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™ News Digest Thursday, August 31,1995 Page 2 ___ Air strikes intended to show NATO’s resolve WASHINGTON—After years of weakness and indecision, a long awaited show of strength in Bosnia could open a new chapter in the con flict - but only if the toughest NATO air strikes of the war convince the Serbs, and maybe the U.S. Congress, that the West is united and resolved. “We are now translating into acts what we have always said,” NATO Secretary General Willy Claes said Wednesday as waves of warplanes hit at Serb targets. In the past, the Serbs could scoff at Western threats that never led to any thing more than brief air strikes de signed to avoid casualties and severe damage. The current assault involved doz ens of NATO planes as well as bom bardment from the heavy guns of the j:. U.N. rapid reaction force. U.S. Navy ^ Adm. Leighton Smith, the NATO commander in charge of the strikes, said they were meant to “do a signifi cant amount of damage” to Bosnian Serb military targets and “get their attention.” Claes said the attacks had the dual purpose of retaliating for Monday’s shelling of a Sarajevo market and pressuring the Bosnian Serbs to ne gotiate. He said the Serbs were un likely “to accept reasonable compro mises if the international community did not react in a strong way as we are doing for the moment.” The attacks also could head off a battle between President Clinton and Congress over whether to lift the ban on arms sales to the Bosnian govern ment. Clinton vetoed legislation to lift the embargo and Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole said that if the NATO strikes prove “part of a new and effective policy” he would post pone a vote on overriding the president’s veto. “However, one day of military action does not make up for three years of passivity and failure,” said Dole while campaigning in New Hampshire for the 1996 Republican presidential nomination. The Bosnian Serbs initial reaction was defiance. But what’s important is what they do next. Will they continue their attacks on Sarajevo? Will they remove the heavy weapons that ring the Bosnian capi tal? Will they be more willing or less willing to accept a peace plan that requires them to give up a third of the Bosnian territory they’ve seized dur ing the 40-month war? An early hint of the diplomatic prospects might come not from the Bosnian Serbs but from their early patrons in neighboring Serbia. Richard Holbrooke, an assistant secretary of state, met in Belgrade with Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic in another effort to per suade him to recognize Bosnia’s gov ernment and pressure the Serbs to end their rebellion. State Department spokesman Nicholas Bums, asked if there was any sign the bombing had damaged prospects for a negotiated settlement, said “it doesn’t appear to us that there has been any fundamental break in the momentum that we sense in the region for a peace process.” The Clinton administration also was watching the response on Capi tol Hill, where Congress might soon vote on whether to override the president’s veto of legislation direct ing him to lift the ban on arms sales to the Bosnian government. Sen. Richard Lugar of Indiana, a senior Republican on the Foreign Relations Committee and a candi date for the GOP presidential nomi nation, said that “the situation on the ground will determine largely how that vote comes out. In the event that it appears that the Bosnian Serbs are prepared to continue shelling Sarajevo or creating other distur bances where the prestige of NATO is at stake, then the vote to override the president is likely to be a much stronger one.” Sen. Joseph Lieberman of Con necticut, a leading Democratic sup porter of lifting the arms embargo, said the air strikes had not changed his position. “Ultimately, the only way any peace agreement can be sustained is for the people of Bosnia to have the ability to defend themselves,” he said. The question of whether the NATO military campaign was sustainable was raised anew with the shooting down of a French plane over Bosnia, a reminder that military action runs NATO bombing NATO planes bombed Serb positions around Sarajew early Wednesday. The bombing was in response to Monday’s marketplace massacre, which the U.N. has blamed on Bosnian Serbs. Ap the risk of casualties. “NATO and our participation in NATO are at stake,” said Lugar. “These are large issues that call for taking a risk.” Husband butchers wife after he burns pasta BOSTON — An insurance ex ecutive was charged with tearing out his wife’s heart and lungs and impaling them on a stake in a fight about overcooked