Indiana Gazette from Indiana, Pennsylvania • 6

iRtanB Page me The Indiana, PA Gazette Sunday, August 2, 1992 A-6 Two orphans killed by gunfire in Sarajevo Croats voted for independence from Serb-led Yugoslavia on Feb. 29. Magnusson, meanwhile, charged that Bosnian forces had endangered U.N. peacekeepers by setting up weapons too close to their monitoring positions. On Friday, six newly arrived Ukrainian peacekeepers were injured when a mortar hit the entrance to their bunker northwest of Sarajevo.

Two suffered severe head injuries and were evacuated by a U.S. plane to Frankfurt, Germany, Magnusson said. The Serb gunners who hit the Ukrainians apparently were aiming for Bosnian recoil-less rifle positions 15 yards away from the site, Magnusson said. Government forces also had two tanks positioned just outside U.N. headquarters, Magnusson said, and mortars only 200 yards away from other U.N.

positions in the city. "That's just dirty war, and we have protested." Magnusson said. A protest was also lodged with the Serbs for firing back at well-marked U.N. positions, he said. southern Germany.

They were unable to fly out because the Sarajevo airport has been mostly closed for several days by heavy fighting. On Saturday, the Bosnian government continued a major counteroffensive aimed at slicing the Serbian noose that has bound the Bosnian capital for months. Tomic said his group had received no escort from the U.N. protection force that is providing food and medicine to the 300,000 residents of the besieged capital. The U.N.

spokesman, Mik Magnusson, said the German-donated bus left Sarajevo at 7 p.m.. a 'daft lime" to start off. The victims were identified as Vedrana Ulavas, 2, and Rokl Suiejmanovic. 1. Their ethnic identities weren't immediately clear.

The 48 children who survived the attack, along with 10 adults, were being sheltered by families near where the bus was hit, according to Radio 99, an independent station. community has no plans to intervene militarily to halt the Serb advance that has captured two-thirds of Bosnia. Croatian radio said late Saturday that 43 people had been killed and 566 wounded in fighting over the last 24 hours, most of it in Sarajevo. Bosnian radio reported that government forces advanced to Vogosca, northwest of Sarajevo, to try to break through Serb forces and connect to Muslim forces further west in Visoko and Zenica. Maj.

Dervo Harbinja, a senior Sarajevo defense official, told reporters territorial forces also had surrounded the Serb-held 'own of llijas, further to the northwest The Belgrade-based Tanjug news agency quoted Bosnian Serb sources as saying four Serb soldiers were killed and three wounded in an attack by 2,000 Bosnian militia on Trnovo, 25 miles south of the capital. At least 7.500 people and as many as 50,000 have died since Bosnia's Muslims and The attack occurred just before the final Bosnian government checkpoint on the three-mile "Sniper Alley." which was the main east-west highway before the civil war broke out five months ago. Tomic said the survivors eventually would travel on to Croatia's Adriatic port of Split, where a plane was to take them to Germany. Another 100 orphans remain at in the laundry room of the agency's Ljubica Ivezic orphanage in Sarajevo, where they were placed after an exposed wing of the orphanage was hit by shells, wounding one girl and one nurse. Magnusson said Serb and Muslim fighters were battling all around Sarajevo at the time of the attack, as the government attempts to break the Serb siege.

Bosnia has become increasingly desperate to break out of the encirclement of the mountain-ringed capital in recent weeks as it becomes clear that the international By TONY SMITH Associated Press Writer SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Herzegovina (API A bus carrying 90 orphans out of Sarajevo was hit by anti-aircraft fire Saturday night, killing a 2-year-old retarded girl' and a 1-year-old boy, the orphanage said. The bus was driving east out of Sarajevo on a road known as "Sniper Alley" when it came under heavy machine-gun fire, said Dusko Tomic, director of the Medjasi Children's Embassy charity. "It's an absolute catastrophe. No other kids were wounded, but they were all screaming." Tomic said. There was no word on who hit the bus.

