University Daily Kansan / Thursday, April 13, 1989
Nation/World
7
Minimum wage bill near vote
The Associated Press
WASHINGTON — The Senate neared a final vote yesterday on legislation that would raise the hourly minimum wage to $4.55 after Utah San. Orrin Hatch called on his Republican colleagues to end their daylong effort to tack on unrelated amendments.
Senators had proposed nearly 10 amendments to the minimum-wage bill.
Hatch said that if the amendments were part of a stall tactic, such a move would prove fruitless.
"It will spill," Hatch said of the Democrats' bill, which President Bush has vowed to vet. "Everyone should join the all-game rests on the presidential veto."
Hatch said the minimum wage was just the first of a number of domestic policy initiatives likely to clear up partisan divisions to Bush over Republican objections.
Under the Democrats' plan, the minimum wage, frozen at $3.35 since 1981, would rise to $3.83 on Oct. 1, 1990, I, 1990, and to $4.54 a year later.
Hatch said that few presidents had had to control Congress through repeated vetos but added, "I suspect this president is going to have to do that."
About 3.9 million people work for the federally specified minimum wage, $3.35 an hour. Here's what those people are like.
Profile of the minimum wage earner
Bush has said he would veto any bill that raised the minimum wage to more than $4.25 an hour and has insisted that legislation must also reward workers to pay all new workers a subminimum wage for up to six months.
Knight-Ridder Tribune News/JUDY TREIBLE
Republicans argue that the "training wage" is necessary to prevent massive job losses they contend would be caused by the higher minimum wage. Democrats have dismissed this argument as outadded in their measure a substantive giving new workers a subminimum wage for up to two months.
The Senate bill would raise the minimum wage to the same level provided for in a House-passed bill. But a conference committee will be needed to draft a compromise because the language providing for the subminimum wage differs in the two versions.
Mindful of the pending conference committee, many Democrats supported a handful of non-binding resor- tions for GOP senators offered as amendments.
The resolutions range from a request that the Senate review catastrophic health care to a demand that it modify or repeal a provision of the 1986 tax code changes. More than likely, the resolutions will be stripped from the bill in conference committee, a fact not lost on lawmakers when they cast their votes in largely meaningless tallies that nevertheless are closely watched by lobbying groups.
Chemist defends claim to peers
DALLAS — B. Stanley Pons, co-developer of a University of Utah cold fusion process, faced a tough audience of his peers yesterday to defend what he claims is a breakthrough in nuclear fusion research
Pons, a chemistry professor, discussed his controversial fusion experiment at the 197th national meeting of the American Chemical Society.
Fusion experts remain skeptical, however, and some have suggested that what Pons and Fleischman reported is not fusion but either a chemical reaction, a "battery effect" or a phenomenon unknown to science.
They said their experiment used a rod of palladium and a coil of platinum immersed in a beaker of deuterium, an isotope of hydrogen found in seawater. When electricity was applied to the coil for about 100 hours, it forced deuterium atoms into the palladium until the atoms fused, producing energy in the form of heat, Pons said.
The appearance came just two days after researchers at Texas A&M and Georgia Tech announced that they had replicated at least part of the experimental results reported by Pons and co-investigator Martin Fleischman of the University of Southampton in Great Britain.
He said the device made four watts of energy for every watt used.
The Associated Press
confused researchers around the world, some of whom have spent more than 25 years and millions of dollars to develop controlled nuclear fusion.
Fusion occurs when two atoms of hydrogen are compressed so tightly that they overcome a natural repulsion and are forced to merge into a single atom of helium-3, a stable chemical. As the process occurs, it gives off a burst of energy and expels a single neutron particle.
Furthermore, fusion fires burn without the pollution produced from fossil fuels, and fusion creates hundreds of times less radioactive waste than do atom-splitting nuclear power plants.
Baker requests aid for contras
The announcement stunned and
WASHINGTON — Secretary of State James A. Baker III asked Congress yesterday to approve quickly a $4.7 million bipartisan aid plan for the contrast to set up a utlimat test of the willfulness of Nicaragua's Sandinista government and its Soviet allies to support the peace process.
The Associated Press
The House Appropriations Committee voted 32-10 to recommend that the compromise plan be adopted. The commissioners were poised to endorse it, as well.
The proposal, which could reach the House floor today, is likely to be approved by both chambers, putting at least a temporary end to years of controversy and divisiveness over hisagan's policy of arming the centrs.
Baker said the new arrangement to
maintain the contras with clothing, food, medical supplies and other non-military aid would "put the ballgame in the ballgame in Central America."
"Between now and February 1990, when elections are scheduled in Nicaragua, the whole world will know the answer to this question: Do the Sandinistas keep their word?" Baker said.
