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> News Digest President signs Chinese trade bill ■ Deal could help U.S. businesses but result in job losses for Chinese. THE ASSOCIATED PRESS WASHINGTON - President Clinton’s signing of a bill that per manently normalizes trade rela tions with China is expected to translate into billions of dollars in new sales for U.S. farmers, manu facturers and service companies. Increased competition inside China, however, is expected to ; result in massive layoffs, especial ly in China’s state-run companies. The House approved the legis lation normalizing trade relations in May; the Senate passed it on Sept 19. The measure revises a law from the mid-1970s that subject ed trade relations with commu nist states to annual reviews. The president invited key law makers to the South Lawn of the White House on Tuesday to wit ness his signing of the bill, a hard fought victory for the administra tion. The legislation is an out growth of a U.S.-Chinese agree ment last fall under which China, as a condition for entering the World Hade Organization, agreed to open its markets and reduce tariffs. Clinton has argued that the more China opens its markets to U.S. products, the more fully it will unleash the potential of China’s citizens. It is China’s 1 billion residents that U.S. business is eyeing. Labor, conservative groups and human rights campaigners had argued that the annual review allowed the U.S. a chance each year to pres sure China on human rights, trade practices and weapons exports. After it enters the WTO, China’s tariffs on U.S.-made goods would drop from an overall aver age of 25 percent to nine percent by2005. Negotiations at the WTO’s Geneva headquarters, however, recently stalled after three weeks of discussions in which the Chinese negotiators appeared to be backpedaling on agreements made with the U.S. or other nations. “We remain engaged with the Chinese about implementing PNTR. There are some very important issues we have to address,” White House press sec retary Jake Siewert said Tuesday. U.S. Trade Representative “We remain engaged with the Chinese about implementing PNTR. There are some very important issues we have to address Jake Siewert White House press secretary Charlene Barshefsky has been in touch with negotiators and will continue to talk about the impor tance of implementing the agree ment in a way that actually makes it work, Siewert said. The Chinese government must live up to the spirit of the agreement, as well as to the letter of the agreement, he said. Barshefsky is set to leave as early as this week for Beijing to help clear the way for China’s initi ation into the WTO. Barshefsky spokeswoman Amy Stilwell emphasized Monday that Barshefsky’s trip was not aimed at reopening any parts of the deal the U.S. made with China last November. The Chinese know that the only way they will enter the WTO is by sticking to the terms of their agreements, she said. “She (Barshefsky) is not carry ing any new proposals with her,” Stilwell said. A Palestinian man is carried away by medics Tuesday after he was shot by an Israeli soldier as protests flared again near the West Bank town ofRamaUah. Ami Vitate/Newsmakere U.N.to Mideast: Revive talks ■ After a week of subdued violence, fighting between Palestinians and • Israelis escalates once again. THE ASSOCIATED PRESS JERUSALEM - Amid scattered but ugly new outbreaks of violence in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, the U.N. sec retary-general appealed Tuesday to Israel and the Palestinians to get back to the bargaining table and end the cycle of killing. Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak said it was too soon to tell if the relative calm of recent days would hold after a series of ferocious clashes that have left 88 people dead since Sept. 28, most of diem Palestinians. Hours after he spoke, a 12-year-old Palestinian shot in the head during a stone-throwing clash with Israeli sol diers was declared brain dead. The army said its troops opened fire after a fire bomb was thrown into its outpost, burn ing a soldier. It expressed sorrow but crit icized Palestinians for putting children in harm’s way in the clashes. Tbesday was a day of intense diplo matic activity, with President Clinton I calling Barak and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat trying to gather support for a summit. In die region to meet with both sides were Secretary-General Kofi Annan, Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov and European Union security chief Javier Solana. Annan, seeking to resolve the crisis that has brought the Israeli-Palestinian peace process to the brink of extinction, has taken on another difficult task as well: trying to broker the release of three Israeli soldiers captured on the Lebanon border by the Shiite Muslim guerrillas of Hezbollah. The secretary-general, who goes to Lebanon on Wednesday, said the sol diers were believed to be alive and well, and called their capture a violation of international law. Israel has massed troops, including elite commando units, along the border and has warned of drastic consequences if the soldiers are not freed. In the West Bank and Gaza Strip, fighting between Israeli troops and Palestinian stone throwers and gunmen has fallen off in recent days. Tuesday again saw isolated clashes, near the West Bank town of Ramallah and