Image provided by: Texas A&M University
About The Battalion. (College Station, Tex.) 1893-current | View Entire Issue (Nov. 17, 1989)
he Battalion •**-••*• WEATHER TOMORROW’S FORECAST: Sunshine, cooler HIGH: 72 LOW: 46 Vol.89 No.56 USPS 045360 12 Pages College Station, Texas Friday, November 17,1989 Slow speed pursuit around campus University Police inspect the car of a DWI suspect apprehended last night in front of Goodwin Hall. The suspect hit several cars as he attempted to parallel park in the parking area between the MSC and Cain Hall. He then tried to push another car out of a Photo by Lisa Clyde spot when UPD noticed him. The police followed him past the Grove, around the Albritton Bell Tower and the Simpson Drill Field until they arrested him in front of Goodwin Hall. Panel: education fights AIDS By Bob Krenek Of The Battalion Staff While a possible vaccine or cure for the AIDS virus is still many years away, scientists currently know of one guaranteed method of preventing the deadly disease. Modifying current behavior by educating those in high risk groups is the best way to com bat AIDS, a panel of experts said in a nationally televised conference on “AIDS in the College Community.” “We do not expect a scientific solution in the form of a vaccine for many years,” Dr. Richard Keeling, M.D., the director of student health at the University of Virginia, said. “But we do have one powerful tool at our disposal, the potential for behavior change.” Keeling said people must realize the real possi bility of contracting AIDS and take the proper precautions to avoid the disease at all costs. Recent research has determined AIDS pro gresses in stages of infection after the disease is detected and that the period of sickness is only the final stage of the illness, he said. “Many people live for years with the infection without any signs of AIDS,” Keeling said. “Many do not even know they are infected.” Keeling said he wanted to make it clear the dis ease can not be contacted through casual contact. There are only three ways to contract AIDS, he said, through sexual contact, sharing intravenous needles and from a mother to a child during birth. The documented AIDS cases have revealed that 61 percent of AIDS patients contacted the disease through male homosexual contact and 22 See AIDS/Page 12 percent from drug needles, he said. Only five percent of the cases have come from heterosex ual contact, he said. The relatively low figures of heterosexual cases can, however, be misleading, Keeling said. Scientists now think there may be as long as a 10- year latency period from the time of contraction to the time the disease reveals itself, Keeling said, and because of this current figures are impossi ble to estimate. “In the future the percentage of homosexual cases of AIDS will decrease as the percentage of heterosexual cases rises,” he said. “The eventual extent of heterosexual cases of AIDS has yet to be determined.” One important factor that is often ignored is Slide show exposes environmental dangers By Todd Swearingen Of The Battalion Staff The world is literally on fire and the land is bleeding into the ocean. A NASA scientist said that the world’s tropical rain forests are being burned away at an alarming rate. Dr. Michael Halford, chief scien tist with the Earth Observation Of fice at the Johnson Space Center, presented “Recognizing the Global Nature of Environmental Problems” Thursday night in connection with Texas A&M University’s Depart ment of Geography in observation of national Geography Awareness Week. Halford presented a slide show of otographs taken from space that illustrated the changes in global en vironment that have occured over the last decade. As an example, Halford said that the island of Madagascar is typical of many underdeveloped nations in the tropics that experience drastic changes in climate and have limited resources and technology. As a re sult, they must rely on the only re source available, and that resource is wood and land. Halford said that the accepted practice is to clear the land and peri odically burn the vegetation to en courage the growth of grass for live stock. But, he said, after about seven years the soil becomes exhausted of nutrients. Halford showed a graphic of the globe taken from a textbook that de picted the vegetation types of the va rious continents, and then showed photographs of baren land where forests once were. Nearly all of the rain forests depicted in the graphic have been reduced or eliminated all together. Massive amounts of erosion result with the loss of vegetation and clog the waterways with sediment, Hal ford said. He said that the soil ero sion rate in Madagascar is around 450 tons per year for every two acres of land. As an index, the loss of only five tons per year, which takes from 1,000 to 10,000 years to replace, will begin to diminish the productivity of the land. Halford showed two slides taken 12 years apart of the same region in the Atlantic that illustrated the pol lution