The Michgan Daily - Monday, October 11, 1993 - 7
. Tanker
explodes
off Texas
coast*
GALVESTON,Texas(AP)-Sal-
vagecrews scrambled yesterday aboard
a gasoline tanker ripped open by an
explosion that peeled back part of the
deck "like a sardine can." Three people
were believed killed.
The Coast Guard strung contain-
ment booms in case of a possible fuel
spill from the damaged OMI Charger,
Wwhich was carrying no cargo but held
365,000 gallons of fuel.
"There is a potential for a major
spill," said Capt. Paul Prokop, com-
mander of the Coast Guard station at
Galveston.
The Houston Ship channel, one of
the world's busiest waterways, was
closed part of the day because officials
feared ship wakes could endanger the
*tanker. Officials laterallowedrestricted
use of the channel, which serves the
Houston petrochemical industry.
CoastGuardofficials said they were
convinced none of the fuel had spilled
from the 660-foot ship. It was partially
afloat in about 40 feet of water. Crews
planned to remove the fuel.
Witnesses said the ship was hit by
twoexplosions Saturday. The firstblast
around 8 p.m. was felt more than four
Office humor or
harassment, High
Court to decide
AP Photo
The half-sunken OMI Charger floats near Galveston with a hole in its hull following an explosion Saturday.
miles away, while a less intense explo-
sion occurred about an hour later. The
fire burnedoutof control for about 51/
2 hours.
Two sailors were confirmed killed
and one other was missing and pre-
sumed dead. Three of the 35 crew
members remained hospitalized yes-
terday, one in serious condition. About
a dozen others were treated and re-
leased.
The blasts opened a gaping hole
along the left side of the ship, exposing
its interior. Pipelines on the deck were
twisted like blackened spaghetti.
Part of the main deck was "peeled
back like a sardine can,' said Coast
Guard Cmdr. Roger Peoples, who flew
over the wreck yesterday. The ship's
stern had sunk to the channel bottom
and it listed to port, but Peoples said it
was in no danger of sinking.
Twenty-seven crew members were
rescued from the burning ship minutes
after the blast by the crew of a passing
oil rig supply boat.
Owners of the ship and the Coast
Guard would not say what caused the
blasts. Butauthoritiessaidthatacouple
of workers were welding inside the
ship at the time of the blast. Peoples
said hydraulics systems also were sus-
pected.
Officials estimated the insured ship
was worth about $10 million.
In June 1990, theNorwegiantanker
Mega Borg spilled 43 million gallons
of crude oil about 60 miles off
Galveston.
NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) -
Teresa Harris said she listened to de-
meaning and suggestive comments
from her boss for two years. The last
straw came when he asked if she
planned to have sex with a customer to
clinch a deal.
She quit and filed sexual harass-
ment charges.
Charles Hardy said he was simply
treating Harris as "one of the boys."
Her complaints, he asserts, stem from a
soured business deal with her husband.
The case-Harris vs. ForkliftSys-
tems - comes before the U.S. Su-
preme Court on Wednesday.
The question is whether suggestive
remarks by a boss must go beyond
mere offensiveness and deliver psy-
chological damage to constitute sexual
harassment.
Three federal appeals courts have
said suggestive comments mustbe psy-
chologically damaging to be harass-
ment. Three other appeals courts have
held the comments need only be offen-
sive in order to justify the payment of
damages.
Hardy, ownerandpresidentof Fork-
liftSystems Inc., has conceded making
comments to Harris, his rental man-
ager for two years, that include:
"You'rejustadumb-ass woman."
"Let's go to the Holiday Inn and
negotiate your raise."
"You're a woman, what do you
know?"
"Don't you think it is about time
we started screwing around?"
He also said in court that he asked
Harris and other female employees of
the forklift sales and rental company to
bend over and pick up items from the
floorandtopullquartersfromhisfront
pockets.
Hardy, who declined to be inter-
viewed, has said it was all harmless
office banter.
"They were all in-house jokes,"
saidHardy'sattoney, Stanley Chernau.
"I don't think they're funny, but they
were jokes in the office:"
Harris told The Associated Press
she wasn't laughing.
"I felt almost like a prostitute," she
said. "In my mind I was selling out fo
money. That's how I felt. I didn't like
it at all, but if I quit my family would
suffer and I was the primary breadwin-
ner."
She said she tried to avoid Hardy
and became anxious, cried frequently
and drank heavily. A doctor said she
should leave her job and prescribed
sedatives to calm her.
She confronted Hardy in August
1987. She said she planned to resign,
but Hardy talked her into staying and
promised he would refrain from mak-
ing inappropriate comments. The next
month, heaskedherif shehadagreedto
sleep with a customer.
She quit and filed a sexual harass-
ment complaint with the federal Equal
Employment Opportunities Commis-
sion.
Harris now works as a nurse at a
Nashville hospital.
Peacekeepers to restore democracy in Haiti
Prime Minister warns, Haitian refugees may
continue to flee with the return to power of
deposed leader Jean-Bertrand Aristide
PORT-AU-PRINCE,Haiti(AP)-
O f the United Nations mission fails to
restore democracy in this Caribbean
country, hordes of Haitians will flee
toward the UnitedStates, PrimeMinis-
ter Robert Malval warned yesterday.
