The Palm Beach Post from West Palm Beach, Florida • Page 1

SHEFFIELD INJURED Slugger out for season as Marlins lose 6-2 SPORTS, 1C Cabdriver found shot to death in quiet Riviera neighborhood ib Clinton, Gingrich set for picnic today in New Hampshire3A WEATHER: Partly cloudy, scattered thunderstorms. High 90, low 76. 2A 7. sf tit 'h r.vr;' a Discover Florida's vi Xsu west uoast TRAVEL, II The Palm Beach Post FINAL EDITION SUNDAY, JUNE 11, 1995 454 PAGES $1.25 4 ar seeks First transplant hurdle: Just getting on the list 'I believe that if I had $280,000, I could go down and get a liver transplant right Mi iv r( -n now. increase Steve Pugner in support may also stand less of a chance particularly if they haven't stayed sober for a while.

And people without insurance or money have difficulty getting on a waiting list at one or more of the nation's 117 liver-transplant centers, including Florida's two, in Miami and Gainesville. Steve Pugner of Riviera Beach learned two years ago that he was "toward the end stage of cirrhosis," St. Mary's Hospital records show. Pugner, now 45, said doctors told him this year that he needs a new liver to survive. His liver has nearly been destroyed by hepatitis and, until several years ago, heavy drinking, he said.

He has been seeing liver specialists at Jackson Memorial Hospital in Miami for about three months. By STEPHANIE ARTERO and CAROLYN SUSMAN Palm Beach Post Staff Writers After Mickey Mantle got a new liver in less than two days, the complaints began. Indignantly, his doctors and hospital officials asserted the former baseball star did not get preferential treatment. Everyone on the list for organ transplants is treated equally, according to need, they said. That's true, but there's a catch.

First you have to make the list. And making the list is far from automatic. Financial, lifestyle and medical considerations can dictate who lives or dies. Patients with hepatitis or a bad heart may have a harder time getting on a list. Big-time drinkers who have sabotaged their livers He's not on their list.

Pugner doesn't begrudge Mantle his second chance, but he's steamed about the system. "I believe if I had $280,000, I could go down and get a liver transplant right now." He is covered by Medicaid, he said, and doctors are trying to get him on the list for the program at University of MiamiJackson Memorial. "I said, 'This is a money issue, And they said, 'Yes, this is the United States, isn't Please see LIVER 18A U.S. Sugar Production In millions of tons, raw value Beet sugar Cane sugar 5.0 i 4.5- 4.0 3.5- 5" 4i jr. 3.0 '4 2.5 '8485 '8081 '8889 9293 I By DE'ANN WEIMER Palm Beach Post Staff Writer Faced with a Republican Congress considering a bill to eliminate the sugar price support system, the sugar industry led by major South Florida cane growers came up with a counteroffer: Raise the average price of sugar to 23 cents from the present 22 cents, guaranteeing more money for cane growers.

Guarantee cane growers their current share of the domestic market at the expense of sugar beet growers, the most rapidly growing segment of the industry. Give the growers themselves more control of the government's loan program instead of the secretary of agriculture, who administers the price support system now. That's program reform, Big Sugar style. Critics charge that behind the extremely convoluted provisions worked out over the past two weeks lurks a compromise that would give sugar growers particularly Florida cane growers a more lucrative deal than the one the industry presently enjoys. "This does nothing to solve the problem at all," Rep.

Dan Miller complained Friday. Miller, a Bradenton Republican, has introduced a bill that would eliminate the program immediately. Every five years, the nation's sugar policy must be reenacted by '8283 '8687 '9091 '9495 SOURCE: U.S. Department of Agriculture STAFF GRAPHIC Congress as part of the federal farm bill. The program sets a guaranteed price, 22 cents a pound now, that manufacturers will pay for sugar grown here.

It costs the government little to run the sugar program, but critics, including the General Accounting Office, claim it costs U.S. consumers $1.4 billion in higher prices. Florida is the largest producer of sugar in the United States, with two growers Flo-Sun Inc. and U.S. Sugar Corp.

accounting for Please see SUGAR7A IJ N' I 1 Chain gang rebirth: Justice or brutality? Fla. Sen. Charlie Crist and prisons chief Harry Singletary take a look at Alabama's new program. BILL INGRAMStaff Photographer Athletes Prepare For Triathlon Swim JUNO BEACH About 400 triathletes crowd the beach Satur- Ion. Scott Colton, 31, and Sara Weaver, 30, won their divi-day for the swimming competition in the Loggerhead Triath- sions in the 10th annual event.

SPORTS, 11C Vesco changes from mystery man to pawn uge. And Vesco, a connoisseur of yachts and fine dining, has sudden by on Interstate 65, temporarily drowning the chink, chink, chink of the quarter-inch stainless steel chains that tethered the inmates, five to a group. Blue-suited correctional officers with 12-gauge shotguns propped against their shoulders stood guard. For Crist, it was a mighty fine sight. i Last month, Alabama became the first state to revive chain gangs.

