OCR Text |
Show iUf til 1 I LvJciiULllOjOU uu Wednesday, December 2, 1992 The Daily Herald e telescope reveals views of distant mlavAe By PAUL RECER AP Science Writer Court examines tax refund case - WASHINGTON Views of a cluster of that be sven billion to 10 may galaxies billion light years away, perhaps the most distant ever sighted, have been captured by the Hubble Space Telescope. Astronomer Alan Dressier of the Carnegie Institution in Washington said Tuesday that the distant objects were discovered in the background of a study of galaxies about 4 billion light years away . At first, he said, the distant points of light were considered only "a nuisance" that interfered with study of the closer objects. But further study suggested that the nuisance lights may, in fact, be an important discovery, Dressier said. - WASHINGTON (AP) Billions of dollars are at stake as the Supreme Court studies whether states must refund taxes collected unlawfully from retired federal workers. The high court in 1989 ruled that states may not tax federal pensions while exempting the pensions of their own retired state and local government employees. Left undecided was whether that ruling applied retroactively, and whether states must refund taxes already collected under the discriminatory method. Some estimates of how much money states would have to refund if the justices say their 1989 ruling should be applied retroactively top. $2 billion. Utah gets - mini-seri- away. heel-shape- spiral-shape- "Though the superposition of the cluster objects and the quasar could be a coincidence, both are so unusual that there is good reason to believe they are all members of the same cluster," said Dressier. "This galaxies A cluster is a group of galaxies that are a gravitationally bound unit. A cluster may include thousands of galaxies, each with 100 billion or more stars. Astronomers estimate there are more than 3 billion galaxies in the The objects do not appear to be in the elliptical, spiral or round shapes most common among galaxies closer to Earth, he said. This suggests that the more distant objects universe. I iI ' Senate probes Packwood case i Associated Press Writer WASHINGTON f 7 into the probe Tuesday by announcing the inquiry would begin while Congress is in recess. Women's groups in Oregon had urged the committee to act now, even though the investigation will be carried on next year by a newly constituted panel. committee is The losing its chairman and vice chairone defeated, the other reman and possibly other memtiring bers. The women's groups have, urged that one of the six female senators who will be in office next year be appointed to the commit- VT f" to-;d- ay New drug may help treat cancer By SUSAN FAHLGREN Associated Press Writer two-ye- semi-synthet- ar ic White House decides on new food labels By DIANE DUSTON Associated Press Writer - ld ld Kidney failure rate higher for blacks - New labels WASHINGTON that will tell consumers the nutritional contents of virtually every packaged product in the grocery store were chosen by the White House today, according to administration and industry sources. The labels not only will explain the number of calories and amounts of other nutrients but put the food in the context of a daily sample diet of 2,000 calories and 65 grams of fat as advocated by the Food and Drug Administration, said the industry sources. The rules apply to both foods regulated by the FDA and meat products regulated by the Agriculture Department, but exempt foods sold in restaurants, according to the industry sources, non-me- . at tee. Additional pressure to act quickly came from Senate leaders. Ma- Galveston, Texas. About 270 people attended the event. People around the world marked the day with rallies, protests and vigils. jority Leader George J. Mitchell, privately conveyed to Chairman Terry Sanford, also expressed publicly his view that the panel should begin an inquiry now. Minority Leader Bob called publicly for a Dole, swift investigation. d former Ten women staff members or lobbyists accused the veteran senator of unwanted sexual advances in a story first reported by The Washington Post on Nov. 22. C, The drug is made from the needles of the tree and is related to taxol, a promising anticancer drug derived from the bark of the rare western Pacific yew tree. Because taxotere is made from needles, it would be easier to produce in large supply. Results of the study by Dr. Rich eight-hou- - World AIDS Day observers hold up candles during a prayer at the end of a ceremony Tuesday at the Galveston County Courthouse in "But we were definitely in the running, until Amendment 2 passed, because of the variety of indoor locales. Plus, the producets were enthusiastic about Colorado's numerous outdoor locations . ' ' r ABC Filming of the which is set largely in Colorado and Nevada, would have begun shooting in February. mini-serie- s, A KISSIMMEE, Fla. (AP) fourth young man was arrested in connection with a carjacking that ended with two execution-styl- e killings, police said. Three men and a woman were kidnapped Saturday by gunmen. The carjackers took the group to a pasture and forced the three men to tstrip, lie down and place their hands on the backs of their heads. One of the attackers then shot each one, police said. man and a A