The Kokomo Tribune from Kokomo, Indiana • Page 21

State 22 Kokomo (Ind.) Tribune Monday, Nov. 25, Sister cities GARY, Ind. (AP) A Hoosier city has signed a pact with an African capital to cooperate on issues ranging from the economy to education. Gary and Lagos. Nigeria, signed a sister city pact the northwest Indiana city Saturday.

Gary Mayor Thomas V. Barnes Nigerian Prince Ademola made it official by signing the pact. "For too long we have narrowed our horizons," Barnes said. "When we restricted vision, we restricted our op- w-aortunities. From now on when we of travel, tourism, education -iaind jobs, let us think of Lagos, Euthanasia novel EVANSVILLE, Ind.

(AP) Dr. Jim Hold had no way of knowing his novel about euthanasia would be as fresh as today's headlines. Hold began working on his book, "First Degree Love," long before Dr. Jack Kevorkian of Michigan made headlines by helping three Women to commit suicide. Degree Love," is the story of a country doctor in Kentucky torn between his own religious background and his patients' desire to die.

"I'm happy it's such a timely topic, but back in 1987 when I began working on it I just thought it was a good idea for a story," said Rold, a 58- year-old radiologist on the staff of St. Mary's Medical Center. Abortion protests FORT WAYNE, Ind. (AP) An anti-abortion group from Fort Wayne traveled to northern Indiana over the weekend to stage demonstrations. There were no arrests in Saturday's protests by about 50 members of the city's Operation Rescue chapter.

Organizers said the group participated in the National Days of Rescue, a nationwide protest against abortion. The group staged a morning demonstration in Gary, before driving to Dr. Ulrich Klppfer's residence in Illinois for a brief prayer meeting in front of his house. In the afternoon, the group picketed a Planned Parenthood clinic in Merillville. Farmers feeling repercussions from collapse INDIANAPOLIS (AP) A bankrupt St.

Louis grain dealer, which owes about 500 Hoosier farmers $5 million, may have built its network of grain elevators on fraudulent financial statements that overstated its assets, according to a published report. The evidence of fraud involving Merchants Grain Co. is being uncovered by attorneys examining the company's subpoenaed financial records, the report said. "I just didn't think a company would do stuff like that to keep operating. We're getting our eyes opened," said Tony H.

Asher, a Putnam County farmer who serves on the creditors' committee in the bankruptcy proceedings. Asher, like other farmers, has little chance of collecting on the grain he sold to Merchants. The company's collapse was made public three days after Christmas of 1990 when Merchants lost its federal license to buy and sell grain. Repercussions have been felt throughout the grain- trading industry. In Indiana, the Commissioner of Agriculture's Office has tightened its oversight of grain companies under a 1991 law known as "the Merchants clause." At the federal level, the U.S.

Department of Agriculture also is studying the case to prevent it from happening again. Criminal charges also are possible. The U.S. attorney's office in Indianapolis is looking into prosecuting company executives, said Edmund M. Mahern, the court- appointed receiver who took the company into Chapter 11 bankruptcy.

The case ended up in Indianapolis because the company's Indiana assets were foreclosed first. Merchants operated grain elevators in Beech Grove in Marion County; LaPaz in Marshall County; Roachdale in Putnam County; Coatesville in Hendricks County; Cynthiana in Posey County; and Princeton in Gibson County. Merchants also operated in five other states, but only farmers in Indiana, Kentucky and Tennessee were owed money. Indiana farmers were nit especially hard by Merchants' collapse. They are owed 62 percent of the $8 million Merchants never paid for grain purchases.

"It was a disaster of unprecedented proportions," said Cresswell A. Hizer, assistant state agriculture commissioner. Asher is owed $110,000, or half his 1990 harvest revenue. He estimates it will take him three or four years to recover from his loss. Hendricks County farmer Keith Brock wasn't paid for 35 percent of his harvest and had to get a loan to plant a crop this year.

"I've never done that since I started fanning," he said. Merchants Grain was founded in 1983 by New York City financier Hugh Levey as his attempt to break into the highly competitive grain industry. However, Merchants found itself short of capital and turned to what receiver's attorney Joseph H. Yeager Jr. called a "flash transaction." The accounting procedure involved ordering millions of dollars of grain to hold only on the last day of the company's fiscal year.

