Trinidad
Prime Minister
agrees to resign
Page 4
.. w
Rodeo days
A rider is nearly gored by a bull after being thrown in the bull riding competition ter with the animal. The rodeo, held during the weekend, was sponsored by the
at the Undine rodeo in Bellefonte. The rider walked away unhurt after his encoun- Undine Fire Department.
Student loan programs
Largest loaner in financial straits; default rates skyrocketing
By DAVE SKIDMORE
Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON, D.C. Fraud, lax government avoid a financial collapse,
regulation and talk of a taxpayer bailout. HEAF is the largest of 47 state government and pri-
It sounds like a litany from the savings and loan cri- va t e non-profit agencies guaranteeing student loans
sis. Instead, it is the story of federally guaranteed stu- ma de by 12,000 commercial banks, savings and loans,
dent loans. credit unions and other lenders.
The two problems cannot be compared in magni- Base( j j n Overland Park, Kan., it guarantees
tude or severity, but there are parallels. billion in loans, or about 17 percent of the national
Both speak to the inherent abuses that can occur £ . ..
anytime the federal government attempts to protect
private parties against risk. Both involve what critics Disclosure of HEAF s problems last Monday sent
charge is lax government oversight. ripples through the financial markets, contributing
Barges, Liberian tanker collide
Cleanup crews try to deflect spilled oil away from marshes
By SUSAN FAHLGREN
Associated Press Writer
GALVESTON, Texas A 50,000-gal
lon oil slick from two collision-ruptured
barges in Galveston Bay moved away
from shore yesterday as cleanup crews
tried to deflect the 5-mile-long patch
from sensitive marshlands, the Coast
Guard said.
Both bargeswere damaged Saturday
in a collision with the Liberian oil tanker
Shinoussa in the Houston Ship Channel.
One barge nearly sank, and the other
was listing.
The barges were among three being
towed by the tugboat Chandy N. The tug
was undamaged, and no injuries were
reported.
Crews worked yesterday to contain
the spilling oil as the ship channel
remained closed, backing up several
vessels for the second time in a week.
Oil leaking from the nearly sunken
barge bubbled to the water’s surface,
while oil spilling from the other vessel
was mostly trapped by absorbent pads.
In addition to the main slick, a small-
Mandela accuses government of stalling talks.
“To suggest. . . that these outstanding sons and “They have never sought to transform the ANC into
daughters of our people harbor ideas of unilateral mil- a tool and puppet of the Communist Party,” Mandela
itary action against the peace process is an insult man- said.
SOWETO South Africa Nelson Mandela accused ufactured by the enemies of democracy,” Mandela Police claim Communists and militants within the
the government yesterday of using an alleged Com- said. ANC’s military wing have stockpiled weapons and
munist conspiracy to delay peace talks. He spoke “If it is genuinely interested in peace and negotia- were formulating plans to seize power if talks between
before tens of thousands of people celebrating the tions, the government must act to bring about this the government and the ANC on ending white-minon
launch of the South African Communist Party. result,” Mandela said. ty rule fail. -% .
ManHoia said the government was trying to whip up Mandela also stressed that the ANC was not a Marx- Government officials in Pretoria said they were
hysteria with claims that Communist, members of his ist movement, although many hold studying Mandela’s charges and had no immediate
African National Congress had plotted to seize power, senior positions in the ANC. . response.
By BARRY RENFREW
Associated Press Writer
.vs'
er patch developed near the accident
site, said Coast Guard Capt. Thomas
Greene.
“It’s nothing significant compared to
the patch in the north,” Greene said.
However, the new patch was about a
mile from a beach south of the accident
site.
Coast Guard Cmdr. Frank Whipple
said officials flew over the slick yester
day afternoon. “It’s in the same general
area where it was this morning, and
that’s good news,” Whipple said.
‘ ‘Our concern right now is mainly the
oil in the water and keeping it out of the
sensitive areas, and the barge that’s
leaking securing it so that it stops
leaking oil,” he added.
Part of the patchy slick was on a
northeasterly path that could take it
towards Trinity Bay, which has several
sensitive estuaries, Coast Guard Petty
Officer Larry Meredith said. But offi
cials expected afternoon currents to
change the slick’s path to a southerly
direction.