killed. Another were boy man who was left for dead survived because the bullet !was deflected by his hand. The woman escaped injury. Three men who were arrested on Monday and Tuesday admitted iaking part in the carjacking. Somber occasion facility. rt ily," he said. "That's a legitimate reason for filming there because Colorado can't match such a single Police arrest fourth carjacking suspect AP Pholo Initial clinical HOUSTON trials of a drug derived from the European yew tree show it may be helpful in treating ovarian and breast cancer, researchers reported today. Taxotere stalled tumor growth in six of 10 ovarian cancer patients and produced a partial remission of breast cancer in another patient in the first phase of a study, the researchers said. state-of-the-a- Ta-com- a, al Not known for rapid action, the committee injected some urgency er anti-ga- y Mc-Cho- rd Blacks with CHICAGO (AP) a common type of diabetes or with hypertension are far more likely to 'develop permanent kidney failure than whites with the diseases, new Vnedical studies suggest, j Permanent kidney failure causes 540,000 Americans a year to need jddriey dialysis or transplants at a ost of hundreds of millions of dollars, Diabetes causes almost a third pf those cases and high blood pressure nearly another third, researchers said in today's issue of The Journal of the American Med-jcAssociation. i The journal had two studies on kidney failure, one covering diabetic men and women and the other men with high blood pressure. e. "Rich Rubinstein, Laurel's B-1- B The Senate Ethics Committee, acting only a day after receiving a formal complaint, is beginning a preliminary inquiry into sexual harassment alPack-woo- d, legations against Sen. Bob Direc- chief executive officer, informed us that, while his company was not making a boycott statement, officials did not want to create problems if cast members refused to work in Colorado," Klein said. A letter sent by Rubinstein to Klein over the weekend said, "Frankly it was 'neck and neck' between yourselves and another state until recently when a new factor surfaced and swung the decision away from Colorado, i.e., the passage of w hat we consider to be legislation by the maof Colorado voters." jority Amendment 2 prohibits laws allowing civil rights protection based on sexual orientation. Klein said filming facilities in Utah also gave that state an advantage. "Utah offers huge, sound stages near Salt Lake City, built by the Osmond fam- - is some of the best evidence yet that in clusters evolve and change over time," he said. es Colorado Film Commission tor Michael Klein. d. By LARRY MARGASAK Colorado had been in contention with Utah for the project, but a Lauletter from New York-base- d rel Entertainment Inc. said the success of Amendment 2 has spoiled Colorado's chances, according to HARLEM, Mont. (AP) don't believe mechanical" problems were responsible for ihe collision of two large military lransports near the Canadian border, an Air Force spokesman said. ; In Texas, the search resumed .today for four people aboard a bomber that slammed into a mountain about 150 miles southeast of El Paso on Monday. Searchers were unable to determine if the airmen ejected. One body was missing early today in the Montana crash, which occurred Monday night near Harlem, a town about 30 miles south of the Canadian border, said Capt. Ray Martell, spokesman at Air Force Base near Wash. , where the transports were based. j ar could be galaxies in the early stages of formation. Dressier said views of two clusters of galaxies 4 billion light years away showed that about 30 percent were spiral galaxies, or d formations of stars, gas pinw and matter. Among closer, and, hence, older, clusters of galaxies, only about 5 percent are 2. Investigators probe 'military plane crash i star-formi- A production DENVER (AP) to drop Colhas decided company orado as a possible filming site for based on a television Stephen King's "The Stand" due, in part, to passage of Amendment er ; 30 to 40 bright points that could be light from violence w ithin the galaxies. In one corner of the group, he said, is a quasar that is known from other studies to be about 10 billion light years away. Quasars, or quasi-stellobjects, are thought to be bright, active cores of primitive galaxies and most are found at points 10 billion light years milli-Serie- S The city's ; NEW YORK (AP) education chief has suspended a neighborhood school board for refusing to implement a new curriculum that teaches respect for homosexual parents. Schools Chancellor Joseph Fernandez on Tuesday appointed three members of his staff to reelected place the board in District 24 in Queens borough until it agrees "not to sabo'' tage an approved curriculum. I "I am truly saddened that we have come to this," Fernandez ?aid at a news conference. "Saddened by the irony that teaching children the fourth 'R,' respect for their neighbors and themselves, lias brought on the hateful condemnations' ' of recent months. I tJ better odds for site of Board suspended over gay issue nine-memb- To a ground-base- d telescope, the objects would be "just a bunch of fuzzy blobs," he said. But to the Hubble, sighting from above the distorting influence of the Earth's atmosphere, the blobs could be resolved into distinct features of light. A