The Courier-Journal from Louisville, Kentucky • Page 2

4 Via. A 10 THE COURIER-JOURNAL, MONDAY, DECEMBER 23, 1991 Battle rages in Georgian republic Governor has backers of bottle bill bubbling 3 r. 't -f IZ As ll i think shoppers will pay for food, clothing, appliances and luxury goods in hopes that higher prices will spur farmers and factories to produce more in pursuit of profits. Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev gamely saluted Yeltsin as the new master of the Kremlin in a televised interview yesterday, but voiced the wish that his onetime rival would be "more democratic." Gorbachev, who is expected to resign his now-titular presidency within days, said that he intended to retain a role in his country's political life despite tempting offers of academic posts at universities in the United States, Europe and Japan. "I think I will not leave the world of politics," he told CBS "Face the Nation" and Russian television in an interview taped on Saturday and aired yesterday.

Although 11 of the 12 former Soviet republics agreed Saturday to band together loosely in a new commonwealth, effectively abolishing the office of Soviet president, Gorbachev said that he would await receipt of the official documents before actually resigning. The commonwealth's leaders suggested the anger about planned reforms was the fault of the old cen- According to Iprinda, Tbilisi Mayor Tamaz Vashadze and Georgian lawmaker Avtandil Rtskhiladze, one of Gamsakhurdia's most vocal supporters, were taken hostage by the rebels. Opposition leaders declared at a rally attended by about 6,000 people on Friday that they would force out Gamsakhurdia by Jan. 1. The president has ordered all weapons to be turned in by the same day.

In Moscow, pro-Communist protesters waving Soviet flags staged a "hungry line" rally to criticize the commonwealth and demand that Boris Yeltsin step down as Russian Federation president. The group of mostly middle-aged people carried portraits of Communist leaders and signs, including one that read: S. S. R. Elected by the People.

Commonwealth a Community of Separatists." Several hundred pro-Communist protesters also rallied in St. Petersburg, the birthplace of the Bolshevik revolution, against Yeltsin's reforms to introduce a free-market economy by next fall, and in support of the old union, Tass said. Under Yeltsin's plan to decontrol prices starting on Jan. 2, stores will be free to charge as much as they Continued from Page One er and safer than the defunct one. But citizens facing bare store shelves remained skeptical.

There were conflicting reports about who started the fighting in Georgia. The Russian Information Agency said rebel National Guardsmen who broke with Gamsakhurdia in August tried to seize Government House yesterday. After a lull during which the sides tried to start negotiations, the rebels launched another attack late yesterday using machine guns and mortars, the Tass news agency and Russian television reported. By midnight, a fire had broken out in the ornate Artists' Union building across the street from Government House on Tbilisi's main street, Rustaveli Prospect, Tass said. People were feared trapped inside the building, but firefighters were unable to approach because of the fighting and roadblocks on the six-lane thoroughfare, Tass said.

Georgian Radio appealed for Gamsakhurdia supporters to come to the parliament building for weapons. It also appealed for volunteers to give blood for the wounded. ASSOCIATED PRESS Opponents of President Zviad Gamsakhurdia have been demanding his ouster, saying he has become dictatorial. tral government. "It's their misfortune that they believed so sincerely (in) this super-perfect propaganda of the Soviet "way of life," said Byelorussian Prime Minister Stanislav Shushke-vich, speaking on a live televised call-in program broadcast from his capital, Minsk.

Information for this story was also gathered by The Los Angeles Times. Continued from Page One during an interview last week on Kentucky Educational Television. The plan Jones outlined would establish collection centers, rather than requiring retailers and grocers to take the empty bottles. Aides to Jones said a detailed legislative proposal has not been worked out. Jones' support "increases the chances that there will be a legitimate debate" on a bottle bill but does not ensure its passage, Barrows said.

But without the governor's backing, the legislation would likely stall again, he said. Barrows said he will decide whether to reintroduce his bill after meeting with other bottle-bill backers, Deskins said that a bottle bill has the support of key House Democrats, including Majority Leader Greg Stumbo, D-Prestonsburg. The momentum in favor of the legislation will bring its traditional opponents to the bargaining table, Deskins predicted. "I think that if they see the handwriting on the wall, they'll want to have some input," he said. Hearings on the bill will begin in January, he said.

Sen. Fred Bradley, D-Frankfort, chairman of the Senate Agriculture and Natural Resources Committee, said he wants to see exactly what Jones has in mind before committing himself to support a bottle bill. A centralized collection system is an attractive idea, Bradley said. He agreed with Deskins that opponents might be more inclined to compromise this time, both because of the changed political situation and because of public sentiment for more recycling. Rep.

Mark Brown, D-Branden-burg, a leading House proponent of recycling, said he remains opposed to requiring deposits on containers but will reserve judgment on a bottle bill until he sees what Jones proposes. A bottle bill will still have an uphill road, he said. "I don't think the situation has changed as far as the General Assembly is concerned," Brown said. "As of now, I'd say it's got about the same chance as it did last time." Pat Hicks of the Kentucky Grocers Association says his group also wants to see Jones' plan before taking a position. He acknowledged that the governor's support: will have an impact.

