n409  2317  17 Sep 78
 
BC-Meat 2takes 09-18
Attention: Food, feature editors.
By DAVID STROUD
(c) 1978 Chicago Sun-Times
    Q. I had a gyros sandwich in a Greek food shop recently, my
first one. The counterman told me the delicious meat was beef
and lamb, but I saw the cook carving it from one roast, not two.
What's the meat?
    A. Greek sandwich shop countermen never lie about their gyros.
It was beef and lamb combined. The roast you saw was fabricated
from finely shaved fresh beef and lamb, with almost all visible
fat being trimmed away. The meats are combined and formed under
pressure in a shaping mold into a solid roast.
    This fresh, fabricated product is roasted almost as it is ready
to serve, often on a vertical spit. The meat turns on the spit
axis with a vertical flame or heat source covering its passage.
After a short time, the carver can cut away paper thin
slices as the surface cooks.
    Gyros sandwiches seem to be the late 1970s' version of the
early 1950s' pizza, a tasty and nutritious culinary delight for
the finger-food set. More and more quick food places seem to be
adding gyros to the menu.
    Q. In a recent column you said pork is notably more tender
today than in earlier years. I agree pork is very tender most of
the time. But once in a while, even if braised, I get a tough
chop. What happens?
    A. There are several reasons known and a lot of work is being
done to find more. Sometimes a meat animal responds stressfully
to the trek from farm to slaughterhouse. Most don't, but this
results in a post mortem state of what meat scientists call
pale, soft, exudative pork. That sounds dreadful, but the meat
is perfectly wholesome, yet becomes untender due to nature's
own strange behavior. These pigs usually are sighted and their
meat passed through for other purposes, but some slips through
to the fresh meat counter.
    Or, it could be simply that an older pig has gone to market.
The preponderance of porkers head for the grocery at six months
of age, but sometimes a farmer will try to market a heavier hog,
thus an older one, thus a more exercised one. The 8- to
10-month-old pigs are tougher. The industry's goals are
otherwise, but those are the facts.
    Finally, it may be that you're the reason. When you prebrown
pork chops for either microwave cooking or for braising, do it
over moderate, not high, searing heat. A high temperature
sometimes causes the muscle to contract, and the meat curls
slightly. This contraction makes the meat tougher.
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a057  0413  20 Sep 78
PM-Greta,550
By TOM FENTON
Associated Press Writer
    COXEN HOLE, Honduras (AP) - Hurricane Greta made a shambles out of
scores of homes in this picturesque island village off the north coast
of Honduras.
    It left one dead elsewhere and hundreds of destroyed huts in the
British territory of Belize before dissolving into a windy rainstorm
Tuesday .
    But authorities say there were no deaths here because residents
remembered the lessons they learned four years ago in killer Hurricane
Fifi.
    ''I felt sure someone would get killed when the waves and the wind
were rolling like they were. But only a few people were slightly
injured. People stayed inside if they thought their houses would stand
up.
    ''A lot of people went to the health center or churches and other
concrete buildings we felt sure would stand it,'' said John J. Wood,
mayor of Coxen Hole and 14 other villages on the west end of Roatan
Island.
    The mayor said authorities provided plenty of advance warning and
residents heeded the warnings.
    The island's main street was littered Tuesday with debris including
household goods, mattresses, downed electric wires and cars axle-deep
in sand where they had been left by the surf.
    The Honduran government said more than 1,000 homes were destroyed in
the storm in the islands and in the villages along the coast about 35
miles away.
    The Red Cross said one little child was drowned when he was washed
away by the tide in La Ceiba.
    Many ofthe damaged buildings sit atop pilings for protection from
sandflies and other insects. Some of the pilings extend into the
water.
    Men struggled to shore up pilings under some houses Tuesday and
lines formed at hardware stores as people carried out tin roofing and
lumber.
    ''This is third time my house has fallen down,'' said Gladys Nelson.
''This is the first time since Hurricane Fifi in 1974.
    That storm killed some 6,000 persons and left 500,000 homeless.
    ''She knocked down lotta tree herebouts, but the sea she stayed
down. That the only thing that save us,'' said Danny smith, 18, who
drove a reporter and a photographer through Coxen Hole and described
the hurricane in the islands' English dialect.
    The town is believed to be named after the English pirate John
Coxen, who raided from here in the late 1600s.
    At one point, Smith turned his jeep off the sand road and churned
across a cemetary, skirting uprooted palm trees.
    A few yards down the road a house sat squarely in the middle of the
lane. It had been wrenched from surfside pilings and deposited
intact.
    Smith said the owner had taken refuge in a concrete school when the
storm struck.
    Greta, packing 120 mile-an-hour winds, tore along the north coast
Monday following roughly the same path as Fifi.
    The islands, which form a tiny archipelago of eight islands and 65
cays about 35 miles off the coast, were among the communities hardest
hit.
    ''We estimate that 500 to 600 houses were destroyed throughout the
islands,'' said Capt. Miguel Angel Varela, district military
commander.
    Telephone communications with the islands were still out late
Tuesday, officials said the wind had toppled a microwave tower on
Roatan.
    ''All in all, we've been lucky,'' said Wood. ''The most serious
problem will food in the next few days. All our crops were destroyed
and the food will have to come from the mainland.''
    
