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Battalion
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I. 88 No. 178 USPS 045360 6 Pages
College Station, Texas
Thursday, July 27,1989
emocrats block
OP-proposed
as amendment
ASHINGTON (AP) — Defno-
U nning»t s on Wednesday blocked a Re
publican-proposed constitutional
i Hiendment to ban flag burning as
they pursued passage of a regular
Htute they say can do the same
Dot! thing without altering the Bill of
Rights.
Ife jlThe chairman of the House Judi-
Hry Committee, Jack Brooks, D-
i -Kxas, ruled out of order an attempt
by Rep. James Sensenbrenner, R-
Ifi Wis„ to bring before the committee
fhe amendment backed by President
lot; Bush.
■Supporters of the amendment
Icii tOntend that changing the Constitu
tion is the only way to overcome last
Yk month’s ruling by the Supreme
Court that flag-burning was a pro
ved form of free expression.
Democratic leaders, including
Hill-
Brooks and House Speaker Thomas
S. Foley, D-Wash., are pursuing a
regular statute designed to meet the
court’s objections.
Their strategy is aimed at avoid
ing damage to constitutional rights
and demonstrating that Democrats
abhor flag burning.
The symbolism of the flag was
used by Bush in last year’s presi
dential campaign against the Demo
cratic nominee, Massachusetts Gov.
Michael Dukakis.
Brooks scheduled another meet
ing of the panel for Thursday to
take action on his proposed bill to
outlaw desecration of the flag, in
cluding burning, with penalties of
up to a year in jail plus a fine.
The bill could come before the
full House next week.
ouse votes to limit
funds for production Net wait
of costly B-2 bomber
Photo by Phelan M. Ebenhack
Firefighters prepare to sharpen their rappelling skills by de
scending the Drill Tower while their colleagues wait below on
the safety net. The exercise was part of a training session
Wednesday afternoon at the Brayton Firemen Training Field.
■WASHINGTON (AP) — The
■mocratic-controlled House voted
■ednesday to sharply limit produc-
C|asj< bon money for President Bush’s
]cbstly stealth bomber, pressing the
Pentagon to come up with a pro-
am cheaper than the current $70
lion.
“The B-2 bomber is in serious
tilouble,” Rep. Mike Synar, D-Okla.,
said prior to House approval of the
njeasure, which put off a decision on
thr final fate of the radar-evading
bpmber until next year.
B The crucial vote Wednesday was
257-160, with 49 Republicans join-
■g 208 Democrats to limit produc
tion of the bomber.
I The 1 louse action, part of its work
|pn the $295 billion military budget,
'79-4756T as a set b ac k for Bush, who person
ally lobbied lawmakers for the air-
aft.
The amendment, sponsored by
I I CCA P e P- L es Aspin, D-Wis., chairman of
Ul WvBe House Armed Services Commit-
|He, and Synar, allows the adminis-
J Hation production funds for only
tvv<> new bombers in 1990 and 1991.
he Pentagon had sought eight
ombers.
The action sets up a confrontation
, , M ith the Senate, which voted 98-1
f pnOflSBuesday to back the bomber if it
eets flight test and radar-evasion
iandards.
The Senate trimmed Bush’s $4.7
n
billion B-2 request for the next fiscal
year by a relatively modest $300 mil
lion.
Once the House and Senate com
plete their versions of the defense
bill, the two chambers will meet in
conference to work out a final mea
sure. The administration expressed
the hope that a B-2 program resem
bling the White House request will
still prevail.
“The Aspin amendment regret
tably delays the program,” White
House spokesman Roman Popadiuk
said. “It weakens our negotiating po
sition (in arms-reduction talks) since
it shows less than a full commitment
to the manned bomber leg of our
triad. We hope to restore the pro
gram in conference.”
The House amendment on the
bomber would meet the administra
tion’s full request for research and
development work over the next two
years but would limit procurement
money and then cut it off unless
Congress acts again.
Aspin argued Wednesday that the
Air Force has “hardly tested this
plane.”
“What this amendment does is say
‘slow down the program, do the re
search and development and fence
the program,’ ” said the Wisconsin
Democrat.
Bush signs bill to end last price controls
on natural gas, calls for new energy plan
WASHINGTON — President Bush on
Wednesday ended the nation’s last price controls
on natural gas and announced his administration
will travel the country soliciting suggestions for
an energy policy keyed to market forces.
“Our task ... is to build the national consensus
necessary to support this strategy,” the president
said in signing a bill ending the last wellhead
price controls on natural gas, 35 years after they
were begun.
