!
Highs in 70s
Lows in 50s
The Bush administration
correctly put conditions on
loan guarantees to Israel
-Battalion Editorial Board
Page 9
STUDY ABROAD
A&M offers courses in
France for Fall ‘92
Page 2
A&M softball team
plays in home opener
this afternoon at Lady
Aggie Field
Page 5
The Battalion
Vol. 91 No. 106 College Station, Texas
“Serving Texas A&M since 1893
10 Pages Wednesday, March 4, 1992
Analysts report home sale
rise, encouraging economy
WASHINGTON (AP) - Re
ports of a big jump in the gov
ernment's main economic
barometer and a surge in new
home sales suggested on Tues
day the economy has begun to
perk up.
President Bush welcomed the
reports, saying, "It's nice to have
some encouraging news."
Analysts agreed that any re
covery would be anemic, unlike
the robust revivals that followed
most other post-World War II re
cessions. Federal Reserve Chair
man Alan Greenspan cautioned
that "extraordinary forces" still
make the future uncertain.
The Commerce Department
said its Index of Leading Eco
nomic Indicators jumped 0.9 per
cent in January after two straight
declines. Seven of the 11 for
ward-looking statistics posted
gains, led by soaring stock
prices.
The index is designed to fore
cast economic activity six to nine
months in advance. Three con
secutive declines are viewed as a
fairly reliable signal of an ap
proaching recession.
The report also showed the
November and December drops
See Economists/Page 10
Greenspan
Nuclear waste solution
A&M scientist seeks way to control problem
By Reagon Clamon
The Battalion
A Texas A&M researcher has found what might be
the answer to the world's nuclear waste woes.
Dr. Abe Clearfield, a professor in the Department
of Chemistry, has developed a process that would
substantially increase the manageability of medium
to low-level nuclear waste.
The process entails separating specific waste mate
rials out of liquids. Synthetic clays trap the materials
by sandwiching them between layers. The layers
can be "propped up" at different heights to trap a
certain type of waste, letting all other materials pass.
Although the process can be applied to many ma
terials, Clearfield said the nuclear application is the
most immediate.
"During World War II, the U.S. started building
nuclear weapons, which created a lot of nuclear
waste," Clearfield said. "Now, some 40 years later,
we have an enormous amount of these radioactive
wastes; not from nuclear reactors that are producing
power, but from weapons."
Clearfield said nuclear weapons produce a much
higher-powered waste than reactors.
"Producing weapons creates a lot of high-level ra
dioactivity," he said. "The problems with this (type
of) radioactivity are more severe."
During the storage process, this high-level waste
has been mixed with low-level wastes, vastly compli
cating the disposal problem.
"If the materials had been separated at an early
stage, you could dispose of the different materials ac
cordingly, but now it's all mixed together,"
Clearfield said. "Separations have to be carried out -
See Project/Page 10
Presidents
schedule
meeting
Bush, Yeltsin plan
disarmament talks
WASHINGTON (AP) - Presi
dent Bush announced Tuesday
that he and Russian President
BorisN. Yeltsin will hold their first
formal summit meeting June 16 in
. Washington. They will try to use
the two-day meeting to establish
new momentum toward eliminat
ing additional thousands of strate
gic nuclear warheads.
In thepost-Cold War era, agree
ments to reduce nuclear arsenals
i have been easier to achieve than
■ U.S. commitments for massive fi
nancial assistance to help Russia
stabilize its foundering economy.
That could prove even likelier
for a summit taking place in the
midst of a presidential campaign.
Bush said he and Yeltsin would
"get into the nuclear and military
questions, and then the joint ef
forts in support of reform in Rus
sia."
Speculation in the capital was
that Bush would press the Senate
to ratify the pending Strategic
Arms Reduction Treaty (START)
before the June summit and that
he and Yeltsin would formally set
a subsequent goal of reducing
each nation's arsenal to 2,500 to
4,500 such warheads.
EDITH CASTILLO/Special to The Battalion
Football player injured in accident
Dexter Wesley, an offensive lineman for A&M, was intersection of George Bush and Wellborn. Wesley was in
involved in an accident Tuesday afternoon at the stable condition late Tuesday at Humana Hospital.
Psychology doctoral program to increase enrollment
By Sharon Gilmore
The Battalion
The Texas A&M Department of Psy
chology's accreditation for its doctoral
program will increase the number of
students in the program in the future,
department officials said.
Department head Paul Wellman said
the psychology department has already
received close to 300 applications.
"We fully expect more student appli
cations for the doctoral programs in
psychology," he said.
Program director Douglas K. Snyder
said the outside, independent team of
accreditors evaluated the program in
spring '91 and the official reports came
out in fall '91.
"The accreditation is done by the
American Psychology Association and
involves a visit to campus by a team of
professionals selected by the APA to
evaluate educational and training pro
grams," Snyder said.
Accreditors look for quality in the
core curriculum, the courses and the
program's success in attracting stu
dents, Wellman said.
Presently, the doctorate program in
clinical psychology involves 35 stu
dents and takes five years to complete.
The ten full-time faculty involved in the
program include nine doctoral psychol
ogists and one psychiatrist.
"We are committed not only to ad
vancing psychology through research,
but to providing quality training within
the realm of clinical service," Snyder
said.
