2A
The Inside Front
Tuesday January 13, 1998
News
from campus, the state, the nation and the world
CAMPUS
Tickets for the 49th annual Rock Chalk Revue went on sale yesterday in the Kansas Union.
WORLD
PARIS — Less than a week after an American scientist announced he would clone a child, 19 European nations signed a treaty yesterday that said cloning people violated human dignity and was a misuse of science.
HONG KONG — As senior officials from the United States and the International Monetary Fund launched an emergency effort to calm East Asia's economic turmoil, Hong Kong's stock market became the latest victim, falling sharply today.
NATION
CHAZY, N.Y. — With a forecast of subzero temperatures threatening to bring another wave of misery to four Northeastern states this morning, the National Guard searched by air and foot for people still isolated by last week's deadly ice storm.
LOS ANGELES — Prices at the nation's gasoline pumps fell 2.5 cents per gallon in the past three weeks because of lower crude oil prices and a decrease in driving in the winter months, an industry analyst said.
CAMPUS
Rock Chalk Revue tickets can be purchased in Union
Tickets for the 49th annual Rock Chalk Revue went on sale yesterday in the Kansas Union.
The three performances for this year's Rock Chalk Revue, Two Truths and a Lie, will be March 12-14. Tickets will be on sale on the fourth floor of the Kansas Union until the last performance.
Mike Cain, Rock Chalk Revue's senior advisor, said ticket prices would be the same price as last year.
The March 12 performance costs $10, the March 13 performance costs $12 and the March 14 performance costs $14, Cain said.
Tickets can also be reserved until the night of the show by calling 864-4033.
"The Saturday night performance is usually a guaranteed sellout, and we usually do pretty good with the Friday night show," Cain said. "It's Thursday that we usually have the most trouble selling tickets."
This year, the three shows will be performed by five sets of fraternities and sororites including Delta Delta Delta and Sigma Phi Epsilon, Alpha Delta Pi andLambda Chi Alpha, Kappa Kappa Gamma and Phi Gamma Delta, Gamma Phi Beta and Delta Chi, and Pi Beta Phi and Phi Delta Theta.
Last year, the Revue donated nearly $30,000 and 34,000 hours of community service to United Way of Douglas County
Kansan staff report
Cain said that although he expected crowds to be about the same as last year, the amount of revenue generated could vary depending on the show's expenses.
WORLD
European nations' treaty puts ban on human cloning
PARIS — Less than a week after an American scientist announced he would clone a child, 19 European nations signed a treaty yesterday that said cloning people violated human dignity and was a misuse of science.
Britain and Germany, however, balked at signing the measure that London considers too strict and Bonn too mild.
Although yesterday's signing was planned months ago, it clearly took on a greater significance with the announcement last week by Chicago physicist Richard Seed that he will clone a child within two years.
"This is a horror story that the states present here ... will use every effort to prevent," said Jean Boucauris, Greece's director for European affairs.
The signing by 19 members of the Council of Europe — in a room filled with professors, philosophers and physicians as well as diplomats — came the same day French President Jacques Chirac called for an international ban on human cloning, and two days after President Clinton urged Congress to do the same.
Many U.S. and international leaders renewed their condemnation after Seed said that he planned to begin working on human cloning using a newly developed technique. Some physicians questioned whether Seed, who is not a doctor, had the expertise to successfully complete such an experiment.
The July 1997 presentation of Dolly the sheep, the world's first cloned mammal, set off an international outcry over the implications for human biology.
Seed, unaffiliated with any institution, said he would move his enterprise to Tijuana, Mexico, if Congress banned human cloning in the United States.
The treaty said that cloning was contrary to human dignity and thus constitutes a misuse of biology and medicine. Signatory nations agreed to enact laws that outlaw human cloning, but the protocol itself makes no mention of sanctions against those that do not carry it out.
Medical ethicists praised the treaty for drawing attention to an issue for which, they say, the vast scientific complications are dwarfed by the moral questions.
"There will always be mad people out there, and I could name one in Chicago," said Francoise Shenfield, a fertility expert who teaches medical ethics at University College London.
Hong Kong stocks become latest victim of Asia crisis
HONG KONG — As senior officials from the United States and the International Monetary Fund launched an emergency effort to calm East Asia's economic turmoil, Hong Kong's stock market became the latest victim, falling sharply today.
Rattled by rising interest rates, reports that a major Hong Kong-based investment bank may shut down and the sharp decline on Wall Street on Friday, the Hang Seng index tumbled 10 percent, or 905.77 points, to 7.988.87.
Last week, the index dropped 16 percent.
A Hong Kong bank clerk, Chau Hoeyung, said his $9,000 investment was now worth $1,300.
"I'm expecting the worst. I've lost everything, and I'm now only holding on to a pile of wastepaper," Chau said.
Share prices also fell in Singapore, Japan, Taiwan, Malaysia and Australia.
