Ten O'Clock News

[Male reporter] Here's the news. The Republicans do have a candidate for governor. Three strikes and you're out Mike. We have a saga of Cambridge zoning along the red line and on Halley's Comet watch John Oh gets almost too close for comfort. [Female announcer] The 10 o'clock news is made possible by your contributions, and by grants from New England Telephone- serving New England's communications needs for 100 years, by Nimrod press printers and then Braver's, by Shonof Banks, providers of education, financing, and information at over 170 offices throughout Massachusetts. 'Good evening I'm Christopher Lyden. Two eminent controversialists tonight for and against the U.S. aid to the Contras, John Silber of Boston University in favor; Noam Chomsky of MIT. opposed.' [Gail Harris speaks] 'I'm Gail Harris.

We begin tonight with the first official opposition of the reelection campaign of Governor Dukakis. Greg Hyatt, the co-author of Prop 2 and a Half and a former candidate for Congress. He kicked off his campaign today for governor with a pointed assault on his Democratic opponent David Williams has our story.' [Hyatt speaks] 'Michael Dukakis may mean well but another four years of his policies will spell disaster for Massachusetts and for those of us who foot the bill for his elitist approach to government. [David Williams] 'Elitism and arrogance were among the words Greg Hyatt used today as he launched his campaign for governor with a sharp attack on Michael Dukakis. Hyatt accused Dukakis of intellectual dishonesty for taking credit for the state's economic success. Credit that Hyatt believes should be given to Ronald Reagan and former Governor Ed King. [Hyatt speaking] 'Dukakis is consistently opposed the Reagan economic program. He opposed Governor King and back in 1978, he said the people of Massachusetts are too intelligent to vote for something like Two and a Half. Three strikes and you're out Mike.'

[David Williams] 'Two months ago there was little talk of Gregg Hyatt as a candidate for governor. Indeed some observers see him merely as a stand in for better known Republicans such as Ed King and Ray Shamy who have declined to run. However, the 32 year old Hyatt argues he's well qualified to lead the Commonwealth. For example he points to his success with Barbara Anderson and Citizens for Limited Taxation in winning passage of Proposition 2 and a Half. More recently Hyatt has teamed up with radio talk show host Jerry Williams to repeal the state's mandatory seatbelt law. And in 1984 Hyatt won 47 percent of the vote in his race for Congress against Chester Atkins.' [Hyatt speaks] 'And if you don't think that there was a lot of administration involved in getting Prop 2 and a half on the ballot and the mandatory seat belt would be on the ballot you're mistaken. Because that's an administrative chop chore and task. It takes an awful lot of help. And by the way, there were no paid consultants involved in the seatbelt repeal- none.' [Williams speaks] 'Guy Carbone a former MDC Commissioner, is expected to be Hyatt's only Republican challenger. Hyatt said today he and Carbone have pledged to support whoever wins the nomination in

next month's state Republican convention. For the 10 o'clock news, I'm David Williams.' [Lyden speaks] 'Healthy Start is the Massachusetts name for a new state effort to make medical treatment during pregnancy more accessible to poor women and to minors. The Healthy Start idea was being refined at the State House today before the Senate Committee on Human Services. Marcus Jones was there.' [Marcus Jones speaks] 'In an effort to deal with the problem of inadequate prenatal care for poor women and teenagers. Operation healthy start was initiated last year. Now less than a year into the program health care professionals and social workers are calling on lawmakers to broaden the project.' [Female speaker] 'We believe that this is an important program. This is an important bill to promote good, comprehensive, maternity related care. The passage of Senate Bill 637 would bridge the gap of access to prenatal care for those women who need it the most.' [Marcus Jones] 'Last year a state task force discovered an alarming