Petty Officer Dennis Schaefer said
salvage crews were working to right the
±, PGA demonstration
Player agrees with planned protest of golf
mm \ '''HujMfc championship’s host club
aily Collegian
Cracks in the student loan system were underscored
last week when the Higher Education Assistance
Foundation, or HEAF, said it needed federal help to
nearly sunken barge while tugboats sur
rounded the second barge to keep it
afloat.
Booms were placed around both bar
ges to contain spilling oil. Together, the
two were carrying about 700,000 gallons
of “catfeed oil,” similar to a No. 5 heavy
crude used in refining, Greene said.
Apex RE&T Inc., a St. Louis-based
towing firm, owns the tug and barges,
and was working with salvage contrac
tor T&T Marine of Galveston on the
cleanup, Schaefer said.
Salvage crews had planned to trans
fer the fuel from the barges to other ves
sels yesterday evening, but Greene said
that process might not begin until Mon
day morning.
The third barge, carrying 20,000 bar
rels of fuel, was moved up the ship
channel, Schaefer said.
The 601-foot tanker, carrying 29,400
metric tons of jet fuel, remained
anchored, Schaefer said. Although the
collision left a gash in its hull, the vessel
didn’t leak because of its double hull.
The 27,793-ton Shinoussa was built this
year, he said.
W \ jm
in trouble
to a 105-point plunge in the stock market during the
first 90 minutes of trading.
At stake is a system that last year lent $l2 billion,
at subsidized rates, to 4.7 million students at 8,000 four
year universities, community colleges and trade
schools.
Bankers say that if the government allows HEAF
to default, the entire student loan program could be
jeopardized
“Student loans, if not for the guarantee, would be
very risky and would probably not be made,” said
Floyd Stoner of the American Bankers Association.
“They are loans to people with no credit history, no
assets and no fixed address. ’ ’
NM
I .
V TEXAS
\ Houston
MEXICO \ /
, ?00 -—,
The Mega Borg, which was transfer
ring oil to a smaller vessel about 57
miles off Galveston, was rocked by a
series of explosions June 8 and spilled
3.9 million gallons of light Angolan
crude into the Gulf of Mexico.
Collegian Photo /Jeff Farrar
1 o*a a
Abortion law
to go before
federal judge
READING (AP) The most restric
tive state abortion law in the nation goes
before a federal judge today in a case
that could give the U.S. Supreme Court
another chance to re-evaluate Roe vs.
Wade.
In a hearing scheduled to last most of
the week, Senior U.S. District Judge
Daniel H. Huyett 111 will hear argu
ments on whether legislation passed in
1988 and 1989 illegally restricts the
rights of pregnant women and their doc
tors to obtain or to perform abortions.
Contested provisions include those
that require married women to inform
their husbands before they can obtain
abortions and that generally ban abor
tions after the 24th week of pregnancy.
Other sections are similar to some the
U.S. Supreme Court declared unconsti
tutional in a 1986 Pennsylvania case
Those provisions
■ Obligate doctors to provide preg
nant women with specified information
regarding fetal development and their
rights to obtain child support.
■ Require a 24-hour waiting period
between a woman’s visit to a doctor and
the performance of the abortion.
■ Make information available to the
public from reports required from
facilities performing abortions.
Opponents say the law interferes with
the ability of doctors to follow accepted
treatment and counseling standards,
invites uneven law enforcement and the
harassment of abortion facilities and
staffers, forces families to make deci
sions contrary to their moral judgments
and imposes reproductive choices on
women but not on men.
“What it does is pose a series of
restrictions that put roadblocks in a
woman’s ability to have an abortion,”
said Kathryn Kolbert of the American
Civil Liberties Union’s Reproductive
Freedom Project.
But Robert R. Gentzel, a spokesman
for the Attorney General’s Office, said
the commonwealth believes the law is
“the result of a legislative process that
resulted in a compromise legislation to
impose appropriate controls on abortion
in Pennsylvania and that there are
Chicago fire brings
looting, power loss
By MICHAEL GOUGIS
Associated Press Writer
CHICAGO - Looting broke out
overnight on the West Side after a
generating plant fire left 40,000 cus
tomers without electricity, authori
ties said yesterday.
Police put extra patrols on the
streets and said they arrested 49 peo
ple on looting-related charges after
power was knocked out late Satur
day. About 15 stores were ran
sacked, said Detective Luby
Novitovic, who cautioned that it was
a “rough estimate ”
Three people died in a fire started
by candles they were using to light
their home, authorities said.