The program focuses on balancing
clinical training and research, he said.
Four of the students' years in the
program are spent in an on-campus
residency and another year is spent in
an off-campus internship.
Snyder said over the last two years
the program has strengthened its devel
opment of a network for clinical place
ment in the community.
Second-year students in the program
work 10 to 20 hours each week at places
such as the federal prison camp in
Bryan, the Brazos County jail, the Men
tal Health - Mental Retardation Au
thority of Brazos Valley and the Sand
stone Center, a College Station hospital.
Faculty staffing the doctoral pro
gram also run a mental health clinic on
campus open to the community. Stu
dents can also gain valuable training in
the clinic working with patients, he
said.
House finance committee endorses tax cut
WASHINGTON (AP) - Brushing
aside veto threats, the Senate Finance
Committee on
Tuesday approved
a $300-per-child,
middle-income tax
cut that would be
paid for by raising
taxes on the
wealthy.
The bill in
cludes a capital-
gains reduction,
liberalized Indi
vidual Retirement Bentsen
Accounts and in
vestment incen
tives President Bush has proposed to
stimulate the economy.
About 20 million families would
get the permanent tax cut. Fewer than
1 million of the richest Americans
would have to pay more.
The vote was 11-9. Senate consider
ation is expected next week.
"I hope the president will work
with us, not obstruct the process,"
Chairman Lloyd Bentsen, D-Texas,
said as the committee began work on
the bill, which he proposed. "But if he
wants to continue to protect the
wealthiest at the expense of average
Americans, that's his choice."
Bush says daily that he will veto
any bill that raises taxes, even though
his own budget calls for tax increases
this year. The Senate bill would not re
sult in a net tax increase; it would raise
some taxes by a total of $57 billion
over the next five years and cut other
taxes by the same amount.
"It doesn't create one job," insisted
Senate Republican Leader Bob Dole of
Kansas. "This bill is going to be ve
toed and that veto will be sustained,
that's what the Democrats want."
Dole even accused Democrats of
tinkering with the proposed tax in
crease in such a way that members of
Congress would not have to pay.
Bentsen replied that a check already
had been made and that more than 70
of the 100 senators would have to pay
more if the bill became law.
Republicans on the committee
washed their hands of the bill and
urged Democrats to quickly do what
they had to do: send the bill to the
Senate to pave the way for a Bush
veto.
"Democrats appear intent on rais
ing taxes while doing nothing to im
prove competitiveness and productiv
ity," said Sen. Bob Packwood, R-Ore-
gon.
Majority leader George Mitchell, D-
Maine, said many Republicans had
urged tax cuts in the 1980s.
"Now, when Democrats propose to
cut taxes, we are told it's politics," he
said.
Democrats
split vote
in elections
Bush sweeps GOP race;
Buchanan stays focused
Gov. Clinton
won the
Democratic
primary in
Georgia
President Bush
swept all three
primaries
for the
Republican bid
Associated Press
Paul Tsongas won Maryland's presidential pri
mary Tuesday night and Bill Clinton countered in
Georgia as Democratic rivals battled coast-to-coast
for front-runner credentials. President Bush swept
the GOP contests, but Patrick Buchanan main
tained his determined challenge.
Bush was sure to win Colorado, and the presi
dent said he was "well on our way to the nomina
tion." He said he was "committed to regaining"
the support of Republican voters who deserted him
for the more conservative Buchanan.
Tsongas said his victory made him the "break
through kid," because he was the first Democrat to
prevail in a primary outside his home region.
Georgia presented Clinton with his first victory
of the primary season, but it lacked drama, coming
in his southerri stronghold.
The first votes from Colorado showed a close,
three-way finish among Clinton, Tsongas and Jerry
Brown, and the night's results appeared to assure a
continuing, contentious string of primaries as
Democrats pick an opponent for Bush in the fall.
Democrats held caucuses in Minnesota, Idaho and
Washington state and there was a primary in Utah.
Clinton's victory was a long time coming for the
candidate who loomed large before a series of char
acter controversies stalled his campaign in New
Hampshire.
He hoped to parlay his win into success next
week in several southern states, and wasted no
time in attacking Tsongas as an advocate of "a re
fined version of 1980s style trickle-down eco
nomics."
Bush was gaining 62 percent of the GOP vote in
Georgia, to 38 percent for Buchanan, with 67 per
cent counted. Buchanan said in advance that a
strong showing would be enough to fuel his candi
dacy throughout the primary season.
In Maryland, with 25 percent of the precincts in.
Bush was gaining 71 percent to 29 percent for
Buchanan.
The president was leading for all 91 delegates in
the two states. He reached out to Buchanan's sup
porters, saying, "To those who have been with me
in the past but did not vote for me today, I hear
your concerns and understand your frustration
with Washington."
The Democratic returns in Georgia showed
Clinton with 62 percent, Tsongas 19 percent. Jerry
Brown was third at 8 percent, trailed by Sen. Bob
Kerrey at 5 percent and Sen. Tom Harkin, 2 per
cent.
In Maryland, Tsongas had 40 percent to 33 per
cent for Clinton. Brown had 9 percent.
Clinton was leading for 87 delegates from the
two states; Tsongas for 50.