Volume XkVH, Number 9
Committed to cultural
Lee Owen Stone
continues to
embrace diversity
Students at Lee Owen Stone
celebrate 30 years o f
diversty.
See Metro, page BI.
I ebfuaiy 26, 1997
PICA Presents
PureMovement
Haitian Dance and
lecture
Philadelphia Hip-Hop
dance troupe. Rennie Harris
PureMovement.
Native Jamaican Yanique
Hume will give a free public
lecture on Afro-Caribbean
dance.
See Black History, page B4.
See Arts & Entertainment, page B3.
(The
IN
™
REVIEW
WEEK
Court
rules on
abortion
protests
i
Study shows more black
males losing voting rights
According to a report released by the
Washington. C.C. - based Sentencing
Project, one in seven African-American
males have lost their voting rights due to
incarceration and felony convictions. An
estimated 1.46 million Black males have
lost the right to vote. The study discovered
that about 510.000 Black males are per
manently disenfranchised in 13 states.
The remaining 950.000 are ineligible to
vote in 31 states for the term of their
incarceration, probation or parole. Only
four states, Maine, Massachusetts, Utah
and Vermont, allow prison inmates to
vote.
he Supreme Court Wednes
day upheld fixed restrictions
on protesters at abortion
clinics, but struck down so-called
“floating buffer zones" for violating
free-speech rights.
T
Above: Sharnell Brown, 9, a
South Africa’s New
Constitution Takes Effect
student at Martin Luther
King School, shows LaSean
Woodland, 3 (left), and Tracy
Barber, 2, the new
computers at Self
Enhancement Inc.
community center.
South Africa! PAN A ) - South African's
new constitution, hailed as one of the most
progressive in the world, came into effect
at midnight Monday Feb. 3. 1997. It re
places the interim constitution under which
'he country has been governed since the
inception ofthe first democratically elected
parliament in May 1994. Its final certifi
cation in December 1996 by the Constitu
tional Court ended negotiations which
began after President Nelson Mandela's
release February 1990 from 27 years in
prison.
Left: An enthusiastic crowd
filled the new Self
Enhancement Inc.
community center in North
Portland during Saturday's
grand opening.
Southern African Women
Express Concern Over
Great Lakes Summit
South Africa (PANA) - Women from
five Southern African countries are de
manding representation at the United Na
tions Great Lakes Summit, which is sched
uled to be held at the end of March. The
women made this call at a recent Dutch-
sponsored conference on the role of women
in armed conflict. Winnie Madikizela-
Mandela, the President of the ANC
Women's League, addressed the delegates.
Empire State
Building reopens
I he observation deck of the Em
pire State Building reopened to the public
Tuesday with extensive new security mea
sures in effect two days after a distraught
gunman killed a tourist and wounded six
others at the famous New York landmark.
Lawmakers fault Mexico
Pressure mounted Tuesday for Presi
dent Clinton to send Mexico a tough
message and deny it Washington’s un
qualified blessing for its efforts against
drug trafficking. His administration must
announce by Saturday the verdicts on
Mexico and 31 other countries in the
process known as "certification.” But last
week. Washington was caught by surprise
when Mexico dismissed its top anti-nar
cotics official, charging that he had ties to
a drug kingpin. Decertified countries face
U.S. economic sanctions.
Photos by Nell Heilpern
The high court upheld part of an in
junction in upstate New York which
banned demonstrators within 15 feet of
the clinics, but declared unconstitutional
the floating part requiring demonstra
tors stay 15 feet away from anyone who
does not want to talk to them
“The floating buffer zones are struck
down because they burden more speech
than is necessary to serve the relevant
governmental interests.” Chief Justice
William Rehnquist said for the court it?
the 26-page opinion.
He explained that the floating buffer
zones prevented demonstrators from com
municating a message from a normal
conversational distance or from handing
out leaflets on public sidewalks.
However, R ehnquist upheld the
fixed restrictions barring dem onstra
tors from near the clinic doorways,
driveways and entrances, saying these
limits were necessary to ensure that
people and vehicles have access to the
clinic.
The restrictions had been imposed
by a federal judge in 1992 because
protesters previously engaged in a cam
paign to h arass ab o rtio n -se ek in g
women and obstruct access to the clin
ics in Buffalo and Rochester.
Researchers clone lamb, raise questions
esearchers have cloned an adult
scientists who cloned the sheep. “We think
mammal for the first time, an
it would be ethically unacceptable and cer
astonishing scientific landmark
tainly would not want to be involved in that
that raises the unsettling possibility
of
project.”
making copies of people.
Carl Feldbaum, president of the Biotech
R
Scientists slipped genes from a6-year-old
ewe into unfertilized eggs and used them to
try to create pregnancies in other sheep. The
result: A lamb named Dolly, born in July,
that is a genetic copy of the ewe.
The feat opens the door to cloning prized
farm animals such as cattle, and should
make it much easier to add or modify genes
in livestock, experts said.
