The Town Talk from Alexandria, Louisiana • Page 4

A-4 Town Talk, Alexandria-Pinevffle, Tuesday, March 3, 19S1 Briefs New Union Planned For Office Workers Pre-Natal Classes to Start Beginning Wednesday. SL Frances Cabrini Hospital will offer six two-hour sessions of pre-natal classes for expectant parents. Classes will continue Friday, March 11, 13 and 18 from 7 p.m. until 9 p.m. each day in the hospital's Ensenada Room.

Lectures, audio-visual presentations and a tour of the obstetric department will be included in the classes which are conducted by obstetric registered nurses. A guest obstetrician will speak at the last session March 20. Expectant parents may register for the free class by calling Cabrini Hospital education department, 487-1122, extension 6669 or 6670. Natchitoches School Board NATCHITOCHES The Natchitoches Parish School Board will meet at 5 p.m. Thursday in the Board Room of the School Board Office, 310 Royal SL Easter Seals The 1981 Easter Seal Campaign is now underway and will run through Easter Sunday April 19.

Daniel Underwood is executive director of the Easter Seal Society for Crippled Children and Adults of Louisiana. WASHINGTON (UPI) The Service Employees International Union and a major organization of women office workers today announced a joint campaign to unionize the nation's 20 million secretarial and clerical workers. At a news conference. Service Employees President John Sweeney and Karen Nussbaum, executive director of Working Women, a organization of office workers, disclosed plans to join in the organizing effort Under the agreement, the union will create a new national local called District 925, with local autonomy, in which the newly unionized workers will be placed. "This partnership between the women's movement and the trade union movement is a significant step toward building a strong national bargaining agent for office workers," said Ms.

Nussbaum. She will head the national organizing campaign and serve as ing president of District 925, with Jacquelynn Ruff, president of a current Service Employees Local 925 in Boston, serving as executive director. Sweeney said without union representation, office workers "are among the most underpaid and abused members of the workforce." Acting Grant DA Pledges To Cut Backlog If Elected J. Smith at 992-8231 between 9 a.m. and 9 p.m.

Alpine Fire Awards The Alpine Volunteer Fire Department's annual Fireman of the Year award was presented recently to Jackie Gilchrist. Officer of the year award was presented to Charles Petrus. Bruce Taylor was elected to his fourth term as chief. Other officers elected were David Hanna, assistant chief; Charles Petrus, first captain; Curtis Oakes, second captain; Robert Brewer, bay captain; Wayne Sandidge, chief pumper engineer; Jackie Gilchrist, assistant pumper engineer, station James Brasher, assistant pumper engineer station and R.T. Reed, secretary-treasurer.

Board of directors will be Mike Hubert, Mike Malone, George Alford, Tommy Taylor, Bruce Taylor and Reed. American Energy Week The Girl Scouts of Central Louisiana Girl Scout Council and Central Louisiana Electric Co. Inc. will work together to promote American Energy Week, Sunday through March 21. The program's purpose is to promote self-sufficiency in energy.

Girl Scouts will learn to read electric meters, record energy usage and study energy conservation tips. In addition, the Girl Scouts will participate in National Energy Education Day March 20, one of the major programs highlighted during the week. NEED is an independent project of the National School Board Association. Gospel Businessmen Meeting Full Gospel Businessmen will hold its monthly meeting at 7:30 p.m. March 14 in Alexandria Community Center on Bolton Avenue.

Speaker will be Jon Vanderreit. Basketball Tourney JENA A men and women's basketball tournament will be sponsored by the American Heart Fund March 13 and 14 in the Jena High Gym at the corner of High School Drive and Peyton Street. All benefits, proceeds and entry fees will go the the American Heart Association of Louisiana. The tax deductible entry fee is $15 per team and should be received by Wednesday. Checks may be made payable to the American Heart Trophy Fund, Attention: Polly Taylor, La-Salle State Bank, P.O.

Box 1060, Jena 71342. For more information contact tournament director Larry Abortion Rate Still Rising By Tom Haywood Town Talk Staff Writer Joe Beck said he would push to relieve the current backlog of court cases in Grant Parish if elected district attorney in the April 4 election. Beck said getting cases to trial rapidly has been a priority of his since he became acting district attorney Nov. 15. He took over the office from retiring District Attorney Billy Lutes after serving as assistant district attorney for four years.