The road is frequently targeted by Serb snipers, but U.N. officials said the Serb nationalists were battling the mostly Muslim Bosnian government forces in the area at the time. The children had been waiting for six days to be evacuated to an orphanage in Bavaria. Tests suggest presence of disease-bearing ticks DM I McEtM POT1H I 5Txx 7 xLa- t-1 UIMNI 2 xfk.xXy) -JTT According to Humphreys, larger numbers of Lyme disease cases arc being reported now probably because of (he spread of the tick and also because of increased awareness of the illness. More than 50 residents of Old Lyme.

in 1975 developed a mysterious disease which resulted in inflammatory arthritis. Similar illnesses had been reported in Wisconsin years earlier and in Europe about 19(10. but the causative agent was not known until the Connecticut residents were sickened. By 1988 Lyme disease had been reported in 32 states, and currently the national Centers for Disease Control reports about 1.500 cases each year. More than 85 percent of those cases come from three concentrated areas: the northeastern and mid-Atlantic states including Pennsylvania, the midwestern slates of Minnesota and Wisconsin, and the western states of Oregon and California.

Within Pennsylvania, concentrations or the ticks have been identified in a four-county area in the Continued from Page 1 mammal, or a human or bird. The ticks usually remain attached to the host for two to four days, Adult ticks are usually found in brush about three feet high (explain-! ing why whiletail deer are also a frequent host I and attach to a host iwhen it brushes up against the tick. 1UP biology professors Dr. Jan Humphreys and Dr. Rexford Lord have been coordinating the local deer blood testing to track the deer tick migration into the Indiana County area, a process Humphreys said takes considerable time.

I This fall they hope to test blood i samples from 200 Indiana County deer during hunting season, and may try to perform the serologies at i local meal processing facilities, "We need about 15 more years to be able to answer many of the questions about Lyme disease." I Humphreys said, comparing what is known about the illness now to what was known about Legionnaires' dis-t ease shortly after its outbreak in the 11970s. i southeast: in a 10-county area roughly centering around the Clear-(leld-Jcfferson county line; and on Presque Isle in Lake Erie. "It's certainly something that's got our attention." said Dr. Robert Houscknechl of the Pennsylvania Department of Health, Acute Infectious Diseases-Epidemiology. For those who develop complications, it can be a "significant disease," he said.

Since 1987. physicians have been required to report all cases of Lyme disease to the state Department of Health. According lo Houseknecht, the number of "reported" cases of the sickness in Pennsylvania climbed from 256 in 1988 to 62G in '89 and 747 in '90. Although the numbers have been increasing statewide. Houscknecht's data for some individual counties is moving in the opposite direction.

In Indiana County there were three cases in 1990, two in '91, and only one so far this year. In Armstrong County, there were eight reported cases in 1990, four in '91 and one thus far in '92. No cases have been reported in Jefferson County during the past three years, although there were two cases in 1999. Houscknechl said some variances in the incidence rate from various sources result from what he called a "reporting differential" some of the cases do not exhibit all the classic symptums and are not as readily diagnosed as Lyme disease. As an example, he said only 30 to 50 percent of the cases exhibit the classic Erythema chronicum migrans a circular red rash ringing the bile site.

That "reporting differential" is viewed as somewhat of an understatement by Dr. Joseph Joseph, a Hermitage. Mercer Countv. physician who specializes in the treatment of Lyme disease. Joseph said because the CDC requires that very specific symptoms be present before an illness is diagnosed as Lyme disease, he suspects as many as 90 percent of the actual cases arc probably being misdiagnosed, often being passed off as the flu.

Joseph estimates he has treated Bonis and Montgomery townships in Indiana County wen among the anas when deer blood samples with Lyme disease antibodies wen found for the first time during the 1991 hunting season, according to IUP biologists. Positive samples wen also collected for the first time last year in deer harvested in Jefferson, Cambria, Forrest, Cameron, Clarion, McKean and Potter counties. The X's show the townships when deer blood tests wen positive. The shaded anas indicate regions with well-established populations of the deer tick which spnads the illness. (Gazette Graphic) Tick talk: How to avoid Lyme Staying away from the fields and woods where deer ticks live Is the best way to avoid Lyme disease.

Short of doing that, environmental and health specialists offer these suggestions for dodging the illness: Wolk in the middle of trails, away from bushes and tall grass. Wear long pants, long-sleeved shirts, socks and closed shoes. Tock pant legs into the top of socks. Wear light-colored clothing to make tick detection easier. Use insecticides containing permethrin or DEET to repel or kill ticks.

