Historical Newspapers of South Carolina

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ON THE WEB © www.dailygamecock.com Read online five days a week. Clutch. * • Weather Forecast TODBV TUE. UiEB. THU. # # # # High 1 High 81 High 83 High 81 High 82 low 51 low 53 low 58 low 60 low 62 CAROLINA 0 BRIEF • USC to help develop hydrogen engines USC announced a partnership Friday to develop and test a system that would convert diesel-powered engines to run on hydrogen. The College of Engineering and Information Technology will work with Siemens of Columbia and XRDi of Beaufort to develop a system that would inject hydrogen into diesel engines. The group believes the project will be ready for commercialization in five to eight years. -‘ THIS WEEK © USC TUESDAY USC Left Bank Big Band concert: 7:30 p.m. School of Music 206 WEDNESDAY Columbia jazz Orchestra concert: 7:30 p.m. School of Music 206 THURSDAY “Classical and Quantum Properties of Black Holes": 3:45 p.m. Jones Physical Science Center 409 Town council still owes fees after Wiccan wins lawsuit The Dssciated Press GREAT FALLS — The attorney for a Wiccan who successfully sued the town to remove the name of Jesus Christ from pre-meeting prayers says if , the town doesn’t pay up next week, he’ll ask a federal judge to enforce the order so he can collect his fees. , Federal Judge Cameron Currie last month ordered the town to pay about $53,000 in legal bills Darla Wynne incurred during her four-year fight over the prayers. The time to appeal that decision is running out and the town has taken no action to pay the bill. The Town Council meets Monday, but its agenda does not include action on the federal court order, said Mayor H.C. “Speedy” Starnes. If no action is taken, the 30-day window the town council has to tile a notice or appeal over Curries ruling about payment would most likely expire before council meets again in November. Herbert Buhl, Wynne’s attorney, successfully pursued the lawsuit that ended in June when the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear the town’s appeal of a lower court decision that it improperly favored one faith with its prayers. “It might take sending the federal marshal out and see what they’ve got worth $53,000,” Buhl said of the Town Council. “You would think they would drop it and move on. But they are used to doing things the way they want unless somebody bucks the system.” It would be unusual for the town not to pay, said Andrew Siegel, a University of South Carolina law professor and constitutional law expert. Get ON THE BUS Nick Esara/TH E (JAMEIKKJK USC students bound for the Gulf Coast prepare to leave Wednesday. The students had volunteered to help Hurricane Katrina victims. POLICE REPORT THURSDAY, OCT. 13 Fire (non-suspicions), 8:30a.m. Coker Life Sciences Building, 700 Sumter St. The complainant said a small fire caused minimal damage in the motor of the EM center chiller. Fire and safety crews were notified and responded. Reporting officers: Gooding, Brewster Collision, 4:40p.m. Intersection of Pickens and Wheat streets A legally parked car was struck by another vehicle, which left the scene. The parked car sustained damage to the door and front passenger-side quarter panel and the headlight/bumper. Estimated damage: $2,500 Reporting officers: Gooding, Brewster FRIDAY, OCT. 14 Assisting another agency, fugitive from justice, 2:05 a.m. Intersection of Gervais and Pickens streets The subject was a passenger in a white Chevy van stopped for acting suspicious. It, was discovered that the subject was wanted in Texas for parole violation. The National Crime Information Center hit was confirmed, and extradition was promised. The subject was arrested, handcuffed, searched and transported to Richland County Detention Center. Reporting officer: J.E. Silcox. Assistance rendered, 3 a.m. Capstone House, 902 Barnwell S Reports are taken from the (JSC Police Department. Elliot Fields was highly intoxicated and was transported to Baptist Hospital by EMS. E. Reporting officer: J.E. Silcox. Mining companies paying 19th-century prices for public lands John Heilprin THE ASSOCIATED PRESS CRESTED BUTTE, Colo. — The ruddy slopes of 12,392-foot Mount Emmons loom over this town, drawing hikers, backcountry skiers and snowshoers. But to residents such as Jim Starr, they also stand for what is wrong with the nations antiquated mining laws. Those laws allowed the Bush administration to sell 155 acres of public land on the “Red Lady” to a mining company for less than $900. The land has deposits of molybdenum, a gray metal used to make steel, alloys and lubricants. “It’s a huge threat. If anyone did put a mine in there, it’s hard to imagine that it would not destroy this area,” said Starr, a lawyer and Democratic chairman of Gunnison County’s board of commissioners. The sale was made possible by an 1872 mining law that lets the government sell, for just $2.50 or $5 an acre, public lands that contain minerals. This land sale, known as a patent, gives companies absolute tide to the property. Since October 1994, Congress has voted each year to renew a temporary ban that prevents companies from submitting new patent applications to buy more government land at rock-bottom