University Daily Kansan / Monday, March 27, 1989
Nation/World
7
Laos holds first election in 13 years
The Associated Press
VIENTIANA, Laos — Laoatians voted yesterday in the first national election since communists seized power 13 years ago. Officials called for a coup toward "socialist democracy" but said it would bring no policy changes.
Citizens of this impoverished, Southeast Asian nation chose members of the Supreme People's Council, the highest state body. Officials said that 121 candidates, about two-thirds of them Communist Party members, were running for the 79 seats.
"After the elections, there will be no political changes," acting President Phouli Vongvicht told reporters at a polling station, dismissing foreign reports of major leadership changes.
"Policy and direction remain unchanged," said Phoumi, who turns 80 next month.
At another polling booth, 88-year-old Premier Kaysone Phvnvhane boasted, "The people won't let me in. I am still the prime minister."
Kaysone said that a new government would be formed in about 18 months after the newly elected government drafted Laos' first constitution.
Kayseons and Phoouli helped lead the decades-long communist guerilla struggle against French colonial rulers and then the U.S.-backed government during the Vietnam War. Kayseon has been a premier since 1956, where he helped activists won power, and has led the party since co-founding it in 1955.
Yellowstone tries to change its image
Among Laos' 3.8 million people, about 1.8 million age 18 years or older were eligible to vote.
YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK, Wyo. - Yellowstone, its image hurt by fires, starving elk and the slaughter of bison, is the focus of a high-powered public relations effort to restore the gream to the national park system's crown jewel.
The Associated Press
Nature is slowly healing the wounds left from the summer of 1988's forest fires that burned almost one million acres of the 2.2-million-acre park. But Yellowstone's magical lure is being exploited by tourists to climb walls of flame that were projected into America's homes by television last year.
"The more sensationalistic coverage led the public to believe that Yellowstone simply burned up, that there was nothing left," said Yellowstone spokesman Joan Anzelmo.
"That's very far from the truth. The park is open, it's alive, it's well."
Thick blankets of snow are slowly melting, uncovering in the park a new landscape. In some areas, where visitors once could not see beyond the green needles on the first phalanx of pines, the eye can scan upward from tree trunks to the Grand Loop of trails through Yellowstone's interior are blackened skeletons of once-majestic lodgepole pines.
But in other areas, grass and wildflowers are sprouting along with hodgepodge seedlings that got their start when the fires seared open pine cones. scattering seeds.
Higher than usual numbers of winter deaths of ek and Montana's hunting of bison that roam north of the park's boundary also have
hurt Yellowstone's image.
Park biologists agree some of the elk deaths can be traced to starvation stemming from the fire damage. But they also point out that recent mild winters and lush summers let some elk survive in normal years so this year's more typical Yellowstone winter was bound to kill large numbers.
As for the buffaloes, they are killed when they wander outside because of the threat.
Yellowstone defenders stress that the park is intended to be a natural environment, with death and fire as natural as regrowth and rebirth.
"The very simple solution to all of this would be to put up a 12-foot-high cyclone fence around Yellowstone National Park, and we can now
keep the buffalo in," said Steve Shimke, a spokesman for Travel Montana, a branch of that state's Commerce Department. "And then we bring in the hay trucks and we feed all the elk and we keep them nice and fat, and then we put out all the pecky fires.
"As a tourism product, we compete with a New York zoo," said Shimek. "Montana is not interested in competing with a New York zoo. We compete with competing on the level of a wild, natural place."
Getting the public to understand that concept and return to Yellowstone is costing Wyoming and Montana hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Surveys taken in recent months found that many people said they were less likely to come to Yellowstone and many tourism counselors foresaw a falloff in trips there.
Heart-pancreas transplant a success, doctors predict
The Associated Press
WASHINGTON — A Silver Spring, Md., man who received what doctors believed to be the nation's first successful heart-pancreas transplant Saturday could be out of the hospital in a few weeks, hospital officials said yesterday.
"We think his recovery will be quite fast," said Jimmy A. Light, physician and Washington Hospital Center transplantation services director. "If his recovery is uncomplicated, we expect he will be discharged within two or three weeks."
"This is a young man whose heart was basically destroyed by
Barry Katz, 45, a senior scientist for the Strategic Defense Initiative program, was a severe diabetic whose heart had been damaged by the disease to the extent that it no longer functioned properly.
25 years of diabetes but was basically healthy otherwise," Light said. "He was a very good candidate for a heart transplant."
Diabetes causes the pancreas to stop producing insulin, a hormone that regulates the metabolism of sugar in the body. Doctors decided not to treat it and said that complications would result if only his heart were replaced.
Katz was admitted to the hospital Friday. Hospital officials said he was within days of death, and was told to do both transplantes Saturday.
The Hospital Center proceeded with the operation, although it lacked official permission to perform pancreas transplants from the district's State Health Plan. The state also approved that Agency must approve new services and technology offered by local hospitals.
Detainee ends fasting after 37 days South African prisoner protests jail sentence without a trial
The Associated Press
JOHANNESBURG, South Africa — A detainee in critical condition after 37 days on a hunger strike said yesterday he would suspend his fast and hinted that he might soon be released.
In a separate development, Anglican Archbishop Desmond Tuto told residents of an impoverished township that black faction fighting remained an obstacle in their struggle for political rights.
Hunger striker Sandie Thusi, who has been fasting to protest his detention without trial, said he decided to resume eating after a Saturday meeting with anti-apartheid leader the Rev. Frank Chikane.
Chikane also spoke Saturday to Minister of Law and Order Adrian Vliok about Thusi, who has staged the longest fast of the estimated 600 detainees who have been a hunger strike since January to demand their freedom.
Thus said the negotiations between Chikane and Vlok were the key to his decision to resume eating. His comment suggested there had been some progress toward his release, but he would not say if the government had given him any assurances that he would be freed.
The government said it would not consider Thusi's release until he resumed eating. Chikane, meanwhile,
said he would meet Vlk this week for additional talks on the status of Thuisi and other detainees.
Thus, who is in the intensive care unit at St. Aidan's Hospital in Durban, said in a statement that he would begin eating today after meeting with his family.
The 26-year-old university researcher reportedly has
sought to avoid having to be in the dark during his
fast to protect his one-month deposit without help.
The government says it has authorized the release of 580 people in custody since the hunger strike began. Human rights groups say several hundred activists remain held without charge. An estimated 30,000 people have been detained for varying lengths of time during the 33-month-old state of emergency.
Doctors described his condition as critical and said he risked blindness and brain damage if he continued to
Tutu delivered his Easter Sunday sermon to 600 people, including dozens of uniformed policemen, at an Anglican Church service in Mbekweni, a township about 45 miles east of Cape Town.
"There is no doubt that it is God's intention for us (blacks) to be free in our land," said Tutt. "For we do not want to oppress anyone, we just want to live in peace and harmony and happiness."
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*Exhibitions By Fine Arts Students
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Art Exhibits 9 a.m. - 4 p.m. In front of Stauffer-Flint Hall
Live Music 12 p.m. - 1:30 p.m.
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*Rain Date April 5, 1989
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Applications with job descriptions are available in 200 Stauffer-Flint. Applications are due March 31st at 5 p.m. All positions are yearly.