1SJPWQ F)i Opct Rotated Press -*■ ^ w w 1 ^ JLC|V^ LJ %r Edited by Brandon Loomis Romanians revert to rations to stop hoarding BUCHAREST, Romania - Already meager meat supplies have become critical and some communities have imposed short-term rationing to fight hoarding by consumers long denied the bare necessities, a top food offi cial said Wednesday. Romanian Radio and government officials announced, meanwhile, that trials would begin next week for six top henchmen of ousted Communist dictator Nicolae Ceauscscu, includ ing the No. 3 man in his government. Officials say the trials will be public and nationally televised. Food shortages were widespread in the last years of Ccauscscu’s 24 year tenure because of a forced ex port drive aimed at paying off Roma nia's multibillion-dollar foreign debt. BcforcCeausescu’sdownfall Dec. 22, each Romanian was restricted to 1.1 pounds of meat a week, and sugar, oil, eggs and butter also were either rationed or unavailable. In the provinces, rationing was even stricter. In Sibiu, 125 miles northwest of Bucharest, people made do with 2.2 pounds of meat every three months, less than one stick of butter a month and half a loaf of bread daily. Although food supplies have im proved some since the revolution, Vintila Rotaru, minister in charge of the domestic food industry, was pes simistic when asked about the supply of meat. “Iam confronted with a very bad situation,” he told The Associated Press. “We are speaking of a critical shortage.” Ion Radulescu, manager of Bucharest’s main distribution center for relief supplies donated from abroad, described meat, along with dairy products, as the most vital food aid. One lest of the provisional govern ment’s credibility is its ability to ensure adequate food supplies to Romania’s 23 million citizens, and both Rotaru and Radulescu expressed concern about the short term. Rotaru said he hoped food imports - now a trickle - would increase enough by April to banish the threat of shortages. The daily Romania Libera said Wednesday several thousand people had protested in Brasov, about 100 miles north of the capital, Jan. 13-14 ‘ ‘about the aggravation of food distri bution ... and the re-introduction of ration cards for food,” and spoke ol the re-introduction of rationing in other communities in a separate article. Rotaru acknowledged some local rationing but described it as a short term measure introduced to stop panic buying by consumers used to years of deprivation and skeptical of whether the improvement in supplies was permanent. “They started hoarding meat, sa lami, all that they found, fearing the past,” Rotaru said. Butchers and shop clerks polled at random in Bucharest stores said wide spread hoarding continued. *1 COUPON I PER VISIT | Soviets respond to ethnic violence MOSCOW - The Kremlin on Wednesday told the thousands of soldiers it sent to the Caucasus to shoot if need be to halt bands of Azerbaijanis and Aremenians fight ing each other in hills around the disputed territory of Nagorno-Kara bakh. Thousands of Armenian refugees poured from the southern republic of Azerbaijan, many beaten or chased from their homes by angry mobs. Some blamed the attacks on Azer baijanis who earlier Hed ethnic vio lence in Armenia. The death toll rose to 58, mostly Armenians, and the number of in jured to 169 in five days of civil warfare, an Interior Ministry official said. The evening TV news show “Vremya” ran a statement from the KQB and the interior and defense ministries, which control troops in the area, that said: “Risking their lives, they have so far refrained from using arms against criminals to prevent bloodshed. “However, a sharp increase in outrageous attacks has made the situ ation unbearable,” and the soldiers now were permitted to use their weap ons in accordance with military rules and Soviet law. Four burned bodies were found in Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan, the official news agency Tass said Wed nesday. Iran’s spiritual leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said Wednesday that Islamic fervor was behind events in Soviet Azerbaijan, and warned Moscow not to deal harshly with the Shiite Moslem upsurge, Tehran radio reported. The broadcast, monitored in Cy prus, quoted Khamenei as saying ‘ ‘anyone who thinks or pretends that the motives behind these movements are ethnic or nationalistic is making a big mistake. These sentiments are Islamic, and Soviet