Vol. 87 No. 165 CJSPS 045360 6 Pages
College Station, Texas
Friday, June 24, 1988
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°n effort!
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'men say
ultl drive
business
Officials meet,
liscuss heat,
Jrought plans
From Associated Press
>n the riricL
this JGovernors from 10 parched states
Golan saic'B^ an em ergency meeting Thurs
of adult e to plot stejjs to help farmers sur-
ies he opci.M' e ^ worst drought in 50 years,
i, righ, s ^ wbile i° restr y officials said the hot
ly ground was increasing the dan-
■rof fires.
■By midafternoon, temperatures
provedC ® Da a 8 a ‘ n ^ ie m iddle 90s to
it’s reoij Bauttd 100 degrees f rom the central
uhan'i High Plains through the lower Mis-
ie new sent
ion."
Public Sent
ition-lme st
sotiri Valley into the Tennessee Val-
iscnption
orn lines jJ
... .... 'i n jleyand mid-Atlantic states.
®The devastating combination of
l ■tieme heat and record low rainfall
nteiaMbvM 0 con, inued to stall barge traffic
rwillbeaB 1 ^ nat ‘ on s midsection and in-
I i. TMeased the threat of forest fires.
. 0 “»e weather eased in parts of the
Northeast, however.
* r .Mb'St. Louis, the medical examin-
iM 8 °^ lce sa '^ Thursday that a 99-
War-old woman whose body w&s
.. r foi id in a sweltering bedroom the
'ties, lnaili Mevious day had died from the
m sTB 31, ^ ut a wor ^ er w h° collapsed
n Wd died Wednesday at an un-air-
, Bnditioned Chrysler Corp. plant in
P 0nt .!?Warbv Fenton, Mo., was found to
". er died of heart disease unrelated
the t h e weather, officials said Thurs-
'g" a co ' da.
ose signiniMj' ^ e worker’s death had
pt co ntideni» om p te( j ot | iers at t i le pl an t to walk
Bf the job for a time, but work re-
Bijmed Thursday, Chrysler said,
■orkers had also walked out briefly
■ Tuesday.
■Temperature records were bro-
■n or tied in several cities, includ
ing, Kansas City, Mo., where the 99-
■gree reading beat the 15-year-old
■cord by 7 degrees. The 98 degrees
■ Washington, D.C., tied a record
^ithad stood for 114 years.
In Chicago, Agriculture Secretary
chard Lyng told midwestern gov-
ors that the federal government
!§•
LS.
ce
ins
would “do what is needed” to aid
farmers.
Governors discussed steps to aid
their struggling economies, from the
diversion of water from Lake Michi
gan to speed up the flow of barge
traffic on the Mississippi to long
term measures to halt the drop in
water tables in the northern and
western states.
In a speech to the governors,
Lyng announced a drought hot line
for farmers and noted that existing
crop insurance and disaster loan
programs were available as farmers
determine the extent of crop losses
in the coming days and weeks.
“The situation is still fluid. . . .
We’ll need a little bit of time to learn
what the losses ai;e,” he said. “But we
will do what is needed to minimize
the severity of the damage.”
Opening the conference, Illinois
Gov. James Thompson said that un
less his state gets rain in the next 30
days, “we risk the loss of our corn
crop and (soybean) crop. And all the
governors here can tell much the
same story.”
Because barge traffic along the
Mississippi River is so crucial to agri
culture, Thompson proposed that
the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers
seek permission to divert water from
Lake Michigan to solve the problem.
That proposal, however, drew the
fire of Gov. Tommy Thompson
from neighboring Wisconsin, who
said, “It might turn out to be more
disastrous over the long term than
the immediate salvation it provides.”
Some 1,000 barges were halted
along the Mississippi in Memphis,
Tenn., area alone, and dredging of
the channel continued Thursday.
Dry weather also raised the
spectre of forest fires.
Kick it out
The hot Texas weather doesn’t seem to affect the enthusiasm of mem
bers of the Denton Fillies as they practice a routine on the Quad
Thursday afternoon. The Fillies are
camp for high school drill teams.
