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https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1990-12-31-fi-5681-story.html
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Newsday to Raise Price: New York Newsday...
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Newsday to Raise Price: New York Newsday...
Newsday to Raise Price: New York Newsday will hike its newsstand price by 10 cents to 35 cents for its weekday editions, the first price increase for the tabloid in five years. The metropolitan area’s youngest tabloid, which is owned by Los Angeles-based Times Mirror Co., had set its cover price at a quarter in an uphill struggle to win readers. Newsday Publisher Robert M. Johnson said earlier this month that since the New York Daily News strike began Oct. 25, New York Newsday’s daily circulation has jumped to more than 340,000 from 220,000 and its Sunday circulation to about 373,000 from 225,000.
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a328519643608434f32fa3e96bdf50b9
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https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1990-12-31-fi-5683-story.html
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Saudi Arabia Reopens Key Refinery: Saudi Arabia’s...
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Saudi Arabia Reopens Key Refinery: Saudi Arabia’s...
Saudi Arabia Reopens Key Refinery: Saudi Arabia’s Ras Tannurah refinery, a key fuel supplier to U.S.-led forces in the Persian Gulf, resumed production after two weeks of repairs due to fire damage, oil industry sources said. They said the refinery--the world’s biggest, with a capacity of 530,000 barrels a day--is now producing around 300,000 barrels. The refinery was processing 500,000 barrels per day of crude before the fire Nov. 30.
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1fcc9c623a1b35fbe61c3cffcedb9f5a
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https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1990-12-31-fi-5684-story.html
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Airline Tests Device for Heart Attack Victims:...
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Airline Tests Device for Heart Attack Victims:...
Airline Tests Device for Heart Attack Victims: Air New Zealand is testing a high-tech device known as an automated defibrillator in its long-range aircraft as a means of saving the lives of passengers who suffer airborne heart attacks. Murray Vaile, the airline’s marketing manager in Singapore, said the device uses a mild electric shock to bring a person’s heart back to normal rhythm. Automated defibrillators like the Norwegian-made Heartstart 3000 can be operated with a minimal amount of training. Some fire departments have considered them for use by personnel who do not have advanced medical training.
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18e38442c829cd262a1c225c53caad45
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https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1990-12-31-fi-5685-story.html
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Investor Boosts First Executive Stake: Los Angeles...
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Investor Boosts First Executive Stake: Los Angeles...
Investor Boosts First Executive Stake: Los Angeles investor David T. Smith, who has been accumulating First Executive Corp. depositary preference shares, has acquired 5.7% or 588,800 shares of the Los Angeles-based insurer’s series G cumulative convertible preferred stock as well. Neither series of stock carries voting rights. Smith, who owns 9.5% of the troubled insurer’s depositary preference shares, is chairman and chief executive of D. T. Smith Inc., a Los Angeles real estate developer.
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0088ec527644ae3009c3a81e4636d04d
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https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1990-12-31-fi-5686-story.html
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Matsushita Completes $6.13-Billion Tender for MCA
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Matsushita Completes $6.13-Billion Tender for MCA
Matsushita Electric Industrial Co. announced over the weekend that it had completed its $6.13-billion tender offer for MCA Inc.--the largest takeover ever of an American company by a Japanese.
Matsushita said in a statement that 77.7 million shares of Universal City-based MCA had been tendered as of its 12:01 a.m. Saturday deadline. That represented 97% of shares outstanding, the announcement said.
Matsushita said shareholders who tendered will be paid Wednesday.
It said it expects to complete its merger of MCA into a wholly owned subsidiary within two weeks.
Completion of the merger followed two failed 11th-hour attempts Friday to block the deal in the courts.
Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia denied a request by Go-Video Inc. to stop the takeover. The manufacturer of videocassette recorders had contended that the deal would violate antitrust laws.
In Los Angeles, a federal district judge rejected the motion of a shareholder who had alleged that MCA Chairman Lew R. Wasserman was given preferential treatment in the deal.
The plaintiff contended that shareholders were not offered the chance to swap their shares for Matsushita stock, as Wasserman was. The deal allows him to avoid paying about $109 million in capital gains tax.
Other shareholders will receive $66 per share in the tender offer. Stockholders also will receive shares in MCA’s television station, WWOR-TV in Secaucus, N.J., which analysts value at $5 a share.
MCA stock closed Friday at $69.125, up 62.5 cents, in heavy New York Stock Exchange trading.
MCA, founded in 1924, is the nation’s fourth-largest entertainment company. It owns Universal Pictures, theme parks, record labels and other interests. Its most famous movies are “E.T.--The Extra-Terrestrial,” “Back to the Future” and “Jaws.”
Universal Pictures becomes the third major Hollywood studio to go to a foreign buyer.
Matsushita rival Sony Corp. last year bought Columbia Pictures for $3.4 billion, and Italy’s Pathe Corp. this year bought MGM/UA Entertainment Co. for $1.36 billion.
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173ddc230b93b8d708c5c076d7138ac0
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https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1990-12-31-fi-5687-story.html
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Gulf States’ Oil Revenues Jumped 55% in 1990 : Energy: The reason was a surge in world crude prices after the invasion of Kuwait. The Saudis are paying a lot for troops in the area, however.
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Gulf States’ Oil Revenues Jumped 55% in 1990 : Energy: The reason was a surge in world crude prices after the invasion of Kuwait. The Saudis are paying a lot for troops in the area, however.
Oil revenues of the Persian Gulf Arab states other than Kuwait and Iraq jumped by more than 50% during 1990 due to higher crude prices precipitated by the Gulf crisis, it was reported Sunday.
Gulf International Bank economist Henry Azzam said the combined oil income of Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Oman and Bahrain rose 55% to $70.5 billion from $41.9 billion in 1989.
Azzam predicted that budget deficits in three of the five states--Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and Qatar--would shrink in 1990 while deficits that had been forecast by Oman and the UAE would actually be surpluses.
Saudi Arabia’s oil revenues will jump 63% this year to $41.3 billion, Azzam said. The UAE’s oil sales will rise 43% to $14.8 billion and Qatar’s will climb 50% to $3.4 billion, he said.
Oman’s oil revenues will increase 40% to $4.7 billion while Bahrain’s will be up 33% to $875 million, he said.
Azzam said that, despite the jump in oil revenue, Saudi Arabia’s 1990 deficit will not be wiped out because it is the main financial backer both of the multinational forces in the area and countries bordering Iraq that have been hit hard by the U.N. embargo against Iraq.
Azzam quoted Saudi Arabia’s finance ministry as saying that it had spent $21 billion on the crisis, considerably more than its additional oil revenues of $16 billion.
A significant portion of the incremental Saudi oil production is being supplied free to the multinational forces or at very good terms to Saudi allies, he added.
Saudi Arabia set 1990 spending at $38 billion and forecast a budget deficit of $6.6 billion.
Azzam said that although Iraq’s Aug. 2 invasion of Kuwait hurt non-oil economic activities of the anti-Iraq Gulf allies, solid overall growth during the first seven months of 1990 and the jump in oil exports will result in higher gross national products for most of the allies.
Saudi Arabia’s GNP will grow 9.8% in 1990, compared to 3.5% in 1989, while the UAE growth rate will leap to 25% from 14.3%, he said.
Oman’s growth rate would jump to 12.2% from 10.5% in 1989, while Qatar’s will increase to 12 % from 8% and Bahrain’s will edge up to 2.8% from 2.5%, he said.
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9d0b7759c6c0627158c81be2f65055f5
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https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1990-12-31-fi-5689-story.html
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Tool Orders Fall; Industry Is Optimistic
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Tool Orders Fall; Industry Is Optimistic
Orders for machine tools fell 24.1% in November due to the sagging economy and volatile Middle East situation, but they were still higher than a year ago, a trade group reported.
Albert Moore, president of the Assn. for Manufacturing Technology, said other causes for optimism included “continued export opportunities, particularly now that the dollar is at a more realistic level, and the need for investment by American manufacturers (which) mean business for machine tool builders.”
The recent move by the Federal Reserve to lower key interest rates, which in turn would aid domestic production and trade, also is encouraging for industry, Moore added.
November machine tool orders fell to $203.4 million from October’s $268.10 million, the association said. But they were 10.3% higher than the $184.40 million in orders in November of 1989.
Machine tools, including computer-assisted lathes, machining centers and milling machines, are used to produce a wide range of articles--from household goods to heavy machinery and sophisticated weaponry.
Economists watch the orders as an indication of the future health of manufacturing.
In its monthly statistical report, the trade association said machine tool shipments had a value of $268.65 million, up from $253.75 million the previous month, but 14% below the year-ago level.
Foreign orders totaled $41.50 million, up from $33.95 million in October and $36.20 million in November, 1989.
Metal-cutting tool orders fell 24.6% last month to $137.45 million but were up 6.6% from a year ago, when orders totaled $128.90 million.
Metal-cutting shipments fell 2.8% to $183.45 million in November and were 19.8% below last year’s level.
Orders for metal-forming tools fell 23% last month to $65.95 million from October’s $85.70 million, but were up 18.8% over the $55.5 million of a year ago.
Metal-forming shipments totaled $85.20 million in November, a 31.2% increase from October’s $64.95 million. They were up only 0.1% from the $85.10 million of November, 1989, however.
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42eb379fae0e93981a418f071dfb1505
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https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1990-12-31-fi-5691-story.html
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IBM Is on Rebound With Streamlined Operations, New Product Lines : Computers: Dispelling its reputation as an arrogant giant helped the nation’s fourth-largest industrial firm pull out of a slump, analysts say.
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IBM Is on Rebound With Streamlined Operations, New Product Lines : Computers: Dispelling its reputation as an arrogant giant helped the nation’s fourth-largest industrial firm pull out of a slump, analysts say.
A few years ago, some industrial experts feared that IBM, one of the nation’s most important companies, had slipped into a dangerous slump.
Its products were outdated and overpriced and its payroll and cost structure too bloated to deal with a slowdown in computer industry sales, the critics said.
Instead of its sales growing 15% or better a year, as IBM had predicted, annual growth averaged less than half that from 1984 to 1989.
In addition, IBM’s profit fell from $6.6 billion in 1985 to $3.8 billion in 1989, and its stock price slipped from as high as $173 a share in 1987 to as low as $93 a share in December, 1989.
The downturn was troubling not just because International Business Machines Corp. is the nation’s fourth-largest industrial company, but because IBM’s health is a benchmark for the U.S. economy and its technical prowess.
Some said IBM--which employs more people than live in Minneapolis--was too big and bureaucratic to change.
But in the past year or so, the world’s largest computer company appears to have executed a neat turnaround.
Its profit and stock price are on the rebound, its product lineup has been revitalized and thousands of unneeded employees are gone. IBM also has become more customer-oriented, helping dispel its reputation as an arrogant giant, industry analysts say.
“In the mid-80s, other (computer) companies started to do well. IBM was marking time,” said Barry Bosak, an analyst at Smith Barney, Harris Upham & Co. “Now, in 1990, IBM seems to be doing better in general than the computer industry.
“I’m impressed by the ability of IBM to make a good number of cutbacks and at the same time roll out what is a fairly extensive line of new computers,” he added.
IBM had been losing ground in the product area to nimbler, younger competitors. Compaq Computer Corp. lured away corporate customers for personal computers, while Sun Microsystems Inc. outshined IBM in the fast-growing computer workstation market.
In 1990, IBM replaced its slow-selling workstations with machines that won critical praise and strong orders. It made a promising return to the home computer market, while selling off its low-tech typewriter business. Most important, it announced the biggest overhaul of its mainframe computers since the 1960s.
Mainframes, the room-sized computers that store huge amounts of data for companies such as airlines, are IBM’s most important business. The machines and associated equipment and services account for more than half IBM’s revenue and profit.
Analysts say they generally are pleased with IBM’s revamped products. Rick Martin of Prudential-Bache Securities Inc. calls it the company’s most competitive lineup since the early 1980s.
Analysts also applaud the way IBM handled the transition to its new mainframe line, announced in September. Transitions to a new generation of technology often disrupt orders while customers await the announcement. While IBM felt that lag, it was not as severe as some analysts expected.
IBM is now “shipping all we can build” of the new mainframes, said Bill Grabe, a marketing vice president.
The company needed the new machines to meet increased competition for its once-exclusive mainframe customers. Two U.S. companies that are partially Japanese-owned, Hitachi Data Systems Corp. and Amdahl Corp., offer competitive machines compatible with IBM models.
IBM’s mainframes also face competition from the No. 2 computer maker, Digital Equipment Corp., which began shipping its first mainframes in 1990.
In the past few years, IBM also has increased its presence in software--an area of growing importance--by buying minority stakes in dozens of small software houses. These companies have developed programs that tailor IBM computers for specific industries.
Under Chairman John Akers, who took charge in 1986, IBM reduced its worldwide payroll from a high of 407,000 that year to 383,000 at the end of 1989 through voluntary severance offers. The figure is a few thousand lower now, though the company hasn’t disclosed the exact total.
Under the most recent cutback, announced in December, 1989, IBM said it would eliminate 10,000 U.S. workers. The company took a $2.4-billion charge against its 1989 profit to pay for the severance deals, resulting in a steep earnings drop that year.
IBM also has reassigned workers from factory floors and headquarters to sales offices, where they are helping improve customer service and beef up orders.
IBM’s transformation began after the company reported a 27% drop in earnings in 1986, which it blamed in part on a downturn in the economy and the computer industry.
“We also did some real introspection and concluded that part of the problem was ours,” said Frank A. Metz Jr., IBM’s chief financial officer.
That self-examination led to the recognition that IBM’s overhead was too costly. Its payroll and plants were at a level that required annual revenue growth of 13% to 15% to turn a profit, while revenue was growing at only half that rate.
IBM also decided that it must “re-emphasize our commitment to our customer,” Metz said in a recent interview at the company’s hilltop headquarters, about 25 miles north of New York City.
“We concluded that, although our products were good, it was taking us far too long to get our products to the marketplace, and too often they weren’t as responsive as they needed to be to our customer requirements,” he said.
That led IBM to loosen the centralized decision-making that had long been its hallmark.
“There are a lot of decisions made in this company today--important decisions, operational decisions--that we’re not involved in here,” Metz said.
An association that represents IBM customers says it has noticed the company’s new attitude.
“The openness has changed tremendously,” said Merrikay Lee, secretary of Common, which represents users of IBM mid-range computers. “They used to listen but never really incorporated their customers into the fold. Now they’re much more willing to talk and listen.”
Metz said the process of downsizing IBM will continue, though he doesn’t expect another major restructuring.
IBM’s moves already have boosted its profit. For the first nine months of 1990, it earned $3.56 billion, compared to $3.17 billion in the same period a year earlier.
Analyst Cliff Friedman of Bear, Stearns & Co. predicts that IBM will earn $10.20 a share for 1990, up from the $9.05 it would have earned in 1989 had it not been for the restructuring charge that slashed profit to $6.47 per share.
IBM’s improving fortunes have been reflected in its stock price, which has risen to about $113 a share.
Although rejuvenated, IBM isn’t out of the woods. One looming threat is the recession. Another is the increasing competition in the computer industry as its growth rate slows.
In addition, IBM’s profit could be squeezed by computer users’ increasing interest in “open” systems, those that allow machines from different makers to work together. Open-system computers have a lower profit margin than proprietary models such as IBM’s mainframes and minicomputers.
Despite its recent resurgence, “over the long term, IBM’s going to wind up losing market share,” predicted analyst Stephen Cohen of SoundView Financial Group Inc. “Industry (profit) margins are going to be declining because it’s a maturing industry. I think IBM is going to face some very stiff competition.”
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1ff2aa8ca25ec036d2649d80bf9a83d6
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https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1990-12-31-fi-5692-story.html
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Ruble Confusion Leads to <i> Dollarization</i>
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Ruble Confusion Leads to <i> Dollarization</i>
The U.S. dollar is rapidly becoming the currency of choice in the Soviet Union due to growing confusion over the value of the ruble during the country’s struggle to become a market-driven economy.
Rubles are worth nothing outside the Soviet Union because the government refuses to back them with hard currency, gold or silver.
But inside the country, tourists can walk up to a Moscow hotel currency booth and buy six rubles for one dollar, or 16 cents each. If they use a credit card, they get 1.8 rubles per dollar, the so-called commercial rate.
On the black market, a dollar fetches about 20 rubles.
“Confusion reigns everywhere,” said Andy Rafalat, deputy general director of Moscow’s two Pizza Hut restaurants.
More firms are switching as many transactions as possible to hard currencies, the favorite being the dollar.
Leaders of the huge Russian republic, who want to make the ruble the only legal currency in the country, have coined a word for the trend: dollarization.
Until recently, foreign businesses had dealt only in the official ruble, known in Russian as valuta. Price tags and restaurant menus were printed in official rubles, for example.
The rate was replaced in November, however, by a new commercial exchange rate that devalued the ruble from 1.6 to the dollar to 1.8.
In his decree, President Mikhail S. Gorbachev indicated this rate was to cover all international commercial transactions by Soviet companies as well as joint ventures with foreign firms and foreign residents in the Soviet Union.
The official rate was retained only for international currency comparisons and to protect Third World countries whose debts are in rubles.
Finland, the Soviet Union’s closest Western trading partner, was so confused that its central bank stopped clearing ruble transactions for nearly a week.
In Moscow, the Swiss-Soviet joint venture Sadko kept its staff on overtime one night to change all its price tags. Ruble prices were tripled, but since the new ruble was worth only one-third of the old one, the hard currency price remained the same.
Pizza Hut started writing its credit card bills in U.S. dollars to avoid being charged the higher exchange rate by banks ignoring the new rules.
Explanatory notes have been stapled to all hard currency menus, and Rafalat said the company is considering reprinting them in dollars instead of rubles next month to make them easier to understand.
“The only 100% clear road I can see is by quoting prices in another currency. As we receive most of our hard currency in dollars, dollars seem to be the most obvious thing to quote,” he said.
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24e4b61a66da5319c7f18183d79a9cbc
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https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1990-12-31-fi-5695-story.html
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Bond Outlook for Early ’91 Is Good : Credit: Treasuries historically do well when stocks, property and other investments appear at their riskiest.
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Bond Outlook for Early ’91 Is Good : Credit: Treasuries historically do well when stocks, property and other investments appear at their riskiest.
With recession on most economists’ calendars for the first half of 1991, the outlook for bonds is good.
U.S. Treasuries, the safest investment available, historically do well in economic slumps as the stock market, real estate and other investments appear at their riskiest.
Economists predict that rallying bond prices will push the yield for the 30-year Treasury bond down to around 7.5% in 1991. The benchmark bond has been yielding around 8.3% in recent days and was above 9% as recently as early October.
The bond market has been rallying since the Federal Reserve early last month signaled that it was ready to lower interest rates to increase economic activity.
The Fed cut its target for the federal funds rate three times in December--in 0.25 percentage-point increments--to 7%. The central bank also lowered the discount rate by 0.50 percentage point to 6.5 percent.
The federal funds rate is the overnight loan rate between banks. The discount rate is the Fed’s loan fee to banks.
Two factors could strongly affect bond prices and their yields. The Persian Gulf crisis continues to be unpredictable, and Federal Reserve policy, as always, will influence bond yields.
There is strong pressure from Washington for the Fed to ease more aggressively. However, some on Wall Street are concerned that lowering interest rates too much would aggravate inflation, which erodes the value of fixed-income securities such as bonds.
“If the Fed moves too quickly, inflation expectations could rise,” said Lawrence A. Kudlow, chief economist at Bear, Stearns & Co. As it has thus far, the Fed should take its cue from the bond market and gold prices, according to Kudlow. Falling gold prices and rising bond prices should precede another Fed easing move, he said.
Kudlow expects long-term bond yields to fall to 7.6% by midyear and fluctuate around there for the rest of the year.
John Lonski, senior economist at Moody’s Investors Service Inc., says long-term interest rates could fall to 7.35% if core inflation--excluding food and energy--is significantly reduced.
“Increased government borrowing will put pressure on bond yields, but cutbacks in private-sector borrowing will ensure an adequate amount of funds,” he said. Also, banks and others will put more money in Treasury securities.
The safety of Treasury bills, notes and bonds historically attracts investors wary of the risks inherent in investing in an economic downturn. Treasury securities are seen as safe because they are backed by the government. If the federal government couldn’t pay its debts, money wouldn’t be of much use because the economy would be in shambles.
Corporate bond prices are expected to follow Treasury bonds. The fortunes of corporate borrowers and their ability to repay debt will be helped if interest rates go lower.
“The corporate market is basically trying to determine the outlook for profits, cash flows and credit worthiness--there’s nothing better than lower interest rates,” Kudlow said.
Junk bonds will probably still be in the dumper in the coming year.
In 1990, $22 billion in corporate bonds--issued by 91 companies--defaulted, according to preliminary numbers compiled by the Bond Investors Assn. The nonprofit group that tracks bond defaults expects $25 billion worth of corporate debt to default in 1991.
The economic slowdown, combined with lack of demand for new issues of junk bonds, is causing the spiraling default rates, said C. Richard Lehmann, Bond Investors Assn. president.
Before the collapse of the junk bond market, issuers could avoid default and restructure their debt by floating new bonds. Now that junk bond buyers have all but disappeared, that option is gone.
The trend lately has been for issuers to give up equity to bondholders to entice them to agree to a restructuring.
Some investors, most notably TWA Chairman Carl C. Icahn, have been selectively buying junk bonds with hopes of picking up a profit in a debt-for-equity swap.
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e247eafa780ab19c75294652afea6c45
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https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1990-12-31-fi-5696-story.html
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Medical Issues Led Stocks in 1990 : Markets: They advanced an average of 20% in value. Bank and savings and loan shares dominated Wall Street’s sick list.
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Medical Issues Led Stocks in 1990 : Markets: They advanced an average of 20% in value. Bank and savings and loan shares dominated Wall Street’s sick list.
In the anemic environment that prevailed on Wall Street in 1990, medical and drug stocks proved to be the best prescription for financial health.
At the same time, shares of bank and savings and loan holding companies dominated the market’s sick list as the year drew to a close.
Most broad-based indicators of stock-price trends showed double-digit percentage losses for 1990 as of late December. That was the poorest performance since the bear market of 1981-82.
Just 11 of 82 stock groups tracked by Dow Jones & Co.'s industry-group indexes posted gains for the year through the close of trading Dec. 21.
The medical and biotechnology group led the pack, with an advance of better than 20%, followed by medical supplies, pharmaceutical manufacturers, health-care providers and retail drug chains.
The performance of these stocks testifies that health care remains a booming--though by no means trouble-free--business in the early 1990s.
While the nation debates what to do about soaring health costs and uneven distribution of medical services, many companies in the field continue to thrive as the population ages.
Technology and other innovation add an extra measure of opportunity, however risky in business terms, for venturesome health-care enterprises both large and small.
A just-published quarterly report by the Value Line Investment Survey on the medical supplies industry cites “growing demand for health care, a decent pricing environment and the entry of more high-margined products” as major reasons for recent enthusiasm over stocks of this kind.
Even the gloomy outlook for the economy has worked in favor of health-care stocks, by encouraging investors to look for defensive issues that are insulated from the effects of a business slump.
As Value Line observed in its latest evaluation of drug stocks, “pharmaceutical manufacturers have always been known for their defensive characteristics.
“They look particularly recession-resistant this time around, due to the elimination of many low-margined non-health-care product lines over the course of the last several years.”
An example of a standout health-care stock in 1990: U.S. Surgical, producer of a line of products used in surgical stapling, which soared from 24 1/8 in January to a recent high just under 70.
Turn U.S. Surgical’s stock chart upside down, and you would have a pretty fair representation of what happened to many bank and savings and loan issues the past year.
Dow Jones’s S&L; index fell nearly 60%, its gauge of money-center banks dropped 37% and its composite of regional banks lost 40%.
The story gets even more somber when you look at the behavior of individual banking and S&L; issues. Bank of New England, for example, fell from above 9 to less than 1, for a drop of 93%.
First City Bancorp, Crossland Savings, Unionfed Financial, Citytrust Bancorp and HomeFed all suffered declines of more than 80%.
In the last few weeks of 1990, many depressed financial issues have rallied a bit on buy orders from investors attracted by distress merchandise.
If the upswing in bank stocks were to continue, analysts say, it might start shaping up as a signal that the worst of the nation’s spell of debt retrenchment and credit crunch were past.
But whether such hopes are warranted remains to be determined in 1991.
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5c4a4e209d849eb9612a00082fb847a4
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https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1990-12-31-fi-5749-story.html
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Day of the Deal-Maker Is Over : Real Estate Managers Are Supplanting Entrepreneurs : Questions & Answers: JAMES J. GORMAN
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Day of the Deal-Maker Is Over : Real Estate Managers Are Supplanting Entrepreneurs : Questions & Answers: JAMES J. GORMAN
James J. Gorman used to be a real estate executive before joining the executive search firm Korn/Ferry International two years ago. Now he specializes in rounding up executives for Southern California’s large real estate industry.
The problem is, the industry doesn’t need all that many executives these days. Or any other types of employees, for that matter. The real estate industry in Southern California and across the nation is going through one of the most wrenching periods anyone can remember. It is reminiscent, some experts say, to the kind of widespread and permanent changes that the auto and steel industries have seen.
Consequently, real estate companies will look far different in the future, and the types of executives they’ll need will change dramatically, Gorman says. The flashy, entrepreneurial developer will be largely gone. In his place will be a more corporate type, more prone to pin-striped suits and business-school case studies than wheeling and dealing.
Korn/Ferry, with headquarters in Los Angeles, is the world’s largest executive search firm and has offices worldwide.
Gorman, 53, graduated from Loyola University of Chicago and worked as a mortgage banker and lending officer in Chicago before joining Korn/Ferry in Chicago. He is now a vice president.
He recently moved to Irvine and works out of Korn/Ferry’s small Orange County outpost in a modest office near John Wayne Airport in Newport Beach.
In a recent interview with Times staff writer Michael Flagg, Gorman talked about what the industry will look like in the 1990s and what types of people it will need to survive.
Q. First a background question. How’s the executive search business work?
A. We work strictly for the employer. We do not represent the employee. We charge a fee on the basis of the first year’s cash compensation. Our fee normally runs one-third of that. The firm does search work in every industry. As a retained search firm versus a contingency firm, I don’t think we operate too differently from other firms, nor is our fee structure much different.
Q. How many people work in the real estate section of the firm?
A. Three other people and I specialize in the real estate industry.
Q. Do all the big search firms have a specialty in real estate executives?
A. Most of the larger retained search firms have partners that work primarily in real estate, and there are also a number of small boutique firms that work in the real estate field.
Q. Is real estate a new field for these firms or have search firms always worked for real estate companies?
A. We’ve had a partner specializing in real estate for the last 18 years, and over the years we’ve had two or three partners doing it.
Q. Typically, what kind of industries are big users of search firms?
A. I would say almost every large industry uses search firms to one degree or another.
Q. How important is real estate work to your firm?
A. It’s a small percentage of our total revenues. It’s not a significant piece of the business. But it’s a very profitable piece of the business.
Q. Real estate developers generally haven’t used executive search firms as much as other industries, have they?
A. That may have been true years ago, but as the industry itself has become more sophisticated, people realize that the good-old-boy network doesn’t really work anymore and that these firms have become more professional and more sophisticated. So they’ve begun to use search firms more and more over, say, the last five to 10 years.
Q. Traditionally, there was an old-boy network among these companies, then?
A. I think so. But the industry’s become more institutionalized, and they’ve had to hire people who fit into that situation.
Q. Given the problems the real estate business is going through right now, that part of the search business can’t exactly be a high-growth area, can it?
A. Not right now. There are a lot of people looking for jobs, but there aren’t that many jobs available. The industry is going through a retooling process. It’s certainly in a down cycle, and the dust hasn’t settled yet. Everybody has taken a half-step backward and said: “Let’s wait and see how bad the problems are and how they shake out.” The biggest problems, of course, are the oversupply of space and the undersupply of capital.
Q. By “retooling,” I assume you mean layoffs, which have already occurred widely, even in a relatively prosperous area such as Orange County. How many people are going to lose their jobs in this business overall?
A. If you read the trade publications over the last few months, the soothsayers are predicting that there will be anywhere from 25% to 50% fewer people in the industry by the end of 1991 or 1992. So the number depends on whom you believe, but there will certainly be a lot fewer people. And there will be different kinds of people coming in.
Q. How so?
A. The industry has changed from being focused on development and finance to one that’s going to be focused on operations and management of assets.
Q. Is this decline in jobs going to be a permanent thing? Or will they come back once we go into an up cycle?
A. No, they won’t. This cycle, I believe, is going to be a lot more serious and a lot longer than the previous ones have been.
Q. Why? What’s different about this down cycle from some of the others, after which the industry came back strongly?
A. First of all, I don’t think we’ve ever had as serious an oversupply problem in this industry as we do today. It’s extremely serious, and it’s serious in almost every major first- and second-tier market I can think of. You couple that with the fact we have an economy that’s slowed down significantly, with no immediate hope of it fueling up again, and it’s clear that empty space is not going to be absorbed nearly as quickly as people have projected it would be. You go to a major market like Orange County or Los Angeles--where there is a significant amount of space still under development right now that is going to further add to overdevelopment--and I don’t see where we’re going to come out of this cycle for quite some time.
Q. Then there’s the fact nobody can borrow any money for a real estate deal anymore, isn’t there?
A. Yes. You couple all of this with the fact we have no liquidity in this business, which has never been the case before. Back in the early 1980s we had high interest rates but ample money, and deals were being made. Today there’s no money, regardless of the cost. Actually, interest rates are not that high these days, but there’s no money available. At least, the sources of the money say there’s no money available, although I’m not so sure that’s true.
Q. A lot of people say developers won’t be building many buildings on spec--that is, with no particular tenant in mind but with the expectation the building will lease up--in the 1990s. True?
A. Absolutely. I’m not so sure there will ever be a big spec market again.
Q. Why?
A. I think people are going to have longer memories after this cycle. And I doubt very seriously if the banks, insurance companies and pension funds are going to provide that easy, inexpensive capital for developers that’s been the case in the last 15 or 20 years.
Q. So what happens instead?
A. Most of what you will see in the future--not all, but most--will be build-to-suit. The developers that are building spec properties are going to have to have their own equity in the deal, and the properties themselves are going to have to have significant pre-leasing before any funds will be made available. The supply-and-demand ratio of buildings will be a lot more in balance in the future. It’s not going to be a year or two, and then everything’s going to be rosy.
Q. How long do you think the down cycle’s going to last?
A. Hard to say, but probably three years. In some markets, five years, partly because I believe the institutions (pension funds, insurance companies) that provide capital will play by different rules in the future. The money’s not going to be so cheap or so plentiful. The real estate industry will be more regulated and more institutionalized.
Q. So where do search firms fit into all this?
A. Search firms will be spending more of their time looking for asset managers and operations-oriented executives. We’ll be looking for fewer developers and deal-makers.
Q. Where will the entrepreneurial, development- and deal-oriented types go?
A. I think there are significant numbers of real estate people who will have to move into other industries. If somebody’s been a successful marketing person in real estate, he’s probably going to have to take a hard look at selling those skills in another industry.
Q. So guys who have traditionally been asset managers, say, must be in some demand in the business today?
A. They’re in very, very strong demand.
Q. That’s kind of ironic, given that’s the least glamorous, least sexy part of the business.
A. Yes, but the bulk of the activity in the business is not going to be development. It’s going to be managing the buildings that are already here, and you’re going to need those kinds of people. It might not be glamorous, but it’s necessary today.
Q. People say real estate companies are likely to become just another type of service company, building mostly for other people for a fee instead of getting a piece of the ownership of the building. Do you agree?
A. The bulk of the real estate companies that will survive this cycle will be mostly generating revenue from fees. They’ll become merchant builders, asset managers, that kind of thing. And the banks and insurance companies and offshore investors that will be buying a lot of these buildings that are struggling these days will be looking to the development companies to manage these assets.
Q. So most of the companies that grew rapidly in the 1980s, the Kolls and the Birtchers, probably won’t be growing nearly as rapidly in the coming decade?
A. Absolutely. If you talk to any partner at any large company today, they’ll tell you the people who were involved in development are now going to be a lot more involved in asset management.
Q. When did this change start to happen?
A. It’s only been the last three or four months. Many companies have not cut back and won’t until the first of 1991. That’s when I think the big cuts will occur here and nationwide.
Q. But the overbuilding problem’s been around since the mid-1980s, and vacancies have been high in this county since the same period. Why the layoffs now?
A. People always have an ability to not believe the signs they see. Real estate people are the ultimate optimists. Just take a look at all the empty buildings around here.
Q. That’s one reason for the overbuilding, isn’t it? The people who built these large organizations had to keep feeding them with new projects and banked on the tenants still arriving in droves to fill them?
A. The developers have been able to borrow the money to keep that machine going. But now they’re no longer able to borrow, and that’s what’s going to shut the system down.
Q. Now it seems that the joint-venture partners are getting a bit more cautious and requiring developers to put their own money into some of these deals, doesn’t it?
A. Yes. Or the developers will be hired strictly as a subcontractor and won’t even get a piece of the deal. They’ll merely get a fee. The developers previously have received a significant piece of the equity--or whatever equity there is left in some of these buildings that are sitting empty or with tenants paying low rents--for their expertise. Now the institutions are turning around and saying, “What did we get for our money? A portfolio of empty properties?” That leads the institutions to say, “When we get back in the business again, we’re going to play by a whole new set of rules.” After all, they’ve got the money, and nobody else has money anymore.
Q. What kind of person goes into property management? What are the companies looking for?
A. First, he has to have excellent marketing skills. If he can’t keep the tenants in the building, what’s he doing? And a tremendous amount of efficiency will be required out of property managers today. They’re going to have to watch every single dime they spend, while still keeping their buildings aesthetically attractive, because the cash flow on these buildings is often little or none.
Q. Can you bring in an executive from another industry and have him or her succeed in the real estate business?
A. Sure. You’ll find at the big brokerages and development companies that many of their top people came from IBM and Xerox and other big companies. Marketing has always been a lot of what it takes to be successful in real estate--good salesmanship. Now I think it’s going to change. You’ll have to be a little more numbers oriented.
Q. As you travel around the country, do you perceive any differences between Orange County and other markets? Are we really quite as strong economically as people say?
