i
TATE & LOCAL
3
uesday, August 1,1989
t
ivers search for workers on capsized rig
Number of state
banks listed as
eluded cn
s cat, m
ee Weel
a song oil
ct the pid
'n colunj
icy wereii
NEW ORLEANS (AP) — Divers fought
gainst time and near-hurricane conditions
[Monday in hopes of finding nine missing oil
rig workers in air pockets on a capsized rig.
“The bunk rooms on these vessels probably
have a water and air tight door,” Lt. Steve
Hardy said. ”It should have been secured
since the vessel was underway. That would
give those inside a limited supply of air. But
time is so critical.”
The rig, which was leased by Chevron, is
actually a self-propelled work barge with
jackup legs. It was headed to shore early
Monday when it capsized about 20 miles off
the Louisiana coast near Morgan City, com
pany spokesman Jonathan Lifa said.
Thirteen people were believed aboard.
The Coast Guard originally reported that six
had been picked up by fishing boats and a
Coast Guard helicopter, but later said it could
confirm only four survivors.
Rescue efforts were hampered by 12-foot
seas, heavy rains and 60 mph winds from the
fringes of Tropical Storm Chantal, Lt. Pat
it
Fhe bunk rooms on
these vessels probably
have a water and air tight
door. It should have been
secured since the vessel
was underway. That would
give those inside a limited
supply of air. But time is so
critical.”
Lt. Steve Hardy,
Philbin said. The rig was reported on its side
in about 25 feet of water.
Divers were unable to search the rig be
cause of the storm, he said. The dive boat and
a Coast Guard cutter stood nearby, but the
bad weather forced helicopters back to shore.
An air bubble trapped in the sealed rooms
would be the only oxygen for any survivors,
Hardy said, but he did not estimate how long
it would last.
“If people panic, oxygen goes real fast. If
they stay calm they can make it last a long
time,” he said.
Three survivors were taken aboard the
fishing vessel Spar Royale for a trip to Wine
Island Pass, and one person was taken by heli
copter to Grand Isle, Hardy said.
No identities were made public and the
Coast Guard said none of the four was se
riously injured.
The survivor taken to the Coast Guard sta
tion at Grand Isle suffered minor cuts and
slight exposure and was reported asleep most
of the morning.
Petty Officer Rich Muller said the rig be
longed to Lafayette Lift Boat and was man
aged by Avis Boug Co. of Folsom. Attempts
to reach officials of both companies were un
successful.
The Avco 5 rig is leased by Chevron Oil
Corp.
troubled rises
The barge had been in 50 to 60 feet of wa
ter, working on oil pipes on the seabottom. It
was ordered to head to port because of the
approaching storm, Lifa said, and probably
had gone about 20 miles when the accident
occurred.
The rig is about 72-feet long. The legs,
which extend 100 feet when it is working, are
lifted above the vessel when it is underway,
Hardy said.
Prof teaches students
in Africa methods
'ite severaii
tides.
)S, civil li
; a de
ity of cam
the
as about n
of Western music
i the polii
: Boric,!
oloredlrj
sm. Int
appear tti
s dogma |
eryone o
Pallmew
the one I
w phenoo
pus, womf
lir. I reac
of sexist si
ze his si:
i be a j
v he camei
writing gtj
oversiahi
, butnotlj
s views I
people cl
fs. Inslflj
aad ini
iffensive)
i, he
ivernmtj
Fish Cat
LUBBOCK (AP) — A Texas
Tech University professor is
helping African students unac
customed to written musical sym
bols venture into the world of
Western music.
Don Tanner, a member of
Tech’s music education faculty,
winds up the three-week pro
gram at the West Africa Music
Conference in Lome, Togo, on
Aug. 5.
The conference — designed to
teach basic methods of notation
and harmonizing in Western mu
sic — is the first of its type on the
continent, he said.
“Much of their music is passed
on orally from one generation to
another, so they don’t have to
write it down,” he said in an inter
view before the trip.
“And there are so many sounds
that are used in African music
that can’t be notated, such as
body noises,” Tanner said. He
then made a noise that resembled
a grunted cough. “How do you
write that down?”