The law Bush signed before a White House
audience of members of Congress from oil pro
ducing states and industry representatives re
moves controls on the remaining one-third of
natural gas supplies subject to price ceilings. The
ceilings will be abolished by January 1993 for
existing wells and by May 1991 for wells drilled
from now on.
The end of price controls is expected to have
little or no effect in consumer markets since gas is
selling well below the current ceilings.
Years of price controls proved bad for produc
ers and consumers, Bush contended, and were
responsible for “the damaging natural gas short
ages of the ’70s and for gas market distortions
that exist to this very day.”
Natural gas supplies one quarter of the na
tion’s energy. A 1978 law permitted the decon
trol of most supplies starting in 1985, but the bill
Bush signed was necessary to free the rest.
Gas prices have fallen from a peak average of
tacks on the use of fossil fuels, which worsens the
“greenhouse effect” warming of the globe, and
when the Exxon Valdez tanker spill in Alaska has
prompted Congress to expand, the. areas of fed
eral offshore waters that are closed to oil and gas
exploration.
“This is no time for complacency,” Bush said.
“Our energy security problem continues. Con
servation achievements are leveling off, domestic
“ ET
E-xperience shows that
deregulation works to serve
consumers and to serve an
expanding economy.”
President Bush
oil production is continuing its downward trend.
And petroleum imports are increasing. And our
need for a cleaner environment is obvious to all.”
Watkins cited several administration concerns:
Domestic oil production is at its lowest point in 25
years while imports, still almost 20 percent below
the 1977 peak, are 65 percent higher than in
1985.
$2.69 per thousand cubic feet at the wellhead in
1984, when homeowners paid an average of
$6.12, to $ 1.71 last year, when homeowners aver
aged. $5.46.. .
Bush called the natural gas deregulation his
administration’s “first major energy initiative.”
“Experience shows that deregulation works to
serve consumers and to serve an expanding
economy,” Bush said in a bill-signing ceremony
in the East Room. “It’s a tribute to the American
political system that after decades of dis
agreement over the merits of gas decontrol we
can gather here today to state a clear message for
all to hear.
“We have learned from the past. We are
united in the conviction that the best way to deal
with our energy problems and serve the Ameri
can people is to let our market economy work.”
Bush announced he was directing Energy Sec
retary James Watkins to come up with a national
strategy that will seek to balance the nation’s
need for reasonably priced energy supplies, com
mitment to a safer and healthier environment, a
strong economy and reduced dependence on
foreign energy suppliers.
Bush said he would continue pushing for tax
incentives to prop up declining domestic oil pro
duction, although he acknowledged he was un
likely to win action in Congress this year.
The administration’s policy drafting comes
when environmentalists are increasing their at-
Iced
49
3y Cindy McMillian
STAFF WRITER
$50
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Texas A&M researchers are tak
ing the witness stand as the contro
versy surrounding genetic research
nas moved from the laboratory to
he courtrooom.
Prosecutors from around the state
are calling on A&M experts to lend
uredibility to genetic tests which can
match the DNA of rapists and sus-
ects.
Dr. James Womack, a geneticist in
Texas A&M’s College of Veterinary
Medicine, testified as an expert wit-
$50
$2#
200 $$
H
~ rosecutors call on A&M experts to help
support use of genetic tests in rape cases
less for the prosecution in a Fort
vVorth rape trial where genetic test
ing was a factor.
‘The prosecution wanted me to
verify that the probabilities of error
were as small as the crime lab had
alculated,” Womack said. “In fact, I
don’t even work with human genet-
200 $2^ ics, but both human and bovine ge-
the experiments “aren’t adequately
controlled.”
The accuracy of genetic analysis
depends on the quality and amount
of DNA available. If the DNA sam
ple is large and maintained prop
erly, then the test is “very definitive,”
he said. If the sample is small or not
stored properly, he said, then the
test is not as reliable.
Womack said the test results in the
Fort Worth trial were “very defini
tive” and an important piece of evi
dence leading to the conviction.
He said he interviewed the jurors
after the trial and they said the ge
netic tests were not the only basis for
their decision.
Bill Juvrud, Assistant Brazos
County District Attorney, said ge
netic tests have been used as evi
dence in two rape trials in Brazos
County this year. The tests are used
when little other evidence is avail
able, he said.
One case this summer involved a
victim who could supply only a gen
eral description of her attacker be
cause she never saw his face, Juvrud
said.
“When dealing with a rape victim
who was prevented from seeing the
attacker, genetic tests can be the only
possible link to identification,” he
said.
Both Brazos County trials ended
in convictions, he said.