He spoke after a night of heavy
gunfire in the capital, a stark reminder
of the volatile political passions that
many fear will force the U.N. peace-
keepers into fighting, as has happened
in Somalia.
A U.S. warship carrying hundreds
of GIs to take part in the U.N. mission
istoarrive today. Asmallcontingentof
U.S. and Canadian peacekeepers ar-
rived last week.
The U.N troops are partofaU.N.-
brokered plan to restore democracy
more than two years after President
Jean-Bertrand Aristide, Haiti's first
freely elected leader, was deposed in a
coup.
After Aristide's ouster, countless
Haitians began fleeing by boat for the
United States.
U.S. military ships began intercept-
ing them and retuming them to Haiti,
sparking outragedcriticismthatWash-
ington was turning away refugees of
political oppression.
If the U.N. plan fails, "more and
more people will leave the island. It
will no longer be aproblem for Haiti. It
will be a problem for Florida," Malval
told reporters, speaking from the porch
of his home.
"Even the U.S. 6th Fleet will be
unabletopreventHaitians from fleeing
aless and less hospitable land," Malval
said.
Malval rejected comparisons with
Somalia, asserting that 90 percent of
Haitians wanted to restore democracy
here. However, his transition govern-
ment has received little cooperation
from the Haitian army, and armed ci-
vilians tied to the military have been
blamed for a series of politically re-
lated killings in the past two months.
More than 200 people have died in
almost-nightly shooting attacks on pro-
Aristide neighborhoods. There was no
casualty toll available for the shooting
over the weekend.
"Many friends and observers are
very pessimistic," Malval acknowl-
edged."Butwe are not. Haitians refuse
to identify with those who maintain
them in poverty and terror."
He disclosed thiat Western Hemi-
sphere foreign ministers were planning
to fly here Oct. 30 for the scheduled
return of Aristide.
The U.S. amphibious warship
Harlan County headed toward Haiti
yesterday carrying military engineers,
medics and civil affairs specialists,
along with troop trucks, bulldozers,
earth movers, tents and rations for a
six-month mission.
Also to be unloaded are M-16s,
sidearms and ammunition, which U.S.
officials said would only be used in
self-defense.
The force is to total 1,600 troops.
Six hundred American troops have
been committed to the mission, which
has been the subject of a debate within
the Pentagon. To protect the arriving
American troops, a greater concern
following the attacks in Somalia, the
Pentagon said Friday that the Harlan,
County will remain off Haiti's coast,
Mexico hopes NAFTA
can keep its people home,
PUACUARO, Mexico (AP) -
Celso Ascensio is unusual: He hasn't
left town for the United States.
Most men from this Purepecha In-
dian village have headed north in search
of the jobs and money Mexico cannot
provide. Ascensioremainsbehindwith
the village children, who play noisily
in the dirt streets outside his home and
furniture workshop.
Towns like Puacuaro, in west-cen-
tral Mexico, are thesource of a huanaw
river that is transforming the United
States.
It has carried tens of millions of
people across the border in the past 50
years, and demographers say Latinos
soon may be the largest U.S. ethnic
minority.
Supporters of the North American
Free Trade Agreement say it will help
curb that flow by luring investment to
Mexico, opening foreign markets and
creating jobs at home.
"We want to export goods and not
people," President Carlos Salinas de
Gortari told U.S. business people in
San Francisco last month.
Ascensio is a modest example of
those hopes.
"I have asource of work.... There's
no need to go," said the 30-year-old
carpenter, who employs six people in
the shop at the back of his house.
"All the furniture made here is for
the United States," he said.
Illegal immigration has so alarmed
California that a liberal senator pro-
poses posting U.S. troops on the bor-
der. The state's governor has recom-
mended abandoning a historic prin-
ciple of U.S. law: that those born in
America are Americans.
"Denying citizenship to children of
illegal aliens isn't going to solve your
problem," said Douglas Massey of the
University of Chicago, who has stud-
ied Mexican migration for more than a
decade. "Most Mexicans aren't moti-
vatedbycitizenship.They'remotivated
by employment."
Froilan Bautista, saidhe had never
held a job in Mexico.
"There's no work here," he said,
leaning against a post outside his
mother's grocery a few blocks from
Ascencio's house in the lakeside fish-
ing and farming town.
Massey estimated that 12.2 million
Mexicans crossed the border from 1985
to 1989 but only about 1.5 million
stayed.
AP Photo
Armed civilians demonstrate in the streets of the Haitian capital against the
return of ousted President Jean-Bertrand Aristide and the U.N. mission in
Haiti.
ready for possible rescue missions.
Another warship, the USS Fairfax
County, is to arrive Oct. 20 carrying
hundreds more troops and tons more
material.
Worn down by a worldwide petro-
leum embargo and other economic
sanctions, Haiti's army agreed in July
to a U.N. plan in which commander
Raoul Cedras and police chief Joseph
Michel Francois would leave their posts
and Aristide would return by Oct. 30.
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