lesday • April 29, 1998
m 11 The Battalion
NATION
[ore rats die in space, Strong economy boosts system
al activists protest
MCE CENTER, Houston (AP) —
Jaby rats have died aboard space
tie Columbia, prompting protests
isday from an animal rights group
at accused NASA of having an “ap-
T; record” in animal research.
BA’s chief veterinarian, Joseph
Tki, said 50 rats had died aboard
Jibia due to maternal neglect, an
■se from the 45 deaths reported
■ay.
Jt is more than half of the 96 baby
jthat were launched aboard Co-
jila 11/2 weeks ago. Bielitzki said
Mists had expected only a 10-12
Jit mortality rate.
|e deaths drew harsh criticism
"people for the Ethical Treatment
Imals.
^SA has an appalling record. It
teep animals alive on the ground
or in space,” said Mary Beth Sweetland,
director of PETAs research, investiga
tions and rescue department.
Bielitzki, however, said crew mem
bers were doing everything possible to
prevent more deaths.
‘‘The crew has really done yeoman’s
work in this case,” he said. “Anybody
that has tried to rear an orphaned ani
mal ... understands the number of
hours and the effort that has to go into
to saving a single animal, let alone 45
or 50 of them.”
Richard Linnehan, the veterinarian
aboard Columbia, said Tuesday that
several sick rats had improved after be
ing fed a Gatorade and water mixture
by hand.
“They all seemed to perk up quite a
bit,” Linnehan said. “We feel we’re over
the hump.”
isnian weapons move west
4STERDAM, Netherlands (AP) —
there was giggling, then raucous
iter. A deafening blast and the tin-
sound of a thousand shards of
, Thirty seconds of silence. Then
ns and sirens,
halid Lemqaddem was only 8
|s old; his best friend, Othman
[luali.only 10. It was April Fool’s Day
moon this year, and the two Mo-
Jan-born school chums were play-
ion the sidewalk with the grenade
r’d just found in a nearby park.
[he grenade, authorities say, came
p the fonnerYugoslavia, whose war
)lus has become the latest source
Ight arms and explosives for mili-
}s, gang members and petty street
linals throughout Western Europe.
[There’s a rising tide of this weapon-
id law enforcement seems to think
in't do anything about it,” said
liel Plesch, director of the British
mean Security Information Coun-
; which advises governments on
1-arms trafficking.
)utch authorities say the number
renades circulating on the black
rket has increased fourteenfold
:e the signing of the 1995 Dayton
accords ending Bosnia’s war. Estimates
run into the tens of thousands.
Ordinary citizens are finding the ex
plosives in parks, alleys and other pub
lic places with alarming regularity.
Practically all of them, authorities
say, bore markings indicating they
were either made in the former Yu
goslavia or were the same Russian- or
Chinese-made grenades that were
handed out for free by the dozens to
the Bosnian Serbs.
“We’re concerned about the very
weak and porous nature of European
Union arms controls,” said Brian Wood
of London-based Amnesty Interna
tional. “The weaponry stocks are just
not controlled.”
Although both the EU and the Unit
ed Nations last year promised a crack
down on small-arms smuggling, “so far
it’s not much mor e than a piece of pa
per,” Wood said.
Officials will discuss the problem at
the mid-May Group of Eight summit in
Birmingham, England.
Dutch authorities say grenades as
powerful as the one that killed Khalid
and Othman are being peddled for as
little as $12.50 apiece.
WASHINGTON (AP) —The country’s hum
ming economy is pouring more money into
the Social Security system, the program’s
trustees said Tuesday, predicting three extra
years of full benefits for retiring baby boomers
before a potential cash shortfall in 2032.
“The strength of our economy has led to
modest improvements in the outlook for So
cial Security,” President Clinton said. But he
said those “modest improvements only un
derscore the fundamental challenge we face.”
Thi slightly more optimistic report also was
not enough to calm cries on Capitol Hill for
changes to shore up the government’s biggest
benefit program.
“If we don’t do anything but clap, Social Se
curity will still go broke,” said Sen. Phil Gramm,
R-Texas, an outspoken member of the Senate Fi
nance Committee that oversees Social Security.
The improvement that Social Security
trustees predicted in their annual report Tues
day is “almost entirely due to the strength of
the U.S. economy and our projections that
over the near term that strength continues,”
said Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin.