A. There are differences. As long as you continue to have growth in the population in Southern California, there’s going to be more opportunities for growth in every industry, not just real estate. My guess is that Orange County will suffer less because of its diversity and the strong business activity here. The real estate industry is big here, but it’s not enough to negate the effect of local businesses that are surviving better than real estate. One interesting thing, though: This is the only time in this industry that I can think of where the unemployment is higher in the white-collar area than it is in the blue-collar area.
Q. What about the outlook for your own business? Are the local real estate developers likely to hire a firm such as Korn/Ferry to help it find people in an era of cost-cutting?
A. We have excellent relationships with most of the big developers, including the Koll Co. and the Irvine Co., and I expect that when things turn around they’ll be asking us to come back and work for them again. But right now we’re doing a lot less search work in real estate. And it may well be that we’ll have to find work in other areas besides real estate, at least for a while. I’ve done search work in other industries, but not much because there was so much business to be done in real estate. Now I have more time, and I’ll be doing search work in other industries.
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7c76c7f688e7e46083d19dc252b34796
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https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1990-12-31-fi-5752-story.html
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His Entrepreneurial Spirit Pointed to Success : Retail: Larry Imperiale, 1986 winner of San Diego State’s business plan competition, saw a niche among the point-of-sale giants and filled it.
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His Entrepreneurial Spirit Pointed to Success : Retail: Larry Imperiale, 1986 winner of San Diego State’s business plan competition, saw a niche among the point-of-sale giants and filled it.
Not all winners of the annual San Diego State University business plan competition go on to start a business, much less become successful.
But Larry Imperiale did and is.
His company, SalePoint, has become a leading producer of point-of-sale systems used by specialty retailers to track sales and inventory and to improve store operations. SalePoint expects to do more than $4 million in sales in 1990, only its third full year in business. SalePoint systems, which basically are cash registers linked to personal computers, consist of SalePoint-designed software and International Business Machines hardware.
Imperiale’s company has thrived despite heavy competition from corporate giants such as NCR, Fujitsu and IBM. Among SalePoint’s successes are agreements to supply systems to retailers such as Williams-Sonoma, The Nature Company, Egghead Software and Universal Studios in California and Florida.
Imperiale, 32, attributes his success in large part to the annual SDSU business plan competition, which he won in 1986 shortly before receiving his master’s degree in business administration. The young entrepreneur said the competition forced him to focus and concentrate his ideas in coming up with what became the blueprint for starting SalePoint in 1987.
Business plans are documents that entrepreneurs use to lay the groundwork for a new enterprise. The documents, which contain an array of market, technical and financial information, also serve as marketing tools used to attract capital from investors or lenders.
Each year, SDSU sponsors a competition to encourage business students to come to grips with the hard realities of starting up a new business and to foster the entrepreneurial spirit. The competition is held every December and is judged by an outside panel, including San Diego business executives, bankers, venture capitalists and journalists.
For Imperiale, a Redwood City native who attended SDSU’s graduate business school while holding down a full-time job at Triad Systems, his contest entry became “the vehicle for taking my idea and putting brackets around it.”
“The plan was a way of saying, here’s how to go about doing it, forcing me to write it down, plan it out and anticipate all the obstacles I’d run into,” Imperiale said. “Academically, (the contest) let me tie in everything I learned through my business school program through one exercise. That’s what’s lacking in most business schools. There is so much theoretical stuff that you lose touch with the pragmatic.”
The thesis of Imperiale’s plan was that there was an opportunity in the retail point-of-sale market to develop a system suited to specialty retail stores. Imperiale knew what he was talking about: he was working in point-of-sale products for Triad Systems.
At the time he wrote his plan, most of the advanced point-of-sale systems offered by IBM, NCR and others were targeting very large operations such as department stores that were likely to have 100 or more cash registers per location.
Smaller stores and chains were being neglected, Imperiale said, because it was easier for the manufacturers to sell and service the larger accounts. And not many small businesses could afford the cost of the IBM and NCR systems, which made economic sense only if the cost could be spread out among dozens of “points of sale,” or cash registers.
After Triad declined to take up his idea, Imperiale resigned and started out on his own. He soon took on as his partner Alan Grant, a retired San Jose venture capitalist living in Coronado and a former national director of the American Electronics Assn. Grant helped Imperiale navigate the rough financial waters that all start-up companies encounter.
Imperiale’s company set out to develop a product geared to retailers with less than 10 cash registers per store, and costing half what IBM was charging per register. SalePoint’s system would also use operating software that permitted store managers to use the computers for a variety of purposes. A drawback of IBM’s proprietary software used in its large-store systems was that it was good only for the point-of-sale system, Imperiale said.
The product SalePoint introduced in 1988 was good enough that IBM accepted the company as an “industry remarketer” of its products, a tacit admission that SalePoint could serve a computer market that Big Blue couldn’t, IBM’s Beverly de Luise said Monday.
“IBM depends on its industry remarketers to help us get into niches that IBM does not have solutions for,” said De Luise, a Raleigh, N.C.-based marketing representative who has responsibility for store systems products. “Theme parks are a good example. SalePoint has sold IBM hardware into Universal Studios. We use them as marketing arms and legs for us.”
Despite contractual terms that prohibit SalePoint from selling its software with other brands of point-of-sale hardware, Imperiale said his relationship with IBM has worked well. The main advantage has been the sales leads that it receives from IBM salespeople, who receive the same commissions from a SalePoint deal that they would from selling the systems themselves.
The industry term industry remarketer has come to replace value-added reseller , or VAR , as a description for a company that buys computer hardware, then adds its own software, hardware or technical expertise before reselling the package to the end user, Imperiale said. There are an estimated 8,000 such companies in the country, according to International Data Corp., a market research firm based in Framingham, Mass.
SalePoint’s five-year, $5-million deal signed last June to supply point-of-sale systems to Williams-Sonoma, a San Francisco-based retailer of specialty cookware items, was “a real feather in their cap,” said Thomas H. Friedman, publisher of Retail Systems Alert, a Newton, Mass.-based industry newsletter that reports on retail automation trends.
“There are companies that are bigger than SalePoint, wealthier than SalePoint, with more technical resources than SalePoint, but there are few companies with the tenacity of SalePoint,” Friedman said.
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6a31a3c58b87ceead8aa9d73fd955219
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https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1990-12-31-fi-5753-story.html
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A weekly look at office and industrial real estate in the county.
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A weekly look at office and industrial real estate in the county.
EL TORO COMMERCIAL AND INDUSTRIAL REAL ESTATE As of Sept. 30, 1990. OFFICE BUILDINGS Existing Buildings Number: 9 Total square feet: 393,938 Vacant space: 57,399 Vacancy rate: 14.57% Monthly Lease Rates Per Square Foot Existing Vacant Office Space Average: $1.50 Low: $1.30 High: $1.75 High Tech/Research & Development Space Sale price per square foot Average: $93.50 Low: $91.00 High: $96.00 Lease price per square foot Average: $0.66 Low: $0.58 High: $0.70 Manufacturing/Warehouse Space Sale price per square foot Average: $85.67 Low: $82.00 High: $91.00 Lease price per square foot Average: $0.61 Low: $0.53 High: $0.70 Source: Coldwell Banker
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418bf2bda449828e47169b5230bd3440
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https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1990-12-31-fi-5776-story.html
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P.M. BRIEFING : USG Postponing Debt Payments
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P.M. BRIEFING : USG Postponing Debt Payments
USG Corp., one of the nation’s largest building products manufacturers, said today that it is postponing debt payments and selling a major subsidiary because of the declining construction industry.
The company said its major bank lenders have agreed to cooperate in the refinancing plan. In the interim, USG will defer payments of $105 million in principal due today to its senior lending banks. It will also not make interest payments on $40 million in loans from subordinated bondholders.
The company said it is postponing these payments in order to strengthen its cash position so that it can pay its trade and operating expenses during the financial restructuring.
It said it is also seeking an equity investor.
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a77875a4e2a5108c67807fb77becabf2
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https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1990-12-31-fi-5777-story.html
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London Stocks Tumble 16.9
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London Stocks Tumble 16.9
Share prices ended lower in an abbreviated session today on London’s Stock Exchange.
The market closed about four hours earlier than normal on New Year’s Eve.
At the close, the Financial Times-Stock Exchange 100-share index was down 16.9 points, or 0.8%, at 2,143.5.
For the year, the 100-share index fell 279.2 points, or 11.5% from its 1989 closing level of 2,422.7.
Closing volume was 129.9 million shares.
The market has been plagued with worries about Britain’s economic downturn and the country’s high interest rates, which currently stand at about 14%. In recent months, the market also has been nervous about the Persian Gulf crisis.
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02cb16a5ffadb1b653cfd825465d5575
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https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1990-12-31-fi-5778-story.html
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P.M. BRIEFING : Data General Drops Japan Pact
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P.M. BRIEFING : Data General Drops Japan Pact
Troubled Data General Corp. has dropped a product development agreement with Japan’s Nippon Telegraph & Telephone Corp., company officials said today.
The agreement with NTT to build high-speed hubs for private data communications networks was announced in 1987. The communications systems were to link voice, data and computers in large, private communications networks such as those used by corporations and universities.
NTT executives said then that the company planned to buy about $130-million worth of equipment to be developed by Data General. The purchases were to be made in a five-year period beginning in 1989.
But the project was scrapped after research showed there was not a strong market in Japan for such systems, said Jim Dunlap, a spokesman for Data General.
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82c6141bdcd61b4681619d14ba7aff55
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https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1990-12-31-fi-5779-story.html
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P.M. BRIEFING : Gusts Whip Boston Airport, Jet
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P.M. BRIEFING : Gusts Whip Boston Airport, Jet
Wind gusts damaged a passenger jet and a cargo building at Logan International Airport this morning, forcing at least one flight to be canceled and a terminal gateway to be closed. No injuries were reported.
An unoccupied USAir 737-200 was pushed against a jetway in the incident, which occurred at about 4 a.m., said airline spokeswoman Susan Young.
The leading edge of a wing was damaged, forcing USAir to take it out of service for at least a day and cancel an early morning flight to Charlotte, N.C. The jetway, at Gate 8 of the terminal building, also was damaged and the gate was shut down, Young said.
The airport authority said there was also damage to the roof of a freight and cargo building.
The wind, which was gusting up to 50 m.p.h., cracked a window at the National Car Rental car-return building, and three cars had broken windshields.
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f171a25dcb3c786fe39df2747b361ae9
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https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1990-12-31-fi-5783-story.html
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Colum-bust : U.S. Plan to Honor Discovery of America Hits Stormy Waters
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Colum-bust : U.S. Plan to Honor Discovery of America Hits Stormy Waters
A presidential commission planning the 500th anniversary celebration of Columbus’ voyage to America has been plagued by problems: a tiny budget, few corporate donations and, until this month, almost no publicity.
Now add a conflict-of-interest controversy to its list of woes.
The panel’s chairman, Miami real estate developer John Goudie, resigned amid disclosures that a close friend has ties to a company doing business with the commission.
The event’s biggest corporate sponsor, Texaco Inc., suspended its donations in September after raising questions about the commission’s management. Another potential sponsor, Chrysler Corp., may stay away from the event.
And a congressional subcommittee is looking into Goudie’s involvement with the Christopher Columbus Licensing Group Inc., or CCLG, of Miami and New York.
“To have this project blow up in our faces now is making it difficult to deal with future sponsors,” said Frederick Guardabassi, a Ft. Lauderdale, Fla., businessman who has served on the commission since 1985. “So much damage has been done to the commission. It’s a tragedy.”
The centerpieces of the celebration are replicas of Columbus’ three ships being built in Spain and originally financed with money from Texaco. The commission is $600,000 in arrears in payments for the ships, which are to follow Columbus’ route and visit 50 U.S. ports.
Chrysler says it wants to clear up unspecified contractual questions before making a donation of more than $1 million.
Congress has appropriated $210,000 a year for the commission, which pays for staff salaries and office space.
Strapped for cash, the commission turned to CCLG in 1989 because the company was willing to pay $300,000 immediately for the licensing rights to Columbus souvenirs.
The rights potentially are worth millions.
Goudie is a popular fund-raiser for Republican candidates in Florida. His Hispanic background made him a natural for the commission chairmanship, say GOP figures in Miami.
This year, CCLG paid at least $35,000 to Manuel Gonzalez, who describes Goudie as a close friend. The two Miami businessmen have known each other since their days in junior college, Gonzalez said during the course of several interviews.
Other commissioners said they didn’t know about Gonzalez’ role.
“I was stunned,” said Commissioner Charles Ginoli, who served on the finance committee that reviewed the CCLG contract.
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172f3f032dcdb776a8af392dfa632ebb
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https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1990-12-31-fi-5784-story.html
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StyroCop Gets Star Billing in Fight on Foam
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StyroCop Gets Star Billing in Fight on Foam
Like a patrolman on the beat, Lee Barrett strides into a Chinese restaurant, flashes his ID card and has a look around. “StyroCop” is on the trail of illicit carryout containers.
The city has gotten a complaint that the restaurant is putting its egg rolls and fried rice in boxes that violate Portland’s year-old ban on polystyrene foam fast-food containers.
Barrett, 44, a longtime environmental activist, is the ban’s enforcer. A local television reporter dubbed him StyroCop--a takeoff on the movie “RoboCop"--his first day on the job, and he’s become something of a celebrity.
The Portland law does not restrict containers made of paper or plastic not blown into foam. Those have been the alternatives used by fast-food restaurants, the only industry affected by the Portland law.
Businesses cited by Barrett face fines of $250 for a first offense and $500 for each subsequent offense.
Neither a police officer nor a health inspector, Barrett only responds to complaints received by the city. He’s written only a handful of tickets but says the law is a start and has raised public awareness.
Back at the Chinese restaurant, Barrett spots a stack of carryout containers in the kitchen and holds one up.
“That’s a hundred percent polystyrene,” he said. “Zero percent air.” It’s legal. Barrett asks to see a storeroom downstairs, where he finds more of the same.
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bb96c3ea24ee2bcf9e9d343942e296d7
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https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1990-12-31-me-5479-story.html
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LOTTERY RESULTS : DEC. 29
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LOTTERY RESULTS : DEC. 29
Saturday’s Winning Numbers: 5-20-21-28-33-46
Bonus Number: 1
Saturday’s Jackpot: $4.5 million
Winners per Category
No. of Prizes Winners Each 6 of 6 1 $4.5 million 5 of 6 plus bonus 2 $264,510 5 of 6 116 $4,560 4 of 6 7,260 $66 3 of 6 151,016 $5
The Big Spin
Margaret Halford, Sacramento, $100,000; Phyllis Goodwin, Bloomington, $80,000; Emily Hayes, Lakewood, $50,000; Kim Settle, American Canyon, $30,000; Alfonso Manzo, Los Angeles, $20,000; Ricky Neece, Huntington Beach, $20,000; Jack Dierberger, Bakersfield, $20,000; Humberto Albarran, Santa Barbara, $10,000
TOPPER
Saturday’s Winning Cities:
Torrance
Saugus
Escondido
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48a90f32e3c67d927c4431e16d27e37c
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https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1990-12-31-me-5484-story.html
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Rx for the ‘R’ Word? : Another Fed drop in rates might thaw banks
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Rx for the ‘R’ Word? : Another Fed drop in rates might thaw banks
The recession that is about to grip the U.S. economy has set off an unusual and disturbing phenomenon of deflation which is pushing down prices, particularly in the real estate market. Falling prices in normal times would be a boon to consumers, but now they are creating new uncertainties in an economy already overloaded in debt and weakened by widespread layoffs, loan delinquencies and a credit crunch.
Extraordinary times require some extraordinary measures--and courage. The Federal Reserve Board should consider cutting interest rates again to stimulate the economy. “The appropriate response to weakness in the economy is a more stimulative monetary policy,” said Rep. Lee Hamilton of Indiana, the Democratic chairman of the Joint Economic Committee of Congress.
True, the Fed has cut the federal funds rate that banks charge each other on overnight loans four times since July. It recently even cut the discount rate it charges on loans to banks for the first time since 1986.
But banks generally have failed to cut their interest rates because of a squeeze on their profits caused by problem real estate loans. Declining commercial real estate prices are throwing borrowers into default, putting pressure on beleaguered banks, which are reluctant to resume lending. Exacerbating all this is the prospect of war in the Mideast. If fighting breaks out, bankers and businesses expect slow payments and rising loan defaults.
The Fed’s traditional concern when it comes to firing up the economy is that reducing interest rates will fuel inflation. But the annual inflation rate, excluding energy, rose only 3.9% in November. What’s happening is a round of deflation with the prices declining for major assets such as real estate. There’s downward pressure on prices of commodities and consumer goods, too.
If debt levels were not so high, both business and consumers could take the hit. But that’s not the case, so lower prices could mean less profits for employers. That in turn could lead to more layoffs. Consumers will have less to spend. The result: A worsening and prolonged recession.
If the Fed drops interest rates (and banks follow suit this time around), it would mean lower home-loan rates--and anyone with a variable mortgage rate can appreciate what a savings that might mean.
A recent drop in home-loan rates helped sales of existing single family homes to rise 3% in November, reversing two months of steep declines, according to the National Assn. of Realtors. That’s not enough to mark a turnaround in housing, but it’s an encouraging sign that the slump in housing may have have hit bottom.
That’s welcome news--but a recovery in housing and elsewhere will depend on affordable interest rates.
The R word--though recession has never been acknowledged by President Bush--has cast a pall over Americans who already are worried about the grim prospect of war. It’s time for the Fed to step in with an encouraging move: another interest-rate cut.
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cd95e007f1d0e743b99430cdc293f98b
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https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1990-12-31-me-5485-story.html
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ETHICS WATCH : Alibi Suite
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ETHICS WATCH : Alibi Suite
In no-fault America, a Christmas package that arrives around New Year’s Day may elicit a sympathetic whine: “Good help is so hard to find.” From space programs, where failure costs big bucks, to toy ducks that won’t quack, explanations are often handled by lawyers, public relations staff or form letter, freeing management to create new reasons to pass the buck.
Small wonder that the five-year-old memory is so vivid of the president of Japan Air Lines resigning because one of his planes crashed, killing 520 passengers. That is not only rare but also unheard of in other societies where accidents also happen.
Now a Japanese businessman and 17 of his top people have pushed the blame barrier to some sort of record high.
President Norimasa Furuta and his colleagues at Mazda Motor Co. will take self-imposed salary cuts of 5% to 10% for the next three months for an offense against truth.
What they did was quietly call in owners of some 3,500 Luce models of the Mazda line--not sold in the United States--that had problems with their brake lights and cruise-control system and fix them up, sort of on the sly, without issuing a general recall. It’s true that they cut their pay only after the Transportation Ministry chided them, but they still deserve credit for setting a standard of personal responsibility out of reach of executives in most of the rest of the world.
Don’t be surprised if American workers--often chided for not being more like the Japanese in their work habits--regard this story as an example worth emulating in the corporate suite.
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332f4e50adb6ed0eae52aa851b261857
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https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1990-12-31-me-5488-story.html
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The Cost of Good Intentions : Times series on minority programs reveals abuses
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The Cost of Good Intentions : Times series on minority programs reveals abuses
A sort of Head Start program for adults, designed to help companies owned by minorities and women break down racial barriers in heavy construction, can, in the wrong hands, turn into a greedy free-for-all.
The goal is too worthwhile to be abandoned. But it may take action in Washington to pull the program out of the swamp of sharp practices and simple chiseling that Times writers John R. Hurst and Ronald B. Taylor described in a recent series of reports.
In dollar amounts, the cheating could be dismissed as small change. What they found is that as much as 9% of money that should go to minority contractors for work on the RTD’s Metro Rail is going to companies that are either bogus front groups for white contractors or fail to meet the means test of true minority groups. But in a program founded on principle, principle has to count.
Problems with the program, started in 1977 with a goal of signing up minority companies for 10% of the nation’s public works projects, crop up all over the country, but Hurst and Taylor found plenty to write about in Los Angeles alone.
An important part of the problem is that under pressure of meeting construction deadlines, public agencies often follow the path of least resistance. Take the case of Jon McGrath, who did $28.6 million worth of subcontracting on Metro Rail on the strength of his claim to a Cherokee ancestor.
McGrath established to the satisfaction of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma that he is 1/64th American Indian. A prime contractor accepted that as evidence of minority ownership of his company and signed McGrath up to do some work.
But, as Hurst and Taylor wrote, federal guidelines say that being black or Indian or a woman is not enough. The whole idea was a running start, not welfare. The problems cannot be used as an excuse to scuttle a worthwhile program. But the federal government can and must get a handle on the abuses that do occur and bring them to a halt.
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47fc31a31dc1f237551c09891ec4f80e
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https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1990-12-31-me-5583-story.html
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Straight Talk Leaves Him Out of Work Again
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Straight Talk Leaves Him Out of Work Again
Howard Robbins has talked his way into unemployment again.
Some months ago, I told you how Robbins, 24, was fired as a security guard in Sorrento Valley after urging an engineering firm to recycle its trash.
Since then, he signed up with Volt Temporary Services, which found him a $6.30-an-hour job with a contractor who is remodeling the Marriott Residency Inn in La Jolla.
Things were jolly until Robbins discovered that his pay was only 52% of the hourly amount the contractor was paying Volt.
Robbins remembered seeing a video at Volt saying that employees got 72.9% of the amount that employers pay Volt. He talked with the Volt manager in Clairemont about the discrepancy.
Robbins says the manager informed him that the contractor had just notified her that Robbins’ services were no longer required. Robbins felt he was being snookered.
Leon Boone, the contractor, said he was sorry to lose a hard worker like Robbins:
“Volt called and said Howard had been reassigned and wouldn’t be coming back. They told me that they had concerns about him because he had raised some questions about how much he was being paid.”
The Volt manager in Clairemont won’t discuss Robbins. Neither will the Volt regional supervisor in Orange County, who suggested that I was a spy for a rival job agency.
After several days, the supervisor told Robbins that he could return to work if Boone approved. But Boone already had received a replacement worker from Volt and had no openings.
Robbins, a business major at Mesa College, is out of luck and out of work.
He knows he may suffer further lumps unless he learns to bend a bit in pursuit of a paycheck. He has a solution:
“I think I should work for myself.”
Sounds like a good idea.
Looking for a Connection
Here and there.
* Money and politics.
The district attorney’s office is looking at an accusation by disaffected Sierra Clubber Mark Zerbe about an alleged plan (never carried out) to use the Sierra Club to funnel money from Hartson Medical Service to the City Council campaign of Linda Bernhardt.
* Even the mansion market is feeling the real estate chill.
Four longtime firms at Rancho Santa Fe are merging for self preservation.
Coldwell Banker and RSF Acreage & Homes will join; the same for Grubb & Ellis and Crosby Real Estate.
* Sixteen San Diego cops and 20 San Diego County sheriff’s deputies have been called to active duty as military reservists.
Highest-ranking is Sheriff’s Capt. Bob Apostolos, in charge of the Encinitas station.
* The Naval Health Research Center in San Diego is studying how to prevent dehydration among U.S. troops in Saudi Arabia.
Volunteers wearing 60-pound packs spend two hours on treadmills in 120-degree heat. Four liquids are being tested, including Gatorade.
What Price Friendship?
Memories.
* How soon they forget.
When Don R. Dixon was living fancy in Solana Beach, he traveled in impressive local circles: business, religious (he gave to Catholic charities) and political (he gave to Rep. Bill Lowery).
But now he’s been convicted of savings-and-loan fraud in Dallas.
Of 80 letters submitted to the judge asking for leniency, not one came from San Diego County.
* Danke schoen.
Pete Wilson issued a press release last week thanking his “old friend” Wayne Newton for agreeing to perform at his inaugural bash in Sacramento.
It’s unclear, though, how close the governor-elect and the Las Vegas headliner are.
When asked to name his favorite Newton song, Wilson said, “The Battle Hymn of the Republic.” (P.S.: Newton attended high school with Wilson’s wife, Gayle.)
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4b0463f3e61c57d75e8447542e289d22
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https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1990-12-31-me-5584-story.html
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King Tut, Zoo’s Famous Longtime Greeter, Dies
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King Tut, Zoo’s Famous Longtime Greeter, Dies
King Tut, the salmon-crested cockatoo that served for 64 years as the San Diego Zoo’s official greeter and became one of its best-known symbols, died Sunday. The oldest bird at the zoo, he was believed to be at least 67.
Tut, who greeted well over 100 million visitors from his perch near the zoo’s entrance from 1925 until his retirement in 1989, was found floundering Sunday morning in the zoo’s bird yard by keepers, who had heard odd squawking noises.
Veterinarians brought oxygen and tried cardiopulmonary resuscitation on Tut, who had fallen from his perch. But the bird, a veteran of stage and screen whose frailty in recent years had prompted his retirement and whose celebrity had earned him special treats, including a personal cache of peanut butter, died about noon, zoo officials said.
“It happened suddenly,” said Amy Shima, a zoo veterinarian who had rushed to the bird yard after keepers reported the odd squawks. “There were no signs of ill health, no trauma. He was an old bird, but appeared normal up until his fall.”
King Tut’s death shook zoo officials, who on Dec. 23 put to death Maya, a 51-year-old Asian elephant, the oldest living mammal at the facility.
“Last Sunday the oldest elephant died. Now the oldest bird,” said Jeff Jouett, a zoo spokesman. “And we had not yet gotten over missing Maya.
“King Tut was the sweetest bird. He was friendly to everyone. He had millions of fans.”
The elephant was put to death after she fell into a moat and crippled herself, sparking criticism from the Humane Society of the United States that the zoo’s elephant exhibit is inadequate and dangerous for the enormous animals and the human keepers. Zoo officials have denied the charges.
The cause of King Tut’s death appeared to be heart and liver failure, a pathologist told zoo officials Sunday afternoon. Marilyn Anderson told officials that she found heart damage as well as a large liver cyst, but needed to do more tests to decide whether the cyst was caused by cirrhosis or a tumor, Jouett said.
Tut’s longtime keeper, Jerry Gallenberger, could not be reached Sunday for comment.
In recent years, Tut had held out against blindness, laryngitis and bouts of arthritis. Cockatoos can live into their 70s.
Those ills prompted Tut’s June, 1989, retirement from the greeter’s perch. The bird continued to appear, however, at school assemblies and zoo tours, Jouett said.
On Sunday morning, Tut appeared at a tour for zoo members and “was petted by 20 or 30 people,” he said.
Retirement had not dulled Tut’s celebrity at the zoo, Jouett said. Keepers still prepared personal meals for him of cooked sweet potatoes and carrots, soft fruit and peanuts. And there was that personal jar of peanut butter, Jouett said.
“It had to be creamy, not crunchy,” Jouett said. “He had to have his creamy peanut butter. He even preferred a specific brand--Skippy.”
For 64 years, Tut fluffed his feathers for zoo visitors, including U.S. Presidents Jimmy Carter and Gerald Ford and Japanese Emperor Hirohito.
At his perch, the bird “would swing his head from side to side and cackle and fluff out his feathers and people were just drawn to him,” Jouett said. “Every tour bus went by and saluted King Tut. There is no single animal in the zoo who has ever had as much affection.”
King Tut loved attention, Jouett said. And people were eager to please the bird, he said.
“After he had been out or been with people, when he was put back on his perch, he would scream and scream and scream, trying to get the keepers or people to come back and pet him some more,” Jouett said. “He was a real character. He imitated every bird in the bird yard. He had a repertory of bird calls that was amazing.”
Named after the famous Egyptian king, King Tut immigrated with keeper Frank Buck from Singapore in 1925. Tut was then already an adult, meaning he was at least 2 years old, but the bird’s precise age has always been uncertain, Jouett said.
Sometime after arriving in the United States, Tut was sold to a La Mesa couple who collected birds and who shared the bird with the zoo.
Tut quickly learned show-biz basics--singing, whistling, talking--and performed at the zoo and other venues. After years of scattering his talents, the bird came to the zoo to stay in 1951.
The bird appeared on several TV shows, was featured in performances at the Old Globe Theatre and Starlight Opera, and starred in many documentaries about the San Diego Zoo.
King Tut’s replacement for official greeter has been hard to find, zoo officials said.
When Tut retired 18 months ago, the zoo had a replacement waiting in the wings--Teddy, another salmon-colored cockatoo. But Teddy, who was then 5, “didn’t work out because he was too friendly,” Jouett said. “He kept flying off his perch and landing on people’s shoulders.”
Currently, zoo officials rotate three blue-and-gold macaws at the perch, Jouett said.
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d9523beb450e090cdbe9e829dc976c01
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https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1990-12-31-me-5585-story.html
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Loss Reinforces Oceanside’s Ties With Marines : Changing times: Once embarrassed by its identity as a military town, the community is rediscovering its link with Camp Pendleton’s Marines.
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Loss Reinforces Oceanside’s Ties With Marines : Changing times: Once embarrassed by its identity as a military town, the community is rediscovering its link with Camp Pendleton’s Marines.
For years, Oceanside has fought its reputation as a raunchy garrison town where young Marines from neighboring Camp Pendleton busted up bars and kept hookers in easy federal money.
There was truth behind that image during the Vietnam War era, when Marines, many of them reluctant draftees, lingered in the downtown, adrift in drugs and booze, confused by the detested war.
But now, with a new generation of 20,000 to 30,000 local Marines shipped off to the Middle East, Oceanside is left with an irony.
For all its civic desire to downplay the Marines and tout itself as a shimmering coastal mecca for tourism and investment, the city is rediscovering the economic and spiritual bonds that have connected it to the military since the base opened in 1942.
Even though an influx of urban refugees from Los Angeles and Orange counties has helped swell the population to nearly 130,000, Oceanside remains a fundamentally conservative, pro-military community that cares about its Marines.
Especially now, during the sentimental holidays.
“I’ve been receiving an outpouring of comfort and love within the last month,” said Linda Rodarte, the wife of a staff sergeant deployed to the gulf.
The native of Leitchfield, Ky., population 18,000, is used to an effusion of small-town patriotism and support when the boys have left for war. Rodarte was surprised by the reaction in Oceanside when people spotted the yellow ribbon fluttering from her car.
“Even driving on the road, somebody would put thumbs up,” she said. “When I pulled into the mini market, people grinned. I’d expect that in my hometown, but I didn’t expect it in Oceanside.”
Certainly there have been no parades down Hill Street, or any outburst of Splendid Little War jingoism a la 1898, but in poignant ways civilians have rallied to the Marines and the families left behind.
City Councilwoman Melba Bishop, whose husband, Lucky, was a career Marine who served four tours in Vietnam, observed that the military-civilian relationship links the whole community.
“There’s nobody in this town who doesn’t have some dealing with a Marine family,” said Bishop. “It’s a military community pulling together better than it’s ever done.”
Emotions are running so high that when the Armed Forces YMCA put on its annual program to place Marines with local families for Christmas, there weren’t enough young Marines to go around.
YMCA Executive Director Glen Bryson said that last year, 200 families invited Marines for Yule dinner, a number that doubled this time around.
Bryson said, “We had to stop taking phone calls from families wanting to take Marines home for Christmas because we didn’t have enough Marines.”
Many of the families had never invited servicemen into their homes before, but somehow the tense Middle East situation inspired them to extend their hospitality.
Lee Schwabe, a bank loan agent who moved from Anaheim to Oceanside 1 1/2 years ago, trekked down to the YMCA on Christmas Day to pick up two young lance corporals from the South who had only been in Oceanside a week.
“We would have asked for three of them, but we’re satisfied with the two,” said Schwabe, who has never been in the military, but decided with his wife, Beverly, to do something kind for some Marines.
“As far as the Marines being deployed, it sure seems empty (in Oceanside), and everybody feels it,” said Schwabe, who did not treat the Marines to home cooking as an endorsement of U.S. foreign policy in the gulf, but rather as a humanitarian gesture.
“We just wanted to help somebody out,” he said.
The Schwabe family’s two guests, James McCrary of Peachtree City, Ga., and Eric Brown of Atlanta, whose military jobs are in grave registration--processing the dead--were happy somebody would take them in.
McCrary said that, if it weren’t for the Schwabes, “We’d probably just be back at the barracks, sitting around.”
Oceanside isn’t an ordinary city, not only because it has the world’s largest amphibious training base for a neighbor, but because generations of Marines have remained in the community.
Many former Marines, devoutly believing they are lifelong members of an elite brotherhood, are helping service organizations provide for the 12,000 Marine dependents left at Camp Pendleton and the 32,000 living in the surrounding area.
On base at the Navy Relief Society, director Jinx McCain, a retired Marine colonel and combat veteran of three wars, watches the donations roll in and marvels at how Marines stick together.
Five former Marines have volunteered to help. “You’re a Marine forever,” McCain said.
“We have Marines every day asking us what they can do. We had a retired Marine come in the other day and hand me a $100 bill and say, ‘Here, help somebody with this,’ ” said McCain.
But compassion and patriotism aside, sheer economics is another reason Oceanside misses its Marines.
With a normal complement of 36,000 Marines, Camp Pendleton’s payroll tops $400 million a year. Although there are no figures for how many Marines and family members actually live in Oceanside, most downtown merchants testify to their buying power.
Next to the recession, city officials blame the deployment of the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force and the 5th Marine Expeditionary Brigade with a sales tax revenue slump that threatened a $5.8-million city budget deficit.
The city is trying to avert a deficit by a 12% spending cut among city departments.
But that does not help the downtown--midway through a difficult redevelopment effort--where barbers, restaurants, furniture stores, dry cleaners and night spots are hanging on for an end to the Middle East crisis, which in turn would end their own crises.
“Downtown businesses have been hurt dramatically,” said Sam Williamson Jr., president of the Oceanside Chamber of Commerce.
In past deployments, fresh troops arrived at Camp Pendleton to take the place of departed Marines. This time, said Williamson, “It’s becoming more and more evident we do not have the replacement troops.”
The city will not know until January, when it receives information on local sales tax revenue, how deeply the recession and deployment have hurt business. But, with most of the Marines gone for five months, the anecdotal evidence is strong.
Mick Hill is the bartender at Pure Platinum downtown, where on a normal Saturday night, 200 distinctive shaved heads of young Marines watched topless dancers undulate beneath lavender and pink neon lights.
“Now it’s down at least by half,” said Hill. “You take away 25,000 Marines and it’s boom, like taking the village away from the town.”
Down the street at George’s Gyro Burgers, business is off by one-third to one-half, and manager Chuck Flores uttered the truism of most downtown merchants: “We live and die on the military downtown.”
Volume at the eatery has picked up on weekends as Marines passing through Camp Pendleton for training are allowed off base.
But Flores has wearied of all the consternation over the deployment and its hardships on the Marines.