in the atmosphere — the most recent photograph was almost com pletely obsured by haze, dust, and smoke. Of South America, Halford said, “We have seen and measured clouds of smoke so dense that you can not see the ground (from space) — over as much as two-and-a-half million square kilometers at one time. Think about it, that’s the area of the U.S. from the Mississippi river to the pa cific coast.” He presented photographs of dust storms that covered the entire continent of Africa and crossed the Atlantic to the U.S., both to the amazement of scientists. Halford said that nearly all of Africa is cov ered by smoke almost all the time. The slides showed that the areas which have; been cleared of forests are free of clouds. “Forests transpire, they evaporate the moisture right back into the at mosphere, . . . it’s not brought in from the Atlantic,” Halford said. Six Jesuit priests found murdered in San Salvador SAN SALVADOR, El Salvador (AP) — Armed men killed and muti lated six Jesuit priests, their house keeper and her daughter Thursday after bursting into their house at a leading university. A priest quoted witnesses as saying government forces were involved. The government denied responsi bility, condemned the slayings as “savage and irrational” and said an investigation was under way. •Jesuit Priests in Austin call for U.S. aid to El Salvador/pG3 The U.S. National Council of Churches also denounced the slay ings, and the U.S. ambassador said the slayings would have a “negative impact” on President Alfredo Cris- tiani’s rightist government. Two witnesses said about 30 uni formed police or army soldiers en tered the campus before dawn and killed the eight “with lavish barbar ity,” said the Rev. Jose Maria To- jeira, the Jesuit order leader for Central America. “For example, they (the troops) took out their brains.” Roman Catholic Archbishop Ar turo Rivera Damas compared the killings to the slaying of nis prede cessor, Oscar Arnulfo Romero. That 1980 assassination marked the be ginning of years of killings and kid nappings by right-wing death squads. “If this spiral of violence contin ues, death and destruction will sweep away many, especially those who are of most use to our people,” said Rivera Damas after leading a prayer over the mutilated bodies. The slayings came on the sixth day of fierce combat around this capital following an attack by leftist Farabundo Marti National Liber ation Front (FMLN) guerrillas. The dead included Ignacio Ella- curia, rector of Jose Simeon Canas Central American University, and vice-rector Ignacio Martin-Baro, the country’s leading expert on polls and polling procedures. The other dead priests, all educators, were Se- gundo Montes, Amado Lopez, Juan Ramon Moreno and Joaquin Lopez Lopez. A servant, Julia Elba Ramos, and her 15-year-old daughter Celina, also were killed, said Tqjeira. “They did not want to leave wit nesses,” said Eduardo Valdez, direc tor of Jesuit studies at the university. The educators had received death threats since the heaviest fighting of the 10-year-old war began Saturday, and callers to radio talk shows had vehemently chastised Jesuits as sub versives and demanded their expul sion or punishment. The extreme right has for more than a decade accused local Jesuits and their university of fostering sub versive ideology. Rivera Damas said those who killed the priests “were motivated by the same hate that snuffed out the life of Monsignor Romero.” de Klerk declares segregated beaches open to all blacks CAPE TOWN, South Africa (AP) — President F.W. de Klerk on Thursday declared all beaches open to blacks, and he promised that the law allowing racial segre gation of public facilities would be repealed as soon as possible. “There is no alternative for South Africa but the road of rec onciliation, of creating opportu nities for all the people of this country in a way which is fair, just and equitable,” he said. “The time has arrived to repeal this act,” he said, referring to the Separate Amenities Act which his National Party put into law in 1953, allowing white local gov ernments across the country to bar blacks from parks, libraries, swimming pools, civic centers, buses and public toilets. The act cannot be repealed formally until Parliament recon venes Feb. 2. De Klerk’s declara tion “that all beaches will hence forth be accessible to all members of the public” also requires action by municipal and provincial au- , thorities. In many communities, most or all public amenities are open to all races. But whites-only facilities persist in the capital, Pretoria, in many rural towns, and in several small industrial cities where the far-right Conservative Party took power in municipal elections last year. The proposed repeal of the Separate Amenities Act “is the be ginning of the end of a separate white community life,” said Koos van der Merwe, chief spokesman for the Conservatives, who urged whites to oust de Klerk. “Mr. de Klerk is placing South Africa on the road of a totally ra cially mixed