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Vol. 88 No. 173 USPS 045360 6 Pages
College Station, Texas
WEATHER
TOMORROW’S FORECAST:
Partly cloudy with a 30 percent
chance of showers in the af
ternoon.
HIGH: 90s LOW: 70s
Wednesday, July 19,1989
I'Caperton: Comp bill controversy almost over
Politicians, supporters gather in honor of senator
By Richard Tijerina
STAFF WRITER
State legislators are close to an agreement on
workers’ compensation reform, but they’ll proba
bly have to work until midnight tonight, the end
of the special session, to reach an agreement,
Sen. Kent Caperton said Tuesday.
Caperton, D-Bryan, was the guest of honor at
a “Senator Kent Caperton Appreciation Day”
fundraiser at Washington-on-the-Brazos State
Park.
Several prominent Democratic politicians at
tended the event, including gubernatorial candi
date and State Treasurer Ann Richards, Attor
ney General Jim Mattox, who has not announced
his candidacy b 't is expected to run against Rich
ards, and Lt. C v. Bill Hobby.
Caperton, chairman of the Senate Finance
Committee and co-chairman of the conference
committee that is negotiating workers’ compen
sation reform, said the Legislature might have to
work until the midnight deadline tonight to come
to an agreement on the bill.
“That’s not the way I’d like it to be, that’s not
the way I planned it,” Caperton said.
“We will continue to try to reason together, to
work to resolve those differences.”
State lawmakers failed to pass the workers’
compensation bill during the 140-day regular
session and Gov. Bill Clements called a special
session in hopes of having the Legislature pass a
reform bill overhauling the Texas workers’ com
pensation system.
We will continue to try
to reason together, to work
to resolve those differences.”
— Kent Caperton
state senator
Clements, who gave even odds Tuesday that
the Legislature would send him the bill, said he
will call another 30-day special session in Novem
ber if the bill is not passed.
“I remain convinced that as long as men and
women of good will work together toward the
common goal (of settling the bill), our problems
are capable of resolution,” Caperton told the
crowd of about 300 supporters.
Caperton said he originally planned to an
nounce his political plans at the event, but de
cided to wait until an agreement to the bill is
reached.
He has hinted he wants to run for re-election,
instead of retiring from politics or running for a
statewide office.
He was appointed Senate Finance chairman
last year and officially began his tenure in the po
sition when the Legislature convened in January.
“Seeing you here tempts me greatly (to an
nounce my political plans), but I want to have an
opportunity to think about it, talk to people I re
gard as my advisers and speak with my family
about it,” he said.
Texas Monthly magazine in its July issue’s
“Ten Best and Worst List” picked Caperton as
the number one member of the Texas Legis
lature.
The list was based on interviews with House
and Senate staff, lobbyists and lawmakers.
Caperton said the workers’ compensation bill
is important to the people of his 5th Senatorial
District, a 15-county district which includes
Bryan-College Station, and he will continue to
fight for the bill until it’s passed.
“We’re going to keep trying until midnight
(Wednesday),” he said. “I hope we can get the bill
done. I know it’s important to the people of this
district, both the workers and employers. It’s just
a tough, tough issue to resolve.
“I think we’re close, but we’re not there — all
we can do is keep trying.”
S6.00
investigates microfilm theft
rom A&M, 11 other libraries
i
I RICHMOND, Va. (AP) — The FBI is investigating
■he disappearance of hundreds of microfilm reels of
^patents from a dozen university libraries, including
:those at Texas A&M, University of Texas and Rice Uni
versity a newspaper reported Tuesday.
Since mid-June, at least 886 microfilm reels of U.S.
batents have been reported missing, according to the
Richmond News Leader. The stolen reels, which con-
microfilm of patents issued between 1968 and
988, generally do not contain any of the same infor-
ation.
Thefts have been reported at the universities of
Hdaho, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Mex-
■cu, Utah and Texas, as well as Georgia Institute of
■Technology, Ohio State University, Virginia Common-
Bvealth University, Rice and A&M, the newspaper said.
Some librarians believe the thefts are part of a con-
piracy to amass a 20-year collection of microfilmed in-
brmation, even though such information is available at
tany libraries and can be purchased from a Connecti-
ut company.
“Unfortunately, the extent of this problem is grow-
ng daily and has now reached alarming proportions,”
he U.S. Patent and Trademark Office warned in a re-
ent memorandum.
“It’s a puzzlement,” said William J. Judd, university
library services director at VCU, where 163 reels van
ished last month. “Why would this happen?”
William J. Studer, director of Ohio State University
Libraries, also said he was surprised.
“I don’t know that I can ever recall in my profes
sional lifetime of 25 years that government information
openly available in many places is the target of whole
sale thievery,” he said. “It is strange.”