"If elected I'll continue to do what I've been doing since Nov. 15," Beck said Monday. "That's a short space of time to April 4 to demonstrate what kind of district attorney I'd make." He said his goal is to "get these cases to trial as quickly after the arrest as possible" to help ease the case load. Beck spoke Monday to the Alex-andria-Pineville Board of Realtors, a group important to Grant Parish because it transacts 85-90 percent of the real estate transfers there. Noting what he called his "ability to work with people to get things done," Beck said as town attorney for Pollock he helped attract five new industries to the area.

"I think it would be safe to say that that's a five-times increase in our industrial capacity," he ill jit on school boards" that the boards have restricted young peoples' access to birth control information. "I predict these abortions will increase as long as we have people like Richard Schwei-ker (U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services) who has said there will be no more birth control for teen-agers on welfare," Baird added. The Rev. John McLaughlin, pro-life coordinator for the Catholic Archdiocese of Boston, said, "We have to continue to highlight the value of the human person.

"There is a human being in the mother's womb who has a right to life. It's as simple as reproductive age in 1978 and 30.2 in 1979," the report said. The private institute said it's possible abandonment of two of the most effective contraceptive methods the pill and the IUD because of health risks led to the increase. The number of abortions in 1979 may be also be related to economic pressures, improved referral information and the increased importance to many women of careers. Bill Baird, a nationally known birth control advocate, said another reason is "the antfc abortion people, the Moral Majority and the Catholic Church have put so much pressure NEW YORK (UPI) The nation's abortion rate reached a total of 1.5 million or three out of every 10 pregnancies in 1979, according to the Alan Guttmacher Institute.

Thirty-one percent of the abortions were obtained by teen-agers, who represent only 18 percent of the sexually active females of child-bearing age, according to the study released Monday. The overall total was up from 1.4 million abortions performed in 1978, the institute said in its "Family Planning Perspectives." "The U.S. abortion rate continued its long-term rise since legalization in 1973, reaching a level of 28.2 abortions per 1,000 women of Joe Beck: Says he would unclog the backlog of cases if elected Grant Parish district attorney. smiled. Beck has been Pollock's town attorney for the last four years and would keep the position if elected as district attorney.

State law allows for a person to hold both posts at once and provides for contingencies if a conflict of interest arises, such as if Pollock sued Grant Parish, Beck said. Beck's opponent in the April 4 election is Colfax attorney Robert Kennedy. mat," ne saia. Pollution Changing World's Weather, Area firemen Mpke 1 2 Runs 10 20 a.m., England Drive, grass fire. 3:30 p.m., Lodi Road, grass fire.

Alexandria firemen made two more runs Sunday: 1:05 p.m., 1411 South Yale St, burst water pipe. 1:50 p.m., 1932 Harris pillow on fire under the house. Pineville firemen made two runs Sunday; 2:47 a.m., 130 Hudson auto accident. 10:45 a.m., 1916 Melrose mattress fire. Weather Report You get the up-to-date weather report each day in The Town Talk.

Firemen here made 12 runs over the weekend. Alexandria and Rapides Parish Fire District No. 2 firemen jointly made four runs Saturday 4:56 p.m., 2556A Loblolly grass fire. 7 p.m., 2556A Loblolly grass fire. 9:19 p.m., 2556A Loblolly grass fire.

9:44 p.m., U.S. Post Office near North Circle, false alarm. Alexandria firemen made two other runs Saturday 12:23 a.m., Fenner and Mason, trash fire. 6:54 p.m., 415 Perry mattress fire caused by smoking in bed. District firemen made two other runs Saturday: Fake Krugerrands Found in Houston HOUSTON (UPI) Police have issued a public warning that "good copies" of Krugerrands, the South African gold coin favored by collectors and investors, are circulating.

"There's a large quantity of them out. We recovered somewhere in the neighborhood of 200 of them," said Detective J.C. Davis of the police burglary and theft division. Davis said the fake Krugerrand scheme apparently has been operating in Houston and other cities for 18 months. He said police arrested two men Feb.

