/
' igest
_ primary begins I
EAST LANSING, Mich. (AP) -
Fresh from a South Carolina triumph,
George W.^Bush said Sunday he was
campaigning to “bring our country
together.” John McCain called his
Republican rival a big-spender, then
taunted, “if he’s a reformer, I’m an
astronaut.”
Both men moved through the first
day of a tightly compressed campaign
in Michigan as the pace of the
Republican presidential nomination
battle quickened. It fell to McCain, the
underdog in uncontested need of a win,
to outline the stakes.
“We won round one,” he said, refer
ring to his landslide in New
Hampshire’s presidential primary on
Feb. 1. “Governor Bush won round
two,” a lopsided win in South Carolina.
“Now we go to round three.”
Bush strategists were hoping South
Carolina would give their man the
momentum. McCain countered with an
endorsement from Rep. Peter King, R
N.Y., who had supported Bush but said
he was put off by the candidate’s appeal
in South Carolina.
One poll, taken before South
Carolina voted, rated Michigan a toss
up. It had Bush ahead in the GOP
strongholds and McCain running
stronger in the areas where independent
voters and blue collar, Reagan-style
Democrats reside.
With the primary set for Tuesday,
there was no time for either campaign to
make new television commercials or
even purchase additional time on the
state’s stations.
Bush, the Texas governor, flew in
Saturday night and headed straight for
the Republican strongholds around
Grand Rapids.
Later, in Detroit, he jabbed at
McCain, saying voters would pick a
leader like himself who is talking about
reforms in education and strengthening
the military over “somebody who’s try
ing to cast aspersions on his opponent. I
suspect they’re going to pick like they
did in South Carolina.”
Bush and several aides also took
issue with McCain’s concession speech
Saturday night, in which he said the
campaign was a choice “between expe
rience and pretense.”
“1 think the American voters, the
” Now they ve had a chance to see each
of us react to victory and each of us react
to defeat.”
people in Michigan, are going to have
to judge how each of us reacts,” Bush
said. “Now they’ve had a chance to see
each of us react to victory and each of
us react to defeat.”
Exit polls in South Carolina showed
that Bush’s claim to be a “reformer with
results” had connected and also that
voters believed McCain, more than his
rival, had engaged in unfair attacks.
That left McCain with a tricky task
of trying to underscore his conservative
credentials at the same time he was
angling to undercut Bush’s claim of
being a reformer - all the while uphold
ing his pledge to run a positive cam
paign. McCain questioned Bush’s
integrity, comparing him to President
Clinton, in an ad that aired in South
George W. Bush
presidential candidate
Carolina but was not shown to
Michigan voters.
Appearing on NBC’s “Meet the
Press,” McCain said Bush’s record on
spending compared unfavorably with
Clinton’s.
“Spending in Texas has almost dou
bled, while spending under Clinton has
been increased by 20 percent,” he said.
At a rally in Livonia, he added that
Bush had been a supporter of last year’s
omnibus spending bill in Congress, a
measure he said contained the “most
outrageous pork barreling spending.”
“I voted against it,” said McCain,
who represents Arizona in the Senate.
“Governor Bush said he’d support it and
sign it.”
Iran voter favor
reform parliament
Audit: Airline plant
problems frequent
JL
TEHRAN, Iran (AP) - A former
intelligence minister whose agents
were accused of killing political ene
mies was among leading hard-liners
going down to defeat Sunday as it
became increasingly clear that
Iranians want a reform-minded parlia
ment.
If the returns from Friday’s elec
tion continue to favor the reformists,
as is likely, it will be the first time the
parliament is free ofhard-line domina
tion since the 1979 Islamic revolution
brought the clergy to power.
Results had been announced
Sunday for 190 of the 290 seats in the
Majlis, or parliament. Winners are list
ed only by name, not affiliation, but a
background check of the candidates
by The Associated Press showed the
winners included 137 reformists - or
72 percent.
Conservatives had taken 44 seats,
or 23 percent, and independents had
nine seats, or 5 percent. The Interior
Ministry, in charge of the elections,
will announce the final results when
they become known later this week.
Meanwhile, four provincial cities
were reported calm after election-relat
ed violence Saturday that left eight
dead, Kayhan newspaper reported.
The paper said three teen-agers
were killed and 10 injured when police
fired into a crowd that was trying to
get into the governor’s office in the
town of Dasht-e-Azadegan. The
young men were angry that their can
didate did not win, the paper said. It
did not give the candidate’s affiliation.
Five people were reportedly killed
in the town of Shush in clashes with
police. They were protesting the re
election of a candidate they accused of
vote-buying, the paper said.
A reformist wave has been sweep
ing Iran since the May 1997 election
of President Mohammad Khatami.
The 56-year-old president, a moderate
Shiite cleric, has captured the hearts of
the young with his efforts to widen
individual freedoms, free the press and
reduce the cleigy’s interference in the
government, the judiciary and peo
ple’s lives.
But Khatami’s initiatives had been
stymied by hard-liners who controlled
the outgoing Majlis.
With the new parliament conven
ing in June, what remains to be seen is
whether the hard-liners will continue
to use their key powers to block the
reformists.
Many in the conservative camp
appeared ready to accept the people’s
verdict.
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LOS ANGELES (AP) - An audit
found sloppy work, improperly
inspected parts and out-of-date blue
prints at the McDonnell Douglas
facility where the Alaska Airlines jet
that crashed last month was built, the
Los Angeles Times reported Sunday.