Photo by Sam B. Myers
at A&M as part of a summer
Sales tax revenue improves outlook
By Janet Goode
Senior Staff Writer
Increases in sales tax revenue
throughout Texas cities indicate eco
nomic recovery and are relieving
fears of a national recession or sharp
drop in oil prices, sources in the state
comptroller’s office said Wednesday.
Candi Manges, spokesman for the
comptroller, said the sales tax reve
nue gain was sparked by an increase
in consumer spending and general
economic recovery led by manufac
turing.
Texas’ ecnomonic outlook should
continue to improve with sales tax
revenues increasing statewide
through 1991 at a rate of more than
8 percent a year, Manges said.
City allocation checks this month
showed a 23.5 percent increase over
June 1987, which can be attributed
to the broadened sales tax base along
with increase in retail sales. Manges
said.
Sales tax revenue increases also
were evident for the cities of Bryan
and College Station. According to a
report by the comptroller’s office,
College Station’s sales tax revenue
for June 1988, compared to June
1987, increased 26.25 percent.
According to the report, net pay
ment this period for Bryan was
$194,958 comparable to payment
the prior calandar year of $170,954
— an increase of 14.55 percent. Col
lege Station showed an increase
from $180,951 to $228,446.
Glenn Schroeder, deputy director
of finance and budget for College
Station, said the sales tax revenue,
which goes into the general fund
budget for the city’s general opera
tions, is slightly higher for the
month than had been anticipated.
“The entire increase is based on
two things,” Schoroeder said, “the
economy is doing a little better and
retail sales are increasing.
“It’s one of those balancing fac
tors. This will compensate for other
short falls in revenue. Consequently,
we will be able to operate on the
same level as we have been in the
past.”
Scott McGough, director of finan
cial services in Bryan, said that al
though these figures are encourag
ing, it is hard to determine a trend
from one month. One reason is that
checks received quarterly from the
state are relativley larger.
McGough said the report is also in
calendar years rather than fiscal.
McGough said that looking at a
nine month period of the fiscal year
from October to June, the sales tax
gain for Bryan was 3.47 — an in
crease over the same time period for
last year. The total sales tax revenue
for the year for Bryan was $740,653.
McGough said this is still good news.
“The best thing about it is at least
it looks like it has leveled off . . . and
perhaps trending upward,” he said.
o leads found in search
for former A&M student
Godwin: Frustration
caused resignation
4sit
liege
*tin
12.87
74.02
56.88
ay
By Loyd Brumfield
Senior Staff Writer
■Police still have no leads in the dis-
appearance of a Texas A&M former
student, but her mother says she’s
still hopeful something will turn up
sck;ii.
■‘Every little sign is encouraging,”
iBillie Fowler says.
■Her daughter, 24-year-old Au-
drtv Cardenas, a May journalism
Bduate, has been missing from her
job since Monday.
■Cardenas, from Houston, was
Ipartif ipating in a newspaper inter-
nslup program for minorities and
was working at the Belleville News-
Democrat in Belleville, Ill.
■Fowler is in Belleville working
with the police department and the
mtws-Democrat in an effort to find
hei daughter.
■Fowler says the last few days have
|begim to wear on her.
■Tm kind of tired,” she says. “A
little bit was going on a while ago
and it was keeping me occupied.”
■Fowler says she hasn’t learned
anything new in the case.
■‘Nothing has happened. The po
lio are still questioning people, and
wi re getting quite a few calls from
people who say they’ve seen her,”
site says.
■The police follow up everything
and every call.”
Word of Cardenas’ disappearance
has spread all over the country,
Fowler says.
“A woman called and said she saw
Audrey in Detroit trying to get a
flight to Houston,” Fowler says.
“The only thing that makes me
doubt that is that she said the girl
was speaking Spanish, and Audrey
doesn’t speak Spanish. She may
know one or two words, but that’s
about it.
“You have to follow up every
thing. You can’t assume people are
wrong in cases like this.”
She says St. Louis television sta
tions are broadcasting reports and
showing Cardenas’ picture regu
larly.
