S. Dakota governor
remembered, mourned
PIERRE, S.D. (AP)—At 6 feet
5 inches and 250 pounds, George
Mickelson was a giant of a man
with big dreams who followed his
father into politics and rose to gov
ernor six years ago.
Mickelson, 52, and seven other
people were killed Monday in a
plane crash near Dubuque, Iowa.
Federal investigators waded
through a muddy farmlot Tuesday,
looking for clues to what caused
the state-owned turboprop plane to
go down in a rainstorm.
The Federal Aviation Adminis
tration said the pilot reported en
gine trouble before attempting to
reach the Dubuque airport. Also
killed were two state officials,
Roland Dolly and Ron Reed, and
two pilots and three businessmen.
Lt.Gov. Walter Dale Miller, 67,
was sworn in Tuesday afternoon as
South Dakota’s 29th governor.
“Together we can accomplish all
he wanted to accomplish for us,”
Miller said in an emotional tribute.
Mickelson was remembered as
a man of the people, an avid
outdoorsman who championed In
dian rights and occasionally mowed
a neighbor’s lawn.
“How many people can say they
have the governor for his lawn boy?”
said Orrin Juel, the mayor of
Brookings who has a cabin near
Mickelson’s on Lake Poinsett.
Mickelson was tireless in his
efforts to boost the stale’s econom y.
The crash came on the return leg of
a business trip to Ohio.
“This great big guy with the
beautiful smile, he really put South
Dakota first,” said Mary Wagner, a
former state lawmaker from
Brookings.
His humility and sense of humor
will be missed, said Richard
Helsper, a friend and former law
partner of Mickelson’s.
Mickelson is survived by his
wife, Linda, and their three chil
dren.
Equally at home in a four-wheel
drive pickup or a luxury car,
Mickelson enjoyed hunting, fish
ing and other outdoor sports. He
was frequently seen boating on the
Missouri River reservoirs near
Pierre.
Clinton faces first defeat
as GOP resists jobs bill
WASHINGTON (AP) — Presi
dent Clinton’s jobs bill seemed all but
dead Tuesday as Senate Republicans
reaffirmed their rock-solid opposi
tion to it upon returning from the
Easter recess.
Barring an unexpected new effort
at compromise by Clinton, the GOP
unity meant
that the legis
lation had vir
tually no
chance in the
Senate.
And that
leaves
Clinton star
ing at what
would be his
first major
legislative defeat.
Clinton says the measure would
create jobs during a still uncertain
economic recovery. Republicans say
the measure would pile billions of
dollars onto record budget deficits
while doing little for the economy.
“The people of the country arc
behind us,” said Sen. Larry Pressler,
R-S.D. “They’re excited about cut
tingspending. We’ve got an issue and
we shouldn’t let go of it.”
“There’s no emergency, and we
ought to be getting onto more impor
tant business,” said Sen. Dave
Durenbergcr, R-Minn.
The bill contains $12.2 billion in
new spending for everything from
new computers for federal agencies to
aid for school districts. It also con
tains $3.2 billion for road-building
that would come from the highway
trust fund.
Clinton slashedS4 billion from the
measure on Friday in hopes of moving
toward a deal. Republicans rejected
that overture because it ignored their
core demand: that Clinton offset its
costs by cutting existing programs.
The Senate planned test votes on
Clinton’s package and a much smaller,
$6 billion GOP alternative.
Republicans are outnumbered by
Democrats in the Senate 57-43, but 60
votes are needed toculoff any filibus
ter.
“It’s pure politics, an effort to em
barrass the president, an effort to de
feat the president’s program,” said
Senate Majority Leader George
Mitchell, D-Maine. ‘‘And what is at
risk is not the politics of the presi
dency, but the American economy.”
‘‘It’s dead if Republicans want it to
be dead. We can’t overcome their
votes if they decide to hang tough,”
said Sen. Dale Bumpers, D-Ark.
The administration had hoped to
pick up additional support over the
recess by applying pressure on sev
eral Republicans.
“It was the kind of pressure that
backfires because if you want my
support, don’t try to beat up on me,”
said one of the targets, Sen. Alfonse
D’Amato, R-N.Y.
