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‘Junk mail’ isn't garbage;
it's billion-dollar business
iviLOr\, Aiii. -- wanna uuy a
cemetery plot, cheap? How about a
free spinal exam by a chiroprac
tor? Or 20 percent off on your first
dental visit? Maybe a free ap
praisal of your house would inter
est you.
These offers and more, cover
ing almost every aspect of life,
including death (undertakers) and
taxes (accounting firms), are a bil
lion-dollar annual business.
If you have a permanent ad
dress, you’ve received coupons or
business reply cards from advertis
ers as big as American Express and
as small as your neighborhood
pizzeria, promising to save you
- money or improve your life. It’s
called “direct mail,’’ more com
monly known as junk mail.
In 1988, more than 221 billion
coupons, up from 215 billion in
1987, were distributed and 3.2
percent, or about 7 billion, were
redeemed, according to American
Advertising Distributors, Inc., the
largest U.S. direct mail franchiser.
With more than 100 franchises, the
company distributed 650 million
coupons last year.
While discounts on name
brands and new products are ap
preciated, AAD says consumers
prefer coupons from local mer
ciiaius. Dui wnai ciicks 111 uue area
of the country may not do as well in
another, and what works one year
may wear off the nexL
For example, according to
A AD research in 450 cities, a year
ago pizzerias reported the best
results with coupons offering $1
off a large pizza. More recently,
customers preferred “buy one, get
one free” offers. Likewise, last
year’s coupons offered 99-cent
video rentals while this year
they’re of the “rent one, get one
free” variety.
Other businesses find one type
of offer works best year after year.
For restaurants, it’s usually “buy
one entree, get one free;”
dryclcaners 4 ’clean one, clean one
free.” For car washes it’s “$1 off
any car wash” and for dentists it's
“$25 off the first visit for any new
patient.”
American Advertising says a
local merchant typically will con
tract for a mailing of 10,000 to
15,000 coupons at a cost of $400
per 10,000.
A clothing store offer of $5 off
any $20 purchase, according to
AAD, will generate about 70 cus
tomers and from $2,000 to $4,000
in sales.
I Baker says Soviet talks fruitful
JACKSON HOLE, Wyo. - Secre
tary of State James A. Baker III said
Sunday that the success of his meet
ing with the Soviet foreign minister
should silence congressional critics
and dampen their appetite for unilat
eral arms cuts.
Despite progress on talks to cut
strategic, conventional and chemical
weapons and the signing of six ac
cords Saturday, Baker said the Soviet
Union still was “a military threat.”
“I think it would be quite naive for
the United States to talk about unilat
eral reductions of its strategic arse
nal,” Baker said on the CBS-TV
program ‘‘Face the Nation.”
The Bush administration, he said,
remains committed to the Strategic
Defense Initiative and deploying new
classes of long-range bombers and
mobile missiles.
Baker’s four-day session with
Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard A.
Shevardnadze yielded an agreement
to hold a summit in the United States
next spring or summer.
It will be the first meeting between
President George Bush and Soviet
leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev since
Bush look office, although the two
met in New York between’s Bush’s
election and his inauguration.
In the course of the Baker
Shevardnadze talks, the Soviets also
said they would withdraw a demand
that the United States agree to curb
work on “Star Wars” before conclu
sion of a Strategic Arms Reduction
Treaty (START).
Baker told a news conference Sat
urday the Soviet decision could speed
conclusion of START, which would
cut long-range strategic arms by 30 to
50 percent.
Taking on domestic critics Sun
day, Baker said, “There was a lot of
criticisms in advance of this ministe
rial (meeting) that I hope is abso
lutely gone now because we have
made,some really fundamental prog
ress.”
r __i .
Colombian judges plan striKe ior pruiecuon
BOGOTA, Colombia -- Colom
bia’s 4,600 judges, facing persistent
death threats from drug traffickers,
threatened Sunday to strike if the
government doesn’t give them better
protection.