Tests for the two trials in Brazos
County were performed by Life
Codes, a private company in New
York. The tests are expensive, but
more companies are starting to offer
them, he said, including one in Dal
las called Gene Screen.
Juvrud said the procedure is be
coming more common in court
rooms outside major cities, but it is
meeting some challenges from crit
ics.
“That’s why we still need re
searchers from A&M to testify at the
trials,” he said.
Chinese police arrest 3182 in three-day manhunt
netics use the same basic analytical
techniques and are based on the
same principles.”
The tests reveal specific gene
codes in DNA samples. Because ev
ery individual’s DNA has a different
combination of chemicals, these
gene codes are genetic “finger
prints.”
Geneticists and forensic scientists
can use these “fingerprints” to
match DNA from rapists’ semen
with DNA from suspects’ tissue sam
ples.
Womack said the method has met
with some controversy in legal and
scientific circles because some think
BEIJING (AP) — Police in eastern Jiangsu province
arrested 3,182 people in a three-day manhunt, includ
ing a Beijing student leader and other alleged coun
terrevolutionaries, an official newspaper report seen
Wednesday said.
Jiangsu’s Xinhua Daily did not say how many of
those arrested have been charged with political crimes
connected to the crushed student democracy
movement.
It said they included the secretary and liaison worker
of an independent workers’ union in Hefei, and Cheng
Mingxia, treasurer of Beijing’s United Association of
University Students, the independent student union
that led the protests.
The brief report, in Saturday’s edition, said Cheng
had hidden thousands of dollars in Hong Kong, Japa
nese, Chinese and British currency.
Official reports of arrests connected with the seven-
week student-led movement trickled almost to a halt in
national newspapers after more than 2,000 were an
nounced nationwide. However, thousands more arrests
are believed to be taking place in secret.
The Beijing Evening News reported a Beijing court
sentenced four people to death Wednesday — two for
several thefts and two for theft and murder.
Officials say 12 people directly linked to the protests
have been executed since June 4. They refuse to con
firm unofficial reports of more executions of protes
ters.
The government, meanwhile, criticized as “very unf
riendly” the announcements by foreign governments,
including the United States, extending the visas of
Chinese students abroad.
A State Education Commission statement promised
authorities would not punish the thousands of Chinese
students who took part in demonstrations in Japan and
the West to protest the June 3-4 military crackdown in
which hundreds of their classmates at home were killed.
China has said 100 civilians were killed and about 100
police and soldiers died.
Student indicted for infecting
A&M’s, 5 other universities’
computer systems with virus
FROM STAFF & WIRE REPORTS
A Cornell University graduate
student was indicted Wednesday
on a felony charge stemming
from creation of a rogue com
puter “virus” that affected as
many as 6,000 computers last fall,
including the Texas A&M com
puter system..
Robert Tappan Morris, 24,
who has been suspended from
Cornell for one year, was indicted
by a federal grand jury in Syra
cuse, N.Y., on a single count of
accessing without authorization at
least six university and military
computers.
The virus found in A&M’s
computer system was isolated and
“cured” before it had the oppor
tunity to do any damage.
According to computer ex
perts, the virus was entered into
the Arpanet system by Morris.
The computer virus then entered
the A&M campus computer sys
tem through a user who logged
onto the system in Michigan.
In a November issue of The
Battalion, Associate Provost for
Computing and Information Sys
tems John Dinkel said viruses are
hidden within a computer pro
gram, so when a person tries to
copy a program, the virus be
comes active and reproduces.
Some are destructive and delete
stored data and some are just in
nocuous.
Dinkel said if the virus had not
been caught, the Arpanet system
would have had to be completely
shut down before it was thor
oughly affected by the virus. The
computer-crime indictment
charged that the virus, which
spread across a nationwide net
work of computers, prevented
the authorized use of those com
puters by universities and mili
tary bases.
The Justice Department said in
a statement released here that
Morris was the first person to be
charged under the computer-
crime provision of the Computer
Fraud and Abuse Act of 1986.
The indictment comes after
months of deliberations within
the Justice Department over
whether to charge Morris with a
felony or a misdemeanor.
Morris, of Arnold, Md., could
face a possible five-year sentence
and a $250,000 fine if convicted
of the charge.
The law also provides for resti
tution of victims of a computer
crime, but prosecutors did not
specify how much damage was
caused by the Nov. 2, 1988, inci
dent that virtually shut down a
military-university computer net
work used to transmit non-classi-
fied data.
An industry group estimated
that as much as $96 million worth
of damage was caused by the vi
rus to 6,200 computers.