Fowler, with the help of the News-
Democrat, is distributing pictures
and posters of her daughter around
Belleville, which has a population of
about 50,000.
“Her picture is all over town,” she
says. “Someone called from Houston
saying she saw her picture in the
(Houston) Chronicle.
“People in town have been very
helpful. This town is about the size
of Bryan. People are very involved
with one another here.
“It isn’t like Houston, where
you’ve got a couple of million peo
ple.”
It’s been about a month since she’s
seen her daughter, Fowler says, al
though they had been keeping in
touch before Cardenas’ disappear
ance.
“She called about two weeks ago
and said she was settling in and wor
king,” she says.
“She said she liked her job okay,
but they made her do drought sto
ries and she didn’t like that.
“She’d say, ‘How much can you
write about a drought?’ ”
One of Cardenas’ professors has
described her as a serious-minded
student deeply interested in journa
lism.
Fred Ehrlich, assistant city editor
for the News-Democrat, told The
Battalion that Cardenas was one of
the paper’s best interns.
Her name has been entered in a
nation-wide computer search for
missing people.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Caspar
Weinberger’s former colleague in
private life — brought in to the Pen
tagon to get control of procurement
— says he quit in frustration last fall
because Weinberger and President
Reagan failed to support his man
agement reforms.
“I differ 100 percent with the
(former) secretary of defense who
said the system is fine but we have a
few bad apples,” said Richard P.
Godwin, the former undersecretary
of defense for acquisition who was
brought into the Pentagon to carry
out reforms recommended by an
other Californian, industrialist Da
vid Packard.
Godwin, the former president of
Bechtel Civil and Minerals Inc., also
said Weinberger, the former de
fense secretary, was “100 percent
wrong” in defending the way the
Pentagon buys weapons.
In a telephone interview Wednes
day, Godwin called the Pentagon
procurement process a “national cri
sis,” as serious for the United States
as drug trafficking and the AIDS ep
idemic.
“We have institutionalized a bad
system,” said 66-year-old Godwin,
who worked with Weinberger at
Bechtel before President Reagan’s
election in 1980.
Bechtel Civil and Minerals was a
division of Bechtel Group Inc., the
huge construction company based in
San Francisco. Between assignments
in Republican administrations,
Weinberger served as vice president
and general counsel of the Bechtel
Group. Secretary of State George P.
Shultz was president of Bechtel
Group from 1975-1982.
Weinberger said he thinks the
Pentagon’s' weapons-buying proce
dures are generally adequate, but it
is impossible to eliminate dishonesty
on the part of some people.
Reagan said on Tuesday that al
though he does not condone miscon
duct, some corruption is “under
standable” in an enterprise as big as
the defense department, which
spends $160 billion a year on acquisi
tions and which, Weinberger noted
Wednesday, lets more than 50,000
contracts a day.
Godwin said he accepted the job
as the first undersecretary of de
fense for acquisition in 1986 with the
understanding that he would stay
only as long as he felt he was effec
tive. The post was created by Con
gress in the wake of a report by
Packard’s presidential commission
recommending changes in procure
ment practices.
T exas site
part of theft
investigation
CORPUS CHRISTI (AP) —
An FBI agent said an investigaton
into the theft of 10 turbine heli
copter engines from the Corpus
Christi Army Depot is part of a
federal probe that has recovered
$9 million worth of stolen mili
tary property in seven states.
In addition to the engines sto
len from CCAD in 1986, the FBI
inquiry involves stolen turbine en
gines from Fort Eustis near New
port News, Va., and Fort Camp
bell in Kentucky.
FBI Agent Joe Wolfinger said
the investigation involves the
largest amount of stolen govern
ment property in recent years.
The FBI revealed last week
that it was investigating the theft
of 10 T-55 turbine helicopter en
gines stolen from the depot in
1986. CCAD’s stolen engines
were seized by federal agents in
the last month in Washington,
Kentucky and Texas, the FBI
said.
CCAD, the nation’s largest he
licopter repair facility, repairs he
licopters from all branches of the
military and is Corpus Christi’s
largest industrial employer with
3,800 workers.