As soon as you retain from the outdoors, inspect your body for ticks. Unless the tick remains attached for at least six to 12 hours (and some specialists say as long as 24 hours), there is little chance the disease will be transmitted. you find a tick attached to your body, grasp It with tweeters as close to its bead as possible, and without crushing the tick, pull it from your skin. Wash and disinfect the bite area. Saving the tick in alcohol could help lo later determining if it was a carrier of the spirochete bacteria which causes Lyme disease.

between 1,300 and 1,400 patients for Lyme disease including some from Indiana County in the past live years. Some patients have been under treatment for as long as two years, but he said the average is about four months. He described two of his advanced-stage patients as "demented" with little hope of recovery. In addition to the circular rash pattern, other common symptoms Joseph has observed are fatigue, joint pains, numbness and a tingling sensation. His treatment frequently involves oral penicillin-derivative drugs.

"We don't know about a cure." Joseph said. "1 think there probably is a cure." adding some of his patients have now been symptom- free for more than three years. Both Joseph and Houseknecht admit medical science does not yet have a fool-proof handle on diagnosing the illness. "Clinical and serological diagnosis is not 100 percent," Houseknecht said, adding both tests can give faise positive and false negative readings. Joseph considers blood testing to be only 60 percent accurate in diagnosing Lyme disease.

Spinal fluid testing is more reliable, he said, and is probably about 90 percent accurate. But the two men differ on their treatment philosophies. Joseph feels even if it is not definitely known and only suspected the patient has Lyme disease, the treatment with antibiot ics will do no harm. "We don't advocate treating people prophylactically" just because they may have Lyme disease, Houseknecht commented. Currently, an accurate and quick diagnosis of the illness depends largely on the patient's ability to inform the doctor about any known exposure to deer ticks.

A Penn State brochure on the illness distributed through the state's Cooperative Extension Service suggests that for the immediate future, taking precautions about where you travel and knowing the signs and symptoms of Lyme disease are probably the best defenses against the sickness. JFK researcher wills papers to Hood College assassination, and says director Oliver Stone's recent movie "JFK" misleads the public more than anything since the Warren Commission report. He spends his time working on another book about the doctors who performed the autopsy on Kennedy. Meanwhile, some of Wcisberg's'Warren Commission documents and various other files have been moved lo the Hood library. The rest of the Weisberg collection will follow when he dies.

Charles Kuhn. library director, said the plan is to computerize the documents on compact discs that could be easily accessed by the public. The library plans to store the original documents in safekeeping. "It's his life's work. It's a large amount of data that doesn't exist in this form anywhere else." Kuhn said.

"It's an entire life of going arfer FBI files against the odds. It took a lot of lawsuits and a lot of turmoil to get this together. It's really a historical record." Dividing Iraq only way Mideast to achieve peace, Arabs say By DEB RIECHMANN Associated Press Writer FREDERICK. Md. i AP I Harold Weisberg moves i slowly these days down the wooden stairs of his cellar where more than 50 file cabinets are stuffed with government documents on President Kcnnedv's assas- sination.

Like a proud father. Weisberg. 79. shuffles around the rows of tan. black and Army green file cabinets titled i with names from the past: Lee Harvev Oswald.

Jack i Ituby and the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. Inside each drawer, Weisberg has neatly catalogued more than 300.000 pages of information on the assassi- nations of Kennedy and Kin (hat he has managed to wrest from the Federal Rumiu of Investigation, the Department of Justice, tlw Warren Commission, the Central Intelligence Agency and other government i agencies. Weisberg used the documents (o write seven books six on the 13 assassination of Kennedy and the other I on the 1968 slaying of King, a charismatic civil rights leader. But with health problems and advancing age.

Weisberg recently decided lo will his life's work to Hood College where his papers arc lo be computerized and accessible to future general ions. "This is one subject that is never going lo die." Weisberg said, silling in a living room chair with his legs, weakened by phlebitis, propped up on an ottoman. "People have collections of the nutty stuff the conspiracy theories hul mil the facts." Unlike other researchers. Weisberg did not focus on who killed Kennedy He concentrated instead on Ihc I facts and evidence in the slaving and what the government did and did nnt do lo investigate the i murder. Four of his books are titled "Whitewash." and I have a series of subtitles to distinguish them I Obtaining documentation on the government's hives- ligation into the Kennedy assassination did not come I easily.

