Copyright 1999 St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Inc.
St.
Louis Post-Dispatch
February 12, 1999, Friday, FIVE STAR LIFT
EDITION
SECTION: NEWS, Pg. A12, NATION BRIEFS COLUMN
LENGTH: 834 words
HEADLINE:
NATION
BYLINE: From News Services
BODY:
Parts of national forests get
protection from roads
The federal government suspended the construction
of new logging roads in most of the undeveloped back country of the national
forests on Thursday, decisively shifting forest policy toward conservation after
a year of heated public debate. The move sets the stage for a comprehensive
review of long-term forest policy. President Bill Clinton's administration wants
to look at not only the remote roadless areas affected by the
suspension but also at other areas that are excluded from the moratorium and at
the even larger expanses that are already crisscrossed by an estimated 400,000
miles of roads. Road building will be suspended for 18 months, temporarily
protecting about 33 million acres of publicly owned land.
Judge
orders review of some Agent Orange cases
The Veterans Administration
must review all benefit claims denied to hundreds of Vietnam veterans who failed
to say their illnesses resulted from exposure to Agent Orange, a federal judge
ruled Thursday. The federal government has paid some benefits to about 6,000
Vietnam veterans who developed cancer and other illnesses. But an estimated
1,000 veterans were denied back payments under strict language that required
applicants to state that Agent Orange or herbicides were linked to the cause of
the disability, a hurdle ruled illegal Thursday in the class-action lawsuit.
Under Veterans Administration regulations, veterans do not have to prove they
were exposed to Agent Orange or other herbicides containing the toxic substance
dioxin. In fact, anyone who served in the war is automatically presumed to have
been exposed to it.
Gore promotes administration's pension reform
plans
Vice President Al Gore urged Congress on Thursday to approve the
administration's $ 1 billion plan to help people save money for retirement. He
said pensions can no longer be rigid in today's ever-changing American work
force. The vice president touted pension legislation that would help small
businesses start retirement plans, let workers contribute to individual
retirement accounts through payroll deductions and make it easier for workers to
take their pensions with them when they change jobs. Gore said the reforms are
necessary because workers today change jobs more frequently than in the past.
Allowing them the flexibility to transfer their pensions and 401(k) savings
accounts would ensure they won't cash out and spend the money.
National Park Service defends plans for Gettysburg
The National Park
Service defended its proposed $ 40 million face lift at the Gettysburg
battlefield Thursday against complaints that a new visitors center and retail
complex would cheapen the Civil War site. The agency already has scaled down the
privately funded proposal in south-central Pennsylvania by eliminating a
big-screen IMAX theater and cutting back the number of retail shops. Some
preservationists and community groups complained that the Park Service did not
consider other alternatives for replacing existing facilities that agency
officials consider cramped and "below atrocious." The Gettysburg National
Military Park is the site of the three-day Battle of Gettysburg July 1-3, 1863,
and Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address on Nov. 19 that year. It draws nearly 2
million visitors a year.
Jury rejects incriminating statements by
defendant
The second defendant in the robbery and murder of a high
school teacher was acquitted Thursday of all charges in spite of 13 pages of
self-incriminating statements that he gave to police. A jury found Montoun Hart,
26, innocent of second-degree murder and robbery in the 1997 slaying of Jonathan
Levin, the son of Time Warner chairman Gerald Levin. Hart had been accused of
being an accomplice in torturing Levin, 31, with a knife for his personal bank
card number, looting his account of $ 800, then killing him. A former student of
Levin's, Corey Arthur, 20, was convicted in November of second-degree murder in
the case.
Nobel Prize winner concedes book wasn't strictly true
A Nobel laureate conceded Thursday she mixed the testimony of other
victims of Guatemala's civil war with her life story in the book that helped her
win the peace prize, but she said in New York she remains an effective human
rights advocate. "The book that is being questioned is a testimonial that mixes
my personal testimony and the testimony of what happened in Guatemala,"
Rigoberta Menchu said. "I was a survivor, alone in the world, who had to
convince the world to look at the atrocities committed in my homeland." She
asked her audience to instead focus attention on the need to investigate and
prosecute the massacres, kidnappings and widespread torture during Guatemala's
36-year civil war. Menchu became a powerful human rights advocate after the 1983
publication of "I, Rigoberta Menchu," a wrenching story of an Indian child whose
family was caught in the war that killed an estimated 100,000 people.
GRAPHIC: PHOTO THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Photo
Crowd in
California protests North Vietnamese flag - A police officer in Westminster,
Calif., stands near video store owner Truong Van Tran. He fell during an
altercation Wednesday when a crowd confronted him as he unfurled a North
Vietnamese flag at his store. A court ruled he had a right to display the flag.
LOAD-DATE: July 22, 1999 