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n636  0544  20 Sep 78
 
BC-Working 1stadd 09-20
Michael Flannery xxx bargaining committee.
    ''If the job is hazardous, then it should be made safe
for all employes. You don't solve it by excluding half the
human race during their peak years,'' Young said.
    The arbitrator in the Williams case decided otherwise.
IN a July ruling he specifically concluded that GM's ''policy
to exclude fertile women is not arbitrary or capricious
and does not constitute an improper exercise of management's''
job assignment rights nor did it violate prohibitions
against sex-based discrimination.
    Union spokesmen, such as Michael J. Wright, an industrial
hygienist for the United Steelworkers of America, charge
that behind ''these discriminatory policies lies a reason
other than concern for the unborn - the fear of lawsuits.''
    State workers' compensation laws severely limit the
amount of money an employe injured by occupational
hazards could recover in a lawsuit against his employer.
But a child who was damaged by a parent's exposure - and
could prove it - might collect a huge legal award.
    ''You could have an industrial thalidomide situation,''
said attorney A. E. Lawson, soon to become one of five
members of the newly created Mine Safety and Health
Review Commission.
    ''I'm surprised it has not happened yet. But it will
very soon. Someone will do a medical study of families in a
certain occupation and will find an abnormal number of
deformed children. Once some enterprising lawyer gets
that into court, the potential damages could run to
enormous size,'' he said.
    Some 200,000 U.S. infants - 1 in every 14 - are born with
serious birth defects every year. A third of the beds in
children's hospitals are occupied by deformed youngsters,
whose medical problems often are extremely expensive to
treat. Some defects are clearly hereditarz and about
10 per cent have been linked to environmental poisons.
    The vast majority of birth defects - fully two-thirds - are
of unknown origins, however. Health professionals have
become increasingly suspicious of the proliferating
hazards in the American workplace.
    ''The more we learn about the effects of environmental
toxic exposures on reproduction, the more we suspect
that it is a substantial burden,'' Eula Bingham, director
of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration,
told a conference in April. ''The list of chemicals and
other toxic substances such as radio-frequency microwaves
grows almost daily as our research efforts expand.''
    Unions and other worker-interest groups complain that
research has shortsightedly focused almost exclusively on
the female role in reproduction and virtually has ignored
damage to the male's reproductive organs. Even in cases
where information on effects in males is available, it
often is ignored - perhaps, they charge, because the
possibility of a third-party lawsuit by the son or daughter
of a male worker is not so apparent as in the case of
a female worker.
    Sylvia Krekel, an industrial hygienist for the Oil,
Chemical and Atomic workers, recalled how Dow Chemical Co.
withheld for almost 20 years data indicating that the
pesticide DBCP had been implicated in male sterility.
The effect became known only recently, when two Dow workers
confided to each other over lunch that they were unable to
sire children. They soon discovered that more than 100
male colleagues had a similar problem.
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n617  0212  27 Sep 78
 
