Logansport Pharos-Tribune from Logansport, Indiana • Page 3

Friday, March 9, 1984 Pharos-Tribune, Logansport, Indiana Page 3 Nation Reagan Challenges 'Baby Doe' Rule WASHINGTON (UPI) The Reagan administration, trying to keep its new "Baby Doe" rule alive, wants a federal court to take another look at its rejected attempt to get the medical records of a severely handicapped baby in New York. In requesting a rehearing by the full 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, the Justice Department said Thursday a three-judge panel of the court erroneously interpreted the law in upholding a ruling that denied it access. THE INFANT, known as "Baby Jane Doe," has been the subject of litigation since her parents refused to allow surgery they concluded could prolong her life but not improve her handicapped condition and anticipated retardation. By a 2-1 vote Feb.

23, the appeals court panel affirmed the decision in November by the U.S. District Court in Uniondale, Long Island, that barred the government from obtaining the records from University Hospital in Stony Brook, N. Y. The appeals panel held that Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, under which the government sought to intervene in the case, was never intended "to apply to treatment decisions involving defective newborn The decision was seen as raising questions about the validity of the government's newly reissued regulations regarding hospital procedures for hand- icappped infants. THE INFANT was born Oct.

11 with an open spinal column, an accumulation of fluid on the brain, an abnormally small head and a malformed brain stem. She had made some improvement but still is listed in critical condition. White House Counsel Edwin Meese, in written responses Thursday to the Senate Judiciary Committee, which is considering his nomination as attorney general, said Reagan opposes discriminatory medical care. "If confirmed as attorney general, I would be firmly committed to a policy of vigorous enforcement of the rights of handicapped persons," Meese said. Jet, Private Plane Nearly Collide HOUSTON (UPI) The Federal Aviation Administration is searching for the pilot of a small plane that flew into the path of a Continental Airlines jet carrying 84 passengers and came within 500 feet to 1,000 feet of the commercial craft.

The Continental plane had to take evasive action to avoid a collision, said Houston control tower officials. Television station KHOU-TV Thursday reported Continental Flight 152 from Mexico City was descending from 14,000 feet to 6,000 feet on its way to Houston's Intercontinental Airport when the incident occurred at about 5 p.m. CST Wednesday. The control tower officials said the Continental flight was following its normal flight path to Houston when a small, unidentified craft came on the screen. The smaller plane was believed headed for Houston's Hobby Airport.

FAA officials said they were investigating the incident and trying to locate the pilot of the small plane. Continental officials said their pilot reported the small plane came within 500 feet to 1,000 feet of the jet, but Roxanne DeLeon of Houston, a passenger on Flight 152, said the plane looked closer. She said she saw the plane pass right under the jet and the pilot had to climb abruptly to avoid a collision. She said the plane came "very, very close." "It would have hit us if we had not gotten up, "she said. Deficit Panel Dying 14 Injured A Greyhound bus that smashed into a group of stranded motorists and truckers who had stopped to help them on Interstate 71 in Mount United Press International Gilead, Ohio, is attacked to a tow truck.

The accident occured about 50 miles north of Columbus. At least 14 people were injured. WASHINGTON (UPI) President Reagan apparently is being squeezed out of this year's budget process with his two-party deficit- cutting panel all but dead and his fiscal 1985 budget getting the cold shoulder on Capitol Hill. The Democratic-led House Budget Committee has been meeting all week in private sessions formulating a spending plan for fiscal 1985. Indications are it will bear little resemblance to the document Reagan sent Congress last month a $926 billion spending plan that shows a $180 billion deficit.

"The president's budget doesn't even exist," a senior committee staff member said Thursday. "Nobody's mentioned the president's budget for months." The panel hopes to have its plan ready by mid-month. Reagan got a little consideration, however, from Senate Republicans. Although key committee chairmen are formulating a $150 billion three-year plan to cut the deficit on their own, they brought it to Reagan aides Thursday to see if there are "areas that we can sort of settle on," a Senate leadership aide said. The plan has three elements domestic and defense and tax hikes.

