Austin American-Statesman from Austin, Texas • 10

A10 Austin American-Statesman Tuesday, July 12, 1994 This section is recyclable With this hammer I thee divorce: Rings smashed for freedom Oliveira leaving KVUE to co-own new Austin station In AP My dream has been from Day One to be a part-owner and help manage a television station. Ron Oliveira Linda Howell watches her wedding ring go flying after she hit it with a sledgehammer during a divorce ceremony in Albuquerque, N.M. Rings: Jewelry for the Divorced, which makes custom jewelry out of wedding rings. Peters calls the venture her "artistic contribution to the recycling effort." Others call it a refreshing way to handle a painful situation. In addition to the re-formed jewelry, smashers get a signed divorce certificate and a mini-reception with champagne and music.

Peters' friends serve as ring and hammer bearers. The hammer is placed in a music box of sorts. When opened, the faint twinkling of The Wedding March cascades out of the silk-lined container, which is quickly shut so the smashing can begin. "It's like a release," said Howell, who split with her husband after a 14-year marriage. She said receiving the divorce papers in the mail didn't feel like the real thing.

By Eddie Pells Associated Press ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. Do you take this divorce? I do. With this ring I SMASH! -celebrate my freedom. With a whack of a 4-pound sledgehammer and Tammy Wyn-ette's I twanging in the background, Linda Howell reduced her wedding ring to an unrecognizable mess of gold, silver and cubic zirconia. Howell swigged champagne and thought about her plans.

Make the mess into a pendant? Earrings? Yes, a pendant. So much for tradition. For Howell, a 38-year-old nurse, the ceremony was a cathartic way to start over following her divorce. And it brought jeweler Lynn Peters some business. Peters is the founder of Freedom Peters felt the same way after she divorced in 1988.

"I never felt like there was closure," Peters said. "So I threw a party, sort of like a wedding celebration in reverse." But what to do with the ring? Peters said she thought about going to a pawn shop or giving it away, but her experience as a jeweler gave her a better idea. "I thought, Tve never really made a custom piece of jewelry for she said. "So I took the diamond out, took a sledgehammer to the band and transformed it." Peters' old band is now a pendant emblazoned with the company's logo a wedding ring with a slash through it. She wears that on her collar, along with a button that reads "I miss my ex-husband, but my aim is improving." Continued from A1 though "there's still a lot of blanks to fill in." Decisions still to be made include programming, hours of operation, location of the office and negotiating an agreement with Austin Cable Vision.

The station will lease tower space and is constructing a transmitter. It has contracted with Linn Broadcasting, owners of KXAN, Channel 36 Cable 4, to help the station with sales and technical support. Principal owners of Channel 54 are Oliveira; 21st Century Corpor-tation of Houston, which is part-owner of a Spanish-language station in McAllen; and Mark Goldberg, a special assistant in the state comptroller's office. "My dream has been from Day One to be a part-owner and help manage a television station," Oliveira said. Besides KNVA, Austin's other full-powered stations include KTBC; KVUE, the ABC affiliate; KXAN, the NBC affiliate; KBVO, Channel 42 Cable 5, the Fox affiliate; and KLRU, Channel 18 Cable the Public Broadcasting System.

Independent station KVC, Channel 13, is a low-power station with limited range which reaches a larger audience through cable television systems. An application for an FCC license for Channel 54 was submitted in 1984. Appeals to the FCC from losing license applicants, then from a low-power station licensee on Channel 55, bogged Channel 54's efforts to go on air. Appeals were rejected in 1988 U.S. recognizes French role in AIDS test kit and a license granted.

But the economic downturn then delayed the station, Oliveira said. Oliveira started at KVUE in 1980, debuting its Wednesday's Child feature, which tries to place children for adoption. He left in 1985 to become station manager at KVEO in Brownsville before returning to KVUE in 1987. Oliveira, 38, co-anchors KVUE's 5, 6 and 10 p.m. news programs with Judy Maggio.

He also is host of This Week Austin (formerly Vuepoint Austin). KVUE officials said they are sorry to see Oliveira leave, but know Channel 54 has been one of his goals. "His departure is a tremendous loss to our station and to viewers as well if he goes off the air," said Ardyth Diercks, the station's vice president and general manager. "He's really a savvy broadcaster and a classy guy. "He will be a good competitor," she said.