For hundreds of years — and
still predominantly today — Afri
cans who were interested in music
received oral instructions from
elders in their tribes, Tanner
said. He said, however, that an in
terest in Western techniques is be
ginning to surface there: African
musicians increasingly desire to
preserve their music in written
form, and they want to know how
to perform songs from other cul
tures.
In response, a group of offi
cials from several African schools
and conservatories planned the
conference to be hosted at the
West Africa Advanced School of
Theology. Tanner and two other
Americans — an opera singer
and a choral conductor — agreed
to participate as instructors.
“We’re going to emphasize cre
ativity and improvisation,” he
said. “This will help them apply
Western techniques to the ad
vancement of their own music.”
Tanner, working with inter
preters where needed, is teaching
sessions on notation, harmoniz
ing and performing to about 100
students in a performance hall
classroom equipped with an or
gan, grand piano, synthesizers
and African instruments.
First hurricane of season, Chantal,
heads for Texas or Louisiana coast
“The most difficult aspect will
be getting the students to be pa
tient enough to learn the symbol
system sufficiently so that they
can perform as they are accus
tomed,” he said. “Weil have the
problem of them learning to read
and not just improvising and
doing it by ear.”
Pentatonic folk songs, a style
familiar in Africa, are used in in
struction rather than American
songs.
MIAMI (AP) — Chantal became the first hurricane
of the Atlantic season Monday, packing top winds of 75
mph as it pushed north toward the Gulf Coast of Texas
and Louisiana, forecasters said.
Hurricane warnings continued in effect from Free
port, Texas, to Morgan City, La.
“It’s not going to be a major hurricane, but there will
be beach erosion, tides 10 feet above normal in some
places and 10 to 15 inches of rain over Mississippi,
Louisiana and eastern Texas,” said Todd Kimberlain of
the National Hurricane Center.
.m. CDT, the hurricane’s center was near 27.8 de
grees north latitude and 92.8 degrees west longitude, or
about 165 miles southeast of Galveston.
The storm was moving north- northwest at 9 mph
and forecasters expected it to continue to gain strength
and follow that northwesterly path into midday Tues
day.
“This should bring the center over the upper Texas
or western Louisiana coast tomorrow afternoon or eve
ning,” said Bob Sheets, the hurricane center’s director.
Sheets said tropical storm force winds extend out
ward 150 miles to the north and 125 miles to the south
of the center. A few tornadoes also were likely over por
tions of Louisiana and extreme eastern Texas Monday
night and Tuesday, he said.
Squalls on the edge of the storm have already
dumped heavy rain on New Orleans and forced closure
of the 24-mile long causeway across Lake Pontchar-
train.
About 2,500 people on Grand Isle, a tiny resort area
just off the southeast Louisiana coast were asked to
head north to the mainland. Mayor Andy Valence said
he feared Louisiana Highway 1 — the only route off the
island — would flood.
Churning waters on the storm’s fringe hampered ef
forts to search for seven men feared trapped on a self-
propelled moveable oil rig that overturned while being
moved south of Morgan City. The Coast Guard flew di
vers to the rig despite the heavy weather, 10-foot o s^3^
and 35 mph winds.
Texans were girding for the storm, trying to deter
mine exactly where the eye would touch land.
“The old bugaboo is where this baby is going to hit,”
John Jamison, a National Weather Service meteorolo
gist in Galveston, said Monday. “It’s tough to go out on
a limb.”
In advance of the storm, oil companies on Monday
were moving hundreds of crews from rigs and plat
forms in the Gulf.
“We’ve evacuated everybody,” said Conoco Inc.
spokesman Michael O’Connor. “Our production is au
tomated. We’ve set them on timers.”
“We’re planning for the worst and hoping for the
best,” said Doug Matthews, city manager of Galveston,
an island city of 60,000just south of Houston.
Chantal, the third named storm of the 1989 Atlantic
hurricane season, formed Monday from the season’s
fourth tropical depression in the south-central Gulf.
Federal courts in South Texas
face ‘traffic jam’ of drug cases
liy heist
years:
hat a fen
lar com
, and &
vritingcfl
ig he w|
n troven
First European-bound
beef since ban by EEC
ready to leave Houston
iting
efully h |
ade.
