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Show fe gtafeon The Daily Herald a, Friday, February 12, 1993 Auditors question Interior Dept.'s use of travel perks Questionnaires weed out jurors By PHILIP BRASHER Associated Press Writer - LOS ANGELES (AP) A prospective juror afraid "the press would persecute me" was dismissed along with 13 others whose answers on a jury questionnaire disqualified them from serving on the Rodney King case. The fate of dozens of other potential jurors was unresolved until they could appear before U.S. District Judge John Davies. Davies excused the 14 panelists Thursday, leaving 284 in the jury pool. He ordered 75 prospects selected at random to appear before him on Tuesday for questioning. Meanwhile, a federal appeals court. weighed a news media requesquest to release the filled-otionnaires. The Associated Press and the Los Angeles Times claim a First Amendment right to see the questionnaires. 53-pa- ge ut - WASHINGTON Top Interior Department officials improperly used their government status to buy thousands of dollars in discounted airline tickets and may have billed the government for other personal trips, auditors say. The officials include the directors of the Bureau of Reclamation and the Fish and Wildlife Service and the former head of the Bureau of Land Management. In many cases, the officials mixed personal and official business to subsidize side trips to their hometowns, according to an Interior Department inspector general's report obtained by The Associated Press. "The travel regulations are very clear that you cannot use government-rate tickets for personal business. That's just not the purpose," Inspector General James Richards said Thursday. Agencies have asked officials to reimburse the government for some of the trips but denied that many of those cited in the report were improper. Department officials improperly bought $55,000 in government discounted air fares for personal trips in 1990 and 1991 , according to the audit. An additional $61,000 in trips that the department itself paid for ar port said. "It's incredible that these people have still learned nothing from the past several elections that taxpayers are angry over this sort of thing," said Pete Sepp, a spokesman for the National Taxpayers Union, a watchdog group on government spending. Dennis Underwood, who heads the Bureau of Reclamation, flew into Los Angeles, where his wife lives, on 20 of 55 business trips he took over the two years that were audited, the report said. John Turner, director of the Fish and Wildlife Service, was criticized for Hying to his ranch in Jackson Hole, Wyo., on a government ticket after a stop at his agency's regional office in Denver. In an interview, Underwood said he often arranged stopovers in Los Angeles to avoid staying in a hotel or returning to Washington between business engagements in other cites. "Most of my trips wound up with tremendous cost savings to the government," he said. "If you really look at it ... it made a heck of a lot of sense to do what I did. " The auditors said Underwood Turner was in Jackson Hole for days over the Christmas holi- 1 1 days, but he insisted he did agency work in the area for at least five of those. His agency, responding to the audit, insisted that all his trips were for official business. "X"A faces accusations V By RUTH SINAI - - 26-c- saved $3,900 using the discount air fares on trips that appeared personal. The bureau asked him to repay the government $175 for one trip the Bureau of Reclamation agreed was personal. On four of those, he used govefares despite reporting the flights as personal. He reported six other trips through Los Angeles as official even though they were personal, the auditors said. rnment-rate cases, officials extended official travel for personal trips and didn't reimburse the government, the re- Ambassador nominee officials familiar with the case. Associated Press Writer Among the alleged violations in 26-cwere use of an official car. and WASHINGTON Thomas driver to take Pickering's wife, AlClinton's President Pickering, ice, shopping, the sources said. choice for ambassador to Moscow, CNN A reported that the Pickerings OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) is being accused of retaliating were also alleged to have bypassed pileup on an icy highfiery a whistleblower who acagainst competitive bidding regulations way overpass killed three people cused him of financial impropriewhen they bought furniture for and injured at least 20. It was one ties. their official residence. n collisions of two Administration officials say Inspector General Sherman caused by a storm dumping snow don't believe the accusations, Funk conducted an they investigation Oklaajd freezing rain across first reported Thursday night by that did not find said wrongdoing, homa. CNN, will derail Pickering's nomseveral officials. The more serious pileup hapination. But the employee was reaspened on Interstate 40 at about But the administration is conto other duties that same signed 11:30 p.m. Thursday. It began 's review of a and alleged that the transfer k hit ducting thorough year, when two cars and a background, as with all was the result of retaliation by ice and slid into each other, the nominees, before sending his name Pickering, the official said. The Oklahoma Highway Patrol said toto the Senate, said one official who aide filed a complaint in February day. on condition of anonymity. 