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Tuesday, November 16,19991___• • 'r _ Page 2
Turkey death toll rises to 450
■ As cold temperatures
linger, likelihood of find
ing survivors goes down,
rescuers say.
DUZCE, Turkey (AP) - Families
made homeless by a shattering earth
quake gathered scrap wood for camp
fires Monday as temperatures plunged
into the teens, while rescuers warned
that the cold decreased the chances of
finding anyone alive in the wreckage.
The death toll from Friday’s quake
rose to 450; survivors struggled to find
food and shelter and rebuild their lives.
Jean-Phillipe Jutzi of Swiss Rescue
said that after the freezing temperatures
of the past three nights, many people
trapped in the rubble must have died of
hypothermia.
“It would be a miracle” if anyone
survived, he said.
International rescuers were sched
uled to meet Monday to decide whether
to put an end to rescue operations.
Teams from about 20 countries are
searching the area, including a group
from Fairfax, Va.
President Clinton, who met with
Turkish President Suleyman Demirel
on Monday, said Washington has sent
tents for 10,000 people.
“The United States is proud to stand
with Turkey in good times or bad,” he
said.
Clinton, who is on a state visit, plans
a trip today to a tent city set up by U.S.
Marines in August after another devas
tating earthquake destroyed thousands
ofhomes. ^
Fear ofa third deadly quake has kept
survivors from moving back to their
homes, turning Duzce, a farming town
of80,000, into a huge tent city.
For three nights, Abdullah Ayyildiz
has been sleeping in his car with his
wife and newborn baby.
“I am trying to find a tent,” he said.
“I hope the crisis center will give us one
today.”
With temperatures plunging as low
as 18 degrees, it is becoming a necessi
ty
Like Ayyildiz, many people have
been sleeping in their cats. Others lie on
blankets distributed by authorities near
campfires. Scores of trucks distributed
bread, and soup kitchens served hot
meals to thousands of people three
times a day.
Dr. Bedri Bilge, who set up a first
aid tent in the garden of Duzce ^ meteo
rological institute, warned of the risk of
diseases - especially upper respiratory
infections - spreading among survivors
if they did not find warm shelter soon.
“Authorities also need to secure toi
lets and clean water for personal
hygiene, or we will start seeing gastroin
testinal diseases,” Bilge said.
In the garden, where more than 50
families gathered, 4-year-old Ismail
Kara dragged a small branch lying in the
garden and threw it on his family's
campfire. His sisters held out their
hands to warm their freezing Fingers.
Newsmakers
PEOPLE WAIT for rescue help in front of a collapsed apartment block in
the town of Duzce in Northwestern TUrkey. The people shown, who did not
want to be named, said a relative’s family lived in the apartment block,
which collapsed in the 7.2-magnitude quake Friday. Cold weather is ham
pering rescue operations, which are still not fully under way.
Many families set traditional
Turkish teapots on smaller fires, and
offered hot drinks to cold passers-by.
Hundreds of tents had been set up in
the area after the Aug. 17 quake that
killed 17,000 people, hundreds of them
in Duzce. Many people had moved back
home last week, leaving the tent cities
half empty.
Monday, they were overcrowded.
Meanwhile, residents continued
streaming out of the city. Hundreds have
already left The streets were filled with
furniture taken out from seriously dam
aged buildings.
“I’m terrified of going back in. But
I can’t just leave it there,” said HaVa
Yuksel, taking out everything she could
reach from her half-crushed ground
floor apartment
For those who remained, some
shops did reopen. A dozen regular cus
tomers ventured into Metin Bas’ tea
house in aback street of Duzce.
But most of Duzce, from banks to
pharmacies, remained shut down.
School-prayer ca
A %/ 55®. St: .„ __
WASHINGTON (AP) - The
Supreme Court re-entered the emotion
al debate over school prayer Monday,
agreeing to decide whether public
schools can let students lead group invo
cations at high school football games.
A Galveston County, Texas, school
board is asking die justices to overturn a
lower court ruling that said student-led
prayers over die public-address system
at football games violate the constitu
tionally required separation of church
and state.
“The school district is not causing
prayer or endorsing prayer if it leaves to
the student die choice of what to say,”
school district lawyer Lisa A. Brown
said after the nation’s highest court
granted review. “There’s a long tradition
in many states of having this pre-game
ceremony of having a moment of reflec
tion before the game begins.”
But the Rev. Barry Lynn of
Americans United for Separation of
Church and State contended such
prayers at officially sponsored school
events violate the Constitution.
“The school’s giving you die micro
phone; it will sound like an officially
sanctioned religious statement and
that’s what has no place at a high-school
football game,” Lynn said.
The Supreme Court’s decision,
expected by late June, could help clarify
the jumbled state of the law surrounding
school prayer.
The justices’ last major school
prayer ruling, in 1992, barred clergy-led
prayers at public school graduation cer
emonies. “The Constitution forbids die
state to exact religious conformity from
a student as the price of attending her
own high school graduation,” the court
said then.