Both sides were willing to approve
the $4 billion the measure carries for
jobless benefits.
Breast cancer
risk rises with
exposure to DDT
NEW YORK (AP)—Women with
the highest exposure to the pesticide
DDT had four times the breast cancer
risk of women with the least expo
sure, researchers said Tuesday.
Tlteir study is one of the first to link
the insecticide with breast cancer,
although DDT has been known for
decades to cause cancer in animals.
While the findings do not consti
tute proof that DDT causes breast
cancer, they could provide a possible
explanation for the puzzling rise in
breast cancer in recent decades in the
United States.
“Breast cancer is the most com
mon cancer among women, and a lot
of the risk is unexplained,” said the
study’s principal author, Mary S.
Wolff, a chemist at the Mount Sinai
School of Medicine in New York
The study was being published
Wednesday in the Journal of the Na
tional Cancer Institute.
The rise in breast cancer followed
the increase in the use of DDT, sug
gesting that the two might be linked,
Wolff said.
Even though DDT was phased out
in 1972 in the United Stales, “we’re
all exposed to it through the diet," she
said.
Before 1972, DDT was common in
meat and dairy products, and because
it is stored in the body for decades
most Americans still carry DDT resi
dues, she said.
Children are exposed to it through
their mothers’ milk, Wolff said. And
DDT is still widely used in other
countries, including Mexico, she said.
Inherited breast cancer
Percentage of risk for women in the U.S., by age:
Source: Journal of American Madteal Association
wont ana ner colleagues mea
sured levels of a DDT-breakdown
product in the blood of 58 women
with breast cancer and 171 women
without breast cancer. Women with
levels in the top 10 percent had four
limes the breast cancer risk of women
in the bottom 10 percent.
The researchers also looked for a
link between PCBs and breast cancer,
but failed to find one. PCBs, or poly
chlorinated biphenyls, are hazardous
liquids used as insulators in electrical
transformers. Like DDT, they arc
widespread environmental contami
nants.
David J. Hunter and KarlT. Kelsey
of the Harvard School ofPublic Health
in Boston said: “Because the f indings.
. .may have extraordinary global im
plications for the prevention of breast
cancer, their study should serve as a
wake-up call for further urgent re
search.”
“The study is the best-designed
study yet conducted to investigate the
link between toxic chemicals and a
major disease in women,” said Devra
Lee Davis of the National Research
Council, an authority on environmen•
tal causes of cancer.
The study “should be regarded as a
very serious message to all of those
concerned with figuring out how to
prevent cancer,” she said.
The National Cancer Institute and
the National Institute of Environmen
tal Health Sciences have now pro
posed a series of studies looking at
potential environmental causes of
breast cancer, said Susan Seiber of the
cancer institute.
Abortion pill to be tested in U.S.
WASHINGTON (AP) — In a
. breakthrough for advocates of legal
izing the abortion pill RU-486, the
French manufacturer agreed Tuesday
to license the drug to a population
control group for eventual U.S. distri
bution.
It will still be at least “a couple of
years” before the abortion pill can be
licensed for full commercial use in
the United Slates, the head of the
Food and Drug Administration said.
The agreement was announced by
FDA Commissioner David A. Kessler
and Margaret Catlcy-Carlson, presi
dent of the non-profit Population
Council, after they met with Edouard
Sakiz, president of Roussel-Uclaf.
The agreement allows the Popula
tion Council to contract with a U.S.
drug manufacturer to produce and
distribute the pill in the United Stales.
Catley-Carlson also said it would
be “probably years" before RU-486
could win full FDA approval.
Kessler, who last Thursday criti
cized Rousscl-Uclaf’s German par
eni, Hocchsi AG for refusing to seek
a U.S. license, said, “Substantial
progress has been made in removing
the roadblocks.”
Catley-Carl son said, “We arc go
ing to begin a clinical trial to test the
drug in the United States. This trial
will include a minimum of 2,000
women.”
The Population Council hopes to
raise $1 million to S4 million from
private foundations to support the re
search.
The New York-based group nor
mally works with developing coun
tries on population and reproductive
health questions.