Baker said the plan would focus international attention on the Sandinistas and make clear whether they would keep the promises made when Nicaragua's Daniel Ortega and the other Central American presidents signed the Esquipas accord in August 1987.
That question will be answered by whether the Sandinistas negotiate fair election rules, permit the return
Baker said the Soviet Union used Nicaragua as a "dumping ground" for $515 million in military aid a year and noted that the last U.S. arms aid to the contras expired in the spring of 1988.
Baker noted that the Soviets had said that they supported the Esquipulas agreement.
of the contrasts with safety under democratic conditions and stop supporting Marxist guerrillas in El Salvador. Baker said.
"Now we will have an opportunity to see if they really do," he said. "We will see if there is any meat on the bones of 'new thinking' as far as their goals in Central America are concerned."
Baker said that nothing in the plan barred the Bush administration from seeking renewed military aid.
Toxin level surprises even EPA
The Associated Press
WASHINGTON — U.S. industry is purging more than 32 billion pounds of toxic chemicals into the air, water and land each year, the Environmental Protection Agency said yesterday.
William Reilly, EPA administrator, said that although the raw figures, supplied by industry under a new 'right to know law', would be limited to 10 percent of cases, they didn't show rate of release, concentration or actual exposure.
Although EPA officials said that they were surprised about the large volume, they said that the figures by the agency were not reliable of the possible impact on health.
"It is likely that only a few facilities are exposing the public to toxic chemicals at a rate that could require immediate action." Reilly said.
News Briefs
Nevertheless, the sheer number of pounds of toxic substances — more than 300 chemicals, including an assortment known to cause cancer and other serious illnesses — surprised government officials.
it releases broke down this way:
9.7 billion pounds of chemicals into streams and other bodies of water,
2.7 billion pounds into the air, 2.4 billion pounds into landfills, 3.2 billion pounds injected deep into the ground, and 2.5 billion pounds shipped to municipal wastewater treatment plants and 2.6 billion pounds sent to off-site treatment and disposal facilities.
GUN IMPORT SUSPENSION:
Close to 1 million new semi-automatic assault-style rifles would flood the United States if the Bush administration decides to end its suspension of such imports.
Gun importers have applications to bring in 965,000 of the weapons suspended at the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, according to spokesman Dick Pedersen.
The import suspension was imposed March 14 after public and police outcries over the increased use of the weapons such as semiautomatic versions of AK-47s and Uzi carbines in drug-related violence and the January slayings of five schoolchildren in Stockton, Calif.
INSIDE LOOK AT FLIGHT: A transcript released yesterday about the February conversation between the flight crew of United Airlines jumbo jet Flight 811 and air traffic controllers provided a glimpse into the extraordinary return flight of the Boeing 747.
In the minutes after the emergency began, it was clear from the transcript, released by the Federal Aviation Administration, that the flight crew believed that a bomb had gone off.
But investigators have since ruled out the possibility of a bomb and have suggested that a cargo door blew open after a latch failed to work properly. This caused a 10-foot wide hole, which swept nine persons to their deaths, to open in the forward part of the aircraft.
The jet, bound for Auckland,
New Zealand, with 354 people
boarded, was only 16 minutes out of
Honolulu when the tragedy
occurred.
Pacific on Feb. 24 was tracked closely by controllers who had to assure the crew that they had the plane on radar in case a water rescue were needed.
The return of Flight 811 to Honolulu from 22,000 feet over the
JET LOSES TAIL: A British Airways Concorde jet on a world-circling journey lost a piece of its tail in flight but landed safely at Sydney International Airport yesterday, news reports said.
No injuries were reported.
The Concorde, making the first all-supersonic flight around the world, was trying to set more than 300 miles of distance circled the globe, organizations said.
Australian Associated Press, quoting Australian Civil Aviation Authority spokesman John Death, said it appeared that part of the plane was missed at the back of the plane was missed at 12:42 p.m. (9:42 p.m. CDT Tuesday) on a flight from Christchurch, New Zealand.
The airport control tower was warned by the pilot that there was a problem with the plane and all emergency vehicles were placed on standby, the McQuarie radio network said.
The three-week trip, covering 38,343 miles, involves 35 hours of flight and started April 1 in London. The 106-seat plane was filled with activity with American passengers who each paid $39,000 for the flight.
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PROF. IBRAHIM ABU-LUGHUD A MEMBER OF
PALESTINE NATIONAL
COUNCIL
(The decision making body of the Palestinian People)
Professor of Political Science at Northwestern University Delivers a lecture on
PEACE PROSPECTS FOR PALESTINE
and
Co-sponsored by The University of Kansas Political Science Department and the General Union of Palestine Students
7:30 p.m. Monday
April 17, 1989
Woodruff Auditorium, Kansas Union
University of Kansas
2228 Iowa
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