“I’m getting tired of the whining and crying. They’re getting paid, that’s their job. Hey, all they’re doing is sitting around. Nothing’s happened yet.”
Even crime has changed since thousands of Marines left the area.
Police Chief Bruce Dunne, a 24-year department veteran, said the con artists who used to prey on young Marines are now searching for other marks. Marines, said Dunne, “are kind of a vulnerable victim (to) street robbery and con games.”
The Marine as a crime victim is a strange indication of how far the situation has changed since the Vietnam War days, when Dunne recalls many drafted Marines engaged in vice and drunkenness. For a time, MPs from Camp Pendleton accompanied city police on patrol.
Dunne said it’s too early to tell whether the deployment has affected the crime rate, but so far it appears that “there hasn’t been a benefit in that the Marines have gone.”
One thing that’s more certain, the Police Department--like some businesses that have lost moonlighting Marines as part-time employees--has seen six reserve police officers sent off to the gulf with their Marine units.
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e4837db13a3db19a7ccfd1f9e6c0041d
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https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1990-12-31-me-5588-story.html
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Arson Suspected in Fire That Killed 3 U.S. Servicemen
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Arson Suspected in Fire That Killed 3 U.S. Servicemen
Arson is suspected in a fire that roared through a hotel early Sunday near a U.S. Navy base in the Philippines and killed three Americans, including one believed to be assigned to the San Diego-based aircraft carrier Ranger, U.S. and Filipino officials said.
Officials intensified efforts in the Philippines to identify all three, but said two were burned beyond recognition in the fire, which raced through the 34-room Royal Lodge Hotel in Olangapo, close to the Subic Bay base.
A Filipino woman also was killed and two other Americans were hurt in the fire, which began about 1:30 a.m. local time Sunday at the two-story hotel, one of many lodges around the base packed with sailors on the way to the Persian Gulf, officials said.
The two injured Americans were in stable condition at the Navy’s Subic Bay hospital, said Bob Coble, a base spokesman. They also were believed to be assigned to ships accompanying the Ranger, part of a massive convoy that arrived at Subic Bay from San Diego on Thursday on its way to the gulf.
The Navy withheld the names of all five sailors. Filipino officials declined to release the name of the woman.
The cause of the fire was not determined, but officials said signs pointed to arson.
“We cannot discount the possibility of an arson, that’s what I think,” Ador Alfonso, an investigator with the U.S. Naval Investigative Service, said in a telephone interview. He declined to provide additional details.
Once ignited, the fire fanned rapidly through the hotel, Olangapo firefighters and police officers said. Witnesses told the Associated Press that dozens of Americans fled the hotel in their nightclothes.
“It was a very quick fire,” Alfonso said.
The hotel is about a mile from the main gate at Subic, which is about 50 miles west of Manila, Cpl. Jose Gonzalez, an Olangapo police officer, said by phone. “It’s all ashes now,” he said.
“It was an old hotel,” Alfonso said. “It was not really a first-class hotel or second-class hotel, just an ordinary hotel.”
The Ranger and at least 13 other ships left San Diego and Long Beach earlier this month, headed for the Persian Gulf--the largest amphibious task force to ship out from Southern California since 1965.
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c8c091087bb68c3c8f771f159cdabe27
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https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1990-12-31-me-5596-story.html
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Riot Fear Cancels Concert by ‘Bad Religion’ Band
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Riot Fear Cancels Concert by ‘Bad Religion’ Band
One day after a crowd of violent concert-goers trashed a North Hollywood theater and damaged neighboring storefronts, promoters of the popular punk rock band Bad Religion canceled a Sunday performance in West Hollywood.
Organizers of the canceled concert at the Whisky said they feared a repeat of the Saturday night melee that erupted at the Classic Theater on Lankershim Boulevard when the band’s concert was halted because the auditorium was overcrowded.
More than 300 angry fans pulled out chairs bolted to the floor and smashed windows outside after they were ordered to leave by fire officials.
Two police officers and several people in the crowd suffered minor injuries. Four people were arrested on suspicion of vandalism. The Classic Theater owners, who could not be reached Sunday, were cited for overcrowding and improper use of the facility, which fire officials said is not licensed for live entertainment.
Police estimated damage to the theater and surrounding businesses, where windows were smashed, at $20,000.
Rick Van Santen, a spokesman for Goldenvoice Productions, which organized Saturday’s show, said Sunday’s concert was postponed just hours before it was to begin because of fears the rioters would return. He said tickets for both weekend shows will be honored at a performance Feb. 1 at the Hollywood Palladium.
“We felt it was too risky,” he said. “This way, it’s safer for everyone.”
The riot Saturday broke out shortly after 8:30 p.m. Firefighters passing the theater at 5269 Lankershim Blvd. noticed crowds outside. Because the auditorium, which dates back at least to the 1930s, was recently reopened after nearly a year of darkness, the firefighters reported the activity to their supervisor.
When a fire inspector arrived at the theater, he saw fans standing on chairs and crowding the aisles, Assistant Bureau Cmdr. Tony Ennis said. The theater is permitted to seat 1,261, Ennis said. Fire officials said they counted about 1,860 concert-goers. Van Santen said the theater has a capacity of about 1,400 and that 1,321 tickets were sold.
He disputed the count by fire officials, but said concert organizers had to abide by the order to shut down the show.
After an opening act and before Bad Religion took the stage, a concert manager announced that the performance was over. The angry crowd began to file out of the auditorium chanting “start the revolution” and cursing police and fire officials, according to one concert-goer.
As the unruly crowd filed out, one person fell against a glass door, sending out a loud cracking noise, said Terry Bing, who operated the concession stand at the theater.
Then “all hell broke loose,” said a concert-goer who only gave his name as Chris.
People smashed windows, display cases and glass doors. More than 200 chairs were pulled out or damaged. Trash cans were lobbed across the lobby. A small fire was started in an upstairs restroom. A crowd that had gathered across the street began to move toward the theater and firefighters used water hoses to keep them at bay, authorities said.
It took nearly two hours to restore order to the street, police said.
The melee was at odds with the message that Bad Religion says it is attempting to spread. “What we try to do in our songs is make people responsible for their own actions,” lead singer Greg Gaffin said during the disturbance.
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20bc22d36057ec7120583788c8e077e8
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https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1990-12-31-me-5598-story.html
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Popular Fund-Raising Sergeant Reassigned : Police: Alex Gomez is given patrol duties and his successful community relations unit is told to return to ‘basics.’ Officials say the job change is routine and issue new rules for charity efforts.
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Popular Fund-Raising Sergeant Reassigned : Police: Alex Gomez is given patrol duties and his successful community relations unit is told to return to ‘basics.’ Officials say the job change is routine and issue new rules for charity efforts.
In the three years since Sgt. Alex Gomez took control of the community relations section of the Los Angeles Police Department’s Hollenbeck station, he has transformed it into one of the most prolific police fund-raising units in the country.
From his cluttered cubicle in the Boyle Heights station house, he has staged rock concerts to benefit disadvantaged youths, organized holiday street fairs at which thousands of toys were distributed, and recently coordinated a week of outings for eight terminally ill youngsters.
In the words of businessman Rudy Garza, Gomez “helps make a difference while the city’s falling apart.”
Despite Gomez’s successes, the sergeant is being reassigned to patrol duties beginning Tuesday. He says his community relations unit has been told to get back to such “basics” as speaking to school children about crosswalks and attending service club luncheons.
Moreover, the Police Department has implemented a new policy that police spokesman Cmdr. William Booth said will curtail fund raising by officers throughout the city. Under the rules, any officer who wants to raise money--even by passing the hat for a crime victim--must seek permission from the brass downtown in Parker Center.
Booth said the decision to centralize fund raising was prompted by fears of “an unwieldy proliferation” of police-endorsed events, possibly leading the department to wear out its welcome with such generous entertainers as pop singer Michael Jackson, a supporter of DARE, the department’s anti-drug program for school children.
Booth insisted that Gomez’s reassignment is routine. “There was no question,” Booth said, “of his integrity or ability.”
Gomez, clearly disappointed with his reassignment, said he was told by his commander simply that “three years in a job is long enough.” Gomez thinks he may have stepped on too many toes.
Chief Daryl F. Gates’ staff, among others, complained about the choice of British singer Boy George--a former heroin addict--to headline a youth fund-raiser co-sponsored by the Hollenbeck station last June.
Concerns also were voiced to the department by Councilman Richard Alatorre, whose district includes the Hollenbeck division. Alatorre, refusing to elaborate, said he had passed along complaints from “community groups” that Gomez was “not accessible” to them.
“He’s a great community relations guy,” Alatorre said of Gomez. “But he’s bogged down in meritorious projects.”
Earlier this year, Gomez clashed with concert promoter Rodri Rodriguez, who was serving on the city’s Cultural Affairs Commission. She believed that a mariachi concert planned by the sergeant in East Los Angeles would undercut the profitability of two others in the works, including one she was staging.
Whatever the reasons for his reassignment, Gomez said, he believes the department’s renewed emphasis on traditional community relations work will hurt police efforts to show the mostly immigrant residents of the Hollenbeck area that the department cares about their needs.
“It’s a different neighborhood out here than in many parts of the city,” Gomez said, noting that many residents fear the police. “A lot of community relations is just shaking hands. But that isn’t enough here. What people need is a helping hand. And that’s what I think the police need to give if we’re going to build trust.”
The single telephone line into Gomez’s cramped and cluttered office rings constantly.
One recent caller told of how she had brought 11 children across the Mexican border illegally. She said they were living in a cellar and had no food or blankets.
“Sargento Gomez,” she said in Spanish, “everybody tells me to call you.”
He referred her to a law firm that he knew would help.
As a rookie in the 1970s, Gomez was briefly assigned to Hollenbeck’s community relations unit when such programs were being beefed up in response to civil unrest in minority communities. Back then, the unit had nine members.
When Gomez returned in late 1987 to head the unit after working more than a decade in other assignments, its staff had been reduced to three. During the intervening years, crime had risen and the city’s budget problems had grown, making community relations work a lesser priority.
With the approval of Hollenbeck commanders, he began to rebuild the unit. He recruited young Latino officers who shared his philosophy, eventually boosting his staff to six.
One of his officers developed a computer bank containing the names of hundreds of people, ranging from friends to businessmen to foundations that could be counted on to make emergency donations. In fact, the computer was donated.
Among Gomez’s first programs was an expansion of the station’s annual toy giveaway from a visit with Santa Claus to a block fair that draws 25,000 people and distributes thousands of toys in conjunction with the Hollenbeck Youth Center, a police-supported gym that provides activities for 4,000 youths a year.
The center, which receives most of the money raised by Gomez, produced a gold medal boxer in the 1984 Summer Olympics--Paul Gonzalez.
Gomez also set up a “mature driver” program to help seniors obtain insurance discounts and arranged for the donation of industrial-sized spray paint equipment to remove graffiti in the Hollenbeck area.
Last year, Gomez’s officers used vacation time to deliver $150,000 in donated hospital beds, incubators and other equipment to a hospital in Guadalajara, Mexico, that cares for cancer-stricken children.
Perhaps Gomez’s most ambitious undertaking was a 1989 concert headlined by Linda Ronstadt, produced with radio station KRTH-AM and the Hollenbeck Police-Business Council, made up of officers and local businessmen. The concert netted more than $100,000 for the youth center.
With the future of Hollenbeck fund raising unclear, Gomez said the Police-Business Council will take over the toy giveaway and possibly other events. Meanwhile, members of Gomez’s community relations team said they plan to press ahead on their own time to work with the hospital in Guadalajara.
One of Gomez’s officers, Maria Martinez, said she was disappointed with her boss’s new assignment. “I guess the only thing I can say is that Sgt. Gomez has the biggest heart in the whole world.”
Gomez, asked if there was anything he would have done differently, answered without hesitation: “No.”
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f497b1a41a679a6ac32e3b872019a860
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https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1990-12-31-me-5599-story.html
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Science / Medicine : Anti-Suicide Programs Questioned
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Science / Medicine : Anti-Suicide Programs Questioned
School suicide-prevention programs for teen-agers can do some youngsters more harm than good, researchers said last week. Columbia University researchers said they found little evidence that such programs reduced suicides or suicide attempts, according to a study in the Journal of the American Medical Assn.
“There was some evidence of unwanted effects” on teen-agers who have attempted suicide, researchers from Columbia’s medical school said.
Discussing the topic openly often stirred up suicidal feelings, subjects of the study said. Of those who had tried to kill themselves before taking part in school counseling, 26.7% thought the programs increase the chances that youths will attempt suicide.
“Attempters exposed to programs were significantly less likely to recommend that the programs be presented to other students and significantly more likely to indicate that talking about suicide makes some kids more likely to try to kill themselves,” the study said.
The team, headed by David Shaffer, found that those teen-agers continued to believe that suicide was a possible solution to their problems and that they would be less likely to seek help or discuss their feeling with peers who have not tried to kill themselves.
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2ff6c98482bf08d7adb9b30e3be42459
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https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1990-12-31-me-5600-story.html
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Science / Medicine : Clotting Substance Copied
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Science / Medicine : Clotting Substance Copied
Doctors report that a new drug designed to help make blood clot in people with hemophilia is safe and effective. The drug is supposed to be an exact copy of the natural clotting substance known as factor VIII. It was developed through genetic engineering techniques by Cutter Biological in Berkeley.
In tests on 107 people with hemophilia, the researchers concluded that the genetically engineered version of factor VIII “is safe and clinically effective for the prevention and treatment” of bleeding caused by hemophilia.
Human tests of the genetically engineered factor VIII began in June, 1988, according to the researchers involved in the new study.
The findings, reported in the New England Journal of Medicine, mean that hemophiliacs may someday be able to use the new drug to stop their bleeding without the risk of developing AIDS or other potentially deadly diseases associated with conventional treatment.
The group, led by Dr. Richard S. Schwartz of Cutter, found that the engineered form of factor VIII stayed in the body just as long, if not longer, than the factor VIII extracted from donated blood.
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5f71a94344f1d5c7815986ff89e72f9d
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https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1990-12-31-me-5601-story.html
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Science / Medicine : Toothpaste Linked to Asthma
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Science / Medicine : Toothpaste Linked to Asthma
Asthma sufferers who find themselves wheezing and coughing might look to their toothpaste as a possible cause of their problems, two doctors said last week. An artificial mint flavoring found in a brand of toothpaste made from an opaque paste instead of a gel apparently triggered breathing problems in a 21-year-old woman with a history of asthma, according to a letter published in the New England Journal of Medicine.
Then, she switched toothpastes. She had been using Crest Tartar Control toothpaste, “but when she switched to a gel-based toothpaste her wheezing resolved dramatically,” wrote Drs. Bruce Spurlock and Thomas Dailey of Kaiser Permanente Medical Center in Santa Clara, Calif.
When the woman subsequently used any paste-based toothpaste, she started wheezing again within 10 minutes, they said.
Terry Glover, spokeswoman for Procter and Gamble Co., the maker of Crest, said she was unaware of any other cases in which toothpaste apparently induced asthma symptoms.
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aea5c46563b7dc95891d6adf27d7f2d5
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https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1990-12-31-me-5603-story.html
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Science / Medicine : Galapagos Isles Remain a Science Lab : Evolution: Wellspring of Darwin’s theories 145 years ago, life on the isolated archipelago continues to be studied by researchers.
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Science / Medicine : Galapagos Isles Remain a Science Lab : Evolution: Wellspring of Darwin’s theories 145 years ago, life on the isolated archipelago continues to be studied by researchers.
“Both in space and time, we seem to be brought somewhat near to that great fact--that mystery of mysteries--the first appearance of new beings on this Earth.”
The words, written by a young Charles Darwin in 1845, were describing the Galapagos Islands.
Nearly a century and a half later, the storied archipelago 600 miles off the Ecuadorean mainland remains a fertile natural laboratory for scientists exploring animals, plants and geology. Evolution, long synonymous with Darwin’s work here, remains a unifying theme.
Exotic birds and prehistoric-looking reptiles are the biggest draws for the researchers who flock to the Charles Darwin Research Station to conduct their field inquiries. More than 400 scientific missions have visited the islands since the station was established by an alliance of international conservation groups in 1960.
The diverse “Darwin’s finches,” the giant tortoises from which the islands take their name, boobies of various hues, saltwater-snorting marine iguanas and playful fur seals are among the animals that continue to provide scientists with insights into natural selection and adaptation.
Research is also being conducted to determine how to preserve this fragile ecosystem in the face of increased tourism and immigration.
The Galapagos are conducive to scientific exploration because a limited number of species have evolved in this nearly pristine setting remote from the mainland and, in large measure, from human incursion. And the islands’ isolation from one another in many cases has led to the emergence of different species on different islands.
In addition, a lack of natural predators has left the animals fearless of outside species, including humans and, therefore, easily accessible for study in the wild. Finally, rapidly changing climatic conditions on the volcanic islands allow researchers to chart how various species adapt to their environment over short time periods.
The Galapagos “are sort of a microcosm of what goes on everywhere,” says Craig MacFarland, president of the Charles Darwin Foundation for Galapagos Isles. But “it’s a simpler system so it’s easier to understand and describe the dynamics.”
Darwin’s observation of the tortoises, mockingbirds and finches on the various islands, for example, set in motion thoughts that eventually led to his landmark theory that the fittest of any species survive through a process of evolution.
At any given time today, MacFarland says, there are about five research missions in the islands, in addition to a scientific staff of 15 at the Darwin station. Some scientists pursue “knowledge for knowledge’s sake"--much of which can also be applied to conservation efforts--while others conduct research directly aimed at the preservation of flora and fauna, much of it unique to the Galapagos.
At the research station, a program to breed tortoises in captivity before releasing them into the lush, green highlands has helped increase their numbers dramatically.
Howard L. Snell, an assistant professor of biology and curator of herpetology at the University of New Mexico, has engaged in both pure research and preservation endeavors.
Snell, who has performed research in the Galapagos since 1977, has studied, among other things, how land iguanas retain a stable size through the process of natural selection.
Initially, he found that larger females produced more offspring that survived than did smaller females. But when droughts followed an El Nino--unusually warm waters, which take a harsh toll on sea life, combined with significantly increased rainfall--Snell discovered that larger iguanas were the first to starve because they needed more food, which was scarce.
Hence, strong natural selection pressures tend to work, under different conditions, against the evolution of iguanas that are either larger or smaller than the norm. The iguanas--avid sunbathers whose expression appears to that of a wry smile--have a arithmetic mean length of 15.7 inches as adults.
More recently, Snell has undertaken a four-year project in conjunction with the Darwin Foundation to document the islands’ biological diversity as well as the human impact on the archipelago. The data will be given to the Ecuadorean government and the Galapagos National Park Service for use in charting tourism and development policy.
Dave Anderson, an evolutionary ecologist at UC Davis, started working in the Galapagos as a research assistant to Princeton University biologist Peter Grant and has been conducting his own work since 1983. Grant is a leader in Galapagos research through his work with finches and other birds.
Anderson is studying fratricide--the ultimate in sibling rivalry--among masked boobies. Unlike other sea birds that raise a single offspring from a single egg, these striking white and black boobies lay two eggs each breeding cycle.
Generally, the older of the two chicks wastes little time pulling or shoving its weaker sibling out of the nest. Too feeble to get back, the infant dies of exposure or starvation. The parents do not interfere.
The reason the masked boobies lay two eggs, Anderson says, is that they have a relatively low rate of successful egg hatching. The second egg is insurance in case the first fails. The birds don’t lay more than two eggs, however, because the physical cost of producing additional eggs is not worth the limited benefit, Anderson hypothesizes.
In an effort to determine whether the parents could raise both chicks, Anderson matched two equal-size chicks in a single nest. He was able to do this because the boobies treat any chick in their nest as their own.
By carefully managing the chicks’ growth to prevent one from gaining an upper hand, Anderson found that the parents would indeed raise both offspring until they could make it on their own.
The success rate of getting at least one chick to fledge increased from 58% in the single chick brood to 93% in the two-chick broods. Why, then, does this not happen naturally? The answer, Anderson says, is the need to prevent the population from outstriping the food supply.
Stephen Kress, a research biologist for the Audubon Naturalist Society and an ornithological laboratory associate at Cornell University, is engaged in a project to enhance the survival chances of an endangered species, the dark-rumped petrel.
Petrels, crow-sized sea birds with pink, webbed feet, build nests on the ground in soil burrows. The eggs have a long 52-day incubation period; newborns take another three months to fledge. This leaves both vulnerable to introduced predators--pigs, cats and especially rats.
Kress and his partner, Richard Podolosky, have sought to counter this danger by creating 220 artificial petrel nests in an extinct volcano--a more protected environment--on Santa Cruz Island. The scientists played recordings of petrel sounds-- cacky-poooo is a favorite--to persuade the birds that others petrels had already deemed the site safe.
Over the past three summers, more than 70% of the burrows have been visited by petrels, Kress said. Last summer, four pairs bred in the created nests--although the chicks were killed by rats. Undaunted, Kress says that even a single rat can do this kind of damage.
“This is only an experiment,” Kress cautioned. “This is not necessarily a solution.”
‘One Is Astonished at the . . . . Creative Force’
Charles Darwin spent five weeks in the Galapagos as a young naturalist aboard the ship Beagle in 1835. He combined his observations of species on the islands and their counterparts on the South American mainland when he published “Origin of Species” in 1859.
Darwin noted particularly the numerous species of finches, giant tortoises, mockingbirds and plants on the various islands of the archipelago. This diversity of unique species on islands so near to each other yet so varied in their environmental conditions planted seeds of doubt in Darwin’s mind about the accepted biblical account of creation.
“One is astonished at the amount of creative force, if such an expression may be used, displayed on these small, barren and rocky islands,” Darwin wrote of the Galapagos, “and still more so, at its diverse yet analogous action on points so near each other.”
The 13 varieties of finches, for instance, display specialized beak structures and feeding habits, each suited to the conditions on its respective island.
Some eat seeds, others insects or leaves; some remove ticks from tortoises and some drink blood from sea birds.
All of the sparrow-sized birds evolved from a common ancestor. This helped lead Darwin to his theory that, as a species adapts to its environmental conditions, “favorable variations would tend to be preserved and unfavorable ones to be destroyed. The result of this would be the formation of new species.”
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3825263fe9a1b9fc6dbcf1f637067307
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https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1990-12-31-me-5605-story.html
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Juanita St. John Arrested on Drunk Driving Charge
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Juanita St. John Arrested on Drunk Driving Charge
Juanita St. John, a former business associate of Mayor Tom Bradley who faces trial on charges of stealing money from a city-funded trade task force, was arrested on suspicion of driving under the influence of alcohol, authorities said Sunday.
A California Highway Patrol officer arrested St. John on the Pasadena Freeway about 11:42 p.m. Saturday and booked her at the Los Angeles Police Department’s Parker Center. After her release without bond, highway patrol officers drove St. John to her San Marino home, CHP Officer Steve Parr said.
St. John’s attorney, Victor Sherman, said the Highway Patrol apparently stopped his client’s car at a checkpoint and “got overzealous.”
The reason for St. John’s ride home, Sherman said, was: “I think they realized they’d made a mistake and they wanted to make amends.” Parr said it was because “her husband was sick and she had no one else to care for him.”
St. John, 59, was ordered earlier this month to stand trial on charges that she bilked a Los Angeles-Africa trade task force out of about $180,000. At the time, Municipal Court Judge David Doi predicted it would be “very difficult” at trial to prove the charges beyond a reasonable doubt.
The mayor and St. John were partners in a real estate venture while Bradley was lobbying to fund the task force.
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399c304872554fdb9b1868dcfb25a1f4
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https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1990-12-31-me-5642-story.html
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Officers View Gang Threats as Part of Job : Crime: Police in Van Nuys react with concern and cool indifference after receiving warnings of deadly retaliation over a crackdown on drugs.
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Officers View Gang Threats as Part of Job : Crime: Police in Van Nuys react with concern and cool indifference after receiving warnings of deadly retaliation over a crackdown on drugs.
While three alleged members of a Van Nuys gang remained in custody Sunday, arrested in a plot to kill police on New Year’s Eve, officers at the community’s police station said such threats are just part of what it means to wear a badge.
“It’s a concern, but it comes with the job,” a front desk officer flatly said. “At least in this case we’re getting warned.”
The warnings came in threatening phone calls and in flyers, posted near the Los Angeles Police Department’s Van Nuys station, which promised deadly retaliation against officers for cracking down on drug sales along the 14100 and 14600 blocks of Calvert Street, described by police as lucrative locations for dope-dealing gang members.
According to detectives, one flyer read: “Police have been screwing with our drug sales. So we’re going to screw with the police and kill two or three of them.”
Officers at the Van Nuys station reacted to the threat with a mixture of concern and cool indifference.
“No one’s losing sleep over it. Just something to consider, that’s all,” said Officer Randy Holcombe of the Van Nuys station. Besides, officers sometimes hear of death threats and plots on the street, he said. They see graffiti threatening police officers. “There’s so much talk of that,” he said.
Still, authorities took the threats seriously enough to issue a special bulletin Dec. 9 calling for extra caution among officers patrolling the Van Nuys area. Police declined to name the gang but said it has operated in the area for decades.
The bulletin advised officers to be cautious but did not call for changes in operations or tactics, police said.
“They’d be winning if we changed the way we do things,” Holcombe said. Officers already follow procedures designed for their safety, authorities said. The bulletin basically reminded officers to observe those procedures.
One officer said the bulletin echoed warnings from his days at the police academy. “Keep your head on a swivel,” he said, demonstrating by looking left and right. “Watch your back.”
Still, the threat has to be kept in perspective, said Sgt. G. Tam of Van Nuys. “There’s always a concern, but it’s not something we’re dwelling on,” he said. Supervisors will continue to brief officers on the threat during roll calls for a few days. After that, “it’s business as usual,” he said.
Police said information concerning the threat led to the arrest of Cesar Reveles and Hector Aleman, both of Van Nuys, and Sergio Camarena of Sylmar. The men, all 18, were in custody at the Van Nuys jail Sunday. No other arrests have been made.
Reveles and Camarena were being held without bail on suspicion of conspiring to kill a police officer. Aleman was held on $2,500 bail on suspicion of possessing a sawed-off rifle.
Down a long, narrow hallway from the jail, the front desk officer stood a few feet away from a wall where six photographs of police officers are mounted in somber frames.
A wooden plaque with the phrase “in the line of duty” hangs below the frames and name plates: Jack V. Evans, Sidney Z. Reigel, Randy Marshall, Paul L. Verna, Roger R. Warren Jr., Charles C. Caraccilo.
According to police, 175 Los Angeles police officers have been killed in the line of duty since 1907. Of those, 88 were felled by suspects.
The most recent death came in October when veteran homicide Detective Russell Kuster was gunned down by a man who rushed into a Hollywood Hills restaurant brandishing a 9-millimeter pistol. Kuster, hit four times, still managed to shoot and kill the man.
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49240e7c21c483ee58d256f1e06ff037
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https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1990-12-31-me-5644-story.html
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Copters Douse 15-Acre Fire Above Chatsworth
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Copters Douse 15-Acre Fire Above Chatsworth
About 15 acres of grass and brush were burned Sunday in a fire above Chatsworth that was quickly doused by helicopters dropping water, the Los Angeles Fire Department reported.
The fire apparently broke out in the ruins of an abandoned house about half a mile north of Topanga Canyon Boulevard and the Simi Valley Freeway, Battalion Chief Melvin Lydecker said. Investigators had not determined the cause. No other structures were threatened, he said, and there were no injuries.
The fire was reported about 9:40 a.m. and was contained in 30 minutes, Lydecker said. Four helicopters were used because the steep terrain is inaccessible to fire engines, Lydecker said. More than 100 firefighters from the Los Angeles city and county fire departments assisted, he said.
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a6a0c426fb7b82b36407d4214af4ab0a
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https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1990-12-31-me-5645-story.html
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Early-Morning Fire Damages Hillside House
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Early-Morning Fire Damages Hillside House
An early-morning fire caused about $110,000 in damage Sunday to a hillside house in Sherman Oaks, the Los Angeles Fire Department reported.
The blaze in the 3900 block of Oakfield Drive apparently began when heat from a gas furnace ignited a wall, Battalion Chief Larry Krokes said. Flames spread to the floorboards of the second story and into the attic, he said.
No one was home when the blaze broke out shortly after 7 a.m., Krokes said. There were no injuries. It took 35 firefighters about 30 minutes to extinguish the fire, he said.
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2e5f1d40dbd7224416e8c8ff68e0132b
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https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1990-12-31-me-5698-story.html
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1990 in Ventura County : YEAR IN REVIEW : Going to War : Duty Calls Residents
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1990 in Ventura County : YEAR IN REVIEW : Going to War : Duty Calls Residents
Within weeks of Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait, more than 2,000 Ventura County residents were on their way to the Persian Gulf.
About 1,800 Seabees--three-fourths of the total based at Port Hueneme--were deployed to Saudi Arabia, where they are building airstrips, installing fuel tanks and carving out berths for ships.
Several hundred more county residents had to leave their jobs and families when their reserve units were called to active duty because of the Persian Gulf crisis.
Among them were doctors and nurses in the Naval Reserve; medical evacuation specialists and transport workers in the Air National Guard; and a 150-member Marine Corps Reserve unit equipped with some of the heaviest hand-carried weapons in the military.
Many were volunteers; others were stunned to suddenly be facing the possibility of combat.
“I’m scared. Who wouldn’t be?” said a 20-year-old Seabee as he walked to a chartered plane that would take him to Saudi Arabia.
“I guess I never anticipated this when I first signed up.”
Looking Ahead
Six hundred Seabees and nearly 100 Air National Guard reservists who had been deployed for Operation Desert Shield came home in the closing days of the old year.
No one is predicting when the rest might return.
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45f9d0849ceaa84baa07fe6970378574
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https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1990-12-31-me-5699-story.html
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CYA Wards Learn How to Get a Job : Offenders: The program teaches youths eligible for parole skills that may help keep them out of trouble.
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CYA Wards Learn How to Get a Job : Offenders: The program teaches youths eligible for parole skills that may help keep them out of trouble.
More than 100 young offenders up for parole from the California Youth Authority’s Ventura School will get special counseling in how to write a resume, how to handle an employment interview, and how to keep a job.
And most important, how to stay out of trouble.
“We provide a linkage between here and the outside,” said program administrator Lolina Talili. Most participants in the program will be from Ventura County, she said, because a county agency, the Job Training Policy Council, is paying the $370,000 cost.
All 900 wards at the Camarillo school, who come from all over the state, are offered academic and vocational courses, but most of them get no follow-up counseling or other support after they are released, Talili said.
“There are multiple barriers to employment--transportation, child care, even bare necessities such as clothing,” she said. “That’s why the recidivism rate is so high. When they leave here, they’re on their own.”
Of the 2,654 Youth Authority wards released in 1987, 56% were back in a state corrections facility within two years, according to Youth Authority records.
The program started Dec. 17 with 14 male offenders and one female, including five who are considered serious habitual offenders by the Ventura County district attorney’s office. As they are paroled, more inmates are scheduled to enter the program.
As a first step, participants evaluate their strengths and weaknesses and write a plan aimed at making themselves more marketable to prospective employers. Most already have learned vocational skills--such as sewing, landscaping, kitchen work, building maintenance or travel-agency work--but few have experienced getting and keeping a job.
“You learn how to sell yourself in an interview, how to fill out applications, what’s expected of you,” said Fred Roberts, 20, who has been a Youth Authority ward for nearly four years.
Last year, Roberts was in a similar program sponsored by Los Angeles County. A resident of South-Central Los Angeles, Roberts said he had made a lot of money selling crack cocaine but did not have much job experience.
The program “gives you an idea of what kind of fields are best for you in the long run,” Roberts said.
He decided to learn how to handle airline reservations and other travel-agency tasks. But when he came up for parole last March, the board said no.
Roberts, exhibiting no bitterness, said his parole was denied because he “got into loan-sharking” soon after he was committed to the Youth Authority. He said he and some fellow gang members would buy goods from the canteen and sell them to other wards at twice the price on a delayed-payment basis.
“I’ve always had high expectations,” said Roberts, who said he never used drugs but became addicted to the easy money he made from selling them. “The problem was finding a legal way to do it.”
He will be up for parole again in August. If his parole is granted, he will be helped to find a job through the program.
Ivan Ashford of Ventura expects to be paroled in January after four years at Youth Authority facilities. He has been studying industrial sewing for four months and expects the program to help him get a job at an Oxnard clothing manufacturer.
Ashford, 19, acknowledged that he may need help with his resume.
“I got caught embezzling on my last job,” said Ashford, who worked at a fast-food restaurant. He said he previously had been found guilty of burglary and being under the influence of drugs.
“I’ve been messing up all my life,” Ashford said. He said he expects the program to teach him “how to present myself” on the job. It will also help persuade the parole board to release him, Ashford said.
Saundra Brewer, deputy district attorney in charge of the juvenile division, said county prosecutors have doubts about the program.
“My general feeling is that only the most serious juvenile offenders are committed to the Youth Authority,” she said. “Typically, they are violent. We feel that they should remain there as long as legally possible for the protection of the community.
“Once in a while, these special programs . . . get them on parole earlier than they ought to be,” Brewer said. “These kids aren’t dumb. They’ll cooperate if it will help them get out early.”
But Maggie O’Neill, who supervises serious habitual offender programs for the Oxnard Police Department, said participation in the employment skills program has little impact on the parole board’s decision. The board also considers many other factors, such as behavior, motivation and work skills, she said.
In supporting the program, the Oxnard department has the same goals as prosecutors, she said. “We want to keep them from victimizing the community as much as they do,” O’Neill said.
Bill Hewston, chairman of the county’s Job Policy Training Council, said the agency decided to finance the program because participants came from two of the groups targeted by the federal government. The council allocates federal money to various job-training programs.
“We were looking for the severely disadvantaged, and an incarcerated group falls into that,” Hewston said. “In addition, some have the problem of English as a second language. Some don’t even have a basic primary education.”
The public, he said, “is not just wasting money having them incarcerated,” Hewston said. “They can pick up something that will help when they leave.”
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caa227cb00354da04c9e2051d1207989
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https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1990-12-31-me-5703-story.html
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Growers Relieved as Cold Front Misses Area : Weather: Some farmers stay at their wind machines and smudge pots all night to battle the expected freeze. But no significant damage is reported.
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Growers Relieved as Cold Front Misses Area : Weather: Some farmers stay at their wind machines and smudge pots all night to battle the expected freeze. But no significant damage is reported.
