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Monday, February 17, IQSSFThe Battalion/Page 7
World and Nation
Lincoln edges
Washington in
place race
Associated Press
WASHINGTON — George
Washington may be the father of
our nation, but when it comes to
namesakes, Abraham Lincoln has
edged him out by a narrow mar
gin.
Washington, of course, has a
whole state named after him, as
well as the nation’s capital, while
Lincoln’s most prominent
namesake is probably the capital
city of Nebraska.
Those are just the highlights,
though.
Nationwide, there are no less
than 1,346 towns, schools, reser
voirs, parks, streams, valleys,
springs, ridges and other geo
graphic features named Wash
ington.
But the U.S. Geological Survey
reveals that there are 1,361 places
and things called Lincoln.
At this season of celebrating
the birthday anniversaries of the
two presidents, Illinois, “the Land
of Lincoln,” has the most poten
tial for festivities, with some 128
spots named for that president.
Tylenol not poisoned at
plant level, official says
Associated Press
NEW YORK — The chairman of
Johnson & Johnson on Sunday dis
puted suggestions that cyanide was
put in Tylenol capsules at the plant
or distribution center, saying it
seemed too great a coincidence that
two bottles would “end up at two
stores a block and a half apart.”
At least 14 states and the District
of Columbia, along with Italy, have
banned sales of Tylenol capsules or
ordered them off store shelves, and
one official called on the federal
government to control production
and sale of all drugs in capsules.
A young woman died in suburban
Westchester County after taking two
capsules that contained potassium
cyanide. A second poisoned bottle of
capsules was found later in a store
less than two blocks from the market
where the woman’s pills were
bought.
According to the chairman of the
company that manufactures the
popular painkiller, investigators re
ported no new leads in the case.
Interviewed ^on the ABC News
program “This Week with David
Brinkley,” Johnson 8c Johnson’s
center would have had to penetrate
“an awful lot of material” in which
the capsules were packed, he said.
James Burke said FBI Director Wil
liam Webster told him Sunday
morning that, “Unfortunately,
there’s nothing new at this time.”
Burke disagreed with Westchester
District Attorney Carl Vergari, who
said FBI test results led him to be
lieve the capsules were poisoned “at
the plant.”
Vergari said FBI officials told him
that tests indicated the seals on both
taintec^ bottles had not been broken
after they left the factory.
But Burke said the bottles came
from two plants, one in Pennsylva
nia, the other in Puerto Rico. He also
rejected a theory that the pills were
tainted at a distribution center, also
in Pennsylvania, where both bottles
were handled last summer in the
space of two weeks.
A tamperer at the distribution
Then, Burke said, the tamperer
would have to ensure that it would
“end up going through the A&P (su
permarkets) distribution center
which goes to 38 states. . . . And then
you’ve got to get (the other bottle)
into a packing center that goes to the
F.W. Woolworth distribution centers
in 26 states.”
Finally, he said, the pills had to
“end up at two stores a block and a
half apart at the same time.”
Vergari said he would send inves
tigators to the Pennsylvania Tylenol
factory this week.
Frank Young, head of the federal
Food and Drug Administration,
noted that the bottles had several
layers of protective coating. “It really
sounds like it’s much more of a pro
fessional-type job,” he said.
Westchester County Executive
Andrew O’Rourke called on the fed
eral government to ban the use of
such capsules, except where medi
cally necessary or prepared by local
pharmacists for sale only from be
hind the counter.
Insurance company rule condemned
Associated Vxess
WASHINGTON —- For every dollar the gov
ernment pays health insurance companies to
process Medicare claims, the Reagan administra
tion expects them to deny at least $5 in benefits,
according to federal regulations.
The obscure rule for evaluating the perfor
mance of insurance companies hired by the
Health Care Financing Administration is cited by
critics as evidence the administration is trying to
make it harder for elderly people to get Medicare
to pay for post-hospital care.
The regulation, which was formally adopted in
1982 and has been updated several times since,
was detailed in a letter last summer to Chairman
Edward R. Roybal, D-Calif., of the House Select
Committee on Aging from Lawrence J. DeNar-
dis, acting assistant secretary of health and hu
man resources.
“Both medical review and audit are critical el
ements,” DeNardis wrote of the cost-benefit ra
tio. “Failure to succeed in these elements could
\ead to various contract actions, including termi
nation.”
No insurance company’s contract has been
canceled for failure to return $5 in savings for
every dollar it earns. But critics contend that
companies getting the lucrative audit contracts
feel pressure to deny benefits with little regard to
the merits of claims.
