2A
The Inside Front
Thursday September 25,1997
News
from campus, the state, the nation and the world
CAMPUS/AREA
A fire destroyed a 1979 Volare owned by KANU. The fire was caused by an animal nest under the hood.
The Museum of Natural History needs students to help clean and piece together a dinosaur fossil discovered by two graduate students this summer.
NATIONAL
CAPE CANVERAL, Fla. NASA's chief awaited two final safety reports yesterday before deciding whether to send astronaut David Wolf on a long and possibly perilous mission aboard Mir.
NEW YORK: European allies, buoyed by a Clinton administration pledge not to "cut and run" from peacemaking in Bosnia, sought a firm commitment yesterday that U.S. troops would remain in the region beyond a scheduled withdrawal next June.
WASHINGTON: Dieters are showing up at doctors' offices demanding echocardiograms to see if their hearts were damaged by the drugs fen-phen and Redux. Physicians say the tests probably are not worth it for many patients who have no symptoms.
WASHINGTON: Riding the momentum of a congressional probe, Sen. Sam Brownback said yesterday he would sponsor legislation to kill the Internal Revenue Service.
NEW YORK: Men who want a son might do well to marry a younger woman, while women who want a daughter might look for a younger man, a study says.
INTERNATIONAL
NABLUS, West Bank: Yasser Arafat ordered the arrests of 20 suspected Islamic militants yesterday and tightened security around jailed Hamas activists after Israeli accusations that four men responsible for recent suicide bombings had walked out of a Palestinian jail.
ENSENADA, Mexico: Hurricane Nora bore down on Mexico's Baja California peninsula yesterday, packing 85 mph winds and a potential for heavy rain.
CAMPUS/AREA Animal nest under hood causes fire in KANU car
A 1979 Volare owned by KANU caught on fire at 1:15 p.m. yesterday.
The fire was caused by an animal nest that was under the hood of the car.
"I was driving off campus, and it basically caught on fire," said Mike Douthat, the KANU director of engineering.
"It probably will not be feasible to repair," Doutah said.
The Volare, which the radio station purchased for $1,200 from state surplus, now may be permanently out of commission.
He said that he noticed the smell when he got on campus and that smoke began billowing out of the hood as he pulled into the KANU parking lot behind Marvin Hall.
"Someone across the way came with a fire extinguisher first," Douthat said.
The fire was out by the time the Lawrence Fire Department arrived.
"There was some debris still left from a nest under the hood - a rat or mouse nest," said Stan Ray, Lawrence fire captain. "I've been here 21 years, and this is the first one I've seen."
Students needed to piece together dinosaur puzzle
Here is a chance to be a part of history.
Well, prehistory anyway.
The Natural History Museum is searching for volunteers to help clean the bones of a dinosaur that graduate students uncovered this summer in Wyoming.
Volunteers will receive bone-cleaning training and will help piece the fossil together.
An informational meeting will be held at 2 p.m. Sunday in 320 Dyche Hall.
"We are looking for people who can give us some kind of time commitment," said T.J. Meehan, who is one of the graduate students that discovered the bones. "Nothing big; an hour or two a week or every other week would be great.
"We just hope to get a small army together to help us prepare the bones."
For more information, call T.J. Meehan or Craig Sundell at 864-3216.
Kansan staff reports
NATIONAL
Astronaut still up in air about mission with Mir
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — NASA's chief awaited two final safety reports yesterday before deciding whether to send astronaut David Wolf on a long and possibly perilous mission aboard Mir.
Daniel Goldin's decision could come as late as this morning, just hours before the space shuttle Atlantis is scheduled to leave for the Russian station on a night flight.
The space agency never has waited so close to launch to make such a major decision regarding an astronaut and
Wolf seemed unfazed by the rumors and speculation. He joked with his crematives and gave a thumbs-up during a gathering of friends and family at the launch pad.
Goldin, just back from meetings with Russian space officials in Moscow, wanted to see two Mir safety reviews by outside experts and meet with those experts before making a decision.
his flight.
Regardless of what Goldin decides about Wolf, Atlantis still will fly to Mir to bring American Michael Foale home after a 41/2-month stay and to drop off a replacement computer, patches for holes, food, water and other urgently needed supplies. Wolf might just go along for the ride.
Dieters demand heart tests to determine valve damage
WASHINGTON — Dieters are showing up at doctors' offices demanding echocardiograms to see if their hearts were damaged by the drugs fen-phen and Redux. But doctors are not always sure what to advise.
The tests are expensive, and physicians say the tests are probably not worth it for many patients who have no symptoms.
"There could easily be an onslaught (of demand)," said James L. Weiss, the physician who runs the echocardiology lab at John Hopkins University. "By means are we recommending that everyone who takes one of these diet drugs have an echocardiogram."
Redux and fenfluramine — the first half of fen-phen — were pulled off the market last week after doctors discovered the drugs could damage heart valves. Patients short of breath and suffering other symptoms were reported in July, but then the Food and Drug Administration found evidence that 30 percent of dieters with no symptoms also might have valve damage.