A last-minute shift in wind pushed a frigid mass of Arctic air toward the Rocky Mountains on Sunday, sparing Ventura County farmers from further damage to crops hit hard by freezing temperatures about a week ago.
“We seem to have dodged a major bullet,” said Rex Laird, executive director of the Ventura County Farm Bureau. “We were expecting a front that was going to be even colder than the one that hit us last week. But it seems to have veered over toward Arizona.”
As a result, he said, the county’s farmers reported no significant damage from the air mass that comes over the North Pole from the Soviet Union, sometimes called the Yukon Express.
Braced for colder weather, some farmers stayed up through the night turning wind machines on and off and preparing to ignite smudge pots if needed. Yet even in the coldest spots near Ojai and northern canyons, temperatures held above levels that can harm avocados, citrus and other crops. Farmers say it takes several hours of temperatures of 28 degrees or lower to begin crop damage.
For the next week at least, slightly warmer weather should hold, said National Weather Service meteorologist Terry Schaeffer. He predicted moderate temperatures, with westerly winds bringing increased humidity by the end of the week. Such conditions generally favor farmers, he said.
Tom Pecht, an avocado and lemon farmer near Oxnard, said he turned on wind machines twice Sunday morning when temperatures fell to about 30 degrees. With these giant fans, farmers can stir up warmer air that will prevent the chill from settling on their crops.
“That brought it up to 34 or 35, so we turned the machines off,” he said. “I feel quite lucky, especially since the earlier warning called for the coldest Arctic air mass I have ever seen.”
The turn toward relatively mild weather contrasted sharply with temperatures just a week ago, when the county’s farmers suffered an estimated $100 million in losses, mainly in avocado and citrus crops. In the hard freeze of Dec. 22-23, Ojai temperatures sank as low as 15 degrees.
Early Sunday morning, the coldest readings in the county were in the upper 20s in the Ojai Valley, Schaeffer said. “But that was only for a short duration.”
Schaeffer said other early-Sunday low temperatures remained above freezing--between 35 and 40 degrees--in most farming areas, including the Santa Clara River Valley and the Santa Rosa and Las Posas valleys. Parts of the Oxnard Plain were even warmer, with lows of about 40 degrees, he reported.
“Just a slight shift in direction by the coldest air would have resulted in further losses,” Schaeffer said.
Laird warned that it will be at least another two months before farmers can consider themselves safe from another crop-damaging freeze. “You’re usually out of the woods by March 1,” he said.
Some farmers believe the freeze season lasts even longer than that. “Old-timers will tell you it starts Oct. 15 and runs until April 15,” said Don Reeder, president of the County Farm Bureau and manager of Pro-Ag Inc., which has 2,000 acres scattered throughout the county.
“I feel lucky,” he said. “But don’t forget, January and early February are the coldest parts of the year.”
Ironically, Schaeffer said the first freeze made it less likely that cold weather would inflict further damage to crops in vulnerable areas.
“It would take extremely low temperatures to do more damage to fruit in some areas,” he said. “But, of course, these same farmers now have to worry about permanent damage to their trees.”
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10acb4960400f6059e715bbb8cc7d11a
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https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1990-12-31-me-5705-story.html
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1990 in Ventura County : YEAR IN REVIEW : Elys Arrested : College District Rocked
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1990 in Ventura County : YEAR IN REVIEW : Elys Arrested : College District Rocked
On Aug. 14, a scandal that began in the spring culminated in the arrests of Tom Ely, a Ventura County Community College District trustee, and his wife, Ingrid.
First came newspaper reports that Tom Ely owed thousands of dollars to Nevada casinos. Then it was disclosed that a bank had sued the couple for allegedly failing to repay $17,000 in credit card charges.
District auditors reported that Ely had improperly charged $8,422 in expenses to the district and had filed an additional $6,978 in claims without proper substantiation.
Ely insisted he had followed district procedures and denied having a gambling problem.
The district attorney launched an investigation, which was later broadened to include allegations that Ingrid Ely had billed the Moorpark College Alumni Assn. for trips that her husband had also charged to the district.
Ingrid Ely, president of the alumni group, denied any wrongdoing.
Six weeks after the couple’s arrest, Municipal Judge Thomas J. Hutchins ruled there was enough evidence to bind them over for trial.
In addition to the two conspiracy counts, Tom Ely is charged with 19 counts of making a false or fraudulent claim and eight counts of embezzlement.
The Elys, released on their own recognizance, have pleaded not guilty.
They also have filed for bankruptcy, saying they owe creditors more than $300,000.
Included was more than $50,000 owed to casinos.
Looking Ahead
The Elys’ trial is scheduled for Jan. 14.
Although Tom Ely’s fellow board members have asked him to resign and he has not attended meetings for months, he remains on the board and continues to draw a $400-per-month salary.
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020b000641d5a2718aa861bfe5d565e0
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https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1990-12-31-me-5706-story.html
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1990 in Ventura County : YEAR IN REVIEW : Slavery Allegations : Rancher Charged
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1990 in Ventura County : YEAR IN REVIEW : Slavery Allegations : Rancher Charged
It was an improbable, incongruous story for an Easter Sunday.
At a flower ranch in the pastoral town of Somis, Mexican workers claimed they had been imprisoned as slaves, required to work 16-hour days and forced to spend their meager wages at a company store with hyper-inflated prices.
A federal grand jury indicted ranch owner Edwin M. Ives, six ranch foremen and an alleged smuggler, charging that they had enslaved more than 100 Mexican laborers.
All have pleaded innocent.
The indictment said Ives used promises of big money to lure unsophisticated workers from rural Mexican villages to his 50-acre Somis compound.
There, the workers learned that they had to pay $435 to the smuggler who had brought them to the United States, the indictment said.
Even after the debt was paid, the workers, who earned about $1 per hour, were not allowed to leave the ranch, according to the indictment.
“It was slave labor,” said Fernando Maldonado, who said he worked at the ranch for three weeks before escaping.
“We realized we had entered the mouth of the wolf.”
In June, 27 workers filed suit in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles seeking millions of dollars in damages from Ives, his wife Dolly, seven former ranch overseers and the alleged smuggler.
The district attorney’s office filed a separate suit in Ventura County Superior Court, seeking penalties and fines for alleged violations of state law.
Looking Ahead
The criminal case is set for trial in March.
It could be years before the civil cases are heard.
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ceae37942e98614cb71480cfcd0d6c7a
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https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1990-12-31-me-5707-story.html
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1990 in Ventura County : YEAR IN REVIEW : Growth : Slow Down, Voters Say
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1990 in Ventura County : YEAR IN REVIEW : Growth : Slow Down, Voters Say
After a decade of rapid growth, voters in 1990 sent a message to county government: Enough already.
The messenger was 25-year-old Maria VanderKolk, manager of a product-licensing firm and a resident of Ventura County for less than two years.
Despite her inexperience, VanderKolk had something to offer voters who were tired of seeing their hillsides covered by condominiums: a promise to say no to developers.
By 79 votes, VanderKolk defeated County Supervisor Madge L. Schaefer in a June election, changing overnight the face of politics in Ventura County.
Her election immediately put two proposed developments--Bob Hope’s 750-unit Jordan Ranch project and the adjacent 3,000-unit Ahmanson Ranch development--in jeopardy, given the reservations of at least two other supervisors on the five-member board.
But the upset victory had a much wider impact.
“I think my colleagues might read this result and know that if they proceed to stick a jail out in a greenbelt, it will be folly,” Supervisor John K. Flynn said.
A slow-growth majority, meanwhile, took control of the Ventura City Council and promptly adopted a stringent water-conservation ordinance that virtually stopped growth by forbidding new water hookups.
In November, county voters dealt another blow to growth interests by defeating, by a 2-1 margin, a proposed half-cent increase in the sales tax that would have provided $500 million for transportation improvements over 20 years.
Oxnard, the county’s largest city, remained a notable holdout in the slow-growth push.
No council or mayoral candidate calling for more controls on development there managed to win in the November election.
The advent of a slow-growth ethic follows a 23% increase in the county’s population during the 1980s, according to the U.S. Census Bureau’s preliminary tally.
The 122,000-resident increase was roughly the equivalent of a town the size of Simi Valley and Moorpark combined.
Looking Ahead
The county staff is examining environmental impact reports prepared for the Jordan Ranch and Ahmanson projects, and supervisors could vote on the projects by late spring.
Meanwhile, the County Transportation Commission plans to try again for approval of the sales tax increase, possibly in a November special election.
Perhaps the most telling direction sign for growth control will be the outcome of efforts to build a countywide organization from the scattered movements that scored victories in 1990.
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https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1990-12-31-me-5708-story.html
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1990 in Ventura County : YEAR IN REVIEW : Fires : Brush Cleanup Pays Off
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1990 in Ventura County : YEAR IN REVIEW : Fires : Brush Cleanup Pays Off
From Ventura to Thousand Oaks, from Ojai to Santa Cruz Island, brush fires erupted in spurts throughout the year, charring thousands of acres and bearing witness to the drought with miles-high monuments of smoke.
Unlike nearby Santa Barbara, however, where 567 houses were destroyed in a June blaze, Ventura County did not lose a single home to brush fires in 1990. Officials credited an aggressive county program to force residents to clear brush away from homes.
The largest blazes occurred in mid-October, when hot, dry Santa Ana winds sent flames roaring up the hills north and south of Santa Paula and east of Fillmore, covering 2,200 acres with cinders and ashes. Another spate of fires broke out in late June and early July, charring 119 acres in Thousand Oaks, 280 acres above Fillmore, 585 acres north of Ojai and 600 acres on Santa Cruz Island.
Nearly all of the blazes were blamed on arsonists, none of whom were arrested. It was also the year of the most costly residential fire in the county’s history, a spectacular $7-million November blaze accidentally triggered by a plumber’s torch. The fire destroyed 22 apartment buildings under construction in Thousand Oaks.
Looking Ahead
Even if the area gets lots of rain this winter, fire officials say 1991 could be a bad year for brush fires. Heavy rains would cover the hillsides with grass, they say, but it would eventually dry up and help spread fire among bone-dry trees and other vegetation. The only solution, they say, is to renew growth in the larger plants. That will take several good rainy seasons.
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a1bb82dd15a40173a3e8ace3a830e5bb
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https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1990-12-31-me-5709-story.html
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1990 in Ventura County : YEAR IN REVIEW : The Drought : Down to the Last Drops
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1990 in Ventura County : YEAR IN REVIEW : The Drought : Down to the Last Drops
As the statewide drought entered its fifth year, its impact in the county spread from a few cities to virtually every farm and community.
Ventura, which has perhaps the most severe shortage in the county, passed a mandatory conservation ordinance in May that required major institutions to reduce use by 20%, smaller businesses by 15%. Single-family residences were limited to 294 gallons a day and units in multifamily dwellings to 196 gallons.
Compliance has been good, but the drought is still crippling the city.
Some companies have threatened to leave. Ventura High School closed its leaking swimming pool.
Restrooms and showers at San Buenaventura State Beach have been shut off on weekdays.
At one point, the city talked about towing in icebergs from polar regions. Enthusiasm for that idea quickly melted, but Ventura still is considering building a seawater desalination plant. In the fall, Ventura commissioned a study on the environmental impact of building an $85-million pipeline to hook into the state water system at Lake Castaic. But the state system is hurting, too.
In December, the Metropolitan Water District, which imports water from the Colorado River and Northern California, imposed restrictions on its customers, including Simi Valley, Thousand Oaks, Moorpark, Camarillo and Oxnard.
Hardest hit were farmers, who were ordered to reduce consumption by 20%.
Looking Ahead
In Ventura and the Ojai Valley, local rainfall will determine how soon the drought ends.
In the eastern part of the county, the key factor is how much rain and snow falls in Northern California.
Without above-normal precipitation this winter, the state predicts that agriculture will be cut to 35% of normal supplies in 1991, while municipal and industrial customers get 85%.
If growers have to plant less, they won’t need to buy as much fuel or equipment.
Fewer jobs will be available for farm workers, perhaps resulting in an increase in welfare payments.
Produce will cost more.
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https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1990-12-31-me-5711-story.html
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1990 in Ventura County : YEAR IN REVIEW : Slow Economy : Freeze Ruins Crops
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1990 in Ventura County : YEAR IN REVIEW : Slow Economy : Freeze Ruins Crops
The late December freeze that destroyed millions of dollars worth of crops was the last of a series of blows to Ventura County’s economy in 1990.
First came a collapse in home sales. By year’s end, the median price of a home was $12,000 less than a year earlier; the 8,002 home sales in the first nine months of 1990 were 3,139 fewer than the previous year. “Home for Sale” signs were topped with “Price Reduced” signs.
The county lost 2,200 jobs when Raytheon closed a missile-tracking equipment plant in Oxnard and Northrop announced plans to shut down its Newbury Park plant.
Retail stores reported sluggish sales all year, and the Christmas buying bonanza that some were counting on never happened.
Most stores said 1990’s holiday receipts would be less than the previous year’s.
No sector of the economy suffered a bigger blow than agriculture, one of the county’s largest industries with $806 million in receipts in 1989.
In a few chilly December nights, more than $100 million worth of avocados, oranges, strawberries and other fruits were destroyed.
With winter just beginning, growers were worried that more subfreezing weather would affect future crops by damaging or killing trees. Layoffs were already starting among farm workers, and canneries and packinghouses eventually are expected to feel the pinch.
Tourism remained a bright spot in the county’s economy.
Visitors spent $444 million in the county in 1989, and 1990’s total is expected to top that.
Looking Ahead
Experts expect the real estate slump to continue well into 1991.
If the drought persists, look for cutbacks in agriculture and related industries, as well as continued bars to development in water-short areas.
A war in the Persian Gulf would likely hurt consumer confidence and result in less spending on retail goods and services, which provide more than 40% of the county’s jobs.
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https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1990-12-31-me-5713-story.html
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1990 in Ventura County : YEAR IN REVIEW : Stun Guns : Suits Target Police
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1990 in Ventura County : YEAR IN REVIEW : Stun Guns : Suits Target Police
On Feb. 13, cardiac patient Duane Johnson began throwing himself against the walls of his room at Ventura County Medical Center to protest plans to transfer him back to a mental health facility.
Hospital officials summoned Ventura police officers, triggering an ongoing controversy about the use of stun guns by police.
Stun guns jar the nervous system with 50,000 volts of electricity. Defenders say they are often the best way--short of gunfire--to deter misbehavior.
But as the Johnson case illustrates, they can be lethal.
The two officers jolted Johnson seven to 11 times, according to a coroner’s report, even after he was tethered to a hospital gurney.
He died within minutes of the final application.
The autopsy attributed death to the stun gun applications, as well as to Johnson’s exertions and heart disease.
A district attorney’s investigator found that the officers had used “inappropriate and unjustified” force, but the agency declined to prosecute.
Four months later, a Ventura officer used a stun gun nine times on a driver who refused to get out of his truck for questioning.
It turned out that the 26-year-old man, Donn Christensen Jr., was coming out of an epileptic seizure and did not comprehend the officer’s commands.
Although the officer’s immediate superiors recommended dismissal, Chief Richard F. Thomas decided instead to suspend the officer for a month.
Thomas also revised the department’s policy on stun guns, saying they should be used defensively, not to force suspects to comply with orders.
Christensen sued the city and ended up accepting a $150,000 settlement.
Looking Ahead
Johnson’s parents filed a wrongful-death lawsuit against the city and county in September.
It did not specify an amount, but the family had filed claims of $2.5 million each against the city and county, which rejected them.
It may be years before the case reaches trial.
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https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1990-12-31-me-5714-story.html
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Clerks at 13 Stores Arrested After Minors Buy Alcohol
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Clerks at 13 Stores Arrested After Minors Buy Alcohol
Using 19-year-old cadets in an undercover operation, Ventura County sheriff’s deputies arrested clerks at 13 stores in Moorpark and Thousand Oaks on suspicion of selling alcohol to minors.
Friday’s undercover operation, which encompassed 70 stores and restaurants that sell alcoholic beverages, was part of an ongoing effort by police to curb the consumption of liquor by minors, according to a Sheriff’s Department statement.
“We do it every year about this time,” said Sgt. Frank O’Hanlon of the Sheriff’s Department’s eastern division.
O’Hanlon said the department’s cadets are part-time employees who are in college or below the age required to be a full-fledged deputy sheriff. He said many of the cited clerks were also under the legal drinking age of 21. “I’m sure that the average age of a store clerk was around 18 years old,” he said.
Typically, he said, the underage cadets will select a six-pack of beer in a store or order a drink at a restaurant and see if they are allowed to buy it. If the clerk or waiter approves the purchase, a deputy sheriff steps in after watching the transaction, seizes the alcohol and issues a citation.
The Sheriff’s Department also forwards the names of the businesses to the state Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control for possible administrative sanctions. The state agency has the power to suspend or revoke liquor licenses.
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https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1990-12-31-me-5722-story.html
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Van Touches Off Wild Chase at Checkpoint
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Van Touches Off Wild Chase at Checkpoint
A van apparently smuggling illegal immigrants from Mexico bolted the Border Patrol checkpoint near San Clemente Sunday and led lawmen on a 40-minute chase through Orange County, sometimes against oncoming freeway traffic.
The fleeing driver, identified only as a Mexican citizen, drove into oncoming lanes of the San Diego Freeway in Irvine and the Costa Mesa Freeway in Tustin but was stopped on the Santa Ana Freeway here before anyone was hurt, police said.
“It never really got up to high speeds,” Tustin Police Sgt. Brent Zicarelli said.
Officers said the van’s seven occupants fled, but the driver and two of his passengers were apprehended and turned over to the Border Patrol.
The van, which stopped at the checkpoint at 6:10 a.m., sped off when Border Patrol officers approached it, a spokesman said.
Border Patrol officers pursued the van up Interstate 5 and onto the San Diego Freeway in Irvine, until the van crossed the bare-earth median strip near Jamboree Road into southbound traffic. Agents then broke off the chase as being too dangerous, a spokesman said.
Local police had been alerted, however, and a Tustin officer spotted and pulled over the van at McFadden and Pasadena avenues just east of the Costa Mesa Freeway. But when he approached the van, it sped off, setting off another chase along surface streets and freeway lanes.
Zicarelli said the officer saw the van turn onto a Costa Mesa Freeway off-ramp and head north in the southbound lanes.
“If a pursuit becomes too wild, we’ll take a license plate and description and discontinue the pursuit,” Zicarelli said. But the van was not speeding, and the officer followed, staying to the shoulder with lights and siren on to warn oncoming motorists, he said. The van got off at the next on-ramp.
The van eventually stopped at 6:40 a.m. on the southbound Santa Ana Freeway near the Costa Mesa Freeway, and the occupants ran off, Zicarelli said.
“It was Sunday morning, and there was not a lot of traffic,” he said. “If it had been 6:30 Monday, we’d have lost him or broken off the pursuit or someone could have gotten hurt.”
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e3457a6d978c961f4c61fcb3451f5667
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https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1990-12-31-me-5724-story.html
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Golden Hood Ornament and Dented Hubcap Awards
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Golden Hood Ornament and Dented Hubcap Awards
As the clock ticks toward the end of 1990, it’s time to take stock of another year on the traffic-stalled streets of Orange County. So, with no further ado, a drum roll please. . . .
Ta-da!
Yes, folks, it’s the First (and perhaps Last) Golden Hood Ornament and Dented Hubcap Awards.
No, don’t turn that newspaper page. You’re not dreaming. This is really happening to you. We’re going to pass out the trophies (if we ever pick them up at the local wrecking yard) honoring the best and worst on the road in 1990.
Hey, why not? Traffic is a not-so-benevolent dictator in our lives--it can determine what time we get up in the morning, influence where we live or work, toy with our moods, even determine how much money is left in our wallets by month’s end. So what better way to vent than an awards ceremony celebrating good and bad on the highway?
There have been no scientific polls. There are no sealed envelopes. The sole judge in this little contest is yours truly. But don’t feel shy about making your own nominations in the weeks to come. Cards and letters are welcome.
While there are lots of obvious losers, like the infamous El Toro “Y” and the Byzantine knot where the Orange, Santa Ana and Garden Grove freeways meet, I’ve edged away from the glaring trouble spots in favor of more obscure successes and failures.
So here goes. Spotlight center stage. These are the winners:
Sign Sleuth: A Golden Hood Ornament to Lynn Merle of Costa Mesa for pointing out that northbound Brookhurst Street in Fountain Valley lacks a sign advising motorists to make a right turn on Talbert Avenue to pick up the San Diego Freeway. Alerted to the problem, authorities put up a new sign.
Seeing Red: A Dented Hubcap to Santa Ana for the fickle red light on Civic Center Drive at the parking lot just west of Flower Street. This sucker turns red at all hours of the day or night, whether any cars are leaving the parking lot or not.
Beam Me Up: Telecommuting may sound like something Capt. Kirk and Mr. Spock would practice, but the idea of using a computer to do your work at home is here today. Lots of workers could do it, but few actually get the chance. A Golden Hood Ornament to those persistent souls who talked their bosses into letting the PC do the driving.
South Coast Mess: Maybe it’s just my typical post-Christmas blues, but the ramps and overpasses linking the San Diego Freeway to the shopping kingdom of South Coast Plaza seem particularly onerous these days. Cars headed north on the freeway must cut across traffic sweeping off the Costa Mesa Freeway. Motorists steering south encounter the dreaded, looping off-ramp that leads to the Bristol Street overpass across the freeway. A Dented Hubcap to all involved.
It’s Not the Freeway: A Golden Hood Ornament to John R.M. Wilson of Costa Mesa for noting Southern Californians’ peculiar practice of using the when referring to freeways, as in “go get on the 91.” As Wilson noted, we’re giving freeways far too much respect. Just say, “Get on 91.” Class dismissed.
Day of the Dozer: Huntington Beach gets a Dented Hubcap for permitting a contractor to jump the gun and begin bulldozing private land to widen Ellis Avenue before the city obtained ownership.
55 Is Alive: Lord knows we never thought we’d see the day, but there has been a marked improvement since the California Department of Transportation completed the transition road from the southbound Santa Ana Freeway to the Costa Mesa Freeway. Although the ramp twists a bit, traffic now flows smoothly at all but the busiest times of day. A Golden Hood Ornament for that one.
John’s Grinning: The wonderful concrete loops, aprons and lengthy lanes of the new John Wayne Airport surely deserve a Golden Hood Ornament. Once a nightmare, the airport has turned into a sweet dream for motorists. Parking is plentiful, and the passenger loading zones seem to stretch forever. And getting to the place, especially for those using the convenient new exit and entrance ramps on the Costa Mesa Freeway, is much easier.
John’s Spinning: OK, enough happy talk. There remain a couple of traffic problems at the new airport terminal that must have the Duke rolling in his grave. Why aren’t there more signs on surrounding streets to guide out-of-towners to the place? Why is the queue of available taxis so short? Where are those machines they promised to automatically pay a parking stub? Hence, the airport also gets a Dented Hubcap.
Trimmer Tree: Anita Freedman noted that an overgrown evergreen was blocking a sign on Katella Avenue announcing the northbound on-ramp to the Costa Mesa Freeway. Her concern got maintenance crews out on the scene to trim back the overzealous tree.
Going Boom: A Dented Hubcap to the owner of any car or truck in Orange County equipped with a boom-box stereo. The things make my teeth rattle two lanes away. I’d love to pull the plug on all 200 decibels. At this rate, the occupants of these boom wagons will be deaf by the time they’re 30. Maybe they should learn to love Mozart.
High-Speed Lotto: Dean D.E. Alexander earns a Golden Hood Ornament for suggesting that the state adopt his “Diamond Lane Lottery” to woo people into the car-pool lanes. Winners would receive cash or prizes for using the diamond lane. But I’m not going to hold my breath waiting for Sacramento to embrace this one.
Signal Shark: John Richards II of Los Alamitos earns a Golden Hood Ornament for chastising all of us who don’t use our turn signals as required by law. Richards goes so far as to use his signal for a right turn into his driveway, a move he admits is greatly appreciated by the neighborhood cats.
Road Blocks: A Golden Hood Ornament to Santa Ana for the traffic-diversion system installed at Washington and Flower streets to keep commuters out of a residential neighborhood hugged by those thoroughfares. While many motorists griped, they only need imagine how they’d feel if hordes of cars roared past their homes each day.
Meter Reader: Lynn Dani of Mission Viejo gets a Golden Hood Ornament for suggesting that Caltrans improve the ramp meter that regulates traffic swinging south onto the Orange Freeway from westbound Yorba Linda Boulevard. Her concerns prompted the agency to swivel the lights so they can be seen by motorists farther up the road.
Traffic Bust: A Dented Hubcap to the motorcycle cop who stopped Bob David of Irvine for an alleged driving error and announced that the city has a “100% enforcement” policy on all traffic violations. City police say they have no such policy, noting that their officers give tickets out only about 50% of the times they stop motorists.
Zsa Zsa Wanna-Be: Dale Corneliso of Laguna Hills gets a Golden Hood Ornament for suggesting that I sounded like Zsa Zsa Gabor for being “biased” in favor of bicyclists who break the rules of the road. Corneliso also gets a Dented Hubcap for missing my point--I think bicyclists who break the law should be treated just like Zsa Zsa.
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https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1990-12-31-me-5725-story.html
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Police Shoot Reported Attacker of Woman : Crime: A suspect was critically wounded in the second recent shooting by Anaheim officers. Police said the man confronted them but would not say if he was armed.
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Police Shoot Reported Attacker of Woman : Crime: A suspect was critically wounded in the second recent shooting by Anaheim officers. Police said the man confronted them but would not say if he was armed.
In the second shooting by city police in three days, an officer on Sunday critically wounded a man who reportedly was attacking a woman in the bushes of a residential area, police said.
The suspect, identified as 23-year-old Leonardo Macias Castelan, address unknown, will be booked on suspicion of attempted rape, police said. Police would not say whether Castelan, who is apparently not from Orange County, was armed. He was in critical condition Sunday night at UCI Medical Center.
According to Anaheim police, a 34-year-old woman was walking home alone about 4 a.m. Sunday in the 2900 block of West Orange Avenue, near Beach Boulevard, when she was attacked by a stranger who began choking her and dragging her into bushes beside a house.
A passerby called police, Lt. Ray Welch said. Officers in three cars responded, discovering the rape suspect as he held the woman down on the ground, officers said. As the officers identified themselves, the suspect “jumped up, confronted the officers and was shot by one of the officers,” according to an account from Lt. Marc Hedgepeth.
“We heard three gunshots--boom, boom, boom, just as fast as you could shoot ‘em,” said Lee Miller, 60, who has lived for more than two decades on West Orange Avenue, two doors from the crime scene.
“No sooner did we hear the gunshots than the police were lined up for half a block,” Miller recounted. “No one would say anything--it was all very hush-hush, and I had to call the Police Department myself to try and find something out. But they just said: ‘Stay in the house.’ ”
Neighbor Charles Noland, 69, said he saw the victim standing beside a police car soon after the shooting, hysterical. He said an officer tried to calm her, saying he needed to ask her questions.
Police said the woman was then taken for treatment to a local hospital and released.
Like Lee Miller, most neighbors in the area surrounding the shooting reported hearing three shots. But the man staying at the house where the crime took place said he heard police say seven shots were fired in all.
But the man, who requested anonymity, said he himself heard nothing.
“We slept through the whole thing--didn’t even wake for the cops banging on the door,” his girlfriend said.
Alongside the house where they are staying, owned by the man’s parents, splotches of blood stained the pavement in a fenced-in patio area. Police also dislodged a bullet from the side of the house.
But the bullets weren’t confined to the immediate area. Verda Thomas, 60, who lives across an alley from the crime scene, reported that she heard a bullet hit her bedroom wall and found it on her back patio by a glass door Sunday morning.
“I know the difference between a (car) backfire and a bullet, and when I heard that, I just froze in bed. If that had gone through the wall, it would have been pretty scary,” she said.
“You know, this area used to be paradise; now it’s hell,” she said.
In fact, the frequency of burglaries, prostitution and violence along Beach Boulevard in Anaheim and the bordering residential neighborhoods has gotten so bad that local resident Bill McDonald, 36, said he just bought a .357-caliber handgun to protect himself.
“This neighborhood isn’t safe anymore,” he said.
Still, one resident who requested anonymity said, “The trigger-happy cops, I’m more afraid of them than the criminals.” Police shootings “just happen too much.”
In Orange County this year, there have been at least 23 police shootings, down from about 30 last year. The most recent came Thursday in Garden Grove when an Anaheim police officer shot and killed an unarmed man after the man rammed into a police barricade and tried to flee. The incident, like the one Sunday, is under investigation.
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377c4635919730db3044c4fe1ce4271c
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https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1990-12-31-me-5726-story.html
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IRVINE : City May Sweeten Pot for Commuters
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IRVINE : City May Sweeten Pot for Commuters
More extensive--and expensive--measures will be required in the new year to encourage city employees to car-pool, ride bicycles, buses or walk to work.
Under Southern California air quality rules, the city of Irvine, like all large employers, must encourage employees to reduce the number of times they drive to work alone.
Irvine’s first attempt at achieving the South Coast Air Quality Management District’s goal of an average 1.5 workers per car at City Hall fell far short, said Douglas C. Reilly, executive director of the city’s transportation authority. A yearlong effort of cash and other incentives achieved only an average of 1.11 workers per car, meaning 468 more car trips to City Hall need to be eliminated each week to meet the goal, he said.
To encourage workers to participate in the city’s trip-reduction program, on Jan. 8 the City Council is scheduled to consider an expanded program that will raise the city’s cost from about $87,000 a year to about $200,000.
The existing program, adopted in 1989, offers employees who come to work at least half the time without their cars an added $25 a month in cash, free bicycles for those wishing to pedal to work, preferential parking spaces and on-site oil changes for car-poolers, a free lunch and awards ceremony four times a year and other programs.
But those incentives failed to coax enough people out of their cars, said Reilly, who car-pools one day a week.
The plan council members will consider would add incentives and ask permission to switch more employees to shortened workweeks. Those incentives include a guaranteed ride home for car-poolers who must unexpectedly leave work early, bus and rail passes, and a lunchtime shuttle that would cruise by shopping, banking and restaurant areas.
The commuter bonuses are intended to eliminate some of the reasons people give for driving to work alone, Reilly said.
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https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1990-12-31-me-5728-story.html
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COUNTYWIDE : Fees on Projects Near Tollways May Rise
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COUNTYWIDE : Fees on Projects Near Tollways May Rise
Officials planning Orange County’s three new tollways are considering increases in the fees paid by developers along the routes, which are expected to cost more than $2 billion when completed around the turn of the century.
The increase in fees is necessary to keep pace with inflation and ballooning estimates of construction costs for the three new highways, tollway officials say.
An increase of 39% is planned for the San Joaquin tollway, which is to run from San Juan Capistrano through the coastal foothills to the Corona del Mar Freeway in Newport Beach. For a single-family home close to the highway, the fee would rise from $2,023 to $2,822. A multiple-family dwelling would jump from $1,178 to $1,643.
A more modest 3% hike is proposed for the Eastern and Foothill tollways. A builder would be charged $2,399 for a single-family home, up from $2,327 previously. Multifamily units would rise from $1,359 to $1,401. The Eastern tollway is to connect the Riverside Freeway near the county border with the Santa Ana Freeway in Irvine and the Foothill Freeway is planned to serve Rancho Santa Margarita and other communities sprouting in rural eastern Orange County.
The boards of the county’s Transportation Corridor Agencies, which are planning the tollways, will consider the fee hikes during a Jan. 10 meeting.
Developer fees finance nearly half the cost of the ambitious tollways, with the rest of the money coming from tolls that will be paid by motorists.
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e9d5d709fecf8130dd55cef8b22bad48
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https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1990-12-31-me-5729-story.html
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MISSION VIEJO : Council Agenda Full of Strategy Sessions
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MISSION VIEJO : Council Agenda Full of Strategy Sessions
Locked in a dispute with the Mission Viejo Co. over land-use, the City Council has scheduled six meetings in January, mainly to develop strategies to deal with the dispute.
At stake is control of the rapidly dwindling pockets of undeveloped land in this city of 75,000. City planners estimate that only about 10% of all usable land is not developed.
“This is probably the most pivotal period in our city’s young history,” said Mayor Robert A. Curtis. “It will definitely determine what fork on the road we will travel.”
In October, the council passed a state-required general plan, a blueprint for overall development in the city, which seriously conflicted with a planning document that was already in place: a 1987 development agreement between the county and the Mission Viejo Co.
The city’s general plan set aside land in several areas for open space and commercial development that the development agreement had marked for housing construction.
The Mission Viejo Co. reacted to the council’s decision by suing the city in November, challenging aspects of the general plan.
On Jan. 5, the council’s busy month will begin with a closed session meeting at 8 a.m. to discuss the lawsuit.
Two days later, they will meet with the Planning Commission to pinpoint the differences between the general plan and the development agreement.
Jan. 9, the council will hold the first of two public hearings on a deal negotiated by Mayor Curtis last May with the Mission Viejo Co. that proposes to exchange about seven acres of land earmarked as a civic center for city approval of a major corporate center at Crown Valley Parkway that includes a hotel-restaurant complex. The second hearing is set for Jan. 30.
At their regular meeting on Jan. 14, council members will decide what to do with a city hall site purchased by the city several months ago for about $3 million. Another major decision, whether to extend a 45-day building moratorium enacted last month to a full year, will be made by the council at the regular Jan. 28 meeting.
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https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1990-12-31-me-5730-story.html
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IRVINE : Police Reserve Unit Called to Active Duty
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IRVINE : Police Reserve Unit Called to Active Duty
Members of the 440th Military Police detachment based in Irvine are scheduled to report for active duty at the Army Reserve Center at Los Alamitos on Thursday to receive equipment and fill out paperwork before leaving for training at Ft. Ord.
The 10-member 440th, which specializes in detaining prisoners of war, consists mostly law enforcement officers who work for police departments in Orange County.
As many as 2,000 reservists from California, Nevada and Arizona have been called to active duty from the 63rd Army Reserve Command headquarters at Los Alamitos since the Persian Gulf crisis erupted in early August.
Ted Bartimus, a spokesman for the 63rd Army Reserve Command, said the small, Irvine-based unit was being called up “in support of Operation Desert Shield.” But he would not speculate on whether the detachment would be shipped to the Persian Gulf.
But Bartimus did say it would be about a week before the unit would leave the area for Ft. Ord in Northern California.