HOUSTON (AP) — A container
of Texas hormone-free beef was
prepared Monday for shipment to
England, the first domestic beef
bound for Europe since the Euro
pean Economic Community embar
goed its sale there Jan. 1.
“From the onset, we at the Texas
Department of Agriculture felt that
more was at stake than steak, and a
whole lot more was at stake than
growth hormones,” Texas Agricul
ture Commissioner Jim Flightower
said.
He appeared at a news conference
at the Port of Houston, where
40,000 pounds of beef, worth
$100,000, was being loaded in a re
frigerated container onto the Nedl-
loyd Hudson.
The shipment was scheduled to
depart early Tuesday and arrive in
Liverpool by Aug. 20.
European countries banned im
ports of hormone-treated beef be
cause of health concerns over the
growth stimulant. The action cut oil
a $100 million market to U.S. cattle
producers.
The United States claimed Eu
rope was using the hormone issue as
a way to restrain trade and retaliated
by setting $100 million in higher tar
iffs on a variety of European prod
ucts.
Since then, Hightower has tried to
export hormone-free beef from
Texas. His effort sometimes met re
sistance from federal trade officials
who said Hightower was undermin
ing their negotiations with European
countries.
, “This shipment is pretty much the
test case,” Hightower said of the ex
port plan, which he thinks will find
“a new market for hard-pressed
Texas ranchers.”
The first shipment of the hor
mone-free beef is being processed by
Cox Packing Co. in Devine, near San
Antonio, and sent to TSW Meats
Ltd. of Liverpool.
CORPUS CHRISTI (AP) — The
four federal courts in South Texas
handled 10 percent of the nation’s
federal drug cases last year, driven
by a war on drugs that has pushed
the caseload to “the brink of over
whelming,” according to one judge.
U.S. District Clerk Jesse Clark of
Houston said the federal courts in
Corpus Christi, Brownsville, McAl
len and Laredo are among the busi
est criminal courts in the federal sys
tem.
“It’s just like a traffic jam — too
many cars and too little concrete,”
Clark told the Corpus Christi Caller-
Times. “That’s what’s happening to
us in the Southern District of Texas.
Too many cases and too fewjudges.”
Felony criminal filings this year
are up 65 percent in the four South
Texas federal courts, Clark said.
Eighty percent of the cases involve
narcotics allegations, he told the
Caller- Times.
Narcotics seizures and arrests
have increased steadily since the cre
ation of Operation Alliance in 1986,
when federal agencies began beefing
up law enforcement in an effort to
stem the flow of illegal drugs coming
across the Mexican border.
In Corpus Christi, court officials
are struggling with a criminal docket
that may double in the space of a
year.
“It’s teetering on the brink of
overwhelming,” said U.S. District
Judge Hayden W. Head Jr. of Cor
pus Christi.
To date in the coastal city, federal
prosecutors have filed nearly as
many 1989 criminal cases as they did
during the entire year of 1988,
according to the district clerk’s of
fice. The grand jury has issued 304
criminal indictments in 1989 — 252
of them for felony narcotics viola
tions. In 1988, there were 363 indict
ments in Corpus Christi, including
216 narcotics cases.
“Unless you instruct them to take
no prisoners, it’s up to the judiciary
to punish the guilty and protect the
innocent,” Clark said.
He advocates adding five more
judges in the Southern District of
Texas, an administrative region that
covers 43 counties and 11 federal
district courts.
Whilejudges spend time on crimi-
d pleas and 1 ’ "
nal pleas and trials, Clark said, their
civil dockets cry for attention.
Head patted a 4-inch-thick file on
his desk. It was a 3-year-old civil-
rights dispute awaiting his attention.
He estimated it would take two days
to study the file and rule on the legal
issues involved in the dispute.
Police break up cocaine ring
with arrest of nine suspects
DALLAS (AP) — A North Texas
cocaine ring, employing more than
25 people and planning drug distri
bution to several U.S. cities, was bro
ken up with the weekend arrests of
nine suspects in Los Angeles, federal
officials said.
The ringleader and eight other
suspects were found with 101 ki
lograms of cocaine, the officials said
Sunday.
The ringleader was arrested as he
met with two men believed to be the
ring’s California-based suppliers,
said Phillip Jordan, special agent in
charge of the U.S. Drug Enforce
ment Administration’s Dallas district
office.
