Del Rio News Herald from Del Rio, Texas • Page 1

Del Rio News-He Monday Angus! 22. I SECTION 10 PAGES Serving Southwest Texas Since 1929 Vol. 60 No. 156 25C 650 people killed in earthquake in India NEW DELHI, India (AP) Monsoon rains hampered efforts to dig through mounds of debris today for more victims of an earthquake that killed at least 650 people as it flattened thousands of homes in the India-Nepal border region. The death toll was expected to climb in Sunday's pre-dawn quake, which triggered landslides and floods and was the mountainous region's deadliest in 38 years.

Nepal reported extensive damage in nearly a third of its territory. Officials in both countries said they had yet to receive reports from the remote Himalayan areas hardest hit by the temblor, which knocked out power and communications and was said to injure at least 3,000 people. "The tolls have come in only from urban areas," said V.K. Sharma, a deputy secretary in Bihar state, the one of the hardest hit areas in India. The quake, centered almost on the India-Nepal border, registered 6.5 on the Richter scale.

Indian television today showed the devastation in Bihar: crumbled buildings, makeshift morgues lined with rows of bodies wrapped in white shrouds, damaged hospital wards packed with survivors. In India, medical teams carried medicine and other supplies to overcrowded hospitals and the army was deployed to help search for victims. But the monsoons, which hit the subcontinent in late June and usually last through September, hampered relief operations. "The rains have been a great hinderance in carrying out rescue works. Accesss to some areas of this mountain country is impossible," Niranjan Thapa, Nepal's minister of State for Home Affairs, told a news conference.

He said 21 of the kingdom's 75 districts suffered extensive damage. The hardest hit ap- peared to be Dharan, a sparsely populated border region where Thapa said at least 131 people died. "It may be three days before communication is restored and we get reports of the damage," said one Nepalese Foreign Ministry official, speaking on condition of anonymity. Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi flew to Bihar to tour some of the hardest hit areas and assess the destruction. Prime Minister Marich Man Revised county budget calling for pay hike; lesser fee for fire protection By ANN THOMAS News-Herald Writer Val Verde County Judge Sergio Gonzalez filed the final draft of his proposed budget this morning.

To bring this budget in the black, Gonzalez recommended that the pay increase for all county employees, elected and otherwise, be lowered from 5 percent to 4 percent. He also included a significantly lesser fee for fire protection than the city had requested. During last week's budget workshop the Val Verde County Commissioners' Court discussed Woman survives fall from bluff By ANN THOMAS News-Herald Writer A Marble Falls woman fell approximately 20 feet off a bluff en a ranch 25 miles north of Del Rio on Saturday; however, she was not seriously injured, officials report. Pearl Goble, 65, was reportedly looking over the property on the Blue Sage Ranch, located 25 miles north of Del Rio off Highway 277, when she slipped and fell 20 to 25 feet down an embankment, said Val Verde County Sheriff's Department Deputy Don Hill. The incident occurred at approximately 11 a.m.

Saturday morning. A retired physician who happened to be at the scene checked Goble for injuries, said Hill. In order to be rescued Goble had to be lowered down the embankment to a waiting boat on what Hill believed to be Devil's River. The boat then took Goble to a four-wheel vehicle which transported her to the ambulance. Goble was transported to Val Verde Memorial Hospital with injuries to her head, shoulder and hip, said Hill.

Goble was admitted for facial lacerations and for over-night observation at the hospital and was released Sunday morning, said Gilda Robles, a spokesman for the hospital. Fluid helping provide sight HOUSTON (AP) A new fluid being used at a Houston eye bank is helping provide sight to more people by prolonging the preservation of donated corneas, officials said. Corneas could previously be stored a maximum of only a few days because of limitations of the preservatives available, but the use of the new solution allows storage up to 10 days, said Dr. Kirk Wilhelmus, medical adviser of the Lions Eyes of Texas Eye Bank in the Texas Medical Center. The time extension allowed by a new solution containing chondroitin sulfate permits corneal transplants to be done on a more elective basis and also allows shipment to more distant locations, Wilhelmus said.

Corneal blindness and corneal dystrophies make up 8-10 percent of all blindness in the U.S. Experts believe half of all blindness to be curable or preventable. "In 1987, more than 30,000 corneal transplants were performed in the United States, and I imagine there will be even more in 1988," Wilhelmus said, "mainly because there have been some recent developments in eye banking and in surgical techniques. The Lions Eye Bank, located in the Neurosensory Center, a part of Baylor and The Methodist Hospital, is the largest center of its kind in procuring corneas. the desire to have "hard negotiations" with the city regarding the budget, including funding for the Val Verde County Library and the fire protection fee.

