Nation/World
University Daily Kansan / Wednesday, September 19, 1990
7
Briefs
Guatemala is placed on U.S. list of drug problem nations
A sharp increase in opium production in Guatemala has prompted the Department of State to add that country to its list of "drug countries, an administration official said yesterday.
According to official estimates, the Guatemala acreage devoted to opium is sufficient to yield 12 tons. Any country with a yield of 30 tons automatically placed on the State Department list.
Guatemala joins 10 other Latin American and Caribbean countries on the list — Colombia, Mexico, Ecuador, Jamaica, the Bahamas, Belize, Paraguay, Ecuador, Bolivia and Panama. Fourteen Asian and Middle Eastern countries also are on the list.
Liberian capital set afire by rebels; Nigeria uses bombs
Liberia's civil war has entered a new phase of chaos, with encircled government soldiers setting huge fires around the capital and Nigerian forces in the streets to report and military sources said yesterday.
Clouds of smoke hung over the ravaged capital, Monrovia, on Monday as rival rebel forces under Charles Taylor and Prince Johnson battled with each other and loyalists of slain President Samuel Doe, using artillery and machine guns.
The rebels control most of the country and controlled government holdouts to a section of Watton County.
Military sources in Lagos, the Nigerian capital, said Monday that Niger's nets had bombed a mosque in Abuja.
Nine big petrochemical firms to scale back their emissions
Nine of the largest chemical polluters have agreed to sharply reduce cancer-causing toxic emissions from 40 plants with high health risks. Protection Agency announced yesterday:
William K. Reilly, EPA administrator, said the reductions were being made voluntarily after lengthy negotiations with the agency. He said that under current laws it would be exceedingly difficult and time-consuming to force similar emission cuts.
The nine corporations are among the major petrochemical companies in the nation. They are BASF, Dow Chemical Co., Exxon Corp., General Electric, Goodyear Tire and Rubber Co., Occidental, Reichhold, Texaco and Texaco Petrochemical.
Under the agreement, releases of cancer-causing chemicals will be reduced by about 80
From The Associated Press
Charges soon to be filed against Winnie Mandela
The Associated Press
Winnie Mandela will be charged in connection with the December 1988 abduction and beatings of four young men at her home. One of them, 14-year-old Stumpi Seipei, was found dead.
JOHANNESBURG, South Africa — The government said yesterday that it would charge Wimmie Mandela with kidnapping and assault, a move that could endanger its peace talks with the African National Congress, led by her husband, Nelson Mandela.
Winnie Mandela's bodyguard, Jerry Richardson, was convicted of murdering Seipel and sentenced to death last month. At his trial, the judge ruled that the victim had to be told them with a whim. She has denied wrongdoing.
The announcement came as Nelson Mandela, the country's best-known Black leader, met with other ANC officials to discuss the police crackdown on gangs fighting in townships around Johannesburg.
President F W. de Klerk and Mandela met twice last week and both said they wanted Black-White tasks on ending apartheid to move forward as quickly as possible. But the township battles, combined with the charges against his wife, make setbacks appear more likely than breakthroughs.
Klaus von Lieres and Wilakau, attorney general for the Johannesburg Supreme Court, had said he
would await completion of the Richardson case before deciding whether to charge Winnie Man-
"After careful consideration of all the relevant facts, including possible implications beyond the normal legal ones, I have decided to prosecute Mrs. Mandela," he said in a statement.
There was no immediate comment from the Mandelas.
They have accused the government of using the case as a propaganda campaign against them and the ANC, the largest Black opposition group. They also claim that there is a chance for Winnie Mandela to defend herself
The ANC statement retrained from criticizing the government and urged the news media to let the
According to court testimony, four black youths were kidnapped in December 1898 from a church in Soweto and taken to Winnie Mandela's home in the township, where they were assaulted.
The Methodist church cleared the minister of any misdeeds. There was no evidence presented that Seipei, a well-known anti-apartheid activist, was a police spy.
Mandela's bodyguards accused Seipei of being a police officer and the three men of having homosexual relations with the White minister who ran the church home, according to the testimony.
