Historical Newspapers of South Carolina

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STATE Legislators offer time off to military COLUMBIA (AP) — Legislators are trying to give the state’s mil itary personnel breaks as the U.S. wages war on Iraq. The changes would include letting state workers use sick leave and vacation pay to sup plement their active duty pay; al lowing troops stationed overseas to delay paying property taxes and cutting income tax rates for service personnel stationed in South Carolina. The legislation is helpful and necessary when 3,000 people are deployed in support of homeland security, said Lt. Col. Pete Brooks, a spokesman for the South Carolina National Guard. Allowances, such as waiving tax deadlines, are “one less thing they have to worry about,” Brooks said. On Thursday, the House passed a resolution that lets peo ple called to active duty use 45 days of sick leave and vacation pay as a salary supplement. “It’s another way we can sup port those who are serving at tremendous personal sacrifice for those of us who are here,” said Rep. James Smith, D Columbia. Smith, the measure’s chief sponsor, is a lawyer and Army National Guard captain. Prisons to increase cigarette prices COLUMBIA (AP) - South Carolina inmates will have to pay more for cigarettes at prison commissaries beginning Tuesday, the state Corrections Department director says. Prisons director John Ozmint has decided to increase the price of tobacco products by 10 percent this week and raise the price an other 10 percent in November as part of a plan to make the agency smoke-free. Ozmint said already low cigarette prices for prisoners who enjoy off-brand cigarettes encour ages the inmates to smoke, and he said taxpayers are having to pay for increased health care costs. Since July 2000, inmate medical bills have climbed $6 million. “We’re doing this because it’s the right thing to do,” said Ozmint, a former prosecutor who had no experience running prisons when he took the job in January. “It’s wrong to make the taxpayer foot the bill for smok ing-related illnesses.” The increased tobacco prices come as the department has lost 1,000 employees, and is operating with a $28 million debt this year. NATION Pricier stents might be more effective CHICAGO (AP) - Much-antic ipated new drug-covered stents, expected to cost three times more than the standard variety, could actually save money in the long run by reducing heart pa tients’ need for expensive repeat angioplasty and bypass surgery, according to a new analysis. The new analysis, released Sunday at a meeting of the American College of Cardiology, offers some assurance that the stents will be worth the price, even though they might be a money-loser for hospitals. For several years, doctors have routinely left behind stain less steel wire coils to prop open heart arteries after forcing them open with balloon angioplasty. Nevertheless, the arteries fill up with scar tissue within a few weeks in about one-quarter of patients. The new stents are like the old ones but are coated with medicines intended to prevent fresh muscle tissue from grow ing into the artery and forming scars. They nearly eliminate an gioplasty failure. The Johnson & Johnson stent, coated with the drug sirolimus, is expected to be ap proved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration sometime this year. Nuns face trial for protest at missile silo DENVER (AP) - The nuns say they were exercising their right to free speech when they cut through a fence around a Minuteman III missile silo, used their own blood to paint a cross on the military structure and be gan swinging at it with hammers. Prosecutors say those actions interfered with the national de fense — a crime, that if a jury finds the women guilty, could put them behind bars for 20 years. Dominican sisters Ardeth Platte, 66, Carol Gilbert, 55, and Jackie Hudson, 68, head to court on Monday for a trial supporters say is ill-timed in the midst of war. “If it had been Iraq and these nuns had found these weapons ev eryone would have praised them as heroes. And that’s exactly the right response,” said Anabel Dwyer, a legal adviser to Platte. The nuns, jailed since their Oct. 6 protest near Greeley, maintain they were a “Citizens Weapons Inspections Team” that was symbolically disarm ing the United States. WORLD Rockets hit Kabul; no injuries reported KABUL, AFGHANISTAN (AP) - A rocket slammed into the head quarters of the international peacekeeping force in Afghanistan late Sunday. There were no reports of injuries. The compound, consisting of several buildings surrounded by high stone walls, is located across the street from the heavily forti fied U.S. Embassy. Few peace keepers were present at the time. “At this point, it appears that a building may have been dam aged,” German peacekeeping spokesman Lt. Col. Thomas Lobberingsaid. A second rocket hit the Pul-e Charkhi area, on the