trend. Since 1981, fewer women- especially minors- have been able to afford prenatal care. That's where Healthy Start comes in.' [Female Speaker] 'A lot of our teenagers are anemic. They're underweight. They need to improve themselves nutritionally. And it's especially important that they receive the iron and vitamins that are prescribed at the beginning of the pregnancies. They will often- they would often come and say that they couldn't afford the tablets. Could we give them samples? We don't have that many samples to give all the patients we have to treat.' [Marcus Jones] 'According to the Boston Committee for Access to Health Care, ten states have increased funding and expanded their prenatal care programs all based on initial data that indicates that the states save money in the long run.' [Male speaker] 'I don't think that legislation of this type could ever be superflous.' [Female speaker] 'We estimate that the cost of prenatal care for every dollar spent on that you save four to six dollars in the costs associated with longer term care.' [Female speaker] 'The public has a lot of concern that any time you provide support for teens who are

pregnant or parenting, that you start making it look really attractive. And statistics just don't bear that out. But what we do know happens that if you don't care for these mothers and their babies you continue the poverty cycle.' [Marcus Jones] 'To add teeth to the Healthy Start program legislators propose raising income eligibility to include women earning less than ten thousand, seven hundred dollars a year. They allow for comprehensive care throughout the pregnancy and coverage of one additional visit after the birth. They also want to make it possible for uninsured minors to get Medicaid benefits without their parent's consent.' [Female speaker] 'Teens statistically do not seek care as early as a person who is older and has more resources. So giving that the teen comes for a pregnancy test in their third or fourth month of pregnancy and also has no resource for medical care is going to spend another month or two trying to go to either boyfriend parents, boyfriends parents or whoever, to try to get money for that first visit to a doctor's office.' [Marcus Jones] 'The House and Senate bills currently in

committee would make Healthy Start a permanent fixture. The program would then be exempt from the whims of yearly budget debates. A relief for indigent mothers and their advocates alike. Marcus Jones for the 10 o'clock news.' [Instrumental Music Playing] [Instrumental Music Playing] [Gail Harris speaks] 'In Washington there was action on two fiscal fronts today. First the Republican chairman of the Senate Budget Committee proposed a brand new spending plan for 1987 that would sharply cut President Reagan's request for military spending, would virtually freeze domestic spending, and also calls for sixteen billion dollars worth of tax increases. In The House meanwhile, a Democratic majority steamrolled a vote against the budget that Reagan submitted last

month. That vote was three hundred and twelve to 12. Also today the Chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, Robert Packwood, introduced a new version of the tax reform bill. It contains substantial differences from the version President Reagan came up with but Packwood said that this one has the President's support. As for simplification, Packwood would only promise that his version was no more complicated than the present tax code.' [Lyden speaks] 'In the now daily pitches for and against aid to the Nicaraguan Contras, President Reagan raised the rhetorical stakes today he spoke of irreparable disaster if Congress does not act now. At the State Department President Reagan inspected a display of weapons captured in Central America a display that will move to Capitol Hill next week before the voting on the hundred million dollars in aid money that the President wants. The prize pieces in that display are actually U.S. weapons M-16 rifles which the Reagan administration says were captured by communists in Vietnam and then shipped through Cuba and Nicaragua to the insurgents in El Salvador. Hence Reagan's claim today that he is confronting in Nicaragua a sophisticated

communist effort to undermine democracy in this hemisphere. House Speaker Tip O'Neill said his fight against contra money is really a fight to keep American troops from being sucked eventually into a wider war in Central America. O'Neill said Reagan is gaining votes in the House but that the contra money will still be voted down next Thursday by more than a dozen votes. Our guests are as far apart on the Contra question as American intellectuals can be. John Silber, the president of Boston University, was a member of the Kissinger commission that diagnosed a security threat in Central America. Noam Chomsky, the language theorist at MIT, argues in his new book titled Turning the Tide that U.S. intervention in Central America is the acute case of our general misuse and misrule of the Third World. I'd like you to begin President Silber, address yourself to the waverers If there are any in the U.S. Senate why would you vote for the Contra money?' [John Silba speaks] 'Well the Senate of the United States has traditionally been in favor of supporting democratic

forces as opposed to totalitarian forces. And if they continue that practice they're going to vote against these Sandanistas and they're going to vote in favor of the Contras on October 15th the Sandanistas passed an edict that suspends the protection against the search of homes without a warrant. That suspends the privacy of mail and allows for censorship of mail. They suspended the right of free assembly, they have suspended all freedom of the press. They have continued their harassment of their people and suspended virtually all democratic rights. The October 15th decree is much more restrictive and comprehensive than the decree that Hitler passed in February 28th, 1933, when he ended the Democratic Republic of Weimar. And once you see this totalitarian nature of the regime which was apparent since 1979 in September, and is continued ever since then, it is time for the Senate of the United States to support the Democrats.' [Christopher Lyden speaks]