1991 with the Office of Special Some vehicles caught fire. The spoke a government agency The whistleblowing incident has Counsel three dead were in one car and established to the come to attention of several protect whistleblow-er- s were killed by the fire, the highand their comwho lawmakers White investigate the warned way patrol said. Twenty people House privately that Pickering, plaints. were treated at the scene for injuAfter a lengthy investigation, ries, and seven of those were taken now ambassador to India, could the Office of Special Counsel apto local hospitals, said Trooper face embarrassing questions if the State Department and submits the Clinton nomination. a proached Highway Larry Montgomery, "Do we expect trouble? No. presented its findings, several offiPatrol spokesman. cials said. Will we answer all questions senaThe findings are confidential, tors may have? Of course," said but CNN reported that the investithe administration official. The case involves a State Degation concluded Pickering had repartment employee who served as taliated against the employee. John Byerly, who at the time an administrative aide to WASHINGTON (AP) Being when he was PresidentPickering was ombudsman of the State DeBush's is not a hazard to your partment's civil service employhealth after all, says a study that U.N. ambassador. The employee complained to the ees, said in a Jan. 16, 1991, letter disputes an earlier report suggestState Department inspector gener- that Pickering had sought for more ing southpaws were at risk of dying in al 1990 that Pickering was vio- than a year to remove his aide from up to 14 years sooner than righties. lating regulations, ac- the U.S. mission at the United Nagovernment Scientists at the National Insticording to current and former tions. tutes of Health and Harvard University examined the rates of death among elderly people in East Boston, Mass., and found that people were at no more Three die pileup on highway were not documented as official business, auditors said. In other ar chain-reactio- it Jt ) I i'ljx Ur'l' Id h )Yi '.AWr V i J) P Z ... 1 Pick-ering- semi-truc- Lefties don't die t j"1. -- AP Photo Cheering boss Staff members at the state attorney's office in Miami, Fla., applaud Thursday while watching sf" as President Clinton nominates their boss, Janet Reno, for U.S. attorney general. TV nn T- - SALE ENDS MONDAY sooner, study says mi s left-hand- ed left-hand- ed risk of dying early than right-hande- d people. Dr. Jack M. Guralnik of the National Institute of Aging, a part of the NIH, said the data came from a community study that included 3,774 people 65 or older in East Boston. All deaths were recorded and analyzed. six-ye- ar Panel criticizes shuttle engines - A panWASHINGTON (AP) of experts gave NASA's space shuttle main engines an unenthu-siasti- c passing grade today, saying the engines are so fussy that they need constant maintenance. The panel said it considers the engine safe to fly provided that technical checks are made "vigorously and rigorously." "Operating experiences and the continuing occurrence of hardware problems indicate that the SSME (the shuttle's main engine) is not as rugged as is desired for such a machine," said the panel's report, released in Boston at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. el Government to test AIDS vaccine - The governBOSTON (AP) ment will begin studies next month to determine whether a vaccine and an antibody injection can head off AIDS in infants born to infected mothers, a researcher says. Dr. John L. Sullivan of the University of Massachusetts Medical School in Worcester, who led the group that designed the studies, said he is optimistic that many cases of AIDS in infants might be prevented. "Do I think we have the vaccine that's going to do the job? I don't think so," he said. But he added, "It's very likely it could induce some protection." Clinton wants deadline for trade accord extended By MARTIN CRUTSINGER AP Economics Writer - The Clinton WASHINGTON administration announced Thursday that it will ask Congress for the authority to extend the deadline for negotiating a sweeping world trade agreement. The decision was announced by U.S. Trade Representative Mickey Kantor following a meeting with the top trade negotiator of the European Community, Leon Brittan. two-ho- ur The action was the first word from the new administration on how it planned to deal with what had been the Bush administration's major trade initiative, an effort to rewrite the rules of world trade under the auspices of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade. These talks, known as the Uruguay round for the nation where they began in 1986, have been stalled for more than two years. Hopes were raised last year that the discussions could be concluded before President Bush left office, after Europe and the United States resolved a longstanding dispute regarding farm subsidies. However, the farm agreement began to unravel because of strong opposition from France and the last minute effort to conclude the Uruguay round went nowhere. The new administration had faced a deadline of March 2 for completing the Uruguay talks and notifying Congress of that fact. But with Kantor's announcement today, the administration signaled that it was not interested in rushing through a package that basically had been completed by the Bush administration but instead wanted more time to put its own stamp on any final agreement. j (km ?.w HI Plf A AlA J f said, 'I'm always happy to break anyone's stereotypes,'" said his wife, Yvette Walker. Twenty-si- x years after the Court struck down Supreme all laws forbidding racially mixed marriages, the Oak Park, Mich., couple find their lives are mainly free of racial prejudice or innuendo. There were 246,000 e last nearcouples year, ly four times the number in 1970, the Census Bureau said this week. An additional 883,000 couples represented marriages between whites and other races, such as Asian, Pacific Islander or American Indian; 32,000 were between blacks and other races. "And I w Ml ifalii .. I i YOUR CHOICE QUEEN 2 PC. EA. PC. or KING 3 PC. Must Be Sold In Sets FIRM OR EXTRA FIRM PROMO SSes. FULL PILLOW TOP FIRMER FIRM $S9ea TWIN. JSca. TWIN, ....'SSca. FULL. TVIN.... FULL THESE MATTRESSES SOLO SEPARATELY OR BUNKGEDS i 55 o BUNK Oemountebl Onftnteiwd frame only J J 12 framt only BOOKCASE BUNK S IN DAYBEDS FUTONS RECLINER STYLE Ea. 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