News Digest
Monday, August 22, 1994 Page 2
World watches as Mexican people vote
By Bill Cormier
The Associated Press
MEXICO CITY — Mexicans lined up to
vote Sunday, wary about fraud but with high
hopes of choosing a new president and lawmak
ers in clean elections. In the south, Mayan
Indians trekked through mountains to reach the
polls.
The elections come during a tumultuous
year that began with an Indian rebellion and
included the assassination of presidential can
didate Luis Donaldo Colosio in Tijuana four
months later.
The vote — which could be Mexico’s most
competitive ever — has become a test of the
country’s resolve to match the bold economic
reforms of this year’s North American Free
Trade Agreement with political reform.
Three candidates were leading in the race for
the presidency. Ernesto Zedillo represents the
Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, which
has ruled Mexico for 65 years. He is strongly
challenged by Diego Fernandez de Cevallos of
the conservative National Action Party and
Cuauhtemoc Cardenas of the leftist Democrat
ic Revolution Party.
President Carlos Salinas de Gortari, who is
credited with raising Mexico’s international
Afficangroups
confront AIDS
By Amba Dad son _
The Associated Press
ABIDJAN, Ivory Coast — When
Jul iana Gbami’s husband died three years
ago, doctors told her the cause was kidney
failure. Just kidney failure.
Three months later, when she devel
oped recurring fevers, diarrhea and chron
ic fatigue, they said it had really been
AIDS, and that she had it too.
“That’s when I collapsed and really fell
ill,” said Gbami, a retired Ivorian social
worker.
Even as AIDS consumes their conti
nent, many Africans can’t bring them
selves to mention it. Experts say that’sonc
reason the disease is spreading.
Africa accounts for 10 million of the
world’s 16 million cases of infection with
HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, accord
ing to the World Health Organization.
Gbami belongs to something almost
unheard of in Africa: an AIDS support
group dedicated to breaking the fatal ta
boo of silence.
“It started very, very tentatively,” said
Dr. Marc Aquirre, an American working
at the Medical and Social Assistance Cen
ter, financed by the Church of Christ. “A
lot of these people are very reticent. But
we basically had a party and got people
talking abbut themselves.”
Experts say cultural modesty and a
deep reluctance to be the bearer of bad
news arc powerful social forces in Africa,
even among some doctors.
“Africans with AIDS do not go and sec
their doctors because of our traditional
sense of modesty and shame,” said Yaya
Diallo, a Senegalese sociologist, at the
University of Dakar.“Thcy prefer to' leave
it to God’ to decide their fate, and try
traditional medicine.”
The support group called “The Friends
Club,” wnich began meeting weekly in
July, represents a quiet revolution that has
even led some people to become crusaders
for community awareness.
“I want to tell people that, with HIV,
you can still live,” said Etienne Tapie. 28,
who was diagnosed in March as HIV
positive. “It is not the end of the world.”
- Not at The Friends Club, which Tapie
helped organize. Club meetings, which
draw 35 to 40 people, are lively, positive
and animated. They include a pretty teen
age girl, the soft-spoken Gbami, a lanky
father of four.
“There’s such a need for people toopen
up and talk to someone,” said Aguirre, the
American doctor. “That is all we aim to
provide, really.” The Ivory Coast, with
18,670 documented AIDS cases in a pop
ulation of 13 million, is West Africa’s
most-affected country.
stature and reducing it’s foreign debt, is consti
tutionally barred from seeking a second con
secutive six-year term.
Fed up with corruption and election fraud,
Mexicans are scrutinizing the election of their
next leadership. The United States, Canada,
Western Europe and Mexico’s other new free
trade partners also arc watching, along with
82,000 Mexican and foreign observers.
Some polling stations in the capital opened
late. But no incidents were reported. Some
places had lines a block long outside.
Part of the reason for the long lines was the
process of checking and marking the new Mex
ican voter identification cards, issued to pre
vent fraud. Also, each voter’s finger was marked
with an indelible yellow ink.
“I don’t like the ink. It’ll last for five days,”
complained Consuelo Gonzalez. “But it does
show I’m a complete citizen.”
About 45.7 million people were registered
to vote. A total of nine presidential candidates,
including two women, were in the race to
replace Salinas on Dec. 1.