the Gaza Strip town of Rafah, on the Egyptian border. On the edge of Ramallah, black smoke from burning tires billowed into the air as about 200 Palestinians massed on the road near an Israeli outpost. In a confrontation that lasted hours, protest ers hurled stones at Israeli troops, who responded with tear gas and rubber coated steel bullets. The army also said two Palestinians were seriously wounded when soldiers returned fire outside the village of Tapuah, near the West Bank town of Nablus. Barak has given Arafat an ultimatum - extended Monday night by what he and aides said would be a few days - to halt the violence or face heavy reprisal. After his meeting with Annan in Jerusalem, the Israeli leader said it wasn't yet clear whether Palestinian rioters had been reined in. Earlier in the day, speaking at a memorial for those killed in the 1973 Yom Kippur War, Barak urged persever ance in pursuit of peace. Arman, who had met earlier in the day with Arafat, said he was heartened by signs of calm ing. “Let’s get to work - stop the violence, move back to the negotiating table,” he said. “The region has suffered too much.” -... Questions? Comments? nL Ask for the appropriate section editor at ■— (402) 472-2588 or e-mail: dn@unl.edu Editor Sarah Baker vy.,# Managing Editor Bradley Davis ^ Associate News Editor Kimberly Sweet Opinion Editor Samuel McKewon Sports Editor Matthew Hansen Arts Editor Dane Stickney Copy Desk Co-Chief: Lindsay Young Copy Desk Co-Chief: Danell McCoy Photo Chief: Heather Glenboski Art Director Melanie Falk Design Chief: Andrew Broer Web Editor Gregg Steams Assistant Web Editor Tanner Graham General Manager Dan Shattil Publications Board Russell Willbanks, Chairman: (402) 436-7226 Adviser Don Walton, (402) 473-7248 Manager Nick Partsch, r (402)472-2589 Assistant Ad Manager Nicole Woita ff I Classified Ad Manager Nikki Bruner mJ^fPreulation Manager Imtiyaz Khan Fax Number: (402) 472-1761 torld Wide Web: www.dailyneb.com The Daily Nebraskan (USPS 144-080) ~ lished by the UNL Publications Board, •k 20 Nebraska Union, 1400 R St., XLincoln. NE 68588-0448, Monday ^mrough Friday during the academic year; weekly during the summer sessions. fh£ public has access to the Publications Board. % Headers are encouraged to submit story ideas iments to the Daily Nebraskan by calling (402) 472-2588. ubscriptions are $60 for one year, 'ostmaster: Send address changes Daily Nebraskan, 20 Nebraska Union, 1400 R St.,Lincoln, NE 68588-0448. riodical postage paid at Lincoln, NE. ALL MATERIAL COPYRIGHT 2000 DAILY NEBRASKAN Hole in ozone layer balloons to record size THE ASSOCIATED PRESS WELLINGTON, New Zealand - The hole in the ozone layer over Antarctica stretched over a Chilean city when it reached to a record size last month, the first time it has reached a population center, scientists said Thursday. Previously, the hole had only opened over Antarctica and the surrounding ocean. Citing data from the U.S. space agency NASA, atmospher ic research scientist Stephen Wood said the hole covered 11.4 . million square miles - an area more than three times the size of the U.S.- on Sept. 9 and 10. For those two days, the hole extended over Punta Arenas, a southern Chile city of about 120,000 people, exposing resi dents to very high levels of ultra violet radiation. Too much UV radiation can cause skin cancer and destroy tiny plants at the beginning of the food chain. Wood is a researcher with New Zealand’s respected National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research. Dr. Dean Peterson, science strategy manager of the Antarctica New Zealand research group, said Wood’s findings showed a city being exposed to the ozone hole for the first time. “The longer it gets, the greater the chances of populat ed areas being hit by low ozone levels,” said Peterson, who was not involved in the study. Because of misinformation given to the Daily Nebraskan, certain ticket prices for David Spade’s performance at the Devaney Center were listed incorrectly iri Tuesday’s edition. Students can buy tickets at the $12.50 discounted rate through the Nov. 2 performance. Public tickets, which cost $16.75, will begin selling Saturday. Court ponders free speech, spending link ■The Supreme Court's ruling focuses on'hard money,'cash typically used in campaigns for mass mailings and candidate ads. THE ASSOCIATED PRESS WASHINGTON - The Supreme Court waded into the debate over money in politics Tuesday, agreeing to decide whether some federal spending limits on political parties are an unconstitutional crimp on free speech. ' A ruling in the case could erase spending limits on party “hard money,” the cash raised under federal law that can be used for direct help to candidates. Without limits, parties would be free to funnel huge amounts to chosen candidates early on, or lavish last-minute cash on die closest races. The court will look at the caps on a political party’s spending done in concert with a particular campaign. Such party money, called coordinated expenditures, usually goes for such things as mass mailings and ads promoting an individual candidate. . The court earlier struck down limits on party money spent independently of the candidate's cam paign. In both instances, the party money is not con sidered a campaign contribution since it remains separate from die candidate’s coffers. “Depending on how the court sides, the parties could