MI gas price surge
lacks repercussions
The Michigan Daily - Tuesday, April 11, 1989 - Page 5
North defends
Iran-Contra fund
BY THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Gasoline dealers, braced for verbal
abuse from customers watching the
digital counters on gas pumps roll
higher and higher, can't believe their
ears.
It's still quiet. Tense, but quiet.
"Nothing like I expected." Jerry
Festerling, who owns Festerling's
Marathon Service in Petoskey, said
yesterday. "I haven't had a comment
except, 'Boy, it went up."'
The gasoline price surge after the
Alaskan oil spill sent gasoline
prices spiraling nationwide, up as
much as 18 cents a gallon in some
parts of Michigan.
"Last Wednesday was probably
the worst day that you could think
of," said Dan Loepp, director of the
Service Station Dealers of Michigan.
Stations raised prices in response
to wholesale price increases, Loepp
said. "I felt very sorry for the cash
register attendants that worked that
day," he said.
In a state-wide survey, AAA
Michigan said the jump apparently
was partly a reaction to reduced sup-
plies to West Coast refineries due to
the Alaskan oil spill.
Some industry analysts also
blamed cuts in crude oil production
by the Organization of Petroleum
Exporting Countries.
Some called the jump a tempo-
rary reaction, without real shortages
to justify it. Loepp said yesterday
there was no sign of any decline in
whole sale prices.
At New Five Shell in Livonia,
the price increases came at the end of
last week.
"Friday was a rough night," said
Lisa Bucalo, daughter of owner Phil
Bucalo, though she said questions
had abated by yesterday.
Customers at Cole Sunoco Ser-
vice in Eggleston, 10 mile east of
Muskegon, took it in stride when
gas prices went up 14.5 cents last
week, owner Don Karchinski said.
The new price of $1.059 a gallon
for self-service unleaded regular drew
a few questions, but Karchinski said
most customers seemed to attribute
the increase to the beginning of the
warm-weather travel season.
"I still pump just as much gas,"
he said.
Loepp said cashiers at many De-
troit-area stations reported angry re-
marks from customers about the
price increases.
"Their scorn was directed at the
wrong spot because dealers don't set
the wholesale price," he said.
WASHINGTON (AP) - Oliver
North, seemingly struggling to keep
his temper, yesterday defended his
stewardship of an Iran-Contra cash
fund and insisted the money he paid
for a used car came instead from a
$15,000 family cache in a metal box
bolted to a closet floor.
At the start of cross examination
at his trial, North said he kept track
in a spiral-bound notebook of every
penny he disbursed from the Iran-
Contra fund which totaled between
$240,000 and $300,000.
"The ledger is still around?" asked
prosecuter John Keker.
"It was destroyed," North said.
"Do you know who destroyed it?"
"Yes," he said. "I did."
Earlier yesterday, North testified
that former President Ronald Reagan
and his attorney general, Edwin
Meese, concealed U.S. involvement
in a November 1985 shipment of
Hawk missiles from Israel to Iran.
In a meeting on Nov. 12, 1986,
Reagan clearly "had made a decision
not to disclose" the shipment, North
said.
The president told a news confer-
ence on Nov. 19 - a week after that
meeting - that the government had
not been involved with other nations
in shipping weapons to Iran and that
the United States had shipped none
before he signed a January 1986 au-
thorizing document. Immediately af-
terward, the White House put out a
statement in which Reagan said a
third country had been involved.
North testified that he assumed
Reagan had known of the diversion
of Iran arms sale funds to the Con-
tras, a contention Reagan has denied.
The former National Security
Council aide was asked by his own
lawyer about NSC documents North
and his former secretary, Fawn Hall,
smuggled out of the White House
complex about the time North was
fired.
North, who destroyed stacks of
other documents around that time in
November 1986, said he wanted the
papers so "that I would have some-
thing to show if necessary, to show
I had authority from my superiors
for activities that I was engaged in."
The papers, some taken out by
North in the days before the Iran-
Contra affair became public and
some by Hall after the firing, totaled
196 pages.
Asked about one note, which he
had written to superiors on Dec. 9,
1985, North said it "clearly articu-
lates what process the United States
was up to" - the process North was
involved in - in approaching Iran
in. hopes of gaining release of
hostages.
WEEKEND
MAGAZINE
Fridays in The Daily
763-0379
Have we fusion?A
Billy Livesay and James Mahaffey, research scientists at the Geor-
gia Tech Research Institute in Atlanta, show off equipment they be-
lieve confirms that nuclear fusion actually happens. Last month, the
University of Utah announced that fusion does, in fact, take place.
