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About The Battalion. (College Station, Tex.) 1893-current | View Entire Issue (Sept. 5, 1988)
timing. 5 e w e , l ' s bestfi 1 "’ill be t bin r,,, i ihere,, ' ‘^cision Pi} can The Battalion ^ol.88 No. 6 CJSPS 045360 16 Pages College Station, Texas Monday, September 5, 1988 the p nt avei n pin inlv tl id wt ie at i« out tllfi lating t! ttherJl Back for seconds?? Shean Dalton, a sophomore mechanical engi neering major from Georgetown, has second and third servings of pecan pie during an outdoor pic- Photo by Phelan M. Ebenhack nic sponsored by the Department of Food Serv ices. Ganges river overflows, entire villages disappear DHAKA, Bangladesh (AP) — loods have inundated three-quar- : 1 Hers of this impoverished nation, !. '/Htranding at least 20 million people 'P I Ivho are eating raw food and drink- " ' ing muddy, probably contaminated lS fl water, officials sa rp rnieni with 111 OlllS lev (tlit ! ing^ saici Sunday. At least 882 people have died since June, when rivers began over flowing their banks in annual mon soon flooding in this country of 110 million people, according to newspa pers in Dhaka. The government count of 333 dead is widely consid ered low. “It is a calamity,” Information Minister Mahbubur Rahman said Sunday night. “It is a havoc-creating, enacing flood.” Flying in an airplane across Ban- ladesh Sunday from the Indian [border to Dhaka, it was virtually im- Ipossible to discern the mighty rivers that normally ribbon this nation’s landscape —just vast seas of brown water. The storied Ganges River, which draws its life in the foothills of In dia’s Himalayan mountains, stretched as far as the eye could see. “I’ve never seen anything like it before,” Capt. Ghias Ahmad, who has piloted over this country for 19 years, said. “You can’t find the rivers any more,” he said. “You can’t differen tiate between the rivers and the flood waters.” The flood waters swallowed up entire villages. Occasionally, tin roofs glinted in the sunlight, the houses beneath them completely submerged. On a few high spots of ground or short stretches of paved road still above water, people milled idly, small boats beached beside them. The information minister said at least 21 million people lost their homesteads and at least three-quar ters of the nation was flooded. The Ganges and Brahmaputra rivers and their dozens of tributaries flow from India and through Ban gladesh to the Bay of Bengal. The rivers flood almost every year after the monsoon rains in Bangla desh and India. Last year, the flood ing in Bangladesh killed about 1,500 people. This season, some refugees have found shelter in relief centers or rel atives’ homes, said government offi cials who spoke on condition of ano nymity. But they estimated that at least 20 million people were either stranded in their homes or ma rooned on small outcroppings of high ground with few supplies. Field investigation ends at Delta 1141 crash site Cause of crash not yet known GRAPEVINE (AP) — Federal in vestigators wound up their field work at the site of last week’s Delta air crash Sunday, refusing to com ment on speculation that double en gine failure might have led to the di saster. The Dallas Morning News, quot ing anonymous sources close to the investigation, reported Sunday that investigators are trying to determine whether two of the three engines on the Boeing 727 failed in the seconds before Wednesday’s crash. See related story, page 11 “When someone says engine fail ure there are a whole host of things that might mean,” Lee Dickinson, a member of the NTSB, said at a briefing Sunday. “One of the things I will not do is speculate on any thing.” Some pilots said the fact that the wing flaps on the jet were apparently retracted at the time of the crash, when they ordinarily would have been extended for takeoff, may have been a sign the pilots were trying to fly the plane on one engine, not a cause of the crash, newspapers re ported. Thirteen people were killed when Flight 1141 en route to Salt Lake City crashed and burned seconds af ter takeoff at Dallas-Fort Worth In ternational Airport. Ninety-five peo ple survived. A recording of cockpit crew mem bers showed they mentioned engine failure. Two loud pops were then heard, which could have indicated a “compressor stall.” But Dickinson said a compressor stall, which occurs when an engine is starving for air, is “When someone says engine failure there are a whole host of things that might mean. One of the things I will not do is speculate on anything. ” — Lee Dickinson, NTSB member not critical. “Keep in mind, compres sor stall is not serious, it’s a hiccup.” At the site Sunday, investigators sealed the cockpit in a blue tarp. It will be taken to Delta headquarters in Atlanta where it will be dis mantled and studied. Workers used power saws to re move the landing gear beneath the 727 and also bored into the ground beneath the