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Thursday, March 2, 1995
UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Communist power returns to Poland
The Associated Press
WARSAW, Poland — Parliament elected former Communist official Jozef Oleksy prime minister yesterday, joining Poland's Eastern European neighbors in restoring a communist to power.
The leftist-dominated legislature forced out Prime Minister Waldemar Pawlak, who was attacked for slowing the pace of selling off state-owned industries. He also clashed with President Lech Walesa, an anti-communist, over economic and social policies.
Former communist officials have returned to power across Eastern Europe on a wave of dissatisfaction with unemployment and falling living standards in the transition to free-market economies.
Former communists have been elected
in Bulgaria, Slovakia and Hungary. They never left power in Romania, and are expected to win elections for Albania's parliament in 1996. Only in the Czech Republic do former communist rulers not appear close to returning to power.
Oleksy, a former local communist party chief, will be the seventh prime minister since Walesa's Solidarity union led the democratic revolution that overthrew the communist regime in 1989. Oleksy, 48, has been speaker of parliament since 1993.
Walesa has not expressed enthusiasm about Oleksy and refused to discuss the new government with him before parliament voted.
The Sejm, the lower house of parliament, voted 285-5 for Olksay. There were 127 abstentions by opposition members who complained that the ruling coalition
of former communists and Pawkai's Polish Peasants' Party had failed to fulfill their election promise to ease the pain of market reforms.
The leftists, elected in 1993, had to scale back plans to expand social programs because of the high costs.
"How can we support the same coalition?" said Bronisław Geremek of the centrist Freedom Union caucus.
Geremek accused Pawlak's government of wasting its chance by slowing down the sale of state industries to private investors and returning to centralized decision-making.
Although Oleksy hasn't said what his policies will be, he and other coalition leaders have indicated they will stick with their program and try to carry it out more effectively.
Oleksy has been holding talks for two
weeks on the new Cabinet, which must be approved by parliament and Walesa. Oleksy indicated he would keep several key ministers from Pawlak's government.
Walesa's spokesman, Leszek Spalniski, said his approval will depend in part on the choices for ministers of defense, interior and foreign affairs.
The president has been at odds for months with the leftist legislature over economic policy and taxes. His opponents accuse him of trying to impose a government of his own, ignoring parliament's wishes.
Some commentators have suggested Wales is trying to block government formation as an excuse to call early elections and drive the leftists out of parliament. The legislature's four-year term expires in 1997.
NASA to build moon craft
The Associated Press
WASHINGTON — NASA plans to launch a low-budget robot craft to orbit the moon and fill in gaps of knowledge about the Earth's nearest celestial neighbor.
The space agency announced Tuesday that the mission, to be called Lunar Prospector, will cost about $59 million and is scheduled for launch in June 1997.
Instruments aboard the unmanned craft will map the chemical composition of the lunar surface, measure the magnetic and gravity fields of the moon and search for evidence of frozen water in the chilled shadows of craters near the lunar poles.
The moon craft will be just over four feet in diameter, far smaller than the craft that carried six crews to the lunar surface during the Apollo program.
Operating from orbit, the Lunar Prospector will carry three spectrometers. These instruments will capture emissions radiating from the moon's surface. Measuring these emissions enables scientists to determine the surface composition of the lunar soil.
National Aeronautics and Space Administration leader Daniel S. Goldin said the moon mission is part of the space agency's new effort to explore the universe with relatively cheap, quickly built spacecraft. The effort, called the Discovery Program, has prompted 28 space mission proposals.
"I am absolutely thrilled with the potential of these missions and with the universally high quality of the 28 proposals submitted to us," Goldin said.
The Discovery Program focuses on use of small planetary probes that have specific scientific goals and can be built within 36 months for less than $150 million. Costs of the launch rocket are not included in the Discovery Program limitation.
NASA announced that three proposed Discovery missions will undergo detailed study over the next six to nine months and that one of the proposals will be selected this fall for development.
The candidate missions are:
- Stardust: Sending a small craft through the dust trail of the comet P/Wild 2 and returning samples of comet material to Earth.
