Section A · Page 6
The University Daily Kansan
Nation/World
Tuesday, March 30, 1999
Paraguayans cheer leader's resignation
The Associated Press
ASUNCION, Paraguay — With hopes for the end of a violent political crisis, Paraguayans threw a huge street party to celebrate their president's surprise resignation.
Some 60,000 people waved flags, shot fireworks and sung the national anthem late Sunday in the same plaza that last week saw bloody riots between supporters and opponents of outgoing President Raul Cubas.
"The violence has come to an end and so has the fear," the new president, Luis Gonzalez Macchi, said after receiving the gold scepter and sash Sunday night during his inauguration.
Only an hour earlier, Cubas, flanked by his wife and close aides, announced his resignation on television, apologizing for the violence.
1 will not be responsible for the spilling
of more innocent blood," Cubas said. "I'm not leaving a thief or corrupt. I'm leaving in hopes it will help the national reconciliation at this sensitive moment."
The change was the latest chapter in the worst political turmoil Paraguay has seen since a foiled 1964 coup attempt. Violent protests flared last week about an impachment trial of Cubas on abuse of power charges.
After Cubas' announcement, blue and red fireworks went off and firefighters cooled the celebrating crowds with hoses in the summer Southern Hemisphere night.
Many hoped the resignation meant the unrest was at an end.
"This is a democratic and legitimate government," said one celebrating man, Roberto Mendez. "Thank God Cubas resigned."
Porfiria Caballero couldn't find strength to cheer.
She said she lost a son. Jose Luis, 25, in street fighting Friday between Cubas' supporters and demonstrators that killed three others and left more than 100 injured in the worst day of violence.
"I've just finished burying my son. Neither this government nor any other is going to bring him back," she said.
Violence began last Tuesday when camouflaged gunmen shot and killed Vice President Luis Maria Argana. Police have no suspects in the assassination.
Blaming Cubas' government for indirectly causing the killing, Paraguay's lower house impeached the former president on Wednesday. A day later, his trial began amid growing public demands for his ouster.
The 55-year-old Cubas won the cleanest election in Paraguayan history last May, capturing more than 50 percent of the vote.
He sparked an uproar of criticism with
Paraguayans threw a huge street party in Asunción to celebrate their president's surprise resignation.
Jason Williams/KANSAN
his first act upon assuming office Aug. 15, the release of his mentor, Lino Oviedo, a once-powerful army general jailed for a 1996 attempt to oust then-President Juan Carlos Wasmosy.
U.S. welfare rolls shrinking
Number of minorities on aid has increased
The Associated Press
WASHINGTON — Across the country, Caucasians are leaving welfare more quickly than African Americans, Hispanic Americans and Native Americans, raising crucial but sensitive questions about whether the ambitious overhaul of the U.S. welfare system is leaving minorities behind.
A strong economy and tough new rules have combined to move people of all races off welfare in unprecedented numbers.
But across the country, the proportion of racial minorities on assistance has grown, in some cases dramatically, according to a 50-state Associated Press survey.
In 33 of 42 states, the proportion of Caucasian welfare recipients had dropped since 1994, when caseloads peaked nationally, the AP survey found.
In the other eight states, either the number of minorities is too small to be meaningful or such statistics are not kept.
In Ohio, African Americans on welfare now outnumber Caucasians for the
first time. In 1995, 54 percent of people on welfare were Caucasian, 42 percent African-American. By this year, 53 percent were African-American and 42 percent Caucasian.
Compared with Caucasians on welfare, African Americans and Hispanic Americans begin with a stack of disadvantages, census statistics indicate.
In 1997, 30 percent of Caucasians on welfare lacked a high school diploma, compared with 43 percent of African Americans and 64 percent of Hispanic Americans. Just 29 percent of Caucasians on welfare lived in a central city or an area where at least one in five were poor. For African Americans, it was about 68 percent, for Hispanic Americans about 60 percent.
Those on welfare also are more concentrated in large cities.
A paper prepared by the Council of Economic Advisers but not released publicly notes the proportion of Hispanic Americans and African Americans in the nation overall is growing, explaining some of the welfare shift.
Hilary Shelton of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People worried the shift would allow racist stereotypes to gain new momentum.
"People begin to argue there’s nothing you can do about those people," he said.
U.S. Supreme Court to rule on school fees
The Associated Press
WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court agreed yesterday to decide whether state-run universities could dedicate a portion of the activity fees collected from all students even those who object—to subsidize groups that pursue political and ideological goals.
The justices said they would review rulings that barred the University of Wisconsin from using a portion of the activity fees it collects from every student to finance such groups.
A federal trial judge and an appeals court ruled that the subsidies unlawfully force some students to subsidize views they find objectionable. The lower courts barred the university from using fees collected from objecting students, ruling that to do so would violate their freespeech rights.
Several law students had challenged the funneling of student-activity money to 18 organizations on the Madison campus.
organizations significantly adds to the burdening of the students' free-speech rights," a three-judge panel of the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled last year.
The appeals court panel's ruling did not shield objecting students from paying any activity fees but gave them an alternative. They can identify the political or ideological groups they do not want to support and have their fees reduced on a prorated basis.
"The forced funding of such
Among the groups objected to in the 1996 lawsuit against the university were Students of National Organization for Women, International Socialist Organization, Campus Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual Center and an AIDS support network.
The nation's highest court ruled in 1995 that public universities and colleges cannot create a "public forum" for students and then refuse to subsidize some student groups because of their viewpoint. That decision said the University of Virginia wrongly had refused to subsidize a student-run Christian magazine.
Jury selection begins for trial of N.Y. police
The Associated Press
NEW YORK — With tensions running high between police and the African-American community, jury selection began yesterday in the trial of four white officers accused of torturing a Haitian immigrant.
Civil rights activists — who had warned of protests — and the defenders were absent as prospective jurors were ushered into federal court in Brooklyn to fill out a long questionnaire on what they know about the beating of Abner Louima.
The atmosphere surrounding the case has been made even more volatile by the Feb. 4 killing of another Black man, Amadou Diallo, an unarmed street vendor from West Africa who died in a hail of 41 bullets fired by four white officers looking for a rape suspect. The officers said they thought Diallo was reaching for a gun in front of his home in the Bronx.
Both cases have led to daily demonstrations in front of police headquarters in Manhattan. Several prominent figures, including former Mayor David Dinkins, actress Saranandon and NAACP leader Kweizi Mfume, have been arrested for blocking the entrance. Yesterday morning, 166 people were arrested.
Defense attorneys in the Louima case unsuccessfully tried to have the trial moved because of intense publicity and the links community leaders have made between his case and that of Diallo.
Last month, U.S. District Judge Eugene Nickerson concluded that "the overall nature of the publicity cannot be characterized as inflammatory."
The questionnaire represents the first stage of a screening process expected to take several days, if not weeks. Nickerson has indicated he hopes to have a jury picked for opening arguments on April 20. The questionnaire was not made public.
The four officers are accused of violating Louima's civil rights by abusing him after his arrest in a street melee on the night of Aug. 9, 1997.
The most explosive allegation is that Officer Charles Schwarz held down a handcuffed Louima while Officer Justin Volpe, believing the Haitian immigrant had punched him, rammed a stick into his rectum and mouth in the station-house bathroom.
In addition, Volpe, 26, Schwarz, 33, and two other officers, Thomas Bruder, 32, and Thomas Wiese, 35, are charged with beating Louima in a patrol car on the way to the stationhouse.
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