be given yet another device for contributing even greater amounts of money to the political process,” said Steven Weiss, spokesman for the non partisan Center for Responsive Politics, which tracks campaign money. "This would remove any remaining obstacle that parties now face to spending as much hard money as they want, whenever they want and wherever they want,” Weiss said. Reducing the influence of money in politics was the hallmark of Sen. John McCain’s insurgent candi dacy in the Republican presidential primary, and campaign finance has remained an issue in the presi dential campaign. At the first presidential debate last week, Vice President A1 Gore, the Democratic nominee, tried to get his Republican counterpart, Texas Gov. George W. Bush, to sign on to a proposal to overhaul current campaign finance laws. Bush instead invoked a litany of Clinton-Gore campaign finance scandals dating to 1996. “This man has no credibility on the issue," Bush said. The major parties are raising ever-increasing sums of hard money. As of June 30, Republicans had $65 million of it in the bank, and Democrats had $40 million. The Supreme Court case arose out of a 1986 Senate race in Colorado. Ruling on another part of the same dispute, the Supreme Court said in 1996 that political parties could spend unlimited hard money as long as they weren't working in consultation with die candidate. At the time, the court bypassed the debate about whether spending could be limited if parties were consulting with the candidates. This time around, the Federal Election Commission and the Justice Department argued in court papers that candidates would know where huge influxes of "coordinated expenditures" came from, and once in office might feel beholden to individual party officials. “There is no reason to believe that such individu als are immune from the corrupting temptations and self-interest of other persons,” the government argued. Without limits on coordinated expenditures, par ties could become funnels for campaign cash from individuals and political action committees with their own axes to grind, the government added. TODAY * Partly cloudy . high 70, low 56 TOMORROW Mostly cloudy high 68, low 50 The Associated Press ■Washington Embassy to be reopened in Belgrade,Yugoslavia In a show of support for newly installed President Vojislav Kostunica, the Clinton administration will reopen the U.S. Embassy in Belgrade and also hopes to re-establish diplo matic relations with Yugoslavia quickly. The State Department also announced on Tuesday that James C. O'Brien, the senior U.S. official for Balkans devel opments, was flying to Belgrade to meet with Kostunica, a fur ther reversal of the icy distance that marked Slobodan Milosevic’s rule. O’Brien will bring the new government up to date on the process of lifting sanctions against Yugoslavia but also will try to ensure that the process doesn’t inadvertently enable former aides of Milosevic “to loot assets or somehow misuse state assets,” Department spokesman Richard Boucher said. ■Pennsylvania Prison guards arrested in sperm smuggling HARRISBURG - TWo former guards at a federal prison accepted thousands of dollars from inmates to smuggle con traband and sperm used to impregnate the inmates' girl friends, prosecutors say. One of the inmates involved in the alleged scheme was a New York mob associate, Antonino Parlevecchio, accord ing to a criminal complaint filed in federal court. The former guards, Troy Kemmerer and Todd Swineford, were arrested last week, charged with bribery and released. Kemmerer, 33, allegedly accepted $5,000 on Oct. 5 from an undercover agent posing as an inmate’s girlfriend. The agent asked that sperm be smuggled out of the Allenwood prison in a cryogenic sperm kit. ■ Washington, D.C. Congressmen call for ban on exporting heating oil Five congressmen from the Northeast called on President Clinton on Tuesday to issue an executive order banning the export of heating oil, saying the fuel “should not be sent to Europe” when U.S. supplies are low. While hard statistics are scarce, there has been growing evidence that refiners in September stepped up exports of heating oil to take advantage of higher prices in Europe. Refineries were operating at high production rates, but U.S. inventories have continued to lag, Energy Department offi cials said earlier this week. The U.S. normally imports more distillates - heating oil and diesel fuel - than it exports, but exports in the past have increased when higher prices are available abroad, as was the case last month. ■North Carolina Murder heard through chat-room microphone DUNN - A woman’s ex-hus band broke into her mobile home and shot her as friends on the other side of the state lis tened from an Internet voice chat room, authorities said. Deanna Diane Gregory, 28, died Monday at a university hospital in Chapel Hill follow ing the weekend shooting. Gregory told four friends through her computer’s micro phone that her ex-husband was breaking in, the Harnett County Sheriff's Office said. The friends heard three gunshots and notified authori ties, who found Gregory’s front door open and the woman wounded on the couch, Maj. Steve West with the sheriff’s office said. Adam Bruce Moore, 29, was initially charged with attempt ed murder, but the charge was expected to change to murder, West said. He was also charged with first-degree burglary.