^A&M student killed
in water ski accident
By Janet Goode
Senior Staff Writer
Funeral services for a Texas
A&M student who died Monday
evening in a water skiing accident
in Austin will be Tuesday in Am
arillo at St. Thomas Catholic
Church.
Douglas Swafford, 23, last at
tended A&M in Fall 1987, and
planned to return as a senior fi
nance major in Fall 1988, his
mother, Linda Swafford, said. He
was living in Austin for the sum
mer.
Senior Sgt. of Homicide Jim
Kortan, of the Austin Police De
partment, said the accident took
place on Lake Austin when the
driver of the boat apparently was
distracted for a second when
turning the boat around to pick
up the skier and accidentally ran
over him.
Swafford was found Wednes
day by Austin Fire Department
Divers, Kortan said.
The case is now to be pre
sented to the district attorney
who will determine if charges will
be filed against the driver, Dax
McCracken, 19, of Austin. Kor
tan said McCracken could possi
bly be charged with involuntary
manslaughter. Kortan also said
the accident was alcohol related.
Swafford was a member of the
Texas A&M chapter of the Beta
Theta Pi fraternity.
Linda Swafford said his frater
nity brothers want to give Swaf
ford a memorial service in Col
lege Station.
A&M research may help detect cancer
By Juliette Rizzo
Reporter
Texas A&M researchers are testing newly
identified chemical substances carried by cancer
cells that may provide a more effective way to di
agnose deadly tumors in human kidneys.
Dr. John Kochevar, assistant professor of pa
thology and laboratory medicine at A&M, said
doctors find it difficult to treat kidney cancer —
renal cell carcinoma (RCC) — because the disease
is often diagnosed in the “late stage”, too late for
effective treatment.
“These tumors are notably resistant to chemo
therapy and radiation treatment unless they are
spotted early,” Kochevar said. “If the tumors are
caught early, treatment through surgery can be
effective.”
In the medical science laboratories at Texas
A&M, Kochevar has identified a chemical known
as an RCC antigen carried by cancer cells in the
kidney.
He said antigens associated with foreign orga
nisms usually trigger the body’s first stages of de
fense against disease and infection after the orga
nisms are detected by antibodies produced by the
immune system.
“The tumors develop unnoticed and go un
treated, because the immune system’s natural an
tibodies only weakly react the antigens in kidney
cancer,” Kochevar said.
“If the tumors are removed or destroyed early
enough, a five-year survival rate of 90 percent or
greater is given,” Kochevar said. “But, if you
have metastasis, spreading of the cancer cells
away from the initial tumor, the five-year survi
val rate is 10 percent or less.”
Because of Kochevar’s discovery of the RCC
antigen, an artificial antibody known as a mono
clonal antibody has been produced to detect and
fight the cells carrying the antigen.
Monoclonal antibodies are laboratory-pro
duced substances that, by attaching to the RCC
antigens, attack the tumor cells like antibodies
produced naturally by the immune system.
Kochevar’s research is aimed at develpoing the
monoclonal antibodies to signal the presence of
disease.
He says the ability of the monoclonal antibody
to attach to antigens present in the blood and ex
crete themselves in urine can be a significant tool
in diagnosing the tumors early enough for treat
ment.
He expects that someday the monoclonal anti
body might be used to improve the effectiveness
of treatments for other tumors in the breast, lung
and prostate glands.
A test that detects this molecule might some
day be included in laboratory studies conducted
as part of regular physical examinations, Koche
var said.
He said research has been encouraging but the
antigen is still being tested.
“Since RCC is a tumor for which there is no
treatment unless the disease is detected early,
anything will be helpful to the patient who des
perately needs treatment, but like lung cancer,
you might be able to kill 90 percent of the cancer
ous cells but they might just grow back,” Koche
var said.
Select patients are being experimentally tested
at cancer treatment centers at the Veterans Ad
ministration Hospital in Washington D.C. and
the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Hospital in New
York City.
Kochevar pointed out that routine clinical use
of these tests is still in the future.