Image provided by: Texas A&M University
About The Battalion. (College Station, Tex.) 1893-current | View Entire Issue (June 15, 1988)
Hr* V Texas A&M mm V # The Battalion ; I — ‘ ; 159 CISPS 045360 6 Pages College Station, Texas Wednesday, June 15, 1988 Trade deficit decreases to lowest level in years, sparks Wall Street rally WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. trade deficit shrank to $9.89 bil lion in April, its best showing in more than three years, the govern ment said Tuesday in a better-than- expected report which sparked a big rally on Wall Street. The Commerce Department said the April deficit narrowed by 15.5 percent from a seasonally adjusted March deficit figure of $11.70 bil lion, with all of the improvement coming from a steep drop in im ports. The trade figure, which has often rattled world financial markets, was greeted as exceptionally good news by investors, who rushed to bid up the price of U.S. stocks and bonds. They also sent the value of the dollar surging on foreign exchange mar kets. By midday, the Dow Jones aver age of 30 industrials had shot up by more than 30 points to 2,129.98, its highest level since the October mar ket crash. Many economists had been braced for a widening of the deficit to around $12.2 billion based on an as sumption that exports could not hold at the record level set in March. Exports did edge-down by 2.5 per cent, but the small drop still left them at $26.22 billion, the second highest level on record. Meanwhile, imports plunged 6.4 percent to $36.11 billion, reflecting big drops in American purchases of foreign produced goods. Private analysts said the string of better trade numbers virtually as sured that President Reagan would win his veto battle with Congress over trade legislation. “The argument for protectionism is fast disappearing as our trade def icit improves,” said Frank McCor mick, senior economist with Bank of America. For the first four months of the year, the trade deficit has been run ning at an annual rate of $141.8 bil lion. While many economists had been expecting a decline to around $150 billion, some said they were now re vising their forecasts to show even more of an improvement this year. ice: nee: Noon ng & ds exas’ hopes alive; travel advertisement campaign f shortened site list designed to boost Texas tourism Stevens said,“We are trying to sell the AUSTIN (AP) — State officials 1 they remain optimistic about igthe $4.4 billion superconduct- super collider project despite a ?Wspaper’s report Tuesday that Sas has been dropped from the short-short list” of candidates. ■ he Nashville Tennessean re- ■led that the U.S. Department of ■rgy, in an unpublished list, had ■iced the number of states under onsideration for enormous re- earch project to Tennessee, Illinois ■ North Carolina. Hut DOF officials denied that any )®even prospective sites — includ- ng Texas — had been removed, Men lentatively, from consideration. “< )ur dog is still in the hunt, and I Hk we’re out in front of the pack,” J.S, Sen. Phil Gramm said Tuesday. ■The DOE is working from the jell-known list of seven, which in- ludes Texas. . . . We do not believe he report,” said Reggie Bashur, Hs secretary to Gov. Bill Clem- mts H^ 6 f° ur other states on the de- Btment’s published list are Ari- ona, Colorado, Michigan and rBas. Gramm, R-Texas, said Energy FBI probes Pentagon officials WASHINGTON (AP) — FBI ffients Tuesday searched the files ■two top Pentagon officials, a former Navy official and some of the nation’s largest defense eon- Hctors in a massive investigation of alleged fraud and bribery in the sale of electronic gear to the military. Hiearch warrants were served ■the FBI and the Naval Investi gative Service at the Pentagon pd some 30 other locations in 12 states, the Justice Department an nounced. Hmderal investigators sealed off Idd searched the Pentagon office m Victor Cohen, the civilian offi- ■ responsible for buying tactical ■tie command, control, com munications and computer sys tems for the Air Force, said a Pentagon official, who spoke only on condition of anonymity. ■Also sealed off and searched was the Pentagon office of James Gaines, deputy assistant secretary |f the Navy for acquisition man agement, international programs and congressional support, a Hvy source said. Hn addition, a former Navy of- \-Hal, Melvyn Paisley, now a Hshington consultant to de- rentty eI1 ^ ense aerospace companies, also , .jrftoas served with a search warrant, the FBI said. !P erci» 'n,,. investigation has been un do way for two years and volves “allegations of fraud and bribery on the part of defense contractors, consultants and U.S. government employees,” FBI sAkesman Gregory Jones said. ■The inquiry focuses on “possi ble widespread fraudulent activ ity within the Department of De mise’s contracting process,” the Jostice Department said in a statement. Ccntci i Department officials assured him there was no foundation for the story whatsoever. “They have not even completed all their site visits. They don’t intend to narrow down (the list) to three sites.” Gramm said the story surfaced during the Energy Department’s in spection of the Tennessee site and that the site team “has spent the whole day trying to straighten out this statement by a Tennessee con gressman.” Lep. Id tl Tenn., told the newspaper, “I have heard that there is a shorter short list and that