The FDA advised dieters to immediately stop taking the drugs and see a doctor. But the agency could not say who needs an echocardiogram, a sophisticated test that lets doctors watch a patient's heart valves open and close.
Brownback plans to battle tax code by sponsoring bill
WASHINGTON — Riding the momentum of a congressional probe, Sen. Sam Brownback said yesterday he would sponsor legislation to kill the Internal Revenue Service.
Brownback, R-Kan., joined Republican colleagues and former presidential candidate Steve Forbes on the Senate lawn behind a 3-foot high pile of tax-code book
The announcement came as the Senate Finance Committee holds hearings into alleged Internal Revenue Service tax collection abuses. The measure does not specify an alternative to replace the tax code, which would expire Dec 31, 2000.
"This is an impressive stack," the freshman senator said. "It's an oppressive code."
The point, Brownback said, is to "start a vigorous national debate" to come up
Baby's gender may depend on age of mother, father
Forbes, an advocate of a flat tax, said the bill was the first real attempt to rid America of the 2.8 million words of tax code.
with a simpler, fairer code.
NEW YORK — Men who want a son might do well to marry a younger woman, while women who want a daughter might look for a younger man, a study says.
The results certainly are not guaranteed. But the research suggests that the age gap can affect a firstborn child's gender.
In a group of 301 British families, researchers found that when men married women at least five years younger than they, the firstborn sons outnumbered daughters nearly 2-to-1. And when women married younger men, the result favored baby girls by about 2-to-1.
How can this be? Biologically, it is a mystery, said study author John Manning of the University of Liverpool in England. Manning, an evolutionary biologist, reports the work with two students in today's issue of the journal "Nature."
Experts in fertility and demography were cautious and said it was not clear whether the finding would apply to people in general.
The work joins a list of studies that suggest the ratio of newborn boys to girls can be influenced by things such as the ages of either parent, their social status, the mother's personality and societal stresses like war.
INTERNATIONAL Arafat tightens security after bombers leave jail
NABLUS, West Bank — Yasser Arafat ordered the arrests of 20 suspected Islamic militants yesterday and tightened
security around jailed Hamas activists after Israeli accusations that four men responsible for recent suicide bombings had walked out of a Palestinian jail.
None of those detained were on Israel's wanted list, however. Israel's Channel Two television, quoting unnamed security sources, said there
Arafat: Ordered the arrests of 20 suspected militants
were "specific warnings" of another bomb attack in the near future.
A day earlier, Israel identified four suicide bombers from two recent attacks in Jerusalem as Hamas activists from the village of Assira near Nablus. The attacks killed 25 people, including five bombers.
The announcement deeply embarrassed Arafat. The four had walked out of a loosely guarded Palestinian jail in Nablus last year, and their names were on a list of 88 Islamic militants Israel had given the Palestinian Authority with the demand they be arrested.
European allies want U.S. to keep troops in Bosnia
NEW YORK — European allies, buoyed by a Clinton administration pledge not to "cut and run" from peace-
making in Bosnia, sought a firm commitment yesterday that U.S. troops would remain in the region beyond a scheduled withdrawal in June.
Secretary of State Madeleine Albright's meetings with British, French, German and Russian diplomats were eased by a declaration from Sandy Berger, a presidential assistant for national
Clinton: Has pledged not to "cut and run."
security affairs, that the allies must be prepared for an extended stay.
Before Berger's speech Tuesday at Georgetown University, the Europeans had made plain that they would not permit their peacekeepers to remain if the Americans withdrew.
Until Clinton sent in U.S. troops, Europeans carried the brunt of the peacemaking burden — and bore the casualties.
The administration, however, has come under pressure from several members of Congress to hold to Clinton's promise to bring the 8,500 U.S. troops home by the end of June.
Hurricane Nora blows into Mexican peninsula
ENSENADA, Mexico Hurricane Nora bore down on Mexico's Baja California peninsula yesterday, packing 85 mph winds and a potential for heavy rain, following a path to the southwestern United States.
"Remnants of Nora will be hitting the United States sometime Friday morning," said Michael Formosa of the U.S. Hurricane Center in Miami.
"Brace yourselves," Formosa said, warning of potentially heavy rains and flooding even as the storm hits Baja California's mountainous backbone on a course plotted for southwest Arizona.
At 5 p.m. EDT, Nora's eye was about 205 miles south of Punta Eugenia, a rocky outcropping midway up the west coast of Baja California.
At its strongest, Nora clocked sustained winds of 125 mph after becoming a hurricane on Sept. 18, but no deaths were reported.
The Associated Press
ON THE RECORD
A KU student's two car tires were damaged between 9:30 and 11:30 p.m. Monday in the Lied Center parking lot, KU police said. The damage was estimated at $100.
A Metter PJ360 electronic balance was stolen between 8 a.m. June 1 and 8 a.m. Sept. 12 from 6030 Malot Hall, KU police said. The balance was valued at $948.42.
ET CETERA
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