'Noam Chomsky in a short speech to the U.S. Senate, why would you be against the Contra money?' [Noam Chomsky speaks] 'Well as even the most ardent supporters of the Contras now concede this is what they call a proxy army, which is entirely- which is attacking Nicaragua from foreign bases, is entirely dependent on its masters for directions, support has never put forth a political program, has created no base of political support within the country, and is it is led by its entire militant- almost its entire top military command is Samozas its officers. Its has achieved- its military achievements so far consist of a long and horrifying series of very well-documented torture and mutilation atrocities and essentially nothing else. The administration, administration officials are now openly conceding in public that the main function of the country is to retard or reverse the rate of social reform in Nicaragua and to try to create- to

terminate the openness of that society. The state of siege, for example, which was imposed last fall and which is very mild I should say there's much political opening in Nicaragua as everyone there up to the American ambassador will tell you that corresponds roughly to the state of siege which has been in place in El Salvador since early 1980 except in El Salvador. It corresponds. It has been associated with a huge massacre of tens of thousands of people, a destruction of the press and so on and so forth. Whereas in Nicaragua it is a reaction to a war that we are carrying out against them with precisely the purpose of trying to retard social reform and to restrict the possibilities of an open and developing society and that's a cruel and savage policy which we should terminate.' [Lyden speaks] 'And complicated it's overlooked...' [Interruption by Silba] 'If you are going to continue that series of plane falshoods. That's a series of falsehoods the like of which I've never seen compacted in such a small period of time.

The massacres that have occurred in Nicaragua have been the massacres by the Sandanistas of the Miskito Indians. The repression there is massive. It is more- it is more serious than anything that we have seen in Central America or in any Latin American country to date. It is a genuine dictatorship imposed there and it described the leaders of the Contras as being supporters of Somoza is simply fabrication. Robello Cruz Aquilerro Chamorro are not Somozistas and never have been. And when you take the leadership of the Army of the Contras some of them were members of the National Guard. But then if you're going to object to that which would be highly unreasonable because that was an army that wasn't simply followers or supporters of Somozistas it was is it is important to remember that Modesto Rojas, the vice chairman of the Air Force of the Sandanistas was also a member of the National Guard and a very large number of members of the National Guard are the ones who are the coordinators of the block committees that imposed the dictatorship by the Sandanistas. This is- this is a series of distortions and fabrications and the

effort of the Sandinistas to discredit the Contras by the manufacture of atrocities is now a point that has been very well documented.' [Lyden speaks] 'Noam Chomsky's trying to respond among other things to the...' [Silber interrupts] 'Well let's just start with facts.' [Lyden continues] 'Among other things to the picture of the totalitarian...' [Chomsky interrupts] 'Let's just first of all just talk about the facts. I stated again that the military leadership of the Contras is almost entirely drawn from the top from the Somozas National Guard...[Silber interrupts] 'So is this now...' [Chomsky continues] 'It's forty six out of forty eight of the top military commanders according to Edgar Chomorro.' [Silber speaks] 'Soldiers are soldiers...' [Chomsky] These are not soldiers. This is the top military...' [Silber interrupts] 'Mr. Aquino...' [Chomsky speaks] ' ....excuse me I let you I let you go on, did I let you...' [Silber interrupts] 'You engaged in a series of fabrications of truth and it's time that someone had the opportunity of correcting your historical statements while you're still around it, Mr. Chomsky.' [Chomsky speaks] 'Mr. Silber has a very good reason...'[Silber interrupts] 'Mr. Marcos' [Chomsky speaks]'...for not wanting me to talk and that is that he knows that he doesn't want to distort it.' [Chomsky] 'May I have a chance to say it?' [Silber] 'No, just let me finish...'[Lyden speaks] 'It is his turn.' [Silber] '...it is Marcos.' army is the very army that helped Aquino into power. So when you try to take on the National Guard as if the National Guard was Somozistas you mis-state the case but you also

make up facts there are plenty of National Guard members who are supporting the Sandanistas.' [Lyden speaks] 'Mr. Chomsky go head and speak.'[Silber speaks] 'Now let me, you're having an action a good example of totalitarinism that is to ensure that the that the opposition..' [Chomsky] 'I just want to stop your monopoly on this information, the idea that I have a monopoly on misinformation the American presence is little ridiculous. Let me read but... really, I control the American press? Let me repeat. Let's go back to the facts. 46 out of 48 top Military commanders of the of the Contras are just officers. You can find that in a congressional report in front of Edgar Morrow who is the CIA appointed spokesman. That's exactly what I said it's exactly true. As for the idea that the Sandinistas have been carried out massacres on a par with those that we have been carrying out in Central America this is really astonishing. In El Salvador the number of people massacred since 1988 or since 1979 when we moved in in force is on the order of 60,000. In Guatemala where we incidentally have been

supporting it all the way through with military aid which never terminated and are now supporting enthusiastically the number of people massacred is on the order of 100,000. In Mr. Silber referred to them as Miskito Indians who were badly treated I should say, the figures are that approximately 60 or 70 were killed- many more than that- whereas in contrast about five or six thousand people have been killed and I don't mean killed this is not garden variety killing. This is torture, murder, and mutilation massively documented in great detail by our forces. Now there, There are crimes of the Sandanistas there's no doubt but they are undetectable in comparison with the crimes of the...' [Lyden interrupts] 'I'd like to just go back to two central arguments that this whole thing depends on. One is the notion that Sandanistic rebel poses a security threat to the United States and to this hemisphere. Secondly that we owe it to the so-called Democrats and the democratic notion to help people who are carrying our standard in the region. John Silber are

these equal arguments and you support them both?' [Silber] 'Well I don't support the presence of about 6500 Soviet and Cuban troops in Nicaragua. I don't support the presence of 24 armed helicopter gunships supplied by the Soviet Union to Nicaragua or a hundred fifty battle tanks or about twelve hundred trucks and 301 airmen...' [Lyden] 'But what of the notion of a security threat to this country?' [Silber] 'Well it's not a security threat yet, and neither was Hitler a security threat when he suspended all freedoms of the Germans in February 28 1933. He wasn't even a security threat that was serious in 1936 when he rearmed the Rhineland. But by the time that the Allies got around to recognizing that he was a threat, it cost us tens of millions of lives and it took six years in which to defeat him. At the present time we can put an end to the Sandanista dictatorship in Central America without using a single

American life. All we have to do is help pay for the firemen. There's a fire going on down there. We don't have to put the fire out but we're asked to pay, to help pay for the firemen. If we wait and we decide to do nothing until the Soviets establish a land base there and it develops as it will develop if we allow it to happen, we will then have to face the fact of a possibility of war. It is not a present threat. It is a vector. If people don't have sense enough to understand that a small fire in a room is a threat not because it's a small fire but because small fires have a way of becoming big fires. Then we haven't learned anything from history.' [Lyden speaks] 'Noam Chomsky's turn on the question of the security threat to the hemisphere to this country.' [Chomsky speaks] 'Well to talk of Nicaragua as a security threat is a bit like asking what security threat Luxemburg poses to the Soviet Union. Mr Silber mentioned Hitler and I'm old enough to remember Hitler's speeches in which he talked about the threat to Germany posed by Poland from which Poland, France, and Germany had to defend itself and we're facing that kind of and even that's it that's unfair to Hitler to draw that example. The fact is if we want it is quite true that

