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UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
We Buy, Sell, Trade & Consign 841-PLAY USED & New Sports Equipment 1029 Massachusetts
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1020 Mass. St. downtown Lawrence
(913) 842-1390
Pol. Adv.
Musical Benefit for Lawrence for Levine
- Featuring ·
- Kim Forehand highly acclaimed singer/songwriter
- Tank Farm original rock
- Lisa Harris and Bill Crahan "goodtime" folk
- Velveteens original rock
Paid for by the Lawrence for Levine Committee, Garth F. Burns, treasurer.
Dollar stronger, stocks and bonds at record level
WASHINGTON — The first decline in retail sales in nearly a year sent financial markets soaring yesterday as investors shrugged off the ballooning U.S. trade deficit and focused instead on hopes that interest rates would not be increased again.
The Associated Press
Analysts credited the market euphoria to a belief that the U.S. economy was slowing from its rapid-fire pace of last year to a more sedate level with only moderate inflation.
"The markets are happy because the economy is slowing down and
The report triggered big rallies in bond and stock markets. The Dow Jones industrial average soared to a record level and demand for Treasury's 30-year bond pushed the yield down to a seven-month low.
The Commerce Department reported that sales at department stores, auto dealerships and other retail outlets fell 0.5 percent in February, reflecting widespread weakness in consumer demand.
"The key for the dollar is whether the fundamentals of the U.S. economy are good. We are getting the kind of low inflation and moderate growth environment that markets like to see." Steinberg said.
Cynthia Latta, an economist at DRI-McGraw Hill Inc., said the markets were correctly interpreting the latest data as putting the Federal Reserve on hold. She said it was likely that the central bank's Feb. 1 rate increase, the seventh in a year, would be the last for a while.
Consumer demand,retail sales down
The dollar actually strengthened yesterday, and analysts credited the boost that bond and stock markets received from the weak retail sales data.
The 0.5 percent drop in retail sales in February was the first since a 1 percent drop last April. Last month's report showed declines in nearly every category.
While America's trade performance was given much of the blame last week when the dollar was hitting record lows against the German mark and the Japanese yen, the new trade report did not trigger a further slide in the dollar.
Sales had risen 0.6 percent in January, but much of that strength reflected heavy discounting by department stores trying to move unsold items following a disappointing Christmas.
The $155.67 billion deficit in the current account, up from $103.90 billion last year, was the second worst trade gap on record, topped only by a $167.10 billion shortfall in 1987.
that there is a genuine slowdown occurring but that we are not headed into a recession," she said.
Sales of big-ticket items such as autos, furniture and appliances and building materials dropped last month and department store sales were down 1.1 percent.
Since consumer spending accounts for two-thirds of the overall economy, analysts said the slowdown in demand would sharply lower economic growth in the first quarter. Many predicted the gross domestic product would expand at a rate of 2.5 percent or less, in line with the Fed's goal for a so-called soft-landing.
The year ended on an exceptionally weak note with a trade gap in the October-December quarter of
In a second report, the Commerce Department said the deficit in America's current account, the broadest measurement of foreign trade, ballooned 50 percent last year to $155.67 billion, the second highest level on record.
$44.76 billion, an all-time high for a single quarter. However, analysts predicted last year's import surge would slow markedly this year with consumer demand weaker.
"The retail sales figures tell us
The current account is considered the broadest gauge of a country's trade performance because it measures not only trade in goods and services, reflected in the government's monthly report, but investment flows between countries and foreign aid as well.
For 1994, the United States suffered the first deficit in investment income since the government began keeping the current series of records in 1960. The shortfall of $15.18 billion reflected the fact that the country now is the world's largest debtor nation with foreigners earning more on their U.S. assets than Americans earn overseas.
While the merchandise deficit hit a record $166.36 billion last year, the one bright spot in the report was a record surplus in services of $59.99 billion, partly reflecting a flood of foreign tourists as the falling dollar made the United States a budget destination.
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The other component of the current account is unilateral transfers such as foreign aid and government pension payments to retirees overseas, which rose to a deficit of $34.12 billion last year.
LAWRENCE BATTERY
The Associated Press
The ruling cutting the man's sentence from 14 to four years came as Parliament approved a bill that would allow doctors to give women abortion information, the first loophole in the nation's ban on abortion.