leaders should face this fact with realism.” Research questions ability of oat bran to decrease blood cholesterol levels BOSTON - Contrary to cereal ads and popular belief , oat bran docs not lower cholesterol levels, according to a study that challenges one of the biggest food crazes of the 1980s. The new research concluded that people who eat lots of oat bran do indeed have less cholesterol in their blood, not because of any special pow ers of oat bran but because they cat less saturated fat and cholesterol. “There really isn’t any choles terol-lowering property in oat bran,’’ said Dr. Frank M. Sacks, a co-author of the study. “Oat bran pretty much does the same as other cereal prod ucts.” Oat bran has been promoted as a health food largely because it is rich in soluble fiber. Several studies have suggested that this kind of fiber some how removes cholesterol from the body. Bui this latest study concluded that people’s cholesterol levels dropped just as much when they ate food made with low-fiber white flour and Cream ol Wheat as it did with heavy intake of oat bran, because fat consumption went down. The researchers said the lower fat and cholesterol consumption, not high liber intake, entirely explained the drop in cholesterol seen in their study. The study,conducted on 20 volun teers, most of them hospital dieti tians, was directed by dietitian Jams F. Swain at Brigham aqd Women’s Hospital in Boston. It was published in today’s New England Journal of Medicine. The volunteers ale seemingly iden tical muffins, meat loaf and casse roles for two, six-week periods. Dur ing one period, the food contained 100 grams, or 3 1/2 ounces, of oat bran per day, while during the other, it contained that much white flour or Cream of Wheal as a control. On both the oat and non-oat regi mens, thejr cholesterol levels were about 7 percent lower than before they went on the diets. Before the diets, they were eating 12 percent of their daily calones in the form of saturated fat. This fell to 10 percent while on the high-fiber diet and 9 percent on the low-fiber diet. Con sumption of cholesterol dropped by |-— one-third. Using dietitians as test subjects meant the researchers had a healthy group who already largely followed recommended dirts. Their cholesterol levels averaged 186. Among the reports most widely cited in favor of oat bran was a study conducted by dietitian Linda Van Horn at Chicago’s Northwestern Univer sity. It found that substituting oat bran lor other carbohydrates in the diet lowered blood cholesterol levels by 3 percent. Her study attempted to keep lat consumption constant, and she said the latest work does not shake her conviction that oat bran and other lormsol soluble fiber can lower cho lesterol. “With their small sample si/e and without the dietary control necessary to monitor the situation, I don’t know what this means,” she said. At Quaker Oats Co., which stresses oat bran’s benefits in its cereal ads, research scientist Fred Shinnick said the group studied was too small and healthy to show a pronounced effect of oat bran. “There is a clear cholesterol-low ering effect when you use oatmeal or oat bran,” he said. “We don’t think one small study disproves the weight of the evidence that has been pub lished over the past 25 years.” The Solution to Your New Year’s Resolution.. You promised yourself, "This year I’m going to stay in shape." Lincoln YMCA can help you stick with a program. You can swim, run, play basketball, lift weights, play racquct ball, enjoy aerobic classes and much more. $18.00 A MONTH Nautilus facility now included Plus $35 initiation fee NOTE: Student Membership excludes the hours ol 11a.m. - 1 p.m. and 5p.m. • 7p.m. weekdays. 2 BLOCKS FROM CAMPUS \V .. .the l.iviUA Downtown Shaping the Student body. Northeast 11th^;sr 2601 No. 70th 4/5-9622 464-7481 Nebraskan Editor Jmy Edward. Graphics Editor John Bruc. Managing Editor Ryan Sleeves m!/101? Ch,®t Dave Hinwn Assoc News Editors Lisa Donovan Nig it News Editors Jana Pedersen Eric Planner . „ Diane Brayton Editorial Page Editor Bob Nelson r Ar'Brian Shell Mo Wire Editor Brandon Loomi* p,hcatl0ns Board, Ne weekly during summer sessions. ' ' ay ,hrouSh Ff*ay during the academic year, phoning 472*1^b^tween oVr^andTp ^Kitanda C°mmen,s 10 Ih« Daily Nebraskan by acsssS,Xnusi,,oS5^%ianrtorma,,on- «-^rP°r tJsst1 a,so has St .Llncol^NE 68SMa0446S Second^ass'Ms'taoe Daid^f Nebfaska Union 34, 1400 R _»» matfwiai