ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Wednesday, January 15, 1997 TAG: 9701150115
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-3 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
Red Cross strike settled with contract
HUNTINGTON, W.Va. - A 16-day strike by American Red Cross workers that halted blood collections in parts of West Virginia, Ohio and Kentucky was settled Tuesday with the approval of a new contract.
The 68 members of Huntington-based Service Employees International Union District 1199 ratified a three-year contract. Blood donations will resume as early as Thursday.
Talks broke down Dec. 26 and employees went on strike four days later, halting blood collection in 33 counties of the three states.
- Associated Press
FBI wiretaps wish list revealed
WASHINGTON - The FBI Tuesday revealed a detailed wish list that it said would guarantee its ability to conduct wiretaps in the digital age without significantly expanding the agency's current level of surveillance over Americans.
The agency is requesting that in coming years telephone companies set aside the capability for law-enforcement officials to perform as many as 60,000 simultaneous wiretaps and other traces nationwide out of the nation's 160 million telephone lines.
The number of potential taps may seem huge, but the agency said it expected only modest increases over current rates, of about a thousand taps a year. Taps on standard ``wireline '' phones could be expected to grow 5.92 percent between 1994 and 1998, and 4.55 percent for the period from 1998 through 2004, the report stated; taps on wireless phones would grow 14.3 percent and 8.38 percent during the same periods.
Telephone industry experts Tuesday were unable to say whether the new numbers constituted a large increase in FBI capabilities. One privacy advocate, David Sobel of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, said Tuesday that the new increases cited in the FBI report constituted ``significant'' growth in wiretaps over time.
- The Washington Post
Jazz documentary wins $1 million grant
WASHINGTON - The Corporation for Public Broadcasting announced a $1 million grant Tuesday to filmmaker Ken Burns for a 12-hour documentary on the history of jazz.
The eight-part project, which will explore jazz's development through the stories of men and women who created it, will be broadcast in 2000.
Burns is the creator of the award-winning documentaries ``The Civil War'' and ``Baseball.''
- Associated Press
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