Pd§e4-Sdfurda'y', July18; 1981--The Michigni Ddily
Flood in China
province leaves
3000 dead

In Brief


Compiled from Associated Press and
United Press International reports


From AP and UPI
PEKING - Floods from a three-day
downpour roared through China's most
populous province, leaving 3,004 people
dead, 50,000 injured and 400,000
homeless, officials said yesterday. -
Hit severely by flooding yesterday
was Chongqing, formerly called
Chungking, a city of four million people
that served as the wartime capital of
Chiang Kai-Shek's nationalist forces.
AT LEAST two million people in the
province were directly affected by the
flooding and many were forced to seek
refuge on roofs. Flood waters in some
areas reached 15 feet.
Houses crumbled, bridges collapsed
and survivors were chased to high
ground by the province's worst floods in
76 years, Sichuan provincial authoritieg
said.
By yesterday, rescuers had saved all
of the 300,000 stranded people, flooding
abated, power was restored and most of
the 650 affected enterprises resumed
production, but river traffic was still
suspended, authorities said.
WATER BEGAN receding as runoff
poured into the Yangtze River after
more than 18 inches of rain fell in the
southwest Chinese province between

Sunday and Tuesday.
"The major concern of the gover-
nment is the 400,000 homeless -masses
who need the government to provide
them with food and clothing and to help
rehabilitate their production," said one
provincial official.
Sichuan's floods are the world's
deadliest since October 1960, when 6,000
people died in one flood in Bangladesh
and 4,000 in another.
LOSSES HAVE not been calculated,
but more than one million acres of far-
mland were reported flooded and two-
thirds of the crops ruined in the provin-
ce, which has one-tenth of China's one
billion people.
Officials warned of more disasters to
come as heavy rains continued to swell
China's longest river.
China has the worst floods on record,
including deluges with death tolls of 3.7
million in 1931, 900,000 in 1887 and
200,000 in 1939.
The Yellow River, which runs several
hundred miles north of the Yangtze, is
traditionally known as "China's
Sorrow" because it floods and changes
course unpredictably, carrying
millions of tons of precious soil out to
sea.

Comic books have
a sanctuary in A 2

Air traffic controllers
reject proposed contract
WASHINGTON-Air traffic controllers are overwhelmingly rejecting a
proposed contract that averted a strike last month, according to an
Associated Press spot check of union locals yesterday.
Ballots were mailed to the 15,000 members of the Professional Air Traffic
Controllers Association a little over a week ago and are due at union
headquarters in Washington on July 28. The union's executive board has
recommended defeat of the contract.
Across the country, preliminary counts showed a lopsided balance against
the agreement.
"It's no better than what we have," said Abe Lehman, president of the
local at Miramar. Lehman said he did not want to predict what would hap-
pen next.
"It's a piece of garbage," added William Healy, head of the local at
Baltimore Washington.
Five states slap quarantine
on infested California fruit
SAN.JOSE, Calif.-Five southern states slapped an expanded quarantine
on all California fruit yesterday as officials pressed a massive war to
destroy the Mediterranean fruit fly before it could spread from the populous
Santa Clara Valley to rich farm regions.
The southern states said that beginning at noon Monday all fruit -that could
possibly carry the Medfly must be fumigated before being accepted. The
move jolted California's $14 billion agricultural industry.
The five-state action came as Medfly officials ended their most successful
aerial raid of the week on the voracious insects, with five helicopters drop-
ping the pesticide malathion over a 28-square-mile area-more than the
previous three nights combined.
Communist party votes
by secret ballot in Poland
WARSAW, Poland-Poland's Communist Party, voting by secret ballot
for the first time, elected a new Central Committee yesterday in an un-
precedented move that swept out extremists and endorsed the nation's
reformist policies.
"This is an incredible reshuffle, this is amazing," said a Warsaw
professor.
The ballot ousted hardliners at both ends of the political spectrum and
replaced many of Poland's most prominent political figures.
The vote for the 200-member committee also opened the way for the re-
election of moderate party chief Stanislaw Kania.
The dramatic reshuffle of the expanded committee, came hours after the
Solidarity trade union announced 40,000 dock workers would go on strike
next Thursday, one day before a scheduled walkout by national airline
workers.
Former Interior Secretary
verbal yattacks successor
WASHINGTON-Former Interior Secretary Cecil Andrus says his suc-
cessor, James Watt, is a pro-development zealot, one of the "rape, ruin and
run boys of America."
In radio and TV interviews yesterday, Andrus accused Watt of being in-
terested only in the development, not the protection, of America's natural
resources.
Andrus said Watt has "the short-sighted vision of 'take everything
tomorrow.' I used to categorize it as the rape, ruin and run boys of America.
Mr. Watt has a developmental zeal that I've never seen the like of before in
public life. And I had hoped this was jus.t bombastic rhetoric."
Mobil tops other offers
in Conoco bidding war
NEW YORK-Mobil Corp., the nation's second-largest company, offered
$7.74 billion in cash and stock yesterday to acquire Conoco Inc., topping two
other offers in the largest corporate bidding war ever.
Conoco Chairman Ralph Bailey said such a deal would raise serious an-
titrust problems but indicated the Conoco board would meet next week to
consider the offer.
Mobil said its bid was worth more than competing offers from chemical
giant Du Pont Co. or Canadian distiller Seagram Co. Ltd.
A Mobil-Conoco merger would create a company with more than $75
billion in annual sales and would cement Mobil's hold on the No. 2 place in
the Fortune 500 listing of industrial companies, far ahead of No. 3 General
Motors.

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(Continued from Page 3)
The store consists of two small
second-floor rooms at South State and
East William. There's no large sign in
front, so the entrance is hard to find.
But the true enthusiast shouldn't have a
problem.
"People who shop in places like this
are a closed entity," explained Harris.
"Most of my customers know this stuff
pretty well."
A poster in.the hall leading into the
store reads: "June is X-month." ("The
X-men" is the store's most popular

comic book.) " 'The X-men' used to do
terribly, but now it's a best seller,"
Harris said. "It's not a supermarket
seller like Batman or Spiderman. It's a
comic that sells basically out of places
like this. This constitutes a big shift
from what the comic book market used
to be."
The Ann Arbor clientele is not quite
as enthusiastic as Harris would like. At
a comic book convention, held in Ann
Arbor last year, turnout was less than
spectacular.
"The convention was held on a
beautiful fall day last year," Harris
said. "And it bombed. Nobody showed
up from the student body. They'll never
have another convention here again."
Harris is at his most persuasive when
defending the merits of the comic book. '
"A comic book has a limited format so
it can't beas subtle as a novel, nor have
as much character development, he
said. "But a good artist and a good
writer can make for a very interesting
and quite good piece of art."

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News Staff

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