During this morning's meeting of the Court, County Auditor Frank Lowe said that he would like to publicly apologize to Mayor Alfredo Gutierrez and the Del Rio City Council for his comments during that meeting. "I fully want to cooperate with the city. It is mandatory that the city and county cooperate fully in these budget matters." Lowe and Commissioner Robert Rodriguez urged that there be full negotiations between the city and county during Tuesday's meeting. Sources said that some City Councilmen interpreted comments during this meeting as signals that the county did not want to negotiate with the city. Rodriguez had suggested that he, Lowe, and Commissioners Martin Wardlaw and Ricardo Padilla meet with City Manager Jeffrey Pomeranz and Mayor Alfredo Gutierrez to discuss a proposed pay increase for library director Janice Weber, the fire protection fee, and the county's contribution to a federal grant for paving roads in the Industrial Park.

As Rodriguez completed his suggestion, Gonzalez, who had stepped out the room, returned and said that he would meet with the mayor and Pomeranz. Today Gonzalez said that he had not had that opportunity. His proposed budget filed today with the county clerk did not include the $79,000 fire protection fee requested by the city, which was one of the items the Commis- See COUNTY. Page 2 House panel: VA bungled files but favored few received special treatment WASHINGTON (AP) A House panel says the Veterans Administration made numerous errors as it hurriedly processed disability claims but had time to give special treatment to applicants who "had the ear" of influential lawmakers. A House Government Operations Committee report, released Sunday, described two separate systems for handling claims.

Applicants without "pull" had their cases rushed to judgment by error-prone managers trying to win pay bonuses for meeting production quotas, the report said. But the panel said the Bureau of Veterans Appeals the court of last resort for claimants whose benefits were denied "maintained a list of congressmen who should be brought to the BVA chairman's attention if they inquire about an appeal." At a hearing last February by the panel's subcommittee on human resources, a former appeals board member, Daniel J.B. Bier man, was asked whether there was preferential treatment when a lawmaker on the list intervened. Bier man replied, "It is difficult for me to say, but I suspect that to be the case, sir. Otherwise, there would be no reason for it (the list)." "The BVA showed favoritism to claimants who had the ear of certain influential members of Congress," the committee concluded.

The VA said in a statement it "has not been provided with a copy of the committee's report and is obviously disadvantaged by the fact that it was released to the media before it came to us. We intend to review it thoroughly when it is received." VA officials refused to reply to the panel's specific allegations. Addressing the appeals board's quota system, the report said, "The Board of Veterans Appeals was so caught up in an unreasonable production quota standard, that some members were deciding at the rate of one every eight minutes." The committee noted that earlier this year, the VA ended production-based bonuses and preferential treatment after both practices were publicized in subcommittee hearings and challenged in a lawsuit filed by Vietnam Veterans of America. The report suggested that Congress end a 55-year-old prohibition and allow veterans who are denied benefits to appeal their cases in federal court. In 1987, veterans won less than 13 percent of the time under the now-abolished quota system at the VA appeals board.

The committee said the VA tried to cover up its frequent mistakes in disability claims by deliberately under-reporting the error rate to staffers for the human resources subcommittee, headed by Rep. Ted Weiss, The VA approves about $11 billion in disability benefits annually to 2.5 million veterans, widows and children. While some veterans were improperly denied benefits under the VA's error- plagued system, others may have received money to which they were not entitled, according to committee staffers. Nine of the 15 Republicans on the 38-member committee filed dissenting views disagreeing with the recommendation for court appeals. Lobbyists spent $63 million trying to influence Congress WASHINGTON (AP) Capitol Hill lobbyists paced by a controversial Social Security advocacy group spent more than $63.62 million trying to influence Congress in 1987.

The amount, compiled from required reports filed with the House and Senate, represented a 4.5 percent increase from 1986, when a massive overhaul of the nation's income tax laws spurred big spending by registered lobbyists. The 1986 total of $60.87 million by some 8,500 individuals and organizations was up from $49 million in 1985 and at the time was the highest total since The Associated Press began compiling the figures in 1983. The National Committee to Preserve Social Security led the pack last year.with a reported outlay of $2.93 million, much of it for direct-mail campaigns designed to flood congressional offices with letters from senior citizens. Headed by James Roosevelt, the son of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the organization has drawn fire from members of Congress who say it uses scare tactics to obtain contributions from the elderly. Roosevelt has defended the lobbying group, saying "our cause is a good one, our methods are honest, our concerns are sincere." The $2.93 million was slightly below the $3 million in lobbying expenses reported by the group for 1986, when it finished in second place behind the $3.02 million spent by Citizens for Sensible Control of Acid Rain.

That group, bankrolled principally by electric utilities and coal companies, decreased its 1987 lobbying expenses to $1.2 million, leaving it in eighth place among nine organizations spending more than $1 million last year. Second spot in 1987 was occupied by perennial big-spender Common Cause, the self- described citizens lobby that concentrates on government ethics and election finance reform and attributes its entire budget to lobbying. Common Cause spent $2.56 million last year, just ahead of the $2.55 million reported by a tobacco company, Philip Morris USA, which used direct-mail campaigns to oppose any increase in federal excise taxes on tobacco products. Philip Morris spent about half its total in the final quarter of 1987. Its fourth-quarter outlay of $1.27 million was the highest by any lobbying group for a three- month period last year.