An official in the Patent and Trademark Office re
fused to talk about the thefts Monday, saying she did
not want to jeopardize the FBI probe.
Libraries have suffered a collective loss of $200,000,
according to a bulletin from the Association of Re
search Libraries.
Officials at one victimized library described possible
suspects as two men in their late 20s or early 30s,
dressed in “casual business attire” and Carrying large,
brown attache cases.
Officials are not sure how the reels were taken.
“If we see someone come in with a suitcase, I think
we would be suspicious,” said Robert Migneault, dean
of library services at the University of New Mexico.
The microfilm collections are held by 65 Patent De
pository Libraries designated by the federal govern
ment. The collections are used by lawyers, inventors
and others needing information such as how patented
devices work and are designed and when a patent was
issued.
Research Publications of Woodbridge, Conn., is au
thorized by the government to sell the microfilm reels.
A 3,126-reel set for patents issued between 1968 and
1988 costs $101,000.
Stayin’ cool by the pool
Photo by Phelan M. Ebenhack
Lifeguard Chuck DuPaul tries to stay cool under- heat and humidity made the pool a nice place to
neath an umbrella at Wofford Cain Pool. The be Tuesday afternoon.
Mexican consul
dies in Austin
after 20 foot fall
AUSTIN (AP) — The Mexican
consul to Austin was killed in an
accidental, 20-foot fall after he
stepped over a retaining wall at a
rural home, authorities said
Tuesday.
The body of German Casta
neda, 60, was found about 9 a.m.
near the home of an Austin res
taurant owner, Curtis Weeks,
spokesman for the Travis County
Sheriffs Office, said.
] An autopsy revealed Casta
neda died late Monday night
from injuries he suffered in the
fall, the Travis County Medical
Examiner’s office said.
His death was determined to
be an accident. Norm Carmack,
of the medical examiner’s office,
said.
Weeks said Castaneda fell after
parking his car and walking up to
the home of Javier Corona, the
owner of Las Palomas Restaurant
& Bar in Westlake Hills, a small
community near Austin.
Before the house is a concrete
and rock retaining wall and a
lighted footbridge that crosses
over a 20-foot drop. Weeks said.
Castaneda probably saw the
kitchen window and approached
the house believing that was the
front door, missing the foot
bridge, he said.
“We think he was trying to find
these people’s house,” Weeks
said.
Weeks said apparently Casta
neda was going to a party at the
home.
Weeks said Castaneda had
been on the job for 15 days. Cas
taneda’s wife, however, said he
had been consul in Austin since
May.
Castaneda had left the County
Line restaurant earlier Monday,
where he dined with several
Texas Department of Agriculture
employees.
Bush returns home after 10 days in Europe
WASHINGTON (AP) — Presi
dent Bush, home after a 10-day trip
to Europe, said Tuesday he sensed
the dawning of an age behind the
Iron Curtain in which freedom and
democracy will flourish.
Returning to the White House,
the president was cheered by thou
sands, including members of his
Cabinet and tourists pulled from
lines waiting to see the Executive
Mansion.
Visibly tired by his whirlwind trip
— four countries in 10 days — Bush
said he had found “an enormous
amount of excitement” in Poland
and Hungary.
He recounted some of the mem
ories he will take from the trip:
“The open arms of the people of
Poland. American flags waving in
the sqaure at the Lenin shipyard in
Gdansk. The faces of the people
who lined the streets greeting us
with such joy. The thousands who
endured a driving downpour in Bu
dapest to welcome us to Hungary .
“The warmth that Barbara and I
felt as a reflection of the warmth the
people of Poland and Hungary feel
for America and for our ideals.”
His trip behind the Iron Curtain,
Bush said, left him sensing there is
“a new world within our reach, a
world where the yearning for free
dom overcomes discord and con
frontation, where freedom and de
mocracy flourish for others as they
have for this great country of ours.”
Minutes later, meeting with Cab
inet members in the Oval Office,
Bush extolled the achievements of
the weekend Paris economic sum
mit, at which he helped to chart a
campaign to preserve the global en
vironment.
Flying back from Europe, Bush
said earlier in the day that the high
point of his trip may have been the
presentation to him by Hungarian
Prime Minister Miklos Nemeth of a
plaque containing fragments of a
barbed wire fence that had stood be
tween the Communist nation and
neutral Austria.
“I love our country so much that
when people express their love of
America by their tears, which we saw
among some of the older people in
almost every place, that moved me a
lot,” Bush said to reporters traveling
with him on Air Force One.
Or, he said, the high point may
have been standing with Lech Wa
lesa, the leader of the Polish trade
union Solidarity, at a towering me
morial to slain workers in Gdansk.
