Casa Grande Dispatch (Newspaper) - April 19, 1994, Casa Grande, Arizona Arizona Comment Sports Commentary Convicted Kilter Ordered To Stay Out of State p 2 Secrecy Surrounds Cigarette Ingredients P 4 Playoff Fever Not Limited to Suns P 6 Final Countys Daily Newspaper A GRAND 3888 43004434110 NO 92 per copy CASA GRANDE ARIZONA 85222 TUESDAY APRIL 19 1994 Uncle Sam Has Too Much Helium Stockpile Means Billion Debt E PASO TX IA VOL 83 83rd Year 1 J C 3 By H JOSEF HEBERT Associated Press Writer WASHINGTON The govern ment is awash in helium And it has run up a debt over the last three decades of billion for being the worlds biggest stockpiler of the gas A House Natural Resources sub committee is the latest to examine how to get the Interior Depart ment out of the helium business and stem the losses to the Treasury Critics say that while govern ment once needed to ensure ade quate helium supplies today it competes needlessly and with a thriving private he lium industry The time has long passed to get rid of this unnecessary pro said Rep Richard Leh chief sponsor of legislation to scrap it For years the Interior Depart ment has stockpiled enough heli um to fill enough balloons to sup ply birthday parties for every man woman and child in the world 10 times over It hasan esti mated 32 billion cubic feet of um stored in a gas field in the Texas Panhandle near Amarillo Helium comes from natural gas In 1960 concerned supplies might run out Interiors Bureau of Mines began buying it to keep in reserve The Defense Department was interested in helium as far back as World War I for blimps and ob servation balloons but today the biggest government demand comes from NASA which uses an estimated 70 million cubic feet a year for the space shuttle and oth er purposes Demand has increased 10 per cent a year to more than 3 billion cubic feet of helium used annually worldwide according to Carl Johnson chairman of the indus trys Helium Advisory Council More than 90 percent of the worlds helium is found in the United States By law government agencies such as NASA and the Defense Department must buy helium from the Bureau of Mines which operates the Texas storage area and processing plant House Natural Resources Com Chairman George Miller whose panel has tion over the Interior Department said the government program is long outdated and already has cost the taxpayer too much For decades weve spent more buying helium than weve made It makes no Miller said The Bureau of Mines bought the helium in the 1960s for mil lion but it borrowed the money from the Treasury and has never paid it back Over the years interest has ballooned the debt to billion and it continues to climb Field Day Fun StaH Photos by Jerry Welch Kv Refugees in Stadium Shelled 20 More Dead In Rwanda Today NAIROBI Kenya AP Rwandan troops fired mortar shells into a stadium sheltering thousands of people under the pro of peacekeepers to day killing about 20 and wounding 50 and Red Cross officials said efforts to achieve a cease fire and get food and medicine to victims of Rwandas ethnic blood bath were almost totally para said Abdul Kabia execu tive director of forces in Rwanda He said 20 or 30 mortar shells exploded in the national stadium and the surrounding area One also hit the roof of ters 150 yards from the stadium but did not explode Kabia Kabia did not have casualty fig ures JeanLuc Thevoz a spokes man for the International Red Cross in Geneva said aid workers reported about 20 dead and 50 wounded The government and rebels had agreed to make the airport neu tral ground so the United Nations could ship in planeloads of food and medicine but that agreement collapsed today Kabia said The army dominated by the majority Hutu tribe announced it Blocking of Jurors on Gender Disallowed wanted to put troops at the air port and this would make our positions vulnerable to fire he said The rebels of the Rwandan Patriotic Front meanwhile said they would not back off on their conditions for signing a ceasefire Kabia said The conditions include an end to atrocities by Hutu gangs the dis banding of the presidential guard and the arrest of those responsible for atrocities Tanzania offered to play host to peace talks but the warring fac tions had not responded Kabia said Inside WASHINGTON AP Keep ing people off juries because of their sex is just as unlawful as ex them based on their race the Supreme Court ruled today By a 63 vote in an Alabama case the court said the Constitu tions guarantee of equal protec tion bars jury selection In a series of decisions since 1986 the court had barred lawyers from excluding black potential ju rors because of their race But lower courts had split over ex tending those rulings to exclusions based on gender In another decision today the Supreme Court ruled that inves tors have no right to sue someone they suspect helped perpetrate a securities fraud The ruling leaves investors without any federal remedy against such aiders and abettors An investor could still sue some one who directly violated the secu law however The gender decision further erodes lawyers traditional use of peremptory or automatic chal lenges to remove potential jurors without having to explain why With respect to jury service and women share a history of total exclusion a history which came to an end for women many years after the em chapter in our