The Committee to Protect the Family ranked fourth in overall spending last year with $1.95 million, followed by Sierra Club's $1.5 million to support lobbying on environment and conservation issues. The biggest spender among organized labor last year was the National Association of Letter Carriers at $1.48 million. The other million-plus spenders were the Fiber Fabric and Apparel Coalition for Trade with $1.24 million and the Home Recording Rights Coalition with nearly $1.18 million. The coalition, a consortium of audio component companies, has been battling on Capitol Hill for several years against the Recording Industry Association of America, composed of record and tape manufacturers. The coalition's spending was far ahead of the $331,280 reported by the recording association in the struggle over whether Congress will restrict use of or impose royalty fees on digital audio tape, the newest kid on the high- fidelitv block.

Index Classifieds 9-10 Comics 6 Crossword 6 6 Deaths 2 Horoscope 6 Living Sports 7,8 TV Log tost toy wan our id tor turn- Singh Shrestha of Nepal visited some of the victims at Bir Hospital in his capital, Katmandu. The quake roused people from their sleep in Bihar and nine other Indian states and central and eastern Nepal. Rail tracks sank into the soggy ground and bridges over rising rivers cracked, paralyzing train service and road travel in many parts of the devastated areas. See EARTHQUAKE, Page 2 News-Herald photo by Miisy Lewis BUTTERFLY VISITOR Swarms of butterflies and moths fluttered around the city for several days, this larger one landing on a zinnia. It could be a Red Admiral, a Swallowtail or some other type of butterfly but whatever it was, it knew how to check up on the zinnia.

School district officials say they're strapped for funds AUSTIN (AP) School boards throughout Texas have been spending August preparing budgets for the coming school year, and many officials say that more districts than ever before are having to increase property tax rates, the Austin American-Statesman reported today. Some officials say they have had to cut their budgets so deeply and raise taxes so high in recent years, their districts soon will be faced with bankruptcy without more state financial aid, the newspaper reported. "I guess traditionally schools have always struggled, but not to this extent," said Jon Tate, assistant director of the Texas Association of Community Schools. The association lobbies the Legislature on behalf of districts in small towns. Joe Wisnoski, director of the resource planning division of the Texas Education Agency, said the agency does not make projections about the number of districts that are planning to raise taxes.

However, he said, having more districts that need to raise tax rates and cut budgets would come as no surprise. "This has been the fourth year we've operated with this basic funding levle, so we haven't seen any new money going out to the districts. That means the districts over time are goinbg to have to bear a higher share," Wisnoski said. The state's unsteady economy also has complicated the picture, he said. "A lot of property has dipped off the tax rolls, so (school districts) have to increase their rates just to stay even," he said.

Tate said, "I'm sure that the economy as made some (property) values decrease. But even if everything had stayed the same (economically), the districts would have been extremely hard put." The Legislature mandated education reforms in 1984, including costly provisions setting up a career ladder for teachers and mandating a maximum class size of 22 students per teacher through grade four. Tate said those reforms, among others, have left districts in a three-way squeeze among increased costs from state-mandated programs, stagnant state funding and district residents who are growing tired of seeing property taxes go up. Pecos deputy slain FORT STOCKTON (AP) Two Kansas prison escapees are being held in jail without bond today on charges of capital murder after a Pecos County lawman was killed while chasing a speeding van, authorities said, Charles Edward Smith, 22, of Deerfield, and his 31-year-old cousin, Carroll Bernard Smith of Houston, were arrested in connection with the Saturday slaying of Pecos County sheriff's deputy Tim Hudson, 60, of Fort Stockton. Two men fired at West Texas lawmen who had set up a number of roadblocks and enlisted the aid of a helicopter to aid in chasing the assailants.

Hudson was killed early Saturday morning while pursuing a van that matched the description of one carrying two men who pumped $22.50 worth of gasoline and then sped off without paying, authorities said. Charles Smith was serving a one to five-year term for convictions in Finney County, on charges of aiding a felon, burglary and theft, said Leo Taylor, director of the Kansas State Reception and Diagnostic Center. Carroll Smith was serving a seven- to 25-year term for burglary, theft and criminal damage to property convictions from Finney County, Taylor said. The men also face escape charges, Taylor said. The two men arrested had walked away Aug.

14 from the Reception and Diagnostic Center of the Kansas Department of Corrections in Tupeka, Kan. Hudson, who was a lawman for more than 30 years, died almost immediately after he was shot, said Pecos County Sheriff Bruce Wilson. Fort Stockton is town of about 10,000 residents in Far West Texas. According to Wilson, an attendant at a service station iu Bakersfield, 35 miles west of Fort Stockton, called police saying two men pumped gas and didn't pay..