Weisberg took the government to court about amen times between 1970 and 1980. using the Freedom of Information Act to amass the documents. A i 1975 lawsuit lasted about in years. I The paper trail he retrieved includes hundreds of pages of verbatim transcripts from executive sessions of the Warren Commission, which concluded that Oswald acted alone in killing tlic president from the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository building in Dallas Nov. 22.

1963. "I think Esquire magazine had it right when they said Weisberg was (Ik- 'dean of assassination said Jerry Oinocchio. an associate professor of sociology at Wofford College in Spartansburg. C. who has delved into the Kennedy assassination for 10 years.

"1 think he is Ihc most credible and the most logical of all the researchers. 1 have read a lot of the conspiracy theories and they play fast and loose with the evidence." Weisberg w.is born in Philadelphia and raised hi Wilmington. Del. After attending the University of Delaware, he worked for the Wilmington (Del.) Morning News and later wrote feature stories for the Sunday supplement of the Philadelphia Ledger. Weisberg.

who also worked as a Senate committee investigator, served in the Army during World War II. first in the military police and later as an analyst for the Office of Strategic Services, a forerunner lo the CIA. He became involved in the Kennedy assassination investigation soon after the president's death, and later was an investigator for James Earl Ray. who was accused of killing King. Weisberg is still receiving boxes of information al his home, situated on about five acres of quiet, wooded land in Frederick County.

In May. he received a box full of FBI and CIA files 164 inches thick that include information about Oswald. The postal carrier also brings him book orders. He and his 80-year-old wife. Lillian, retrieve the bonks stacked in boxes in Ihc basement and Weisberg packages them for shipment while watching the evening television news.

He still gels calls from reporters around the world and receives as many as a dozen letters a day. He personally answers the letters that pose serious questions, but has given up responding to those asking him about various conspiracy theories. While he doesn't propose to know who killed Kennedy and shuns discussion of the conspiracies. Weisberg did say: "I'm certain he (Oswaldi didn't do it and the evidence is not all that persuasive that Oswald killed anybody." He refuses to watch current TV shows about the trol over much of the Kurdish region in northern Iraq, enabling leaders there lo hold elections to choose a Kurdish parliament this spring. A meeting last week between Secretary of State James A.

Baker 111 and Iraqi opposition leaders, including Kurds, Shiites, and Sunnis, reinforced an impression here thai the United States accepted their demands for autonomy. In February, in a major change of policy. Saudi Arabia invited a leader of the Iranian-supported Shiite opposition in the south. Ayatollah Mohammed Bakir Hakim, to visit Riyadh, where he was publicly received by King Fahd, signaling the fading of Saudi fears of an Iranian-dominated movement in southern Iraq. A senior Saudi intelligence official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity about this evolving position in a recent interview in Paris, said that Saudi Arabia was less concerned now about what impact a break-up of Iraq's 17 million people would have.

Continued from Page I The notion that a partitioned Iraq might be less of a menace to its neighbors than the country that exists has also been reinforced by broad changes in the policies of the West and Saudi Arabia. In March 1991. when uprisings in Iraq's Shiite-dominated southern region and Kurdish northern region threatened to split the country days after the gulf war cease-fire, the United States, at the urging of Saudi Arabia, refused to extend its military offensive. Saudi leaders feared that if the Shiite rebellion succeeded. Iran would come to dominate the people of southern Iraq, posing a new threat of instability on the Arabian peninsula itself rivaling the threat of Baghdad.

For its part, the United States seemed to prefer a change of regime in Baghdad that would keep the. country unified under a leader other than Saddam. But since then, the United States, Britain, and France have prevented Baghdad from reasserting its con "This possibility may in fact be a better solution than the present situation," the official noted. Echoing what appears to be a wide sentiment among Kuwaitis, the Saudi official said a majority of the Iraqi people "continue lo believe that Kuwait belongs lo them." He argued that the attempt to annex Kuwait had a precedent in 1961. when another Iraqi government, the regime headed by Abdel Karim Kassem, asserted sovereignty over the gulf sheikdom after Britain granted it independence.

"What we need to do is what the Americans did in Japan and Germany after World War II," the Saudi official said. "We must go into Iraq and change the whole setup, the whole mentality, including the social structure of that country which permits dictators like Saddam to resurface there with regularity every 20 years or so. "To do that," he said, "we may need several small entities to deal with instead of attempting lo preserve one Iraqi nation.".