Reagan is against all but the most minor tax increases and has rejected trimming defense. But he is increasingly having to face the fact that he is not going to get what he wants, from either Democrats or Republicans. "Maybe we've gotten their attention" with the three-legged plan, a Senate Budget Committee aide said. The group held several meetings, but reached no agreements. So Dig! KITCHENER, Ontario (UPI) A widow says a bill collector has threatened to have her husband's body exhumed to repossess the suit he was buried in.

The Kitchener woman, who asked not to be identified, said Thursday she received a telephone call Tuesday from a credit bureau collector regarding a $400 suit her husband bought before he died two years ago. "He said, 'how would you like me to have the bailiff go over and dig him up and take the suit off of him'," the woman said. "I got mad and said, 'Go to hell. If you want to go over there and dig him up, be my Bushes Rattled SWEETWATER, Texas (UPI) The biggest problem with the annual rattlesnake-eating contest is that you've got to go out and catch the main course. The contest is part of the festivities in the 26th annual Rattlesnake Round-up scheduled to open today, with an estimated 400 hunters scheduled to beat the brush for the poisonous vipers.

If the hunt goes as well as last year, about 13,000 western diamondbacks will be squirming inside pits at the Nolan County Coliseum by the end of the three-day festival, said publicity manager Rick Rhodes. Human Hand Qcean Homes vacuatea May Be 'Force' COLUMBUS, Ohio (UPI) A television camera filmed the hand of Tina Resch pulling a lamp off a table, throwing doubt on claims the teenager was the center of psychokinetic activity. But even the newsmen who got the shot Thursday night said 14-year-old Tina may have been trying to escape the unrelenting attention of reporters determined to stay at the Resch home until there was evidence of her story. "We had the camera hooked up on wide angle, but she didn't know it was operating," said Drew Hadwal, with WTVN-TV in Columbus. "We left the house thinking we had recorded a bona fide psychic phenomenon, (of a lamp falling of its own volition) but when we replayed the tape at the station it clearly showed her reaching up to grab the lamp." But Hadwal said this one instance of recorded fakery does not explain the other bizarre happenings he witnessed at the house.

"I was seated at the kitchen table with Tina and all of a sudden the chairs spread I don't see how she could have sent them out in three directions like that," said Hadwal. McGovern Starts Ail-Out Effort CAMBRIDGE, Mass. (UPI) George McGovern today prepared for a crucial weekend of political campaigning in Massachusetts in an all-out effort to save his bid for the Democratic presidential nomination. The former South Dakota senator has said he must finish first or second in the state's March 13 primary to keep his candidacy alive. Recent public opinion polls have shown him trailing Sen.

Gary Hart of Colorado and former Vice President Walter Mondale in the state. Today he planned an old-fashioned political rally at historic Faneuil Hall, the same spot where Mondaje last week held a similar gathering to bolster his flagging support. Mondale Loosens Up ATLANTA (UPI) Walter Mondale has developed a strategy to help regain the momentum he lost to Sen. Gary Hart in New Hampshire, Maine and Vermont: let Mondale be Mondale. Abandoning his cautious, organizational approach to campaigning, Mondale has loosened up and launched into an old-fashioned "give 'em hell" stump campaign that has left some audiences cheering and some surprised.

And he again has released the Mondale dry wit that seemed to be in cold storage during his months as a front-runner. Whether his approach will work is questionable. His staff acknowledges that Florida, Georgia and Alabama are "volatile" states just four days before the "super Tuesday" primaries. MALIBU, Calif. (UPI) Thirteen families whose oceanview homes are slowly being tugged to sea scrambled to collect their belongings before abandoning the expensive dwellings to the mercy of a crumbling bluff.

The average $500,000 homes perched 250 feet above Pacific Coast Highway on Big Rock Mesa were ordered evacuated last week by Los Angeles County engineers who said the bluff supporting the structures could give way without notice. If county engineers obtain a court order forcing evacuations for the residents still occupying their houses Thursday, sheriff's deputies may assist in the evacuations as early as today, a spokesman said. "We're still concerned about the condition and feel there's a hazard," said county engineer Ed Biddlecomb, "They're all trying to find a place, but they're having difficulties." Some residents have filed suit claiming county and state agencies should have done something about the moving earth. United Press International Pleased With Verdict Carl Korte hugs his wife, Dianna, after a jury found the Dearborn, teacher innocent of sexually molesting his students even though 13 children testified they saw him do it. Korte had maintained he was the innocent victim of a campaign instigated by one parent.

