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Show !MONDAY, AUGUST 30, 1999 STATE OLYMPIC TRANSIT PLAN: LEAVE THE DRIVING TO US: A model Olympic transportation plan unveiled Friday has two goals: Get everyone involved in the 2002 Winter Games where they want to go - safely and on time without disrupting the ability of regular passengers to go about their daily business. "If we do the job right, [Olympic traffic] will have minimal impact on our community and commute,· Salt Lake Organizing Committee President Mitt Romney said. "Basically, this [plan) is a straw man. We're saying ·This is our idea. What do you think?' ... I'll be shocked if, when we're all finished, it's the same.· The plan envisions using just about every form of transportation available. Athletes will be transported from the Olympic Village to practice and competition venues in 12-passenger vans. Media will move in SLOC buses. Sponsors will provide their own buses, but have special access to venues. Utahns will be encouraged to use mass transit to attend downtown Salt Lake City events. For outlying venues, they will have to drive to park-and-ride lots and then either catch a SLOC shuttle or walk to the competition site. For people without their own vehicles, including many of the 65,000 out-of-town visitors projected to be in Utah daily for the Games, Romney said SLOC is talking with long-haul bus companies that might be able to provide that service. Also still to be fleshed out are transportation plans for downtown Salt Lake City, where nightly medals ceremonies are expected to attract large crowds to a parking lot directly northeast of the Delta Center, and for Salt Lake City International Airport. Separately, the Utah Transit Authority is working with its counterparts nationally to borrow 1,400 buses. UTA executive director John Inglish said commitments have been secured for nearly 1,000 buses so far. The transit agency also is looking for bus drivers, 60 mechanics to service the buses at three maintenance facilities that must be built, and additional light-rail cars to beef up its fleet for the north-south line through the Salt Lake Valley. Council executive director Wilbur Jefferies, in a July 29 letter to planners, also noted that "local governments need many of the details to make intelligent comments. There is considerable concern with the location of park-and-ride lots, the regional and local plans for spectators to access these lots, and the financing for the transportation program.· In addition , he noted that the plan "seems to ignore· air-quality. State airquality officials are analyzing the potential effects of Games traffic and are participating in the plan's development, said Dianne Nielson, the Utah Department of Environmental Quality's executive director. UNMARRIED COUPLES OUT AS FOST ER PARENTS: A controversial policy that bans unmarried couples from providing foster care for children in the custody of the state was formally adopted Friday by the board of trustees of the Division of Child and Family Services (DCFS). The action defies "best practice· as defined by the Child Welfare League of PAGE 1S UN IVERSITY JOURNAL FOCUS: THE WEEKTHATWAS America, a professional association that sets standards for more than 1,000 voluntary and public agencies (including Utah) in the United States and Canada. It is aimed at gays and lesbians, who cannot legally marry, and at cohabitating heterosexuals, whom some trustees believe pose a greater risk to vulnerable children than married couples. The board's 5-2 vote puts the long-debated policy in place and brings foster care requirements into line with an identically worded policy passed earlier this year for adoptive parents. "I read in the newspaper just last night of two cases in which boyfriends abused the children in their girlfriends' homes,· said board chairman Scott Clark, the driving force behind the amended policies. Clark maintains that unmarried and unrelated adults living together disproportionately abuse children more than married men and women. In past discussions he referred to gay couples as contributing to "gender confusion· of children in their care. The changes in foster care and adoptive parent policies will now be included in the section of the state's Child Welfare Manual that applies to the "best interests" and · safety of the child.· The section includes requirements for timely review of children's cases and for assurance of proper health care. NATION DENNIS CHURNS PERILOUSLY CLOSE TO EAST • COAST: Forecasters watching Hurricane Dennis make its way ....__ _ _ _ __. toward the U.S. East Coast said Sunday they believed the Category 2 storm would stradle the coast before being pushed out to sea National Hurricane Center director Jerry Jarrell said the chances of the storm hitting the shore were "really too close to call," but added that Dennis' size still cquld have a great effect on coastal areas. "It's a very large storm,· Jarrell said. "It doesn't have to come over the coast line to cause strong winds, but we are thinking perhaps tropical storm force winds rather than hurricane force winds." Jarrell said the most likely scenario was that a trough heading from Canada and across the eastern United States would "provide westerly winds and move it to the east.