Also Sunday, the army said it had
captured a suspected drug trafficker
wanted by the United States for extra
dition. Carlos Gomez Zapata is not on
the U.S. Justice Department’s list of
12 wanted drug traffickers.
Residents of this capital city of 6
million endured another night of
bombings Saturday as bombs ex
ploded in a theater, a city bus com
pany’s garage and at a neighborhood
headquarters of the ruling Liberal
party.
The' three bombs injured two
people, national police said.
In the last month, 103 bombs have
killed six people and wounded 130.
Colombia’s judges, fearing for
their lives, said in a statement issued
through their labor union, the Na
tional Association of Judicial Work
ers, that they will go on strike if
immediate action is not taken to ad
dress the dangers they face.
Since 1981, about 50 judges and
170 judicial employees have been
killed. Antonio Morales, president of
the Association of Judicial Employ
ees, has said at least 1,600 of Colom
bia’s 5,000 judges have been threat
ened with death in the last 12 months.
Union officials are to meet Mon
day with acting Justice Minister Car
los Lemos Simmonds.
4 ‘We don’t see any will on the part
of the government to increase secu
rity for our lives,” the president of
the judges’ union, Antonio Suarez
Nino, said in the communique.
The judges repeated previous
demands for bulletproof cars and
vests, guards with metal detectors at
their offices and other security meas
ures.
Judges in Colombia earn about
$400 a month. In interviews last
month many said they were forced to
take buses to work because they
couldn't afford cars. A compact car
here costs $20,000.
Monica de Greiff, who resigned as
justice minister last week after being
threatened by drug traffickers, said
she was promised $19 million in U.S.
aid earlier this month for the purpose
of protecting judges. But the union
said it has heard nothing since about
the aid.
The anti-drug crusading newapa
per El Espectador, in a column by its
editor, Juan Guillermo Cano, ac
cused Colombia’s congress Sunday
of being cowardly and corrupt.
Abortion debate becomes election factor
Pro-choice forces appear to have
seized the momentum in the nation’s
renewed battle over abortion, but
anti-abortion activists say they ex
pect the tide to turn as legislatures -
and the Supreme Court - return to
session this fall and winter.
So far, a half-dozen states have
emerged as early legislative battle
grounds, but most lawmakers appear
reluctant to open the door that was
unlocked by the Supreme Court in
July.
”1 would say it’s basically a stand
off,’ ’ said Lydia Neumann, a spokes
woman for the Planned Parenthood
Federation of America, which favors
access to abortion.
In the nation’s two governor’s
races this fall, pro-choice candidates
have used their viewpoint for its po
tential political advantage, while
anti-aboition candidates have sought
to shift attention away from the issue.
In New Jersey, Republican James
Courier moderated his strong anti
abortion views and is widely per
ceived to have been hurt - either by
his views or by his waffling. Demo
crat James Florio strengthened his
pro-choice stance.
In Virginia, Democrat Douglas
WiIder is aggressively advertising his
pro-choice position in hopes of gain
ing ground on Republican Marshall
Coleman, an anti-abortion candidate
who is considered the front-runner.
Burke Balch, stale legislative
coordinator for the National Right to
Life Committee, insisted that a strong
anti -abortion position was not a po
litical liability. But in general, he
conceded that pro-choice forces have
had the upper hand in the 2 1/2
months since the Supreme Court
upheld Missouri abortion restric
tions.
Hugo causes shortages for South Carolina
CHARLESTON, S.C. — Churches appealed
for emergency donations of food, clothing and
money Sunday for victims of Hurricane Hugo.
Lines for hot meals were blocks long and
people waited up to four hours to buy gas and
other supplies.
r National Guardsmen with M-16 rifles pa
trolled the streets of the battered city of65,000
people, guarding against looters and keeping
order at locations where residents lugged cool
ers and plastic jugs to get fresh water.