The transaction made it look like Merchants had more assets than it really did. A check for the grain was written by Merchants' parent company, a transportation company headed by Levey, but was never cashed and was not counted as an outstanding debt. Yeager said. The contrived year-end ment. which was given to the USDA, was vital to Merchants staying in business.

To protect farmers who sell grain on credit, the USDA requires annual financial data from grain companies ttt tell if they have the minimum assets needed to hold a grain- buying license. Michael A. Lueken, a former Merchants president, said sworn deposition that the con) pany used the phantom buy era! times "to enhance tfi balance sheet." Richard G. DeVries, chief i grain company licensing for th USDA, said Merchants would hav lost its license had his divisiti learned of the transactions. Bu DeVries said the USDA doesn't have the staff to audit the more than 5,000 grain dealers if licenses.

KKK ceremony lotto record 'INDIANAPOLIS (AP) Lotto America ticket sales in Indiana prompted by a $47 million jackpot shattered selling records, lottery official says. Statewide sales of the $1 tickets since Wednesday topped 3 million about four hours before the 11 p.m. drawing Saturday. Lottery spokesman Kurt Wise said sales for the week were expected to hit 5.7 million. Statewide, tickets were selling a rate of 4,800 per minute early Saturday evening, another record.

The previous selling record occurred for the drawing of Sept. 28, and a $25 million jackpot, when sales hit 2.9 million, and hourly sales reached 3,500, Wise said. Help for farmers WASHINGTON (AP) The Senate has approved a farm measure that would provide $1.75 billion in disaster aid for farmers in Indiana and elsewhere across the nation. Sen. Dan Coats, said the measure will benefit drought-stricken farmers.

The chamber approved the plan Friday and sent it to the House- Senate conference committee. Included in the measure was crop insurance waiver legislation sponsored by Coats. He said the wajver will make farmers without crop insurance who had losses last summer eligible for low interest loans of 4.5 percent. Purdue enrollment WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. (AP) Officials at Purdue University say enrollment is growing.

The student population on its statewide system is nearing the 60,000 mark. School officials said late last week that the enrollment is a result of increases among students from Indiana and from minority groups. Enrollment increased at each of the university's campuses this fall for a total of 59,958. No to Drugs Rally (AP) Three members of the Indianapolis Colts wjll be making a pitch this week to children to keep off drugs. Wide receivers Clarence Verdin and Bill Brooks and linebacker Tony Walker will host the third annual Yes to to Drugs Rally.

The event begins at 10 a.m. Tuesday in the Hoosier Dome. A crowd of 10,000 is expected from Marion and eight surrounding counties. Illinois rollover 'SPRINGFIELD, 111. (AP) A single winner this Wednesday in the grand prize drawing of the Illinois Lotto is guaranteed at least $15 million, lottery officials said.

While no one picked all six numbers in the weekend drawing, 138 people matched five numbers for $2,298 each, officials said Sunday. Nearly 8,000 people won $79 each for selecting four winning numbers. BICKNELL, Ind. A Klanswoman holds her torch during a Ku Klux Klan rally and crosslighting ceremony here Saturday evening. About 40 people, approximately 20 wearing KKK regalia, attended the rally, which included two hours of anti-Jewish, anti- black and anti-government speeches prior to the crosslighting at dusk.

(AP photo) Crime in Bayh's neighborh Shooting brings the message home to the governor III INDIANAPOLIS (AP) A rash of crime in the neighborhood of the governor's residence has reminded officials that even the typically quiet north Indianapolis area isn't immune to violence. In the latest incidents, a man was shot to death and another was wounded during separate robberies Saturday night. Police say the incidents may be related. In both cases, which occurred about one hour apart, the victims were shot even though they offered no resistance. Kurt A.

Kahlo, 34, of Fishers was found by a customer shortly after 10 p.m., dead of a single gunshot to the head. Kahlo's body was discovered in the office of Kurt's Marathon Service Center, 4838 N. Pennsylvania St. No arrests had been made in the case on Sunday, said Sgt. Roy West of the IPD's homicide division.

In the second robbery, David Armes, 37, of Indianapolis was shot and wounded in the stomach at the Short-Stop Market, 2204 East 10th Street. Armes, a clerk at the store, was stable Sunday evening at Wishard Memorial Hospital. Only a small amount of money was taken from the cash registers of both businesses, police said. West said investigators were pursuing several leads and were asking that anybody who passed the gas station between 8 and 10 p.m. Saturday to contact police.

