2A The Michigan Daily - Monday, October 7, 1996 NATION/WORLD Belarus govt. tries to shut down press ON ~ * . k 3 ?+ t : § 1' 'Ihe i ashington Post iMINSK, Belarus - As Belarus' Zuthoritarian president campaigns this Sal to seize new political powers in this .:--oviet country, his government is oking to shut down the tiny indepen- ?.t press here. , During two years in office, President .lexander Lukashenko has taken con- s of the state press and broadcasting, 'e main sources of information for the rmillion Belarusans. But in the capi- a few independent press organs Wve survived, publishing frequently ical reports about the government. K Lukashenko is trying to force the leg- -ature to grant him broad new powers hKl diplomats and jurists here say would make him a dictator. He sees even a small, independent press in >Ainsk as a threat, a Western diplomat said, because it has helped inform and energize his opposition. Last month Lukashenko's adminis- ,.tration turned up the pressure against ;independent media. Within a few days, authorities shut down the only indepen- VIRTUAL : ritlnued from Page 1A -University chemical engineering ztaduate student Jeroen Spitael, who . been working with Engineering Prof. John Bell on a chemical-reaction program, said he believes that there are several issues to explore. "We hope to able to produce a better understanding of where this technology can be most effective," Spitael said at the conference. He said the program he is develop- ing with Bell will be able to increase prioductivity, minimizing time and o-st. "Through this symposium, we are trying to determine what educational situations will benefit most from virtu- al reality," Spitael said. "Hopefully it will provide an alternative learning stylc towards chemistry and other faields." Former University President James Duderstadt helped bring the sympo- sium to the University through the Presidential Initiative Fund along with other University departments. Duderstadt said he hopes that this will only be the beginning of more technological advances that will be brought to the Media Union. "With this new building and new technology that it will feature, I believe that North Campus can now be called the Renaissance Campus," Duderstadt said. dent radio station, froze the bank accounts of at least five weekly news- papers for alleged tax evasion and forced one paper out of its office. "They are using financial pressures to force us to close," said Vyacheslav Khodosovskiy, chief editor of Belaruss kiTh$ 3 Rynok, a busi- ness newspaper. fnancal "They suddenly declared that all to force j these newspa- - pers are violat- closes ing tax laws and - Vyachesla have frozen our cheda (bank) account Chief edit Ui p I hearing their news from varied sources. Many Belarusans interviewed this year said they rely on the U.S.-backed station Radio Liberty - or on Russian radio and television, which are rebroad- cast here - as well as the local inde- pendent press. B u t re uSing Lukashenko "clearly regards 'es Urepsi control of infor- S mation as an r$ iOessential part of getting dictatori- al power," a Khodosovskiy Western diplo- mat said. Within r of Belarusski months of win- Rynok ning election in 1994, he replaced editors of several state-owned newspapers with his appointees and took control of state broadcasting. In December 1994, his administration barred reporting of a legislator's speech that accused Lukashenko of corruption, leaving newspapers to publish blank spots where the articles were to have appeared. Last year Lukashenko ordered state- owned presses to stop printing several papers, including the weekly Belarusskaya Gazeta. Since then, "we've had to take our paper to Vilnius (the capital of neighboring Lithuania) to be printed," said Editor Alexander Volvachev. In the paper's small warren of offices, young Belarusans bustled amid paper-cluttered desks, bookshelves and a few computers. Each week they lay out the paper's pages and drive them 125 miles northwest to Vilnius, then truck the papers back. Newspaper distribution in Belarus is a state monopoly, so the independent papers hire unemployed people, often elderly pensioners, as street vendors. Recently police have been harassing vendors, sometimes confiscating their papers, Belarusan journalists said. Lukashenko's pressure on the media aims to silence not only opposition groups, but also the legislature. Perot: Debate did not address issues WASHINGTON - Ross Perot said yesterday the presiden- tial debate that he was excluded from.was "interesting to lis- ten to," but neither President Clinton nor Republican rival Bob Dole talked about the real problems the country faces. "It was interesting to listen to," Perot said on CNN's "Larry King Live." "My concern is that they never went to the core problems. The core problem is that we have two parties that control our government." He also said neither candidate really addressed the country's financial situation. "We are on a financial precipice that we cannot let the coun- Perot try fall off of," Perot said. Perot appeared on the show shortly after the presidential debates between Clinton and Dole in Hartford, Conn. It is a favorite forum for Perot, who declared his candidacy on King's show in 1992 and debated Vice President Al Gore on the NAFTA agreement in 1993. Perot had predicted earlier yesterday that after going one-on-one with Clinton, Dole would regret that Perot was kept from participating in the presidential debates. . . 3v :o and are hitting us with fines.... I don't know how much longer we will survive. Maybe a few more months.' Lukashenko is unlikely to control pub- lic information absolutely. In the decade since Mikhail Gorbachev introduced openness in Soviet information policy, urban Belarusans have become used to School suspensions spark concern WASHINGTON (AP) - Suspended: A 13-year-old honor stu- dent in Ohio for having Midol at school. A first-grader in North Carolina for a kiddie smooch. Two co-eds at a Roman Catholic high school in Florida refused to remove "pro-choice" stickers from their cars and were suspended, as was an Anderson, S.C., boy who wore a jacket to school with a Confederate battle flag on back. Buffeted by lawsuits and lesser crit- icisms, many school administrators have begun following to the letter school rules on weapons, clothing, drugs and potentially offensive behav- ior. Many want to ensure their students respect differences among classmates. Others are trying hard - too hard, some say - for "political correct- ness." "They're going and getting all strict now because there's all this crime," said Robert Evans, a senior at Archbishop Carroll High School in