University Daily Kansan / Thursday, August 29, 1991
7
Nation/World briefs
Kansas City, Mo.
Murder-free month marred by high homicide rate
City and community leaders who wanted a murder-free August instead but the highest number of incidents in any month so far this year.
"It's been terrible," said Lucie H. Bluford, who originated the idea of a murder-free month more than 40 years ago by using her newspaper, The Call, to plead for a stop to the killing.
No one was killed in Kansas City, Mo., in March 1949, but Bluford said that was a long time ago.
"I think we ought to change it from a murder-free month to a murder-free week. I'm not going to try for a month again," she said.
The killing began on Aug. 5, when Carla Wallace, 25, was shot, allegedly by her estranged husband. From then on, the murders happened quickly, 14 in all, more than one every other day.
Of the 14 murder victims in August, 13 were African-American.
Not since 1880, when 18 homicides were recorded in August, have so many people died in the month.
A radio station has run public service messages to stop the killing, and police have said the number of assaults involving weapons is down.
"I'm optimistic that within the next 12 months we'll have a murder-free month." Coe said.
City councilmember Carol Coe, who led the campaign to stop the killing, said she saw some optimistic signs.
Wichita
Peaceful demonstrations may signal end of blockades
Demonstrations at Wichita abortion clinics started peaceful yesterday for the third straight day, lending credibility to indications that six weeks of blockades might be ending.
club.
About 50 anti-abortion demonstrators sang, prayed and read from Bibles outside Women's Health Care Services, one of the city's three abortion clinics.
arrested multiple times.
Demonstrators made no attempt to block the gates guarded by a half-dozen federal marmals, and there were no arrests early yesterday. There were more arrests of more than 1,500 people since the protests started July 15.
Many of the protesters have been
There were no pro-choice demonstrators at the clinic today. But about 18 pro-choice supporters picketed the law office of city councilman Frank Jolie, who has pushed for an ordinance restricting abortions. Jolie would not talk about the pickets when he arrived for *womb*
Colleen Kelly Johnston, president of the National Organization for Women of Wichita, said she planned a series of protests to identify Wichita leaders who have supported Operation Rescue.
A federal judge offered to free abortion protesters in exchange for a pledge that the blockades are finished.
Berlin
Sentiment grows to move Lenin's body from Moscow
The body of Soviet Communist Party founder Vladimir Ilyich Lenin most likely will be removed by a mayor of Moscow said yesterday.
"Completely legitimate suggestions are being put forward demanding that Lenin's last will be carried out and that he be buried next to his mother," Mayor Gavril Popov said.
Leni's mother, Maria Alexandreva Ulyanov, is buried in the Soviet city of Leningrad.
"It think sooner or later it will be so," he said.
Linen's tomb in Red Square is a shrine to communism. He died in 1924.
A number of Communist monuments in Moscow have been torn down since the coup failed, but Popov said too much weight was being placed on these acts.
"There are a lot of people who think that when they've torn down a monument they've also destroyed the old system," he said, but a system is incomparably greater, more advanced and tougher than a monument.
Popov, a radical reformer and associate of Russian President Boris Yeltsin, was in Berlin to sign a friendship agreement between Moscow and Berlin.
From the Associated Press
Bar association ranks Thomas qualified
Bush welcomes judgment, but critics say middle rating shows nominee is mediocre The Associated Press
KENNEBUKPORT. Maine — President Bush yesterday said he welcomed the American Bar Association's judgment that Clarence Thomas was qualified to sit on the Supreme Court.
"I'm very happy the bar did what they should have done," Bush said. "It was a very big vote that found him qualified."
the ABA, the nation's largest lawyers' group, gave Thomas its middle rating.
drafting.
The ABA has three rankings for high court nominees: well qualified, qualified and not qualified.
But Thomas's critics said the appraisal undermined Bush's assertion that Thomas was the best man for the job.
But Bush said the qualified rating was just fine with the White House staff.
White House press secretary Martin Fitzwater said Tuesday in a statement that Bush welcomed the ABA action.
"We are very pleased that the ABA's Standing Committee on the Federal Judiciary has found Judge Thomas qualified to be an associate justice of
"As the president stated here two months ago, Judge Thomas has excelled in everything he has attempted, and the president is confident that Judge Thomas will serve on the court with distinction."
the United States Supreme Court," Flizwater said.
When Bush picked Thomas, who is African-American, in July to succeed retiring Justice Thurgood Marshall, the high court's only African-American member, the president denied he was filling a racial quota on the court.
But Thomas's critics were quick to describe the ABA's ranking of Thomas as evidence that the conservative nominee is a mediocre choice.
Bush described Thomas as the most qualified candidate for the vacancy.
"Thomas' rating is the worst of any nominee in the past decade, and that fact will not be lost on the Senate," said Arthur Kropp, president of People for the American Way, a liberal group. "The panel's misgivings about his nomination will weigh heavily in the balance."
Nan Aron, executive director of the liberal Alliance for Justice, said, "George Bush has shown contempt for the Supreme Court by choosing a judge who was only minimally qualified for the court of appeals just over a year ago. The ABA now says that Judge Thomas is even less qualified for the Supreme Court. The country and the court deserve better than minimally qualified justices.
Judith Lichtman, head of the Women's legal Defense Fund, said, "We cannot afford a justice who is no exceptionally well-qualified."
But Sen. John Danforth, R-Mo., Thomas' leading backer, said that the rating was excellent news for the 43-year-old nominee and that it was a further step toward Thomas' confirmation.