The gas station is two blocks north and one block east of Gov. Evan Bayh's official residence in the 4600 block of Meridian Street. On Nov. 15, the Friendly Foods grocery store in the 4900 block of Pennsylvania was held up and robbed by a man with a gun. A store clerk was shot and wounded.

"We're not ruling it out, but there is nothing to indicate the two (gas station and grocery store robberies) are tied in," West said. "There were possibly two black males involved in that On Nov. 19, an off-duty Indianapolis police detective confronted a group of juveniles thought to be stealing bicycles in the 4600 block of Delaware Street. The officer was shot and wounded in the back, but managed to pursue the gang anyway. A 15-year-old juvenile was chased across the lawn at the governor's residence, two blocks west, and caught soon after.

The officer who was shot, Frank Dewey Poskon, 41, is a friend of Bayh's and often accompanies the governor and his wife Susan when they go jogging. He is an undercover narcotics officer with the Metropolitan Drug Task Force. Bavh, who left his residence to check on the wounded officer before learning that it was Poskon, said the incident proves that violent crime "can happen to anyone, not just in less affluent areas. This brought it home to me." Cancer scientists attack metastasis SOUTH BEND, Ind. (AP) Scientists studying one of the most troublesome problems of cancer research metastasis spent the weekend at the University of Notre Dame pooling their knowledge of the subject.

About 12 physicians delivered lectures on their studies on the cellular level during the symposium, which ended Sunday. Among them was Dr. Michael Feldman, a senior researcher at the Weizmann Institute for Science, near Tel Aviv. Working with laboratory animals, Feldman says he has succeeded in the initial steps of developing a vaccine that appears to inhibit metastasis the spreading of cancer from one organ to another. Researchers said discovering how metastasis occurs, and then controlling it, has been an elusive goal for decades.

However, new techniques that permit scientists to alter the genetic makeup of cancer cells have opened more avenues of research and could eventually lead to effective control over the spread of cancer, said Dr. Morris Pollard, director of Notre Dame's Lobund Laboratory and a cancer researcher. Most cancer deaths are caused not by the initial tumor, but by the malignancies that develop when cancerous cells break away from the first tumor and create new growths in other organs, Pollard said. Feldman, knowing that some cancer cells are capable of metastasis, while others are not, fixed on a distinction between the two types: the metastatic cell lacked a particular molecular found on the other. Inserting a particular gene into the metastatic cell stimulated the cell to produce the missing molecule.

When the altered cells were injected into cancerous laboratory mice, the vaccine stimulated the immune system to create cancer-killer cells that halted the spread of cancer, he said. "So we have converted by genetic engineering a malignant cell into a benign cell," Feldman said. The complex process of metastasis appears to involve genetic controls for every step: breaking away from the original tumor, entering the circulatory system, clustering into groups of cells, and implanting in new sites. "You are looking at many steps," Feldman said. "You could block it at every step." The significance of the research was underscored by Dr.

Jonathan E. Rhoads, a former president of the American Cancer Society and former chairman of the National Cancer Advisory Board, who was invited to discuss the increasing problem of cancer. Improved medical care has tamed many once-fatal diseases, enabling more people to live to old age, where cancer becomes more prevalent, he said. "Even with the improvement in cancer care, we have had trouble keeping up with the increasing incidence of cancer," Rhoads said. "The increase in incidence is all the more reason for concentrating on research programs," Bamboo, peanuts good alternatives WASHINGTON (AP) Some corn and soybean farmers could profitably branch out to such crops as bamboo and peanuts, says an Indiana professor who heads a major research project on farming in his state.

Trying such alternative crops could help farmers across the country stay in business, keep farming dollars in rural communities and maintain soil quality, says David Ferguson, an associate professor of landscape architecture at Ball State University in Muncie, Ind. "We're talking about giving the farmer more choices," Ferguson said in a news release describing his project. "If you don't poison the topsoil, you'll sustain the land and you'll have more choices as far as the crops you plant. We want to sustain the land so the quality of the soil will still be the same three generations from now." Early release given to AIDS inmates 1.5% of prisoners are HIV positive VALPARAISO, Ind. (AP) Porter County Jail inmates serving minor offenses and suffering from AIDS or the HIV virus are being released early.

