News Digest
By the
Associated Press
Edited by Victoria Ayotte
Gunmen assassinate former Medellin mayor
BOGOTA, Colombia - Gunmen on Mon
day assassinated a former mayor of Medellin
who crusaded to oust drug cartels from the city,
which is the cocaine center of Colombia and
the focus of violence in the country’s drug war.
Five or six attackers firing 9mm automatic
pistols from two cars killed Pablo Pclaez
Gonzalez as he was being driven to the local
metal products factory he operated, police
said.
Pelaez’s driver also was killed and a body
guard was wounded, said a police spokes
woman who refused to be identified.
The killers fled, police said. Radio reports
said they were dressed in black.
Colombian television showed bullet holes
in the front and rear windshields of Pelaez’s
while BMW sedan. His personal papers were
scattered across the back seat.
Near Medellin, invaders Monday set fire to
a farm owned by the head of the government oil
company. A similar attack Sunday targeted the
ranch of a government official who supports
turning over drug traffickers’ property to the
poor.
In Washington, State Department deputy
spokesman Richard Boucher called Pelaez’s
killing “deplorable and reprehensible.”
Pelaez, 45, a former police inspector, was
elected mayor of Medellin, Colombia’s sec
ond-largest city, in 1984 on the Liberal Party
ticket, the party of President Virgilio Barco. He
left office in 1986.
Pelaez founded a local group called “Love
for Medellin,” aimed at eliminating drugs and
crime.
Last week, the 4th Army Brigade in
Medellin announced the arrests of four sus
pected leaders of a cocaine-cartel' ‘hit squad”
that sarcastically called itself ‘‘Love for
Medellin.”
Barcoand Colombia's drug lords have been
at war since Aug. 18, when narcotics gangs
assassinated the police chief of Medellin and
Sen. Luis Carlos Gaian, the leading presiden
tial candidate and a cartel foe.
The government retaliated by decreeing
emergency powers, under which it has summa
rily confiscated bank accounts, ranches, air
planes, boats and cars believed to belong to
fugitive drug bosses. It extradited one reputed
cartel member, Eduardo Martinez Romero, to
face trial in the United States.
Martinez Romero was flown to Atlanta to
face charges he was involved in the laundering
of millions of dollars of cocaine cash for the
Medellin cartel, believed responsible for 80
percent of the cocaine reaching the United
States. He pleaded innocent Monday and was
ordered jailed without bond.
Drug gangs have responded to the govern
ment crackdown with daily bombings, arsor
and shootings, mostly in Medellin.
The arson attack Monday was on a rand
near Medellin belonging to Andres Restrcpt
Londono, the head of the government oi
company ECOPETROL. The oil company saic
no one was injured.
Justice Minister Monica de Greiff, whose
office handles extraditions, returned to Colom
bia on Sunday night and met Monday with
President Barco, her office said.
East Germans reach freedom
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PASSAU, West Germany —
Crammed into sputtering sedans and
cheering their new freedom, thou
sands of East Germans reached Bav
aria on Monday in a historic exodus
permitted by the reform-minded
Communist government in Hungary.
More than 2,000 refugees had
made the journey from Hungary to
Austria and then West Germany by
midmoming, with hundreds more
streaming in later in the day. News
reports said the total could top
10,000.
“I decided on escaping 27 years
ago, and today it worked. It’s a feel
ing that’s just tops, just wild,” said a
40-year-old Leipzig man after cross
ing into West Germany at Passau.
Single people, couples and fami
lies with children and babies made
the journey from Hungary to West
Germany - by bus, rickety sedans or
motorcycle.
Many refugees were cheering and
shouting as they reached Bavaria
under the blaze of television lights,
while their children played with
teddy bears handed out by relief
workers.
Some tumbled out of compact cars
packed with people and jubilantly
flashed victory signs after crossing
into West Germany.
It was the greatest flood of East
German refugees since 1961, the year
the Berlin Wall halted the flow to the
East
Hungary's action marks the first
time a Warsaw Pact country has
aided an exodus of refugees from an
allied communist nation. East Ger
man leaders expressed outrage at the
Hungarian government, and state
news media accused it of4 ‘organized
smuggling of humans.”
SAT, ACT scores decline
NEW YORK - After almost a
decade of steady gains, average
Scholastic Aptitude Test scores
among women and several minority
groups slipped last year. The College
Board reported Monday.
Overall, scores among the
1,088,223 high school students w ho
took the SAT in 1989 showed little
change for the fourth consecutive
year. Average verbal scores dropped
a point to 427 compared with 1988;
math scores were unchanged at 476.
Average composite scores on the
ACT Assessment, the college en
trance test that predominates in 28
states mostly in the Midwest and
West, dipped 0.2 points in 1989 to
18.6. Averages on the four-part
exam, assessing English, math, social
studies and natural science skills, are
scored on a scale of 1 to 35.
Critics for years have accused
both tests, especially the SAT, of
being biased against women and
minorities, and the latest averages
again displayed a wide race and gen
der gap.
White students gained two points
on their combined SAT scores to 937
- averaging fully 200 points higher
than blacks, whose math-verbal
scores were unchanged from the pre
vious year at 737.
Women’s combined scores
dipped two points to 875; male test
--
lakers averaged 934, one point higher
than a year earlier.