"Therating is especially strong, given his age and relatively brief service on the bench," Danforth said. "Some very highly regarded justices have come to the Supreme Court with no prior judicial experience."
Two of the 15 members of the ABA's judicial evaluation panel ranked Thomas as not qualified to sit on the high court.
An ABA source who requested anonymity said one panel member did not take part in the vote. The names of the two dissenters were not made pubi-
The mid-level rating for Thomas is the same ABA evaluation he received when he was appointed a federal appeals court judge in 1989.
Thomas, a former chairperson of
theEqual Employment Opportunity Commission, has been attacked by civil rights groups, including the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, and women's rights groups.
Civil rights groups oppose him for his criticism of affirmative action and have said he was too lax in enforcing the dismissal law as head of the EROC.
Women's rights groups said they expected Thomas to vote to overturn the court's 1973 ruling that legalized abortion nationwide.
Senate Judiciary Committee hearings on the Thomas nomination are scheduled to begin Sept. 10 and are expected to be highly contentious.
Last year, the ABA rated David Souter well qualified when Bush picked the little-known judge from New Hampshire to become a Supreme Court justice.
The ABA's role has been highly controversial in the past, particularly in 1987 when four members of the ABA found high court nominee Robert Bork unqualified, calling him ultra-conservative.
Souter was confirmed by the Senate as Bush's first high court appointee.
Coup members forced out of Soviet government
Republican senators then claimed that the ranking of Bork was politically motivated.
The Associated Press
MOSCOW — President Mikhail Gorbachev, moving to punish his enemies and reward his friends, yesterday ordered a shake-up of the KGB and forced out dozens of members of a top administrative body. Prosecutors charged 13 suspected ringleaders of the takeover with high reason.
Gorbachev, betrayed by many top officials during the coup, put a premium on loyalty as he assembled a new inner circle. He appointed a foreign minister, Bori Pankin, who, as Soviet ambassador to Czechoslovakia, defied the orders of the hard line coup leaders during the takeover.
At Gorbachev's request, the Supreme Soviet legislature passed a motion of no confidence in the national Cabinet of Ministers. Many of the cabinet members were implicated in the plot, and all 70 members of the cabinetwere expected to resign.
Meanwhile, more and more attention turned to the growing clout of Boris Yeltsin, who rose to new heights of power when he led the resistance to the coup.
Amid international jitters about control of the Soviet strategic arsenal in the event of a Soviet breakup, Yeltsin offered to take all nuclear weapons now stationed in the Ukraine onto Russian territory if that republic becomes independent.
Also, Soviet lawmakers moved to head off poten
trial border disputes involving the Ukraine. Russia has worried some neighboring republics by suggesting it reserves the right to review its frontiers with those that leave the union.
In other developments yesterday, one week after the coup's collapse:
—A shake-up in the Soviet media continued. The official nightly news program "Vremya" was being overhealed, and Gorbachek appointed his representative, Vitaly Ignatenko, general director of the Tass news agency. Ignatenko's predecessor was fired after the coup.
—Germany recognized the independence of the Baltic republics of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia, following similar moves by dozens of nations. A 1939 German-Soviet treaty gave Josef Stalin a free hand to annex the Baltics, which were independent nations between the world wars.
—President Bush discussed the Baltics and the question of Western aid for the stumbling Soviet economy with John Major, British prime minister, who arrived yesterday for a three-day stay at the president's vacation home in Maine. Major, who is coordinating aid to the Soviet Union, major industrialized democracies, will visit Russia on Sunday and meet with Gorbachev and Veltins
After the three-day coup, Gorbachev vowed that its leaders would be brought to justice. Those
charged with treason yesterday included the seven surviving members of the coup committee.
suv
he eighth member, Boris Pugo, interior minister,
was found dead after the coup. Authorities have
not determined whether he was slain or committed
suicide.
Among those charged with treason was Vladimir Kryuchkov, former chief of the KGB secret police. Gorbachev ordered an investigation into the activities of the KGB, and a committee was set up to write a restructuring plan and legislation to regulate its future activities.
Four KGB generals, including Kryuchkov, have been arrested and charged with treason for their roles in the coup. But KGB troops also played a key role in breaking up the coup. They refused an order to attack pro-democracy demonstrators at the Russian Parliament, headquarters for opposition to the coup.
Lukyanov, a law school classmate of Gorbachev, went before lawmakers yesterday to proclaim his own "rights."
Even longtime Gorbachev associates were being brought to account. The speaker of the national legislature was ousted in connection with the coup plot
Lukyanov said that during the coup, he tried in vain to contain Gorbachev, who was under house arrest at his dacha in the Crimea. He also said he warned the military against using force.
C. 1981 Hewlett Packard Company eNGL202H2
More doctors recommend extra-strength HP.
"The HP 48XS Scientific Expandable has powerful graphics tools that are remarkably helpful to students learning mathematical concepts. And with the equation solver feature, it's excellent for applying mathematics to engineering" according to Dr William Rahmeyer, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at Utah State University.
More and more PhDs across the country are recommending Hewlett-Packard financial and scientific calculators to their students. And for some very strong reasons.
"The HP Business Consultant II has an equation solver and extensive math
functions. These free the students from computational tedium so they can think and interact on a higher level", says Dr Lee V. Stuff, a professor of math education at North Carolina State University.
So go check out the HP calculator line at your college bookstore or HP retailer. You'll agree, there's no faster relief from the pain of tough problems. HP calculators. The best for your success.
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