The Vancouver Sun from Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada • 1

CcO UP City Region Food Business PI LLING STRINGS A Vancouver firm combines engineering and art for great interactive computing C16 mm Vancouver council allows fjjig: The blueberry bonanza has Kiinun in1 TVio (tun limine vnt property owners to fell fa NCO UV FT ivjtjUii, uiiu iiiw uuu iiv-ia uu sort the pick of the crop B4 one Dig tree per year. A. A A. A A. rv-ir 11 irMrfA.

1111 FiirvT $1 minimum outside Lower Mainland Wednesday, July 31, 199fi 60 cents retail 75 cents coin box Vancouver property crimes soaring Canada's over-all crime rate, including violent offences, has fallen again, statistics indicate. LORI THORLAKSON The 1995 crime statistics show a one per cent drop in Canada's crime rate, mostly due to community policing programs that many major cities have adopted, the agency said. The Statistics Canada crime rate, which the agency says is an indicator of public safety, counts all Criminal Code cases, excluding traffic offences, per 100,000 people. The crime data for Vancouver is based on the "census metropolitan area," which is slightly smaller than the Greater Vancouver regional district. In Canada, the violent crime rate was down four per cent from 1994, the largest single drop in 32 years.

The decrease was more modest in Vancouver, where the rate fell by 1.5 per cent. Vancouver has the highest homicide rate in the country. Meanwhile, property crimes, including break-ins, stolen cars and theft, were up by 6.2 per cent in the Vancou ver area, almost twice as high as Montreal and Hamilton. The numbers come as no surprise to Paul Brantingham, a criminologist at Simon Fraser University. Property crime rises with prosperity, when there are more opportunities to steal, he said.

A robust economy meansjnore people will go out in the evening, leaving their houses and cars vulnerable to a break-in. At the same time, good economic times don't seem to have much impact on the appetites of thieves, he noted. The most common types of property crime that police see in Vancouver are break-and-enters and thefts from autos, said Vancouver police Constable Anne Drennan. "A large pan of that is due to the drug trade. We have a large number of addicts who need quick, easy money for their next fix," Drennan said.

Please see Crime, A8 Vancouver Sun While Canada's crime rate is edging down for its fourth consecutive year, property crimes in Vancouver are on a steep rise, says a Statistics Canada report released Tuesday. 'Heroic' guard now suspect in Games blast rfTW2? 1 Associated Press ATLANTA The "hero" security guard who first reported finding the knapsack bomb that exploded and terrorized the Atlanta Olympics has be-. come a focus of the investigation, a federal law enforcement source said Tues day. 'He looks good now, but there have been no arrests and the investigation is still continuing," said the Washington official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. The bomb that exploded near the AT and pavilion in Centennial Olympic Park early Saturday morning AtlaniaM MEDAL PEDALLER: Alison Sydor of Vancouver displays silver meda! that she won Tuesday in the women's cross-country cycling competition (Full coverage C1-C4) WEATHER Asper focuses on new station for Vancouver Island WILLIAM BOEI Tough call Do we say mainly sunny with clouds, or cloudy with lots of clear breaks? Either way, the clouds look to gain the upper hand by Friday.

Nice highs of about 19. Details, D2 Lotteries, A2 toria and is the first to mount a campaign for public support. He's hoping to march into September's hearing of the CRTC which considers Vancouver and Victoria a single TV market with an army of Island support behind him. Asper said he already has several hundred letters of support from Island residents and businesses. "The reason this is so important is that it's now or never," he told Victoria media Tuesday in a hotel suite overlooking the city's Inner Harbor, reminding them that Victoria has only one TV station CHEK and that no one has even applied for a second station in 40 years.

Vancouver has three local stations, four if you count KVOS across the border in Please Sun Business Reporter VICTORIA Winnipeg broadcasting mogul Izzy Asper plans to pit Vancouver Island against the mainland this fall at a hearing to determine who gets the right to start a new TV station on the West Coast. Asper unveiled here Tuesday the strategy he'll be using when the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission decides the issue. Five groups, among them some of the heavyweights of Canadian broadcasting, are competing for the licence to start the new station. Four want to do it in Vancouver. Asper's CanWest Global Communications is the only one that wants to base it in Vic- killed one woman and injured more than 100 other people.