It's also scientifically stunning. Research
ers used DNA from the ewe’s udder cells,
proving that mature mammal cells special
ized for something other than reproduction
could be used to regenerate an entire animal.
Scientists had thought that was impos
sible.
Experts said the same technique might
make it possible to clone humans, but em
phasized that it would be unethical to try.
“There is no clinical reason why you
would do this. Why would you make another
human being?” said Ian Wilmut, one of the
nology Industry Organization, which repre
sents about 700 companies and research
centers in the United States and abroad,
agreed.
“ I can think o f no ethical reason to apply
this technique to human beings, if in fact it
can be applied,” Feldbaum said Sunday.
“The biotechnology industry exists to use
genetic information to cure disease and im
prove agriculture. We opposed human clon
ing when it was a theory. Now that it may be
possible, we urge that it be prohibited by
law.”
A report of the sheep cloning will be
published in Thursday's issue of the journal
Nature by Wilmut and colleagues at the
Roslin Institute near Edinburgh. Scotland,
and others.
Before the new work, scientists had been
able to take tissue from adult frogs and create
genetically identical tadpoles. But the tad
poles never developed fully into frogs.
To do the sheep cloning, scientists took
cells from the ewe’s udder tissue and culti
vated them in a lab, using a treatment that
made the cells essentially dormant They
also took unfertilized sheep eggs and re
moved the nucleus, the cells’ central control
room that contains the genes.
Then they put the udder cells together
with the egg cells and used an electric cur
rent to make them fuse. The eggs, now'
equipped with a nucleus, grew into embryos
as if they’d been fertilized. The embryos
were put into ewes to develop.
The process was horrendously inefficient.
O f 277 fused eggs, only one led to a lamb.
Wilmut said he expects the efficiency to
improve. Someday a dairy farmer, for ex
ample, might make a few clones of cows that
are especially good at producing milk, re
sisting disease and reproducing, he said.
A farmer wouldn’t want entire herds of
identical animals, because populations need
a diverse genetic makeup, he said Without
that diversity, a lethal disease that struck one
cow might wipe out all the clones, too
The advance will also provide a much
more efficient way to insert genes into live
stock, Wilmut and others said Inserted genes
can be used to make animals secrete valuable
drugs in their milk, for example.
Scientists currently insert genes into fer
tilized eggs in a laboratory, which is a very
inefficient way to produce animals that use
the genes properly
With the new technique, they could start
with a virtually unlimited supply of body
cells from an adult animal, use a much more
effective lab technique to insert genes, iden
tify cells that use the genes as planned, and
fuse them to eggs.
Wilmut and colleagues published research
last year that suggested this technique could
be done by inserting genes in embryo cells.
But body cells from an adult are far more
plentiful than embryo cells, making the idea
more feasible.
Ian Wilmut, who headed the team that
created Dolly, said genetic science was
nowhere near reproducing humans But
President Clinton ordered an urgent in
quiry into the ethics of cloning and Nobel
peace prize winner Joseph Rotblat com
pared the breakthrough with the creation
o f the atom bomb
Oklahoma bomb witness admits mistake
mechanic who said he rented
The hearing was to resume this morning.
Timothy McVeigh the truck used
Kansas auto mechanic Tom Kessinger
in the Oklahoma City bombing
told the FBI a few days after the April 1995
is unreliable because he misidentified
bombing that he rented a Ryder truck to
another man as a suspect, the defense
McVeigh. He also said McVeigh was ac
argued.
companied by a burly, heavy-browed man
A
The mechanic was among a handful of
witnesses who testified Tuesday at a pretrial
hearing to determine whether they will ap
pear at McVeigh's trial on March 31 The
defense wants a federal judge to bar their
testimony, arguing that they were influ
enced by widespread publicity.
who came to be known as John Doe 2 in an
FBI sketch circulated worldwide
But Kessinger said Tuesday that he was
wrong about the second man. saying he had
actually described a soldier who came into
the shop the day after McVeigh
Kessinger said he realized in I /ember
after looking at photographs that he had
described Todd Bunting The FBI has since
cleared Bunting of any role in the bombing.
"I think I made a mistake,” Kessinger
testified “My memory was in error.”
McVeigh’s lawyers claim the admission
bolsters their arguments that Kessinger is
unreliable. They said his recollection should
have been best right after the crime, claim
ing his story changed to suit the prosecution's
version of events
“ How could you be so wrong 60 hours
after the event, and so right a year and a half
later?" McVeigh's lawyer, Stephen Joi
asked. Kessinger did not answer
Outside the court, Jones said intense p
licity was one reason why witness sto
changed
"Ih at and the $2 million reward and
17 to 19 meetings with prosecutors mi
have had an influence,” he said
McVeigh and Terry Nichols are char
with murder and conspiracy in the bomb
of the Oklahoma City federal building
killed 168 people No trial date has been
for Nichols