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Max 12, 1999
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Star Wars
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ITHESl
REVIE
NATO Attacks
Yugoslavia
NATO had agreed to stop their air
campaign if Yugoslavia agrees to
w ithdraw their estim ated 40,000
troops and special p o lice from
Kosovo. So far, there has been no
evidence o f that. Serb media cited at
least seven people killed from the air
raid attacks. Chinese and Russian of
ficials expressed their condemnation
ofN A TO ’s indiscriminate bombings.
An Evening With Family & Friends
future careers, which include becoming
authors and entrepreneurs.
Bx D ionne P eeples
C'O NTRIBITINC W R IT E R
Margaret Carter
hen it comes to pressing on de
After an incident with an abusive
spite of, and paving the way for
husband in 1967, M argaret C arter
others, Margaret Carter, Kay
headed to Portland
a place she had
Toran and Jaki W alker stand out. only
This dreamed about.
trio o f African-American women have
“I left Shreveport, Louisiana with five
worked to put this state in the forefront o f
babies, a hundred dollars in my pocket
politics, housing and service to children
and no place to stay. Period.”
and families.
She never regretted it.
As each leaves her current position,
Carter retired as a state representative
they all say that their mothers played an
and as a counselor o f 25 years at Portland
integral role in their success. The les
Community College- Cascade campus
sons they learned from their mothers
earlier this year. She continues to work at
will continue to play a part in their
W
PCC as a community workforce special
ist. She also has started her own business,
M.Carter and Associates, and will be
come a lobbyist. In 2001, she plans to run
for the state senate.
O regon’s term lim its prevented her
from seeking another term as state rep
resentative.
“You can’t change from the outside,
you must make change from within,” Carter
said o f politics.
Carter's mother, Emma, believed the
same thing in addition to hard work.
At the age o f 7, Carter went door-to-
door with her mother to register black
people to vote in Shreveport, La.
Her father, Rev. Hilton Hunter held
NAACP meetings at his church.
The Ku Klux Kian threatened her par
ents, once running them off the road.
But that never deterred her parents’
efforts to use the political system to make
positive change for their community.
C arter has done the same thing for
her com m unity.
During her time in the Legislature.
Carter helped make the Rev. Martin Luther
King Jr.'s birthday a state holiday. She
won legislation requiring the state to di
vest from South Africa. She also spon
sored a law creating enterprise zones
Continued on Metro Page
Chinese Finance
Scandal
Democratic donor Johnny Chung
testified before officials that a senior
Chinese official told him “we really
like your president” and gave him
$300,000 to funnel to the Demo
cratic Party and President Clinton.
Chung was a key figure in the 1996
campaign finance scandal that s cur
rently being investigated by the
H ouse G overnm ent Reform and
Oversight Committee. Chung had ac
cused Robert Luu (from Beijing) for
the death threats against him as a
result o f the scandal.
Yeltsin Impeachment
Hearing
Im p e a c h m e n t
p ro c e e d in g s
against President Boris Yeltsin have
begun despite strong opposition
from the governm ent and Russian
citizens fearing that it would desta
bilize the country. Some politicians
predict that Y eltsin may respond by
dissolving parliam ent, prom pting a
m ajor political crisis.
Killer Tornadoes
--------
A string o f killer tornadoes had
continued to surge through Oklahoma
and Tenessee causing a total o f seven
deaths and numerous victims in those
states. The latest damages in Okla
homa had raised the death toll to 41.
Oregon Freeway
O regon’s busiest freeway inter
change is headed for a m ajor re
modeling. State transportation offi
cials have announced plans to spend
some $60 m illion on the Interstate-
5/ Highw ay 217 interchange south
o f Portland. It presently handles an
average o f 140,000 vehicles a day
and has a high n u m b ero f accidents.
The rem odeling will take about two
years and detours will be put in
place to try and prevent congestion
due to construction.
---------------------------------------------Photo by M . Washington
Chuck Washington and Margaret Carter.