Mexicans also were electing a 500-mcmbcr
Chamber of Deputies and two-thirds of a 128
scat Senate.
The southern state of Chiapas, where the
Indian rebellion still smolders, was electing a
governor, legislator and local authorities.
Salinas promised the cleanest vote ever in a
country with a tradition of fraud-marred elec
tions, and $730 million was spent to overhaul
voter rolls and issue voter identification cards
with photographs. A special deputy attorney
general was named to prosecute election-relat
ed fraud.
Zedillo, a Yale-educated economist who
had never run for elected office, was nominated
late in the campaign to take the place of the
PRI’s slain candidate, Colosio.
The Zapatista National Liberation Army,
which led the Chiapas state rebellion in
January, withdrew , its troops from around
Chiapas polling sites last week, saying it would
allow an unimpeded vote. The guerrillas have
refused to lay down their arms until their de
mands for electoral and other political reforms
are met.
More than 145 people were killed in fighting
between rebel and government troops before a
cease-fire was declared Jan. 12.
The Zapatista rebels have ordered their troops
not to lake any action in the event of fraud
without first allowing civil society to protest
peacefully.
Leaders condemn conference
By Eileen Alt Powell
The Associated Press
CAIRO, Egypt — Muslim fundamentalists
have stepped up their campaign against next
month's U.N. population conference in Cairo,
charging that it will encourage homosexuality,
premarital sex and abortion.
Islamic lawyers are seeking a court order this
week to block the meeting, and a Jordanian
federation has urged that Egypt cancel itoutright
or risk “turmoil and public anger.”
The pro-lslamic Al-Ahrar newspaper carried
a front-page headline Sunday characterizing the
conference as “consolidating American domi
nance” over family values and urged readers to
mail in their objections.
The hard-1 iners are not expected to scuttle the
Sept. 5-13 meeting, which planners say will
draw more than 15,000 people from throughout
the world.
But the Muslim stance, along with the
Vatican’s offensive against artificial birth con
trol, has organizers worried that the confer
ence’s main point — controlling population
growth — will be lost. Pope John Paul II has
urged Roman Catholics to rally against contra
ception and abortion. Earlier this month, about
200,000 Roman Catholics took to the streets of
the Philippine capital Manila in a protest march.
President Hosni Mubarak has tried to assure
all sides that no nation will be forced to accept
anything that contradicts religious beliefs or
traditions.
“Those who protest some items on the con
ference agenda basically forget the conference’s
ultimate objective — to curb overpopulation
and link population growth levels to develop
ment,” Mubarak told a weekend meeting of
— |ft
Those who protest some
Items on the conference
agenda basically forget the
conference’s ultimate
objective—to curb
overpopulation and link
population growth levels to
to development.
—Hosni Mubarak
Egyptian president
-99
Islamic scholars. The International Conference
on Population and Development, as it isofficial
ly called, will seek consensus on how to deal
with the world’s population as well as hunger
and poverty. The goal is to hold world popula
tion to about 7.27 billion by 2015, compared
with the current 5.7 billion. Left unchecked,
the U.N. says, world population will reach 7.92
billion by 2015 and 12.5 billion by 2050, with
much of the growth in underdeveloped countries
that can ill afford to cope. The powerful Al
Azhar, the Cairo-based center of Islamic schol
arship for the Arab world, said in a statement
carl ier this month that the draft agenda “is full of
loose expressions’’ that appear to contradict
Islamic principles.
It found three points most offensive: a men
tion of “plurality of forms” for families, as
accepting of homosexuality; a call for making
sexual advice available to all, as counter to
Islam’s ban on extramarital sex; and references
to safe abortion, which Islam accepts only if the
mother’s life is in danger.
Archeology crew discovers
tools of ancient civilization
CUSTER, S.D.— Workers at an archaeo
logical site west of here have uncovered some
of the oldest artifacts in the United States.
Preliminary results from the Jim Pitts site
indicate the finds are from 10,500 to 11,300
years ago, workers at the dig said.
The dig started in 1991 as part of a construc
tion project for U.S. Highway 16 between
Custer and Newcastle, Wyo. Artifacts found
during an initial survey led to more digs in the
following years.
Last summer, workers discovered lance
points, which were dated at 9,000 and 11,000
years old by University of Wyoming archaeol
ogist George Frison. That puts them in the
Clovis era of palcoindians who hunted wooly
mammoths and were the first known residents
of what is now the United States.