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24b7c4b559c7044e08429e6fdb21011a
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https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1990-12-31-me-5731-story.html
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COUNTYWIDE : O.C. Youth Parole Program to Cease
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COUNTYWIDE : O.C. Youth Parole Program to Cease
The California Youth Authority’s Volunteers in Parole program for Orange County ends the year primarily in boxes and crates, as its director, Patricia C. Ruhlman, prepares to close down the office.
Volunteers in Parole, which matches attorneys with ex-youth offenders in a type of Big-Brother/Big-Sister program, opened an Orange County office in 1982, and since then has made 175 matches between lawyers and parolees.
But state budget woes are forcing it to close. The state Volunteers in Parole program will keep an eye on Orange County from a new regional office in San Diego.
Ruhlman said the director there, James Pauley, will try to keep the current 25 Orange County matches going.
The state maintained three of its seven programs in the budget squeeze, but Orange County did not make the cutoff.
“We’ve had some failures, but we’ve had some wonderful successes,” Ruhlman said. “We have one youth who is now in law school. We’ve had several who have been able to start their own businesses. I still believe strongly that the concept is a good one.”
The idea was to help ex-offenders adjust to parole by matching them with someone who would show an interest in what happened to them.
“We had some negative influences we had to deal with with, primarily gangs and the growing use of drugs,” Ruhlman said.
The program was co-sponsored by the California Bar Assn. and the Orange County Bar Assn. But the bulk of the money came from the Youth Authority, and the two bar groups did not have the funds to make up the difference when the state agency had to curtail its Orange County expenses.
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10f2be6507378211ce05798b371bf58c
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https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1990-12-31-me-5732-story.html
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COUNTYWIDE : Groups Get $70,000 From United Way
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COUNTYWIDE : Groups Get $70,000 From United Way
United Way of Orange County has made a grant of more than $70,000 to 10 social service agencies. Programs benefiting from the onetime grant include:
* Assessment Treatment and Service Center, which received $5,785 to provide counseling for grandparents who are raising their grandchildren.
* Coalition for Children, Adolescents and Parents, which received $10,000 to provide parenting education for low-literacy Spanish-, Cambodian- and English-speaking adults and youths.
* La Habra Community Resources Council, which received $9,750 to provide counseling and assistance to families at risk of homelessness.
* Orange County Sexual Assault Network, which was granted $7,747 to produce a booklet and video on date-rape prevention for junior high students.
* Salvation Army Anaheim Corp., which received $10,000 to provide rental assistance for male alcoholics who have completed an adult rehabilitation program.
* Santa Ana/Tustin YMCA, which received $5,000 to begin a bilingual tutorial program using middle school and senior citizen volunteers to promote education and personal values for elementary-school children.
* Short Statured Foundation, which was awarded $5,000 to establish an information and referral service for families of short-statured or dwarfed people.
* South Coast Institute for Applied Gerontology, which received $5,750 to produce a Spanish, English and sign language video to provide information on Alzheimer’s disease and other related dementia disorders.
* South Coast Literacy Council, which was granted $1,000 to provide library books for adults studying English as a second language.
* Catholic Charities, which received $10,000 to provide support groups for Latino women dealing with alcoholic family members.
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278bf87940ec3e5f989c1b2d2c7bfa2e
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https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1990-12-31-me-5734-story.html
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HUNGTINGTON BEACH : 1991 RESOLUTIONS
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HUNGTINGTON BEACH : 1991 RESOLUTIONS
My personal goal is to create a (community) awareness on the many assets Hungtington Beach has to offer. I want to build a quality photo and slide library that truly represents the image of Huntington Beach. Through marketing and promotion, I want to place Huntington Beach on the map as an ideal conference, tour and leisure destination.
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55ffcdd0f8d4ba02e580fb96e70fc14d
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https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1990-12-31-me-5737-story.html
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TUSTIN : Fatal Attack, Others Assumed Connected
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TUSTIN : Fatal Attack, Others Assumed Connected
Detectives investigating the death of a restaurant worker beaten as he walked home Saturday morning say they continue to assume that he was a victim of men wielding baseball bats who may have attacked three others in Orange and Santa Ana in less than two hours.
“We’re just assuming these could be related. We don’t have a witness or statements from the victim, but the similarities are obvious,” said Sgt. Jim Peery.
The victim of the first attack, which occurred at 11:45 p.m. Friday, was identified as Alfredo Ernesto Rojas, 24, of Santa Ana. Rojas was walking with a friend in the 200 block of East 17th Street when three men in a red, two-door Chevrolet drove up and one got out, struck Rojas on the head with a bat and stole his money, police said. Rojas described the men as black but a witness described them as Latino.
Little more than an hour later, a 29-year-old man riding a bicycle on North Tustin Street in Orange was struck with a baseball bat, kicked, beaten and robbed. He could not describe the attackers or their numbers. His name was withheld.
About 1:20 a.m. Saturday, Froylan Velasquez, 26, was found severely beaten near the gate of his Tustin apartment complex and died later that morning. Police said they have found no witnesses to the attack.
And at about 1:30 a.m. Rene Jimenez, 24, of Santa Ana was riding his bicycle in the 800 block of North Bristol Street in Santa Ana when he was pulled off and struck by baseball bats. He described his attackers as two black men.
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9948419e4c3507c5162832e00eba6807
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https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1990-12-31-me-5738-story.html
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ANAHEIM : Officer, 3 Others Injured in Crash
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ANAHEIM : Officer, 3 Others Injured in Crash
A Santa Ana man was in intensive care Sunday, recovering from injuries he suffered when the car he was driving ran into a police car stopped on the shoulder of the Santa Ana Freeway, police said.
The driver, Jose Blanco, 32, of Santa Ana was arrested on suspicion of felony drunk driving. Blanco was suffering from head injuries, but hospital officials said their main concern was that his condition not deteriorate.
Three other people, including an Anaheim police officer, also were injured in the crash, which occurred at 11:42 p.m. on the northbound Santa Ana Freeway near Harbor Boulevard. Officer James Popa suffered moderate injuries but was released from the hospital Sunday afternoon.
Shortly after 11:30 p.m. Saturday, Popa pulled over Martin Hernandez, 23, to issue him a citation. Hernandez complied, bringing his car to a stop on the shoulder, police said.
Popa then turned on his amber rear light to warn motorists, authorities added.
After talking to Hernandez briefly, Popa had him sit in the back seat of the police car while the officer ran a driver’s license check, a Highway Patrol spokesman said.
Popa was in the front passenger seat using the radio when Blanco crashed into the back of the police car, a CHP spokesman said. A second Anaheim police officer had gotten out of the car to interview Hernandez’s passenger. That officer was not hurt.
Hernandez was injured in the crash, police said, as was a passenger in Blanco’s car. Police said Hernandez was treated for minor injuries at Anaheim Memorial Hospital. Hospital officials, however, refused to comment.
The third victim was unidentified, but his injuries were serious enough that he was flown to Western Medical Center-Anaheim. By late Sunday, CHP officials were unable to identify that victim, and hospital officials would not disclose his condition, but the CHP called his injuries “major.”
Highway Patrol officers were on the scene within minutes of the accident, and a spokesman said officers noticed a strong smell of alcohol in Blanco’s car.
Officers Sunday still had not interviewed Blanco, who was listed in serious condition. “He’s been unable to speak because of his injuries,” the spokesman said.
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6bc4758ceaf7683f7196a4d78267ebdd
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https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1990-12-31-me-5739-story.html
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ANAHEIM : Nominees for Youth of the Year Sought
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ANAHEIM : Nominees for Youth of the Year Sought
Anaheim is seeking nominees for its annual Youth for the Year awards. Nominees should be teen-agers who have been outstanding in their dedication to community involvement.
Three high school students will be chosen among those nominated by teachers, community leaders or others in the city. The winner will receive $400, and the two runners-up will receive $100.
Nominated students will be interviewed in late January, and the awards will be presented Feb. 6 at the Youth in Government Day luncheon.
Applications for nominees are due Jan. 11 and are available at high schools in the Anaheim Union High School District and the city parks, recreation and community services department.
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8809d5ce59829fce3d2a47d8b3b6387c
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https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1990-12-31-me-5740-story.html
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ORANGE : He Wants to Do Justice to TV Ads
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ORANGE : He Wants to Do Justice to TV Ads
Furman B. Roberts, Orange’s city attorney for 22 years, wouldn’t mind becoming television’s next Mr. Whipple.
On Friday, Roberts, 61, stepped down from the job he had held since 1968 to embark on a career as an actor in television commercials.
While still the city attorney, Roberts filmed a commercial for Waterbed Warehouse that is still being aired locally.
“I enjoyed it,” Roberts said. “It was interesting to do something where you could use your creativity. They gave me the opportunity to ham it up a little bit.”
Although Roberts said he still plans to do some part-time legal work, he hopes to find steady employment in commercials. He said he would be delighted to land a part as a recurring character identified with a product.
“If something like that were to happen it would be wonderful,” Roberts said. “If not, I would be happy just to find employment, because there’s a lot of competition out there.”
Roberts, the only full-time city attorney Orange has ever had, began the job 22 years ago after working as an assistant city attorney in Anaheim for eight years.
He said his new career should be a refreshing change from the old one, which forced him to “tell people what they have to know, not what they want to hear.”
“I want to do television because I’ve kind of always felt that there was more interest in people who got up and clowned around than in people who got up and tried to make wise statements,” Roberts said. “People who try to make wise statements always get into trouble because, finally, you’re saying something people don’t like and they’re beating you over the head because of it.”
As city attorney, Roberts had to advise the City Council on a variety of legal issues as Orange grew from a city of 70,000 residents to one with 110,000.
“Orange is a city that has developed a very active citizenship,” Roberts said. “They get organized and they appear at council meetings to lobby for their interests.”
Along with the growth of the city came the growth of the city attorney’s office. Roberts once had to make do with only the help of law students he hired on a part-time basis. Eventually, the city created two assistant city attorney positions to help with the workload.
Through the rough times, Roberts said, he often has turned to Snoopy, the “Peanuts” character, for comic relief. He kept an extensive collection of Snoopy memorabilia in a glass case inside his office.
“The job has had its moments of stress, no question about it,” Roberts said. “I guess with my Snoopy collection I’ve tried to keep my perspective and tried not to get too serious about it. I’ve tried to keep a sense of humor--and Snoopy can provoke that.”
Roberts bought many of the approximately 70 items in the collection during visits to the Snoopy Gallery at Charles Schulz’s Redwood Empire Ice Arena in Santa Rosa.
Roberts lives in Anaheim with his wife of 25 years, Muriel, and their dog, Camille. Not surprisingly, like Snoopy, Camille is a beagle.
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532a933635489d779e74f4c0143891d0
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https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1990-12-31-mn-5523-story.html
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Albanians Streaming Into Greece in Massive Exodus : Migration: At least 500 seek political asylum. And for the first time in decades, Jews are being allowed to emigrate to Israel.
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Albanians Streaming Into Greece in Massive Exodus : Migration: At least 500 seek political asylum. And for the first time in decades, Jews are being allowed to emigrate to Israel.
Hundreds of Albanians streamed across the Greek border Sunday in what may be the biggest one-day exodus since Albania’s Communist government promised democratic reforms.
A police spokesman in the Greek border village of Filiates said it appeared that the Albanian government had opened its mountainous frontier with Greece.
“There can be no other explanation,” he said. “A mosquito couldn’t get across the border before.”
At least 500 Albanians arrived on Sunday, and all were seeking political asylum, he said.
“It looks like there are whole villages crossing--it’s a madhouse up here,” the police spokesman said.
“Our police station has become a refugee center,” he added. “We don’t know what to do with all these people.”
In Albania, meanwhile, an official spokesman indicated that for the first time in decades, Albanian Jews are being allowed to emigrate to Israel or elsewhere. Vladimir Prela, head of the Albanian Foreign Ministry’s press office, said: “If they want to live in Israel, they can do so.”
Prela, reached in the Albanian capital, Tirana, by telephone from Vienna, did not confirm reports that a plan for the emigration of about 500 Albanian Jews has been worked out by Jewish groups or governments in the West.
He suggested that Jews were being allowed to leave under a general easing of restrictions on travel abroad for all Albanians. He estimated that there are about 1,000 Jews in the tiny Balkan nation of 3.3 million.
So far this month, more than 1,000 people have fled into Greece along the countries’ frontier. Most have been ethnic Greeks, and they are automatically granted political asylum.
Border police officers said they had reports that about 3,000 more Albanians are expected to try to cross the 100-mile border area by tonight.
Refugees who are not ethnic Greeks and not eligible for immediate political asylum were to be bused to the U.N. Lavrion refugee center, 40 miles southeast of Athens.
Albania became a hard-line Stalinist state at the end of World War II, and it has only recently started to adopt democratic reforms embraced by other Eastern European countries last year.
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2fb5a80fa43dcad3fc40973fec0e1fc0
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https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1990-12-31-mn-5524-story.html
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Soviet Police Raze Tent City for Homeless : Crackdown: Residents are rounded up before bulldozers go into action in Moscow.
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Soviet Police Raze Tent City for Homeless : Crackdown: Residents are rounded up before bulldozers go into action in Moscow.
Police moved in with bulldozers under the cover of darkness early Sunday and razed a tent and shack city set up as a protest by homeless people near the Kremlin, the first concrete sign of a hard-line crackdown, witnesses said.
The three dozen residents of the makeshift community that sprang up in a gesture of disillusionment with Soviet life were rounded up in the early hours by Interior Ministry police before the bulldozers moved in and flattened their plastic and cardboard dwellings in front of the Rossiya Hotel, witnesses said.
Most of the tent city’s full-time residents, including elderly pensioners, war veterans and former mental patients with a variety of grievances, were taken into custody.
A police officer at the scene said that some will be sent to mental hospitals while others will be freed after investigation.
But the Interior Ministry spokesman said that protesters will be given free tickets back to their hometowns.
The Interior Ministry press office said the decision to raze the protest village was made by the Moscow prosecutor based on an order by the City Council’s executive committee.
“One should help these people and not simply oppress them,” he said.
Vadim Shilov, 22, admitted that authorities had previously made offers to many of the tent city regulars to move to hotels while their complaints were investigated, and about half had accepted the offer.
“The tent city was a political protest by the simple people,” said Svetlana Sedykh, who lived for three months in the shantytown to further her bid to emigrate.
“This was the first and the last such protest. There will never be another,” said Sedykh, who narrowly escaped being taken into custody.
“This is (Mikhail) Gorbachev’s New Year’s present,” said Zhana Sedina, a representative of the Pyotr Grigorenko human rights group named after the late dissident, Gen. Grigorenko.
“Gorbachev has now revealed himself to his own people, and he will soon show his true face to the West,” Sedina said.
The tent city, a mecca for the homeless from many cities, had received wide Soviet news coverage since it was established in July. At its height, 300 people with a wide assortment of complaints called it their home.
The unsightly collection of shacks and protest posters was a symbol not only of the social turmoil caused by Gorbachev’s reforms but also of his moves toward democracy that included an unprecedented tolerance of dissent.
In another sign of a hardening of official attitudes, neither the Tass news agency nor Soviet television said a word about the demolition of the protest city.
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c05a38322741dddad02774b52b395294
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https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1990-12-31-mn-5534-story.html
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Russ Coughlan; Bay Area Radio, TV Figure
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Russ Coughlan; Bay Area Radio, TV Figure
Russ Coughlan, a 40-year San Francisco Bay Area broadcaster and one of the founders of Armed Forces Radio. Coughlan, who kept his age a mystery, spent over 30 years with ABC television and served as anchor of Channel 7’s 6:30 a.m. news program before being named special assignment reporter in 1989. Coughlan began his broadcasting career in 1940 in Watsonville, Calif. During World War II, he served in the Pacific and helped found Armed Forces Radio. After the war, he joined San Francisco radio station KROW as an on-air personality. When television made it to the city a few years later, Coughlan switched over. Coughlan moved to KGO-TV as sales manager and later hosted a talk show at the ABC affiliate. During the 1970s, he worked as general manager of the station. On Saturday of a heart attack at Marin General Hospital in Greenbrae after collapsing at his home.
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911bc1104178f4f7eeaa72f07e619f2c
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https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1990-12-31-mn-5536-story.html
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Harold Town; Painter Set New Path for Canadian Art
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Harold Town; Painter Set New Path for Canadian Art
Abstract artist Harold Town, a founding member of Painters Eleven, a group of 1950s modernists who marked a new direction for art in Canada and brought Canadian painting into the international mainstream, has died. He was 66.
Town, who had been battling cancer, died Thursday at his farm near Peterborough, authorities said.
A graduate of Ontario College of Art, Town for a while dropped painting altogether, after working on 40 canvases at a time, and turned to lithography, drawing, collage, etching and sculpture.
For years, he was unsuccessful at selling his abstract work, which was received with contempt and shock by a conservative art community.
By the late 1950s, he was emerging as a name artist in the national and international art circuit.
Painters Eleven had its first exhibition in 1954. It drew large crowds and served as a springboard for the artists involved.
Town created a stir with his articulate, witty and outrageous personality as much as with his art.
He lampooned other artists, picketed against pop art, marketed one of his paintings as a jigsaw puzzle, and illustrated books that sold for $150 a copy.
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4ceef2cdd181773bb44626650e063b00
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https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1990-12-31-mn-5573-story.html
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Bus Crash, Explosion Kill 18 in Colombia
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Bus Crash, Explosion Kill 18 in Colombia
Thirteen people were killed when a bus plunged into a ravine and five others died when an illegal fireworks factory blew up in Medellin, officials said Sunday.
At least 20 people were injured in the bus accident near the town of Cimitarra, about 95 miles north of Bogota, municipal officials said.
Eleven people were hurt when the Medellin house being used as a fireworks factory blew up Saturday night, the Red Cross said.
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88fd22de7238a7bba2fedc58c3419037
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https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1990-12-31-mn-5575-story.html
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Gulf, Economy May Throttle Congress’ Plans
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Gulf, Economy May Throttle Congress’ Plans
Two crises, one international, the other domestic, have cast a dark cloud over the agenda of the 102nd Congress even before it convenes Thursday.
A war in the Persian Gulf or a deep economic recession at home--or both--could seriously hobble Democratic leaders’ plans. They would like to fill major gaps in health care, raise taxes on the rich while lowering them on the middle class, overcome President Bush’s 1990 vetoes of civil rights and family leave bills, craft a new energy policy and shore up beleaguered banks.
By the same token, war or recession could deal a heavy blow to the President’s own legislative goals. They include his plan for reshaping the banking system, a package of tax measures to stimulate savings and investment and proposals to give more power to parents and the poor in choosing schools and subsidized housing.
“The gulf and the economy could very well determine what the agenda of the next Congress will look like,” said Rep. Leon E. Panetta (D-Carmel Valley), chairman of the House Budget Committee.
In fact, the gulf crisis is so predominant at the moment that congressional leaders have indicated that they will cancel a three-week recess scheduled to begin right after the lawmakers are sworn in.
House Majority Leader Richard A. Gephardt (D-Mo.) suggested Saturday that Congress may debate a pair of competing resolutions. One would authorize the President to attack Iraq if it fails to withdraw from Kuwait by Jan. 15, the deadline set by the United Nations. The other would demand that economic sanctions be given a year or so to work.
Whatever uncertainties the new Congress faces, one thing seems clear: Partisan combat that exploded at the end of the last session will escalate in anticipation of 1992 races for the White House, the Senate and a host of redistricted House seats.
White House Chief of Staff John H. Sununu already has thrown down the political gauntlet, saying that Bush will push for a constitutional limit on congressional terms, a move obviously aimed at shrinking the Democrats’ 101-vote margin in the House and 12-vote edge in the Senate.
“Broadly speaking, I think the Congress will be much more partisan, much less legislatively oriented, much more inclined to engage in conflict with the President, much more in search of opportunities to differentiate the parties,” said Thomas Mann, a Brookings Institution analyst.
Even if the United States avoids a costly war in the Middle East and a sapping downturn in the economy, Congress will encounter tough new fiscal curbs on legislative initiatives. The five-year, $490-billion deficit reduction package enacted last month placed tight spending caps on most defense and domestic programs and required any new programs to be financed with tax hikes or spending cuts.
“With appropriations capped, dividing up the pie will be a big area of contention,” House Majority Whip William H. Gray III (D-Pa.) said in an interview. “Do we buy B-2 Stealth bombers or do we buy C-5 planes for deployment of troops to Desert Shield? On foreign aid, do we want to give military aid or economic development assistance?”
If there is a deep recession, a decision will have to be made on whether to lift requirements in the Gramm-Rudman deficit-reduction law that call for even further trims in the federal budget deficit.
“The question becomes: Should we go ahead with deficit reduction measures in a downturn, or will countercyclical measures (such as job-creating public works projects) be needed?” Gray said.
The cost of the massive Desert Shield operation is sure to be fiercely debated, even if there is no war or prolonged deployment. There are two key budgetary issues: Should U.S. allies be pressured to shoulder more of the burden, and should U.S. costs be paid out of the regular Pentagon budget (at the expense of other programs) or be financed in separate legislation--perhaps with an income surtax?
“There is a real question about whether our allies’ commitment extends beyond just giving the U.S. a few dollars and offering to hold our coat while we do the fighting against Iraq,” said a Democratic leadership aide.
Democratic leaders plan to move early to revive two bills vetoed by Bush during the 101st Congress. One would reverse Supreme Court decisions that made it more difficult for women and minorities to sue over alleged job discrimination. The other measure would require businesses to provide workers with up to 12 weeks of unpaid leave to care for a new child or a seriously ill family member.
“Even if the Democrats fail to override Bush’s vetoes again, it will serve a political purpose,” analyst Mann said. “But I think family leave is a much better political issue for them. It’s something the average citizen supports, while the civil rights bill is vulnerable to the charge that it calls for hiring quotas. That one is potentially devastating for the Democrats.”
Political brawling over taxes, which marked the tumultuous debate over the deficit-reduction package this year, is almost certain to resume in 1991. Although Bush has indicated that he will drop his push for a capital gains tax cut, he is expected to renew other proposals to spur economic growth. In response, Democrats are primed to continue their drive for “tax fairness.”
Gephardt said that a surtax on millionaires “could be part of an overall proposal . . . to fund a real income tax cut for the middle class.”
One part of such a relief package could be a cut in the Social Security payroll tax, an idea heavily promoted by Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan (D-N.Y.). Senate Minority Leader Bob Dole (R-Kan.) proposed Sunday that any such tax cut be financed by an increase in Medicare health insurance premiums paid by the wealthy.
Some congressional Republicans are wary about re-entering the tax swamp so soon after Bush broke his no-new-taxes pledge in this year’s budget talks.
“I think we’ll be very skittish about addressing the tax issue again, at least in the first year of the new Congress,” said Rep. Jerry Lewis (R-Redlands), chairman of the House GOP caucus. “While some of us would like to see a capital gains tax cut to stimulate the economy, we demonstrated our willingness to blow that up the last go-round.”
Lewis was alluding to the bitter internal fight among House Republicans over the ill-fated budget summit agreement reached by the White House and bipartisan congressional leaders. Lewis and House Minority Leader Robert H. Michel (R-Ill.)--who supported the agreement--were pitted against rebels led by House GOP Whip Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.). The insurgents helped force a new agreement, but Democrats appeared to wind up scoring the most political points.
Michel, trying to head off more internecine warfare, recently called on his Republican colleagues to unite behind the President’s program next year.
“Every single working day we are 101 votes behind. But every single day we are also one big vote ahead--armed as we are with the President’s veto power,” Michel said, referring to Congress’ ability to sustain a presidential veto with only one-third of the House or Senate. “Presidential leverage is our political kung fu.”
All 21 vetoes cast by Bush in his first two years in office have been upheld.
Key members of both parties, preeminently Senate Majority Leader George J. Mitchell (D-Me.), are moving for major changes in the health care system. Their goals include health insurance for the more than 20 million Americans who are currently uninsured, and subsidies for the millions in expensive nursing homes.
“I think there will be a serious focus on this,” Panetta said. “The trouble is when you look at any restructuring of the health care system, it takes you right back to the pocketbook and whether you can afford any change.”
A Mitchell bill two years ago called for spending $13 billion a year on nursing home care alone.
Leaders also are seeking a new energy policy to reduce the nation’s enormous dependence on oil from the troubled Middle East. Advocates of increased offshore drilling and exploration in the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge will square off against those stressing conservation and renewable energy sources.
A new wave of legislation to protect industries threatened by imports is likely to spring up if world leaders fail to revive talks aimed at lowering trade barriers. Bills promoting exports also are expected.
Meanwhile, the Senate Ethics Committee will continue an investigation of five senators that could lead to major changes in the campaign finance system and rules governing how lawmakers deal with federal regulators.
There will be pressure for reform even if the committee takes no action against the senators, who helped a major contributor, Charles H. Keating Jr., battle federal banking officials as they moved to close his Lincoln Savings & Loan Assn.
In the highly charged ethics climate, the Senate’s 100 members also may feel compelled to stop taking speaking fees, known as honorariums, from special interest groups. House members already have adopted such a ban in exchange for a pay raise that will boost their congressional salaries to $125,100 per year on Jan. 1.
Senators make only $101,900 but are allowed to accept about $23,000 in honorariums. If the senators give up those fees, they undoubtedly will want a compensating pay raise.
But there’s a rub: The move might anger a lot of voters.
Staff writer Bill Eaton contributed to this story.
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1f16ba05d647975b97d916bb987280b2
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https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1990-12-31-mn-5576-story.html
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Black S. African Police Walk Lonely Beat : Racial conflict: Despised by other nonwhites, officers live in constant fear.
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Black S. African Police Walk Lonely Beat : Racial conflict: Despised by other nonwhites, officers live in constant fear.
At dawn in deepest Soweto, Philemon Sibanyoni prepared for what is always the riskiest part of his day--the drive to work.
He peered out his living room windows, coated in clear plastic on the inside to repel hand grenades and covered on the outside by a decorative brick wall with slits through which to see.
The street was quiet. It was time to move out.
Sibanyoni put on his hat, went into the garage and backed his red Volkswagen down the narrow drive. A couple of neighbors usually spot the black man with thinning hair and glasses as he leaves, but they don’t wave. He doesn’t mind. Having good friends can be dangerous, Sibanyoni says.
On bad days, Sibanyoni’s route is blocked with stones or burning tires. On the good days, like this, the most unpleasant part of the journey is passing the revolutionary slogans splattered on the low walls: “Join the People’s Army.” “Down With Operation Iron Fist.” “Viva ANC.”
Fifteen minutes later, Sibanyoni drove past the sandbags guarding Soweto’s Dobsonville Police Station. He settled in behind his desk, and an aide brought coffee. Louis de Wet, a white captain, entered with a brisk salute for his commander.
“Good morning, Maj. Sibanyoni,” De Wet said.
South Africa’s 40,000 black police officers, accounting for roughly half the national force, have lived in constant fear as the number of attacks on them and their families jumped this year.
More than 90 officers, most of them black, have been killed in 1990, the highest total since the township uprising of 1984-86. Some have died while on duty. Others were assassinated while sleeping in their beds, watching television, walking on the streets or driving their cars.
Despised by anti-apartheid activists and shunned by almost everyone else, black police officers are the loneliest black men and women in the country. Yet blacks are still lining up by the thousands to join the police force, because in South Africa, a job--any job--is scarce. Police work, despite the risks, puts food on the table.
Every six months, the nation’s black police college graduates a new crop of 1,260 recruits and sifts through twice that many applications for the next class.
“We’ve got so many applications that we can’t handle them all,” said Col. Johann Fourie, deputy commander of the college, in Hammanskraal, north of Pretoria.
The starting salary is good by township standards, about $4,500 a year, with rapid increases, and police officers receive medical benefits, home loans and tuition for technical colleges.
“There is security for a young guy in the police force,” said Lt. Benjamin Mavuso, a black instructor at the college.
Financial security, maybe. But not much personal security. The gun they carry is little protection for the uniform they wear.
Black police officers have long been a prime target of angry young radicals, who consider them deadly instruments of oppression and traitors to the black liberation cause. Over the past decade, hundreds of black protesters, guerrilla fighters and, occasionally, innocent bystanders have been killed by police bullets in the streets and, allegedly, by police boots and fists in interrogation rooms.
This year, with the lifting of the four-year state of emergency and new political freedom for anti-apartheid groups, violence on both sides of the racial divide has soared. More than 230 black civilians have been killed by police trying to quell unrest, according to the Human Rights Commission in Johannesburg.
“When I took the oath, my mother was a little bit worried,” admitted Frank Mzondi, a 24-year-old constable who graduated from the police college in November. “But then I told her that being a policeman works hand in hand with religion. You must believe God will be at your side. When I told her that, she felt better.”
It is perhaps no coincidence that Philemon Sibanyoni is an elder in his church, a man who believes police work is a calling from God and for whom the Bible is an emotional shield. In church each Sunday, he searches for the peace that eludes him during the week.
Sibanyoni joined the force when he was 19, and over the past 35 years he has been highly decorated, rising to a rank held by only a handful of black men. He commands a Soweto precinct with 140 policemen, is saluted by white as well as black officers and makes a comfortable annual salary of about $18,000, plus benefits.
But he has to vary his route to work each day and regularly changes the make of his unmarked police car. He is afraid to walk in his neighborhood, seldom emerges from his house at night and chain-smokes cigarettes, a habit he blames on “the pressure of the job.”
His wife, Rebecca, wants him to give up the blue uniform with the star on the shoulder and the 9-millimeter service revolver to become an ordinary citizen again. She is afraid for them both.
Their house has been attacked twice by hand grenades, his car once stalled in the midst of a rock-throwing mob and just three months ago, while it was still daylight, Rebecca Sibanyoni was terrorized by 30 youths who raided their home in search of weapons.
“You can’t be proud to be a policeman now, because we are expecting a bomb at any time,” Sibanyoni said one recent afternoon, resting on a sofa in the dark living room of his fortified house. The sounds of children playing in the street drifted in through an open window.
“Nobody in the township identifies with us,” he added. “We are totally isolated.”
The major, his wife and their 4-year-old grandson, Musa, live in a six-room house in the heart of Soweto, a township of 2.5 million blacks 15 miles southwest of Johannesburg.
After a week of 10- to 12-hour workdays, Sibanyoni relaxes on Saturdays by gardening the narrow strip between the house and his fence. He often preaches at a Methodist church on Sundays, telling parishioners that he is not their boss but their servant. His favorite sermon revolves around the apostle Paul’s admonition to the Romans: Obey those in authority.
Sibanyoni was born 54 years ago on a white man’s farm, and his father moved to Johannesburg to work as a laborer because he wanted a proper education for Philemon and his seven brothers and sisters.
Sibanyoni joined the force in 1955, and his first assignments came in two white Johannesburg suburbs, where he handled crimes involving mostly black servants and gardeners. At the time, black policemen were not allowed to carry guns or arrest white people.
The black police officer’s primary duty until the late 1970s was to enforce the pass laws, which restricted the movement of blacks from rural areas to the white cities. It was unpleasant duty, and it made him a symbol of repression.
“You would find someone being employed, trying to make an honest living, but simply because of the pass laws we had to arrest him,” Sibanyoni remembered. “I wasn’t happy with it. But there was nothing I could do. It was the law.”
In those days, many black men and women in South Africa kept their eyes lowered, grateful for any kindness from whites, and tried to ignore the inequality of the segregated, white-run society.
“We took everything as it came. What could we do? We had to accept it, good or bad,” Sibanyoni said. “But I’ve always felt I was equal (to a white). Though he may not accept it, I know it.”
In 1977, Sibanyoni was transferred to the Jabulani police station in Soweto, the country’s largest black township. That year, Steve Biko, leader of the Black Consciousness movement, died of a cerebral hemorrhage while in police custody. A year earlier, police attempts to stop an uprising of students in Soweto had touched off a nationwide blood bath.
By 1984, the townships were seething. As police used guns and tear gas to put down the disturbances, they moved into the cross hairs of angry anti-apartheid activists.
As Sibanyoni put it: “That’s when our death warrants were signed.”
A hand grenade aimed at Sibanyoni’s bedroom window that year bounced off the frame and exploded outside, shattering all the house’s windows. No one was hurt, but Sibanyoni decided to send his three children to boarding schools far away.
The township trouble escalated, but, Sibanyoni said, he never seriously considered resigning, as anti-apartheid activists demanded.
“Being black, I have no vote,” Sibanyoni said. “I don’t make the laws of this country, and they know that very well. Will they give me a job if I leave the force? Will they maintain my children? I’ve got to fend for my own living.”
He knew that police had killed many people, but he said it was the only way to protect innocent lives and property.
“If there are no other ways of stopping people from rioting, burning businesses and killing, we have to apply heavier measures,” he said. “And that’s what the members (of the force) did.”
As attacks on black policemen increased, many of them moved to the outskirts of Soweto, settling in residential enclaves where they could protect each other. Sibanyoni wanted to move too, and he put his $17,000 house up for sale. But there were no buyers, and two years later he borrowed $8,000 and hired a construction company to fortify it.
A brick curtain wall, with narrow gaps, was erected outside his living room and bedroom windows. He also extended the garage, covering the dining room windows. Even if it didn’t stop people from wanting to kill him, he figured, it would keep them from succeeding.
During the construction, in 1986, a second hand grenade was tossed at the house, again ricocheting off the facade into the yard, where it exploded, causing no injuries.
He soon felt safer at home, but the township still was dangerous. At midnight on New Year’s Eve that year, Sibanyoni turned down a street barricaded with rocks and burning tires. As he tried to reverse, his car stalled, and large stones hailed down from the darkness.
He pulled his pistol from its holster, preparing to use it for the first time, and thought, “I’ve got to defend myself or die,” he remembered. But before he could fire, a voice shouted at the youths, telling them to stop. The stoning ended and Sibanyoni drove away.
The extra protection at home discouraged attacks until last September.
Rebecca Sibanyoni, who runs a nursery school, was home alone when the phone line was cut and more than two dozen young men, armed with automatic rifles, pistols and knives, scaled a wall and burst in through the back door.
They demanded firearms, including the major’s ceremonial sword, part of his dress uniform. Then they searched the house and, finding no sword or other weapons, left with three police caps, two camouflage shirts, one jacket, a pair of trousers, a portable piano and a radio.
Rebecca Sibanyoni wasn’t hurt, but she was shaken.
“We’re no longer safe here,” she told her husband. “I know it’s an important job. But it’s also dangerous, too dangerous for a family man.”