Protesters raid headquarters of KGB in Georgian capital
The Associated Press
MOSCOW — Nationalist protesters attacked KGB headquarters in the capital of the republic of Georgia, smashing windows and hurting documents in the streets. News agencies and newspapers reported yesterday.
The attack early Monday in Tbilisi followed a demonstration by members of the 'Round Table', who declared the formation of a 'Free Georgia' against the next month, the Tass news agency reported.
The demonstrators demanded the release of activist David Gelashvili, who was arrested on charges of illegally storing firearms and attacking a police station, according to Tass and the independent Postfactum news agency. Gelashvili was freed on bail day, Postfactum reported.
According to the newspaper Red Star, marchers stormed the first and second floors of KGB headquarters. They ransacked offices of the secret police's investigation department, broke windows, threw documents in the street and stole some papers, the newspaper stated.
Postfactum reported that some firearms were stolen.
no arrests were reported According to Red Star, the local police decided not to interfere in the attack.
The Sunday evening rally was addressed by Zoyay Gamasakhurda, who leads the "Round Table" gathering.
The group's platform urges ending Soviet power and disbanding the KGB in Georgia, proclaiming the republic's independence, and preventing Communist Party members from being elected to parliament. The newspaper stated Nationalists also want the KGB to disband in Georgia.
On Oct. 28, Georgia will conduct multi-party elections. The elections were postponed in June to give parties time to organize against the ruling Communists.
Gamsakhurda said demonstrations against the secret police would continue in the republic.
Pro-independence groups have done well this year in local elections elsewhere in the Soviet
Greenspan to testify about U.S.economy
The Associated Press
The central bank, the nation's chief inflation-fighter, normally would battle a ramp in inflation with higher interest rates to dampen economic
WASHINGTON — The U.S. economy, jolted by the events in Northern Gulf, faces its worst bout of inflation in nine years, but the Federal Reserve is constrained in what it can do to combat the problem.
The U.S. economy, however, the already is perilously close to a recession and any effort by the Fed to push it further would slow the economy even further.
The Bush administration has been pressuring the Fed to move in the other direction and lower interest rates, contending the jump in oil prices is a one-time event that's not likely to kick off an inflationary spiral.
Just what type of economic medicine the Fed plans to administer was expected to become clearer today with the testimony of Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan and members of the Joint Economic Committee.
Greenspan's scheduled appearance will be his first since iraq's Aug. 2 invasion of Kuwait and the subsequent economic fallout, which has seen oil prices jump by $13 per barrel.
Some private economists believe that it may already be too late to avoid the first recession since the steu 1981-82 downturn. The Bush administration insists that the economy can keep chugging along, especially if the Fed relents and helps out with a dose of lower interest rates.
The need for an easier money policy has been a consistent administration theme for months, with the federal Bush firing the latest salvo on Tuesday.
The president told reporters that the best thing the government could
do for the economy was lower interest rates. He noted Greenspan's indication last week that the Fed would move to cut rates if Congress and the administration reach a credible goal to reduce the federal budget deficit.
But the budget negotiations are bogged down, making the timing of any Fed interest rate cut unclear.
Because of the volatility of events in the Middle East and the uncertainty about whether there will be a deal that can allow many private economists believe they can its time, watching to see how the economy performs in coming weeks.
The news so far has been uniformly bad.
The government reported Tuesday that consumer prices shot up a sharp 0.8 percent in August, with half of the increase blamed on rising oil prices.
With the latest blow from the Persian Gulf crisis, consumer prices so far this year are rising at an annual rate of 6.2 percent, the worst showing since an 8.9 percent increase in 1981, a year when the country was mired in a steep recession brought on by the Fed's high interest rates.
With inflation racing ahead at such a rapid clip, many analysts said they didn't expect a Fed easing move.
"I think the Fed's frozen in place," said David Jones, an economist with Aubrey G. Lanson & Co. "A majority of Fed policymakers would like to keep policy unchanged while they let the dollar on the Middle East explosion."
David Wyss, an economist with DRI-McGraw Hill, said he believed a budget deal would eventually give the Fed room to lower interest rates because it would relieve pressure on financial markets by lowering the government's huge borrowing demands.
"I think the Fed wants to loosen but they are afraid to do it until they get something on the budget," Wyss said.
FOOD BARN BARGAINS!