The SAT, sponsored by The Col
lege Board and administered by the
Educational Testing Service in Prin
ceton, N.J., is the predominant col
lege entrance exam in 22 states. The
two-part, multiple-choice test is
scored on a scale of 200 to 800, with
a combined 1600 being a perfect
score.
The ACT, taken by 855,171 high
school students last year, is admini
stered by American College Testing,
headquartered in Iowa City, Iowa.
The organization announced that,
beginning in October, students will
receive 12 scores instead of the cur
rent five, including seven new sub
scores in specific content areas of
English, math and reading.
College Board President Donald
M. Stewart attributed the continued
lag in SAT averages among women
and minority students to inequities in
educational opportunities.
He nonetheless noted that scores
among most minority groups have
been gaining more rapidly than
among whites during the 1980s, at
least until this year. Average scores
among blacks, for example, have
gained 28 points on the math portion
of the SAT and 21 points on the
verbal since 1979.
John Bruce/Dally Nebraskan
Search is on for ‘Tomorrow’s’ Annie
NEW YORK — She must be be
tween 3-foot-10 and 4-foot-4, sing
loudly and clearly, be able to act
and tap dance, look 10 or 11 years
old and, of course, not be afraid of
dogs.
The search for Broadway’s new
Annie began Monday morning
when 29 little girls walked on stage
at the Golden Theater to face
Martin Chamin, director of “An
nie 2: Miss Hannigan’s Revenge,’’
the new musical about the world’s
most famous orphan.
“Why are we doing this mad
thing?” sighed composer Charles
Strouse as he prepared to listen to
endless renditions of a little mel
ody he wrote called ‘ ‘Tomorrow.”
‘ ‘ We shou Id be playing poker. ’ *
The girls on hand Monday
morning were the first batch of
youngsters to audition forChamin,
Strouse, casting director Pat
McCorkle, choreographer Danny
Daniels and others connected with
the $7 million musical that is to
open March 1 on Broadway.
Some girls waited for more than
four hours before they were let into
the theater. The audition was open
to anyone with enough courage to
be there.
Nine-year-old Brandie Gray of
Louisville, Ky., and her mother,
Teresa, arrived at the theater at
5:30 a.m. to stake out their place in
line.
Right behind them was 9-year
old Jill McEachem of Jackson,
Miss., who with her mother,
Carolyn, showed up at 6:30 a.m.
Jill confided she never had ap
peared in “Annie,” but “I
watched the movie a lot.”
Bush accused of avoiding arms control
MOSCOW -- Foreign Minister
Eduard A. Shevardnadze accused
President George Bush on Monday of
depriving the world of major arms
control agreements by not taking
advantage of opportunities created
by the Reagan administration.
Shevardnadze made the harsh
criticism in an interview with the
government daily Izvestia in advance
of his Sept. 22-23 meeting with Sec
retary of State James A. Baker III.
The criticism was remarkable
because it dealt not only with arms
control but the U.S. attitude toward
perestroika, President Mikhail S.
Gorbachev’s reform program. Itcon
strasted with generally upbeat com
ments by Soviet officials lately about
U.S.-Soviet relations.
“I think that because of the re
strained, indecisive position of the
American administration, both the
U.S.A. and the U.S.S.R., as well as
the entire world community, have
lost a lot,” Shevardnadze said in the
interview.
He contrasted the “constraint and
timidity” of the Bush administration
on arms control with progress made
during the presidency of Ronald
Reagan, which ended in January.
“After recent stormy years, a
peculiar lull has set in. The tempo of
movement toward new agreements,
in any case on the key directions of
real nuclear disarmament, don’t sat
isfy us,” Shevardnadze said.
The Soviet envoy contrasted the
1987 superpower agreement to elimi
nate medium-range nuclear weapons
with a lack of progress under Bush on
pacts to reduce strategic nuclear
weapons and ban nuclear weapons
tests.
In June, he said, Soviet negotiators
entered resumed talks on strategic
arms with fresh proposals, but despite
“promised ‘new ideas,’ our Ameri
can partners frequently preferred to
cite a lack of principle decisions in
Washington,” he said.
The result, Shevardnadze said, has
been that the Geneva talks are frozen,
further from an agreement now than
during the previous U.S. administra
tion.’ He told Izvestia the negotia
tions should have resumed by build
ing on the foundation laid last fall but
instead are ‘ ‘going around it without
an apparent goal. ’
A major dispute in the talks has
been over U.S. plans for space-based
missile defenses. The Soviets want to
limit the so-called Star Wars, or Stra
tegic Defense Inititauve.
Disagreement also persists or
long-range nuclear-tipped cruise
missiles based at sea. Moscow want'
to include them in a treaty but Wash
ington refuses, saying compliance
could not be reliably verified.
On domestic policy, Shevard
nadze said some people in the Unitec
States want to stop perestroika be
cause they think that would
strengthen the U.S. position in the
world. Among them, he said, are
people who hope for the * ‘restoratior
of capitalism here and the undermin
ing of the Soviet federation.’ ’ He die
not identify the critics.
The foreign minister also la
mented4 ‘an unrealized series of pos
sibilities” for U.S.-Soviet economic
ties and accused Washington of bein$
“one of the participants in the sense
less bloodletting” in Afghanistan.
The United States supplies rebels
fighting Afghanistan’s Marxist gov
emment, which in turn is supplied b>
the Soviet Union.
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