- Venus Multiprobe Mission: Dropping 16 probes on Venus to study the properties of that planet's thick atmosphere.
- Suess-Urey: Collect particles streaming from the sun and return them to Earth for study.
Two low-cost missions already are being assembled. A probe to orbit the asteroid Eros will be launched next February. Mars pathfinder, a mission to land a small craft and a toy-sized rover on Mars, will be launched in November 1996.
Girl arrested after allegedly calling with fake AIDS results
The Associated Press
JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — The 13-year-old daughter of a hospital clerk was arrested for allegedly calling former emergency room patients and telling them they had tested positive for the AIDS virus.
A teen-ager tried to get her father's gun and kill herself after receiving one of the calls, a newspaper reported.
Tammy Lynn Eskilsen was arrested Monday on charges of assault, aggravated assault and making threats after police tracked her down with phone numbers captured on a victim's Caller ID, said Sgt. Malcolm Adams, a police spokesman.
She is accused of calling seven patients who were treated at University Medical Center last weekend and telling them they were infected with HIV.
Adams said the girl had visited her mother at work over the weekend and used a computer to print out a two-page list of patients and phone numbers.
The girl told police she made the calls as a prank, Adams said.
charges, if any, are applicable," said Assistant State Attorney Jay Plotkin. The original charges were brought by police.
One patient, Amy Bulmer, a married 16-year-old, became hysterical and tried to kill herself after receiving the phony test results, but relatives kept her from getting her father's gun, she and her family told The Florida Times-Union.
She is being held in a juvenile center while prosecutors "determine what
"I wanted to kill myself," she said. "My husband and Dad calmed me down."
Bulmer had gone to the emergency room Saturday with a bladder infection and received a Pap smear and pregnancy test. On Sunday, a young woman called Bulmer's mother's unlisted number, trying to reach Bulmer.
Bulmer's mother, Shirley Veazie,
quoted the caller as saying: "Amy's
lab work is back, and I need to let you
know that she's HIV positive. And
she's also pregnant. You knew that,
didn't you?"
However, the family called the hospital lab and learned Bulmer wasn't pregnant and hadn't been tested for the AIDS virus.
Prison chain gangs make a comeback
The Associated Press
MONTGOMERY, Ala. — Alabama is bringing back the chain gang, a sight most Americans haven't seen since the Paul Newman movie "Cool Hand Luke."
This spring, inmates will be put in leg irons and made to pick up litter along well-travelled roads.
Alabama will be the first state in the nation to reinstitute chain gangs, according to several national corrections organizations.
Prison work crews shuffling along in leg irons were a common sight in many states until public opinion was stirred by the 1932 movie "I Am a Fugitive From a Chain Gang," about an innocent man brutalized by a Southern chain gang.
"I find it fascinating the corrections system is turning back the hands of time when the rest of the world is moving forward," said Rob Hoelter, director of the National Center on Institutions and Alternatives and a critic of the plan.
No one at the state Corrections Department can recall exactly when Alabama did away with chain gangs or why.
Alabama's new prison commissioner, Ron Jones, has placed a $17,000 order for 300 sets of leg irons so inmates can be put to work during the first 90 days of their sentences.
Jones is carrying out a directive from Republican Gov. Fob James that new inmates be denied TV and other privileges; that they be put to work; and that their first impression of prison be so unpleasant that they never come back.
The idea is to change the perception that all inmates do is watch soap operas and drink Coca-Cola, said Donald Claxton, the governor's spokesman.
Alabama and many other states use minimum-security inmates, without shackles, to pick up litter. But half of Alabama's nearly 20,000 prisoners are medium-security inmates who don't qualify for work details outside prison. They stay inside, working in kitchens, mopping floors or making license plates.
"With leg shackles, we can put higher-risk inmates to work" on the outside. Jones said.
Jones envisions five prisoners working in a group, with 8 feet of chain between inmates.
The chain gangs will start to work in northern Alabama's Limestone County, which is split in half by Interstate 65, a busy route traveled by tourists en route to Gulf of Mexico beaches.
"I think the image is horrible," said Joan Dolby, staff associate with the American Civil Liberties Union's National Prison Project.
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