prices. That left the Interior Department’s Bureau of Land Management with 405 applications it had received before October 1994. Those applications came from companies looking to buy land managed by the BLM and the Forest Service. John Leshy, who approved 68 of those patents as the Interior Department’s top lawyer during the Clinton administration, said the law requires the government to give land away needlessly. “The mining law was a cover for getting the land for nonmining purposes like hunting, fishing, brothels or a saloon. I don’t think people need incentives to settle the West any longer,” said Leshy, a University of California law professor and author of “The Mining Law.” The Bush administration and Congress have made a push to approve the remaining applications — approximately 200 — that were unresolved when President Bush took office. Under the Bush administration, 139 were approved and 50 remain to be considered. The BLM’s deputy director, Jim Hughes, said the patents convey property rights, but not a free pass to disregard environmental laws. He said private investment, mosdy in the rural West, provides good jobs, but acknowledged that some oppose mining because of legitimate aesthetic values. “As always, the BLM is sort of caught between the two and we have to make decisions on those competing interests,” he said. “At the end of the day, we are told to follow the law. It’s not an easy choice.” Getting a patent is not easy. Slightly more than one-third of the 405 applications were withdrawn or rejected by the Bush and Clinton administrations, often for lack of supporting paperwork. Companies have to convince the Interior Department that the land has a valuable mineral deposit and it can be mined at a profit. Department officials say companies typically spend about $10,000 to $15,000 per acre trying to document that it is economically viable to mine there. Once a patent is granted, officials say, the law does not let them challenge a company if it drops its plan to mine at a site that could be resold as valuable real estate. The department acknowledges cases in which lands that companies had patented for mining were used for private, commercial development, such as at the ski resorts of Aspen, Breckendridge, Keystone and Telluride in Colorado and Park City in Utah. At Keystone, developers fetched $11,000 an acre in 1989 selling off more than one-quarter of the 160 acres the government had sold. The land was never mined. In Arizona, a Phoenix luxury hotel sits on 61 acres, part of an area that a businessman patented in 1970 for $153. He sold it to a developer for $400,000, plus a 1 percent share in future profits. Congress has made numerous efforts to change the law, and not even the National Mining Association is a vigorous defender. Spokeswoman Carol Raulston said the trade group would support updating the law so companies pay “fair market value” for patents. But advocates of overhauling the law have been thwarted by those resisting an end to the free-access approach to public lands upon which the nation was built. State At least 12 charged for video violence CHARLESTON — Police say 12 men in a hip-hop DVD shot around Charleston have been charged with crimes ranging from trespassing to murder. Detectives say that number could rise to 15. A The DVD, shot mostly in ® Charleston’s East and West side housing projects, shows men flashing drugs and wads of cash as they rap, holding assault rifles and handguns. “These are the men who could be the victims or suspects in homicides,” Charleston interim Police Chief Ned Hethington said. Nation Five die, 30 injured after truck hits bus OSSEO, Wis. — a bus | carrying high school students home from a band competition collided with a semi truck early Sunday, killing five passengers, the Wisconsin State Patrol said. About 30 people were transported to area hospitals after the crash, which took place shortly after 2 a.m. on Interstate 94 west of Osseo, patrol spokesman Brent Pickard said. The students from Chippewa Falls High School were returning from a competition at the University A of Wisconsin-Whitewater, ™ some 200 miles to the southeast of Chippewa Falls. World China space capsule lands after 5 days BEIJING — A space capsule carrying two Chinese astronauts landed by parachute in the country’s northern grasslands before dawn Monday following a five-day mission meant to affirm China’s status as an emerging technological power. 4 The astronauts Fei Junlong * and Nie Haisheng were “in good health” after their Shenzhou 6 capsule touched down at 4:32 a.m. local time in the Inner Mongolia region, the official Xinhua News Agency said. The two astronauts were shown live on state television climbing out of their kettle shaped capsule with the help of two technicians in red jumpsuits and climbing down a ladder to the ground. They smiled, waved to cheering members of the retrieval crew, accepted bouquets of flowers and sat in a pair of metal chairs ^ beside the capsule. * Nobody, . N'1 we mean nobody, covers use 4 better. Believe it. THifSoAMECOCK Cultural Awareness Commission Brings you: J2 Who was the first African “I American bfllionaifce? jf ^ f _____ k , M x / AH to J-wm'KMir uuxuuor u*jov : JJ,*uuvll