2 -The Michigan Daily - Friday, September 15, 2000 NATION/WORLD FAA to order redesign of Boeing Los Angeles Times WASHINGTON - The Federal Aviation Admin- istration announced yesterday that it will order a redesign of vital controls on the world's workhorse airliner - the Boeing 737 - to prevent an elusive failure that can cause a catastrophic crash. The action came after an FAA-appointed expert panel concluded that previous fixes of the plane's rudder ordered by the agency had not addressed more than a dozen possible ways in which it could fail. It may take the better part of a decade to design and install the new rudder controls on nearly 4,000 aircraft, but Boeing insisted yesterday that 737s are safe, saying the problem is rare and that the previous fixes eliminated the most dangerous of the potential failures. Allen Bailey, Boeing's chief engineer for the 737, said the planes do not pose a safety risk to con- sumers. "I'm going to put my family on one in about a month," he said. Though the 737's overall safety record is twice as good as the industry average, rudder problems have been blamed for two disasters that killed 157 people. USAir Flight 427 went down Sept. 8, 1994, near Pittsburgh, killing all 132 people on board. United Airlines Flight 585 crashed March 3, 1991, near Col- orado Springs, Colo. The 20 passengers and five crew members all died. Both crashes occurred dur- ing the landing approach. In each case, investigators blamed the rudder, a vertical surface on the tail that helps pilots steer the aircraft. The failure of a component is believed to have caused the rudder to veer in the opposite direc- 'I'm going to put my family on one in about a mont h." - Allen Bailey Boeing Chief Engineer nACROSS THE NATION Clinton announces last act as president WASHINGTON - Bill Clintordwill-visit Vietnam as a final act of his presi- dency, personally confronting a painful chapter in the history of the nation and one of most controversial in his own life. The politically sensitive trip, planned for mid-November, would come after the election, in part to avoid competing with Vice President Al (lore in the final weeks of his presidential campaign. The Vietnam swing was tacked on to a prc- viously planned trip to the annual Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum in Brunei on Nov. 15 and 16. The White House made no effort to hide the symbolic power of the first vx by a U.S. president to Vietnam since the war ended 25 years ago, at the cost of 58,000 American lives. "The president believes that there has been a consensus that has developed in this country over the last few years that the time is right to move forward," White House spokesman Joe Lockhart said yesterday. "But there's very much a syn4 bolic value in the president ... going actually to visit the country." The meaning of the trip is only enhanced by Clinton's personal torment with Vietnam. The president actively opposed the war and sat out the conflict as a stu- dent at Georgetown University, Oxford University and Yale Law School. Charges of draft dodging dogged his 1992 campaign and have flared up every time the administration has moved to change U.S. policy toward Vietnam. tion intended by the crew - as if a driver were turn- ing the steering wheel of his car to the right and the vehicle swerved left. Jetliner pilots use the rudder primarily to compen- sate for crosswinds when landing or taking off. Boeing's Bailey said the company already has begun redesigning the rudder controls. British fuel tax protesters call off block LONDON (AP) - Fuel tax protesters whose demonstrations had dried up tanks at British gas stations called off a slew of key blockades yesterday, saying they won a moral victory and would have lost public support had they contin- ued. Demonstrations ended at 10 fuel refineries and depots, roughly a quarter of the facilities hit by people angry over the cost of fuel in Britain. But even after the protests are over, getting the country back to regular fuel levels would likely take two to three weeks, said Ray Holloway, direc- tor of the Petrol Retailers Association. "Initial deliveries to filling stations are not going to resolve this problem" he said. Earlier in the day, Britons awoke to eerily empty roads, depleted supermarket shelves and troops on standby, a sign of Prime Minister Tony Blair's hardened resolve not to give in to a week of protests and blockades. Blair said Wednesday that "lives are at risk" from the protesters, whose demonstrations out- side fuel depots and refineries have left gasoline pumps bone-dry and disrupted schools, hospi- tals, businesses and transportation across Britain. The first to withdraw yesterday were pro- testers at Stanlow in northwestern England, where the fast-spreading action began a week ago. "We have backed down," said Brynle Williams, spokesman for protesters at the Stanlow refinery. "We have won a moral victory." He called on other demonstrators across the country to call off their pickets and join in a national campaign for a cut in fuel tax. Soon after, pickets in Scotland, Wales, and east and west England announced that they, too, would cease their actions. "Public opinion would have gone against us had we continued," said Robert Burns, spokesman for protesters at Grangemouth, in Scotland. "I think we will het a few concessions in November now as they (the government) realize this could all be done again," he said. Similar fuel protests - though less severe - hit other European countries, including France, the Netherlands and Germany. Clinton, Reno differ on Los Alamos case WASHINGTON - In a rare public disagreement, President Clinton said yesterday that Wen Ho Lee's long detention "just can't be justified," but Attorney General Janet Reno refused to apologize and said the confinement was the nuclear scientist's own fault. Lee, a former Los Alamos laborato- ry scientist, went free Wednesday after pleading guilty to one felony of mishandling weapons secrets. Reno told her weekly news confer- ence that Lee could have avoided nine months of detention by agreeing earli- er to plead guilty and tell the govern- ment what he did with the secrets. FBI Director Louis Frech said "the safety of the nation demands that we take this important step" under which Lee was sentenced to the 278 days he had served. The government dropped 58 other counts. Hours after Reno spoke, Clinton expressed an opinion far closer to that of U.S. District Judge James Parker, who said Lee's detention "embar- AROUND THIEC rassed our"entire nation.' Clinton said he found it difficult in retrospect to reconcile how the gov- ernment could "keep someone in jail without bail, argue right up to the 1I1th hour that they're a terrible risk, and then turn around and make that sort of plea agreement." Navy to make toilet? "gender-neutral" WASHINGTON ,-- The Navy has issued orders to replace urinals on the surface fleet with a "gender-neutral" commode. Within sev'eral years, 3,000 "heads,' or bathrooms, are to be converted, at a projected cost of Sl187,000 apiece, to a new modular desiun that is easier clean, cheaper to maintain and m* suitable for female crew members. A single bathroom can contain several commodes. "The goal is to make all sanitary spaces gender-neutral to facilitate changes in crew composition," said a Navy memo distributed throughout the fleet this week. Won