BC-Prefab 09-27
Editors: the following is a Homelife feature.
By JAY MCMULLEN
(c) 1978 Chicago Sun-Times
    The home of the future may be built in a factory instead of being
''stick-built'' on a lot piece by piece, due to rising home
building costs.
    Builders seeking to stem the cost increases are turning to
manufactured homes built wholly or in part in a factory and
thenion and
hooked up to water, sewer and electrical connections.
    The savings in construction costs are dramatic.
    In 1977, some 300,000 homes were produced wholly or in part in
factories, reports that Nastional Assn. of Home Manufacturers.
That's 15 per cent of all homes built last year.
    Earlier this year, the average price of a site-built house rose
to $58,400, leaving only 15 per cent of American families able to
afford this type of single-family home. In contrast, the average
cost of a new manufactured home was only $14,300.
    Manufactured housing accounts for more than three-fourths of
all new homes priced under $30,000, nearly all of new housing
costing under $20,000, and one-sixth of the total new single-family
housing.
    Almost 11-million Americans now live in approximately 4.75-million
manufactured housing units, once called ''mobile homes'' or
''trailers.'' Now, the ''mobility'' of most such units ends
when they are delivered to their buyers.
    The difference in design, materials and features between
manufactured and stick-built (or site-built) homes can be minimal.
There's a big difference in cost.
    The price of factory-built homes can be
anywhere from 10 to 15 per cent less than the cost of the same house
built at the site.
    What makes the future of stick-built houses as dim as that of
handmade clothes is that a recent study by Harvard University
and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology estimated that
the average price of a new house conventionally (stick) built at
its site will climb to $78,000 nationally by 1981. The report also
said that manufactured homes can provide an alternative to climbing
costs for many families in the low as well as middle-income brackets.
    Although the cost is substantially less, quarters in mobile homes
are not cramped. Most double-width units average 1,400 square feet
of living area, the same amount as the average single-family
on-site dwelling. They are often equipped with luxuries such as
sunken baths, wet bar, built-in buffet and microwave oven, as well
as ice-dispensing refrigerators and top-of-the-line kitchen
appliances.
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n653  0557  27 Sep 78
 
BC-Sked 2d add 09-27
 
HOMELIFE
 
UNDATED (McMullen - Sun-Times - PREFAB) - Due to rising building
costs, the home of the future may be built in a factory and then
shipped for assembly on a foundation, say an expert - who cites
dramatic savings. (450) - a617 FNSPM
 
UNDATED (Sun-Times - RESTORE) - Double-hung windows in old
houses are especially vulnerable to the winter elements - requiring
two maintenance procedures to keep out water and cold air. (800)
a618 FNSPM
 
UNDATED (Main - Sun-Times - HOUSEPLANTS) - A west exposure is too hot
for a Boston fern during the summer...Succulents can tolerage long
periods without water during cool weather. (400) - a619 FNSPM
 
UNDATED (Hausner - Sun-Times - INSULATE) - Energy conservation
programs and proposals have put many home buyers and homeowners
into a quandary - but the experts say its foolish to wait for federal
and state standards. (650) - a620 FNSPM
 
CHICAGO (McMullen, 2d story - Sun-Times - HOUSING) - A vast
neighborhood revitalization program must be launched throughout the
big cities if housing needs are going to be met through the 1990s,
says an expert. (550) - a621 FNSPM
 
UNDATED (Moore - Sun-Times - PROJECT) - A how-to project story turns
into a farce, a long, involved, time-consuming project that just
goes to show you can't believe every how-to story you read - but live
and learn! (1,200) - a622 a623 FNSPM
 
UNDATED (DeLano - Sun-Times - GARDENING) - Color already has
arrived in the colder areas - which means that gardeners should
hurry to put some finishing touches on their lawns before they
are knee deep in leaves. (550) - a624 FNSPM
 