18 after the sale of some of the fake coins. "The Krugerrands are good copies," Davis said. "They've been in circulation for a long time. These people are making them and they're selling them." Davis said police had been told several large banks have taken the Krugerrands to repay loans and that jewelry and coin stores also have been fooled. He said police were "not sure if any of our local banks are involved." "The reason we're going public with this now is we want the public to know there are fake Krugerrands," Davis said.

"The only sure way to tell the difference is the weight fakes are lighter than the real coins or take them to a jeweler for an acid test. Ken Wiesman, special agent in charge of the Houston Secret Service office, said the centers of the fake coins are lead. "These things are coated in 22-karat gold so they do look good," Davis said. "As a matter of fact, the information we have is that some of the dyes they use to stamp these things out with have come from South Africa." Police said a local coin dealer, whom investigators refused to identify, tipped them to a suspicious offering of Krugerrands at a low price. He helped police set a trap Feb.

18. New Report Warns GENEVA, Switzerland (UPI) The world's weather is being thrown out of balance by growing pollution of the atmosphere, an authoritative scientific report warned today. It said the average surface temperature will rise by 1 degree centigrade or more early next century with serious implications for farming and fishing. The report was made by experts convened by the World Meteorological Organization, U.N. Environment Program and the International Council of Scientific Unions! Currently, it said, more than 5 billion tons of carbon are released annually into the atmosphere, primarily in the form of carbon dioxide, from the burning of coaL oil and gas.

"Simultaneously, human manipulation of forests and vegetation provide another perturbation," the report said. "Experiments carried out with global atmospheric models strongly suggest that the carbon dioxide concentrations that might be reached early in the next century as a result of the projected consumption of fossil fuels would increase global average surface temperature by 1 degree centigrade or more," it said. The temperature rise "would be significantly greater in high latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere" and "slightly less than the average" in the tropics. Agricultural production, harvests from the sea and water supplies will be "materially affected" because weather systems are driven by the temperature difference between the poles and equator. It is these systems which determine temperature and rainfall patterns, the report said, so once the systems are altered "it is probable that regional ecosystems and hence agricultural production and water supply will be materially affected" The temperature difference between the poles and the equator, because it powers the overall weather systems of the world, also determines wind which in turn determines ocean currents.

And fishing production depends on those currents. The report said an unchecked increase in fossil fuel consumption could also cause a gradual melting of the Antarctic icecap, but that lies centuries away. "Significant warming in the Antarctic could, during future centuries, result in the disintegration of a part of that glacier, raising the global sea level by several meters," the report said. "However, there is general agreement that such an impact on sea level is not imminent," it added. Rep.

Gunter Delivers Petition Asking Probe of Buckeye Case RONNIE ANDRIES First Credit grets that he is in the hospital and unable to personally deliver this peuuon 10 commiuee cnairmen OF ALEXANDRIA, INC. 2005-BLEEST. PHONE 445-0937 (raer) Koaino ana (Strom) Thurmond as he had committed himself to do." Long recently underwent heart surgery. WASHINGTON A petition requesting investigations into the U.S. Department of Justice's actions in the Buckeye 3 school attendancecustody case signed by more than 20,000 Rapides Parish citizens has been hand-delivered to the Senate and House Judiciary Committees.

Louisiana state Rep. Carl Gunter of Deville, arrived in Washington Monday with the petition. The petition asks the judiciary committees to investigate Justice and the state court's right of jurisdiction in matters relating to custody laws. Rep. Jerry Huckaby and a representative of hospitalized Rep.

Gillis Long met with Gunter receive the request. Carson Killen, Long's administrative assistant, said Long "re To my patients: With regrets. I am announcing my re-tirement from the private practice of pediatrics, effective at 5:00 P.M. March 12th. Your records will be available at any time, at 2223 Worley Dr.

(my office), which has been purchased by Dr. C.V. Reddy. N. Evans, A THOUGHT FOR TODAY Our care ithould not be ho much to live long, an to live well.

Seneca PRESENTED BY HIXSON BROTHERS FUNERAL DIRECTORS Phone 442-3363 mm 5AM MEADOWS JOYCE DUSANO hll iil'ili'mVfl.