Tennessee is on it.” An aide to Gordon, Harrison Wadsworth, said the congressman’s remark was in response to a Tennes sean reporter’s question regarding the unnamed source’s information. Gramm said, “I said they ought to make this news story the cover sheet for the Tennessee proposal. “They laughed at my suggestion but they are not laughing about hav ing to spend the day straightening out all this missinformation. If it did anything, it hurt Tennessee,” he said. Energy Department spokesman Jeff Sherwood said the department has no shorter list of sites. “The intent is not to go to any kind of a short short-list. The intent is to go from the seven best qualified sites . . . right down to one site in late November.” By Marcena Fadal Staff Writer “Visit a country where the natives are friendly and the language barrier is easily overcome. ” It may sound like a typical travel and tourism advertisement, but it is not only unique. So far it has been uniquely successful. The location? It’s Texas and the advertisement is just one of many themes, created by an adver tising agency in Austin, being used in an effort to increase tourism in the state. “We’re trying to get away from the boastful image Texas has,” said Scott Stevens, public rela tions coordinator for the Texas Department of Commerce. “We are letting everyone know that we are a friendly state and like a whole other country by playing up our natural resources. People in the Midwest don’t realize that Texas has mountains and 600 miles of beach.” Bill Lauderback, Executive Director of the De partment of Commerce, initially was behind the ad campaign promoting Texas. “These advertisements, both television and magazine, are generating more interest than any other tourism campaign in the state’s history,” Lauderback said. “Our increased travel promotion funding is enabling us to get the Texas message out to many more potential visitors, and this should result in increased travel spending statewide, and ultima tely, more jobs,” he said. Stevens said tourism would increase service- oriented jobs such as work in amusement parks, restaurants and hotels. A department spokesman said the Texas De partment of Commerce will spend about $5 mil lion to promote Texas as a vacation spot this year with an extra $2 million allocated for other pro motions by the tourist department. Only $970,000 was spent last year. Stevens said,“We are trying to sell the whole state. We are trying to get away from the tourists concentrating on a few cities in Texas, and to get them to see what else we have to offer.” The ads, launched on April 26 in national publications such as Travel 8c Leisure, American Way and Vista, include a toll-free telephone number for requests for a free 68-page pictorial of Texas and a large highway road map. Re gional editions of Time, Newsweek, People and Sports Illustrated also will print the Texas adver tisements. ’ * “The results are already showing,” Stevens said. “The toll-free number has lead to over 10,000 inquiries calling for information about Texas.” A department spokesman said before the ads were printed, the Texas Department of Com merce received only 100 to 200 calls a day. Since then, many days have brought in more than 2,000 calls. The new print and television commercials were unveiled in Austin on San Jacinto Day by Gov. Bill Clements and his wife Rita, chairman of the Texas Tourism Advisory Committee. Out-of-state tourists come to Texas at a rate of 1,110 per hour, a department spokesman said. In 1986, 39.4 million out-of-state tourists entered Texas, including 3.5 million foreigners. Pleasure and business expenditures totaled $ 17.29 billion. “If each visiting party in Texas would stay one additional day, travel expenditures would in crease $2.5 billion,” a department spokesman said. Tobacco companies’ lawyers meet after loss of cigarette liability case Baker leaves post to rest, aid family WASHINGTON (AP) — Howard H. Baker Jr., who gave up his presi dential ambitions to help President Reagan run the White House after the Iran-Contra scandal, has re signed as chief of staff and will be re placed by his deputy, Kenneth Duberstein, it was announced Tues day. Baker said he will return to his home in Huntsville, Tenn., where his wife and his stepmother are in poor health. The changeover will take place July 1. “I really relish the thought of get ting back to private life,” Baker, an attorney, said in an interview. “It has been an extraordinary experience working with Ronald Reagan. “I expect to go back and do noth ing for awhile. I’m going to rest a little bit,” Baker said. With the accomplishments of the past 16 months and the health prob lems in his family, Baker said, “it seemed like a logical time” to go. Prominently mentioned as a possi ble running mate on the Republican presidential ticket with George Bush, Baker said he would not turn down the No. 2 spot if it were of fered, but he doesn’t expect the of fer. “You don’t turn down requests of that sort if they are made,” Baker said. “It’s really something that is presumptions in the extreme to say, ‘No, I would not do that.’ But I do not want to do that, I do not expect to do that, and I think it’s extremely unlikely I would be asked to do that.” Baker said he had told Bush he was quitting, but did not raise the is sue of whether he might be available as a runningmate. Laughingly, Baker added, “More important, he’s never discussed that with me.” Reagan accepted Baker’s resigna tion with “deep regret” and praised him as “a steady hand in the opera tion of the White House while the Iran-Contra investigations were be ing conducted.” Duberstein, 44, will be Reagan’s fourth chief of staff, responsible for directing the flow of paper and visi tors to the president’s office and coordinating his schedule. He will oversee a White House staff of about 325 people. Like Baker, Duberstein is re nowned for his expertise in dealing with Congress. He was the White House’s chief legislative strategist during part of Reagan’s first term, and after a stint with a business con sulting firm, returned to the White House as Baker’s deputy on March 23, 1987. “Ken will be my principal aide and will lead the White House staff as we head into the home stretch,” Reagan said in a statement. “He is an out standing manager and skilled strate gist who has been fundamental to the significant accomplishments, foreign and domestic, we have achieved.” NEWARK, N.J. (AP) — Tobacco companies went on the offensive Tuesday to counter fallout from their first loss of a cigarette liability case as stock prices for the tobacco giants moved lower. Industry lawyers held a New York hews conference to attack the impar tiality of the judge in the four-month trial that held a cigarette maker partly responsible for a smoker’s lung cancer and awarded $400,000 in damages to her widower. They also argued that greed, not principle, drives attorneys who sue their $35 billion-a-year industry. And they released a detailed rebuttal of previously secret industry docu ments introduced by anti-smoking forces during the trial. Meanwhile, Marc Z. Edell, the at torney who won the first damages award against a cigarette company, said he may amend six other ciga rette liability lawsuits he is handling to include civil racketeering charges against the tobacco industry. The verdict Monday found Lig gett Group Inc. had failed to warn the public about smoking’s dangers and violated a promise, or “express warranty,” in advertisements that cigarettes were safe. However, the six-member jury cleared Lorillard Inc., Philip Morris Inc. and Liggett of conspiring to mislead the public about the risks of smoking. No punitive damages were awarded in the case brought by An tonio Cipollone and his wife, Rose, who died of lung cancer in 1984 af ter 40 years of smoking cigarettes manufactured by the three compa nies. The jury mainly blamed Mrs. Cipollone for contracting her dis ease. Cipollone said the industry “abso lutely” killed his wife. “That I be lieve,” he told reporters Tuesday. Both sides claimed important vic tories from the judgment, however. “The verdict in the Cipollone case is clearly a verdict for the cigarette manufacturers,” said Arthur Ste vens, general counsel for Lorillard. “Any effort to characterize it other wise is clearly a distortion.” “The jury returned a resounding message that individuals who make informed choices have responsibility for those choices,” said Philip Mor ris’ general counsel, Murray Bring, at a news conference called by law yers for Morris and Lorillard. Ashtrays were passed out to re porters and Bring lit a cigarette as television lights shined on the dais in a jammed hotel meeting room in Manhattan. Bring and Stevens used the forum to attack U.S. District Judge H. Lee Sarokin as biased. “It is clear from any person looking at his rulings that they were preferential and unwarranted” and against the rules of procedure, Ste vens said. “We could not have had a more extreme adversary.” They also said greed drove Cipol- lone’s attorneys. “Everybody knows what they were really pursuing, and it wasn’t solely to benefit Tony or Rose Cipollone,” he said, pointing out how the Cipol- lone’s attorneys spent $2 million on the case but only recovered $400,000 in damages. “These cases are about money. If the plaintiffs don’t get money, they are not going to bring them,” Ste vens said. Cipollone’s attorneys “observed no scruples in their effort to defame, to discredit the entire tobacco indus try,” Stevens said.” He also said the tobacco compa nies’ claims of victory was for public relations reasons, both to encourage industry investors and discourage other lawyers from pursuing such cases. Liggett attorneys have promised an appeal of the damages award. Liggett faced additional charges because it manufactured the Ches terfields and L&Ms that Mrs. Cipol lone smoked before 1966, when Congress ordered health warnings on cigarette packs. Mrs. Cipollone later used brands made by Lorillard and Philip Morris, even after having part of her lung removed in 1981. Reaction to the verdict, reached after five days of deliberations, fo cused on its potential impact on the more than 100 such cases pending in federal and state courts nationwide. Half of fund raised for girl to return About $3,000 of the $6,000 needed to airlift Laura Burnett from Munich, Germany to Col lege Station had been raised Tuesday afternoon. Burnett is the daughter of Dr. John Burnett, a marketing pro fessor at A&M. Laura suffered injuries and has been in a coma since a May 30 pedestrian-auto mobile accident in Munich. Any donations should be sent to the Laura Burnett Fund in care of First RepublicBank, P.O. Box 2860, College Station, Texas 77841. Donations should be sent to the attention of Lee Cargill.