Investigators said the ring re
ceived about 150 kilograms of co-
North Texas, Chicago, Phoenix and
New York.
The cocaine confiscated Friday
had a wholesale value of more than
$1.7 million, Jordan told the Dallas
Morning News.
Los Angeles police arrested nine
people connected with the ring late
Friday, Jordan said. Three Dallas-
area residents believed to be employ
ees of Ortega’s operation were ar
rested in Texas late Saturday and
early Sunday, he said.
All those arrested were to be ar
raigned in Dallas or Los Angeles to
day. All were to be charged with dis
tribution of cocaine.
AUSTIN (AP) — More than a
quarter of state-regulated banks are
classified as troubled in a report re
leased Monday by the Texas Depart
ment of Banking, an increase from
18.6 percent at the same time last
year.
The report, based on a rating for
mula used by banking regulators,
said there were 185 problem banks
among the 670 state-insured banks
on March 31.
The year-ago numbers were 146
problem banks among the 783 state-
insured institutions.
The report said the reduction in
the number of state-insured banks
reflect 51 bank failures, 51 mergers
of state into national banks, 17
mergers of state into other state
banks and five conversions of state
into national banks. Eleven banks
were added to state regulation.
Every region of the state experi
enced an increase in the number of
problem banks, with the largest in
creases in the Austin and Dallas re
gions, the report said.
The Austin region showed 42
problem banks on March 31, 1988,
and 54 a year later. In the Dallas re
gion, the number rose from 50 to 66.
The comparison is based on
CAMEL ratings, which assess capi
tal, assets, management, earnings
and liquidity. It excludes institutions
that have been closed or merged
during the year, and it does not in
clude national banks.
Over the year, Texas banks’ equity
capital increased $200 million,
Banking Commissioner Kenneth W.
Littlefield said. However, he said, to
tal assets decreased $16.9 billion and
total deposits declined $6.1 billion.
At the same time, an apparent
$4.6 billion reduction in problem as
set indicators, such as other real es
tate owned and loans on non-ac
crual, is misleading, the statement
said.
Approximately $6 billion of this
category of assets of the former First
Republic banking system is carried
as other assets on the books of its
successor, NCNB National Bank of
Texas, to reflect the FDIC assistance
transaction.
Although times still are hard for
banks, institutions seem to be work
ing out their problems, said Kay
Bruner, administrative assistant at
the Banking Department.
“I think we’re seeing some im
provement, Bruner said.
New club offers
outlet for Aggies
with children
Aggies With Kids, a new club at
Texas A&M, will give students
who are parents the opportunity
to meet with other students in the
same situation.
Nancy Thomas, coordinator of
Off Campus Aggies and adviser
for AWK, said the club was cre
ated by Students Over Tradi
tional Age to serve as a support
group for A&M students with
children.
“It is very difficult for a parent
to attend college while meeting
the responsibilities necessary to
take care of children at the same
time,” Thomas said. “That is why
we felt that a group like AWK was
necessary.”
Thomas said AWK meetings
will serve as an outlet for students
who are parents.
“AWK meetings will give its
members the opportunity to dis
cuss problems as well as the op
portunity to give suggestions to
one another,” she said. “In addi
tion to the support group, we also
will have a baby-sitting program
where parents can exchange
baby-sitting favors.”
Thomas said faculty and staff
members are encouraged to join
AWK.
SUPERCUTS
We Cut Hair For Vour €go Not Ours...
The Notion's #1 Hoir Styling Solon
Is Coming To College Stotion
Watch For Our Opening July 29th
Grand Opening Soon To Follow
Hours Su crcut
Mon.-Fri. 9o.m.-9p.m. Culp0pp0r PIOZQ StudentsSProfessors
Sot. 9 o.m.-8 p.m. ' ' ' UJ/I.D.-$7
Sun. 10 o.m.-5 p.m. I D I V I 0XQS MV0nU0 Children 13 ond under-$6
MSC Visual Arts
presents
Terry Holliday
An Experience in Watercolor
Lecture: 7 p.m. Rm. 201 MSC Tues., August 1st
Reception to follow in the MSC Gallery
Battalion Classified 845-2611