t
Wednesday, February 23,1994
The Battalion
Page 3
r^Nine men, corporation charged in NASA sting
The Associated Press
HOUSTON — Nine men, including two
NASA workers, and one corporation were
charged Tuesday with taking kickbacks, solic
iting bribes and accepting inside information
during a 20-month FBI sting focused on the
Johnson Space Center.
â– General Electric Corp. and Martin Marietta
Corp. were not directly implicated, but the com
panies agreed to jointly reimburse the govern
ment $1 million for the cost of the FBI probe.
U.S. Attorney Gaynelle Griffin Jones said.
The investigation started with tips from
contractors and NASA employees and culmi
nated in Operation Lightning Strike, a sting
that began in December 1991 with undercover
FBI agents posing as executives of a fictitious
company known as Southern Technologies Di
versified.
NASA's Office of Inspector General and the
Defense Criminal Investigative Service also
took part in the probe, Jones said.
Those charged waived indictment by a fed
eral grand jury and were cited in six criminal
informations. Jones said they were not consid
ered flight risks and had not been arrested.
None has entered pleas.
Jones said the investigation continues and
prosecutors expect to file charges against oth
ers later.
Astro International Corp., of League City, a
NASA subcontractor, was charged with solicit
ing and receiving space agency documents rer
lating to the bidding process for a $3.3 million
contract.
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Keyboard wrist-injury case
may spark stream of suits
The Associated Press
ng/Tm Bin
HOUSTON — Compaq Com-
Iputer Corp.'s victory — believed
Ithe first jury verdict in a case in-
Jvolving keyboard-related wrist
[injuries — could prove to be
[meaningless or set the tone for
thousands of suits yet to reach the
[nation's courthouses, lawyers say.
jOn Feb. 16, following a 2 1/2-
week trial, Houston jurors found
for Compaq after a quick 55-
minute deliberation in the case of
Patsy Heard Woodcock.
oHWoodcock, a former legal sec
ret i\ from Houston, claimed in
3r their cum su jt filed in 1991 that a Corn-
noon onfcplb keyboard was responsible for
Kidering her wrists useless for
â– ' Brk.
Bshe is now on disability and
Hi't lift more than five pounds
with her hands.
|^ e suc d Compaq for $800,000
in damages and lost wages, claim-
Ives arerapig Compaq should have warned
jn biolog!i: users.
emeritus;!! |But jurors found because the
as at DallsiHoiiston-based computer compa-
earlion. ny didn't know its computers
r plants;;could cause injury, it was not re-
radiatioiKiiSponsible.
people art; l"The key to the verdict, the
aid Jaggerturning point was that there was
dvocatesrno connection proven between
sal in Teulhe aches and pains of the plain-
and infctiff. and the keyboard," Ed Hub-
level radkbard, an attorney for Compaq,
Hd Tuesday.
on of orpT: ,Hut Steven Phillips, a New
America:rYbrk City attorney representing
. has piitoip
nportancecpi • • •uc’ .r-arr
used in va
some 2,000 keyboard-wrist injury
cases that will surface in courts
beginning this summer, down
played the significance of Com
paq's victory.
"From my perspective, I have
always said, in all of these mass
torts, the deck is stacked at the be
ginning for the defendant,"
Phillips said.
"It always takes the plaintiffs
attorneys a year or two to get up
to speed. I'm extremely confi
dent."
Phillips compared the emer
gence of the first keyboard prod
uct liability cases to the first as
bestos cases that made their way
to courtrooms decades ago.
"The first dozen asbestos cases
were lost," Phillips said. "It takes
a while to get the skeletons out of
the closet.
"The way it works is this:
Sooner or later a critical mass of
information develops and we
start winning," he said.
Phillips' 2,000 clients are com
prised of journalists, bank and
brokerage house employees, sec
retaries and clerks.
In recent years a flood of wrist
injury cases have been filed
against computer keyboard oper
ators.
Those who suffer from the in
juries claim repetitive operations
on keyboards cause them pain
and numbness that ruin their ca
reers after crippling their hands.
Three other cases are pending
against Compaq, filed by Wood
cock's co-workers.
Is America a bad influence ?
Immigrants' performance
drops in U.S. school system
The Associated Press
SAN FRANCISCO — Immigrant children do better in school
than their American classmates but their performance declines as
they become more Americanized, a new study says.
The study released Tuesday is key to helping immigrant chil
dren advance as the nation loses the manufacturing jobs where
their parentshave traditionally found work, said Ruben G. Rum-
baut of Michigan State University.
"The longer you are in the United States, the more you learn,
among other things, the bad habits, such as wearing headphones
while studying or waiting to the last minute to study for a test,"
Rumbaut said at the annual meeting of the American Association
for the Advancement of Science.
Many studies have shown that the children of immigrants do
better in school than American children. This study shows that as
immigrant children become Americanized they move in the di
rection of their American counterparts.
Rumbaut's study showed that foreign-born children who have
lived in the United States for five to 10 years had a grade point
average of 2.58, higher than that of U.S.-born children of immi
grants.
The U.S.-born children of immigrants had a grade point aver
age of only 2.44.
The foreign-born children spent an average of 2.59 hours per
day doing homework, compared with 2.40 hours per day among
the American-born children. The figures are based on analysis of
school records of 5,000 children in San Diego and Miami.
Rumbaut himself was born in Cuba and moved to the United
States at age 12. "I have gone through the story myself," he said.
Judith Treas, a professor at the University of California, Irvme,
said other studies have found similar effects.
"There does seem to be this extraordinary draw of American
culture for immigrant children, not always with good conse
quences," she said. w , rt • J
Guillermina Jasso, a professor at New York University, said,
"More research is needed before we can have a better assessment.
But one of the things we do know is that U.S.-born immigiant
children outperform American children.
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