University Daily Kansan / Wednesday, February 22, 1989
Nation/World
7
FBI nets $1 billion in heroin
The Associated Press
NEW YORK — Police and FBI agents confiscated 800 pounds of heroin yesterday — worth more than $1 billion — in what the assistant FBI said was said the biggest such bust in U.S. history.
Officials said the raid in Queens smashed a Southeast Asian drug ring that smuggled heroin into the country inside hollow rubber wheels. The officers arrested and netted $3 million in cash, officials said.
The street value of the heroin, reported to be 90 percent pure, was estimated at more than $1 billion, said Assistant FBI Director James M. Fox during a news conference.
The amount "would supply 40 to 50 percent of all the berion needed for some 200,000 addicts on an
annual basis in New York City," said U.S. Attorney Andrew Maloney.
"That makes this the largest heroin seizure ever in the United States." Fox said.
Maloney, whose office had prosecuted some of the famous "French Connection" in 1971, told us that he was unboard of
"The largest case that I'm aware of is about 200 pounds back in 1971, but nothing of this scope."
Thirty-one people from New York, Los Angeles,
Detroit, San Francisco, Hong Kong, Singapore,
Toronto, Calgary and Vancouver were named in a
complaint filed in U.S. District Court in
Bronxville.
Of those, 14 were already jailed in Detroit, Buffalo, Toronto and Hong Kong, and the 17 others
were arrested in New York in raids Monday night and yesterday.
Fourteen more suspected ring members will be named. Maloney said.
The 18-month investigation, Operation White Mare, sought to identify major Chinese heroin networks operating in the metropolitan New York area.
Since 1985, the supply of heroin from Asia has increased, and Asian drug rings have supplanted heroin operations run by traditional American organized crime families, Maloney said.
The investigation identified Fok Lee Woo, also known as Peter Woo, a longtime resident and business partner of the company.
Fox would not specify how long the ring had been operating or how much money it had netted.
Federal Reserve to raise interest rates
The Associated Press
WASHINGTON — Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan said yesterday that the central bank would keep up its inflation-fighting efforts by pushing interest rates higher to combat what he termed a troubling acceleration in price pressures.
Greenspan, in his semiannual report to Congress on monetary policy, said that the Fed expected "to support continued economic expansion and place conditions for a gradual easing in the rate of inflation over time."
he added, however.
"Let me stress that the current
Economy's growth, fear of inflation reason for increase, Fed chairman says
rate of inflation, let alone an increase, is not acceptable, and our policies are designed to reduce inflation in coming years."
tion rate of 12.7 percent
Since last March, the Fed has been nudging up interest rates in an attempt to slow economic growth and avoid a flare-up of inflation. Those efforts intensified last week after a price level showed a 1 percent increase during the month of January, equivalent to a compounded annual infla-
Prices at the consumer level in 1988 increased by 4.4 percent, the same pace as during the previous year, and that at Greenspan considered wartime.
toward stimulus."
Greenspan said the Fed's continuously challenging task of charting monetary policy had been made more difficult by the unprecedented combination of an aging economic recovery, financial failures in the economy, and rising levels of corporate debt, and the large trade and budget deficits.
"With the economy running close to its potential, the risks seem to be on the side of a further strengthening of prices pressures, he said. In addition, it has also increased Reserve remains more inclined to act in the direction of restraint than
"We have never confronted a situation that is exactly comparable to what we are in at this particular stage," he said. "It's clear to me that we are confronted with problems that we are confronted with could be assisted in an extremely positive way by a very expeditious and significant cut in the deficit."
News Briefs
GREENHOUSE EFFECT: A House panel was told yesterday that the nation should react to the greenhouse effect by using natural gas instead of burning safe and publicly acceptable nuclear power.
tobert M. White, president of the National Academy of Engineering, said these and other measures were needed to prevent further build-up of greenhouse gases that could be responsible for warming.
White and three other witnesses warned that scientists still did not know whether burning of fossil fuels and other human activities caused greenhouse gas changes, leading to heat waves and drought.