“There were so many wonderful
things,” Bush said.
As for the future of moves toward
democracy and Tree-market econ
omies in Hungary and Poland, Bush
said he felt there was “too much
hope, too much optimism” for those
movements to be squelched by Mos
cow.
In both countries, reform
movements were crushed, in Hun
gary in 1956 and in Poland in 1970.
But Bush said he did not think fear
of the Soviet Union or communism
could reverse the trends underway
now in Poland and Hungary.
Uprisings in Soviet Union leave
at least 16 dead, hundreds hurt
MOSCOW (AP) — Thousands of armed men
roamed an ethnically troubled Black Sea region Tues
day where at least 16 people have been killed and 239
injured in three days of gunfights, kidnappings and
beatings, officials reported.
A national Interior Ministry official said some of the
3,000 ministry soldiers patrolling the Abkhazia region
in Soviet Georgia formed a human barrier between
Georgians and Abkhazians who earlier fought two bat
tles along the Galidze River.
‘T he situation is very serious because so many people
have guns,” said Vladislav G. Ardzinba, a national legis
lator from Sukhumi, capital of Abkhazia, where both
Georgians and Abkhazians claim discrimination by the
other.
Many people in the region have shotguns or hunting
rifles, and several reports said mobs looted firearms, in
cluding automatic weapons, from police stations and
J ai,s -
A high official in Sukhumi said snipers fired at the
local Communist Party and Interior Ministry buildings,
and other armed men cut road and rail transport and
some communications with the area 870 miles south of
Moscow.
“In effect, they are spreading terror,” he said by tele
phone.
Deputy Interior Minister Ivan F. Shilov said on the
national television news show Vremya that 16 people
had been killed and 239 injured, 188 of whom were
hospitalized.
Fie said the most volatile situation Tuesday was near
Ochamchira, on the coast south of Sukhumi, where the
soldiers were acting as a barrier between Georgians and
Abkhazians.
Zarya Vostoka, a Georgian newspaper, said 5,000
people were armed in the Sukhumi area on Sunday
night and there were exchanges of gunfire.
Violence was reported in Tkvarcheli, Gulripsh, Gali,
and Gudauta in Abkhazia, and in Zugdide in western
Georgia. The official news agency Tass said authorities
had confiscated more than 300 weapons.
Prisoners freed by a mob from a jail in Zugdide may
be among the armed marauders. Tass said only 14 of
the 180 prisoners had been recaptured.
Ardzinba, the national legislator from Sukhumi, said
the riots started Saturday with the beating of an Abkha
zian. The Georgian Foreign Ministry said earlier the vi
olence began when Abkhazians attacked Georgians.
Texas coast residents
buzz with excitement
as drug washes ashore
CRYSTAL BEACH (AP) —
High tide has a whole new mean
ing these days along the Texas
Gulf Coast, keeping people in
tiny fishing and resort towns buz
zing about a subject usually dis
cussed more by big-city dwellers.
“Everybody’s talking about it
and I think everybody’s looking
for it,” said Herb Knowles, who
works at the Dirty Pelican Pier,
which juts into the Gulf of Mexico
about 30 miles east of Galveston.
What has captured the atten
tion of folks along a more than
200-mile stretch of coast is the
discovery in the past two weeks of
261 pounds of 98 percent pure
uncut cocaine estimated by fed
eral officials to have a street value
of some $5 million. Some of the
61 packages have washed ashore
and others have been found by
fishermen in the open Gulf.
“Guys on the weekend are out
here at night on three-wheeled
vehicles with big spotlights on the
beach,” Knowles said. “You tell
me what they’re looking for.”
The cocaine first appeared on
June 28 when five packages —
about 14.5 pounds — were dis
covered in the sand on Mat
agorda Island, about 100 miles
southwest of Houston.
On July 1, another package
was found even farther south
near Port Aransas. Two days
later, an identical package turned
up in the same area.
A week after that, two more
discoveries were made: Five bun
dles totaling about 78 pounds
washed ashore on the Bolivar
Peninsula, across from Galveston,
and 19 bundles weighing about
81 pounds were discovered by the
Matagorda County Sheriffs De
partment.
Finally, on July 13, six men
fishing 12 miles off Galveston ra
dioed the Coast Guard, saying
they found 25 packages weighing
83 pounds floating in the Gulf.
“It all has the same markings,
which leads us to believe it’s from
the same load,” said James E.
Caldwell, supervisory special
agent for the U.S. Customs Serv
ice in Galveston.
Marine biologists who exam
ined the packages have estimated
the cocaine was in the water from
three weeks to a couple of
months.
It was bundled in packages of
five bricks wrapped in duct tape
and tied with yellow plastic rope.