B
"" " ' ' .' ’ ‘ " 11 ' 1 "
■ Disability checks to WWII
veterans were stopped to those
individuals suspected of
committing Nazi atrocities.
BONN, Germany (AP) — Shamed by the
protests of Jewish organizations, Germany put
a stop Thursday to nearly 50 years of govern
ment disability checks for those suspected of
being Nazi war criminals.
By unofficial counts, 50,000 German veter
ans suspected of atrocities during World Wat II
are quietly drawing such benefits, including for
mer members of the notorious Waffen SS.
Meanwhile, many Holocaust victims are still
struggling for restitution from the German govern
ment
Parliament sought to redress the balance
Thursday, amending the 1950 Federal Benefits
Law to strip veterans of disability rights if they
“violated the principles of humanity or the law”
during the Third Reich.
The vote came in a show of hands, with
Chancellor Helmut Kohl’s ruling coalition and
most opposition lawmakers in favor of the
amendment.
“Atrocities must weigh heavier than war
injuries,” said Birgit Schnieber-Jastram, a law
maker from Kohl’s Christian Democratic Union.
About 1 million German war veterans or
their families are receiving disability payments
of as much as $470 a month under the law.
The government had no estimate of how
many veterans would be affected but said about
20 are known war criminals whose payments
will be swiftly cut off
They include former SS officer Heinz
Barth, convicted for his role in the 1944 mas
sacre of more than 600 villagers at Oradour,
France. Barth, who was serving a life sentence,
was released from jail in the eastern state of
Brandenburg in July because of ill health.
Also affected is Wolfgang Lehnigk-Emden,
who was convicted in absentia by an Italian
court of ordering the 1943 massacre of 22
Italians. He has been living as a free man near
the Rhine River city of Koblenz because a
German court ruled that the killing fell under
the statute of limitations.
To track other cases, ministry officials will
compare records of war disability benefits with
files of Nazi war crimes suspects kept by German
prosecutors, spokesman Josef Hecken said.
“We owe this to the victims,” he said.
Any documentation linking a veteran to war
crimes will be enough to allow authorities in
Germany’s 16 states to deny the benefits, he
said. A conviction is not required.
Files of Germans who volunteered for the
Nazi SS will be scrutinized especially carefully.
The 1950benefits law did not exclude any units,
even those assigned the most grisly tasks, to avoid
branding all Goman soldiers as war criminals.
Kohl’s government proposed the amend
ment under pressure from Jewish groups and
opposition politicians after the disability pen
sions came to light early this year through
reports in the German media.
In March, the Los Angeles-based Simon
Wiesenthal Center threatened to launch an
international campaign against Germany if it
didn’t stop the payments.
Three lawmakers from the leftist opposition
Social Democrats dissented in Thursday’s vote.
They voiced concern that the new law turned
benefits legislation into an instrument for
catching criminals.
New AIDS treatment won’t cure disease
WASHINGTON (AP) - A drug “cocktail”
that revolutionized the treatment of AIDS is
unable to wipe out reservoirs of the virus hiding
in certain blood cells, researchers found in a
discovery that dims hopes for a cure.
The finding means that patients may have to
take the AIDS drugs for the rest of their lives -
while hoping for new.tj*
1 stamp out the final
virus that causes the dii
Three separate teams of scientists reported
finding evidence that the HTV virus lurks in inac
tive white blood cells in patients who have been
taking the drug cocktail for up to three years and
seem otherwise virtually free of the virus.
Combinations of drugs that block two
enzymes that the HIV virus uses to reproduce
have been enormously effective in stopping the
infection. In thousands of patients, the HIV
virus in the bloodstream has been reduced to
near undetectable levels, and CD4 blood cells,
the principal target of HIV have rallied to nor
mal levels.
The success of the drugs raised hopes by
some experts that HIV could be eradicated
completely from the bodies of patients.
“Although we held out hope that the
eradication hypothesis might pan out, I
don’t think that people really thought it
would,” said Dr. Joel Gallant of Johns
gpp^^Uniyersity, pjCMI^^^^g-authors
Siliciano of Johns Hopkins said that studies did
find good news. He said none of the latent
viruses studied had developed a resistance to
the drug cocktail that has so successfully con
trolled the infection.
This means, he said, thatas long as HIV
patients continue to carefully and diligently
take the three-drug cocktail, “they have an
excellent chance of surviving the infection for a
long time without developing symptoms of the
disease.” *
All three studies found the latent virus in
what are called resting CD4 lymphocytes.
These are immune system white blood cells that
are primed to defend against antigens from bac
teria or from other foreign molecules. Until
they encounter antigens that are their specific
target, the blood cells are inactive, or resting.
The researchers found that HIV virus
had injected its DNA, or genetic instruc
tions, into thefE^JA of a spnall fraction of,
these resting tflopd'cetfsV' ''-7 ' ..'77'
It is believcfd that when the resting blood
cells were awakened, as by a new infection, then
the DNA of the cells would start making new
HIV virus, perhaps sending the virus on a new
infective rampage. The researchers conducted
laboratory experiments that showed that the
latent HIV virus would start reproducing once
the resting blood cells were awakened.
“Originally, there was hope that these rest
ing cells would decay and after a certain amount
of time they would all be gone,” said Joseph
Margolick, another Hopkins co-author. “That
has not happened.”
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ALL MAtEMAL COPYRIGHT 1997
THE DAILY NEBRASKAN
Nader challenges Gates’ empire
vvnomnuiui'i - consumer aavo
cates, high-tech consultants and rivals of
Microsoft Corp. railed against the giant computer
software-maker Thursday as an out-of-control
monopoly that should be reined in by the govern
ment.