The Sibanyonis’ neighborhood once was full of police officers and their families. But now Sibanyoni is the only one left. He doesn’t go out of his way to make friends outside the police force and his church.
“I don’t want somebody close to me,” he said. “It’s always a risk. You let your guard down and you can be ambushed.”
That attitude pervades the police force.
In Sibanyoni’s station in Dobsonville, a sign on the bulletin board reads: “You are the target.” As if anyone needed to be told. A few weeks ago, one of the station’s detectives was attacked while walking near his home and ended up in the hospital, fortunate to be alive.
“It’s only the lucky policeman who hasn’t been attacked,” Sibanyoni said.
Like many police officers, Sibanyoni blames the newly legalized African National Congress for the attacks.
“The ANC wants to make the country ungovernable, and each and every government institution is under attack--schools, hospitals, township councils,” Sibanyoni said. “The only stumbling block is the police.”
Sibanyoni doesn’t blame ANC leader Nelson Mandela, whom he remembers as a good lawyer who often defended black policemen in the 1950s. But he blames the radical ANC youth, who don’t listen to Mandela’s pleas for peace.
“Everything went wrong from the start,” he said. “These children were never taught about civics. They don’t know that a policeman is not serving the government. He is serving and protecting them. The policeman will be here long after this government is gone.”
But police still kill protesters, and activists say police continue to torture detainees as well. This year, two 15-year-old activists have died of blows to the skull while being questioned by police. A police investigation has absolved the interrogators.
The ANC also contends that right-wing police officers have been behind the current wave of black faction fighting that has seized townships around Johannesburg, leaving more than 1,000 dead in the past five months. ANC leaders say the police support Zulu chief Mangosuthu Gatsha Buthelezi’s Inkatha Party, which has been at war with ANC supporters.
The police deny the allegations. No independent investigations have been conducted into the violence.
Sibanyoni’s precinct of Dobsonville--with 100,000 residents, it is about the size of Santa Monica--is one of the quieter areas of Soweto. Yet it has a weekly average of one murder, 15 armed robberies and 15 car thefts.
Of Sibanyoni’s force, only Capt. De Wet is not black, but many white police work in the Soweto riot squad, under the command of a white officer. (The pay scales for black and white police are identical, but many more whites than blacks hold officer rank.)
Because they live and work in the townships, black police generally face far greater risks than their white colleagues. But Sibanyoni is philosophical about the dangers.
“I cannot escape death,” he said. “It will come anyhow, so running away from death is impossible.”
However, he recently began scouting apartments in Johannesburg, where the City Council has voted to open neighborhoods to blacks. He’s weary of the constant threat of attack but also disturbed by the loud radios in his Soweto neighborhood. Yet complaining about the noise is out of the question.
“If I say something, I am inviting trouble,” he explained. “My policy is to remain anonymous.”
So instead he dreams of greener pastures in Johannesburg.
“It’s quiet there,” he said. “Even if your dog barks too much, the police come. And there is no possibility that I wake up in the morning and find stones blocking the road.”
In July, Sibanyoni will be eligible to leave the force and begin drawing his pension. He’s had his mind made up on that for some time now.
“I will retire then,” he said. “If I’m still alive, of course.”
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f203a383ab7d52376788c8e9e0ee7ed9
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https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1990-12-31-mn-5578-story.html
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Murder in New Nicaragua Stirs Fear of Old Ways
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Murder in New Nicaragua Stirs Fear of Old Ways
Jean Paul Genie had no future in the old Nicaragua. Some of his friends had gone to battle and come home crippled. Others had fled to avoid conscription. His parents, fearful for their only child as he neared draft age, made plans to abandon the country.
Then last February, Violeta Barrios de Chamorro was elected president, ending a decade of Sandinista rule. She abolished military conscription and settled the Contra war. Exiles came back. One of them, Carla Lacayo, became Genie’s first sweetheart. The youth, known to his classmates as “little big man,” turned 16 on Oct. 2 and seemed to flourish.
By Oct. 28, Genie was dead. His car was riddled by gunfire, apparently unleashed in panic by the nervous bodyguards of a senior official as he sped past their caravan on a darkened Managua highway. The gunmen left him slumped and bleeding at the wheel.
To many here, the tragedy betrays Chamorro’s promise of a new Nicaragua and echoes an insecure past under arrogant rulers beyond the reach of the law.
More than two months after the shooting, the senior official has not come forward and no suspect has been detained. The victim’s parents, pressing their own inquiry, have received death threats. And a police detective looking into the crime has been killed.
The Genie case is sensitive because of circumstantial evidence pointing to Humberto Ortega, the Sandinista general who remains chief of the armed forces. Gen. Ortega has privately told the youth’s father, a wealthy pharmaceutical distributor with friends on both sides of the political divide, that neither he nor his bodyguards were involved. But the general is widely suspected of a cover-up, even by some Sandinistas.
Still, a government-supervised investigation by the police and army, both run by Sandinista officers, is continuing. It has become a closely watched test of how justice works under this Central American country’s first freely elected government.
Nicaraguans recall a similar case seven years ago when a bodyguard of the late Sandinista comandante Carlos Nunez fatally shot a motorist trying to overtake his caravan. Nunez apologized and the guard stayed on duty.
Memories of such killings also go back to the dictatorship of Anastasio Somoza, which was toppled by Sandinista guerrillas in 1979.
“The historic problem here is that criminal acts by military men go unpunished. The ordinary citizen is defenseless against them,” said Emilio Alvarez, a Conservative politician whose son died 12 years ago in a shooting spree by Somoza’s National Guardsmen. A military tribunal absolved the killers.
“I hope this case will be different,” Alvarez said. “If not, the government’s image will be damaged.”
Disturbed by rising crime and postwar political violence, Chamorro has appealed on television for witnesses to Genie’s death to speak up. The president, whose husband’s assassination in 1978 set off a popular uprising against Somoza but was never fully solved as a crime, has told the youth’s parents that she feels powerless to do more. Nicaraguan news media, unfettered after years of censorship, have reported every angle of the case.
Genie was killed while driving home on the Managua-Masaya highway after visiting his girlfriend. No one has admitted seeing the shooting that Sunday night. But three motorists and two night watchmen have said they saw a caravan of armed men in at least three Renegade Jeeps moving on the two-lane highway in the vicinity of the shooting at about the time it happened.
Walter Salmeron, a classmate of the victim, testified that he raced past Genie’s Mitsubishi Lancer, overtook the caravan and later heard gunfire. A widely accepted scenario is that Genie, notorious for his hot-rodding, was trying to catch Salmeron. The guards must have become so nervous when the first car sped past that they opened fire on the second, according to this theory.
Police said Genie’s car was hit 19 times in the front, back and right side by AK-47 assault rifle bullets, three of them fired after it had spun off the road and stopped.
Chamorro, several of her ministers and all seven comandantes of the Sandinista leadership use armed escorts. Only those of Daniel and Humberto Ortega are known to drive Renegades. “They were the Ortega brothers’ status symbol,” said an official of the Sandinista government that Daniel Ortega headed as president.
Suspicion has focused on Humberto Ortega because his residence is on the Managua-Masaya highway, in the direction that the caravan was headed the night of the shooting. Three of Gen. Ortega’s guards have testified that the entire squad was at the residence all that evening. But one witness said he saw Gen. Ortega riding in the caravan minutes before the shooting.
“People more or less accept that (the killing) was an accident or an over-reaction,” said the former Sandinista official. “What they do not accept is this silence. It is difficult and painful for us to believe, but too much evidence leads to Humberto.”
The case took an alarming turn Nov. 10 with the mysterious death of Lt. Mauricio Aguilar, a police detective who had been taken off the investigation and assigned to an anti-narcotics unit. Police officials said he was accidentally shot at the wheel of his patrol car by his drunken partner, who was inspecting Aguilar’s revolver. The partner told army investigators he recalls nothing of the incident.
Police officials insist that the two killings are unrelated. They say the Genie case will hinge on testimony now being taken from many functionaries’ bodyguards and on ballistic tests of their weapons.
But the detective’s mother has publicly accused unidentified higher-ups of ordering his murder because he “knew too much” about Genie’s death, including the names of the bodyguards in the convoy.
Genie’s parents have worked quietly to bring forward witnesses in both killings. Their social status and political connections afford them some protection from the anonymous threats that come by telephone. They are disillusioned by the results.
“More than following the trails opened by these witnesses, the police seem interested in defending the innocence of possible culprits,” said Raymond Genie, the youth’s father. He and his wife lobbied successfully in the National Assembly for an independent inquiry by handing out printed cards that read: “Your son could be next. Are you going to permit it?”
Their efforts have become a rallying point for hard-line supporters of Chamorro who demand that she abandon her policy of reconciliation with the Sandinistas, fire Gen. Ortega and the Sandinista police commanders, get rid of Sandinista judges and overturn a Sandinista law that prevents citizens from initiating criminal cases in court.
“With a new government, we thought we could restore the people’s confidence in the law after a decade of tyranny, but our leaders seem to be ignoring these sentiments,” stated Sergio Garcia Quintero, president of the National Bar Assn., in a speech on the Genie case.
The Sandinista party newspaper, Barricada, has also demanded justice for the killers while warning that “a climate of political polarization” could complicate the investigation.
At home in Managua’s Las Colinas section, Gloria Angeles Lacayo de Genie remarked to a visitor one evening how quiet the place seems without her son’s music, his laughter, his friends. She showed some essays written after his death by 11th-grade classmates at the Nicaraguan-American School. “Life is like a bomb that can explode any time,” read one.
“Jean Paul was an optimistic child, trusting in the goodness of people,” his mother said, seated with her husband on a patio surrounded by tropical plants. “I was that way too. I still have faith, but I don’t think there will be a public justice. Perhaps that won’t be necessary. Nothing will bring our son back. But if we keep talking, if we try to make clear what happened, it might not happen again.”
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a71ab5fbf232ea77697815124b93feb7
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https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1990-12-31-mn-5579-story.html
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U.S. Hospitals in Europe Not Ready for War
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U.S. Hospitals in Europe Not Ready for War
U.S. military hospitals in Europe are quietly taking extraordinary steps to prepare for mass casualties from the Persian Gulf should war break out, but the key facilities still appear woefully ill-equipped to treat large numbers of wounded.
A lack of beds, specialists and burn units have some doctors worried about plans for the three major American hospitals--all in Germany--to serve as a crucial way station for soldiers seriously wounded in the gulf.
And although both sides privately agree that German civilian hospitals could help, no formal request has been made and no specific plan drafted, officials say.
Even now, the U.S. military hospitals here are stretched thin just caring for the hundreds of gulf injured who stream through each month with ankles broken playing volleyball or kidney stones and other ailments aggravated by the desert heat.
The facilities also must continue caring for thousands of American military dependents in Germany. One of the hospitals delivers an average of 100 babies a month.
“It’s flat-out crazy,” said Col. Thomas Verdon, commander of the biggest of the three hospitals, the Landstuhl Army Medical Center. “I’m going to have to worry about women delivering babies here and a guy over there with his legs blown off, or treating a 2-year-old with meningitis while trying to save a guy who’s been run over by a tank and is in renal failure?”
Elective orthopedic surgery has been delayed already at the 97th General Hospital in Frankfurt, a sprawling Nazi-era relic which has seen more than 800 Desert Shield patients, according to its commander, Col. Richard Kirchdoerfer.
Verdon, the only one of the three commanders to serve in Vietnam, insisted in a recent interview that it is impossible for medical personnel to be fully prepared for hostilities.
“You’re never ready for a war,” he said. “Anybody who tells you they’re 100% prepared is a fool.”
The Air Force is capable of evacuating 1,000 patients a day from the gulf to Germany, a flight that lasts anywhere from five to eight hours, depending on the type of aircraft.
But Landstuhl, the Army’s 97th General Hospital in Frankfurt and the Air Force’s 7100 Combat Support Wing Medical Center in Wiesbaden together have fewer than 1,000 beds, only one neurosurgeon, one cardiovascular surgeon and the ability to handle a total of just six seriously burned patients.
The lack of staff and equipment to care for a greater number of acute burns is considered particularly worrisome because the likelihood of tank battles and Iraqi mustard gas attacks would mean more burn victims than in previous wars.
“If there are many burn patients, it’s going to be trouble with a capital ‘T,’ ” said Verdon, whose hospital is the only U.S. military facility on the Continent with any burn unit at all.
Already, the hospitals are bracing for war by training military dentists to become anesthesiologists, ordering extra beds and holding crash courses for their staffs in everything from personal stress management to diagnosing sand-fly fever.
Officials also privately acknowledge that plans are under way to activate three contingency hospitals in Britain and one in Germany, if needed. The secret “turnkey” facilities are fully equipped, unstaffed phantom hospitals that are opened only when disaster dictates. The number of beds and the exact location of each facility is classified.
Backup hospitals also exist in Italy and Greece, and patients also might be flown to three Royal Air Force bases in Britain and to Incirlik Air Base in Turkey.
There is a general reluctance by doctors, military officials and even the German government to discuss plans for handling any war casualties for fear of panicking the American public, many of them said. The medical commanders in Germany all said that projections on the number of casualties are considered classified as well.
One concern being raised here is the relative inexperience in dealing with war wounded among military doctors today. The majority of medical personnel who served in Vietnam have either left the military or retired.
“That concerns me,” said Col. Earl Ferguson, commander of the Air Force facility in Wiesbaden, who recently returned from a combat casualty course for commanders in the United States.
“We’re educating people as rapidly as we can,” he said. “The absolute worst place in the world to deploy and fight is the Persian Gulf. There are problems with extreme heat and cold--people froze to death on raids with Lawrence of Arabia.
“There are also all kinds of infectious diseases. About 80% of the people hospitalized in Vietnam were there for diseases.”
A recent draft report by the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research described numerous diseases and non-battle injuries threatening the Desert Shield troops, including typhoid, plague, cholera, rabid packs of feral dogs and scorpions whose sting can kill a man in four hours.
Doctors here are also worried about the psychological trauma their own staffs might suffer treating war wounded for the first time in their careers. Like combat soldiers, untold numbers of doctors, nurses, Red Cross volunteers and other medical personnel are known to have returned from Vietnam with the same crippling flashbacks and emotional troubles associated with post-traumatic stress disorder.
Ferguson hopes to obtain a 10-year-old film from the United States to show his staff what war wounds look like.
“They’ll have to make a psychological adjustment,” he said.
In Landstuhl, Verdon is also concerned about the emotional impact treating war wounded would have on his staff and has been encouraging them to learn stress management techniques.
“I tell them there should be no more iron men, even if they ever did exist. It’s no fun seeing an 18-year-old with his arms and legs blown off,” he said. “I want them to know there’s nothing wrong with saying, ‘I need help.’ We’re dealing with big egos, and it’s very difficult for physicians to say that.”
The three commanders in Germany all reported adequate supplies and said they feel confident that more beds and staff reinforcements will be available if war breaks out.
Although existing agreements between the U.S. military and German community hospitals spell out such cooperation in event of a natural disaster or emergency such as a plane crash, no plans have been made public for help in dealing with gulf casualties.
Germany already has come under some international criticism for not sending troops to the gulf and for failing to crack down on German firms reportedly breaking the embargo against Iraq.
Several major German hospitals contacted by The Times said they consider it a political decision left to the Bonn government whether and how to help the U.S. military cope with the flow of gulf wounded in event of war.
“At this point, there is no official request or agreement with the Americans,” said Hans Peter Gaertner, spokesman for the German chancellor’s office.
“Of course the federal government would help if help is necessary,” Gaertner said in a telephone interview. “But we do not believe that this will become an official matter because if you start asking openly about hospital beds now, it could lead to panic among the American public.”
Anticipating a staff shortage in key departments, the Air Force already is cross-training medical and administrative personnel at Wiesbaden.
“We have four operating rooms and could go to nine, but we would need extra nurses and anesthesiologists,” Ferguson said. “So I took seven dentists from our dental clinic who are already trained in IV and nitrous oxide and put them through 16 hours of training as anesthesiologists.”
Ferguson also said the orthopedic ward would likely be overwhelmed with war casualties, which would mean a greater demand for X-rays. He is currently training 11 dental technicians to load and develop X-rays and do the administrative paperwork required by the radiology department.
“There are all kinds of little adjustments you can make that markedly increase your capability,” Ferguson said.
Desert Shield patients who cannot be treated in the field are currently flown to Rhein-Main Air Base near Frankfurt, where a medical team quickly evaluates them and sends them by bus or ambulance to one of the three military hospitals. The same system would continue in the event of war, with helicopters on hand for speedier transfers, if necessary.
In Landstuhl, the staff recently underwent extensive training in treatment of wounds inflicted by chemical weapons because the United States was removing its chemical weapons from German soil and trucks carrying the deadly materials were passing by Landstuhl, according to Verdon.
“You talk about serendipity,” the commander said. “We moved all the chemical weapons out of Germany, and so we were trained in case a truck turned over or terrorists shot a rocket through one.
“I hope, I pray, that nothing happens,” he said of tensions in the gulf. “But if it does, we’re as ready as we can be. But you can never know.
“War throws a lot of curve balls.”
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7b1143738402278fab49e1ce9e061b48
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https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1990-12-31-mn-5581-story.html
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CALIFORNIA LAWS ’91
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CALIFORNIA LAWS ’91
There’s good news for Californians who are concerned about increased air pollution from smoky cars, trucks and buses or those griping about the aerial spraying of malathion. There’s bad news for convicted highway litterbugs and companies that sell telephone fax numbers to merchants and advertisers without the owner’s permission. Taking effect Tuesday are many of the 1,696 bills passed by the Legislature and signed into law by Gov. George Deukmejian during 1990. Others took effect immediately after being signed. Here’s a sampling:
TRANSPORTATION
Reckless Driving--Those convicted of speeding and reckless driving who also are found to be under the influence of alcohol or drugs face additional 60-day jail terms. (AB 3289 by Assemblyman Terry B. Friedman, D-Los Angeles.)
Motorcycles--People under 21 must satisfactorily complete a motorcycle safety training course before obtaining a license to drive one. (AB 55 by Assemblywoman Bev Hansen, R-Santa Rosa.)
Driver’s Licenses--Those convicted of making and selling phony driver’s licenses face stiffer fines and longer jail terms. (AB 2718 by Assemblyman Gerald N. Felando, R-San Pedro.)
Exhaust Fumes--Fines are increased for smoky trucks, buses and automobiles that spew excessive visible exhaust fumes into the atmosphere. (AB 911 by Assemblyman Richard Katz, D-Sylmar.)
More Exhaust Fumes--Diesel truck and bus exhaust fumes will have to be discharged overhead instead of at street level, starting Jan. 1, 1993. (AB 3097 by Assemblyman Tim Leslie, R-Carmichael.)
High-Speed Rail--The state will study the feasibility of building a high-speed rail network that would link Los Angeles, Orange, San Diego, Riverside and San Bernardino counties. (SB 1307 by former Sen. John Garamendi, D-Walnut Grove.)
Night Train--Caltrans must negotiate with Amtrak to speed up the establishment of overnight rail service from Los Angeles to Sacramento via San Francisco. (AB 3671 by Assemblywoman Delaine Eastin, D-Union City.)
Litter--In addition to mandatory fines, those convicted of littering are required to serve 8 to 24 hours picking up litter or cleaning graffiti. (AB 4229 by Assemblyman Charles W. Quackenbush, R-Saratoga.)
CONSUMERS
Credit Cards--Merchants are prohibited from requiring customers’ home addresses or telephone numbers on the front of credit card slips. This information is sometimes sold to other firms. (AB 2920 by Assemblyman Rusty Areias, D-Los Banos.)
Credit ID--Merchants are prohibited from requiring customers to present a credit card for identification when paying by check. (AB 2880 by Assemblyman Rusty Areias, D-Los Banos.)
Small Claims--The jurisdiction of small claims court, limited to awarding damages of $2,500, is extended to cases involving awards up to $5,000. (AB 3916 by Assemblyman Ted Lempert, D-San Mateo.)
State Offices--State offices that provide over-the-counter information and services to the public are required to remain open during the lunch hour on normal workdays. (AB 3167 by Assemblywoman Jackie Speier, D-South San Francisco.)
Credit Reports--Consumers can seek up to $2,500 in civil damages for the illegal use of information contained in credit reports. (AB 2908 by Assemblyman Steve Peace, D-La Mesa.)
Refunds and Exchanges--Retailers who do not permit refunds or exchanges are required to disclose their policies to consumers before goods are purchased. (AB 3047 by Assemblywoman Carol Bentley, R-El Cajon.)
Contract Copies--Merchants are required to give customers a copy of a sales contract at the time it is signed or within 10 days if the transaction takes place by mail. (SB 1107 by Sen. Quentin L. Kopp, I-San Francisco.)
Fax Numbers--Companies that market telephone fax numbers to advertisers and merchants must first obtain the owner’s permission. (SB 1807 by Sen. Quentin L. Kopp, I-San Francisco.)
Hearing Aids--The sale of hearing aids by catalogue or through the mail by unlicensed distributors is prohibited. (SB 1916 by Sen. Herschel Rosenthal, D-Los Angeles.)
Phone Harassment--Misdemeanor provisions are tightened against those who repeatedly make telephone calls to a residence with the intent of harassing or annoying the person called. (AB 3437 by Assemblywoman Lucille Roybal-Allard, D-Los Angeles.)
Lead--The state will spot check for unsafe lead levels before chinaware can be sold to the public. (AB 3659 by Assemblyman Lloyd G. Connelly, D-Sacramento.)
Garage Doors--New state safety standards take effect to prevent accidental injury or death from automatic garage door openers. (AB 3600 by Assemblyman Richard Polanco, D-Los Angeles.)
Advertising--Manufacturers must be able to prove advertising claims that use such pro-environmental terms such as “biodegradable . . . recyclable . . . or ozone friendly.” (AB 3994 by Assemblyman Byron D. Sher, D-Palo Alto.)
FOOD & AGRICULTURE
Malathion Spraying--The state Department of Health Services will conduct a long-term public health study on the effects of malathion aerial spraying used commonly to eradicate the Medfly. (AB 4209 by Assemblywoman Doris Allen, R-Cypress.)
Pesticides--A University of California research center will be established to search for alternatives to malathion and other agricultural chemicals in common use. (AB 4161 by Assemblyman Richard Katz, D-Sylmar.)
CHILDREN
Foster Parents--The state is allowed to conduct a full criminal records check of foster parents who seek to adopt a foster child. (AB 3373 by Assemblyman Tim Leslie, R-Carmichael.)
Poisonings--Manufacturers of highly toxic household products sold in California are required to include either a bitter-tasting agent or a childproof cap to help reduce accidental poisonings. (AB 4160 by Assemblyman Richard Katz, D-Sylmar.)
Youth Suicides--The state Department of Mental Health will maintain and evaluate a youth suicide prevention program. (AB 3328 by Assemblyman Tom Bates, D-Oakland.)
Video Games--Paid advertisements for alcoholic beverages or tobacco products are prohibited in video games likely to be played by youths under the age of 18. (AB 3280 by Assemblywoman Sally Tanner, D-Baldwin Park.)
Baby Thefts--Hospitals are required to improve security procedures to help reduce baby thefts from maternity wards. (AB 4071 by Assemblyman Lloyd G. Connelly, D-Sacramento.)
CRIME
Guns--The 15-day waiting period and buyer’s background check required before the purchase of handguns is extended to the purchase of rifles and shotguns. (AB 497 by Assemblyman Lloyd G. Connelly, D-Sacramento.)
Semiautomatic Weapons--The manufacture, sale or possession of devices that allow semiautomatic weapons to fire several bullets with one pull of the trigger is prohibited. (AB 376 by Assemblyman Johan Klehs, D-Castro Valley.)
Stalking--A new crime is established, called stalking, for those who maliciously follow or disturb the peace of another person with the intent of instilling fear of death or serious injury. (SB 2184 by Sen. Edward R. Royce, R-Anaheim.)
Early Parole--Work time and good behavior credits that could lead to early parole will be denied for three-time convicted violent offenders. (SB 1720 by Sen. Robert Presley, D-Riverside.)
Parole Hearings--The interval between parole hearings for murderers given life sentences, such as Charles Manson, is increased from three to five years. The intent is to reduce the emotional strain on survivors of victims who regularly appear to oppose early release. (SB 2516 by Sen. Robert Presley, D-Riverside.)
Domestic Violence--Firearm sales are prohibited to people who are under court restraining orders for incidents of domestic violence. (AB 1753 by Assemblyman Terry B. Friedman, D-Los Angeles.)
False Reports--Penalties are stiffened for police officers who file false reports with their superior officers. The law was passed after Mark Dickey, a white Long Beach police officer, was shown on video tape pushing Don Jackson, a black activist, through a plate glass window and was charged with reporting the incident inaccurately. (SB 2681 by Sen. Daniel E. Boatwright, D-Concord.)
Automatic Tellers--Banks are required to provide adequate lighting and other safety features for automatic teller machines as a deterrent to crime. (AB 244 by Sen. Charles M. Calderon, D-Whittier.)
Judges--People convicted of using an explosive device or arson fire to terrorize a judge face tougher prison sentences. (SB 2023 by Sen. Gary K. Hart, D-Santa Barbara.)
Police Scholarships--A state study will consider the establishment of a college scholarship program as a way to encourage recruitment of police officers. (AB 1720 by Assemblyman Tom Hayden, D-Santa Monica.)
Religious Services--Those convicted of disturbing a religious service face mandatory community service in addition to existing fines and jail time. (SB 2483 by Sen. Newton R. Russell, R-Glendale.)
Cordless Telephones--It becomes a crime to intentionally intercept calls made on cordless telephones, as it is now illegal to intercept calls on regular and cellular telephones. (AB 3457 by Assemblywoman Gwen Moore, D-Los Angeles.)
Judges--To help reduce court backlogs, retired judges are permitted to work up to 70 days a year without losing their pension benefits. (AB 2874 by Assemblyman Curtis Tucker Jr., D-Inglewood.)
Police Training--Local law enforcement officers are required to take racial and cultural sensitivity training classes. (SB 2680 by Sen. Daniel E. Boatwright, D-Concord.)
Hate Crimes--Victims of alleged hate violence can sue for monetary damages from public and private groups that violate their civil rights. (AB 2683 by Assemblyman Richard E. Floyd, D-Carson.)
Restitution--The state may seize wages of people convicted of crimes if the criminals fail to make court-ordered restitution for a victim’s monetary losses. (AB 1893 by Assemblyman Rusty Areias, D-Los Banos.)
Stolen Cars--Penalties are increased for the possession or sale of automobiles with defaced or altered serial numbers. (AB 3483 by Assemblyman Bob Epple, D-Norwalk.)
Driver’s Licenses--The courts can suspend, restrict, or delay for one year the driving privileges of young people who mix substance abuse and driving. The law applies to those under 21 and over 13 years who are convicted of drug or alcohol offenses committed while operating a motor vehicle or boat. (SB 1756 by Sen. Bill Lockyer, D-Hayward.)
Witnesses--There are tougher penalties for people convicted of threatening to use force or violence against a witness who could testify against them. (AB 1265 by Assemblyman Dennis Brown, R-Los Alamitos.)
More Guns--The Department of Mental Health will maintain a file of those barred from possessing guns because of mental disabilities. The Department of Justice must check the file when determining eligibility of those applying to buy firearms. (SB 2050 by Sen. Barry Keene, D-Benicia.)
SCHOOLS
School Needs--Several hundred California schools with kindergarten through grade 12 will develop their own educational programs under a pilot program intended to cut state red tape in a number of districts, to be determined by the state superintendent of public instruction. (SB 1274 by Sen. Gary K. Hart, D-Santa Barbara.)
Gangs and Drugs--A model school curriculum will be developed to help second-, fourth- and sixth-graders resist joining street gangs and using drugs. (AB 1716 by Assemblyman Pat Nolan, R-Glendale.)
Drugs and Pregnancy--High schools are required to teach the adverse effects of drugs and alcohol on pregnancy. (AB 2822 by Assemblyman Paul A. Woodruff, R-Yucaipa.)
COLLEGES & UNIVERSITIES
Campus Crime--Higher education institutions are required to make campus crime statistics available to applicants, students and employees. (AB 3918 by Assemblyman Pat Nolan, R-Glendale.)
Rape--Public and private colleges and universities are required to provide counseling and treatment to rape victims among its students, staff and faculty. (AB 3098 by Assemblywoman Lucille Roybal-Allard, D-Los Angeles.)
Campus Lighting--To improve nighttime security, the state architect will adopt standards for the lighting of college campus parking lots and walkways. SB 1912 by Sen. Marian Bergeson, R-Newport Beach.)
Disabled Parking--The University of California, state universities and community colleges are requested to provide more parking for disabled students and visitors. (AB 2625 by Assemblyman Richard Katz, D-Sylmar.)
HOUSING
Low-Income Units--In approving housing developments, cities and counties are required to ensure that at least 20% of new units are rated affordable to low- and moderate-income families. (SB 2011 by Sen. Leroy Greene, D-Carmichael.)
Appraisers--The state will begin licensing and certifying real estate appraisers who deal in federally related home and business loans, starting July 1. (AB 527 by Assemblyman Thomas M. Hannigan, D-Fairfield.)
Mobile Home Parks--Park owners are required to give residents at least 30 days notice of their intent to sell so tenants can bid on the purchase. (AB 2944 by Assemblyman Steve Clute, D-Riverside.)
HEALTH
Doctor Discipline--Tougher disciplinary action is in store for medical doctors found to be incompetent or unethical. (SB 2375 by Sen. Robert Presley, D-Riverside.)
Hospitals--Hospital emergency wards are required to provide interpreters or bilingual professional staff to serve patients with limited English proficiency or for those who are deaf. (SB 1840 by Sen. Quentin L. Kopp, I-San Francisco.)
Vocational Nurses--Licensed vocational nurses face minimum 12th-grade educational requirements, up from 10th grade. (AB 3306 by Assemblyman William H. Lancaster, R-Covina.)
Organic Foods--Tighter regulation of the fast-growing organic food industry will be implemented by the state Department of Food and Agriculture. (AB 2012 by Assemblyman Sam Farr, D-Carmel.)
Prostate Cancer--Doctors must provide prostate cancer patients a state-prepared brochure outlining all of the treatment options. (AB 3487 by Assemblyman John Burton, D-San Francisco.)
WOMEN
Date Rape--A current or previous dating relationship is not deemed sufficient to constitute consent as a defense in sex offense cases where consent is an issue. (AB 2631 by Assemblywoman Lucille Roybal-Allard, D-Los Angeles.)
Pap Smears--Health insurance plans are required to include coverage for annual Pap smear tests that are used to detect cervical cancer in women. (AB 2542 by Assemblywoman Sally Tanner, D-Baldwin Park.)
Laboratories--State-licensed laboratories that do Pap smears will be inspected at least once every two years. (AB 4352 by Assemblywoman Sally Tanner, D-Baldwin Park.)
Mammograms--Health insurance plans are required to pay for mammograms to detect breast cancer in cases where women are referred by nurse practitioners or midwives. (AB 3117 by Assemblywoman Gwen Moore, D-Los Angeles.)
Spousal Abuse--Husbands convicted of injuring their wives may be required to participate in a wife batterers’ treatment program. (AB 2632 by Assemblywoman Lucille Roybal-Allard, D-Los Angeles.)
GANGS
Graffiti--Cities and counties, with two-thirds approval by voters, can levy up to a 10-cent tax on aerosol spray paint cans and a five-cent tax on marker pens to raise money for removal of gang graffiti. (AB 3580 by Assemblyman Richard Katz, D-Sylmar.)
Graffiti Crime--The courts are allowed to suspend or delay for one year the driver’s license of anyone convicted of defacing property with paint or other materials used to create graffiti. (SB 1977 by Sen. Quentin L. Kopp, I-San Francisco.)
Teachers--The state will develop a training course for teachers and administrators on the proper handling of youth gangs, drugs and alcohol abuse. (SB 2460 by Sen. Cecil N. Green, D-Norwalk.)
EARTHQUAKES
Earthquake Insurance--A new state earthquake insurance fund will provide California’s 6.5 million homeowners with $15,000 each in earthquake damage insurance. Homeowners will be required to pay $12 to $60 a year, depending on the relative risk of a major quake in their region and the type of home construction. Coverage takes effect July 1. (SB 2902 by Sen. Frank Hill, R-Whittier.)
Coverage--Residential property insurers must offer earthquake damage coverage that meets specific standards. (SB 2596 by Sen. Alan Robbins, D-Tarzana.)
Looting--Those who loot commercial properties during a natural disaster-caused state of emergency are subject to a new crime with stiff penalties. (AB 3894 by Assemblyman William J. Filante, R-Greenbrae.)
Warning Systems--Stadiums and arenas designed for 10,000 or more must have public address systems with an emergency backup to announce what to do in case of a natural disaster. (AB 2994 by Assemblyman Gerald R. Eaves, D-Rialto.)
Maps--Seismic hazard maps for all of California will be developed by the state geologist. (AB 3897 by Assembly Speaker Willie Brown Jr., D-San Francisco.)
Homeowners’ Guide--The state Seismic Safety Commission is instructed to develop, publish and distribute a “Homeowners’ Guide to Earthquake Preparedness” by the end of this year. (AB 2959 by Assemblyman Johan Klehs, D-Castro Valley.)
Volunteers--A study will determine whether to create a volunteer corps that would coordinate grass-roots relief efforts during earthquakes, floods, fires or other disasters. (AB 3568 by Assemblyman Rusty Areias, D-Los Banos.)
INSURANCE
Life--A state life insurance guarantee fund is established to protect policyholders and their beneficiaries in the event that an insurer goes broke. (AB 4076 by Assemblyman Patrick Johnston, D-Stockton.)
Health--A state health insurance guarantee fund is established to pay off claims if a company goes bankrupt and leaves policyholders with unpaid medical bills. (SB 1979 by Sen. Alan Robbins, D-Tarzana.)
Sexual Orientation--Health insurance companies are prohibited from discriminating against policy applicants on the basis of their sexual orientation. (AB 1721 by Assemblyman Terry B. Friedman, D-Los Angeles.)
MILITARY
Mobile Homes--The maximum price for a mobile home financed with a Cal-Vet home and farm loan is increased from $90,000 to $125,000. (AB 3114 by Assemblyman Pete Chacon, D-San Diego.)
Middle East--State employees in reserve units called for duty in Saudi Arabia will be paid the difference between their state salary and military pay for six months. (SB 1899 by Sen. Ruben S. Ayala, D-Chino.)
