'El ban ti One hundred four years of editorial freedom 7" .Wolverines battle Spartans for bragging rights, first place By RYAN WHITE Daily Basketball Writer Jimmy King isn't guaranteeing a victory against No. 12 Michigan State in Sunday's battle for the top spot in the Big Ten, but he's coming pretty close. "It doesn't matter what (Michigan State) saying," the senior said when asked about leSpartans believing that they belong in the top spot, and not the Wolverines. "As of Sunday we'll be in first place and they won't." That isn't a guarantee? "No, but I'm confident," King said. "If you step on the court and think you're going to lose - you shouldn't play." As a result, one can assume that King will be on the floor Sunday at Crisler Arena when the Wolverines (4-1 Big Ten, 10-6 overall) battle the Spartans (3-1, 11-2) for first place in the conference and state bragging rights. King and fellow senior Ray Jackson find themselves, and their team, in an unusual position heading into a game against Michi- gan State - they're underdogs. "It's kind of like role reversal," said Jack- son, who has gone 5-1 against the Spartans in his career. "But we have the confidence to beat them now. "We feel pretty good about the way we're playing and I think we have the talent to beat them." Michigan State is coming off a 93-56 dismantling of Northwestern and coach Jud Heathcote brings his best Spartan team in a number of years to Ann Arbor. The key to the Spartans' success this sea- son, however, happened last summer when then junior guard Shawn Respert made the decision to stay at Michigan State and not leave school for the NBA. Now a senior, Respert averages 25.5 points per game. With 49 3-pointers, he has made only I1 fewer treys than the entire Michigan team. He scored 40 points in a, 82-89, loss at Indiana on Jan. 11. "Respert has a maturity and poise that very few players in the country have," Michigan coach Steve Fisher said. "He makes everyone around him better and we all know that's the sign of a great player." Unlike past seasons, the Spartans do not have to rely on just Respert to get the job done. The emergence of senior guard Eric Snow, who is averaging 13.2 points and 6.8 assists a game this season, =has given Michigan State one of the top backcourts in the country. Junior forward Jamie Fieck is the third Spar- tan averaging double figures, scoring just over 10 points per game. 1 think they have a good team all the way through,' King said. "They have a good sup- porting cast and that's the difference." If Michigan State didn't have enough of a reason to be excited for the Wolverines, the game will also mark the final appearance in Crisler Arena for Heathcote, who is retiring after the season. "He's really going to have his team pumped up and I'd hate to send him off with an 'L', but that's business," King said. Jrater appointed to House committees By ZACHARY M. RAIMI Daily Staff Reporter State Rep. Liz Brater D-Ann Ar- bor) was appointed to three commit- tees in the House of Representatives earlier this week. In her first term, Brater will serve on the State Mental Health, Higher Education, and Conservation, Envi- ronment and Great Lakes committees. "I'm very pleased," said Brater, a rmer Ann Arbor mayor. "I think it will give me a good opportunity to serve my constituents and work on issues I talked about during the cam- paign. As a member of the Higher Edu- cation Committee Brater said she will have the "opportunity to network with people from other university commu- nities and to try and build a coalition * advocacy for support of higher education. Also, Brater said she will work to keep funding for higher education from "losing ground." Brater said she will work on legisla- tion concerning toxic waste for urban areas and increasing recycling while serving on the Conservation, Environ- ment and Great Lakes Committee. *,Fighting for insurance parity for mentally ill citizens, and providing adequate facilities and vocational training for them tops Brater's goals for the Mental Health Committee. Brater said she will request posi- tions on several subcommittees, and she intends to "take an active role" if placed on some. Each representative serves on two or three House committees. Brater tbmitted five requests, including the ppropriations Committee which she called "a long shot." She said her three appointments were among her top five choices. With state representatives limited to three two-year terms, Brater said "it's very likely" she can serve as a committee chair or ranking member in the next four years. This year, only 10 ?Tw Democrats and nine new Repub- ans were elected to the State House. There are 110 members in the State House. AN EVENING AT THE SYMPHONY Quake toll hits 4,000; hundreds still missing Tardiness of government aid criticized The Washington Post NISHINOMIYA, Japan, Jan. 20 (Friday) - The death toll from Tuesday's massive earthquake in west- ern Japan passed 4,000 late last night, and officials began to acknowledge an inadequate government response to the nation's deadliest quake since Tokyo was destroyed by one in 1923. As rescue workers continued to drag hundreds of bodies and a hand- ful of survivors from the rubble, top officials began pointing fingers and shifting blame for the sluggish, ill- coordinated relief effort that left more than 200,000 displaced people with- out adequate food, shelter and sanita- tion facilities for a third straight day. Public anger over government un- preparedness was evident when Prime Minister Tomiichi Murayama, visiting the strickenarea for the first time yes- terday, stopped at an emergency shelter in Kobe - the city hardest hit by the quake-where he reiterated pledges of aid and exhorted residents to "please