Power was restored to about 20,000
customers by 4 p.m. yesterday, said
Commonwealth Edison spokesman
Steve Hogan. More police officers
patrolled the West Side to prevent a
repeat of Saturday night’s troubles.
“They (looters) just lined up out
side the stores, waiting for the police
to leave,” Officer Rory Ohse said
yesterday. “As soon as the police
left, they came back. We couldn’t
keep up.”
But city officials played down the
disturbances, saying they didn’t
expect major problems yesterday.
“There is no need for a curfew.
There is no call for the National
Guard,” said Mayor Richard M.
Daley. “It was only a blackout.
There was no riot. There was no
heavy looting.”
The blackout stemmed from a
series of small explosions that began
shortly after 10 p.m. in a faulty
transformer at a coal-burning plant
Weather
Partly sunny today, with showers and
thunderstorms developing this
afternoon and continuing into tonight,
high today 85. Low tonight, 65. Mostly
cloudy tomorrow with morning show
ers, high 82.
- Mike Hopkins
Monday, July 30,1990
Vol. 91, No. 31 10 pages University Park, Pa. 16801
Published independently by students at Penn State
©1990 Collegian Inc.
indeed appropriate public policy rea
sons for all of the provisions. "
He said the commonwealth also
believes the restrictions are permissible
under existing Supreme Court rulings.
Only Guam, in the Pacific, has
adopted a more stringent abortion code
among all U.S. states and territories.
This spring, the Guam legislature
banned all abortions except when a
woman’s life is endangered and out
lawed all abortion referrals.
As in Pennsylvania, that law has been
temporarily blocked by a federal court
order.
“The significance of it (the Pennsyl
vania law) is the race to the Supreme
Court,” Kolbert said. “Whichever one
gets there first raises the question for
the court to re-evaluate Roe. ’ ’
The U.S. Supreme Court’s 1973 deci
sion in Roe vs. Wade outlawed state
regulation of abortions unless the regu
lations were clearly to safeguard the
health of the woman.
Gentzel said the commonwealth
doesn’t consider itself in a race,
although he acknowledged the case
could reach the Supreme Court.
The Pennsylvania law is being chal
lenged by Planned Parenthood of South
eastern Pennsylvania, Women’s
Suburban Clinic, Women’s Health Serv
ices Inc., Reproductive Health and
Counseling Center, Allentown Women’s
Center and Dr. Thomas Allen of Allen
town on behalf of all Pennsylvania phy
sicians who perform or make referrals
for abortions.
Defendants in the suit are Gov. Ro
bert P. Casey, state Secretary of Health
N. Mark Richards and state Attorney
General Ernie Preate.
Since 1980, when 65,777 abortions were
performed in the state, the number has
declined every year, according to court
documents.
In 1988 there were 50,786 abortions
This is the second time Huyett has
been called upon to rule on the constitu
tionality of Pennsylvania abortion law.
The case was assigned to him because
of its relation to the first case, court offi
cials said.
on the West Side, said John Hogan,
another Commonwealth Edison
spokesman. The resulting blaze
knocked out the cables that route
power to most of the West Side. The
blaze wasn’t extinguished until 6:30
a.m. yesterday.
Work crews continued to work to
restore power, but some of the 20,000
customers without electricity yester
day evening might have to wait until
Monday and possibly longer, accord
ing to Hogan.
Looting began in West Side busi
ness districts within minutes after
the blackout and continued until sun
rise, police said.
Some stores were ransacked and
some completely emptied, business
owners and police said. Vandals
smashed glass doors and windows,
and some chopped holes in the roofs
of stores to gain entrance.
“They took everything,” said Mike
Alsars, who was guarding Way-Low
Discount Foods on yesterday morn
ing. “All the shelves are empty. All
the coolers are empty. The floors
look like garbage.”
Some Arab merchants com
plained burglars singled out their
stores and passed over others. But
store owners of all races were
robbed, Police Superintendent
Leßoy Martin said.
“The stores that were attacked
crossed all racial lines,” Martin
said. “There were no selected tar
gets.”
Those arrested overnight faced
felony charges of burglary, looting,
disorderly conduct and damage to
property, said Novitovic.