liability insurance to day
care centers,” said Bill Hankins of
the Michigan DSS. “We’ve had cen
ters that have never had a claim be
fore and their policies are being
canceled.”
Hankins’ department recently
sent questionnaires to 2,500 licensed
come in,” says David Willis, spokes
man for Cigna Corp. of Philadel
phia, once a major insurer of child
care centers nationwide that is now
scaling back its coverage,
inis ai
Willis and other insurance offi
cials said their industry reacts to
news reports, as well as direct expe
rience, in making coverage deci
sions.
Recent, widely publicized
sexual abuse investiga
tions have changed the in
dustry’s perception of the
risks of insuring day care
centers.
centers in Michigan asking how
many are having difficulty obtaining
insurance coverage.
Insurance industry officials said
they have no figures on how much
money, if any, has been paid in
claims based on sexual abuse in child
care centers.
“I don’t know what losses have
“What we know is what we’ve been
reading in newspapers and seeing
on television,” said Mary Zavada of
the Insurance Information Institute,
a New York-based trade group.
Willis and Zavada said recent,
widely publicized sexual abuse inves
tigations in Michigan, California and
New York have changed the indus
try’s perception of the risks of insur
ing day care centers. Previously, the
industry almost automatically issued
liability insurance for such centers.
Earlier this year, Cigna canceled
insurance coverage for Hilltop
House in Ypsilanti, Mich. Its direc
tor, Patty Sherwood, said the center
had submitted only minor claims to
the company; none of the claims in
volved child abuse.
Sherwood said she was confident
the center will find another insurer,
but added that she expects increased
premiums.
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septuplets:
six survive
Associated Press
V/.lo
McMuseum
recreates
1955 eatery
Associated Press
DES PLAINES, Ill. — Paris has
the Louvre. London has Madame
T ussaud’s. Now this Chicago sub
urb lias the McMuseum.
The McDonald’s Museum was
dedicated T uesday in the red-
and-white tile restaurant where
hamburger history was made 30
years ago.
It was under those neon
golden arches just north of Chi
cago that Ray Kroc opened his
first drive-in restaurant on April
15, 1955.
Today, more than 52 billion
burgers later, it’s “an American
landmark,” said Michael Quinlan,
company president. “This is
where Ray Kroc took his first step
in building what has become the
world’s biggest small business.”
The museum will be vintage
1955: mannequins in white shirts,
paper hats, and thin black ties
identical to those worn by the first
employees; tapes of Elvis Presley
and other rock ’n’ rollers; original
hamburger wrappers and four
period cars in the parking lot.
The museum is “recreated as a
time capsule as (the building) was
in 1955,” said Charles Ebeling,
McDonald’s director of corporate
communications.
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ORANGE, Calif. — Six “very
pink, very small” babies were deliv
ered by Caesarean section Tuesday
to an English teacher, 30, who took a
fertility drug, but a seventh infant
was born dead, hospital officials
said.
Three dozen doctors, nurses and
other medical staf fers at Children’s
Hospital of Orange County assisted
in the operation on Patricia Frustaci,
who developed complications in her
28th week of pregnancy.
The four surviving boys and two
girls — ranging in weight from 1
pound, 1 ounce to 1 pound, 13
ounces — were listed in critical but
stable condition. Hospital spokes
man Doug Wood said premature ba
bies weighing less than 2 pounds
generally have a 35 percent to 40
percent chance for survival.
“Right now there is no major
problem with any of the six,” Wood
said. “They all look very pink, very
small, very thin. The smallest one
you could easily hold in rnv hand.”
The infants’ chances of long-term
survival can’t be estimated at this
time, hospital spokeswoman Debra
Conkey said.
The Guinness Book of World Re
cords lists no cases of septuplets all
surviving. It mentions three pre
vious cases in which sextuplets sur
vived, but none were in the L’nited
States.
The babies were transferred in
isolettes to a special neo-natal inten
sive care unit at Childrens Hospital
via an underground tunnel linking it
to the adjacent St. Joseph Hospital,
where Frustaci started undergoing
surgery under a general anesthetic
at 8:17 a.m., Wood said.
The first girl was born at 8:19
a.m., followed by two boys and an
other girl a minute later, two more
boys at 8:21 a.m. and a dead girl at
8:22 a.m., St. Joseph spokeswoman
Orleans said.
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