The grocers have opposed past bottle bills. Hicks said they don't want any bill that would require them to add to the amount they charge consumers for products in containers. Kentucky's beverage industry remains convinced that a bottle bill is not the way to spur recycling and get rid of litter, said D. Ray Gillespie, executive director of BERP the Beverage Industry Recycling Program. The success of voluntary recycling programs such as those sponsored by BIRP make a bottle bill unnecessary, he said.

Gillespie said it would be premature to speculate on the prospects of a bottle bill or the impact Jones will have on the outcome until the governor presents a detailed proposal. Environmentalists are delighted that they finally have the governor on their side. "For once, we have a leader who's willing to stand up" on the issue, said Joan Perry, president of the Kentucky Conservation Committee. She said a bill "has a better-than-even chance" of passing. Sarah Lynn Cunningham of the Louisville-based Paddlewheel Alliance said bottle-bill backers still have their work cut out.

"Do I think (the governor's support) will suffice to pass it? No." Corrections clarifications Because of an editor's error, the description of where firefighters found the bodies of four children was incorrectly attributed in yesterday's story on a Middlesboro fire. The information came from Bell County Coroner Clyde Creech. Owner brought static to Murray radio, TV stations driving away advertisers with the changes he made at the stations. Disc jockeys complained that he required them to play a song from one of his records every hour and to record it in a "We had trouble getting paychecks from almost the first day he took over the station," said Black, who was fired after Cory eliminated the evening newscast. In November, 14 employees "There are people who work to live, and there are people who live to work.

I live to work. The people there didn't live to work." Troy Cory People's Republic of China." Publicity materials sent out by Cory include a picture of him strolling across Tiananmen Square arm in arm with several Chinese beauty queens and Cristy Thorn, Playboy magazine's Miss February 1991., Cory, meanwhile, insists that the WNBS pay disputes were not the result of financial problems and that he would have paid Parham and the three other employees if the station had not been shut down so suddenly. He said the fact that Parham was able to run the station almost sin-glehandedly in its last two weeks proves that not all 20 employees were needed. Cory said he has not given up on Murray and plans to visit in early January to show off a working replica of his grandfather's invention and kick off "Nathan Beverly Stubblefield Year." "They weren't ready for me; I don't know why," Cory said. "But they weren't ready for Stubblefield either." log.

Cory also changed Channel 46's daytime programming to something he called "look radio," which the employees said consisted of training a camera on the radio station's disc jockey and showing cartoons, old movie clips, and videos of parades and Calloway County scenery while the music played. Cory "is not a reasonable person," said Krit Stubblefield, a distant relative of Nathan B. Stubblefield whom Cory had promised to make general manager of the sta Swiss glaciers shrink BERN, Switzerland (AP) Swiss glaciers, one of the country's picture-postcard attractions, melted last winter more than in any of the seven previous winters, the Swiss Alpine Club said. The reasons include a warm, dry fall in 1989 and no major snowfall at the end of last winter, a study published in the club's bulletin said. Continued from Page One blefield and that he was the grandson of Nathan B.

Stubblefield, a melon farmer and sometime inventor who died of starvation in a shack outside Murray in 1928. Although there is evidence that Stubblefield used a device called an earth battery to broadcast his voice without wires in 1892, historians generally credit Guglielmo Marconi for inventing what came to be known as radio in the mid-1890s. Cory, however, threatened to sue writers and publishers who did not credit Stubblefield. Cory, a pop singer who lives in Pasadena, announced that he had made it his life's mission to give his grandfather his rightful place in history, a place he claimed that even the people of Murray had failed to recognize. Cory's crusade has taken him from Pasadena to Las Vegas, Dallas, and Washington, but his bombastic and confrontational tactics led the Murray Ledger Times to editorialize that his campaign was "too hard to swallow." And Cory has yet to make good on his grandest scheme: This summer, with the mayor of Murray and other local dignitaries looking on, he unveiled plans to build a $2.5 million entertainment complex on the courthouse square, complete with a 180-room hotel and a branch of the Texas-based National Museum of Communications.

Earlier he had announced he was buying the radio station that advertised itself as "the birthplace of radio" and its sister TV station. The owner was Chuck Shuf-fett, who bought the station in 1957 and began Channel 46 last year. The Federal Communications Commission approved the $1.2 million sale, and Cory took charge in early October. Ml quit, saying Cory had re-fused to pay them, and complained to County Attorney David Harrington. Several more employees filed complaints later, and Harrington said Commonwealth's Attorney Mike Ward will decide whether to bring charges.

Cory said he refused to pay the employees unless they signed contracts that would have made them independent contractors responsible for their own tax and Social Security payments. The contracts also required employees to provide and pay for "catering of food," "transportation of guest stars," "travel costs to out-of-state locations," "sets and special effects," "costumes, makeup hair," "cleanup" and 16 other items. An account executive, Jamie Fu-trell, said he was told he could stay only if he became a producer and put $50,000 in a joint bank account with Cory. Futrell refused and now works for a Benton radio station. Cory defended the contracts, saying they were standard practice in Hollywood.