New Orleans Bus Crash Kills 22
AT&T
Software giant Microsoft Corp,
will tie forging an alliance with AT&T
Corp, to speed the delivery o f voice,
video and Internet services to mil
lions o f American homes. As part of
this partnership, AT&T will increase
its use o f Microsoft’s Windows CE-
based operating system software in
its digital set-top boxes, through which
AT&T expects to manage its high-
capacity cable links to customers.
----------------
~
NFCDC . NortheaSt Community Development Center). From left to right: Kay Toran. Jakl Walker,
A dinner party was held at Jakl Walker s home announcing her resignation from NECD (
Inquiry Begins
B y C hristi D aücherty
NEW ORLEANS, May 10 (Reuters) -
The death toll from a charter bus that crashed
in New Orleans while en route to a Missis
sippi G ulf Coast casino rose to 22 on Sunday
night, as investigators began piecing together
the cause of the city’s worst traffic accident.
Nineteen of the mostly elderly victims died at
the scene, while two died at the state Charity
Hospital and another on Sunday night at Tulane
University MedicalCentre, authorities said Some
were thrown from the bus during the crash.
At least seven other people were hospi
talized in extrem ely critical condition,
C harity H ospital spokesm an Jerry Romig
told Reuters shortly before midnight. "O ne
very critical w om an is in surgery now , but
we have no idea w hat the outcom e will
be,” he said.
Six other passengers on board for the
M other’s D ay gam bling excursion were
hospitalized w ith less serious injuries at
o th e r fa c ilitie s , N ew O rlean s p o lic e
spokesm an David Bow ser told Reuters.
“This is the worst vehicular collision in
the city’s history," Mayor Marc Morial said.
Details on possible causes o f the accident
will not be released until at least a prelimi
nary joint investigation by city police and the
National Transportation Safety Board acci
dent team is completed, Morial said.
The charter bus veered across three
lanes o f traffic on 1-610, struck a guard
rail and smashed into a concrete em bank
ment and metal fence outside the City
Park G o lf Course a t9 a .m .C D T (10 a .m.
ED T) (1400 GMT).
Police said it took em ergency workers
more than four hours to free the bodies o f
victim s from the tw isted m etal w reckage.
Most o f the passengers were members of
a gambling club that often chartered buses
for excursions to the G ulf Coast casinos.
“This is the worst disaster w e’ve seen
here in years," Romig said. “W e’re deal
ing w ith very, very critically injured eld
erly people in their 70s and 80s suffering
from m ultiple fractures — skulls, chests,
legs — and blood loss.”
As w ord o f the accident spread, dozens
o f residents and some tourists lined up at
the local blood bank to donate blood for
victim s, blood bank officials said. Almost
100 people donated blood during the four
hours the centre was open.
Bow ser said the N 7S B team, which
routinely investigates all accidents involv
ing com m on carriers, began arriving in
New O rleans on Sunday night.
A uthorities initially said the bus car
ried 37 passengers, but later said that
more could have been on the charter from
LaPlace, Louisiana, 20 miles (32 km) west
o f New O rleans, to a casino in Bay St.
Louis, M ississippi The bus had a capac
ity o f 55 people.
“We still don’t know exactly how many
w ere on the bus since the com pany hasn t
com e up w ith a m anifest yet,' Bowser
said. “We do know that.. .some were treated
and released, but not how m any.”
C arl L aB ranche o f G ary v ille, La.,
whose 8 1 -year-old father was being treated
at Charity H ospital, said seven other fam
ily m em bers also were on the bus.
Romig said the driver, who was c riti
cally injured with a shattered pelvis, told
him he thought som eone cut in front o f
him and the last thing he rem em bered was
veering to the right.
Custom Bus C harter Com pany safety
engineer T errell W alker identified the
driver as 47-year-old Frank B edell, w ho
had been with the com pany for three years
and had a clean driving record.
He w ould not speculate on the cause o f
the accident.
Police are analyzing blood sam ples
from Bedell, a routine procedure in fatal
crashes, to determ ine if alcohol or drugs
w ere a factor in the wreck.
The east-bound lanes o f the highw ay
w here the bus crashed w ere closed for
nine hours, snarling traffic on other east-
bound routes through the city.