Section A · Page 9
The University Daily Kansan
Monday, April 17,2000
Nation/World
Stock market drops may be ceasing soon
The Associated Press
NEW YORK — If there was a glimmer of good news in Friday's catastrophic stock market sell-off, it came in the final hour of trading.
The Dow Jones industrial average, down more than 700 points in late afternoon, clawed about 100 points higher by 4 p.m. when the closing bell rang at the New York Stock Exchange.
"The close was vitally important," said Gary Kaltbaum, chief technical analyst at J.W. Genesis Securities in Boca Raton, Fla. "For several days, we saw selling peak in the last hour as major institutional investors just got out of the way."
On Friday, the institutional investors appeared to be responsible for the late-hour upturn.
That very modest upwing could have been a sign that after the worst week in Wall Street history, investors are ready to return in search of bargains, some market analysts said. But others aren't as certain investors will be ready to
ON THE WEB
New York Stock Exchange:
www.nyse.com
Nasdaq Stock Market:
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The Dow industrials lost a record 805.71 points, or 7.3 percent, last week, while the Nasdaq composite index shed a record 1,125.16 points, or 25.3 percent.
jump back in.
Past market dips have given a nation mad for stock investing the chance to buy highly regarded stocks at more-affordable prices. Bargain-hunting investors were largely responsible for lifting the market out of steep corrections in 1997 and 1998.
But last week, buyers were hard to find. The utter lack of enthusiasm left some analysts pessimistic about the market's chances for today.
"It's not a funeral. But it is a crisis," said Jim Griffin, chief investment strategist at Aelius Investment Management in Hartford, Conn.
U.S., Taiwan to begin talks
The Associated Press
WASHINGTON — When U.S. and Taiwanese officials gather behind closed doors today to discuss which weapons the United States is willing to sell, the $4.4 billion question will be whether Taiwan gets the go-ahead to buy the Aegis destroyers it says it needs to counter a buildup of Chinese missiles.
The talks today and tomorrow in Washington are especially sensitive because of their profound political implications.
China has said it would be compelled to react harshly if Taiwan acquires Aegis warships. Taiwan views its request as a test of U.S. support in the face of China's continuing buildup of offensive missiles.
China regards Taiwan as Chinese territory, separated by civil war.
The United States has a "one China" policy, but under the Taiwan Relations Act of 1979 it is obligated to ensure a "sufficient" defense for Taiwan.
The Clinton administration is divided on the weapons sales. The Pentagon believes the sales are justified for Taiwan's self-defense, but the White House and State Department worry more about provoking China. Virtually all international arms sales have political implications, but experts say the potential sale of Aegis destroyers is especially political because of the growing belief in Congress that China is bent on regaining control of Taiwan at any cost.
Pentagon spokesman Kenneth Bacon said Friday he could not discuss the substance of the United States-Taiwan talks.
IMF protesters clash with authorities
The Associated Press
Meetings go as planned but police fire pepper spray to contain large crowds
WASHINGTON — Thousands of marchers failed to stop world finance leaders from meeting yesterday but paraded through the capital in a show of celebration and anger that provoked one ugly episode—a surging crowd met by a stinging cloud of irritants fired by police.
Festive street theater with giant puppets coexisted with pushy confrontations among police and protesters agitating about the plight of the poor and the "decadence" of the rich.
The weekend demonstrations were largely nonviolent.
At one point, police in riot gear and on motorcycles charged into a crowd that had surged toward the police line. Police used pepper spray and what they said were smoke bombs to drive back protesters, who were convinced they'd been
tear-gassed.
"I've seen a whole lot less property damage than after a Bulls game in Chicago," said Han Shan, a protest organizer from the San Francisco-based group Ruckus.
Police in the United States' security-savvy capital accomplished their No. 1 objective for yesterday, sending buses under the cover of early morning darkness to pick up world finance ministers at their hotels — and using circuitous routes and U-turms to get them to work.
But some VIPs were stranded: The finance ministers of France, Brazil and Thailand were thwarted by the crowds. They eventually made it to the spring meeting of the International Monetary Fund.
Police, who estimated as many as 10,000 protesters were on the streets, blocked off about a 60-block area of downtown but let demonstrators largely have their way outside the security zone. Shan credited police for being relatively restrained.
"Overall, they maintained their composure quite a bit," he said. "They have brutalized a few people without provocation."
The atmosphere was less tense than on Saturday, when police raided and closed the protest headquarters and arrested more than 600 people.
Fewer than 20 were arrested yesterday, said Terry Gainer, executive assistant police chief. He said two police officers were hospitalized.
The protests were intended to disrupt the World Bank and IMF meetings yesterday and today.
The anger sprang from a variety of causes, including human rights atrocities in Ethiopia, the "prison industrial complex" and biotechnology in food.
Protesters accused the World Bank and IMF of burdening poor countries with crushing debt payments, unsafe food, environmental destruction and sweatshirts.
"Blaming the World Bank for poverty is a bit like blaming the Red Cross for starting World Wars I and II," said Michael Moore, director general of the World Trade Organization.
Drought-stricken Ethiopians in need of aid
The Associated Press
HADAWE, Ethiopia — Only one of Hawo Adbi Subdi's 40 camels made it to the village. Collapsed on stones, it knelt unmoving while an old woman unloaded what was left of her family and their goods, after three children died along the way.
Hawo, the eldest of a band of mostly women and children, had trekked for days to the nearest village in hopes of aid such as thousands of other ethnic Somali herders streaming in from the drought-devastated plains of southeastern Ethiopia.
She quickly learned that life was no better in the village, about 20 miles from the region's still minimal relief center of Gode.
"We came because we had no milk for the children," Hawo said. "But they say they have no food here."
Village elder Mahamed Mahamud Gure could only record the numbers of the latest newcomers in a faded notebook, the same notebook in which he records their names when they die — as 389 did in the last two
Mindy Berns / KANSAN
months, according to his figures.
months, according to his figures.
When and if the aid groups come he wants to be able to show them how many people have died.
The land has grown so hard that people sometimes have given up on digging proper graves and resorted to shoving corpses into holes dug in termite mounds. Gure said.
"Twenty-five are in there," he said,
pointing at one with his cane.
The drought threatens millions more people across the Horn of Africa, according to the U.N. World
"We came because we had no milk for the children, but they say they have no food here."
Hawo Abdi Subed ethnic Somali herder
Food Program. An estimated 150,000 in Djibouti and 350,000 in Eritrea are in danger of starvation. As many as 425,000 people in Somalia would need food shipments if April rains fail, and 2.7 million in northern Kenya are hungry and urgently need donations, the WFP said.
Like the 7.7 million estimated in danger in Ethiopia, many of the first and hardest-hit in those nations are nomadic herders. Three years of sparse rains have killed virtually all the cattle on which Ethiopia's ethnic Somali herders draw meat and milk.
The foreign community encouraged creation of emergency food reserves after up to 1 million people
died in Ethiopia's 1984-85 famine. But recent gaps in donations of food or money into the relief pipeline mean the nomads' aid has slowed to a trickle.
Assistance threatens to stop entirely in June, aid agencies warned last month. But so far that warning seems to have drawn far more journalists than aid workers.
And the herders can't wait months. Thousands gathering in Ethiopia's southeastern Somali region seem unlikely to make it weeks or even days.
Hadawe has had no aid distributions for 26 days, Gure said Saturday. And the aid the herders are getting is not the aid they most need, said Ahmed Ibrahim Hussein of the Ogaden Welfare Society, a local group helping the drought-displaced.
Herder Mahamed Olad points to indiscernible specks in the distance he says are his cattle.
They are his last two,he said.
"When they die, then we will die too."
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