· Coastal areas from central Florida through South Carolina were feeling the growing impact of rain squalls Sunday as Dennis moved closer to the U.S. mainland from the Bahamas. Even though the threat of the hurricane's eye hitting land had diminished, weather watch and warning areas have been extended northward. A tropical storm warning from north of Savar;mah, Georgia, to Surf City, North Carolina, was extended further north to Cape Hatteras. A hurricane watch was in effect for the same area. The National Hurricane Center also issued a tropical storm watch north of Cape Hatteras to Cape Charles Light, Virginia. At 2 p.m. EDT, the center of Hurricane Dennis was located 170 miles southsoutheast of Charleston, South Carolina, moving to the north- northwest at about 1O mph and expected to turn further northward later Sunday. The storm was packing maximum sustained winds of 105 mph and was expected to strengthen, possibly becoming a category 3 storm with winds between 111 and 130 mph. Dennis' location also places it about 240 miles south of Wilmington, North Carolina, one of several southeastern coastal towns all too familiar with hurricanes. ·1think those of us who have been here a good while don't get into a panic and keep something in the garage or somewhere all the time, but you still got to get your last minute stuff,· Wilmington resident Beverly Wright said at a local grocery store. Evidence of the potential threat of Dennis is the damage left behind in parts of the Bahamas, especially the Abacos. where trees and utility poles were uprooted, boats were torn from their moorings and some buildings were ripped down. STUDY: HIV CANNOT BE ERADICATED FROM BODY: HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, cannot be eradicated from a patient's body even when it is undetectable in the blood, according to a study released Saturday by the National Institutes of Health . Researchers had hoped that after taking anti-HIV drugs for more than a year, patients with HIV could stop treatment and the virus would not return. The study results appear to indicate that patients may need to continue drug therapy for the long term . "It's going to be very difficult to take somebody off therapy and feel that the virus is not going to bounce back,· said Dr. Anthony Fauci, who headed the research team. Fauci and colleagues followed 18 HIVpositive patients who had been on the drugs for more than a year and in whom HIV had been reduced to undetectable levels. The researchers then took the patients off the drugs to see if the virus came back: It did . in all 18 patients, within three weeks. WORLD EXPLOSION AT ETHNIC HARMONY MEMORIAL UNDERSCORES HATRED IN KOSOVO: A strong explosion rocked downtown Pristina Saturday, damaging a communist-era monument to ethnic harmony and reflecting the hatreds hampering international efforts to establish normality in postwar Kosovo. Nobody was hurt in the predawn explosion, said members of the NATOled peacekeeping force, but the power of the blast rattled windows in a section of the Kosovo capital. The three-pronged concrete Brotherhood and Unity monument was erected during the rule of Josip Broz Tito, founder of communist Yugoslavia and a proponent of multiethnic coexistence. Tito died in 1980, and the breakup of Yugoslavia along ethnic lines turned bloody a decade later, with the Serb-Albanian conflict in Kosovo just the latest conflict. The blast destroyed one of the monument's pillars. NATO troops removed the remaining explosives, after the early morning explosion. SPORTS BRONCOS' DAVIS IS GREATEST ACCORDING TO SURVEY: Why all the list making? Because we love to prioritize. We can't get enough of it. It feeds our curiosity, stokes . our passions. Ranking things has become one Terrel Davis of our most important activities. In fact, it is currently our seventh most important endeavor, narrowly trailing professional fulfillment but maintaining a comfortable lead over watching "Funniest Videos.· To satisfy your hunger for rankings, we polled the personnel departments of the NFL's 31 teams and asked them to rank the top 50 players in the league. Athletes were evaluated on their current worth, not on potential or prior accomplishments. Thirteen personnel directors responded, naming a.total of 149 players. LEISURE DUCHOVNY SUES FOX FOR LOST 'XFILES' PROFITS: After battling conspiracies as FBI Agent Fox Mulder on The X-Files, David Duchovny is fighting what he sees as a reallife conspiracy to keep David Duchovny money he earned_on the show out of his pocket. In his first interview since filing a suit against Twentieth Century Fox Film Corp. Duchovny claims that the company cheated him out of millions from the show's profits. His suit also alleges that X-Files cr~ator Chris Carter (who is not a defendant in the suit) conspired with Fox to keep silent about the studio's reduction of Duchovny's depleted profit $haring. Duchovny says, in the Sep . 3 issue of Entertainment Weekly, " I've fulfilled my contract and I want them to fulfill .theirs." Duchovny's complex suit alleges that he's a victim of corporate synergy. He charges that Fox Film Corp. intentionally undersold X-Files reruns and show rights to its own subsidiaries such as the cable network FX and book publisher Harper Collins. In doing so, the suit says, the company was able to boost its own bottom line at the expense of Duchovny's cut as a profit participant. Duchovny's legal team says, Carter received in excess of $30 million and a new series as compensation for the potential money lost from Fox's selfdealing which also reduced the actor's own cut. · In response to the suit, a Fox spokesperson says, " We have nothing but respect and appreciation for David... To see that' he's apparently being led by his own advisers into believing that Fox acted inappropriately in its exploitation of the show rs saddening." Duchovriy says that this will without question be his last season on The XFiles. He claims, however, that hi-s legal battle has nothing to do with that decision: ·~s much as I love the show, I think for me this will be the end. ,.. |