Two Superior Court judges say they are freeing some prisoners because the jaillacks the medical facilities to treat acquired immune deficiency syndrome. Porter Superior Court Judges Norman Buls and Mary Harper say they have concerns for the health and well-being of the offender and the potential health risks to other inmates. "There have been more than a few people in the last few months who have passed through here with AIDS who have been released," said Buls, who added that he could not estimate their number. "They pose a tremendous problem for our system," he said. Harper estimated that over the last three to four years, she has had more than 100 AIDS- or HIV- infected defendants in her court, mostly charged with misdemeanor offenses.

A key reason for the early release is the high cost of medical treatment for those inmates. "On the local level it's even more of a problem because we don't have the money to put together a treatment program, and I'm not sure that's the way to go," Buls said. The Porter County Jail does not have an AIDS treatment program. Harper said she has serious concerns when she sentences a' healthy man to prison because of the possibility of sex among mates. Homosexual sex acts in jail, either consensual or force happen, Harper said.

"We tend to be sensitive to pie's medical problems but AIDS seems to be a predomi-a nant concern," she said. "We re-3 ally do try to be sensitive to these? problems, especially when the of-J tenses with which they're chargedsf are not heinous." The Indiana Department of Correction's policy on AIDS- and HIV-infected inmates provides for! testing at the individual's request, said Glenn Lawrence, a DOCgjj spokesman. Pre-test and counseling is given. Inmates who test positive housed in the general unless they engage in that places others at Lawrence said, when they coulcP be placed in segregation. The Lake County Jail offers counseling on the transmission of the disease and gives inmates the drug AZT, which been shown to slow the progression of the disease.

Zanesville considers becoming real town ZANESVILLE, Ind. (AP) If the state wants to give money away, the folks around Zanesville would like some of it. Trying to take advantage of available state tax revenues and grants, some of the 500 residents of Zanesville want to incorporate the Wells County community as a town. Their aim is to qualify Zanesville for state grants to help pay for a new sewer system and entitle residents to cigarette, gas and sales tax revenues that could be used to pay for police and fire protection, upkeep of Zanesville Community Park, street maintenance and other services such as police protection. As a town, Zanesville also could collect property taxes.

Once signatures of 50 residents have been obtained, a petition will be submitted to the Wells County commissioners. If there is no opposition and the commissioners approve, Zanesville would become a town. Bluffton attorney Travis Holdman, a former Zanesville resident who is representing the Zanesville Area Neighborhood Association in its efforts to make Zanesville a town, said incorporation "is an avenue to get to cheap money." Zanesville is located about 15 miles southwest of Fort Wayne and straddles the Wells-Allen County line. It is predominantly residential with many professional and upper-middle class residents who work in Fort Wayne, Bluffton orHuntington. As a town, Zanesville could receive about $15,000 as its per capita allotment of state tax revenues.

A proposed property tax assessment of 80 cents to $1 per $100 assessed valuation would generate an additional $20,000 to $25,000, Holdman said. This isn't the first attempt to incorporate Zanesville. A 1986 bid failed because of concerns about property tax increases and uncontrolled development. ZANA was born as a result, and there appears to be little opposition to the latest proposal, ZANA secretary Melba Edwards said. Zanesville has been plagued for years by problems with its septic systems.

Because unincorporated places do not qualify for state grants or low-interest loans, residents would have to shoulder the entire cost. The situation has lowered prop- erty values and harmed growth in the area, Edwards said. By incorporating, Zanesville i also would be able to afford to hire a town marshal and provide more police protection. Mail 30 years overdue ROSEDALE, Ind. (AP) The recent arrival of some long-overdue mail, including one card sent more than 30 years ago, has some Rosedale residents and postal officials puzzled.

"It's so weird," said Shirley A. Brown, the town clerk of this southern Parke County Community. "These three pieces of mail are from so many different years, but they've all come at In 1985, Shirley A. Brown sent a sympathy note to friends living on a nearby rural route in Brazil about 12 miles away. "It was the kind of note you fold over and seal with a sticker, "she recalled.

Three weeks ago, she got it back, with a message: Deceased. Return to sender. The next day, Brown's neighbor got a postcard from Houston that neighbors had sent while vacationing in 1974. But that's not all. A post card mailed from Washington state to Brown's deceased friends arrived at their estate recently with a 1960 postmark.

The card was from the couple's son. It was his death in 1985 that had prompted Brown to write her condolence letter that recently surfaced. The whole thing is a mystery tonostal officials Rosedale Postmaster Mark A. White said the mail would have come through the Terre Haute post office. He was unsure why it was so late.

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