Nicaragua is now Soviet armed and heavily armed. And the reason is that they are being attacked by a superpower which has specifically blocked every other source of supply. Up until the- for example- up until the May embargo last year 20 percent of the Nicaraguan trade was with the Soviet bloc. Prior to that its arms were coming from everywhere. We then blocked arms from everywhere else as we intensify the war. They do exactly what the US government wants them to do- namely they divert resources from the social reforms which we really fear and they turn them towards militarization. If we want to the idea that Nicaragua could attack the countries of that- I might add that the countries of Latin America regard this as hysterical lunacy. Every country-all the Contadora countries- all the support countries which include all of the relatively democratic countries and in Latin America are pleading with us to call off the war against the Contras because they understand perfectly well exactly what it's doing. It's forcing them to be a militarized state and it's creating a danger of a wider war in the region. If we want to

get the Soviet tanks out of Nicaragua and the Soviets advisors very few the Cuban advisors out. What we should do is very simple and everyone in the government knows it. Call off the war and they will return to what they were doing before we attacked them. Namely creating and even creating the most effective social reforms in the hemisphere which were widely praised by the World Bank, the inner American Development Bank, organizations like OXFAM which describe them as unique in their experience in 76 developing countries. The run which we have retarded and stopped by this attack.' [Lyden speaks] 'We are running so far overtime that we might just as well keep going. I want you to deal with the question of democracy and our responsibility to to aid the cause. You criticize the Sandinistas but do you really want to embrace the Contras as a vehicle of democracy?' [Silber speaks] 'Absolutely and let's dispense with the myth that somehow these were lovely Democrats until we drove them into the hands of the Soviet Union by our opposition. That is a myth that is a fabrication of history that Mr. Chomsky knows is false. As a matter of fact when the revolution came to an end in July of 1979 the Sandinistas came to

Washington after having pledged the Organization of American States that they would hold free elections. They then received one hundred and seventeen million dollars in loans. They received credit from the from the World Bank through the intercession of the United States. They were very well received and very well treated. And on September of 19 seventy nine they already began their process of repression. So the notion that we drove them into the hands of the Communists is utterly false.' [Lyden] 'But the question is is the Contras as a vehicle for democracy?' [Silber] 'The Contras do not have overt support among the Nicaraguan people at the present time inside Nicaragua for one obvious reason. Hitler's opponents did not have any obvious support in Germany after Hitler had taken over that country in a totalitarian state. The opposition does not have any effective voice. You don't find that effective voice in the Soviet Union right now either. You have isolated groups of refuseniks but in in Nicaragua you have a leadership: Robello, Cruz, Chomorro, Colero. Those are

major figures- major Democratic figures who opposed Somoza and many of them went to jail and they are followed by literally thousands of people who are opposing the Sandinista dictatorship to try to write these people off as totalitarians and come up with that trumped up nonsense about the atrocities that those people have committed is just a good example of doublethink. This is just an 1984 exercise by Mr. Chomsky for which he has already established a world wide reputation. It's rubbish.' [Lyden speaks] 'Mr Chomsky when you hear this call to come to the rescue of democracy and democratic forces. What do you answer?' [Chomsky speaks] 'I would be delighted if the United States were to reverse its longstanding policies of opposing democratic forces throughout Central America and begin to support those forces. Now in the return to Nicaragua and to return to the real world. I never described the Sandinista as perfect Democrats or whatever your phrase was. What I did was quote the World Bank, Oxfam, the Jesuit order, and others who recognized that what they were doing was to to to use the

meager resources of that country for the benefit of the poor majority. That's why health standards shot up, that's why literacy shot up. That's why agrarian reform proceeded to the only place in the region. That's why subsistence agriculture improved and. consumption of food increased and that's why we attacked them. It had nothing to do with Democracy. Now, I also did not say that Cruz and Robello committed atrocities. In fact Cruz and Robello sit in Washington and they'll do anything. They're figureheads we concocted. The people who commit atrocities are the contra forces led by the National Guard and of all the figures you mention one is involved namely Calero who is an ultra right wing businessman and represents the extremist, narrow business forces in Nicaragua. Now if we had the slightest concern with democracy, which we do not in our foreign affairs and never have, we would turn to countries where we have influence like El Salvador. Now in El Salvador they don't call the archbishop bad names. What they do is murder him. They do not repress. They do not censor the press. They wipe the press out. They sent the army in to blow up the church radio

