TARGET:
DRINKING
DRIVERS
Prince George RCMP are going to have a sharp eye out New Year’s Eve for drinking drivers.
RCMP Staff Sgt. Charles Scheideman says two additional police officers from general duty will be working in the traffic section on New Year’s Eve.
“We’ll be watching for gatherings of cars and if we get complaints about a party, we will frequent that area — because it’s quite obvious what’s happening at a party when the neighbors start to complain,’’ he says.
Police will also be watching all liquor sources, such as commercial establishments.
Staff Sgt. Scheideman recommends people make arrangements for going home while they are still sober and not when their judgement is impaired by alcohol.
“Don’t take your car to a party and decide there whether or not to drive — you may be wrong," he says.
Instead of drinking and driving, celebrants will be able to ride the bus free of charge Dec.
31 from 8 p.m. to approximately 2:30 a.m.
Special timetables outlining the service are available on buses, or call 563-0011 for information.
“A free bus is a super deal and a taxi is sure money well-spent,” says Staff Sgt. Scheideman.
The special service is sponsored by the City of Prince George,
B.C. Transit, and the city’s three major pulp mills.
After 2 a.m. on any night of the year one in four drivers has been drinking and one in 17 is drunk. Staff Sgt. Scheideman expects those figures to be significantly higher on New Year’s Eve.
“It’s probably safer on a battlefield...when the liquor outlets close, there will be a tremendously high concentration of impaired To an impaired driver after a New Year’s Eve par- trouble when he begins asking questions about how drivers.” ty, an arresting RCMP officer may look like double much liquor was consumed. Citizen photo by Ric Ernst
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30c The _____ Friday, December 30, 1983
Prince George JL J Jfl- JL- Serving Central B.C.
SPECIAL NEEDS
Gov't to pay daycare bill
VICTORIA (CP) - The B.C. government has backed off on its proposal to apply a means test to parents before paying the full cost of daycare for children with special needs.
In a news release issued Thursday, Human Resources Minister Grace McCarthy said the government has now decided to continue paying the full cost of special-needs daycare.
Jill Weiss, chairman of the B.C. Coalition of the Disabled, said the rescinding of the policy is “fantastic. .. it’s great news”.
She said the coalition has been lobbying along with other groups representing the handicapped to stop the government from applying the income testing.
Under the policy proposed in August, parents whose incomes were above a prescribed level would have paid an amount equivalent to regular daycare costs and the provincial government would contribute the rest.
The full cost of regular daycare ranges between $66 and $303 a month, while special care averages nearly $500 a month.
Weiss said through the umbrella organization, British Columbians for Mentally Handicapped People, the various groups were able to convince the government that there is no separation between the “regular" portion of daycare and special needs daycare.
“All daycare is extra stimulation for these children. Most aren’t dropped off for the whole day there-she said.
Weiss said parents of the approximately 1,140 handicapped children in B.C. also have an enormous amount of additional expenses that aren’t covered by any government programs.
In announcing the proposed income testing, McCarthy said the money raised from the parents would used to provide daycare for 120 additional children without increasing the budget.
Although the minister said the proposed policy wasn’t intended to save money, she said Thursday, not getting additional money from the parents will make expansion of daycare facilities will be impossible without an increased daycare budget.
Dairy prices 'to increase'
OTTAWA (CP) — Retail prices for butter, cheese, yogurt, ice cream and other manufactured dairy products are expected to rise after the federal prices for industrial milk are increased effective Jan. 1, Agriculture Minister Eugene Whelan said Thursday.
The new federal industrial milk price, known as the Target Returns Level, will rise about one per cent to $43.18 per 100 litres, or 43.18 cents per litre. The old price was $42.80 per 100 litres.
The federal target price is often used by provincial agencies to set their industrial milk prices. Consumers will feel the pinch once these provincial agencies increase their prices to reflect the federal price increase.
'Banana
republic'
treatment
WASHINGTON (CP) - A private U.S. political study group has criticized the U.S. ambassador to Canada, Paul Robinson, as a “yahoo" political appointee who treats Canada as “little more than a banana republic.”
The criticism of Robinson is contained in a report by the Council on * Hemispheric Affairs, a frequent critic of the Reagan administration, in what it describes as the first of an annual assessment of U.S. diplomats in the Western Hemisphere.
The council awards its worst rating to Frederic Chapin as “friend of the military, cool to democratic forces" while U.S. ambassador in Guatemala.
It places Robinson among “cronies of the administration with no distinction or proven capacity in diplomacy” whose appointments slighted career foreign service diplomats.
It cites former screen actor John Gavin, in Mexico, as another.
“Paul Heron Robinson Jr., political appointee to Canada, would have been declared persona non grata if the Trudeau government didn’t have a sense of civility or was prepared to stand up to bad behavior," the council says.
“Treating Canada as little more than a banana republic to the north, Robinson has continually interfered in Canadian domestic matters and has deported himself more as a yahoo than a dignified emissary to one of Washington’s most important allies.”
Ex-leaders face court
BUENOS AIRES (Reuter) - Two former Argentine presidents went on trial Thursday on charges of torturing and murdering thousands of civilians in a systematic campaign of human rights abuses in an anti-guerrilla campaign in the 1970s.
Meanwhile, local government officials announced the discovery of 41 more unidentified bodies buried at a cemetery in the Buenos Aires suburb of Boulogne.