UNDATED (Hausner, 2d story - Sun-Times - REMODEL) - Increased product
technology, ease of installation, availability of products and high
labor costs causes a boom in do-it-yourself remodeling - aided by
many helpful books. (1,100) - a625 a626 FNSPM
 
UNDATED (Sun-Times - SOLAR) - The world's largest producer of
factory-built homes reports that houses with solar-assisted heating
have accounted for 20 per cent of sales this year - making energy
efficiency a key element. (250) - a627 FNSPM
 
CHICAGO (McMullen, 3d story - Sun-Times - ENERGY) - Costly
investments in energy-saving features such as insulation may not
be recovered in resale of a home - and homeowners should think
before they rush to insulate. (700) - a628 FNSPM
 
UNDATED (Hausner 3d story - Sun-Times - AVAILABLE) - Many books and
pamphlets are available to the energy-conscious homeowner, often
at little or no cost. (400) - a629 FNSPM
 
FEATURES AND REGULAR COLUMNS
 
UNDATED (Kupcinet - Sun-Times - KUP) - Two rope-a-dope fights boggle
the mind - Raquel Welch vs. Susan Clark and Muhammad Ali vs. Teofilo
Stevenson ...ABC's experiment with Sunday night football proves
a disaster. Kup's column. (1,200) - a635 a636 FNSPM
 
CHICAGO (Royko - Sun-Times - ROYKO) - You may try to go home again,
but when an appalling pallbearer shows up it seems to prove that
you can almost get mugged at your own funeral. Context: a commentary
on current affairs. (950) - a637 a638 FNSPM
 
UNDATED (Darby - Sun-Times - DARBY) - Richard Crowell spends a good
part of his time trying to improve computer technology as it might
be applied to money matters, but he is also cautious and careful
about the stock market. Attention financial editors. (800) - a639
FNSPM
 
UNDATED (Snider - Sun-Times - MEDICINE) - In his practice, Dr.
Michael Halberstam finds a distinct aversion to taking pills - and
that can be had when it comes to tranquilizers. Medicine Chest.
(700) - a640 FNSPM
 
UNDATED (Davis - Sun-Times - MANAGER) - Getting fired may be more
of an occupational hazard of trade association managers than
corporate executives...Recruiting blacks but not promoting
them is common in corporations. Attention financial editors. (600)
a641 FNSPM
 
UNDATED (Swertlow - Sun-Times - MARY) - Having already failed to
prove that she is a musical comedy star and not merely a funny
woman in a sitcom, Mary Tyler Moore tries again in Mary - a show
that is not funny. Attention TV editors (700) - a642 FNSPM
 
UNDATED (Ebert - Sun-Times - LIFE) - The reincarnated Life magazine
looks less like its previous 1,864 issues than like an uptight trial
run - acutely self-conscious and lacking people and personality.
(600) - a643 FNSPM
 