Woman Dies As Respirator Disconnected MANCHESTER, Conn. (UPI) Sandra Foody lay quietly in a hospital bed as her respirator was disconnected, awake but unaware of the great legal furor raised by her parents to bring her to that moment. Less than an hourlater, she was dead. Her parents, the attending physician, a parish priest and various hospital specialists were with Miss Foody, 42, when she died at 1:26 p.m. Thursday, a spokesman at Manchester Memorial Hospital said.

"We are grateful that the ordeal of Sandra Foody and her family have, at last, been concluded," spokesman Andrew Beck said, describing her death as "an uneventful passing with no com- plications." Kenneth and Ann Foody began their legal battle to let their daughter die after Miss Foody, who had struggled with multiple sclerosis for 24 years, suffered respiratory arrest Dec. 15. Miss Foody, described as "awake but unaware" in the moments before her death, was paralyzed from the neck down but was not considered brain dead. Although her brain stem was functioning, doctors said she could not live more than a few minutes without a respirator. Hartford Superior Court Judge Mary R.

Hennessey ruled Tuesday Miss Foody's parents could have her respirator disconnected without fear of civil or criminal reprisals. Beck read a statement to reporters about 30 minutes after Miss Foody was pronounced dead. "We have tried to honor (the Foodys') request, that in every way their daughter's death be a dignified one," he said. He declined to provide details of her condition during the final 52 minutes, and said the family had asked that no details of her death be released. State Attorney General Joseph I.

Lieberman had opposed the bid to disconnect the life-support system on grounds no one had argued in court on Miss Foody's behalf and that the case would make new law. World Chemical Use Probed In Iran-Iraq Conflict United Press International Iran claimed to have repulsed two Iraqi drives to recapture its oil-rich Majnoon island, and the United Nations announced an on-site investigation into Iranian charges Iraq is using outlawed chemical weapons in the 3 Persian Gulf war. But the London Daily Telegraph today in a dispatch from the Majnoon area, 250 miles south of Baghdad, quoted the local Iraqi commander as saying he and his soldiers were "walking on dams of Iranian bodies." In Washington, the State Department Thursday tried to balance its criticism of Iraq for the use of lethal poison gas by condemning Iran for using "human wave" battlefield tactics and refusing to negotiate a cease-fire. In New York, U.N. Secretary-General Javier Perez de Cuellar announced Thursday he is sending a team of experts to Iran to look into Iranian charges that Iraq is deploying poison gas outlawed under the Geneva war conventions.

Perez de Cuellar said he "categorically and strongly condemns the use of chemical weapons wherever and whenever this may occur." Tehran has been pressing for a U.N. investigation. The official Iranian news agency IRNA, monitored in London, said Iranian defenders beat back a four-hour Iraqi attack Wednesday night and again Thursday morning around Majnoon island. Iran Thursday reported clashes in six areas along the 250-mile border warfront, from Ham in the north to the oil refinery town of Abadan on the Persian Gulf, and claimed 50 Iraqi dead. The Daily Telegraph's military correspondent, retired British Maj.

Gen. Edward Fursdon, said Maj. Gen, Moher Abed Al-Rashid told him Iraq has re- taken parts of Majnoon in a two-day counterattack and the Iranian defenders were "almostencircled." Majnoon, an artificial island built to tap the Howzeh marsh's rich oil reserves, was Iran's main gain since it launched a major offensive against Iraq on Feb. 21. Fursdon said he witnessed a 90-minute non-stop Iraqi barrage of artillery shells at the rate of one round every two seconds, all targeted on Iranian defense positions.

The Iran-Iraq war began with an Iraqi invasion of Iran on Sept. 22, 1980, in an attempt to capture the strategic Shatt al-Arab waterway. Iraq later repeatedly offered to negotiate, but Iran mounted a massive invasion and attempted to invade Iraq in 1982, vowing to continue the war until the ouster of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein..