The Akron Beacon Journal from Akron, Ohio • Page 18

HOFFMAN'S FRESH ROLE SOUR SUNDAY IN NFL Actor finds depth in down-on-his-luck reporter in 'Mad Page B6. Fiww I LET CO-SIGNER BEWARE Parents who help children buy house put themselves at risk. Page 1. High today: 45 Low tonight: 33 Chance of rain today. Scattered snow showers tomorrow.

Full report, PageA2. Dolphins beat Jets 24-17; call on whether pass was dropped angers N.Y. coach. Pages CI, 4-5. Beacon journal Serving the community for 159 years 11 Crisis uilds ast warn Neither U.S.

nor Iraq looks ready in dispute over U.N. weapons near vote in Hons Clinton, Gingrich put arm on lawmakers late into night in llth-hour effort to authorize trade action I if gm if From Heiwim Journal wire services Washington: Toiling late into the night, Congress pushed toward a vote early this morning on fast-track trade negotiation after a long day of legislative breakthroughs, including a consolidated spending bill and faster drug approval for the Food and Drug Administration. President Clinton and House Speaker Newt Gingrich worked in tandem late yesterday in an uncertain effort to push trade legislation through the House. The chief executive assured Democrats he wouldn't "trade a matter of principle" as he bargained for Republican votes. The votes came in a last-minute burst of activity as lawmakers rushed to end the first session of the 105th Congress.

Lawmakers had hoped to wrap up the session early yesterday. The House moved toward a wee-hours vote late yesterday on (VipyriKhl 1907 Beacon Journal Publishing Co. 35C 2 PortageSummit Edition 1 whether to give Clinton "fast-track" authority to negotiate new trade pacts, with Republican leaders predicting the measure would pass despite heavy opposition. "It is, frankly, in the next few hours, an uphill fight," Gingrich, of Georgia, told reporters after the caucus. "I think it's going to be very, very close." House members were expected to begin voting sometime after 2 a.m.

today, with balloting possibly remaining open longer than usual to give Republican leaders more time to win over undecided lawmakers. "People are still torn philosophically and politically over it," said Rep. Vic Fazio, who backs the bill, "but the opponents' numbers are in downward flight. It's going to be very close, but I think we've got it." A Democratic aide on the Sen-See Fast, Page A5 That trend has emerged even as the proportion of workers who are offered insurance through their jobs has actually increased. It is well established that more Americans are becoming uninsured, making them prone to neglect preventive care when they are healthy and more vulnerable to staggering medical bills when they get sick.

Some 41 million Americans lack health insurance, and the number has been increasing by about 1 million a year. But the new study, by a pair of economists at the Agency for Health Care Policy and Research, part of the Department of Health and Human Services, is the first to explore how much of that trend is due to changing choices made by See STUDY, Page A4 If you've got mail, this guy lets you know Former Rittman man is beloved Voice of AOL to back down inspectors Iraqi sites. The U.N. teams refused to work without the Americans, whom the Iraqis call spies. In Baghdad, Saddam Hussein met air force and air defense commanders and then was quoted as telling his top political and military advisers: "Iraq has been put in a situation in which it has to choose between sacrifice and slavery." Iraq's air defense system was put on alert yesterday, and the See IRAQ, Page A5 If Jl jM1 5f a 1.1 MONDAY, November 10, 1997 mm tffirti iffl'riftiiJiirifn M-ttf LateBreming First lady's flight does turnaround A Boeing 707 flying Hillary Rodham Clinton to Central Asia was forced to dump fuel and return to Andrews Air Force Base last night after experiencing engine problems 10 minutes after takeoff.

No injuries were reported. Maintenance workers found a frayed wire in the outboard engine on the left wing, said a White House official, speaking on condition of anonymity. A light indicator signaled a problem with the engine, said a flight official, who didn't want his name used. A half-dozen firetrucks greeted the plane carrying the first lady and her entourage when it landed at the base at 9:55 p.m. In The Military Pentagon-OK'd study calls for closings, cuts A new Pentagon-backed study recommends two more rounds of military base closures a step fiercely opposed by Congress -and slashing the civilian and military staffs inside the Defense Department by 25 percent, Pentagon officials said yesterday.

The proposals will be introduced today in the Pentagon. Vice President Al Gore, Defense Secretary William Cohen and Joint Chiefs Chairman Gea Henry Shelton are expected to attend. If adopted, the steps would save $6 billion annually, an official said. Cohen established the panel earner this year, seeking recommendations to slim down the Pentagon bureaucracy following the May release of a major Pentagon review of strategy and weaponry. In Religion Rock said to be site where Mary rested Archaeologists have discovered the rock revered by early Christians as the place where the pregnant Virgin Mary rested on her way to Bethlehem, officials in Jerusalem said yesterday.