A Turkish photographer also died of a heart attack while running to cover the blast. The guard, Richard Jewell, 33, denied to reporters that he was responsible. Between FBI interviews, Jewell told a local TV crew: "I'm sure they are investigating everyone in that area. Did I do it? No sir, I didn't do this." An FBI official in Atlanta, Paul Miller, would say only that investigators "have been questioning many individuals." Jewell was working for a Los Angeles- Please see Olympics, A2 Canadians 'to feel' anti-terror tactics AILEEN McCABE Southam Newspapers PARIS Terrorism touches ordinary lives and governments determined to fight it may soon be interfering with them too. Foreign Affairs Minister Lloyd Axworthy says Canadians are likely to "feel" some of the 25 measures adopted at the anti-terrorism summit Tuesday.

He said it may be that air fares will rise to cover the cost of more security at airports or that much longer delays to accommodate tougher security checks will become a fact of life when people travel. But he said any intrusion into the life of ordinary Canadians had to be put in perspective. "If terrorism is allowed to win, it is going to change the way we do things in this world, in our own country," Axworthy said. "Will you have international events anymore? Will people be wanting to travel the same way? Will you be having so much security around Parliament Hill that no one can get in to see question period? All sorts of things will change if we don't battle back." Foreign and security ministers from the Group of Seven leading industrial Please see Terrorism, A2 INDEX Bond C8 Landers B6 Bridge D6 lamphier C7 Business C7 Letters A14 Canada A3 Lotteries A2 Classified 1 Dl Movies B9 Comics B10 Obituaries Dl Crossword D7.D4 Palmer A14 Editorials A14 Sports CI Entertainment B7 Theatres B8 Food B4 TV B8 Gothe B5 Weather D2 Horoscope D5 World A10 Kid's Page B10 Yaffe A3 Reader Sales and Service 736-2281 Coast guard cuts would cost lives, feds warned The False Creek rescue base would go from round-the-clock operations to on-call service if recommendations are adopted. STEWART BELL Outside the Lower Mainland 1-800-663-2662 24-Hour automated service Classified 730-7355 52 PAGES FOUNDED 1886 VOL.111 No.72 would be on-call, the report says.

The proposal is one of several cost-saving measures oudined in a federal "discussion paper" prepared this spring and leaked to The Vancouver Sun. The plan is a response to orders from Ottawa to cut costs within Canada's marine life-saving agency, but it's already under attack internally because it could sharply increase the amount of time it takes rescuers to reach the scene of an accident. "To reduce the Kitsilano base to lifeboat status will inevitably result in the loss of life," Coast Guard Captain John McGrath of the Sea Island hovercraft rescue base wrote last May in a reply to the proposals. McGrath said a full-time crew is needed at the base because of its location and heavy workload. Incident reports show the base is just as busy at night as during the day, he said.

Smaller coastal communities are able to operate effective search-and-rescue programs with on-call paid and volunteer staff because they all live close to the rescue vessel and can get there quickly in the event of an emergency. But some staff at the Kitsilano base I live far from False Creek. "Call-in crews will take at least 40 minutes" to get to the base, McGrath warned. "Thus it is obvious that an incident will go wrong and this will not take long to happen." The coast guard has been trying for the past few years to deal with a series i of budget cuts imposed by Ottawa. To save costs, the agency has been automating lighthouses and was merged last year with the department of fish- Please see Coast guard, A8 Vancouver Sun After spending almost $3 million to rebuild the Canadian Coast Guard base in False Creek, federal officials are now proposing severe cuts to rescue services at the station a move one officer warns would cost lives.

An internal report prepared by the coast guard says the Kitsilano base one of the busiest in Canada should be staffed by rescue crews during the daytime only. The base is currently staffed around-the-clock. For the remaining hours rescuers ,0 "57040" 10035nil1 JORDANS The only totally complete home ftmiishing and interior design service in B.C. At Jordans Interiors you'll find a world of exciting ideas in superb furniture, accessories, fabrics, carpets, oriental rugs, vinyls, hardwood and ceramics. All coordinated by our professional designers at no additional cost INTERIORS Where providing the best quality, value and service is more than a promise.

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