"We genuinely wish him the best." No replacement has been named. Oliveira said he has no plans to be an on-air personality at the new station. than French test kits are being sold, the United States has received $20 million in royalties to the French's $14 million. Varmus said the new arrangement is expected to provide the French several hundred thousand dollars more per year. His announcement included an open acknowledgement by the NIH and its parent agency, the Department of Health and Human Services, saying "scientists at the NIH used a virus provided to them by Institut Pasteur to invent the American HIV test kit." Harold Varmus, NIH director.

The two agencies have been at odds since 1983 over credit for discovery of the human immunodeficiency virus and the subsequent race to patent a test for the virus. In 1984, the U.S. Patent Office granted the patent to the American team. While NIH scientist Robert Gallo has been cleared of allegations that he stole the virus from the French, Gallo has conceded that he "likely" used a virus he received from Pasteur researcher Luc Montagnier in inventing the American HIV test kit. Gallo and By Edwin Chen Los Angeles Times Service WASHINGTON The United States acknowledged Monday that government scientists used a French-provided virus to invent the American test kit for the AIDS virus, and Washington agreed to increase payments to the French under a 1987 royalties-sharing formula.

The new agreement is intended to "normalize the sometimes rocky relations" between the U.S. National Institutes of Health and the Pasteur Institute in Paris, said Dr. Montagnier ended up sharing credit for discovering the virus. The official NIH acknowledgment that Gallo had used a French-provided virus was "something that has never been said before by the U.S. government," according to Washington attorneys Michael Epstein and Robert Odle, who represented the Fren-chin the dispute.

The two nations reached a settlement seven years ago to share in the royalties for the HIV test kit, based on sales in each country. But largely because more American All State and Higher Education employees are invited to the: tyjs era rMwi Qpoim E3dugo at the Four Seasons Hotel 98 San Jacinto I )W7 downtown Austin national briefs Whitman warns GOP to avoid extremist label Compiled from News Services WASHINGTON Plunging into a sharpening debate over the political role of religious conservatives, Christine Todd Whitman, the Republican governor of New Jersey, on Monday called on the GOP to delete the anti-abortion plank from its 1996 platform and warned that the party must convince voters it has not been captured by "extremists." In an interview with Los Angeles Times reporters and editors, Whitman also counseled the party to move cautiously on efforts to discourage out-of-wedlock births by cutting welfare benefits. U.S. proposes stricter poultry inspections WASHINGTON The Agriculture Department proposed new rules Monday to strengthen poultry inspections, including a "zero tolerance" standard for disease and contamination on chickens and turkeys leaving the slaughterhouse. The public will have 90 days to comment on the proposed rules, which are expected to take effect by early 1995.

Once final, the rules would add a critical step in the inspection process to guard against bacterial contamination of birds from their own feces. Petition drive fails for suicide referendum DETROIT A petition drive to place the issue of assisted suicide before Michigan voters failed Monday. Dr. Jack Kevorkian and others supporting a constitutional right to assisted suicide had been gathering signatures to place a referendum on the Nov. 8 ballot.

Monday's deadline to submit more than 250,000 signatures of registered voters came and went, so petition drive organizers conceded defeat and said the campaign would aim for the 1996 ballot. Mail delivery is slower this year than in 1993 WASHINGTON Mail delivery in most U.S. cities improved when snow and ice gave way to spring. But most mail still was moving more slowly than last year. The goal is 95 percent on-time delivery for first-class mail, but no city in the Postal Service's survey achieved it.

In the two cities that came closest Billings, and Wichita, Kan. 93 percent of test letters mailed within the overnight delivery area arrived on time. At the bottom of the list, only 62 percent of the letters arrived overnight in New York and Washington, D.C. In Austin, 83 percent of the overnight mail arrived on time. Hiesday, July 12 11 a.m.-l p.m.

(lunch provided) or 5 -7 p.m. (snacks and soft drinks) Great door prizes, food, benefit and network information -and a great Austin-area jazz band THE BREW! We 're going all out to prove to you that BlueCross BlueShield of Texas ELEGI BlueChoke' An Independent Licensee of the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association Registered Marks of the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association 1994 Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Texas. Inc. I I.