ziti. Richard Rosenthal, his 4 month-old daughter with him in his car, was arrested Tuesday and „ charged with murder after he fol lowed a couple home and tried to engage them in a driveway con versation about gun control, po lice said. The couple’s license plate read “357-BAN.” Rosenthal told the court-appointed forensic psycholo gist that he thought the plate re ferred to .357-caliber Magnum handguns. The couple called police, who found the baby in the back seat of Rosenthal’s car, along with a plas tic-bag full of bloody men’s cloth ing, Middlesex County prosecutor Martin Murphy said. Police followed a trail of blood from Rosenthal’s stately Framingham house to the woods and found the beaten, mutilated body of his wife, Laura Rosenthal. Mrs. Rosenthal, 34, had been slit with a butcher knife from her throat to her navel, and her organs had been placed on an 18-inch stake in a nearby garden. Her face also had been pum meled with a softball-size rock, leaving her so disfigured that she was listed as “Jane Doe” on Rosenthal’s arrest report. It took more than a day to identify her. Investigators said Rosenthal,40, told them his wife had chided him for burning the ziti. “I had an argu ment. ... I overcooked the ziti,” they quoted Rosenthal as saying. It was not clear when Mrs. Rosenthal was killed. She was last seen alive on Sunday, police said. The couple had no history of violence and neither had a crimi nal record, police said. The couple’s daughter, Marla, was un harmed and placed in state cus tody. Rosenthal, a senior financial officer for John Hancock Mutual Life Insurance Co. in Boston, pleaded innocent Tuesday and was held without bail. District Judge Paul Healey sent him to a mental hospital for evaluation. Jack Levin, a sociology profes sor at Northeastern University, said temporary insanity could be his defense. Doctors boast new abortion pill combination as safe and effective BOSTON — Doctors can quickly and safely induce abortions at home with a combination of two drugs al ready on the market for other uses, researchers reported in a study that could pre-empt the political debate over whether to make the French abortion pill available in the United States. The two-drug combination may be as effective as the French abortion pill, RU-486, which is undergoing testing in this country. The two kinds of drug-induced abortion have not yet been compared directly, and nei ther is likely to work as well as surgi cal abortion. A small study published last Octo ber in the Journal of the American Medical Association showed the po tential of the new two-drug combina tion. Now a much larger study in this week’s New England Journal of Medi cine demonstrates its safety and ef fectiveness. “This is an exciting phenomenon because it will provide yet another choice for women,” said Dr. Richard U. Hausknecht, who conducted the latest study. “Since there is a paucity of health care providers providing abor tions in sane parts of the United States, this may have a significant impact.” RU-486, which is also called mifepristone, was developed by the French pharmaceutical firm Roussel Uclaf and has been used in Europe for more than a decade. The Population Council is overseeing testing at sev eral hospitals and clinics in the United States as a step toward seeking FDA approval. Abortion opponents fiercely oppose introductionofRU-486andhave threat ened a boycott of any pharmaceutical company that manufactures it. Hausknecht, a genealogist at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York City, tested the new ap proach on women in their first nine weeks of pregnancy. It involves a combination of methotrexate, a widely used cancer drug, and misoprostol, an ulcer medicine. Methotrexate destabilizes the uter ine lining, and misoprostol triggers contractions that expel the fetus. The combination induced abor tions in 171 of 178 pregnant volun teers, or 96 percent. Other studies show that RU-486, the French pill, is about 95 percent effective. Any doctor can legally prescribe the new combination for abortion, even though the medicines have not been approved by the Food and Drug Administration for this purpose. How ever, because so few studies about the technique have been published, doctors may be vulnerable to mal practice lawsuits if something goes wrong. “We would urge women and their doctors to use this regimen as part of a controlled clinical trial” and not do it routinely, said FDA Deputy Com missioner Mary Pendergast. However, Hausknecht said he knows of several doctors in the United States and Canada, whom he declined to identify, who are helping women abort fetuses this way. This kind of abortion requires two