Kessler said the French company
had agreed to submit European data to
the FDA on RU-486’s toxicology and
chemistry, and the regulatory agency
will move swiftly to review that infor
mation.
Some 120,000 women have used
the pill as an alternative to surgical
abortion in France, Britain and Swe
den. It causes the uterus to shed its
lining, including the fertilized em
bryo, and is considered % percent
effective in ending a pregnancy.
It is used in conjunction with an
other hormone, prostaglandin, which
causes contractions and is normally
given under tight medical supervision
at clinics in Europe. Roussel had in
dicated it did not want to market the
pill here itself because of concerns
over the political controversy over
abortion in the United States, even
with a pro-abortion rights president in
the White House. •
* The Bush administration banned
imports of the drug even for research
purposes, but the Clinton administra
tion has made clear from the start it
supported demands by women’s
groups that RU-486 be legalized.
Rep. Ron Wyden, D-Orc. said,
“Clearly it is welcome news for Ameri
can women that Hoechst has crossed
the threshold and is allowing this drug
to be licensed to the Population Coun
cil. It is still going to take longer than
it should for this drug to be commer
cially available to U.S. women.” »
Intense fighting spreads
in Bosnia; at least200dead
TUZLA, Bosnia-Herzegovina
(AP)—Heavy fighting between Croat
and Muslim troops spread Tuesday
from central to southwestern Bosnia
on the fifth day of combat that has
killed an estimated 200 people.
Serb-Muslim fighting also contin
ued in the embattled former Y ugoslav
republic despite international media
tion efforts.
U.N. officials reported some vio
lations of the cease-fire around
Srebrenica, with occasional exchanges
of small arms and machine gun fire.
But Serb big guns that have rav
aged the Muslim enclave for nearly a
year remained silent for a third day
under a U.N.-monitored cease-fire that
forced its outgunned Muslim defend
ers to virtually surrender the town.
In related developments:
• Western air patrols spotted a
cargo hel icopter in a Serb-held part ot
Bosnia, and NATO officials said it is
believed to have violated the U.N.
ban on flightsover the republic, meant
primarily to keep Serb aircraft from
flying.
• Members of the U.S. Senate
Foreign Relations Committee criti
cized Secretary of State Warren Chris
topher over what they called the U.S.
failure to respond to Serbian aggres
sion in Bosnia.
• Serbian President Slobodan
Milosevic met with lawmakers from
Russia, a traditional Serbian ally.
Delegation leader Yevgeny
Ambartsumov said afterward that
strict new sanctions to be imposed
April 26 on Serbian-dominated Yu
goslavia were “unfounded,” the
Yugoslav news agency Tanjug re
ported.
Ohio officials agree to change
or review several prison laws
LUCAS VILLE, Ohio (AP)—The
state has agreed to change or at least
review a number of prison rules that
hostage-holding inmates have cited
in their demands during a deadly stand
off, inmates were told.
“These demands have been re
viewed and signed by the administra
tion so we can end this in a peaceful
manner,” said the voice on the loud
speakers aimed at the inmates' barri
caded cellbiock. The speaker was not
identified.
The message read to inmates late
Monday and Tuesday asked that they
bring one of the remaining hostages
with them to the bargaining table.
Sharron Komegay, a spokeswoman
for the state prison system, said today
the message “affirms our intention to
negotiate in good faith.”
Also today, about 10 American
■ .. ..
Red Cross workers went into the
prison. Officials did not explain why.
The inmates have held a cellblock
at the state’s maximum-security
Southern Ohio Correctional Facility
prison since a riot April 11, when they
took eight guards hostage.
At least seven inmates and one
guard have been killed.
Authorities declined to elaborate
on what the concession offers meant.
Among the points made in the loud
speaker message:
• No retaliation would be made
against inmates or their property.
• Communication with inmates on
quality of life questions would be
improved.
• Transfer of eligible inmates to
other prisons in Ohio and elsewhere
would be done promptly.
Nel?raiskan
Editor Chris Hopfensperger Night News Editors Stephanie Purdy
472-1766 Mike Lewis
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Editor Publications Board Chairman Doug Fiedler
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, 473-7301
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