Unemployment and inflation are at their
lowest levels in decades, and with more Amer
icans on the job, the taxes deducted from
workers’ paychecks to support Social Security
are up.
Low inflation also saves Social Security
money because yearly cost-of-living raises to
retirees can be smaller. This year’s raise was
just 2.1 percent, the lowest in a decade.
Social Security, in fact, now collects more
payroll taxes than are needed to pay benefits
to today’s retirees. The surpluses are invested
in government bonds.
The program will not need to start cashing
in those investments to pay retirees’ benefits
until 2013, the trustees said—a year later than
previously expected.
At that time, baby boomers will be retiring
in droves, and it is projected that the taxes
paid by those left in the work force won’t cov
er their pensions.
Because times are so good, however, the
money now accumulating will be enough to
pay full Social Security benefits until 2032,
rather than 2029 as previously thought, the
trustees said.
If changes to the system are not made, the
government at that point would be able to pay
only about three-quarters of promised benefits.
Social Security makes payments to disabled
people and to the survivors of workers who die
young, as well as to retirees.
The trustees — including Rubin, Health and
Human Services Secretary Donna Shalala and
two private citizens — also released their an
nual report on Medicare, the nation’s health in
surance program for the elderly and disabled.
Paid for like Social Security with taxes on
workers’ wages, the part of Medicare that cov
ers hospital care is already in trouble.
The hospital fund in 1995 started paying out
more than it takes in and began spending
down surpluses saved from previous years.
The trustees say changes made in last
year’s balanced budget act, including tighter
Social Security
The Clinton administration
announced that the Social
Security trust fund will be solvent
until 2032, three years later than
earlier estimates.
Year-end estimates in trillions of dollars
$4.0
3.5
1.5
1.0
$0
assets
1998 ‘00
‘10
‘20
‘30 '32
Source: Social Security Administration AP
controls on fees paid to doctors and hospitals,
will extend Medicare’s ability to pay its bills
until 2008.
That’s better than the 2001 predicted before,
but still two years ahead of the first baby
boomer retirements.
Extreme-rightist victory causes some concern
BERLIN (AP) —The German People’s Union
party used to be all talk, heard mostly by the
small readership of its extreme-rightist news
papers.
The anti-foreigner themes struck a trou
bling neo-Nazi chord, but no one worried
much. That is, until last weekend. With its stri
dent appeal to Germans anxious over unem
ployment, the party won a jolting 13 percent in
elections in an eastern state.
It was the extreme right’s best showing here
since before World War II.
German politicians denied the victory was
a gain for racism, saying that voters in Saxony-
Anhalt were merely voicing frustration with
poverty and joblessness. European columnists
and Jewish leaders expressed alarm nonethe
less, warning Germany to counter a neo-Nazi
resurgence.
Many Germans had dismissed the party as
a disorganized band of far-right cranks. And
perhaps no one was as surprised by the win as
the German People’s Union itself— known by
its initials DVU.
Once weakened by infighting, the party hur
ried Tuesday to capitalize on its sudden
strength by seeking an alliance with another
rightist party.
If the Republican party accepts the DVU’s
overture — it has refused previous offers, say
ing the DVU was too radical — DVU chief Ger
hard Frey said he will take his campaign to oth
er state elections, and perhaps the national
vote on Sept. 27.
The decision to ally with the Republican
party will be announced within weeks, Frey
told a press conference Tuesday in the south
ern city of Munich, his hometown.
“This is one state,” Chancellor Helmut Kohl
said of the Saxony-Anhalt legislative vote.
“There is absolutely no danger of rightist radi
calism threatening the republic.”
The U.S. State Department backed him up,
with spokesperson James Foley saying Ger
many was an “extraordinarily solid democracy
and has been so for more than half a century.”
Others were less certain.
The Times of London wrote: “Neo Nazis ...
are starting to speak for the young unem
ployed who feel abandoned by the political
class.” The leftist Liberation newspaper in
Paris cautioned that others would seek to
copy the DVU’s success.
Mindful of such anxieties, the German As
sociation of Trade and Industry worried that
the DVU would hurt Germany’s image and
scare off investment.
Can I get the credit
toucan/
This summer in Houston at
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