Path: bloom-picayune.mit.edu!snorkelwacker.mit.edu!americast.com!americast.com!americast-post Newsgroups: americast.twt.news From: americast-post@AmeriCast.Com Organization: American Cybercasting Approved: americast-post@AmeriCast.com Subject: Headline Article Date: Thu, 29 Oct 92 14:38:17 EST Message-ID: \SE A;TOP OF THE NEWS;NATION \BY FROM WIRE DISPATCHES AND STAFF REPORTS S=NEW STORY Burning of dioxin draws Arkansas lawsuit LITTLE ROCK, Ark. - An environmental group sued yesterday to stop the burning of tons of waste containing high levels of toxic dioxin. The burning was scheduled to begin today. The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court by the watchdog group Governmental Accountability Project, accuses government agencies of endangering the public and circumventing federal safety regulations. It seeks an immediate order halting the burning at the Vertac Chemical Co. plant in Jacksonville, Ark., and a permanent injunction barring the burning of dioxin-contaminated waste at the site. "The dioxin released is likely to result in serious and unacceptable harm to public health," one of the group's attorneys, Mick Harrison, said in filing the lawsuit. Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton, the Democratic presidential nominee, has supported the incineration. The state Department of Pollution Control and Ecology is a defendant. S=NEW STORY FBI to open records on JFK killing FBI Director William S. Sessions yesterday said the bureau, in compliance with a new law enacted by Congress and signed by President Bush, will open "the few remaining FBI records" on the assassination of President John F. Kennedy that are still confidential. "It is essential that the American people be able to see . . . the few remaining FBI records that have not been released to the public concerning this tragic event in American history," Mr. Sessions said in a statement. He said FBI files relating to the assassination contain about 500,000 pages and that more than 220,000 pages were made public by 1978. The latter figure, he said, "represents a great majority of the information contained in FBI files." An FBI spokesman, Bill Carter, said there was no immediate estimate of when the agency would begin releasing the material. S=NEW STORY Denny sues city over riot beating LOS ANGELES - Reginald Denny, the white truck driver seen being beaten by a black mob at the start of the Los Angeles riots, has filed a claim against the city as a precursor to a multimillion-dollar lawsuit, his lawyer said yesterday. Mr. Denny's claim accuses the Los Angeles Police Department of failing to protect him and of allocating its resources in response to the riots in a racially biased way. His lawyer, Eric Ferrer, said people in south-central Los Angeles, a predominantly black area of the city and the flash point of the riots that broke out April 29, had always complained about the slow police response time. The claim is the latest in a stream of such complaints. Lawyers representing 1,800 people who said they had been injured or suffered damage to their properties during the three days of rioting filed similar claims Monday against the city as well as the county of Los Angeles. S=NEW STORY Astronauts greet sailors, students CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. - Columbia's astronauts exchanged a cheery "Aloha!" yesterday with sailors crossing the Pacific Ocean 180 miles below in a Polynesian-style canoe. In an elaborate radio hookup through the University of Hawaii at Manoa, the two crews compared travel notes and chatted with children in Hawaii. After chatting for several minutes, the crews took turns answering questions from three sixth-graders and one fifth-grader gathered at the University of Hawaii. The astronauts were asked about the most exciting aspects of flying in space. Replied Canadian astronaut Steven MacLean, a member of the Canadian national gymnastics team in 1976-77 who performed a partial flip in space: "It's a great deal of fun to play with your own inertia." S=NEW STORY Gays can't be barred from parade, panel says NEW YORK - Members of the Irish Lesbian and Gay Organization must be allowed to march in the St. Patrick's Day Parade, the city's Human Rights Commission ruled yesterday, reversing a judge's earlier decision. Administrative Law Judge Rosemarie Maldonado ruled earlier that the Constitution's religious-freedom guarantee gives parade organizers the right to ban the group because the parade is a religious-oriented event. The March 17 parade is sponsored by the Ancient Order of Hibernians, a fraternal Catholic organization, which says the homosexual group is an affront to the Catholic Church's stance against homosexuality. But the commission said yesterday the annual parade is made up of diverse groups "without regard to sex, race, color or creed to celebrate Irish heritage." S=NEW STORY GOP committee airing new campaign ads Congressional Republicans are trying to grab the mantle of change with a new series of generic television ads aimed at 75 competitive House races around the country. Rep. Guy Vander Jagt, Michigan Republican, chairman of the House GOP campaign committee, said roughly $500,000 will be spent to air the spots in about 40 markets during the last few days before Election Day. The ads hope to make the point with voters that Tuesday's voting will be "a national referendum on the Congress" in which Republicans, out of power for 38 years, represent change, said Mr. Vander Jagt, who has felt the sting of anti-incumbency in his own primary election defeat. One spot, a Keystone Kops-style ad showing antique cars driving erratically, concludes that "it's time to turn the keys over to someone else." S=NEW STORY Mobil sues U.S. over oil, gas leases Fairfax County-based Mobil Corp. filed a lawsuit yesterday to force the government to buy back oil and gas leases off North Carolina, Florida and Alaska because of congressional bans against offshore drilling. The suit, the second filed by a major oil company, asked the Interior Department to pay Mobil $183 million to reimburse the company for costs connected with the leases it bought in the 1980s. This article is copyright 1992 The Washington Times. 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