William Dombi, co-director of Legal Assis
tance for Medicare Patients in Connecticut, said,
“We are finding clearly covered cases that are be
ing denied. They are happening with too great
frequency.”
One insurance company executive, who spoke
on the condition of anonymity, said the rule isn’t
a factor in the way the firm processes claims be
cause she has never told her auditors about it.
“I know that the decisions they are making are
supportable because they are not aware of that
requirement,” she said.
Thomas McElvogue, a vice president of Blue
Cross of Greater Philadelphia, says the rule has
not affected his company’s review of Medicare
claims. “1 don’t think there has been any in
creased pressure on us to come up with more sav
ings or anything specific.”
But operators of nursing homes and home
health agencies contend they are feeling the
brunt of a government crackdown on Medicare
benefits for the care they provide.
Robert Stutz, an administrator of a hospital-
based nursing home in Philadelphia, said the fa
cility’s rate of denied claims soared to 70 percent
for a time last year after Blue Cross was ordered
to check the medical charts of every patient ad
mitted following hospitalization.
Stutz said the facility was forced to close half its
beds last year because too few patients were qual
ifying for Medicare.
Philip Nathanson, a senior HCFA official,
said, “There is not a campaign here to cut re
imbursements to nursing homes in any way.
“Our main interest in intensifying reviews is to
make sure that people are not being prematurely
discharged from hospital beds, not to restrict
nursing homes.”
Kenya seeks to stop custom of mob justice
Associated Press
NAIROBI, Kenya — Mob justice,
often lethal and frequently misdi
rected, is a Kenyan custom of which
no one is proud.
A shout of “mwizi” — Swahili for
thief—can transform passers-by on
a city street into a hysterical mob that
will punch, kick, bludgeon and stone
a suspect to death without pausing to
determine the facts of a case.
Since Jan. 1, two suspected rob
bers have been stoned to death after
a chase through a Nairobi shanty
town, a burglar who stole a tool box
was set ablaze by another Nairobi
mob and a woman in a village south
east of the capital was beaten to
death after being accused of using
witchcraft to poison fruit she gave to
three children who became ill.
Kenyan police keep no statistics
on mob killings, but the average an
nual toll in recent years, as gauged
by newspaper reports, appears to be
perhaps two dozen.
A shout of “mwizi” — Swahili for thief — can transform
passers-by on a city street into a hysterical mob that will
punch, kick, bludgeon and stone a suspect to death
without pausing to determine the facts of a case.
pie were rarely killed, even
murderers.”
There are conflicting theories
why mob justice is more common in
Kenya, East Africa’s most prosper
ous country, than elsewhere in the
region.
One factor may be a public per
ception that thieves are unlikely to
be caught by police.
Harrison Musau, a deputy com
missioner of the national police,
said, “If there were policemen every
where, where they could arrest these
people, there would be no need for
mob justice.”
A recent informal survey by a Nai
robi newspaper, The Standard, indi
cated many Kenyans view mob jus
tice as an effective deterrent.
Arthur Okoth-Owiro, a lecturer
in criminal law at the University of
Nairobi, told the Associated Press,
“Mob justice has more to do with
self-hate than it does with stopping
crime. The people who engage in it
are normally in the same social and
economic category as the victims of
mob justice. They are frustrated,
hardened people who feel left out.”
Mob justice is a product of Ke
nya’s modern-day social problems,
he said, not an evolution of the com
munity justice traditionally adminis
tered in Kenya’s villages, he said.
“In traditional Kenyan society, ev
erybody had a place,” he said. “Pun
ishment was not arbitrary, and peo-
Urban violence is one of the many
problems worsening in Kenya and
other African countries as their cities
swell with arrivals from the country
side. Often, the newcomers give up
the psychological comfort of family
and tribal ties only to find that the
city has too few jobs and too little de
cent housing.
“Just trying to survive in Nairobi
is very difficult,” Okoth-Owiri said.
There have been cases in Nairobi
where thieves escaped by making a
false accusation that prompted a
mob to pursue and beat the wrong
person. In other instances, angry
mobs intent on violence have tried to
pull their quarry from the grasp of
intervening police officers.
Government officials, police offi
cers and judges condemn the violent
aspects of mob justice, but they en
courage the public to play an active
role in law enforcement.
BLACK
AWARENESS
COMMUTE
JUDGE NOT BY THE COLOR OF THEIR SKIN
;
d
A RACISM SEMINAR
FEATURING
DR. CHARLES KING
AND
A PANEL DISCUSSION OF
TAMU STUDENTS
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