Federal government begins battle
against drugs in the nation's capital
WASHINGTON (AP) - He announced plans calling for dozens of American cities. But here
.,
William Bennett, slapping at the
city government's attempts to battle
a drug problem which he said "is so
glaring - so out of control," an-
nounced yesterday a multi-million
dollar effort to combat drugs in the
nation's capital.
Bennett, director of the national
drug control policy office, said that
"the plain fact is that, for too long,
and in too many respects, the D.C.
government has failed its citizens."
S~ i
oviet
ContinUed from Page 1
of the Helsinki Watch group.
"The military stood there with
their tanks and frightened the people
off," he said.
Sergei Dancurov, a nationalist,
said troops jumped from armored
personnel carriers and fired into the
air.
The delegation from the ruling
Politboro was led by Shevardnadze, a
Georgian who displayed sympathy to
nationalists in his 1972-85 tenure as
the republic's Communist Party
building new pretrial detention and
prison facilities, expanding a local
law enforcement task force, an effort
to rid public housing of drug users
and dealers, expansion of drug treat-
ment facilities, and an increase in
job-training programs.
Washington was the nation's
murder capital last year with 372
slayings, most of them drug-related.
"Drugs and demand for drugs
sorely test the responsive abilities of
where the problem is so glaring -
so out of control - serious ques-
tions of local politics and gover-
nance can no longer be avoided or
excused. They must be answered,"
said Bennett.
A Washington-area drug task
force will get an additional 57 fed-
eral, state and local investigators
under the plan, including 11 Drug
Enforcement agents and five Defense
Department intelligence analysts.
A
I N
CLAS
L IN E
1
9
chief.
As party chief, Shevardnadze re-
peatedly called for mutual respect and
tolerance between Georgians and the
ethnic Abkhazians, a minority living
in the western part of the republic.
In 1978 he supported a law making
Georgian the republic's official lan-
guage,a demand offending national-
ists.
On April 4, demonstrators began
protesting calls from Abkhazians to
break away from the republic be-
cause of alleged discrimination by
Georgians. Others demanded Georgia
secede from the Soviet Union be-
cause of alleged interference by
Moscow in their political, eco-
nomic, and cultural affairs.
Shevardnadze had just returned
from London, and had postponed a
trip to East Germany because of the
unrest, Gerasimov said. He arrived in
Tbilisi over the weekend and met
with intellectuals and media execu-
tives to discuss how to resolve the
dispute, according to the Tass news
agency.
Shevardnadze also met with
Georgian officials who called the
"moral-political situation" in Tbilisi
and other cities "extremely tense,"
Tass said.
Seniors - Please come to the Wrap-Ul
for the 1989 Senior Pledge Program!
Free food, fun and live entertainment:
Master of Ceremonies: Comedian Peter B
* Music by "Big Box of Nines"
* Much more!
9
*a
" .
S ACT
M 8 9
p Party
.6
*0
erman'°
c::s
i
00
On Palmer Field
(by Alice Lloyd Hall)
Thursday, April 13, 1989
4:00 to 9:00 p.m.
(Rain date: Friday, April 14,
3:00 to 7:00 p.m.)
You must bring your invitat
and your student I.D. for ad
Questions? Call 763-7420
ion
mission.
MSU
Continued from Page .3.
suitable. But pointing to his civil
rights record, he said dismissal
would be excessive.
According to Larrowe, his civil
rights record extends to 1959, when
a group of Black students asked him
WANTED Any Quantity
Used Michigan Bell
"CASHCARDS"
Paying
$1 for Blue Cards
$3 for Yellow Cards
Prompt Payment
A. Rendon
P. O. Box 323
Massapequa Park, NY 11762
DON'T SEND
YOUR CLOTHES
HOME-
STORE THEM
FOR THE
SUMMER!
to be faculty advisor to the newly-
formed campus chapter of the Na-
tional Association for the Advance-
ment of Colored People.
Since then, Larrowe said he has
participated in sit-ins and pickets in
support of civil rights.
Larrowe has denounced apartheid
in the State News column he has
written since 1971, making him one
of the most visible faculty members
at MSU.
MSU officials are currently
"reviewing what's legally, techni-
cally and morally appropriate," Den-
bow said.
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37
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It took Galileo 16 years to master the universe.
YOU hve One night.
It seems unfair The genius had all that time. While you have a few
short hours to learn your sun spots from your satellites before the
o/ /.
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