keep your spirit up." Public television aired the bitter reaction of one woman at the shelter: "It's just meaningless words." Murayama told reporters the dam- age was "much worse than I had ex- pected," and the government has more than doubled the number of troops initialed mobilized for the relief ef- fort - from 13,000 to 30,000. The prime minister noted that the quake was the first in modern Japan to affect a highly developed urban area and that many houses and buildings were simply not built to withstand a tem- blor as powerful as Tuesday's - which measured 7.2 on the open- ended Richter scale. Early this morning, the official death toll stood at 4,048, with 727 still listed as missing - which exceeds the toll in a 1948 quake in Fukui that killed more than 3,700. In this cen- AP PHOTO Hungry survivors crowd around a vendor to buy food and water in Kobe, Japan. Arrival of government relief was slow, refugees said. tury, only the "Great Kanto Earth- quake" that leveled Tokyo seven de- cades ago took more lives - an esti- mated 143,000. In Tokyo yesterday, high-ranking government officials began trading re- criminations over the plodding relief effort. Nobuo Ishihara, the deputy chief cabinet secretary, told reporters that troops should have been mobi- lizedmuchsooner 'We have t icism, patiently waiting in long lines at supermarkets and lugging heavy loads of food, water, toilet paper and other necessities to relatives and friends despite having to walk or bi- cycle for miles because of disrupted rail service. "We can't rely completely on the government," said Kazuo Kai, a resi- A percussionist warms up before the School of Music's College concert yesterday. GOP working tol C m bl o do all we than they were and that "the govern- ment was late in 'assessing damage and late in adopt- card to help ourselves.' - Kazuo Kai Kobe resident dent of one of Kobe's most dev- astated neighbor- hoods who ped- aled his bike for four hours to an undamaged train line so he bring back two large Los Angeles Times WASHINGTON -In an epic leg- islative struggle that nearly capsized his presidency, President Clinton last summer squeezed out a nail-biting victory on a six-year $30 billion bill to fight crime. With House Judiciary Committee hearings that started yesterday, Con- gressional Republicans begin an ag- gressive drive to dismantle that bill and recast it in a more conservative image. After a fall campaign in which tough promises on crime helped to drive the historic GOP gains, Repub- licans are poised to once again fight the battles on spending priorities they lost last summer and force onto the agenda long-sought conservative le- gal reforms that Democrats barred from last year's bill. In both cham- bers, Republicans are provoking ma- jor confrontations with Democrats by proposing to divert billions of dollars in social service "crime prevention" programs included in last year's bill to prisons and law enforcement. At the same time, the GOP has taken aim at Clinton's top priority by See CRIME BILL, Page 2 ing measures." Defense Agency Director Tokusaburo Tamazawa responded that under Japanese law troops cannot be mobilized for such purposes un- less local authorities request them, and he indirectly blamed those offi- cials for failing to do so. But Ishihara contended that the agency should have offered help to the local authorities "because they were in confusion" immediately after the quake struck in predawn darkness. As officials quarreled, thousands of residents in the affected areas bore their misfortune with remarkable sto- bags of supplies from Osaka. "We have to do all we can to help ourselves and rely on our friends and relations," he said. "That's what most people are doing." A single instance of looting has been reported since the quake hit: Several men tried to steal merchan- dise from a damaged Kobe jewelry store. Police were summoned to the scene and promptly arrested the thieves. A television reporter recount- ing the incident told viewers he felt very sorry because "until now there have been no such cases." Russian troops take Chechen tronghold The Washington Post GROZNY, Russia - Vastly outnumbered and outgunned, several hundred Chechen fighters yes- terday relinquished control of the Presidential Pal- ace here, the stronghold from which they had held off a ferocious assault by thousands of Russian troops for nearly three weeks. * The last defenders left the 11-story building shortly after midnight, about 10 hours, after it was rocked by a pair of gigantic Russian bombs that penetrated to the basement hospital, killing dozens of Chechens and wounded Russian prisoners. Hours after the Chechens slipped out of the palace under Prof. to discuss mobile university in Sarajevo r i By CHRISTY GLASS For the Daily University history Prof. John Fine embarked this week on a two-week trip to the besieged capital city of Sarajevo to discuss plans for a mobile university. In Sarajevo at the mayor's invita- tion, Fine and other scholars will be discussing plans for the project, which they hope to implement in the sum- mer of 1995. Beginning in Sarajevo, -the project will eventually travel throughout Bosnia. The university will provide aca- demic contacts, through workshops and lecture seminars, for Bosnia's isolated intellectuals. The program was originally designed by Suada Kapic, who is scheduled to speak at the University in March-and is the director of a Bosnian foundation dedicated to maintaining the cultural life of Sarajevo during the war. Together with Kapic and others, Fine will deter- mine the size and scope of the project. Upon returning, Fine said he hopes to begin recruiting faculty from west- ern nations to teach for the mobile See SARAJEVO, Page 2 AP PHOTO