Insurance--Automobile insurance companies are prohibited from denying coverage solely because an individual is on active duty with the armed forces. (AB 3683 by Assemblyman Dan Hauser, D-Arcata.)
DRUGS
Steroids--All public school athletic coaches and physical education teachers are required to be trained to prevent steroid and drug abuse. (AB 2063 by Assemblyman Steve Clute, D-Riverside.)
Workplace--Firms applying for state contracts are required to guarantee a drug-free workplace. (SB 1120 by Sen. John Seymour, R-Anaheim.)
Penalties--Potential penalties are increased for repeat drug offenders who refuse to participate in drug treatment programs. (AB 3407 by Assemblyman Curtis Tucker Jr., D-Inglewood.)
Autos--To help track proceeds of drug deals, automobile dealers are required to report all cash transactions exceeding $10,000. (AB 1314 by Assemblyman Steve Clute, D-Riverside.)
“Ice"--Possession of drug paraphernalia for use with “ice,” or crystal methamphetamine, is outlawed. (SB 2028 by Sen. John Doolittle, R-Rocklin).
Expenses--State agencies that receive federal anti-drug funds are required to report to the Legislature exactly how the money is spent. (SB 2739 by Senate President Pro Tem David A. Roberti, D-Los Angeles.)
ELECTIONS & POLITICS
Legislative Ethics--State legislators are prohibited from accepting speaking fees and gifts; free trips are limited; the first conflict-of-interest penalties for state lawmakers are established, and former legislators are prohibited from becoming special-interest lobbyists for one year after leaving office. (SB 1738 by Senate President Pro Tem David A. Roberti, D-Los Angeles.)
Campaigns--Elected state officials, appointees, employees and consultants face civil penalties for misusing state resources for personal purposes or in election campaign. (AB 2220 by Assemblyman Elihu M. Harris, D-Oakland.)
Ballot Propositions--Those who circulate petitions to qualify initiatives for the ballot are required to disclose their names and employers to prospective signers. (AB 3148 by Assemblyman Stan Statham, R-Oak Run.)
Proposition Backers--Friends and foes of proposed ballot propositions are required to publicly disclose their financial backers while qualification petitions are being circulated. (SB 284 by Sen. Milton Marks, D-San Francisco.)
Absentee Ballots--County election officials are required to post notices of the date, time and place where absentee ballots will be opened and counted. (AB 3586 by Assemblyman Richard L. Mountjoy, R-Monrovia.)
Disabled Voters--All election polling places must be made accessible to physically disabled voters. (AB 211 by Assemblyman Richard E. Floyd, D-Carson.)
TAXES
Forgery--It becomes a misdemeanor to forge a spouse’s signature on a state income tax form. (AB 3045 by Assemblywoman Jackie Speier, D-South San Francisco.)
Payments--Some Californians will be permitted to pay their state income and bank and corporation taxes by credit card under a pilot project. (AB 3583 by Assemblyman Paul A. Woodruff, R-Yucaipa.)
SENIOR CITIZENS
Drugs--Pharmacists are required to warn senior citizens of health hazards that could result from mixing prescription drugs. (AB 3276 by Assemblyman Bruce Bronzan, D-Fresno.)
Speed Limits--Local governments can establish 25 m.p.h. speed limits on streets in the vicinity of homes for senior citizens. (SB 1860 by Sen. Quentin L. Kopp, I-San Francisco.)
Fire Alarms--New fire alarm and sprinkler system standards are established for residential care homes for the elderly. (AB 1989 by Assemblyman Thomas M. Hannigan, D-Fairfield.)
Park Passes--Those 62 and older may obtain state park passes at reduced rates for use during off-peak hours under a pilot program that is applied to specific state facilities. (SB 752 by Sen. Dan McCorquodale, D-San Jose.)
Civil Suits--Civil actions involving those 70 and older may be granted trial calendar preference under certain conditions. (AB 3811 by Assembly Speaker Willie Brown Jr., D-San Francisco.)
EMPLOYMENT
Worker Safety--Employers can face criminal and civil penalties for violating state safety regulations that result in a worker’s death. (AB 1675 by Assemblyman Terry B. Friedman, D-Los Angeles.)
Danger Warning--Employers who fail to warn employees of the existence of a serious, concealed workplace danger can be charged with a crime. (AB 2249 by Assemblyman Terry B. Friedman, D-Los Angeles.)
Wages--Employers who pay their workers in cash to avoid taxes face tougher penalties. (AB 2693 by Assemblywoman Delaine Eastin, D-Union City.)
School Visits--Employers are prohibited from penalizing an employee who uses up to four hours of vacation time a year to visit his or her child’s school. (AB 3782 by Assemblyman Curtis Tucker Jr., D-Inglewood.)
MISCELLANEOUS
Drunken Boating--In conformity with laws for motor vehicle operators, adult boaters whose blood shows an alcohol level of 0.08% or minors who test at 0.05% are presumbed to be under the influence of alcohol. Previously the adult level was 0.10% for drunken boating. (SB 1808 by Sen. Bill Leonard, R-Big Bear.)
Fire Safety--Cities and counties may enact fire safety building ordinances that are stricter than state standards. (SB 1830 by Sen. Cecil N. Green, D-Norwalk.)
Check Cashing--Service centers that cash checks are required to post in plain view a schedule of the fees they charge. (AB 3096 by Assemblyman Elihu M. Harris D-Oakland.)
Los Angeles River--The state will study the feasibility of developing the Los Angeles River floodway as a park and recreation area. (SB 1920 by Sen. Art Torres D-Los Angeles.)
AIDS--The state Department of Health Services will conduct a detailed study of the effectiveness of AIDS-related programs in helping substance abusers, members of racial or ethnic minority groups and women. (AB 4248 by Assembly Speaker Willie Brown Jr., D-San Francisco.)
Puppies--To curb the sale of unhealthy animals, pet shops are required to inform puppy purchasers of a dog’s past veterinary treatment record. (AB 4300 by Assemblyman Sam Farr, D-Carmel.)
Cranes--Twice-a-year inspections of tower cranes will be conducted by the state. This law is the response to a San Francisco high-rise crane accident that killed five people and injured 21 others. (AB 3826 by Assemblyman Tom Hayden, D-Santa Monica.)
New State Boards--Proponents of new state boards or commissions must prove to the state Legislature that the boards are needed and that an existing body cannot assume the same duties. (AB 2572 by Assemblywoman Delaine Eastin, D-Union City.)
Charity--It will be easier to prosecute fraudulent charitable solicitation schemes because of the elimination of a requirement for two witnesses or proof in writing. (AB 2702 by Assemblyman Gerald R. Eaves, D-Rialto.)
Lottery--The state Lottery Commission will develop a model agreement for dividing big prizes among group members who purchase a winning ticket. (AB 2847 by Assemblyman Richard E. Floyd, D-Carson.)
Area Codes--Telephone companies are required to provide advance notice and hold public hearings before establishing new area codes. (AB 2889 by Assemblywoman Gwen Moore, D-Los Angeles.)
Trade Secrets--Barring overriding public interest to the contrary, judges may close courtrooms to hear testimony in which high technical trade secrets would be exposed. (AB 2986 by Assemblyman Charles W. Quackenbush, R-Saratoga.)
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d205964ad84ca17cc93b221197eb1969
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https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1990-12-31-mn-5623-story.html
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Albanians Streaming Into Greece; Jews Allowed to Go
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Albanians Streaming Into Greece; Jews Allowed to Go
Hundreds of Albanians streamed into Greece on Sunday in the biggest one-day exodus since their country’s Communist rulers began a reform program, and Albania announced it is also allowing Jews to depart.
Thirty-seven Jews, all related, flew to Rome from the Albanian capital en route to Israel, said Shula Bahat, a spokeswoman for the American Jewish Committee in New York.
She said Sunday’s flight was the first in a planned operation dubbed “Flying Carpet” to whisk an estimated 500 Jews out of Albania.
Vladimir Prela, head of the Albanian Foreign Ministry’s press office, said the Jewish emigration is part of a new government policy to allow people to leave Albania.
“If they want to live in Israel, they can do so,” Prela said in a telephone interview from Tirana, Albania’s capital. He estimated Albanian Jews number about 1,000.
Tirana newspapers Sunday published a new draft constitution that enshrines freedom of movement, as well as freedom of religion and private ownership, according to Albanian Radio.
The government station, monitored by the British Broadcasting Corp. in London, said the draft establishes multi-party elections. Under the new constitution, the president would be selected by Parliament to a five-year term and could be reelected only once.
Despite the reforms, many Albanians appear set on using their newly won mobility simply to bolt the country.
A police spokesman in the Greek border village of Filiates said it appears that the Albanian government has opened its mountainous frontier with Greece.
“There can be no other explanation,” he said on condition of anonymity. “A mosquito couldn’t get across the border before.”
At least 500 Albanians arrived Sunday, and all were seeking political asylum, he said.
In the southeastern Albanian city of Korce, thousands of Albanians joined a rally of the country’s newborn opposition Sunday to urge the Communist authorities to postpone Feb. 10 parliamentary elections and free political prisoners, an opposition official said.
Genc Polo, spokesman for the 18-day-old opposition Democratic Party, quoted rally organizers as saying about 40,000 people attended the peaceful gathering.
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dfb8b6878ba6d7404decc488f5b0b612
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https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1990-12-31-mn-5624-story.html
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Britain’s ‘Gong Show’ Is Both Praised, Damned : Awards: The Establishment loves the honors system. Critics argue they are rank political patronage.
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Britain’s ‘Gong Show’ Is Both Praised, Damned : Awards: The Establishment loves the honors system. Critics argue they are rank political patronage.
Insiders call them “gongs.” The Establishment says they are recognition for service. Critics argue they are rank political patronage. The Times of London writes that they are “a regular British farce.”
Whatever the view, the venerable British honors system is still going strong--and controversially. It is praised by some as rewarding endeavor for the nation; damned by others as a corruption at the heart of government.
Outgoing Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher refueled the running argument in her Resignation Honors List in December by naming to the House of Lords people whose chief virtue was the size of their monetary contributions to the Conservative Party.
She also recommended for honors Fleet Street editors whose newspapers are distinguished solely by the fervor with which they supported the prime minister when she was in power.
As the Times described the Thatcher list: “It was an odd mixture of financial and media backers and cronies, together with hard-working assistants, the ‘honor’ done to the former tainting that was done to the latter.”
Still, Thatcher (who can be addressed as Lady Thatcher since her husband was made a baronet), apparently avoided a scandal like that which attended the infamous 1976 resignation honors list of Labor Prime Minister Harold Wilson, who ennobled and knighted men later indicted for various crimes.
British honors are regularly awarded twice a year by the monarch, with the vast majority of nominees made by the prime minister and at the New Year and on the queen’s official birthday. The lists sometimes number more than 2,000 names.
The most recent, announced late Sunday, included a life peerage for mystery novelist P. D. James and a knighthood for actor Ian McKellen. Romance novelist Barbara Cartland was made a dame, the female equivalent of a knight.
Additional honors lists come when a prime minister resigns or Parliament is dissolved. Most honors are accompanied by medals, hence the nickname “gongs.”
People are nominated for honors through a complicated system of civil service committees, which act before the names reach the prime minister’s office and ultimately the palace.
Britain, of course, is not unique in dispensing honors and gongs to deserving (or undeserving) citizens: Most countries have such sought-after baubles.
The United States, for instance, has the Medal of Freedom and lesser awards for recipients, who range from former Presidents to Nobel scientists to entertainers.
The French have varying degrees of the Legion of Honor, created by Napoleon, who said that men would fight and die for bits of ribbon. Germany has replaced the famed Iron Cross with the Federal Service Cross, in several degrees.
Yet no country has quite the array of honors that a British queen can bestow upon her subjects--and also upon nationals of other nations, people like former President Ronald Reagan and Ireland’s Bob Geldof, a rock musician and famine-fund raiser, who were awarded honorary knighthoods.
Honors range from peerages and knighthoods at the top of the scale to MBEs (Member of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire) and BEMs (British Empire Medal) at the lower level.
When the Beatles received MBEs in 1965, other recipients of the award sent back their gongs in protest.
Peerages (usually life barons) and knighthoods (known as a “K”) generally go to retiring political, government, and military officials as well as heavy contributors to the ruling party.
From a certain British point of view, one virtue of a peerage (Lord Smyth) or knighthood (Sir John Smyth) is that the wife of the recipient may formally be addressed as Lady Smyth instead of Mrs. Smyth.
Somewhere in between orders of knighthoods come those awards more truly concerned with achievement: the Order of Merit, limited to 24 members, and the Companion of Honor.
Towards the lower end of the scale, awards are given to sports figures like snooker champ Steve Davis and England soccer coach Bobby Robson, and to government retainers for a lifetime of dedicated service: a doorman at No. 10 Downing Street or a personal maid at Buckingham Palace.
By far the most numerous awards in the Queen’s List go to middle-level government employees: heads of city government, assistant ministers in departments, serving officers and diplomats, postmasters, police officers, senior teachers and those involved in charitable work.
All recipients of awards are entitled to put the initials after their names in descending order of precedence. Hence, former Foreign Secretary Lord Carrington, KG (Knight of the Garter), CH (Companion of Honor), KCMG (Knight Commander of the Order of St. Michael and St. George), MC (Military Cross), PC (Privy Counselor).
Most royal orders have several degrees: The Order of the British Empire, for instance, has Knight (or Dame) Grand Cross, Knight Commander, Commander, Officer, and Member.
When author Nancy Mitford was given a CBE, she remarked: “I didn’t think there was a BE any longer.”
The Most Distinguished Order of St. Michael and St. George is generally reserved for foreign service officers. The degrees are referred to around the Foreign Office, in ascending order, as CMG (Call Me God); KCMG (Kindly Call Me God); GCMG (God Calls Me God).
The top order of knighthood is The Most Noble Order of the Garter, founded in 1348, whose 24 members are personally selected by the queen, and include former Labor Prime Ministers Harold Wilson and James Callaghan.
One gruff old duffer who was a friend of the Royal Family, on being named a KG, reportedly remarked: “What I like about it is there’s no bloody nonsense about merit.”
Most recipient of honors receive them personally from the queen in an investiture ceremony at Buckingham Palace that may come several weeks after the announcement, depending on the numbers of the awards and her schedule.
Though egalitarian critics may deplore it, the honors system follows a hallowed British tradition: The aristocracy itself is based on the fact that monarchs have always rewarded favorites--competent or not--with titles, lands and privileges.
In fact, the custom of awarding knighthoods can be traced back to the 9th Century under King Albert the Great. On inheriting the crown in 1603, James VI of Scotland created 906 knights within four months, dubbing 46 before breakfast on one morning alone.
Earlier this century, Prime Minister David Lloyd George openly sold honors as a way of raising funds for his Liberal Party. His bagman, Maundy Gregory, flagrantly listed the going rate for peerages at 100,000 pounds, then about $500,000; baronetcies (heredity knighthoods) at 30,000 pounds, and knighthoods at 10,000 pounds.
The resulting uproar led King George V to declare Lloyd George’s freewheeling style with honors an insult to the monarchy, and a Political Honors Scrutiny Committee was set up to evaluate submissions.
The Labor governments also did not award heredity peerages but created only barons for life; the title does not pass through the male line as is customary for lords.
Peers sit in the House of Lords and range from dukes, through marquesses, earls, viscounts and barons. Sir Winston Churchill, KG, was reportedly offered a dukedom but declined in order to sit in his beloved House of Commons.
Thatcher restored the practice of granting honors for political service to faithful Tory party retainers and contributors, and she also recommended three heredity peerages: the traditional earldom for former Prime Minister Harold Macmillan (Wilson and Callaghan accepted only life peerages) and viscountcies for former Deputy Prime Minister William Whitelaw and former Speaker of the House George Thomas.
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919e666fcda39829320627b76cf2423f
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https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1990-12-31-mn-5625-story.html
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In Northwest, specialty coffee is the hot drink : Seattle residents line up for exotic beverages at stores and offices. The craze may spill over to L.A.
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In Northwest, specialty coffee is the hot drink : Seattle residents line up for exotic beverages at stores and offices. The craze may spill over to L.A.
It is a curious ritual, and it is practiced here with cheery determination.
People go to the supermarkets. But before they load their carts, they stand in line. They go to a garden nursery. Before looking at plants and bulbs, however, they line up. It’s the same at medical centers and department stores. And of course they line up outside office buildings before heading up the elevators to their jobs.
They are lining up for coffee. Not just ordinary coffee, but specialty coffee, designer coffee drinks, all kinds of exotic coffee.
“Two double lattes, light, and a mocha, a short drip and a tall red eye. Oh, and throw in a decaf Americano.”
That’s the way they talk. Honest.
Coffee is king in Seattle.
After a boom more than a decade in the making, Seattle residents now believe they consume more coffee per capita than anyone else in America.
Chances are they also consume more types of coffee drinks in more different places than anywhere else in America.
On downtown street corners the espresso cart has become a fixture. There are about 150 here in King County. Coffee counters are everywhere, at the big shopping malls, at sporting goods co-ops, at bookstores and movie theaters. There is even a combination drug store/espresso shop. And, of course, there is the drive-through coffee stand. One coffee company operates 10 stores in a single square mile of the downtown area.
Still there are the lines of the thirsty wanting more.
Laid back and easy-going, that’s supposed to be the Northwest image. But judging from the caffeine consumption, Northwesterners are also, deep inside, wired as tight as Madonna’s bustier.
Ron Wallach thought it uninspiring to hang out his shingle: Dr. Ron Wallach, dentist. So in September, he opened his practice as Espresso Dental.
He wore out his first espresso machine by Christmas. Patients find that a dentist who will make them a cappuccino is more approachable and easier to talk to than someone wearing only a mask and gloves, Wallach says.
Seattle’s 10,000-circulation Cafe Ole started this autumn as the nation’s first monthly magazine for coffee drinkers, profiling people and products, offering recipes and answering questions.
Why Seattle and why coffee?
Like most questions about life here, the answer seems to be rooted in the weather. Cool, wet, gray, gloomy--these are perfect year-round conditions for a warm pick-me-up.
Entrepreneurs like Howard Schultz, chief executive of Starbucks, a Seattle-based specialty coffee company, thinks there is an added reason: Give somebody a luxury for $1.50 and they will quite literally lap it up.
A lousy cup of coffee might cost 60 cents. But double the price, grind the beans fresh, add steamed milk and a tiny dollop of milk foam, call it a latte (LA-tay), like the Italians do, and pretty soon you’ve got a beverage to shape the culture of a city.
Coffee experts say the craze is spreading. Starbucks announced it is opening shops, offering coffee by the cup as well as beans and all kinds of brewing paraphernalia, inside Pavilions supermarkets on the West Side of Los Angeles in 1991.
So you don’t hold up the line, here is a quick primer on ordering by the cup:
Espresso is the foundation--a shot-glass measure of concentrate made by forcing pressurized steam through fine grounds. Cappuccino calls for the addition of a floating spoonful of foamed milk. Lattes are the No. 1 selling coffee drink among Seattle coffee consumers. For the health conscious, it is fashionable to specify decaf and skim milk. Chocolate turns a latte into a mocha. You can also call for vanilla or almond extracts. Add a shot of espresso to a cup of drip coffee and it’s a red eye. An Americano is espresso watered down to the strength of a cup of drip coffee.
Oh, and forget ordering either small or large cups; the choices are short or tall.
Careful readers may wonder next, exactly how does one lift the 20-pound turkey out of the grocery freezer compartment without spilling one’s piping hot double mocha? Or how do you sip your cappuccino while Dr. Wallach is fitting a crown on your tooth?
But that’s for the advanced class, later. . . .
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58ab316893abb2e8d0c61fc7b511c125
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https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1990-12-31-mn-5626-story.html
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WASHINGTON INSIGHT
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WASHINGTON INSIGHT
UNIFORM VIEWS: President Bush has the unanimous support of his own top advisers in his decision to move quickly to attack Iraqi forces if Iraq fails to withdraw from Kuwait by the Jan. 15 deadline set by the United Nations Security Council.
Despite reports to the contrary, Administration sources say there is no internal dissent over the question--even from Defense Secretary Dick Cheney, whose own generals have cautioned that U.S. forces may not be prepared by then.
White House strategists also discount views that Bush may face a backlash in Congress if he orders an early attack. When the lawmakers return from spending the holidays at home, “they’ll be behind the President,” one top policy-maker says.
WHAT, ME WORRY? Bush’s top economic team has decided to try to tough out the economic downturn rather than take any new action to help arrest the slide.
Treasury Secretary Nicholas F. Brady’s blithe response on “Meet the Press” earlier this month (“I don’t think it’s the end of the world even if we have a recession. . . . No big deal.”) was a foretaste of the Administration’s approach, policy-makers say.
The only major economic initiative the Administration is planning now is a sweeping bill that would overhaul the banking system. Officials say Bush doesn’t intend to propose any anti-recession plan because to do so might exacerbate inflation.
But some analysts worry that the President’s bank plan could seriously worsen the present slump by heightening the growing uncertainty about the nation’s banks.
TAKING AIM: Gun-control advocates hope to turn the Administration’s proposed “summit” of state and local law enforcement officials--scheduled to convene here in mid-February to discuss the increase in violent crime--into a push for tougher restrictions on firearms ownership.
Such a move could prove embarrassing for the White House. Big-city police chiefs, traditionally opposed to such legislation, now include some of the strongest advocates of tougher gun laws.
OPENING SALVO? The Bush Administration may be facing the prospect of a widespread internal revolt against White House Budget Director Richard G. Darman.
Health and Human Services Secretary Louis W. Sullivan’s surprise public attack on Darman last week--complaining that the budget chief’s demand for further cutbacks could impede delivery of services to the needy--may well have been just the opening salvo, sources here say.
Other top Cabinet officers are expected to try their hand as well as the White House moves into the final phase of decision-making for the fiscal 1992 budget, which is due out Feb. 4.
Some analysts say that Darman has all but invited discontent among other Cabinet officers with his continued heavy-handedness in demanding further cuts.
Veteran Administration-watchers say the Sullivan incident also reflects a growing perception that Darman, who lost ground in the budget fracas with Congress last autumn, is politically vulnerable and on the way out.
YULETIDE THOUGHT: Greeting on a Christmas card sent out by the Iraqi Embassy: “Peace is not a season. It’s a state of mind.”
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c8fdb51022fd83b2121330e7705faf59
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https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1990-12-31-mn-5628-story.html
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Moscow Police Raze Tents, Shacks Built by Homeless
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Moscow Police Raze Tents, Shacks Built by Homeless
Police moved in with bulldozers under the cover of darkness early Sunday and razed a tent and shack city set up as a protest by homeless people near the Kremlin, the first concrete sign of a hard-line crackdown, witnesses said.
The three dozen residents of the makeshift community that sprang up in July in a gesture of disillusionment with Soviet life were rounded up in the early hours by Interior Ministry police before the bulldozers moved in and flattened their plastic and cardboard dwellings in front of the Rossiya Hotel, witnesses said.
Most of the tent city’s full-time residents, including elderly pensioners, war veterans and former mental patients with a variety of grievances, were taken into custody.
A police officer at the scene said some will be sent to mental hospitals and others will be freed after investigation.
But the Interior Ministry spokesman said protesters will be given free tickets back to their hometowns.
The Interior Ministry press office said the decision to raze the protest village was made by the Moscow prosecutor based on an order by the City Council’s executive committee.
“One should help these people and not simply oppress them,” he said.
Vadim Shilov, 22, admitted that authorities had previously made offers to many of the tent city regulars to move to hotels while their complaints were investigated, and about half had accepted the offer.
“The tent city was a political protest by the simple people,” said Svetlana Sedykh, who lived for three months in the shantytown to further her bid to emigrate.
“This was the first and the last such protest. There will never be another,” said Sedykh, who narrowly escaped being taken into custody.
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28ed6a6fa27b85f74da69d9ebafb6e8d
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https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1990-12-31-mn-5630-story.html
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GULF WATCH: Day 151 : A daily briefing paper on developments in the crisis : Diplomatic Front:
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GULF WATCH: Day 151 : A daily briefing paper on developments in the crisis : Diplomatic Front:
Vice President Dan Quayle, on a visit to the Persian Gulf, met with Saudi Arabia’s rulers and said he wants them to provide more financial support to the gulf effort. The Saudis agreed.
European Community foreign ministers will hold an emergency meeting Friday and may invite Iraqi Foreign Minister Tarik Aziz for discussions to try to avert war.
Political Front:
Senate Republican leader Bob Dole said President Bush should try again to arrange a meeting between Secretary of State James A. Baker III and Iraqi President Saddam Hussein because “the American people are not yet committed to war.” Reps. Les Aspin (D-Wis.) and Lee Hamilton (D-Ind.) shared his sentiments.
At the White House, 19 people were arrested in protests against U.S. policy. Among those seized: former priest Philip Berrigan, a leader of the peace movement in the Vietnam War.
Military Front:
Iraq’s ruling party warned that Iraqis and other Arabs will attack U.S. and Western targets worldwide if America and its allies move militarily against Iraq.
Major Contributors Pledging Aid:
* Saudi Arabia: $10 billion+
* Kuwait: $5 billion
* Japan: $4 billion
* Germany: $2 billion
* European Community: $2 billion
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93084123d7fce9400df7e1adaa0ebf92
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https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1990-12-31-mn-5631-story.html
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Baghdad Warns U.S. of Guerrilla Attacks : Terrorism: Retaliation is threatened if gulf war is launched. Hussein calls Bush a Judas.
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Baghdad Warns U.S. of Guerrilla Attacks : Terrorism: Retaliation is threatened if gulf war is launched. Hussein calls Bush a Judas.
The ruling party in Iraq warned the U.S. government Sunday that its vital interests around the world would be targets for guerrilla attack if the U.S.-led multinational forces in the Persian Gulf launch a war to drive Iraq out of Kuwait.
The government also said that 350 Muslims from around the world will gather in Baghdad six days before the U.N. deadline for an Iraqi withdrawal in a show of support for President Saddam Hussein.
And in a New Year’s message, Hussein compared President Bush to the biblical figure Judas and called Saudi King Fahd--who asked U.S.-led international troops to protect his kingdom--a “traitor” to Muslims.
“In the same way as Judas betrayed Jesus Christ, Bush betrayed the teachings of Jesus through his aggressiveness and penchant toward evil,” Hussein said.
The Iraqi threat of terrorist attacks against U.S. and other installations came in the Al Thawra newspaper, which is the mouthpiece of Iraq’s ruling Baath Socialist Party.
“Hundreds of thousands of volunteers are now at the highest state of readiness to fight against the alliance of evil and aggression,” the daily said.
Iraq’s religious affairs minister, Abdullah Fadil, warned Sunday that Muslims would retaliate against the United States and its allies if Islamic holy shrines are hit in any multinational offensive aimed at driving the Iraqis out of Kuwait.
“Every Muslim will be a missile to be thrown against the enemy once he launches his armed aggression against Iraq,” he told a news conference in Baghdad.
Fadil also said that Muslims from around the world will gather in Baghdad for a three-day conference opening Jan. 9. He said 350 delegates from Islamic movements in more than 17 countries would draw up a plan for a Muslim response to any attack against Iraqi forces.
Also Sunday, Iraqi Information Minister Latif Jasim said that Bush “must have been drunk” when he suggested Iraq might withdraw from Kuwait.
Bush said in an interview with Time magazine to be published today that he had a “gut feeling” Iraq would withdraw to avoid war.
Jasim derided the comment, adding: “If Bush starts a war, he will not be able to stop it. . . . We will show the world that America is a paper tiger.”
Also on Sunday, Iraq said four U.S. and Western warships surrounded the Iraqi oil tanker Ain Zalah and that 60 Marines boarded the vessel and attacked the crew.
In Washington, a spokeswoman for the Defense Department said she had no information on the alleged attack.
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04fc2c8cd63ef581e9a97853a0e5167c
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https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1990-12-31-mn-5632-story.html
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Policeman, 4 Others Die in Natal Province
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Policeman, 4 Others Die in Natal Province
A policeman and four civilians were shot or stabbed to death in political and factional black violence in strife-torn Natal province, police said Sunday.
The violence followed an outburst of fighting in black townships of the Indian Ocean province on Friday that left 12 people dead in the most serious clashes since Christmas Day.
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f5f1101f3ad31a944699875296b337ff
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https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1990-12-31-mn-5634-story.html
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Flooding Closes Roads, Forces Evacuations in Midwest : Weather: Another winter storm warning is issued in Washington state. More record lows are set in the plains.
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Flooding Closes Roads, Forces Evacuations in Midwest : Weather: Another winter storm warning is issued in Washington state. More record lows are set in the plains.
Flooding forced evacuations and closed roads Sunday in Indiana and Ohio, and a new storm headed into wind-ravaged Washington state with a threat of snow and high wind.
Highways were icy across parts of the plains and towing services were kept busy with cars that wouldn’t start or stay on the road.
Temperatures dipped to numbing lows again Sunday, including a record 23 below zero at Scottsbluff, Neb., 30 below at Rapid City, S.D., a record for the month of December, and an unofficial 40 below at Porcupine, S.D.
Since the start of the season’s first strong cold wave on Dec. 18, at least 98 deaths have been attributed to the weather.
Two days of heavy rain combined with melting snow to push streams out of their banks in many areas around Indiana. Scattered evacuations were reported in several communities, including Indianapolis. Countless roads were closed by high water, officials said.
Indiana’s emergency management director said he was concerned that rivers were still rising and had not crested yet. Additional rain, sleet and snow fell Sunday.
The Mississinewa River was forecast to crest five feet above flood stage for its worst flooding at Marion since 1958, and Indianapolis was due to receive the highest levels along the White River since 1964, the National Weather Service said.
Dozens of residents were evacuated in two northern Ohio towns because of high water.
In the Northwest, which was battered by high wind Friday that damaged coastal property and knocked down trees and power lines, the weather service issued another winter storm warning for the Puget Sound area and upgraded a storm watch to a storm warning for north-central and northeastern Washington.
The storm also knocked out power to about 150,000 utility customers.
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6ead817d2f3ec3cb7e8df00d05dd2f6a
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https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1990-12-31-mn-5636-story.html
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Algeria Hijackers Release Hostages and Surrender
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Algeria Hijackers Release Hostages and Surrender
A 36-hour hijacking ended peacefully at Annaba in eastern Algeria on Sunday when two armed Algerians freed 52 hostages unharmed and surrendered to police, the state Air Algerie airline said.
The two men had commandeered the Boeing 737 on Friday evening, shortly after it left the southern town of Ghardaia on a regular flight to Algiers, and forced it to land at Annaba airport.
Algerian officials said the two men, in their 20s, were disgruntled servicemen stationed at the remote desert garrison of Ghardaia.
Algiers Radio said the 46 remaining passengers were set free shortly after officials resumed negotiations after a five-hour break. The hijackers released the six crew members minutes later.
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355f3fe41e91eb00b98a310f402f036d
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https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1990-12-31-mn-5637-story.html
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Greece Drops Plans to Free 13 From ’67 Junta
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Greece Drops Plans to Free 13 From ’67 Junta
The Greek conservative government, battered by a storm of protest, Sunday dropped controversial plans to free from prison 13 military officers who seized power in 1967 and imposed a brutal seven-year dictatorship.
A government announcement said the decision to back down from the pardons of leaders of the 1967-74 right-wing military government was made to avoid “political tension.”
Prime Minister Constantine Mitsotakis said Friday that he had decided to pardon nearly all the remaining jailed former members of the junta for humanitarian reasons. That provoked cries of outrage from conservatives, Socialists, Communists and other leftists, both in Greece and on the island of Cyprus.
Approval of the pardon had been expected by a government committee this week and by President Constantine Caramanlis, but newspapers reported Sunday that Caramanlis would not sign such a presidential decree. His office would not confirm the reports.
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fe3795af166a92697d1ab3a1ca622811
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https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1990-12-31-mn-5639-story.html
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2 More Teens Are Shot at Home by Attacker Outside
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2 More Teens Are Shot at Home by Attacker Outside
In the third attack on teen-agers at home over the weekend, two 16-year-old boys were shot through a bedroom window in Torrance on Saturday night, police said.
“This was not a drive-by,” said Torrance Police Lt. Wally Murker.
In the 16900 block of Eastwood Avenue--"a typical suburban neighborhood, typical Torrance, if you will,” Murker said--someone crept up about 10:45 p.m. to the room where three teen-age boys had gathered and fired.
One boy was wounded in the upper thigh and another in the neck, Murker said. The third was uninjured.
Both victims remain hospitalized at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center, Murker said. The boy with the neck injury was in critical condition Sunday; the other in stable condition, he said.
Two 13-year-olds were killed in separate incidents earlier in the weekend. Adrian Ferrusca of Claremont was shot as he slept on a sofa in his grandmother’s house in Pomona. Police said Ferrusca was not a gang member but called the house a “known gang location.” Tanya Cadle was shot through her family’s Crenshaw district living room window in an apparent drive-by shooting.
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eaacb0f564a7bfa5897e07eaac1badbf
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https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1990-12-31-mn-5718-story.html
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Casualties of the American Resolution
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Casualties of the American Resolution
OK, so you didn’t shed those pounds or kick that cigarette habit. And you haven’t finished that house project, erased your debts, gotten that promotion or taken those lessons you promised yourself.
Cheer up. A New Year is aborning and the fitness gurus, money managers, career counselors and weight loss clinics are gearing up for that perennial January blitz of self-improvers out to fulfill New Year’s resolutions.
Many people fall off the program before the month is even out. So what? Nothing ventured, nothing gained. But experts say it’s all in the way you set your goals and try to achieve them that make the difference.
“People tend to be very unrealistic about their objectives and what they want to accomplish,” said Dr. Tom E. Noyes, medical director at Capistrano by the Sea Hospital in Dana Point and a UCI professor of psychiatry.
They want quick fixes to problems that took years to develop, often without acknowledging that they can’t do it alone, he said.
Popular Newport Beach psychologist Pat Allen advises: “Set small goals, things you can achieve in a day or a week, like giving up desserts until you’ve gotten to your desired weight. . . . Look at your resolution to see if it’s small enough for a human being to do this week.”
“There’s something about positive reinforcement in small increments that allows you to handle the big commitments,” said Allen, who has had some personal experience at these things. She is both a recovering alcoholic and a compulsive eater.
Longtime budget adviser Carl Lindquist anticipates that January’s credit card statements--fat with Christmas season charges--will spur an avalanche of clients to his nonprofit Consumer Credit Counselors of Orange County Inc. in Santa Ana.