eastern edge of the Afghan capital. There were no reports of injuries there either. Police spokesman Haroon Asafi said the rockets were fired from several miles east of Kabul. The city is patrolled by nearly 5,000 peacekeepers, a 22-nation force under the command of Germany and the Netherlands. Despite their presence, Kabul has come under frequent attack in recent months. Officials blame Taliban and al-Qaida fugi tives and forces loyal to rene gade rebel leader Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. Indonesian crowds hold anti-war rallies JAKARTA, INDONESIA (AP) - Indonesians held their biggest demonstration against the Iraq war to date Sunday as hundreds of thousands around the world staged another day of rallies de nouncing the conflict. Chanting that America was the “No. 1 terrorist,” more than 100,000 Indonesians peacefully marched a mile from the British Embassy to the U.S. Embassy in Jakarta. Witnesses estimated the crowd was as large as 300,000. Protesters — many dressed in Muslim attire and representing the country’s largest Islamic groups — wore headbands say ing “Peace, No War” and carried banners that read “Bush, Iraq is not your killing field.” Outside the heavily guarded U.S. Embassy, speakers demand ed the United States pull out of Iraq and called for President Bush, British Prime Minister Tony Blair and Australian Prime Minister John Howard to be tried as war criminals. Indonesia is the world’s most populous Muslim nation and its government has been a vocal op ponent of the war. Panel CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1 ferent opinions about war, the dis cussion is to focus only on the emotional impact. “We will focus on the emotion al impact that the war has on stu dents and what they can do to cope,” Liggett said. We have peo ple on the panel who can speak about their experiences and what has helped them to deal with the anxiety of a loved one at war. The goal of the discussion is to share what is most helpful to. people who’s loved ones have been sent to war and what they can do to help their loved ones at war.” The Counseling Center will also offer group counseling for stu dents, faculty and staff on Wednesdays from 3 to 4:30 p.m. “We have an obligation to serve the USC community and want to make this an outreach program to reach many students,” Stricklin Parker said. “We aren’t sure how long this situation in Iraq will last, so it is important for us to begin this service early and offer our support to the students.” Comments on this story?E-mail gamecockudesk@hotmail.com Arrests CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1 Whipple said break-ins at USC are “a very big problem.” She and her boyfriend had parked in Blossom Street Garage after a trip to the movies when the break-in occurred, and another car was broken into as well, she said. Whipple said she was happy with the Police Department’s re sponse to her case but she does not know how to curb such break-ins. “There are cameras in the garages and people are still breaking in, so I don’t know how they can prevent it,” she said. Blossom Street Garage and Bull Street Garage are equipped with security cameras, according to the USCPD. First-year criminal-justice stu dent Ricky Johnson Jr. said he was pleased with the police re sponse to the break-in of his car on March 22. “It’s the major crime around here,” he said. Two subs, an amp, a CD player, CDs and money were taken from his car. McClendon thinks the economy could be to blame for the recent break-ins. “I’ve heard there have been more break-ins nationally. When people can’t get jobs, they have to get money somehow,” she said. McClendon recommends that students “be aware of where they park and what they leave in their cars.” “Look out for each other, and call the police if a car is being bro ken into,” she said. “I have USC Police Department programmed into my cell phone.” Comments on this story?E-mail gamecockudesk@hotmail.com Rally CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1 he also said Tuesday’s rally is aimed at raising awareness about the potential for all minorities to be represented at American uni versities. “I don’t think students realize how much authority they have,” he said. “They can stand and speak up in favor of diversity at their school, and people will lis ten.” Dingle said he worries about his activism and Tuesday’s rally being overshadowed by the me dia’s focus on the war in Iraq. Third-year administration in formation management student Jason Fayall is planning on join ing Dingle at the rally and said he jumped at the chance to go. “The case in the Supreme Court is concerning college admissions, so when this trip was brought to my attention I knew it was impor tant for them to hear the opinions of actual college students,” he said. Both Dingle and Fayall said they think the Supreme Court should decide the fairness of af firmative action and denounced