Arizona followed, and Florida lawmakers led by Crist quickly passed a measure requiring shackled work crews by De-: cember. Last week, Florida's prisons chief Harry Singletary and Crist traveled to northern Alabama, where nearly 400 men work along the state's main highway from 7:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. cutting weeds and picking up litter in the Please see CHAIN GANGS9A By MEG JAMES Palm Beach Post Capital Bureau DECATUR, Ala. The Alabama inmate and the Florida lawmaker were having a cordial conversation, considering the circumstances.

"I deserve this, chains and all," Floyd Mims, 34, told the state senator last week. "You have to pay for your crimes, and this is my punishment." Sen. Charlie Crist, R-St. Petersburg, nodded. Crist the man most responsible for bringing chain gangs back to Florida stood in the hot red clay wearing a crisply pressed, monogrammed white shirt, slacks and black tasseled wingtips.

Mims wore shackles around scuffed boots and a white uniform stenciled with his name, prison number and the words, "CHAIN GANG." Eighteen-wheelers thundered "There was never a burning interest in the extradition of Vesco. Robert Vesco was not a Cali cartel leader, though he dabbled in fraud and narcotics," he said. "Drugs are one of these items that foreign countries deal when they negotiate with one another. This was the drug chip. It was put upon the table.

This is the beginning of the end of not negotiating with the Cuban government." It was still unclear Saturday what the Cubans intended to charge Vesco with or whether ly landed at Villa Marista, a prison in south-central Havana that is the headquarters for the East German-trained State Security police. U.S. State Why the Cubans finally arrested the fugitive American financier remains unclear. By ANNE-MARIE O'CONNOR Palm Beach Post Staff Writer MIAMI Fugitive financier Robert Vesco was the Howard Hughes of Communist Cuba until his gilded cage became his jail cell. Now he is a pawn in an international chess game, a bit player in a James Bond-style drama in which he has been cast as the fall guy, ensnared in the same Machiavellian web that once gave him ref- interest section in Havana of the arrest on June 2.

"In my view, this was a political ploy kicked off by the reversal in U.S. policy regarding the Cuban refugees," said Tom Cash, who was the Drug Enforcement Administration's special agent in charge of Florida and the Caribbean from 1988 until last January. After the Clinton administration moved to repatriate all Cuban refugees found on the high seas, U.S. policy-makers became the target of heavy criticism from the Cuban American community and needed a Cuban concession, however symbolic, Cash said. Ml Vesco Department Christine Shelly spokeswoman said the Cubans informed the U.S.

Please see VESC06A Inside Pilots not told of missile threat where jet was downed in Bosnia Balance in the Battlefield BUSINESS CERABINO CLASSIFIEDS DEARABBY DOUGLAS EDITORIALS IE LOTTERIES IB DAN MOFFETT 1C 1G NEWS SHOW 2A 2D OBITUARIES 6B IE SCHULTZ IF 2F THEATERS 5J The Bosnian 'She Still turns Heads' Anne Hamilton, socialite and actor George Hamilton's mother, is glamorous, and gorgeous. ACCENT, ID Bosnia" tH fl CROSSWORDS ON 10G, IN COMICS A army is heavily outgunned but no longer a pushover. The 24-hour sports, stocks, music, breaking news and much more. See 2A for details. 00 mm The Washington Post WASHINGTON One day before Capt.

Scott O'Grady's jet fighter was shot down over Bosnia, U.S. intelligence equipment detected at least one surface-to-air missile system in the area, according to Pentagon sources. But the information was not passed to the pilot's commander. U.S. defense officials said last week that O'Grady's plane was flying without radar-jamming escort planes and without aircraft capable of destroying SAM missile launchers because intelligence reports showed the area free of the Soviet-made missile systems.

"For months, if not for years, there had never been detected an air defense site in that area," Gen. John Shalikash-vili, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of A Staff, told a Senate panel last week in explaining why the two F-16s were flying without escort. A Pentagon source said Saturday that the National Security Agency, an intelligence-gathering arm of the Defense Department, had detected in the region a tracking radar for the SA-6 missile "but it wasn't something that got to everyone." On June 2, the day O'Grady's plane was shot down, there was more than one SA-6 missile battery on the ground, according to the source, who has seen satellite, imagery of the region. The SA-6 system consists of two tank-like vehicles. A tracking radar is Please see B0SNIJ11A Serbs, while volatile, are facing internal pres sures of their own.

Add FOR HOME DELIVERY SERVICE 8204663 1 800 654 1231 I Copyright 1995 Palm Beach Post Vol. 62 No. 24 President Clinton's struggles with Congress and the U.N. over policy, and the powder keg that is the Balkans nears an explosion. STORIES, GRAPHICS, Salute To Graduates: a look at the valedictorians, salutatorians and notable students of our area.

ACCENT, 6-7D 13 sections "ZSLHIVOOOO1" 9 AND HISTORY OF THE BALKANS, 10A 4.