The ruling was viewed by many as a
strong reaffirmation of the highest
court’s 1962 decision banning orga
nized, officially sponsored prayers from
public schools.
But in 1993, the justices let stand a
U---;
The school's giving you the microphone; it
will sound like an officially sanctioned
religious statement."
Rev. Barry Lynn
federal appeals court ruling in a Texas
case that allowed student-led prayers at
graduations. That ruling, which also
applies to Louisiana and Mississippi,
conflicts with another federal appeals
court decision barring student-led grad
uation prayers in nine Western states.
Four students and their parents sued
the Santa Fe Independent School
District in 1995, seeking to end student
led prayers over the public-address sys
tem at home football games in the
Houston suburb. The district’s policy
allows students to give an “invocation”
or “message.”
The students also challenged the
district’s policy of allowing student-led
prayers at graduations, but the Supreme
Court said its review will be limited to
the issue of prayers at football games.
A federal judge allowed student-led
prayers at football games if students
were told to keep them “nonsectarian
and non-proselytizing.” The case does
not involve prayers in locker rooms.
A three-judge panel of the 5th U.S.
Circuit Court of Appeals reversed and
said student-led prayers at high school
football games are always out of
bounds.
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•
Negotiators for U.S., China
agree to clear trade barriers
BEIJING (AP) - After 13 years of
fitful talks and six days of grueling bar
gaining, Chinese and U.S. negotiators
signed a breakthrough agreement
Monday that would remove trade barri
ers and clears the biggest hurdle to
China’s entry into the World Trade
Organization.
The agreement obligates China to
cut tariffs an average of 23 percent and
promises greater access to the relatively
closed Chinese market for U.S. banks,
insurers, telecommunications firms and
Hollywood film exporters, according to
a statement released by the U.S.
Embassy.
None of the terms will take effect
until China gains entry to the WTO, and
most would be [toed in over five years
or longer.
U.S. Trade Representative Charlene
Barshefsky and China’s foreign trade
minister, Shi Guangsheng, signed die
agreement They then shook hands and
were joined in a champagne toast by
President Clinton’s special economics
adviser, Gene Sperling, and Long
Yongtu, China’s lead WTO negotiator.
Barshefsky then went to the
Communist Party leadership com
pound and met Chinese President Jiang
Zemin.
“Where there’s a wiU, there’s a way,”
Jiang told Barshefsky after the signing.
In Ankara, Turkey, Clinton said the
agreement was “a profoundly important
step” in relations between Washington
and Beijing and a boon for the global
economy. China’s admission to the
WTO has been a major foreign policy
and economic goal of the Clinton
administration.
■ Washington
Information obtained
from flight recorders
WASHINGTON (AP) - The
chairman of the National
Transportation Safety Board said
Monday he is confident there will
be a resolution of the crash of
EgyptAir Flight 990 - although he
raised the possibility of shifting
oversight of the inquiry to another
agency.
Jim Hall told a news confer
ence that his confidence was bol
stered by information being
extracted from the plane’s flight
data and cockpit voice recorders.
Nonetheless, Hall said the
progress of the investigation was
being slowed by a painstaking
process of translating the cockpit
voice information from Arabic,
^the native language of the pilots, to
English.
■ Washington
FBI asked to turn over
weapons from Waco siege
WASHINGTON (AP) - The
special counsel re-investigating
the 1993 Branch Davidian siege
has asked the FBI to turn over the
firearms carried by its on-scene
personnel to determine whether
federal agents fired shots during
the deadly standoff’s waning
hours.
The FBI has long denied that
its agents fired any shots during
the seven-week standoff, which
ended when the Davidians’ com
pound was destroyed in a fiery
inferno.
Cult leader David Koresh and
some 80 followers died during the
blaze, some from the fire, others
from gunshot wounds.
Special counsel John
Danforth, appointed in September
by Attorney General Janet Reno to
investigate the revived controver
sy, has said the issue of govern
ment gunfire will be among the
“dark questions” he will seek to
answer.
■ Washington
Creativity lacking in
teacher hiring, study says
WASHINGTON (AP) - States
may want to boost teacher quality,
but they’re going about it the
wrong way with regulation-heavy
policies that don’t encourage cre
ative hiring, asserts a report issued
Monday.
The Thomas Fordham
Foundation, a private research
organization, compiled data on
policies it associates with teacher
quality and concluded that most
states stand in the way of getting
quality teachers into the nation’s
classrooms.
“A far more promising
approach is to deregulate entry
into teaching, devolve personnel
authority to individual schools and
then hold those schools and their
staffs to account for student learn
ing that occurs in them,” said foun
dation President Chester E. Finn
Jr., an Education Department offi
cial during the Reagan administra
tion.
The report evaluated states in
areas including how they punish or
reward teachers and administra
tors for student achievement, con
duct checks on teachers’ back
grounds and college course work,
and how much they give individ
ual schools power to hire and fire
teachers.