This year, volunteers are helping sift through
tons of dirt at the site for clues to the area’s
history. The workers are searching 165 tons of
dirt that was put in plastic bags and taken to the
State Archaeological Research Center’s office
i
in Rapid City last summer.
The process, called water screening, in
volves dumping the dirt onto a metal screen
suspended over a tank, then spraying water on
the dirt and shaking the mess so that any debris
shows through. Workers using this process
found artifacts dating from more than 11,000
years ago to the present.
Bruce Potter, the head of the archaeological
crew, said his favorite discovery this summer is
a palcoindian projectile point from an area
where no one expected to find anything.
“There’s always something in the screen,”
Potter said. After the remaining 5,000 bags of
dirt are screened, archaeologists will study the
soil to determine environmental conditions at
the lime the artifacts were made.
The information gleaned from the Pitts site
probably will be published in a scientific book
and displayed at the planned Spirit of the Black
Hills Museum, officials said. “But we haven’t
really finished excavating until we get through
those bags,” said Ned Hanenbcrger, field direc
tor of the dig.
NEWS IN A MINUTE
Elephants rampage
HONOLULU — A rampaging circus
elephant killed a trainer and injured anoth
er before it was shot down in the streets. It
was the second elephant attack in a week
at Circus International.
The 21-year-old African elephant
named Tyk went berserk just before she
was to perform with four other elephants
in Saturday’s matinee.
On Monday night, an elephant rammed
a fence around the ring, knocking Scan
Floyd into the next row and pinning his
wife and eight children under the fence,
Floyd said. None of the Floyds required
hospitalization.
Gore hospitalized
WASHINGTON—Vice President A1
Gore, once dubbed a “raging bull” on the
court, will be on crutches for a few weeks
recovering from a basketball injury that
required surgery on his Achilles’ tendon,
an aide said Sunday.
“Everything looks fine,” Heidi Kukis
said the morning after Gore was admitted
to Bethesda Naval Hospital. She said the
vice president would stay a second night
rather than go home late Sunday.
Gore, 46, is expected to resume his
normal schedule after his discharge Mon
day, despite a splint and the crutches,
Kukis said.
Sinking stars
LOS ANGELES — One of the hun
dreds of stars on the Hollywood Walk of
Fame—actor John Forsythe’s—buckled
when subway work going on underneath
Hollywood Boulevard caused the street to
start sinking on Saturday. Police divert
ed traffic around a four-block area of the
street Sunday while crews used jackham
mers to remove 27 threatened stars, in
cluding those of Forsythe, Carol Burnett,
Eddie Albert, MelissaGilbcrt, Jim Nabors
and Fred MacMurray.
The Metropolitan Transportation Au
thority said a combination of tunneling
and water seepage from an unknown source
caused the street to start sinking. That
caused the stone in which Forsythe’s star
is embedded to bend and crack as the
sidewalk containing it bulged.
Relentless refugees
KEY WEST, Fla. — Despite restric
tions newly imposed on Cuban refugees
by the United States, many Cubans were
still ready to brave the 90-milc crossing to
Florida on a few wooden pi anks, lashed by
telephone cords to inflated inner tubes.
Some said they hadn’t heard about the
new U.S. restrictions. Others said they
didn’t care.
Cubans whodidn’t hear about Clinton’s
measures on short wave radio Saturday
read about them Sunday in the state news
paper, Rebel Youth.
Volunteer pilots helping search for
people at sea said the Coast Guard couldn ’ t
reach all the rafters making the 90-mile
voyage.
On Saturday, the Coast Guard had its
biggest day since the 1980 Mariel boat lift,
picking up 1,189 refugees. On Sunday,
678 had brcn picked up by early evening.
Nebraskan
Editor Jeff Zeteny, 472-1796
Managing Editor Anal* Brunkow
Assoc. News Editors Jeffrey Robb
Rainbow Rowell
General Maneger Den Shettil
Production Manager Katherine Pollcky
Adventsing Manager Amy Struthers
„ Senior Acct. Exec. Shed Krsjewekl
Public at tons Board Chairman Tim Modegsard, 439-9256
Professional Adviser Don Walton, 473-7301
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