left wing to determine the amount of fuel that may have spilled during the crash. Two surviving flight attendants were taken to the wreckage and questioned by investigators, Dickin son said. He said he had no immedi ate information on what they said. Dickinson said he planned to leave Dallas later Sunday, and only a few investigators would remain as the center of the inquiry moves to Washington. Meanwhile, NBC and the Wa- shington Post reported that as the plane taxied to the end of the run way, the cockpit crew spoke about previous air crashes including the 1985 Delta Flight 191 crash that killed 137 at the airport. The newspaper said the crew talked about recent reports about a cockpit recording in the crash of a jet last November in Denver, which revealed the crew members dis cussing a co-worker’s dating habits. vnen an engine is starving tor air, is cussing a co-worker s aating nat U.S. group to hold Soviet space talks NBC reported Saturday that the Delta crew members last week joked that they should be careful since their comments could become public if the plane crashed. Dickinson said Saturday night that he had not heard the cockpit voice recording, but added “if in our analysis we decide that’s pertinent information, we’ll analyze it.” The role of the wing flaps, which are extended during takeoff to pro vide added lift, continued to be dis cussed. Flight Engineer Stephen Judd has told investigators that the wing flaps were extended in the proper posi tion upon takeoff. But eviclence col lected from the wreckage indicates the flaps were completely or almost completely retracted. The Delta co-pilot, Carey Wilson Kirkland Jr., told investigators Sat urday that he did not remember anything from when the plane left the gate, Dickinson said. Doctors said the pilot, Capt. Larry Davis, was not well enough to be interviewed. Bill Melvin, a Dallas-based Delta pilot participating in the crash inves tigation on behalf of the Air Line Pi lots Association, said he believes the pilot could have been facing engine failure and decided to retract the flaps in a last-ditch effort to save the plane. HOUSTON (AP) — A group of 15 Americans, including several from Texas, are in route to Moscow for talks with top Soviet officials on the possibility of future cooperative efforts in commercial space ven tures.* The discussions will take place at the prestigious Space Research Insti tute of the Soviet Academy of Sci ences and at Star City, the secretive cosmonaut training base outside Moscow, the Houston Chronicle re ported Sunday. “My personal belief is that these enterprises are the wave of the fu ture for Houston and the rest of the United States and that they will prove to be mutually profitable for both the government and private de velopment,” Harlan J. Smith, the dean of the group and a longtime observer of the Soviet space pro gram, said. “Houston should be one of the leading areas in the country for this kind of cooperative government and private space development,” Smith, a professor of astronomy at the Uni versity of Texas at Austin, said. Smith and the others are sched uled to meet Monday with Soviet space scientists at the institute, possi bly including Roald Z. Sagdeev, head of the institute. Sagdeev is an advocate of joint So- viet-American cooperation in space and has the ear of party secretary Mikhail S. Gorbachev. He also is a strong supporter of the Soviet leader’s attempts to reju venate the communist nation through “glasnost” (openness) and “perestroika” (reform), particularly in science, according to Soviet ex perts. Other Americans scheduled to take part include Louis Friedman, executive director of the Planetary Society; John Pike, director of space policy for the Federation of Ameri can Scientists based in Washington, D.C. Others include Steve Armour, a Houston investor in Space Com merce; James Calaway, a founder and vice president of Space Indus tries; and Charles R. Gallagher, president of the Menefee Founda tion, which holds stock in Space Commerce. Smith believes one day private space commerce, in hand with NASA, will be a strong part of the city’s industrial diversification. “The combination of having the Johnson Space Center at Houston, plus the universities in Texas . . . and the presence of a strong nucleus of private companies, will add to that,” Smith said. “One of the underlying purposes of this visit is to investigate the fu ture of possible space cooperation between the Soviet Union and the United States,” he said. Soviet trial may expose corruption MOSCOW (AP) — The trial of Leonid Brezhnev’s son-in-law, ac cused of taking $1.1 million in bribes, is expected to lay bare the widespread corruption of the Brezhnev era. Court begins Monday for Yuri Churbanov, a former first deputy interior minister who once moved in the top levels of Kremlin so ciety. If found guilty of bribe-tak ing and abuse of office, he and eight co-defendants could be exe