visits to the doctor. On the first, the patient gets an injection of methotrexate. A week later, she re ceives four misoprostol tablets that are placed in the vagina and held in place by a tampon. Then she goes home and usually aborts the fetus within 24 hours. The main side effects are bleeding and mild to moderate pain. Hausknecht said a half-hour coun seling session is essential before die abortion. “The bleeding and cramping can be unpleasant,” he said. “They could panic if they don’t know w^ajLto expect. I explain it in graphic tenra.” He said none of the women suf fered any significant emotional dis tress or depression as a result of the abortions. They overwhelmingly pre ferred the medical termination of their pregnancies to surgical abortion. Teen faces opposition in first day at Tufts MEDFORD, Mass.—Gina Grant, whose admission to Harvard was re scinded when the school learned she had killed her mother, arrived Wednesday to enroll at Tufts Univer sity and encountered new opposition. Editors of a conservative student magazine plastered the school with leaflets condemning the administra tion for admitting Grant, who pleaded no contest to fatally bludgeoning her mother with a candlestick in 1990 when she was 14. “People have been rejected from Tufts for far lesser things that have certainly had less of a negative im pact onJhe community and the world than the violent death of one’s par ent,” said Colin Delaney, editor of The Primary Source. Tufts broke its silence about Grant’s acceptance Wednesday, say ing she was admitted as a fully quali I fled candidate through the normal admissions process last March - be fore news of her past led Harvard to reject her. “Having paid her debts to society, she should not be denied the opportu nity of pursuing a college degree,” said Tufts spokeswoman Rosemarie Van Camp. She added, “Any other decision would have been antitheti cal to our fundamental values and beliefs.” Some Tufts students said Grant, now 19, should be given the benefit of the doubt. “She ’ s obviously worked very hard to put her life together,” said Katherine Thurston, 18, a freshman from Los Altos Hills, Calif. “I think it’s great she’s coming here,” said Alex Shalon, 17, from Montclair, N.J., also a freshman. “College is a clean slate. It’s a new beginning. And I think it’s greatshe’s getting a chance to start over.” "Having paid her debts to society, she should not be denied the opportunity of pursuing a college degree.” ROSEMARIE VAN CAMP Tufts University spokeswoman The university refused to say whether she will live on campus and have a roommate. Friends who wouldn’t identify themselves said she will have no com ment on the controversy and is just trying to blend in. University officials said they re moved some of the critical leaflets from areas of the campus where post ers are not allowed. They said leaf lets any left on kiosks or bulletin boards would not be disturbed. “We respect the right of all stu dents to express their opinion on any subject,” Van Camp said. Harvard rescinded Grant’s admis sion April 3 after learning about the slaying of her mother in Lexington, S.C. Dorothy Mayfield, 42, had been hit at least 13 times with a lead crys tal candlestick. Described in court as an alcoholic, she was drunk when she died; Grant’s lawyer said his client had struck out in self-defense. Grant served a few months in ju venile detention and moved to Cam bridge, where she was on probation until age 18. She attended the presti gious public Rindge and Latin School, where she was an honor student and tennis team co-captain and tutored underprivileged children. Nebraskan Editor J. Christopher Hein 472-1766 Managing Editor Rainbow Rowell Assoc. News Editors DeDra Janssen Brian Sharp Opinion Page Editor Mark Baldridge me Editor Jamie Karl Copy Desk Editor Tim Pearson Sports Editor Jeff Griesch Arts & Entertainment Editor Doug Kouma Photo Director Travis Keying Night News Editors Mitch Sherman FAX NUMBER 472-1761 The Daily NebraskanOJSPS 144-080) is published by the UNL Publications Board, Nebraska Union 34,1400 R St., Lincoln, NE 68588-0448, Monday through Friday during the academic year; weekly during summer sessions. Readers are encouraged to submit story ideas and comments to the Daily Nebraskan by phoning 472-1763 between 9 am. and 5 p.m. Monday through Friday. The public also nas access to the Publications Board. For information, contact Tim Hedegaard, 436 9222. Subscription price is $50 for one year. Postmaster: Send address changes to the Daily Nebraskan, Nebraska Union 34,1400 R St.,Lincoln, NE 68588-0448. Second-class postage paid at Lincoln, NE. ALL MATERIAL COPYRIGHT 1995 DAILY NEBRASKAN