history came to an end for Justice Harry A Black mun wrote for the court The decision is a victory for paternity lawsuit defendant who says his rights were violated when a jury decided he fa thered a boy born four years ago Alabama authorities sued James Bowman contending he fa thered Phillip Rhett Bowman Bi ble The boy was born to Teresia Bible on May and a blood test showed a high probability that Bowman is Phillips father A jury of 12 women decided against Bowman after a 1991 trial in Jackson County and ordered him to pay a month in child support County and Dear For the National Valley Weighs More Strikes In Bosnia Antiaircraft guns seized P 72 WASHINGTON AP With Bosnian Serbs growing more defi ant President Clinton today con a range of military and diplomatic measures A proposal to broaden the use of NATO air power was getting serious consideration Clinton met for 90 minutes this morning with top national securi ty advisers to discuss the turmoil in Bosnia and the siege on Gor which the United Nations commander says threatens to be come a major humanitarian Speaking to reporters on the South Lawn Clinton said for the first time that a Russian proposal for a summit on the Bosnia trage dy deserves serious In Moscow Russia President Boris Yeltsin issued a statement calling for a summit of the United States Russia the European Union and the He said the conflict in Bosnia is on the verge of a dangerous escalation and that the Bosnian Serb leadership must fulfill its promise to stop the fight ing and withdraw from Showing a hint of optimism Clinton commended Yeltsin for the statement We are working closely on this and I believe that we have a chance to build on what has been done the last several he said Clinton was meeting with his ad visers again this afternoon to dis cuss the possibility of increasing the use of NATO air power Were discussing exactly how Air page 3 Scam in CG Costs Woman Staff Reports An 83yearold Casa Grande woman was tricked out of when she was the vic tim of a scam artists pigeon drop last week Detective Mike Glaser in the scam for the Casa Grande Police Depart ment said elderly people are often the victims of the pigeon drop when they are trusting and therefore vulnerable He explained that in a pigeon drop the victim is convinced to put up earnest money against money the scam artist claims to have found The victim is told the cor artist found the money but does not want to turn it over to police The hook is that the victim is told he or she can split the money if no one claims it Glaser said people fall for it all the time Because these elderly peo ple are trusting it makes them he said And they usually have some money saved up But these people dont care if they ruin some ones life This conning is their job and they just dont care who they hurt Thats why these people should go to He said police suspect the con artist had been trolling the parking lot for elderly people In the case of the Casa Gran de woman last week he said the con was a variation of the pigeon drop but the end result was the same She told police she was ap by a woman in the parking lot at Kmart Thurs day The woman told the 83 yearold woman she found some money and needed a ride to her lawyers office for ad vice on what to do with it While in the elderly womans car the woman said her law yer could get a good deal for some certificates of deposit for the 83yearold The elderly woman cashed a bond for and handed cash over to the strange woman She said she drove the woman to a law office in Casa Grande and the woman took the cash to the front door That was the last time the victim saw the woman or her money People in the law office told police the woman never came inside Glaser said an accomplice was probably waiting in back of the offices with a getaway vehicle The victim did not report the crime until the next day Glaser said scams like this often go unreported because the victim is embarrassed Police said they do not have any suspects but do have some leads The con artist was described as a nicely dressed white 30 yearold woman with black hair Overhaul For Social WASHINGTON AP Rep Dan Rostenkowski wants to pro tect the financial future of Social Security by reducing next years adjustment raising the retirement age cutting bene fits and increasing payroll taxes according to a report in todays New York Times Rostenkowski told the Times his plan would guarantee the Trea ability to pay all promised benefits for at least 75 years The chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee said he wanted to stimulate debate on ways to solve the prob lems of Social Security without drastic cuts in benefits or sharp increases in taxes Under proposal the adjustment ex Proposed Security to be 3 percent would be limited to percent The plan also would Increase taxes for Social Se curity beneficiaries who are sin gle with incomes of to a year or married and earning to Reduce benefits over a 50 year period beginning in the year 2003 for workers with average and aboveaverage earnings but not for those with low earnings Increase the age at which workers may retire with full bene fits The retirement age of 65 is currently scheduled to rise gradu ally reaching 67 for people born in 1960 or later Rostenkowski would speed up the change so it would take effect 11 years earlier for people born in 1949 or later