One witness, Patrick J. Michaels, a University of Virginia professor of environmental
sciences, told a House Energy and Commerce subcommittee it would be more prudent to study the greenhouse effect before making drastic policy decisions.
"Our policy should be commensurate with the state of our scientific knowledge." Michaels told us.
The greenhouse effect occurs when gases in Earth's atmosphere trap radiant heat near the planet's surface — the more gases, the more heat.
The gases are more transparent to incoming solar energy than they are to outgoing infrared energy.
In addition to natural build-up, greenhouse gases have increased because of human activities, including burning of coal, oil and gas
the destruction of tropical rain forests
SALVADORAN TRUCE OFFERED: El Salvador's leftist rebels offered yesterday to lay down their weapons if the armed forces were sharply cut, the police force was reorganized and next month's presidential elections were postponed by at least four months.
The Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front presented its revised proposal on the second day of talks with delegates from 13 countries, beginning to end El Salvador's nine-year civil war.
The front's offer attempted to address a major stumbling block in the talks — the constitutional requirement that President Jose Napoleon Duarte leave office by June 1 — by proposing an interim president.
GOP to consent to ex-Klansman's seat
The Associated Press
BATON ROUGE, La. — Newly elected state Rep. David Duke, a former Klu Klau Klan grand wizard, probably will be accepted by Republics as one of their own if he's president of the GOP legislative leaders said yesterday.
A freshman independent said he would challenge Duke's seating, but Democrats and Republicans alike said they didn't expect the move to
If the Republican Legislative Caucus lets him in, Duke will be one of 18 Republicans in the 105-member Senate now has six Republicans.
Republicans interviewed yesterday said they saw no reason to reject Duke from the caucus despite the national GOP chairman's repudiation of him as a "charlatan." The Republican conference session today to take on tax issues.
session today to take up tax issues.
Rep. Odon Bacque of Lafayette
said Monday he intended to challenge Duke on grounds that he did not live in his district for the required year before the election. Duke has said he has proof that he lived in the district.
"We will see if Mr. Duke is what he says he is or what the media says he is," said Rep. Peppi Bruneau of New Orleans, GOP caucus chairman.
Brunéau also is chairman of the committee that would hear a challenge if Bacque gets 53 votes, a majority of the membership.
GOP Rep. Charlie Lancaster said: "I think the guy's elected. I'm curious why the Democrats never asked this question. Why should it be relevant to me now that he was a Republican, but when he was a Democrat nobody would believe him." For his role in Democratic Primary for president of the United States."
Lancaster said that the GOP caucus would meet today and that an 80 percent vote, as usual, would be required to do anything.
Brazilian tribes unite against proposed dam
The Associated Press
ALTMIRA, Brazil — Anny Amazon Indians thrust lances and machetes at government electric power officials yesterday in the secrecy of an apparent hush about proposed hydroelectric dam that would flood tribal lands.
More than 500 Indians from 37 native groups packed the city's community center for a historic encounter of tribes in this east Amazon city, 2,000 miles northwest of Rio de Janeiro.
The meeting is the first united political movement by the native tribes. It seeks to block construction of the Kararaa dam on the Xingu River, an Amazon tributary. Brazil says the energy is vital for development in this nation with a population of 144 million.
Tempers flared when Jose Lopes, engineering director for Electrontrone, the government Amazon power company, told the Indians that the dam would not raise the river beyond its present level.
"You're lying! Everything you say is a lie!" she turned. a Kayapo Indian woman. She strode through the street, her hands grasped an ornated a machete in Lopez's face.
Her words in Kayapo were translated into broken Portuguese by Chief Paulo Paucan. He said her traditions, our traditions, it does not mean war."
Kayapo warrior Uh-Te also pro-
tested angrily and repeatedly thrust a red-feathered lance at the company affair.
"We don't know what energy means," said Uh-Te "I was raised on game, fish and wild honey in the woods." If you consult us about the dam?"
Lopes said Eletronorte was preparing an environmental impact report on the Kararao project.
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