Washington. Many educators agree with the Washington 17-year-old. They say removing students from school is not the first choice for discipline, but offi- cials have become quick to suspend in response to public anxiety over school safety. "You may see that we are cracking down more to be sensitive to what the public wants," said Carole Kennedy, principal at New Haven Elementary School in Columbia, Mo., and president of the National Association of Elementary School Principals. Some educators also fear lawsuits filed by parents alleging their child's right to free speech or expression has been violated or the school did too little to protect their child's safety, said Gwendolyn Gregory, deputy general counsel of the National School Boards Association. They read about the jury in San Francisco that awarded $500,000 to a student on finding that school officials ignored her complaints about a sixth- grade boy's almost daily barrage of vul- garities, lewd insults and threats. Thousands walk for AIDS fund raiser WASHINGTON - Infants in strollers, couples hand-in-hand and dogs wearing red ribbons made their way around the streets of the nation's capital yesterday in an annual trek to raise money for the care of AIDS patients. Organizers estimated that more than 15,000 people participated in the 10th annual AIDS Walk Washington, which began and ended at the Ellipse between the White House and the Washington Monument. The walk is the largest fundraising event in the District of Columbia, but similar events are held in major cities across the country. Tipper Gore, the vice president's wife and the walk's honorary chairper- son, sent the walkers on their way with an appeal to keep up the search for a cure to the disease that has killed 300,000 people in the United States. "The fight is not over until all our loved ones are safe" she said. Those who traveled the walking tour's full 6.2 miles raised more than $2 mil- lion for AIDS programs at the Whitmap- Walker Clinic, which provides housing, medical and other forms of care.fpt Washington-area AIDS patients. Or ation tools * may binder order CONCORD, Mass. - The same technology that has provided seeminglj limitless ways to get organized has paradoxically made life seem more out of control as workers, students and parr- ents face greater demands on their time. That is part of the rationale behind, National Get Organized Week, whic starts today. Instead of enjoying the growing wealth of information, people are besieged by it, said Stephanie Denton, chair of the National Get Organized Week Committee. The average American gets 49,060 pieces of mail in a lifetime, one-third of it junk mail, according to the National Association of Professional Organizers, which organizes Get Organized Week SEARCH Continued from Page IA they will not divulge anything, not even the number of interview letters they sent out. Although lips have been sealed at the Fleming Administration Building and members of PSAC are not releasing any information, travel records obtained through the Freedom of Information Act show that PSAC Chair and Law School Dean Jeffrey Lehman made a three-day trip last spring to Boston and New York City. The records also include a $22 cab receipt from Cambridge, Mass. Cambridge is home to Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. At least one high-profile figure rumored to be in the hunt - Stanford University Provost Condoleezza Rice - said she is not interested in the job. "I have not been interviewed about the presidency at Michigan and have no plans to leave Stanford," Rice said. Letters signed by Lehman provide a rough framework of how the search has progressed so far. Names and dates were deleted from the copies obtained. In the letters, Lehman assures r prospective candidates that "there will be no need to reveal (their) willingness to be considered for the Presidency" until their names are announced to the board, at which time interviews with candidates will be open to the public. "Indeed, we are doing everything we can to prevent it from being known that we are even meeting with poten- tial candidates," Lehman told the can- didates. One letter invites prospective candi- dates "to meet with the full committee at a hotel in the vicinity of the Detroit Metro Airport" in order to conduct face-to-face interviews. Minutes recorded from PSAC meet- ings give only bare-bones accounts of the group's proceedings. Machen, for- mer .University President James Duderstadt and interim President Homer Neal gave presentations "con- cerning the future of the University and the attributes to be desired in our next President," according to the minutes. Machen and Duderstadt spoke at the June 23 meeting; Neal spoke on June 27. Tired of getting picked apart by poor service & high prices We'l keep the buzzards at bay Copies 0 18" 420 htself-seve 1 { , .} ,. r . Mexc XC elections opena peaceflly CHILPANCINGO, Mexico - Elections testing the ruling party's grip on local power went peacefully yester- day in the southwestern state of Guerrero, after thousands of soldiers hunting rebels retreated to their bar- racks, Troops in olive drab, who have virtu- ally occupied some isolated communi- ties, were to remain in their camps until after polls closed last night. For the first time in months, no armored vehicles patrolled state highways. The temporary retreat, which began Saturday evening, eased worries about possible election-day violence in Guerrero, where the Popular Revolutionary Army, or EPR, first emerged June 28. The threat of guerrilla war has driven the campaigns to elect 76 mayors and an all-new 28-member state congress. Disenchantment with the govern- ment has run high in this impoverished state since police massacred 17 local men in June 1995 in the mountains above Acapulco. Th appeared in Guerrerot sary of the killing. State officials said peacefully at the state' sites. i ne EPR first on the anniver- I voting wen s 3,479 pol n Woman loses eight babies, Wants more LONDON - Sitting beside the corpses of eight babies wrapped in lu and pink shawls, the woman who insist- ed on trying to carry them to term sai she wants more children, a tabloi* reported yesterday. Mandy Allwood, who sold her story to News of the World for an undis v closed sum, wept continuously as ri;e described her loss, the tabloid said. "Just looking at them tells me I made the right-decision. They are so beautiful,' Allwood said. Allwood, 32, became pregnant after. taking fertility drugs and disregarded doctors' advice to abort some of th4 fetuses to give the others a better chance, - Compiled from Daily wire reports. 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