light year is the distance that light travels in a vacuum in one year, about 6 trillion miles. When light travels a great distance from its source to Earth, what is sighted is actually a view of the moment that the light was created and not as things are now. As a result, light that has traveled for 10 billion years shows the conditions of 10 billion years ago. This means the galaxies sighted are seen as they were near the beginning of the universe, thought to be some 12 billion to 15 billion years ago. Dressier said the distant cluster consists of sioner David Kessler to announce details. According to the law, the new labels are to be on foods by next May, but that deadline was expected to be extended. More than 270,-00- 0 labels need to be changed, the food industry has said Once these new rules are in place, all foods for the first time will carry standardized label information, enabling direct comparison of all grocery store products. According to the law that requires food relabeling, the rules were to be in place by Nov. 8, but the dispute between Madigan and Sullivan delayed the process. . Sullivan had insisted that the label use a sample diet of 2,000 calories and 65 grams of fat so consumers could understand how each consumed fit into who spoke only on condition of product they their daily eating habits. anonymity. Madigan believed the sample President Bush decided on rules diet complicated the label and after negotiagoverning the labels tions over three key areas broke pointed out that many people can eat more calories and grams of fat down between Agriculture Secrethan the sample shows. tary Edward Madigan and Health The meat industry also had opand Human Services Secretary Louis Sullivan. posed the sample diet because meat The two secretaries met with the is inherently high in fat and might president Monday. Sullivan went not seem as inviting to some conback to the White House today and sumers when put in the context of then scheduled an afternoon news the relatively diet. conference with FDA Commis low-fa- t, low-calor- ie ard Pazdur, associate professor of medicine at the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, were published in today's issue of the Journal of the National Cancer Institute. "It is highly unusual to have this level of activity in a Phase I study since most of these patients had been heavily treated and their cancer was still progressing," Pazdur said. "We are very encouraged by these results." The drug, .manufactured by Rorer which has its U.S. headquarters in College-villPa., is being tested at several cancer centers. Rhone-Poulen- e, The clinical human tests are funded through an agreement between the cancer institute and pharmaceutical companies', M.D. Anderson spokeswoman Catherine Burch Graham said. old said Dr. "It's encouraging," Robert C. Young, president of Fox Chase Cancer Center in Philadelphia and an expert on ovarian cancer. "In a Phase I trial, it's unusual to have a significant number of responders. Occasionally, you have a few, but usually you're just looking for a dose." The first phase of the study was designed to determine the maximum dose of taxotere that can be administered safely to patients. Thirty-nin- e patients enrolled in the clinical study were treated with different levels of taxotere for up to 12 months. All had advanced cancers, including ovarian, colon, breast and uterine. Previous treatments for all of the patients had failed. Successive groups of three patients received escalating doses of taxotere for five consecutive days. Pack-woo- The alleged victims have not complained to the ethics committee, although several are discussing doing so. Instead, the complaint was submitted by attorney Gloria AHred of Los Angeles, in her role as president of the Women's Equal Rights Legal Defense and Education Fund. "Any persons who alleged they are victims should seek the advice of counsel and make themselves, and any relevant information, available to the committee," Allred said in a telephone ,t takes charge of two - - v jf baby deliveries - e DETROIT (AP) Parks dreams of a career in medicine. Now the can put this on her resume: Took charge when mom and a neighbor both gave birth the same morning. When Shari Parks woke up with labor pains before dawn Monday, Charmaine ran across the street and asked Patricia Jackson to drive her mother to the hospital. Charmaine and her five siblings went with the women to Grace Hospital. When the children came home a few hours later, Margo Jackson. Ms. Jackson's daughter, was in labor. Charmaine dialed 911. With the emergency operator's help, the child helped coach Patricia Jackson and another neighbor as they ushered a girl into the world. "I wasn't scared," said Charhonor stumaine, a fourth-grad- e dent and oldest of seven children. "My mama's had babies all her life, so why should I be afraid of one little kid?" At the hospital four hours after Margo Jackson delivered her daughter, Ms. Parks gave birth to an boy. Char-main- -r v 1 v- "" y x M I v 1 ; ' 1 . S f . S ' si 1 y ' .fr.A VLrf M. ... faj AP Photo Charmaine Parks, 9, Is surrounded by her siblings, clockwise from right, Shari, Senina, Chanel, Jernaine and Andrew, Monday In Detroit. Parks helped her mother and a neighbor when they went into labor two hours apart Monday. r |