ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Friday, January 24, 1997 TAG: 9701240090
SECTION: NATL/ITNL PAGE: A-2 EDITION: METRO
Neighbors hold on to spilled cash
MIAMI - Police have recovered only about $300 of the $800,000 that spilled into one of Miami's poorest neighborhoods two weeks ago when a Brinks truck overturned on a highway overpass.
``We're still hopeful the money will be returned,'' said Marven Moss, a spokesman at Brinks Inc.'s Darien, Conn., headquarters. And police said Thursday that they won't give up the search for the bills, coins and food stamps that spilled onto the streets of Overtown on Jan.8.
Police offered two amnesties a week apart for people to return the money, and two people turned in a total of $20.38 during the first grace period. The second expired Saturday without netting any more cash.
On Sunday, someone turned in about $300 at a police station a few miles north of Overtown, Andrews said. The person was not arrested.
- Associated Press
Legislators oppose same-sex marriages
HONOLULU - A proposed state constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriages speedily won approval Thursday in the state House from lawmakers scrambling to undo Hawaiian court rulings.
The House voted 44-7 to send the expedited measure to the state Senate, where similar legislation is expected to win support. If approved, the proposed amendment would go before voters in November 1998.
Hawaii's Supreme Court in 1993 ruled that denying marriage licenses to same-sex couples violates the state constitution's equal-protection clause. In 1994, the Legislature limited marriage to opposite-sex couples.
- Associated Press
Nursing home use falls over decade
WASHINGTON - The proportion of elderly people going into nursing homes has fallen significantly in the past 10 years, as older Americans stay healthier, remain more independent, and choose cheaper health care alternatives that allow them to stay at home, the government reported Thursday.
About 41 of every 1,000 Americans over 65 are in nursing homes, down 18 percent from 1985, the last time the National Center for Health Statistics conducted a survey.
At the same time, the number of nursing homes has decreased, although the ones that stayed afloat are bigger. Nursing home vacancy rates also rose, according to the new National Nursing Home Survey.
- The Washington Post
Son urges wider search for atheist
HOUSTON - A charge account and credit card associated with missing atheist Madalyn Murray O'Hair have been used as recently as December, prompting O'Hair's estranged son to request that Texas Rangers be assigned to the case.
Recent inquiries by the Houston Chronicle showed that an American Express card issued to Robin Murray - O'Hair's granddaughter and adopted daughter who has been missing along with O'Hair and O'Hair's son Jon Murray since September 1995 - is being used and has been paid regularly for the past six months.
In addition, an account at Lord & Taylor of New York, also in Robin Murray's name, is active but has been paid in full.
As a result of those and other developments, Bill Murray, O'Hair's estranged son, has written to Texas Gov. George W. Bush requesting that Texas Rangers be assigned to the case.
- Houston Chronicle
Elderly urged to get pneumonia vaccine
ATLANTA - The elderly should get a shot to fight off a potentially fatal type of pneumonia before they move into a nursing home, the government said Thursday.
A study of nursing homes in three states found that few residents have been vaccinated against pneumococcal pneumonia, the national Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said. The vaccinations are given along with annual flu shots.
The pneumococcal polysacharide vaccine, which has been available since 1983, doesn't protect against all types of pneumonia but does fight off the most common. It is covered by Medicare and other insurers.
- Associated Press
Publisher struggles to sell Clinton book
If Random House took its leftover copies of President Clinton's book and made a bridge out of them, it would reach all the way to the 22nd century.
So the publisher made a ``special inaugural offer'' to booksellers this month, offering them ``Between Hope and History'' for $1.50 each, only a little more than it cost to make them.
``I think it was originally Calvin Trillin's line that the shelf life of the average book is somewhere between milk and yogurt,'' said Peter Bernstein, the new head of Times Books, the Random House division that issued the book in August.
The trouble with Clinton's little treatise is that it had the shelf life of a carton of ice cream - one left in the sun.
Several publishing observers and booksellers said Thursday they had never seen a publisher mark down the price of a book so far so fast. ``This is dumping,'' said Barbara Meade of Politics and Prose in Washington, D.C. ``They have so many copies, they can't get rid of them without fire-sale prices.''
- The Washington Post
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