station. The editor of The Independent newspaper was found in a ditch mutilated and cut the pieces with a machete...' [Silber interrupts] 'Don't, don't...' [Chomsky speaks] 'May I continue? May I continue? I did not interrupt you...' [Silber] 'Don't you ever want to put a time value on anything you're saying if you want to lie.' [Chomsky] 'I'm talking about 1980.' [Silber] 'You are a systematic liar.' [Chomsky] 'Did these things happen or didn't they?' [Silber] 'These things did not happen in the context in which you suggest at all and when you suggest that Cruz is simply a figurehead and does nothing you overlook the fact that Arturo Cruz was the ambassador of the Sandinistas to the United States...' [Chomsky] 'Yes, and he has always had...' [Silber] 'And was head banker of the Sandinistas...' [Chomsky] 'Yes in the United States...' [Silber] 'And we finally broke with him and when he found out finally utterly totalitarian. You are a phony mister and it's time that the people well read you correctly.' [Chomsky] 'It's clear it's clear why you want to divert me from the discussion that I...' [Silber] 'No, it's not, I get tired of rubbish.' [Chomsky] 'Excuse me, the Arturo Cruz exactly as I said was in the United States.' [Silber] 'Why was he in the United States?' [Chomsky] 'He was brought by was in the United States has brought the he was in the United States and he defected in the United States. He was brought back to Nicaragua as a political figure because the business based opposition there had no credible candidate. He did not participate in the

elections as he could have in part because he could, may I continue?' [Silber] 'No, because you're lying again. I got to catch a bus. I didn't say anything yet.' [Silber] 'The Torpas were the ones who prevented Cruz from participating in the election. He didn't.' [Chomsky] 'That's another fabrication but let's continue with...' [Lyden speaks] 'Except we can't. I'm afraid we're out of time you've given President Reagan a tough act to follow on Sunday night. We thank you both John Silver and Noam Chomsky. OK.' [Instrumental music plays] There's little progress to report tonight in two of the confrontations between labor and management in Massachusetts. [Gail Harris] 'Picket lines were up again at commuter train stations north of Boston so those who usually take the train to work had to either board special buses or climb into their cars. And the 21 day walkout that has idled General Electric plants in Lynn, Everett, and Medford continued with little

movement by either side. Company officials said they began digging into a backlog of grievances while the talks took a day off. At the moment each side is looking to the other to get negotiations going again. Cambridge residents are launching a new effort to keep northern Massachusetts Avenue from turning into a haven for high rises. It's an issue that's being hotly debated in the suburbs as well as the city. And as Christi George reports has good reason to be concerned.' [Christi George speaks] 'This is Massachusetts Avenue today. This is what Mass Ave looked like a hundred years ago. It was called North Avenue then and it was a horse and buggy street, the widest of all the colonial avenues around Boston. Prosperous merchants settled on North Avenue because of the railroad junction at Porter Square by the cattle stock yards. But when trollies came to the avenue in 1896 the upper class fled.' [Male speaks] 'The early trolley cars, early electric trolley cars, were extremely noisy. They came much more frequently. They moved

faster. You could hear them from blocks away. And one by one, almost all of those mansions up and down Massachussets Avenue disappeared mostly for apartment buildings beginning in the 1980s. In fact beginning in 1898 two years after they electrified the horse cars you see the first five and six story apartment buildings going up and that continued through the 1930s.' [Christi George speaks] 'A few monuments to that glorious past still stand but the stately Victorians now house offices as well as people. These days Mass Ave is mostly a street of small scale commerce, mom and pop stores, and dry cleaners punctuated by pockets of residential buildings. But just like the trolley did in 1896, the red line extension has brought new development pressure. But this time people are trying to plan. You might think of Mass Ave as completely built up but it's not. Not quite. There are still a handful of big, vacant lots just begging for building.