South Africa, which will inevitably be governed by a black majority,” he said. The repeal would still leave major areas of segregation in South Africa — residential neigh borhoods, medical care and pub lic education. It also would leave intact the political system that gives the 5 million whites domina tion over the 32 million blacks, Asians and people of mixed-race. De Klerk, who took office in August, said his announcements were “in line with our stated goal to eliminate discrimination.” They were the latest in a series of moves aimed at enhancing the prospects for black-white negotia tions on a new constitution that would extend political rights to blacks while protecting white in terests. The government is in the proc ess of designating certain neigh borhoods as multiracial, although it says whites will retain the op tion of living in segregated areas. De Klerk has given no signal that public schools and hospitals will be integrated. “For the white group, clinging to power means accepting the risk of—more than that, of facing—a revolution,” de Klerk warned. Luce outlines ABCs of education reform, drug war By Michael Kelley Of The Battalion Staff Republican guberna torial candidate Tom Luce, calling opponent Clayton Williams’ drug plan “weaker than state law in some areas,” said he would create an in- { dependent agency to fight the war on drugs. Luce appeared at Easterwood Airport in College Station Thurs day to introduce the specifics of his “Zero Tolerance Drug Action Plan.” His drug plan includes the appointment of a “Texas Drug Czar” to head a stand- Luce alone agency to coordinate expansion of existing anti-drug programs and an in crease in penalties for drug offenders. Luce (pronounced ‘loose’), a Dallas attor ney who announced his candidacy in Sep tember, is perhaps the least known candi date in the race for the governor’s mansion. He said this does not bother him, since most people will not start considering who they will vote for until after Christmas. The Re publican primary is in March. Luce said his credibility in handling the drug issue comes from his 1980 appoint ment to the Texas War On Drugs Commit tee, which drafted and passed into law some of the country’s first anti-drug legislation. “I am proud of the fact that I served on the first War On Drugs Committee, but now it’s time for round two,” Luce said. “Texans know' we have to engage in a full scale war against drugs, or we risk losing an entire generation. Texans know it is time for results.” Luce proposed two ways of getting re sults in the war against drugs. For the short term war he suggested using more prosecu tors, police officers, drug enforcement per sonnel and prisons. For long term planning he said education is the answer. We must produce a more helpful mes sage by increasing the $1.6 million budget of the Texas War on Drugs Committee, he said, which is considered the front line in drug education and prevention. “That’s out of the $47 billion state bud get,” Luce said, explaining the small per centage of funding the commission receives compared to other areas in the state. “We need to increase that budget and we need to focus on improving our schools and the cre ation of more jobs. “We must have a motto in Texas that ‘if you do drugs, you do time.’ ” Luce also criticized the Texas Commis sion on Alcohol, the parent organization to the Texas War on Drugs, for not aggres sively fighting the drug war. “I don’t think you can fight the drug war in moderation,” Luce said. “I would make the Texas War on Drugs Committee an in dependent state agency, headed by a Texas drug czar, appointed by the governor, re porting to the governor.” The “Zero Tolerance Plan” also calls for the formation of “Texas Drug Action Tea ms,” made up of new college graduates and volunteers, who would give two years of public service to help combat the drug problem. Other parts of Luce’s plan include: • Implementation of pre-employment drug testing for all new state employees. • Encouragement of drug-free pro grams in the private sector. • Making drug crimes joint federal and state crimes so federal courts and prisons can share the work load. • Denial of bail for repeat offenders and adults who sell drugs to minors. • Creation of asset forfeiture laws to provide rewards for citizens who turn in drug dealers. • Make drug rehabilitation programs mandatory in jails and prisons. • Enactment of a range of additional pe nalties for all persons caught using or pos sessing even small amounts of drugs. • Increased use of the Texas National Guard to help check vehicles and intercept drug traffickers entering Texas from Mex ico. If elected governor, Luce said he would work to promote changes in the criminal justice system of the state. “We must give the state, not the con victed felon, the right to decide whether a judge or a jury will set the punishment,” he said. “I would recommend a life sentence without parole for repeat drug dealers, and the death penalty for drug dealers causing See Luce/Page 12