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Ireland considers abortion law change
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inflation is under control," said Bruce Steinberg, an economist at Merrill Lynch in New York.
DUBLIN, Ireland — Appeal judges yesterday sharply reduced the jail term imposed on a businessman in a sexual assault case that prompted a change in Ireland's abortion law.
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The businessman, now 46, was convicted in June 1994 of indecent assault and of having unlawful sex with the woman when she was under the age of consent.
The assault case forced a referendum in November 1992 that approved travel abroad for abortions after the 14-year-old girl who was assaulted initially had been forbidden by the attorney general from traveling to Britain for an abortion.
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The appeal judges, in shortening his sentence, said the man's life already had been ruined.
"We must also hold out some possibility of hope and redemption for this applicant," said Appeal Judge Hugh O'Flaherty.
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"We told Menen that pressure from the United States and Italy is mounting," said Baer, who was in Argentina on a two-day visit. "He replied Priebble would be in Italy
"He has displayed genuine remorse. ... He has suffered grievously."
The man, who cannot be identified under Irish law, sat beside a prison guard at the back of the Appeal Court during the ruling. Wearing a dark suit and hand-cuffed to a prison guard, he left immediately afterward.
The Supreme Court overturned the ban on traveling abroad for an abortion in the girl's case on the grounds that she had been suicidal. She subsequently miscarried when she was three months pregnant.
The Supreme Court decision, however, left the law confused and forced the 1992 referendum that approved travel abroad for abortions, but retained the abortion ban in Ireland.
"Argentina has been getting the rap for the delay in Priebke's extradition," Baer said yesterday.
The Irish Senate yesterday approved a loophole in the abortion ban, a law that would allow doctors to give pregnant women the names and addresses of English abortion clinics. Vehemently opposed by the Roman Catholic Church, the bill already has been approved in the lower house and requires the signature of President Mary Robinson before becoming law.
Tommy Baer, the international president of B'nal B'rith, said President Carlos Menem told him in a meeting Monday that everything possible was being done to speed up the case.
Former Nazi SS captain may be extradited to Italy
may be extra Man admitted role in 1944 massacre of 335 near Rome
BUENOS AIRES, Argentina — Argentina has promised to extradite a former Nazi SS captain to Italy this month to stand trial in the massacre of 335 Italian civilians, a U.S.-based Jewish group said yesterday.
Erich Priebke, 82, has been under house arrest for nine months in Bariloche, 1,100 miles southwest of Buenos Aires, since admitting to a role in the 1944 massacre in the Ardeatean Caves outside Rome.
Foreign Ministry archives show that many Nazis found safe haven in Argentina after the war and lived there for decades, often keeping their own names.
A representative for Menem said he could not confirm or deny Baer's account, but said Priebke was very likely to be extradited this month.
The Associated Press
The massacre was in reprisal for the killing of 32 German soldiers in Nazi-occupied Italy. Priebke has said he was following Adolf Hitler's orders that 10 Italian civilians be executed for every German soldier killed.
Of more than a dozen extradition requests for war criminals received by Argentina since 1950, only three have been granted.
The last extradited war criminal was Josef Schwammerberger, who was sent to Germany in 1990 and entenced there to life in prison for killing and ordering the deaths of Jews at slave labor camps in occupied Poland.
A court in June ordered Priebke placed under house arrest because he suffered from a heart ailment.
Priebke's defense attorney has delayed the process by demanding that all Italian documents be translated into Spanish.
The University of Kansas
Department of
Music and Dance
The University of Kansas Opera presents Sir John in Love by Ralph Vaughan Williams
Featuring the
Kansas University Symphony Orchestra Brian Priestman, conductor
7:30 p.m.
March 16 - 17, 1995
Lied Center
General admission tickets are on sale in the KU box offices: Murphy Hall, 864-3982; Lied Center, 864-ARTS; SUA Office, 864-3477; public $6, students and senior citizens $3; both VISA and MasterCard are accepted for phone orders.
PRESENTED BY KU CULTURAL INDIA CLUB Featuring:
Master Shashank (Classical Flautist)
Vinita Arora (Classical Vocalist)
Friday, March31, 8:00pm Lied Center, Lawrence
E
Tickets Available At: SUA Box Office Or Contact Paul Bajaj 842-7990
Member Students $5
Non-Member Students $7
General Public $10
Patron/VIP Seating $30