"There are two philosophies in life," Cory said. "There are people who work to live, and there are people who live to work. I live to work. The people there didn't live to work." The employees accused Cory of tions before firing him after two weeks. "Having a conversation with him was like the Mad Hatter's tea party in Alice in Wonderland." Cory, whose publicist compares him to Perry Como and Bing Crosby, likes to advertise himself as "the first American recording artist in China." He said he has sold 15 million records there, although there is apparently no one who keeps track of record sales in that country.

Earlier this year Cory announced plans to stage a Miss China beauty contest in Beijing, but the pageant, which was to have been sponsored by Hawaiian Tropic USA, never came off. That hasn't stopped him from claiming to be the "first American to introduce suntan lotion to the Bacons iff Qerfif ieaf Just can't decide on that perfect gift? How about a gift certificate! No need to worry about the sizes or needs exchanging! Gift certificates are available at any of our locations or, for your convenience, phone 456-5000 and charge it to your accountl Prison may await 'old country drunk' vr1 Bashford Manor, Galleria, Ju Shively, Mall St. Matthews, River Falls Mall, Jr Store For The Homo I Mtl Mm negotiations with Reeder's court-appointed lawyer. She said she was surprised that Reeder had not been previously charged with a felony; he could have been charged various times during the last few years for driving while his license had been suspended for drunken driving, New said. "Apparently misdemeanors didn't get his attention.

Hopefully, a felony will get his attention," she said. But Gold is skeptical. "Do you think when he gets out two years from now he's going to have learned his lesson, judging from what you've seen?" he said. "The answer's got to be "If it's rehabilitation that we're looking for which I doubt it's not working with him. If it's just 'Keep him off the then we need to keep him off the streets." Pennsylvania county bans nuclear weapons ERIE, Pa.

(AP) People who make, test or store nuclear weapons in Pennsylvania's Erie County face 30 days in jail and a $2,000 fine under a new county ordinance. The ordinance also prohibits disposal of radioactive materials in the county and calls for signs saying, "Nuclear Weapon Free Zone," to be posted on some roads. The County Council passed the ordinance 4-3 Tuesday night at the behest of the Erie Regional Peace and Justice Center. Opponents said nuclear weapons were the federal government's business. "This may be a beautiful expression, but to me, it's not very realistic," said dissenting Councilman Paul Foust.

Continued from Page One given short or probated sentences. His latest arrest came early Sept. 26 as he was driving near Fifth and Broadway in Louisville. It came exactly one week after his Sept. 19 release from the River City Corrections Center, where he had finished a one-year sentence one of his longest for a 1990 drunken-driving conviction.

After his latest arrest, Reeder told police that he had been drinking "40 or 50 beers" and did not remember when he had started, records show. But, he did remember when he stopped: "When they pulled me over," he said. Court and police records show Feeder's blood-alcohol level was 0.156 percent; a driver is considered drunk at 0.10 percent. With his guilty plea, Reeder now has been convicted of drunken driving 13 times in Jefferson County 11 times in the past four years. He has been convicted five times of drunken driving in at least three other counties in Kentucky and one in Indiana.

Only a few times has he served extended jail sentences. Often after being convicted, Reeder has been granted work release, probation and home incarceration on the presumption that, without a valid license, he would not drive. But new drunken-driving charges surfaced, sometimes within days. After his 1990 conviction and jailing, Reeder enrolled in court-ordered alcohol counseling. He said in a January 1991 Courier-Journal interview that he had not "drunk a drop since September.

I'm trying to change now." Jefferson District Judge Paul Gold, who denied Reeder's request for work release and sentenced him in September 1990 to a year in jail, had changed his mind by November. He allowed Reeder to leave the minimum-security Dismas House to work at a downtown construction company and as a part-time custodian for the Louisville Police Department. Gold later said Reeder had a right to try to get his life back in order despite his abysmal record. "Maybe, just maybe, this will be the final straw where he finally kicks his alcohol problem," Gold said after Reeder's 18th conviction. In an interview Friday, Gold defended his sentencing of Reeder, saying he gave him the maximum sentence allowable and noted that Reeder was not arrested for drunken driving while he was on work release, but after he had served his sentence.

Asked whether it was mistake to have granted Reeder work release, Gold said: "Let's put it like this: If I had it to do over again, I might not do the same thing." At Reeder's arraignment after the most recent arrest, Jefferson District Judge Tom McDonald set bond at $1 million. It was later reduced to $10,000. On Nov. 20, the county grand jury indicted Reeder on several charges, including two felonies: One was for a fourth or subsequent offense of drunken driving made a felony during a 1991 special session of the legislature and the other for driving while his license was suspended because of drunken driving. Reeder could be sentenced to five years in prison for each of the felonies.

New said her recommendation for a concurrent two-year sentence for both felonies camje out of plea.