But market prices were higher on two of the region's most troubled economies: Indonesia and South Korea.
In Hong Kong, the stock market was rattled by doubts over the future of Peregrine Investment Holdings, which surfaced when Zurich Centre Investments abandoned plans last week to take a 24 percent stake in the troubled company.
On Friday, there was 2.82 percent decline on Wall Street because of growing concern over Asia's economic turmoil, which began last summer and has since forced the IMF to give large bailout loans to Thailand, Indonesia and South Korea.
Peregrine is heavily exposed in Indonesia, where a massive decline last week slashed the value of the runiah currency
Such concerns prompted Stanley Fischer, the IMF's first deputy managing director, to begin talks Sunday with officials in Indonesia on its $40 billion IMF-led rescue package.
Forecast still miserable for those in Northeast
CHAZY, N.Y. — With a forecast of subzero temperatures threatening to bring another wave of misery to four Northeastern states this morning, the National Guard searched by air and foot for people still isolated by last week's deadly ice storm.
Hundreds of thousands of homes and businesses remained without electricity in northern New York, New Hampshire, Maine and Vermont. The combination of no power and a forecast of bitter cold had officials worried about residents who may try to tough it out in unheated homes.
"We are checking on anything that's living," National Guard Sgt. Nicholas Contempasis said Sunday as his humvee slid on an ice-packed road in Chazy, near the Canadian border.
Contompasis was among the Guardsmen who went door-to-door in New York to deliver food, water, and kerosene and to make sure everyone was healthy. Helicopter crews rescued at least 16 people Sunday, and they were to continue searching by ground and air today.
The huge storm caused floods across the South and spread thick, clinging ice across the Northeast and the eastern third of Canada. Eleven deaths were blamed on the storm in Canada, plus three in New York and two in Maine. Seven deaths were counted in Tennessee flooding plus two in North Carolina and one in South Carolina.
Gov. George Pataki and James Lee Witt, director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, also were to survey the damage today — and there was plenty to see. Northern New York, like the three other states, was buried in a sheet of ice that brought trees and power lines down by the hundreds.
Utilities estimated 230,000 homes and businesses still had no electricity Sunday in Maine, with 20,500 blacked out in New Hampshire and 9,600 in Vermont. New York utilities estimated about 500,000 people were without power. Niagara Mohawk Power Corp. said it could be a month before power is restored to all its customers.
Conditions were even worse in Canada, where more than 2 million remained without power and the Canadian military deployed 11,400 soldiers to help aid people and repair power lines.
New Hampshire alone had more than 500 utility line crews from as far away as Delaware busy cutting through downed trees to get at broken utility poles and drooping lines. They were helped by National Guardsmen.
Although frigid temperatures were expected today, the sun came out Sunday and brought warmer temperatures. That caused a new problem: Ice began falling from trees and power lines. The
National Weather Service issued an unusual winter storm warning—not for precipitation from the sky, but from the melting ice.
Meanwhile, people just tried to cope. William and Doris Belanger of Auburn, Maine, relied on a kerosene heater in their kitchen.
"We manage. There's no water, no heat, no electricity. Nothing. So you get along with what you got," said Mrs. Belanger, 73.
Mrs. Belanger said her husband went out Sunday to survey the broken tree limbs and power lines littering streets in their neighborhood. "After that, he told me 'We ain't never getting power back,'" she said.
Officials have repeatedly urged people to go to public shelters — especially Sunday night because of the expected below-zero temperatures, but they recognized that some may be reluctant to leave.
"People are very proud in Maine and they would rather ride it out in their own home than go to a shelter," said Paul Halvachs, a nursing supervisor at St. Joseph Hospital in Bangor, Maine.
Maine Gov. Angus King added: "I'm a little worried that we're moving into the time when people are starting to lose patience. Even though it's sunny now, it isn't over. Tonight is the night that we've really got to look after one another."
Oil prices drop, leading to decrease in gas prices
LOS ANGELES — Prices at the nation's gasoline pumps fell 2.5 cents per gallon in the past three weeks because of lower crude oil prices and a decrease in driving in the winter months, an industry analyst said.
"The expected demand for crude oil, especially in some Asian markets, has drastically reduced because of the economic crisis there," analyst Trilby Lundberg said Sunday.
The overall average gasoline price, including all grades and taxes, was about $1.18 per gallon on Friday, according to the Camarillo-based Lundberg Survey of 10,000 stations nationwide.
At self-service pumps, regular gasoline was $1.13 per gallon, mid-grade was $1.23 and premium was $1.31.
That was down 2.5 cents since the last survey Dec. 19. Prices are down 12.5 cents per gallon since a year ago, Lundberg said.
At full-service pumps, regular was $1.54.
mid-grade was $1.63 and premium was
$1.69.
The Associated Press
On the record
A KU student's $15 stolen between 5 p.m.
Jan. 10 and 11:30 p.m. Jan. 11 from his
apartment in the 1800 block of Kentucky
Street.
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