President Bush for publicly op posing the policy earlier this year. Comments on this story?E-mail gamecockudesk@hotmail.com 1st Sgt. Timothy Watson, a member of the 173rd Airborne Brigade, gets into his gear in a C-17 jet transport headed towards Iraqi airspace. About 1,000 U.S. Army paratroops opened the war's northern front in dramatic fashion Wednesday when they jumped out of low flying jet airplanes at night and seized an airfield in Iraq's Kurdish controlled region. PHOTO BY KEN DILANIAN/KRT CAMPUS Airborne CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1 division. “This is probably the most dangerous part of combat and that’s urban. Sometimes you don’t find out who the enemy is until they’re shooting at you.” It is also a place where soldiers must tread with sensitivity. It is in Najaf that Ali, son-in law of the prophet Muhammad, is buried at an extraordinary shrine, its gold dome and twin minarets gleaming for miles. It is surrounded by low buildings and narrow streets, a nightmare of an urban battleground. Other Muslim holy figures are buried there and at the vast al Wadi es Salaam cemetery - one of the world’s largest - that forms a semicircle around the city. Officers speaking on condition of anonvmitv said some of the Iraai fighters were hiding there. A battle that destroyed these holy places could inflame pas sions of Shiites in Iraq and else where, most notably Iran. The United States has been hoping that Shiite Muslims, who represent 60 percent of Iraq’s pop ulation, will rise up against Saddam and his largely Sunni leadership. Ibrahim Khalili, a prominent Iranian Shiite clergyman, said: “I don’t think that anyone dares to attack a holy site in Iraq. An attack on holy shrines will only provoke the uncontrolled anger of Muslims, especially Shiites, with serious consequences to the attackers.” Capt. Micah Pharris, an attor ney in the 101st Airborne’s judge advocate general’s office, said some locations in Najaf are on the military’s “no target” list - to be fired at only in self defense. “We take our responsibility to these things very seriously and treat them with the utmost re spect,” he said. So the Army still held out hope that the battle could be avoided. Using loudspeakers mounted on Humvees, U.S. soldiers on Najaf s perimeter will soon beseech its townspeople to turn over Saddam’s zealots. To the north, brigades of the Army’s 3rd Infantry Division ad vanced 10 miles to near Karbala, just 50 miles from Baghdad - also a Shiite holy city. One battalion was slowed by the need to shep herd dozens of surrendering Iraqi soldiers. a military intelligence oincer, fluent in Arabic, spoke with fanners who now faced hundreds of U.S. armored vehicles outside their window. The officer held out fistfuls of candy for the children. The Iraqi men at first stood back, hands be hind their heads, struggling to hold up the sticks on which they had tied flour bags in a sign of surrender. The officer’s message: U.S. forces would not hurt them, but they needed to stay away from the American soldiers. As they spoke, artillery fired volley after volley at the nearby city of Al Hindiyah. Republican Guard positions between Karbala and Baghdad continued to be targeted for al lied bombardment - Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said more than half of Sunday’s sorties were di rected at the guard, Saddam’s best equipped and trained forces. At Tallil, the former Iraqi air base near the southern city of Nasiriyah that has been taken over the U.S. forces, A-10 Warthogs departed for missions throughout the day. Tallil grows in importance and size with every day; it is nearer ' to targets than take-off points in the Persian Gulf, Kuwait or else where. North of Baghdad, meanwhile, U.S.-backed Kurdish troops took control of territory left by Iraqi forces withdrawing toward the oil center of Kirkuk. They ad vanced almost 10 miles - slowly, as the cleared more than 300 mines, some the size of ashtrays, others as big as layer cakes. That territory came without a shot — unlike the continuing bat tles with Saddam’s fighters in the south. A British soldier was killed in action near Basra. Royal Marine Commandos at first said they cap- • tured an Iraqi general there, but British military spokesman Will MacKinlay later told BBC televi sion that the report was wrong, attributing the mistake to “the fog of war.” In what was described as the Royal Marines’ largest operation of the war so far, the British Press Association reported fierce fighting for the town of Abu al Khasib, southwest of Basra. It said 30 Iraqis had been killed and hundreds captured in what the British are calling Operation James, named after James Bond. A reporter for Sunday Telegraph of London reported that Kalashnikov rifles confis cated from defeated Iraqi soldiers were being collected by British troops to pass to pro-Western rebels in Basra. 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