WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 9. 2002
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN 7A
NATION
Maryland town shaken in wake of shooting
The Associated Press
BOWIE, Md. — Playgrounds and parks were empty, shoppers darted warily across parking lots and shaken parents escorted children to and from school yesterday, a day after a youngster was wounded by the sniper roaming suburban Washington.
"Usually I'm embarrassed to walk around and hold my mom's hand, but I don't care today," said
Amanda Wiedmaier, 13, whose Benjamin Tasker Middle School was the scene of Monday's shooting of a classmate.
Security firms across the region reported a surge in interest. About 50 Starbucks stores removed their outside seats. And mental health counselors scrambled to set up crisis hot lines for people upset by the string of shootings that have left six people dead and two wounded since last week.
"This is a person who is shooting elderly men, shooting women and now shooting little children," Gov. Parris Glendening said. "This is the act of an absolute coward."
The latest victim, a 13-year-old boy, remained in critical but stable condition yesterday with a wound to the chest. He was shot early Monday after he was dropped off at school.
With few solid clues or witness accounts, a task force of federal.
state and local investigators is sifting through more than 7,500 phoned-in tips. Police said they have 1,400 credible leads but refused to disclose details.
Many Tasker parents kept their children home yesterday; attendance was down by one-third. Other parents served as volunteer guards, watching over intersections.
Dorothy Prather, a Tasker teacher, was impressed by how
well students responded to the traumatic events. "They came right in today and sat down and went right on with their work," she said. "The only ones who seemed really concerned were the parents."
Before classes started, Prather said, the principal addressed the students over the intercom, urging them to get back to business but reminding them that counselors were available if needed.
Less than a mile from Tasker, the colorful playground equipment at the Cresthill Baptist Church nursery school went unused. School director Stacie Hall decided to keep her 2- to 6-year-old charges indoors all day, and let the teachers choose their own gentle explanations.
"One little girl told me, 'We can't go outside today because we might get sunburned,'" Hall said.
The Associated Press
RALEIGH, N.C. - North Carolina, which has had two reigning beauty queens for a month, now has none.
A judge on Tuesday ordered the Miss North Carolina pageant to not recognize anyone as the state titleholder until Rebekah Revels, who won the pageant but was forced to resign over topless snapshots, resolves her legal dispute with the organization.
A month ago, state judge Narley L. Cashwell ruled that Revels, who was crowned in June and stepped down in July, had a valid contract with the Miss North Carolina Pageant Organization.
Revels has sued the state pageant for breach of contract. But the judge said Tuesday that contracts between the pageant
and its contestants say disputes should be settled by arbitration.
Until that is done in Revels' case, he ruled that no one should serve as Miss North Carolina.
Based on Cashwell's original order, Revels went to Atlantic City, N.J., for the Miss America pageant along with Misty Clymer, the original runner-up who was elevated to the title when Revels resigned.
Within a week, a federal judge refused to force the Miss America pageant to include Revels, leaving Clymer as the state's sole representative at the Sept. 21 competition.
Cashwell's decision Tuesday was "quite bizarre, I think," said Revels' lawyer, Barry Nakell.
He said he will ask Cashwell to reconsider.
U.S. abortion rate dropped in '90s
The Associated Press
NEW YORK — The U.S. abortion rate dropped significantly during the second half of the 1990s, particularly among teenagers, and experts attribute the decline to better awareness of contraception and a fear of disease that has cut down on sexual activity.
The rate among girls ages 15 to 18 declined a dramatic 39 percent, from 24 abortions per 1,000 girls to 15.
The rate fell 11 percent between 1994 and 2000, from about 24 abortions for every 1,000 women of childbearing age to 21, the nonprofit Alan Guttmacher Institute reported yesterday.
At the same time, researchers were surprised by a sharp increase in abortions among poorer women, or those who earn less than twice the federal poverty level of about $17,000 for a family of four.
"Their abortion rates were
increasing while they were going down for everyone else," said Rachel K. Jones, who led the study.
The study was based on questionnaires completed by more than 10,000 women who had abortions.
Sarah Brown, director of the National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy, noted that the drop in abortions was accompanied by a decline in teen sex, teen pregnancies and teen births during the late 1990s.
"This signals a deep and profound and robust change in adolescent sexual behavior in this country," she said.
"I think it's cause for — I don't know if 'celebration' is the right word — but certainly our full attention."
Analysts have credited a broad set of factors for those trends, including fear of AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases and more open discussion with youngsters about sex.
"People are really aware, and
we talk more about abstinence and staying away from it altogether," said Shannon Kilcoyne, 18, a high school senior from Greenville, S.C. Kilcoyne was not aware of the study, but said the findings about teenagers reflect concerns of sexual activity among her peers.
"It's more a fear of STDs," she said. "People always talk about how you have to know someone well enough to find out their past history and who they've had sex with."
Researchers said more funding for teen pregnancy prevention programs has probably improved awareness and access to contraceptives.
Similarly, they said that less money for family planning programs for poor women could be one factor for the increase in their abortion rate.
For women below the poverty line, the abortion rate rose 25 percent.
It climbed 23 percent among women making less than twice
that level.
"There have been more and more restrictions on funding for abortions and in some instances, family planning and contraceptive services," said Kathryn Kolbert, a legal expert on reproductive rights at the University of Pennsylvania's Annenberg Public Policy Center.
The Guttmacher institute receives some funding from Planned Parenthood, but its abortion statistics are generally regarded by both anti-abortion groups and abortion-rights supporters as accurate.
Laura Echeverria, a spokeswoman for the National Right to Life Committee, questioned whether the increase in the abortion rate among poor women had anything to do with a lack of access to contraceptives.
"I'd like to see what their educational levels are, how many of them have access to educational material, how many of them understand childbirth," she said.
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