cuted by firing squad. Their trial, and the extraordi nary publicity given its investiga tory phase, are in line with Com munist Party chief Mikhail S. Gorbachev’s drive to break with the cronyism, corruption and nepotism now seen as endemic under Brezhnev. Brezhnev ruled the Soviet Union from 1964 until his death in 1982. The court case, to be heard by the Military Collegium of the So viet Supreme Court, may also have a political aim — to signal the Kremlin Old Guard who flou rished under Brezhnev that their time has passed and that contin ued resistance to Gorbachev-era reforms must cease. Churbanov, who married Brezhnev’s daughter Galina in 1971 after divorcing his first wife in 1964, is a central figure in an embezzlement and bribery scheme. Family will sell movie of JFK’s assassination llass HOUSTON (AP) — The family of the man who made a home movie capturing the assassination of President John F. Kennedy nearly 25 years ago is selling the film for as much as $30,000 per use, the Houston Chronicle reported in a copyright story Sunday. While the footage is currently under copyright protection, some believe profi teering from the historical film made by the late Abraham Zapruder on Nov. 22, 1963, is wrong and that the home movie should be in the public domain. “You shouldn’t be able to copyright something like that,” David Wrone, a his tory professor at the University of Wiscon sin at Stevens Point, said. “It should be in the public domain, just like the crucifixion of Jesus. It’s immoral, socially speaking,” Wrone, who teaches a class pertaining to the assassination, said. Chip Selby, a graduate student at the University of Maryland, sought permission from Zapruder’s son, Henry Zapruder, to use the 22-second, color film in his new documentary without being required to pay the $30,000 fee for non-exclusive rights. “I explained to him that I was a graduate student and I didn’t have that kind of money to pay,” Selby, whose documentary, “Reasonable Doubt,” concludes that more than one gunman fired at Kennedy, said. “He kept saying that he didn’t want to close down my project with the price and that we would work something out. But apparently he was just jerking me then, too, because he won’t return my calls. He won’t answer my letters or anything like that.” Selby’s documentary now includes a $75 bootlegged copy of the Zapruder film that he obtained from Canada. Zapruder, a tax lawyer who has been ne gotiating the sale of the film’s rights out of his Washington, D.C., office, would not comment about his financial interests in the “You shouldn’t be able to copy right something like that. It should be in the public domain, just like the crucifixion of Jesus, It’s immoral, socially speaking. ” David Wrone, history professor film. However, he did say: “Anybody who is using it for their own use, research, show ing it to students, colleges, can have it free of charge, other than the costs of reprinting the film. But if they’re going to be making commercial use of it, then we charge.” Zapruder, 50, sells the rights to the film and stills through the family company, LMH Company. Richard B. Stolley negotiated the 1963 purchase of the film and its rights for Life magazine and Time Inc. from Abraham Za pruder, who died in 1970, for $150,000. He said Zapruder was sensitive to accusa tions that he profited from Kennedy’s death. Time sold the original film back to the Zapruder family in 1975 for $1 in part be cause Time wasn’t comfortahle controlling public access to the film, the paper re ported. Time, itself, he said, still has unlim ited publication rights of film stills. Abraham Zapruder, according to Stolley, saw the sale of the film as a way to provide financial security for his family. His wife and his only other child, a daughter, live in Dallas. Stolley suggested that Abraham Za pruder, a dress manufacturer, probably would not object to the rights being sold if the film were used by legitimate news orga nizations. “His great concern, and it was quite touching and eloquent, was that it not be presented in some kind of sleazy way,” Stol ley said. “He really had real worries that somebody was going to take this and turn it into a kind of Times Square sensation. . . . Abe was a businessman, but he was a very humane man.” Author Robert Groden, who provided a first-generation copy of the film to the ABC television network in 1975 in what he says was the first time the film was shown na tionally, believes Zapruder’s handling of the film is questionable. “The worst part of the whole thing has been the suppression of the film,” Groden said. “Not so much that one person is mak ing a lot of money, but, if somebody wants to do something really good with it, they’re restricted. It’s like their hands are tied.”' Although the Zapruders own the original film and the film rights, the original 8 mm film is being held on behalf of the family at the National Archives in Washington, D.C.