The limestone rock protrudes from the remnants of the floor of a fifth-century octagonal Byzantine church, the largest of its kind in the Holy Land. The rock was unearthed after construction workers laying pipe for the controversial Har Homa Jewish housing project accidentally damaged the church's foundation, spurring an excavation to make repairs. Gideon Avni, the Jerusalem district archaeologist at Israel's Antiquities Authority, said Christians made pilgrimages to a rock on the 5-mile Jerusalem-to-Bethlehem road at least 1,700 years ago, believing it was the place where the Virgin Mary rested on her way to Bethlehem, where she gave birth to Jesus. LOCAL Too many placards for handicapped parking. Page Bl.

REGION: Willing blood donors difficult to find. Page Bl. BUSINESS: Labor has no room for corruption. Page Dl. ITS NOW: Eve's Bayou worthy of Oscar nominations.

Page B6. SPORTS: New football league eyes Akroa Page CI. NATION: Unabomber case to test public defenders. Page A2. Sri Many turn down health insurance Associated Press An Iraqi woman holds an oxygen mask over the face of her sick baby daughter yesterday in Baghdad.

Iraqis are suffering from poor medical treatment due to U.N. sanctions imposed on Iraq since 1990. U-2 spy planes may fly today -J 4U guns would shoot at them, and Iraq's deputy prime minister will appear before the U.N. to present his country's case. Clinton affirmed earlier Pentagon warnings that the United States would regard it as an act of war if Iraq followed through on threats to attack American spy planes.

For the seventh consecutive day yesterday, Iraq refused to allow American members of U.N. arms inspection teams to enter Lost mmm Second of two parts they couldn't pay the small fee in American currency dollars which would have been generally illegal to possess in the Soviet Union at that time. At least one American, the records show, was arrested for trying to buy some on the black market I Marcella Hecker father. She only Julius Hecker Study finds workers rejecting coverage plans offered by employers By Amy Goldstein Waskinglim Past Washington: Increasing numbers of Americans are choosing not to buy health insurance even when their employers offer it, according to a study that sheds new light on why the ranks of the uninsured have been swelling in recent years. The study, published in today's issue of the journal Health Affairs, shows that the number of people who turned down their employers' health plans more than doubled over the past decade, from 2.6 million in 1987 to 6 million last year.

somewhere. From Beacon Journal uire sennres Sounding like warriors on the eve of battle, President Clinton and Iraqi President Saddam Hussein yesterday geared up for a military confrontation as neither man signaled a readiness to back down in the dispute over United Nations weapons inspectors. The crisis is expected to come to a head today on two fronts: American U-2 spy planes, operated on behalf of the United Nations, are set to fly over Iraq despite warnings Iraqi anti-aircraft "We had always hoped he was still alive out there, Relatives learn of executions decades later y. 'v nil 1 f. Some Americans could not leave Soviet Union because they lacked $2 By Glenn Gamboa Hmcon Journal business writer Elwood Edwards is not a household name, but his voice is heard by 17 times more people each day than Howard Stern's.

His catch phrase has never been on Saturday Night Live, nor even ESPN SportsCenter, but it is just as recognizable as "That's the ticket!" or "En Fuego." Edwards, you see, is The AOL Guy. And 17 million times a day -more than 11,000 times a minute -the former Rittman resident says: "Welcome! You've got mail!" to people around the world. "It's all amazing to me," said Edwards, a former operations manager at WAKC in Akron. "I have kind of a cult following now. I think it's strange that I can enter my name in a search engine and see people's Web pages for me." However, Edwards' claim to See AOL, Page A6 Associated Press recalls the day in 1938 when authorities near Moscow took away her recently learned of his execution and the accusations that led to it.

was a former American citizen who confessed to spying. BY ALAN CULUSON Associated Press Moscow: Hundreds of Americans traveled to the Soviet Union in the 1930s to help Josef Stalin build the new worker's paradise and then disappeared from the face of the Earth. Their friends and family, both in the United States and in Russia, have grown old without ever knowing for certain what happened to them Now the answer has been found in moldy KGB files obtained by the Associated Press and in old U.S. State Department records. These records show that some Americans desperate to leave Russia were not allowed to renew their American passports because Business Dl-8 Local News Bl-5 Jewell Cardwell Bl Lottery Bl Classified C7-14 Movies B7 Comics B8, 9 Nation Briefs A3 Deaths B5 People B6 Bob Dyer Bl Terry Pluto CI Editorials A8 Scene B7 Diane Evans Dl Sports Cl-6 It's Now B6-10 TV Listings BIO Ann Landers B8 Weather A2 Jean Singer, who moved to Russia from New York in 1932, with her father, Elias Singer, remembers that they both gave up their U.S.

passports four years later because they could not pay the renewal fee. He was arrested and shot a year later, at age 59. She has spent the rest of her life in Russia. At age 84, she lives there still, in the city of Nizhny Novgorod. "We would have left if we had the $2" for the passport renewal, she said in a recent interview.

"I didn't come to stay in Russia. I See PURGE, Page A4 Visit our Web site OhSocom http:www.ohlo.coin.