Earlier this week 29 unidentified bodies, many showing bullet wounds and torture marks, were exhumed from other graveyards in the capital.
Former presidents Jorge Videla and Roberto Viola and two other members of the military juntas which ruled Argentina from 1976 until last year appeared before a military court on charges of torture and murder of thousands of political detainees.
Argentina’s new elected president. Raul Alfonsin, has ordered all nine members of the three military juntas which supervised the armed forces’ “dirty war" against leftist guerrillas to be court-martialed on these charges.
WEATHER VICTIMS CHEAT DEATH
U.S. survivors too tough to die
by Associated Press
His face bloodied by an avalanche of ice on Washington's Mount Rainier, a climber survived in unforgiving winter by stumbling along on injured legs. In North Carolina, an oysterman spent five days adrift on a chilly bay.
And there were other tales this week of Americans cheating a brutal winter: A father and son who huddled in their crumpled plane, buried in New Mexico snow.
And a New Hampshire snowmobiler who crawled to safety while nearly “freezing to death."
A grandmother who climbed from the bottom of an 80-metre cliff in Colorado to find help for her husband and granddaughter.
“It’s the will to live. There’s no other answer for it,” said police Sgt. Roger Corriveau in Manchester. N.H., where 16-year-old Steven Patient was recovering from his injuries from Sunday's snowmobile crash.
“I don’t know how ... he got out of there,” marvelled Fire Chief Frank Eshpeter of Green-water, Wash., after 19-year-old Kurt Fickeisen trudged nearly five kilometres Thursday with an injured knee, a broken elbow and other injuries from an avalanche that killed his climbing partner.
Fickeisen and Chris Gentry. 19. had been trying to scale a 100-metre frozen waterfall on Mount Rainier when they triggered an ice cascade, authorities said.
When Fickeisen reached a Boy Scout camp
where he summoned help, “his face was covered with blood." said Kathleen Utterbach, from of a visiting church youth group at the camp. He was in hospital in satisfactory condition today.
North Carolina oysterman Albert Jefferson was described as “a very lucky man" Thursday as he was found, unhurt, on an’island after drifting in his eight-metre boat since Christmas in bitter wind and without food.
Jefferson. 43. became stranded when his boat's battery died and an anchor chain snapped on frigid Pamlico Sound. He saved himself by burning rags to keep warm, and finally waded to the island and banged a pot with a hammer to attract aid.
“As long as you're still alive you just presume you're going to make it," Tony Mink, 36, said Thursday from an Albuquerque, N.M., hospital where he was recovering from injuries suffered in a plane crash that killed his wife.
Mink and his 14-year-old son. Brian, created a shelter inside the wreckage, using parts of the plane and Christmas gifts, and endured five days of snowstorms and cold before their rescue Wednesday.
He and his son huddled in the cramped fuselage, burning cheques from a chequebook to add warmth and talking about home and food, although they only had one can of survival rations. he said.
For Charlotte Julian, the ordeal began when her snow-filled car settled in a drift after tumbl-
ing 80 metres from Wolf Creek Pass in southwestern Colorado.
“I crawled and my feet and my hands are still tingling,” said Julian, 54, describing how she made it up the slope to bring help to her husband, who was having trouble breathing, and her 11-year-old granddaughter.
The three were released Wednesday after an overnight hospital stay in Del Norte, Colo.
In New Hampshire. Corriveau said Patient "moved inches at a time," crawling a half a kilometre in four hours Christmas morning with bare hands in freezing temperatures to reach a house for help.
See also page 2
bu 11 eti n
NEW YORK (AP) — A 12-year-old eirl born without eyes was awarded $7 million Thursday in a lawsuit against the maker of the antiepilepsy drug Dilantin.
Albert and Ellen Alboher of Brooklyn, N.Y., sued Warner-Lambert Co.'s Parke-Davis division for $15 million on behalf of their daughter, Elyse. They said the company knew or should have known in the early 1970s that Dilantin could cause birth defects.
todoy in brief
‘TRIP-WIRE VETS’, hiding in the wilderness of Washington, live by the skills they learned in the Vietnam jungle, says a veterans' affairs official. Page
NEWSPAPER EDITORS across Canada have selected Brian Mulroney as the nation’s top newsmaker of the year. Page
THE NATIONAL football league enters its second round of playoff competition. A review of the matchups. Page
THIRTY FIVE YEARS after George Orwell wrote his classic 1984, the world is going to find out what it’s really like. Page
J t
13
28
Index
"TT
Bridge..................24 •
Business...............8,9 —-
City, B.C...........3,6.7,10 *****?
Classified............21-26 -
Comics .................15
Crossword..............23
Editorial.................4 ff|
Entertainment.......15-17
Family .................14
Horoscopes.............23
International.............2
Movies...............16,17
National.................5
Religion ................18
Sports................11-13
Looking back’ pages 6,7
Sadrack says
The Prince George weather office predicts cloudy skies today with intermittent snow. The high will be -6 and the low should be -10. The forecast for Saturday calls for light snow and highs between -8 and -2. The weather Sunday is expected to be cloudy with a few sunny periods, isolated snow, and mild temperatures.
The high Thursday was -17, dropping to a low of -29, with 2.9 hours of sunshine, a trace of snow during the day and three centimetres of
snow overnight.
Last year, the high was -12, with a low of -18, and no sunshine and a trace of snow.
Sunset today will be at 3:57 p.m. and sunset will be at 8:29 a.m