Ih its 1991 audit, the Federal
Aviation Administration said manu
facturing procedures at the Long
Beach plant were marred by clironic
breakdowns, but the deficiencies did
not threaten flight safety.
The FAA was trying to locate the
audit Sunday. Once found, it could
be turned over to the National
Transportation Safety Board, the
agency leading the investigation,
said FAA spokeswoman Rebecca
Trexler.
“We can’t comment until we find
it,” she said.
The MD-83 that crashed into the
Pacific Ocean on Jan. 31 was deliv
ered to Alaska Airlines in May 1992.
The crew of Alaska Airlines
Flight 261 reported problems with
the aircraft’s horizontal stabilizer,
and the pilots were trying to correct
them when the plane crashed, killing
all 88 people aboard.
No official cause of the crash has
been released.
The Douglas Aircraft Co., where
the plane was built, had been strug
gling financially at the time of the
audit in the early 1990s. The
McDonnell Douglas subsidiary
posted a $222 million operating loss
for 1989, according to The Times,
and was straining to fill orders for its
jetliners.
However, a spokesman for
Boeing, which merged with
** ... We did not
deliver airplanes
that did not meet
quality
standards
John Thom
Boeing spokesperson
McDonnell Douglas in 1997, said
Sunday that the plane was mechani
cally sound when it was delivered to
Alaska Airlines and that it would be
improper to draw any connection
between plant problems and the
crash.
“Trying to tie the delivery of that
airplane to that audit is irresponsi
ble,” John Thom said. “Regardless of
whatever regulatory surveillance the
company was under, we did not
deliver airplanes that did not meet
quality standards.”
According to the Times, compa
ny supervisors urged employees to
improve their work in January 1991,
shortly before a team of federal audi
tors arrived. A memo to workers
warned that “consequences for fail
ure are heavy fines, and in the
extreme, loss of our production cer
tificate.”
Still, the FAA audit found prob
lems throughout the production line
at the plant.
Thom said he had not seen the
1991 audit but said McDonnell
Douglas would have addressed
whatever deficiencies it uncovered.
The plant passed two FAA inspec
tions last year, he said.
The MD-80 program in Long
Beach delivered 1,167 airplanes to
domestic and foreign carriers.
Production was discontinued two
months ago.
The MD-80 has a strong safety
track record, according to FAA data.
Mechanical problems with its hori
zontal stabilizer, however, have
prompted the FAA to order mandato
ry inspections five times since 1988.
After the January crash, the FAA
ordered the inspection of the hori
zontal stabilizer on more than 1,100
MD-80, MD-90, DC-9 and Boeing
717 planes, which use similar con
trol mechanisms as the jet that
crashed.
r*^^ tit
■ Yugoslavia
Peacekeepers search houses
for illegal weapons
KOSOVSKA MITROVICA,
Yugoslavia (AP) — A crowd of angry
Serbs pelted American and German
peacekeepers with rocks and bricks
Sunday during a massive house-to
house search for illegal weapons in the
tense, ethnically divided Kosovo
town.
The weapons search was a bid to
halt a spiral of violence that has been
building since Feb. 2, when two Serbs
died in a rocket attack on a U.N. bus.
Nine people have been killed and
dozens arrested since then in
Kosovska Mitrovica, which is divided
into predominantly Serb and predom
inantly ethnic Albanian sides of town.
French Lt. Col. Patrick Chanliau,
a spokesman for the NATO-led peace
keeping force, said soldiers from a
dozen countries found no weapons in
the southern section, where mostly
ethnic Albanians live.
■ New York
‘Cats’ to bring down curtain
on its Broadway show
NEW YORK (AP) - The cast and
fans of “Cats” on Sunday coped with
the news that the longest-running
show in Broadway history will be
closing, sharing tears, hugs and even a
few smiles.
“When I first heard the news, 1
was devastated,” said Hector
Montalvo, a Manhattan computer
software salesman who said he has
seen the show 670 times.
The musical, which has a score by
Andrew Lloyd Webber, will bring
down the curtain June 25, nearly two
decades after it opened at Broadway’s
Winter Garden Theatre after a record
breaking 7,397 performances.
“Cats,” advertised as “Now and
Forever,” has long been a major tourist
attraction.
■ Pennsylvania
Web site lets parents track
children’s progress in school
HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) - With
a few mouse clicks and a password,
Cynthia Banner is keeping track of her
son’s progress in high school
She has joined a growing number
of parents across the nation who are
able to bypass their children and go to
Web sites that post daily grades, atten
dance records, summaries of lesson
plans, disciplinary reports - anything
a teacher might keep in a grade book.
John Poluektov, a spokesman for
ThinkWave.com, a software producer
based in Sausalito, Calif., said it is
now possible for parents to know
more than their children about what is
going on in the classroom.
Think Wave, one of the largest pro
ducers of Internet grade software, cur
rently has 215,000 teacher, student
and parent accounts.
■Washington
White House declares
Y2K mission accomplished
WASHINGTON (AP) - The
White House declared “mission
accomplished” Friday in squashing
the Y2K computer bug and said it has .
no regrets about spending billions of
dollars to battle a millennium problem
that failed to materialize.
_ Scaling down the Y2K campaign,
President Clinton met with John
Koskinen, his senior adviser on the
problem, and members of his team for
a group photo.
Koskinen said-his group has one
last chore - monitoring what happens
on Feb. 29, the extra day added by
Leap Year. His office will go out of
business by March 31. He said he did
not expect any significant problems
Feb. 29, “but we think it’s important to
just make sure.”