An emergency law enacted Saturday night
sought to keep profiteers from charging $ 10 for
a bag of ice and $600 for a chain saw.
'1 Without electricity for a third day, residents
were unable to cook, boil water for drinking or
get cash from bank machines. At stores that
managed to reopen, people wailed in lines for
up to four hours.
The Red Cross dished out hot meals from
lunch wagons. At the Citadel Square Baptist
Church, the line stretched for three blocks,
spokesman Brian Ruberry said.
As a cold rain fell Sunday morning, church
bells pealed above the hum of generators and
the buzz of chain saws.
Hugo clobbered Charleston for six hours
late Thursday and early Friday with 135 mph
winds and a storm surge of 17 feet of water. It
was among the 12 fiercest hurricanes to strike
the United States in this century, based on
internal pressure, which gives winds their
strength, according to the National Hurricane
Center in Miami.
Hugo was the worst storm to hit the U.S.
mainland since Hurricane Camille killed 256
people 20 years ago.
The death toll from Hugo’s six-day ram
page stood at 51 — at least 27 people in the
Caribbean and 24 in the Carolinas, Virginia
artd New York. A South Carolina woman and
her two children died Sunday when their rural
wood-frame house caught fire from candles,
officials said.
Damage estimates were in the billions of
dollars.
In the three-county area around Charleston,
75,000 people were still out of their homes,
Mayor Joseph P. Riley Jr. said. Schools are
closed until further notice, and a dusk-to-dawn
curfew remains in effect.
At least 775,000 people in the Carolinas
remained without power. Sections of Char
leston County may be groping without lights
and refrigerators for a month or more.
In Charlotte, N.C., which is 200 miles in
land, 150,000 of the 375,000 residents'were
without power and some could be without
electricity for two weeks.
North Carolina Gov, Jim Martin has asked
for a federal disaster declaration. The National
Guard was sent to Charlotte on Saturday to help
the police.
Fifty churches in the Columbia area asked
congregants to make donations for the hurri
cane victims.
4‘The congregation has been asked to bring
in food, clothes, brooms, cleaning supplies,
bottled water, bedding - any household items
that are transportable,” said LeGrand Cooper,
administrator at the First Presbyterian Church
in Columbia.
More than half the homes on the Isle of
Palms, a barrier island that took the brunt of the
killer storm, are structurally unsafe and many
stood on just one or two stilts. Propane gas
leaked and power lines, trees and debris clut
tered roads.
Because police drove their cruisers to the
mainland before Hugo struck, the 15-member
police department patrolled in garbage trucks,
on golf carts and on bicycles.
Cam bodian leader pleads tor end to meddling
PHNOM PENH, Cambodia - diet have predicted new offensives Vietnam, which invaded in 1978
Prime Minister Hun Sen on Sunday by the guerrillas after this week’s to end a bloody reign of terror by the
said a full-scale civil war can be withdrawal of Vietnamese troops. Khmer Rouge and installed a pro
averted if other nations stop arming Hun Sen also said that his troops Hanoi government, has pledged it
the guerrillas once Vietnam with- still control Pailin, a gem-mining will remove all its forces from the
draws its troops from Cambodia. region near the Thai border reported country by Tuesday. The guerrillas
He said at a news conference that under intense attack by the Khmer say it is a ploy and that Vietnam is
bloodshed is inevitable after the Viet- Rouge, the strongest group in the hiding soldiers in Cambodia,
namese forces backing his govern- three-member guerrilla coalition. “After‘the withdrawal of Vict
ment are gone; but that the level of Defense Minister Tea Banh ac- namese troops the war will con
fighting depends on foreign aid to the knowledged Saturday that the Khmer tinue,’’ Hun Sen told reporters. “As
insurgents. , • Rouge now control some territory to the scope of the war, we think it
Officials on both sides of the con- near Pailin. will depend on foreign countries.”