JJ    MORE 09-27
 
 
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a017  2338  29 Sep 78
PM-GSA, Bjt,500
By MICHAEL J. SNIFFEN
Associated Press Writer
    BALTIMORE (AP) - The U.S. attorney who obtained the first
indictments in the General Services Administration scandal says he
will expand the investigation and deliver more indictments.
    The 18 indictments returned Friday charge that employees of the
federal government's chief landlord and supplier accepted cash and a
wide variety of merchandise ranging from jewelry to a sand blaster
from suppliers who were paid for goods the government never got.
    Sources who declined to be identified said the additional
indictments would involve the Federal Supply Service, like those
returned Friday, but also would extend to other areas of GSA's $5
billion-a-year operations.
    U.S. Attorney Russell T. Baker Jr., of Baltimore said he was adding
a second assistant to the case and would have additional batches of
indictments beginning in four to six weeks.
    GSA's special counsel, Vincent Alto, has said investigators, now
working in every region of the country, could be onto the largest
money scandal in the history of the federal government, amounting to
perhaps $66 million a year in fraud and corruption.
    The defendants are:
    - Twelve present and former managers and acting managers of GSA
self-service stores within the agency's region III, covering Maryland,
Virginia, Delaware, the District of Columbia and Pennsylvania.
    - Four other federal employees, including two Army employees and one
each at the Navy and at the Department of Justice.
    - The president and vice president of one of two Maryland office and
industrial supply firms mentioned in the indictments.
    All 18 are charged with a single count of conspiracy to defraud the
United States. Conviction could bring a maximum penalty of five years
in prison and a $10,000 fine.
    After the indictments, GSA Administrator Jay Solomon said he had
initiated administrative steps to determine whether the employees,
some of whom were still at work for the government on Friday, should
be suspended and to determine whether the suppliers should be barred
from getting federal contracts.
    Baker refused to give the dollar amounts of payoffs or of the losses
to the federal government. Nor would he say whether the government
had offered immunity to anyone involved in the scheme.
    But a number of people named as participants in the alleged
conspiracy were not charged, suggesting they may be cooperating with
the prosecutors.
    The government said the indicted employees' loot included color
televisions, jewelry, paneling, auto supplies, washers and dryers,
household furniture, carpeting, clothes, luggage, radios, airline
tickets, typewriters, appliances, auto tires, stereo record players,
lawn mowers, liquor, auto repairs, watches, cases of Coca-Cola, cash,
and at least one diamond ring, tape recorder, microwave oven,
automobile, drill press and motor, sand blaster, air compressor and
rifle.
    According to the indictments, some of the payoff schemes were used
at the GSA store inside the headquarters of the Justice Department in
Washington.
    
ap-ny-09-30 0239EDT
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n012  0749  30 Sep 78
 
BC-GSA 2takes
By MARY ANN KUHN and LYLE DENNISTON
c. 1978 Washington Star
    WASHINGTON - Twelve General Services Administration employees
charged with taking bribes in a fraud scheme now face disciplinary
action to force them out of their jobs temporarily.
    It was not immediately clear whether three other indicted federal
workers, employees of other federal agencies, will also face
suspension. A fourth quit his job last week.
    Two businessmen also were named in the indictments issued Friday -
the first to come out of the widespread probe of GSA scandals. The
indictments did not reach high up in that agency or other federal
offices, and apparently did not involve fraud of major proportions.
    The charges emerged from a federal grand jury in Baltimore after a
16-month investigation. Justice Department sources said that more
indictments will be coming within four to six weeks.
    In general, the initial charges were aimed at lower-ranking
employees, accusing them of taking cash and gifts in return for
allowing a private business to collect for goods it never delivered
to GSA.
    Two executives of that private company were the businessmen indicted
Friday.
    The charges spelled out in the indictment followed a pattern that
GSA officials have said was typical of many of the burgeoning
scandals within the agency: contractors got paid for work not done or
delivered, and got by with that by paying off government employees
with whom they had dealt.
    In this case, according to the indictment, the firm got the
employees to file or approve false claims for goods ordered but not
shipped, and the company then paid off the employees with cash,
gifts, or a check which the employees then used to buy items for
their own use.
    Among the gifts in the payoff, the indictment charged, were an auto,
airline tickets, liquor, microwave ovens, a lawn mower, rifles, tape
recorders, color TV sets, luggage, typewriters, a diamond ring and
other jewelry, washers and dryers, furniture, expensive tools, and
cases of Coca-Cola.
    GSA administrator Jay Solomon said that, besides starting suspension
actions against his agency's employees under indictment, his staff
would study the possibility of cutting off the indicted private firm
as a GSA supplier. That firm is James Hilles Associates Inc. of
Westminster, Md.
    Regarding the move to suspend the 12 GSA employees without pay,
Solomon said:
    ''Fraud against the government cannot be tolerated, and in the
interest of the taxpayer, we must consider action which will remove
these individuals from the work situation which may give continued
opportunity for possible criminal activity.''
    Justice Department sources said that four of the GSA employees, all
present or former managers of GSA ''self-service supply stores,'' had
already left their jobs during the investigation.
    (MORE)
    
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