“Imagine going into a shoe store and being
told there is only one shoe you can try on,” said
Gary Reback, a California lawyer who has argued
in cases against Microsoft
“One size fits all. That’s what we have in the
desktop computer industry today,” he said in a
speech at the Ralph Nader-sponsored conference,
“Appraising Microsoft and Its Global Strategy.”
Microsoft officials and their allies gathering at
the same Washington hotel said the Nader confer
ence was a media event staged by competitors
who have been unable to knock Bill Gates’ empire
from its place atop the industry.
Robert Herbold, Microsoft’s executive vice
president, said in a letter to Nader Thursday: “It is
regrettable that you appear to have aligned your
self with a small band of Microsoft’s detractors
whose apparent goal is to enlist die government’s
assistance in their efforts to compete with
Microsoft”
Herbold said Reback’s boss, Larry Sonsini, is
a director of Microsoft competitorNovell Inc., and
owns 54,100 shares of Novell stock.
Executives for other Microsoft competitors
also were on Nader’s panels, including representa
tives from Netscape and Sun Microsystems.
Nader criticized Microsoft chief executive Bill
Gates and his top executives for refusing repeated
invitations to speak to the conference.
“It’s like they think they are immune to public
scrutiny,” Nader told reporters at a news confer
ft
It’s like they think they
are immune to public
scrutiny. What are they
afraid of? What is Bill
Gates afraid of? ”
Ralph Nader
conference sponsor
ence later Thursday. “What are they afraid of?
What is Bill Gates afraid of?”
Microsoft’s Herbold responded, “For us to par
ticipate in this kind of environment would be like
walking into an ambush with sharpshooters on
every hilltop.”
At issue is Microsoft’s alleged attempts to use
its popular computer operating system, Windows,
to comer the market on Internet access by includ
ing free versions of its Internet Explorer.software.
The Justice Department filed suit last month,
accusing Microsoft of violating a 1995 consent
decree barfing the company from anti-competi
tive practices. It seeks fnes of $ 1 million a day and
accuses Microsoft of threatening personal com
puter-makers with terminating their license for
Windows if they alter Internet Explorer software.
“If monopolized markets abound in high tech,
shouldn’t the government step in?” asked W. Brian
Arthur, an economics professor at the Santa Fe
Institute also on die Nader slate.
r
j
i
Palastinians will declare statehood
GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip (AP) - The
Palestinians will declare statehood in 1999,
with or without Israeli approval, Yasser Arafat
said Thursday.
Israeli . Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu has warned that he would break off
peace talks with the Palestinians, if they
declared statehood before the. two sides have
reached a final peace agreement.
“We will declare the establishment of a
state whether Netanyahu wants us to or not...
even if part of the state remains under occupa
tion and contains settlements,” Arafat said in
an interview published Thursday in Israel’s
Yediot Ahronot.
Arafat spoke in the run-up to Saturday’s
annual independence day celebrations, which
mark Arafat’s Nov. 15, 1988, declaration of
Palestinian independence.
Pope meets with gunman’s brother
VATICAN CITY (AP) — The brother of
the Turkish gunman who shot Pope John Paul
II has met privately with the pope in an appar
ent attempt by the family to frde the assailant
from an Italian prison.
Vatican spokesman Joaquin Navarro-Vails
said Thursday that John Paul met briefly
Wednesday with Adnan Agca, whose brother,
Mehmet Ali Agca, is serving a life sentence for
the 1981 shooting. No details were released.
The gunman’s family has been trying to
win him a pardon or transfer to a prison in
Turkey. It would be itp to Italy, not the Vatican,
to grant it, although the family has hoped for
the pope’s recpminefldaftiqh.^
The Vatican has expressed skepticism on
declarations of repentance and reform by
Agca, who shot John Paul on May 13,1981 in
St. Peter’s Square. The pope met Agca in prison
in 1985.
HTV cases rise dramatically in China
BEIJING (AP) —• The number of official
cases of HIV infection in China has climbed to
7,253, although experts say the real figure
could be as high as 200,000, an official news
yopva ivpuiivu i muduajr.
The virus, first detected in China in 1985,
is-spreading mainly through heterosexual sex
and drug use, the China Daily said.
Last December, China said 5,157 people
were infected with the HIV virus that causes
AIDS. By June this year, the number was
7,253, the China Daily said.
“Medical experts estimate that some
150,000 to 200,000 Chinese are already affect
ed,” the newspaper said.
Sexually transmitted diseases are also
spreading, with 398,000 cases reported last
year, an increase of 12 percent compared to the
year before.,--,
A team.of experts plans to tour China to
deliver lectures about preventing the spread of
AIDS.
Four American oil workers killed
KARACHI, Pakistan (AP) — Americans
living in Karachi stuck close to home
Thursday, heeding new warnings from the U.S.
State Department to watch for trouble after
four American oil company workers were
gunned down on their way to work.
A previously unknown group, the Aimal
Secret Committee, claimed responsibility for
Wednesday’s killings and threatened more
attacks if a Pakistani in custody in the United
States gets the death penalty for the 1993 mur- i
ders of two CIA workers.
In Fairfax, Va., additional security was
ordered for the jury deliberating whether to
recommend death for Mir Aimal Kasi, who
eluded police for four years before being cap
tured in June in a joint operation involving the |
FBI and Pakistani security forces.
• Many Pakistanis were angered that Kasi
was whisked out of the country without an I
extradition hearing. Tribesmen from his desert
hometown of Quetta had sworn to avenge the
capture. -