“We have had quite a splurge here recently, and we expect a big one in early January, when people get their bills and realize they can’t make the payments,” said Lindquist, president of the 25-year-old company, which manages an average of 1,500 accounts of people troubled by consumer debts.
If getting out of the financial hole is your New Year’s goal, Lindquist advises cutting up the plastic.
“You’ve got to quit charging stuff, that’s all,” he said. “Try to get on a cash basis. That’s hard to do when you’ve got a pocketful of credit cards.”
When it comes to self-improvement, looking good--that is, losing weight and getting fit--tops most lists.
Consequently, every January, there is a corresponding surge in business at diet and nutrition centers, at Overeaters Anonymous, and at health clubs and fitness centers throughout the county.
Membership at Weight Watchers of Orange County increases 100% after each New Year’s Day, said Orla Lohmeier, advertising manager at the organization’s Santa Ana headquarters.
“Everybody’s resolution is: This time I’m going to do it; this time I’m serious, 1991 will be the year,” Lohmeier said. “Then membership starts to fall off towards March and April and picks back up in September.”
Many are, ahem, repeat customers.
Ruth Mosher of Anaheim has “high hopes” for a run on the Cambridge Diet plan, which she distributes in Orange County. Already, one former graduate has contacted her about resuming the program.
“He said he tried Cambridge back East and was real successful with it. He wants to take it up again.”
Why do it again? “He evidently has gained like we all do,” Mosher said.
Some say they’ve given up New Year’s resolutions because they’ve made the same one so often.
“I should make a resolution to gain weight because I always end up doing the opposite of what I say I’m going to do,” joked Artie Young of Huntington Beach.
Only a notch below diets in popularity are physical fitness resolutions, experts say.
It gets so busy at some gyms and health clubs that fitness fanatics say they routinely skip the month of January. By Ground Hog Day, though, the crush of gung-ho newcomers has subsided.
“We do almost twice the business in January than we do any other month of the year,” said Bart Webster, manager of the Family Fitness health club in Costa Mesa, where about 1,200 members circulate each day.
It’s the holiday bulge that triggers the sudden interest, said Lou Gaudio, a personal trainer who has a gym in Dana Point.
“If they are out of shape or overweight, it becomes much more apparent to them: They’re sitting there with this full stomach or gasping for breath when they’re running around at Christmas,” he said.
Overkill is a key reason many people give up the workouts, says Gaudio. Many get bored with the beginner’s program and want to graduate immediately to the championship routine, and they can hurt themselves.
Those who succeed know “it’s now or never,” Gaudio said. “You’ve got to have reached the point to realize that if you’re going to get in shape, no one’s going to do it for you.”
He adds in a not-so-subtle plug: “Then you need guidance on what to do first and what to do second.”
A helping hand also can be crucial to quit smoking, drinking or taking drugs, experts say.
Many of those who flood American Lung Assn. clinics each January have tried to quit before, said Harvey Shields, executive director of the Orange County chapter, which doubles the usual number of clinics offered in that month.
“Most people are able to quit without assistance, but there are large numbers of smokers who do need some assistance,” he said. “More research has shown us that some people do have a very strong physical addiction.”
Bill Hodge, executive director of the Orange County League of Cities, plans to quit. Again.
“I got a pack of (nicotine) gum in my Christmas stocking that I’ve been eyeing nervously,” said Hodge, who is gradually arming himself with toothpicks, cough drops and other surrogates for an as-yet-unspecified D-day. “The last time, I quit for nine months.”
That was in 1986, with the help of a lung association clinic. There are good reasons he wants to abandon his two-pack-a-day habit: his wife is expecting their first child; he’s going to be 40, and smoking is becoming increasingly unpopular, not to mention illegal in many places.
“I’m starting to relate to what Rosa Parks must’ve felt like at the back of the bus,” he said with grim humor.
If going “cold turkey” doesn’t help, Hodge said, he may join a group of county workers who plan to seek the services of a hypnotist called “Dr. Smoak.”
Whatever the resolution, success depends on personal motivation and a solid evaluation of the problem, said psychiatrist Noyes.
“Once you’ve evaluated the problem, set realistic and achievable goals with time lines. And if you don’t achieve your goal by the time you’ve set, don’t think you’ve failed,” he said. “Instead, maybe consider modifying your approach, setting more realistic time lines. . . . The key word is realistic. “
People often get into trouble when they aspire to an ideal they cannot achieve: say, to be a muscle man like Arnold Schwartzenegger, or svelte like Madonna with a face like Christie Brinkley.
“Often that’s not possible in this life,” said Dr. Lawrence D. Sporty, director of UCI Medical Center’s psychiatric consultation service.
Obviously, some resolutions are easier to keep than others.
Don Frenkel, an electrical engineer from Irvine stood patiently at the earring counter of a Costa Mesa department store on a recent evening. Asked his goal for 1991, he said drolly: “My wife heard my resolution about being more thrifty in 1991, so she’s out here shopping.”
“We said we were both going to get married this year, didn’t we?” Pat Acree, a travel manager for a Buena Park firm, reminded her friend, Valerie Butler of Long Beach, as they cruised the sale racks in search of the right evening dress. Both are still single.
Last year, Supervisor Harriett M. Wieder resolved to lose 10 pounds and get into shape. She lost the weight, but a knee injury hampered her exercising. Now recuperating from knee surgery, Wieder has dusted off her 1990 goals for 1991.
“I lost the 10 pounds, but I didn’t keep it off,” she said, laughing. “So I’m back to the starting gate again.”
Her colleague, 3rd District Supervisor Gaddi H. Vasquez, has two goals: to spend more time with his 11-year-old son and to return to his regimen of working out 1 1/2 hours daily. “Now, I don’t even want to tell you what it is, it’s so sad,” he said.
For New Jersey-born comic Ritch Shydner, New Year’s resolutions are rich fodder because they touch on everyone’s foibles.
“A guy says he’s going to quit smoking, and on New Year’s Eve, he smokes 15 packs. Gets enough nicotine for a lifetime,” said Shydner, who is appearing through New Year’s Eve at the Improv in Brea. “It takes more than an artificial date to change your life, and that’s what’s so funny about ‘em.”
Shydner offered his own vow to ring in the New Year: “I resolve to donate 10% of all my 1991 lottery winnings to the new Andrew Dice Clay wing of the Morton Downey Jr. Celebrity Treatment Center, where the shooting stars of today are detoxified after their 15 minutes of fame.”
Times staff writer Susan Christian contributed to this story.
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6f9db06e4ace30d511d51da21ff84d04
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https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1990-12-31-mn-5720-story.html
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Deukmejian’s Legacy Is Seen in O.C.'s Roads
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Deukmejian’s Legacy Is Seen in O.C.'s Roads
The legacy of Gov. George Deukmejian’s eight years in office is being indelibly etched on the Orange County landscape with the concrete ribbons of freeway lanes and the bulldozed beds of future toll roads.
More than anything, say local officials, frustrated commuters and road-starved developers will fondly remember California’s 35th governor for presiding over a major expansion of the county’s transportation arteries.
With Deukmejian’s support, Orange County has been given the freedom to break with tradition and make plans to build 70 miles of toll roads on its own in South County. The first real signs of this historic “privatization” appeared just last month, when bulldozers broke ground on a 7.6-mile leg of the Foothill Transportation Corridor through Rancho Santa Margarita.
The governor also made sure the state’s far-flung transportation bureaucracy paid closer attention to Orange County when he established its own Caltrans district office. The administrative move breathed new life into other local road plans that languished on the shelves of the Los Angeles Caltrans office.
“Transportation is the lifeblood issue of Orange County for economic reasons and quality-of-life reasons,” said Supervisor Gaddi H. Vasquez, who served on Deukmejian’s Sacramento staff in the mid-1980s. “Our ability to make great progress in transportation is a great deal due to the governor authorizing the changes.
“In that respect, the governor really helped Orange County.”
In other respects, though, Orange County has taken some knocks under Deukmejian.
It was the governor’s chief political fund-raiser, contacting his regulatory appointees, who helped win approval for Lincoln Savings & Loan to peddle worthless junk bonds to thousands of unsuspecting retirees throughout the county. They lost hundreds of thousands of dollars when Lincoln Savings collapsed, toppling financier Charles H. Keating Jr. in one of the nation’s most infamous scandals of influence-peddling and greed.
Under Deukmejian, the state promised but failed to start paying its $380-million share of the Santa Ana River flood control project, a $1.4-billion undertaking federal engineers say is crucial to protecting lives and property in much of the county. The Legislature wanted to make its first $32-million down payment on the state share last year, but Deukmejian cut it out of the budget.
Deukmejian touched off a storm of local protest earlier this year when his Administration followed the Medfly into Orange County and ordered the aerial spraying of malathion over a 36-square-mile area that included Huntington Beach, Anaheim, Santa Ana, Brea and La Habra.
The governor also vetoed legislation this year aimed at cracking down on the latest proliferation of garment industry sweatshops in central Orange County, where dozens of immigrants and children toil for substandard wages.
Meanwhile, Orange County’s growing population of poor and needy also took the brunt of the Deukmejian Administration economies as the fiscally conservative governor held the line on state payments for welfare, indigent health care and other social programs.
Deukmejian’s budget cuts for last year alone left the county $47 million short, sending officials scrambling to scale back programs and staunch the flow of red ink. The result: overburdened courts, dwindling help for the mentally ill and less money to pay doctors for treating the uninsured sick.
“It definitely was not a progressive eight years for health care,” said Thomas Uram, director of the Health Care Agency of Orange County. “There were no COLAs (cost-of-living increases) in some programs and some of our programs were cut.”
One example has been the county’s program to provide health care to poor adults, most of whom work but carry no medical insurance, Uram said. The number of poor who needed medical attention has doubled to 22,000 since 1985, while the state’s contribution to the program has dropped from $33 million to $13 million.
The cutbacks have forced the county to drop its reimbursement to private physicians, who by some figures are treating patients for as little as 11 cents on the dollar.
Funding cuts have also delivered a double message to county courts: Get tough with crooks but don’t spend a lot of money doing it.
Under Deukmejian, the Orange County Superior Court--where the more serious criminal and civil matters are tried--was expanded from 46 to 59 judgeships. The law-and-order governor also left his mark by appointing a majority of 33 conservative jurists to the Superior Court bench, statistics show.
Yet those changes, and an influx of state money under a recent trial court funding program, still haven’t been enough to keep up with proceedings that send twice the number of new felons to prison than when Deukmejian became governor.
Currently there are 17 more Superior Court judges than courtrooms, said the court’s executive officer, Alan Slater--an equation that bodes ill for a system that has seen its criminal case filings doubled since Deukmejian took office. Orange County residents also continue to file more personal injury lawsuits than anyone else in the state.
“The county is in much worse shape in the last few years, despite trial court funding, than when Deukmejian took over as governor,” Slater said. “If we don’t have another case filed, we have enough cases now for the next three to four years.”
Complaints about Deukmejian, however, are rare in the bastion of conservative Republicanism that helped put him in office. Orange County delivered a margin of 166,000 votes for the former attorney general in 1982, enough for a razor-thin victory over Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley in the heated race.
Now, eight years later, the county’s support has turned into praise for a man who shares its tenets of limiting government while nurturing the private sector. Frugal and intractable, Deukmejian has been Orange County’s soul mate in the Capitol, often relying on local lawmakers to help him slow down public spending by the Democrat-controlled Legislature.
“One major bottom line that Orange Countians received benefits from is that he didn’t raise their taxes,” Sen. John Seymour (R-Anaheim) said. “He held the tough line for eight years, and it wasn’t an easy line to hold.”
Holding the line meant that George Deukmejian was no visionary, no innovator of new programs, Seymour said.
Still, the Deukmejian era did not leave Orange County unchanged. Under his direction, the state has aggressively expanded its Chino Hills park and agreed to help pay for restoration of the Huntington Beach Pier. Park and recreation projects have received $80 million in bond proceeds or state funding during the past eight years, figures show.
Deukmejian has looked to Orange County to help reshape the judicial and political landscape as well. He has tapped its women and minorities for many important jobs in state government, including the recent promotion of Superior Court Judge Manuel A. Ramirez of Yorba Linda to be presiding justice for the 4th District Court of Appeal.
He appointed Marianthi Lansdale, wife of a wealthy Huntington Beach contributor, to the California State University Board of Trustees. He continued to back Lansdale after she publicly apologized last year for claiming a phony community college degree on her official application for the government post.
In 1984, Deukmejian appointed his former law partner, Malcolm M. Lucas of Los Alamitos, as an associate justice of the California Supreme Court. The governor promoted Lucas again in 1987 to chief justice, replacing liberal Rose Elizabeth Bird, who had been voted out of office.
Yet his best-known Orange County appointment remains Vasquez, whom Deukmejian chose in 1987 to fill a vacancy on the Board of Supervisors.
A former city of Orange police officer and chief deputy appointments secretary for Deukmejian, the move made Vasquez the highest-ranking Republican Latino officeholder in California and catapulted him into the national limelight.
Vasquez was subsequently chosen to deliver a speech at the 1988 Republican National Convention in New Orleans, and his name is being mentioned as a possible replacement for Gov.-elect Pete Wilson in the U.S. Senate.
“There’s no question that appointing me to the Board of Supervisors was an appointment that caught a great amount of attention for a lot of different reasons,” Vasquez said.
Deukmejian has drawn the most attention, however, for presiding over the expansion of Orange County’s hard-pressed transportation system. Local officials unanimously agreed that the hallmark of his administration will be freeway widening and the advent of private thoroughfares.
In all, there have been more than 260 miles of freeway and toll road lanes built or planned for Orange County. They include 76 miles of car-pool lanes added to the San Diego and Costa Mesa freeways, as well as the widening of the Santa Ana-Costa Mesa freeway interchange. Plans are in the works to double the width of the Santa Ana Freeway between the San Diego and Riverside freeways, as well as to build private roads throughout South County and in the middle of the Santa Ana River flood plain.
Former Gov. Edmund G. Brown Jr., uniformly blamed for blocking such projects in the 1970s, said Deukmejian’s reputation as a transportation savior is undeserved.
“As a matter of fact, under my administration we raised the gas tax 2 cents and made it effective on the morning Deukmejian was sworn in,” said Brown, now chairman of the state Democratic Party. “So we paved the way for whatever road building that has occurred in Orange County during the past eight years.”
Not so, others say.
“We had literally come to a standstill with road-building in Orange County,” said Sen. Marian Bergeson (R-Newport Beach), a Deukmejian partisan.
That began to change slowly under Deukmejian, who controls highway spending indirectly through his appointments to the California Transportation Commission. One of his first choices was Bruce Nestande, former assemblyman and Orange County supervisor.
In the summer of 1983, legislation passed that rewrote the highway funding formula so it considered Orange County separately from Los Angeles. The summer also marked the first time that state highway construction plans were written in such a way that Orange County would get as much money for projects from Sacramento as it paid out in gasoline taxes.
But the master stroke, local officials say, came when Deukmejian ordered in March, 1987, that Orange County should have its own Caltrans office. The start-up staff of seven has since grown into 700 people, working in offices at the Dyer Road exit of the Costa Mesa Freeway.
Not only did the move mark a psychological break with Los Angeles, it gave Orange County projects greater visibility. Moving Caltrans to Orange County made it easier to work with outside consultants and contractors as well.
“That’s hard to do when you are located in Los Angeles and there are meetings to schedule and blueprints to look at,” said Albert Miranda, Caltrans spokesman in Orange County. “Having a local office cuts that processing time considerably.”
Still, these changes wouldn’t be enough to satisfy the county’s insatiable need for new pavement. The fact that state road funds were dwindling, and local citizens turned down a half-cent sales tax for transportation, required the county to call on its political soul mate in the governor’s chair for an even bolder measure.
That measure was toll roads. In June, 1985, Deukmejian signed legislation authorizing local officials to buck tradition and build their own 70 miles of private roadway in development-ripe South County.
So were born the Orange County toll roads.
Pay-for-use roadways were common during the Gold Rush days but were eventually abandoned when the state assumed responsibility for major thoroughfares after the turn of the century. Orange County had come full circle with its “privatization” plan to finance its proposed freeways through property assessments on developers and tolls charged commuters.
Deukmejian hailed the “public-private partnership” showcased in the Orange County toll roads and used them to launch the state in a new era of transportation “privatization.”
He was so enthusiastic about the approach that he demanded that a reluctant Legislature allow Caltrans to build four more private toll road projects in the state as part of the bargain for his political support of the 9-cent-a-gallon gasoline tax increase endorsed by voters in June.
The agency asked entrepreneurs to submit bids on where they would like to build the roads, and when the winning applications were unveiled in September, Orange County once again emerged the big winner with two projects.
One route would link the area around Anaheim Stadium with John Wayne Airport with an 11.2-mile, $700-million elevated toll road; the other would build a 10-mile, $88.3-million toll road in the median of the Riverside Freeway from Anaheim to the San Bernardino County line.
The projects brought to five the number of private toll roads that will be built during the next decade in Orange County, which is now left to count its transportation blessings under the tenure of a governor who many have claimed was miserly and unimaginative.
“I’d say Orange County came off a winner,” Vasquez said.
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925dc2e1cfc07fa0400627fd25c19610
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https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1990-12-31-mn-5755-story.html
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NATION : Bush New Year’s Eve Low-Key
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NATION : Bush New Year’s Eve Low-Key
President Bush plans to spend a quiet New Year’s Eve with his wife, his daughter and two of his grandchildren at Camp David, the White House said today.
The Bushes have not invited any outsiders to ring in 1991 at the presidential retreat in the Cacoctin Mountains of Maryland about 60 miles from here, aides said.
The President went to Camp David before Christmas. He has remained there throughout the holidays, coming back to Washington only for one day to handle paperwork. Bush plans to return to the White House on Tuesday.
Aides said they had no idea whether Bush will stay up until midnight.
Bush’s low-key New Year’s Eve is a sharp contrast from the parties that former President Ronald Reagan annually attended in Palm Springs, Calif. The celebrity-studded events were hosted by publisher Walter H. Annenberg.
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69c7011a3304770b4f2141e5f5d64788
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https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1990-12-31-mn-5757-story.html
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LOCAL : Chatsworth Cycle Shop Burns
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LOCAL : Chatsworth Cycle Shop Burns
A Chatsworth motorcycle dealership sustained $600,000 damage in a fire early today just hours after it had been burglarized.
The blaze at International Motorcycle Co., a Yamaha dealership in the 9500 block of De Soto Avenue, was reported shortly before 4 a.m., said Los Angeles Fire Department spokesman Greg Acevedo. Forty-five firefighters from nine companies extinguished the fire within 25 minutes.
There were no injuries but damage to the one-story commercial building was estimated at $100,000 to the structure and $500,000 to the contents. The cause of the fire was under investigation.
Almost three hours before the fire, police responding to an alarm found boots, helmets, computers and an unknown amount of cash missing, said Detective Sandra Palmer of the Los Angeles Police Department. Authorities did not know if the two incidents were related.
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0368d077ef366c0d8c36dc4bc5483340
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https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1990-12-31-mn-5759-story.html
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Israel Fires American Chief of Dead Sea Scrolls Project
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Israel Fires American Chief of Dead Sea Scrolls Project
Israel today announced it has fired the American academic who led an effort to translate the Dead Sea Scrolls, the oldest known copies of the Old Testament. The decision came after the professor made anti-Jewish remarks.
The announcement cited “health reasons” for removal of Harvard University Prof. John Strugnell from the project, but the 60-year-old scholar has been sharply criticized for an interview containing anti-Jewish remarks published in November in the Hebrew daily Haaretz.
The project also had come under increasing fire for the slowness with which the scholars’ work is being published.
Strugnell has worked on the scrolls for more than three decades and has been editor of the scrolls project since 1987. Earlier in December, other scholars working on the project voted to have him replaced.
The scrolls, some of which date to 100 B.C., were found starting in 1947 in caves near the Dead Sea. They contain the oldest known copies of the Old Testament, other biblical writings, ancient literature and poetry.
In his announcement today, Amir Drori, the director of the Israel Antiquities Authority, said Strugnell was being relieved at the suggestion of the agency’s three-man Scrolls Advisory Committee.
Strugnell, who has been in ill health, was reported hospitalized in the United States.
In the interview published Nov. 9, Strugnell, who is Roman Catholic, described Judaism as “a Christian heresy” and suggested that its adherents should convert.
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cb9a1bf72ad14f376559768c8c00dd2c
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https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1990-12-31-mn-5760-story.html
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LOCAL : Man Charged on 9 Arson Counts
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LOCAL : Man Charged on 9 Arson Counts
A 38-year-old transient was charged this morning on nine counts of arson in connection with the fires that broke out almost simultaneously and caused $2.5 million in damage on a Ventura Boulevard commercial strip in Studio City last week.
John Charles Kellogges faces one count of arson of a structure for each of the eight businesses damaged when three separate fires were started Dec. 26 between the 12100 and 12500 blocks of Ventura Boulevard. A Pier 1 Imports and a Strouds Linen Warehouse were destroyed and six other businesses damaged.
The ninth charge, that of recklessly starting a fire in a structure, was based on several fires in Kellogges’ room at the abandoned Fruitland Motel, 10822 Ventura Blvd. in Studio City. Authorities said it is unknown how long Kellogges had been living there.
Kellogges was arrested the day after the blazes when a customer at a restaurant near the fire scene told police he had encountered a man in the restroom who matched the description of the arson suspect seen running from the fires. Kellogges had matches and a lighter on him when he was arrested, smelled of smoke and some of his clothing had been charred by fire, according to Deputy Dist. Atty. Andrew Diamond said, who added that a motive remains unknown.
Investigators believe that Kellogges started the fires by igniting flammable merchandise such as bedding, pillows and rattan furniture in the stores that burned.
Investigators declined to discuss statements Kellogges made after his arrest but said he took them to the Fruitland Motel to show them where he was staying and had set fires.
Kellogges, who was scheduled to be arraigned on the charges later today, faces up to 18 years in prison if convicted, Diamond said.
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0a55953ca0f3a67ceadcd5243f3bd3c6
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https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1990-12-31-mn-5761-story.html
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Quayle: Patience Waning : No Vietnam, He Assures Gulf Troops
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Quayle: Patience Waning : No Vietnam, He Assures Gulf Troops
Vice President Dan Quayle told U.S. troops today he shares their frustration with Saddam Hussein’s refusal to budge from Kuwait, saying the time for patience is about up.
Quayle spent the eve of 1991 not far from the Kuwaiti front, addressing a crowd of cheering Marines in a Saudi-built stadium dubbed the “Scud Bowl” and playing basketball with fellow Indiana Hoosiers.
“If force is necessary, you will do your job and then go home,” the vice president told the Marines. “It will be quick, massive and decisive.
“This will not be another Vietnam.”
The vice president balked, however, when he was asked later if he regretted never having served in Vietnam, asserting that he was very proud to have served in the Indiana National Guard.
Touring Saudi desert outposts nearly five months after Iraq’s president sent invasion forces into neighboring Kuwait, Quayle sounded pessimistic about prospects for a peaceful settlement.
“You have heard some voices at home urging patience. They say wait a year or two. Let the sanctions work,” he said, referring to the U.N.-imposed economic sanctions against the Baghdad regime.
“But the sanctions have not gotten Saddam out of Kuwait. You have been patient enough and so has President Bush,” Quayle told Marines and Army forces in remarks at two desert bases not far from the Kuwaiti border.
On the second day of a three-day trip to Saudi Arabia, the vice president flew by military helicopter and plowed through desert sands in military convoy vehicles to visit bases bustling with massive war preparations.
The troops received Quayle cordially. Some said they liked the fact that he came to see them; others were indifferent.
“If he could get me out of here, that would be real nice,” said Marine Lance Cpl. Richard Kamoe of Honolulu, whose job is firing Stinger missiles.
Sgt. Michael Collins, of Buffalo, N.Y., alluded to the controversy during the 1988 presidential campaign surrounding allegations that Quayle had used family connections to get enlisted in the Indiana National Guard rather than being drafted during the Vietnam War.
“Honest. We laughed a lot about it,” Collins said.
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f0c43ddf6bcf9d3f0027fcf96b1fd253
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https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1990-12-31-mn-5762-story.html
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Somali Rebels Claim Hold on Capital City
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Somali Rebels Claim Hold on Capital City
Rebels in Somalia said today they control most of the capital of Mogadishu and President Mohamed Siad Barre was at the airport preparing to flee the country.
“I think he will be gone in the next 24 hours,” said a spokesman for the United Somali Congress, one of the main rebel groups fighting to overthrow Maj. Gen. Siad Barre, who has been in power since 1969.
“We now control 99% of Mogadishu,” the congress spokesman, contacted in Rome by telephone from Nairobi, told Reuters.
The spokesman said that the United Somali Congress began taking control of Mogadishu on Sunday morning.
“From yesterday evening many of the army people had retreated to their camps, and there is fighting going on around the camps, mainly in the south of the city,” the spokesman said, adding there was also fighting around the president’s palace and the airport.
He said Siad Barre had left the presidential palace early today.
“We don’t know which country he will go to but he is certainly preparing to leave,” the spokesman said.
The spokesman said as soon as Siad Barre has left, the congress plans to call in other rebel groups and political opposition organizations to cooperate on forming a transitional government.
Residents in Mogadishu said fighting, especially heavy Saturday night, continued today in many parts of the capital.
There has been an upsurge of violence in recent weeks in the capital. The United Somali Congress and another major rebel group, the Somali National Movement, said in August they would cooperate on trying to overthrow Siad Barre.
The rebels rejected as mere cosmetics his recent efforts to liberalize one-party rule--in force since he came to power in a coup--and to call in opposition groups for peace talks.
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143fb02db7e4cf77c6f2dd827d7ed6b7
|
https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1990-12-31-mn-5763-story.html
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WORLD : 56 Die in Fiery Soviet Bus Crash
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WORLD : 56 Die in Fiery Soviet Bus Crash
Fifty-six people were killed when a passenger bus traveling at high speed collided with a truck and caught fire in southern Russia, police said today.
A traffic police spokesman said the accident occurred Sunday morning on the highway linking Rostov-on-Don and Voronezh. He gave no further details but said a senior police inspector had been sent to the site.
The independent Postfactum news agency said the accident occurred when a car crossed the dividing line and collided with the truck. The bus then plowed into the two vehicles at high speed.
“According to the representative of the transport company, the bus was completely burned out,” Postfactum said. “Fifty-five passengers died on the spot. Thirteen people were taken to a hospital in the city of Alekseyevo-Lozovoskoye, where one passenger died.”
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7f48ecdd4ac07b5c510fab11f67443de
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https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1990-12-31-mn-5764-story.html
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STATE : Torrance Ticket Has 6 Numbers
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STATE : Torrance Ticket Has 6 Numbers
A ticket purchased in Torrance for the California Lottery’s Saturday night “Lotto 6-53" contest had all six numbers worth the top prize of $4.5 million, lottery officials said today.
Tickets bought in Port Hueneme and Santa Clara had five numbers plus the bonus number to win $264,510 each from a prize pool of $529,020.
There were 116 tickets with five of six to win $4,560 apiece; 7,260 tickets had four of six to each win $66, and 151,016 tickets had three of six worth an automatic $5.
Wednesday’s jackpot is estimated at $4 million.
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b97bbe921e7f1b0ff4226d5d2647ab6e
|
https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1990-12-31-mn-5765-story.html
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LOCAL : Girl, 14, Dies in Drive-By Incident
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LOCAL : Girl, 14, Dies in Drive-By Incident
A 14-year-old girl sitting alone on a suburban porch was killed in a drive-by shooting, one of seven young people who were among the 14 people to die violently during the final weekend of 1990, authorities said today.
The girl was hit once in the upper torso about 10 p.m. Sunday by shots fired by a gunman in a car passing the home at 1212 S. Atlantic Blvd. in Alhambra, Sheriff’s Deputy Bill Linnemeyer said.
The teen-ager, whose name was not released, died at County-USC Medical Center. It was not immediately clear whether the shooting was gang-related.
In South Los Angeles, an 8-year-old boy was killed when a shotgun accidentally went off and hit him in the face.
The weekend death toll included five other youths.
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f18a289245f929d39da932eca528d3fa
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https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1990-12-31-mn-5767-story.html
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NATION : Quayle Guard Accused of Theft
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NATION : Quayle Guard Accused of Theft
The Secret Service has begun an internal investigation of an agent charged with stealing a $280 ski jacket in Vail, Colo., while assigned to protect Vice President Dan Quayle, a spokesman said today.
The agent, Joyce Fletcher, 39, of Washington, D.C., was accused of stuffing the jacket in her shopping bag in a clothing store in the trendy ski resort last Thursday.
She was charged with misdemeanor theft and released after posting a $300 bond.
A Secret Service spokesman said Fletcher has been with the agency for five years, most recently assigned to the detail protecting Quayle and his family while they were on a Christmas skiing holiday in Vail.
Fletcher has been placed on administrative leave by the Secret Service pending the outcome of its investigation, the spokesman said.
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60400a9e0f1a9e8fac1a11d1fa4c5540
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https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1990-12-31-mn-5768-story.html
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NATION : Beckwith Arrested for 2nd Time
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NATION : Beckwith Arrested for 2nd Time
te supremacist Byron De La Beckwith was arrested for a second time in less than two weeks today on a warrant stemming from the 1963 slaying of civil rights leader Medgar Evers.
In a move intended to speed his transfer from Tennessee to Mississippi, Beckwith, 70, was arrested on a murder warrant, and an extradition hearing was scheduled for Wednesday.
He had been arrested Dec. 18 on a fugitive warrant from Mississippi, where he has twice been tried for the murder of Evers. The arrests followed a new murder indictment returned by a grand jury in Hinds County, Miss.
Evers was field secretary for the NAACP when he was killed in front of his Jackson, Miss., home on June 12, 1963.
Both of Beckwith’s previous trials were heard by all-white juries and ended deadlocked. The charges were dropped in 1969 but the case was reopened amid charges of jury and evidence tampering.
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e84caef31fbeb277871ab6dfbe4b0ed2
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https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1990-12-31-mn-5770-story.html
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Documents Indicate JFK Remarks Drew Careful Eye of British
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Documents Indicate JFK Remarks Drew Careful Eye of British
Britain closely followed the late John F. Kennedy’s bid for the U.S. presidency after he allegedly remarked in private that the British had made a mess of foreign policy, especially in the Middle East, confidential papers released today show.
The documents, released under a 30-year secrecy rule, contain a memorandum from then-Prime Minister Harold Macmillan’s private secretary, Philip de Zulueta, in which he reports a private conversation involving Kennedy.
He said in the memorandum that Montague Browne, private secretary to Sir Winston Churchill, reported on a party he attended the previous year in the south of France that Kennedy, then a senator, attended.
According to the memorandum, neither man knew who the other was.
“Consequently, he (Kennedy) was fairly unguarded in his conversation and remarked at one point that ‘the British have made such a mess of things in the world and especially in the Middle East that the best thing they can do is to keep out of it in the future.’ ”
The memorandum added: “Mr. Montague Browne said that this remark was made in a light vein and was probably not meant very seriously, but it may be an indication of Mr. Kennedy’s real sentiments.”
Kennedy’s father, Joseph, a former ambassador to London, was regarded as anti-British and believed a Nazi victory was imminent in 1939.
But the memorandum does not show evidence of deep anxiety in London at the prospect of a Kennedy presidency. Macmillan was later to establish a close working relationship with Kennedy.
British law allows the opening of government papers after 30 years, but government departments can, partly on grounds of security and sensitivity, withhold certain documents beyond that period. Some papers in the U.S. political section for this period have been withheld.
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28494db70841072db7878ccf0becbba2
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https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1990-12-31-mn-5772-story.html
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12 Guerrillas Die in Israeli Raid on Base : Mideast: The death toll in the air attack on a PLO facility is the highest of the year. In Jerusalem, an Arab woman is killed by her own bomb.
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12 Guerrillas Die in Israeli Raid on Base : Mideast: The death toll in the air attack on a PLO facility is the highest of the year. In Jerusalem, an Arab woman is killed by her own bomb.
Israeli planes bombed a PLO guerrilla base near Sidon early today, killing all 12 of the fighters manning it, police and the PLO said. It was the highest death toll in 21 such attacks this year.
The police report said the jets destroyed a one-story base belonging to Yasser Arafat’s Fatah, the Palestine Liberation Organization’s largest faction.
The base was in a lemon grove 7 1/2 miles southeast of Sidon, a southern port city that is the Palestinians’ main stronghold in Lebanon.
In Jerusalem, the Israeli military command said its planes returned safely to base after hitting “a launching pad for attacks on Israel.”
The air raid came a day after Soviet-designed Katyusha rockets landed in Israel’s self-designated security zone and across the border in northern Israel. The rockets caused no damage or injuries.
Police and the PLO confirmed in separate statements that all the guerrillas were killed.
“There were no survivors. Those dug out alive died in ambulances before reaching hospital,” a police spokesman said.
Police said 28 people were killed and 82 wounded in the 20 previous Israel raids into Lebanon this year.
In Jerusalem today, a bomb ripped through a toilet at an outdoor market in the heart of the Jewish quarter, killing an Arab woman who apparently was handling the explosives, police said.
They said the victim was a 24-year-old woman from the occupied West Bank.
“Apparently the person who was handling the charge was killed in this toilet stall,” said police Commissioner Yaacov Terner. She was alone in the toilet, and there were no other casualties, he said.
The explosion occurred at about 11:30 a.m. at the Mahane Yehuda market. Terner said the woman was “torn to pieces,” but a witness said she was still alive immediately after the blast.
Shopkeeper Meir Cohen said he ran into the toilet and found the woman lying under a fallen door. “She was alive, the woman. I lifted her head. She moved her head as if she wanted to speak, wanted help,” he said.
Cohen said she had something in her hand that he feared might be another bomb, so he ran to nearby police to summon help.
A PLO military communique issued in Tunis claimed the Israeli air strike was part of a “massive military operation” Israel was planning in southern Lebanon.
It said Israel pushed troop reinforcements “estimated at two brigades” into its self-designated security zone in southern Lebanon three days ago, but gave no other details.
The reported buildup could not be independently confirmed.
Fatah, the largest and oldest of nine groups under the PLO, marks the 26th anniversary of its foundation Tuesday.
In the West Bank and Gaza Strip, the army today confined 1 million Arab’s to their homes ahead of the Fatah anniversary. Authorities closed schools in the territories.
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