And for every parcel of land there's at least one developer who's already drawn up blueprints. And for every developer there's at least one neighbor who has some doubts. Kate's Mystery Bookstore sits next to one of those vacant parcels of land and the blueprints for change are already drawn. Developer Harold McHigin wants to put up a three storey office complex on the property and in the process, he'll rip down the defunct factory that sits cheek by jowl to other houses. Most neighbors like his plan but what they gain in light and air Kate's will lose.' [McHigin speaks] 'We're applying for a variance on a proposal which is of much less height with greater parking- it's a trade off between having a tall building which everyone is opposed to versus a three story building which we hope will be acceptable eventually to everyone in the neighborhood.' [Kate speaks] 'You know it's my life. I'm here all the time. I mean I work here, I live here, and I spend a lot of time here so it's sort of like

my existence and so I have very strong feelings about the impact it's going to have a name because it reverberates through everything.' [Noises from inside the bookshop]. [Christi George] 'Kate's is no ordinary bookstore. It's more of a literary salon for mystery buffs, for would be writers, and for published authors. [Man speaks] 'When we first moved to Cambridge and would say to people, what do you like about Cambridge they'd say bookstores, love the bookstores. Most of those people I have heard say that never appear in a bookstore. But I think this is the kind of bookstore they mean.' [McHigin] 'We can't bulldoze over Kate and we're not going to try to do that.' [Christi George] 'The developer Crane represents needs a variance to build the way he wants to. But right now projects that need variances are in a sort of unofficial limbo.' [Woman speaks] 'With the advent of the Red Line extension in particular of course the Porter Square Station here and the station out at Davis Square and Our Life there has been really a very strong interest in development along the Mass Avenue corridor.

What we are faced with is a situation where zoning is 40 over 40 years old and really does not respond to the current development scenario that is presented to the business community.' [Christi George speaks] 'Betty D. Rozier is a city planner in a city without a master plan. The city that's trying to keep Mass Ave North from becoming what Mass Ave South already is.' [Man speaks] 'The area around the Orson Welles between Harvard and Central Squares. If you look at the kinds of stores that have gone into those new buildings they tend to be you know stockbrokers and computer shops and so forth and they're not neighborhood service shops. So it's character in that sense that it provides services to those who walk down the street or get groceries or whatever.' [Christi George] 'Joel Bard started a petition drive to down zone North Cambridge. That is to put lower limits on the height of new buildings. Developers cried foul. So the city council put both factions on a study committee. The results may allow for buildings like this one built by developer Peter Wasserman another committee member although the project needed zoning

variances, Wasserman had his neighbors' support.' [Wasserman speaks] 'We could have built a residential building up to a maximum of 85 feet in order to get the parking. For such a structure we would have probably had parking in maybe on the ground and put the building up on stilts.' [George speaks] 'Tonight the down zoning Study Committee released its first suggestions. Lower building heights and a requirement of design guidelines from now on. Most everywhere there are several months to go before down zoning goes to the city council and passage isn't certain What is certain, though, is that the aesthetics of future development in Cambridge will count for a lot. For the 10 o'clock news. I'm Christi George.' [Lyden] 'Our mid-March taste of wet April weather continues at least till the weekend. Tonight patchy fog. accompanying. Light rain. Temperatures will stay in the upper 30s. Tomorrow the rain picks up again. Mild temperatures reaching past 50.

Tomorrow night we'll see more rain still though- temperatures in the upper 40s. Saturday holds out some hope for Sun. With spring like high temperatures in the 50s.' [Instrumental Music plays] [Lyden speaks] 'In Washington's eyes Nicaragua is now not the only human rights offender in Latin America. The chief U.S. delegate to the United Nations has condemned Chile in a resolution to the U.N. Human Rights Commission for serious violations including torture and excessive use of force by security police, the security and police authorities. The American delegate Richard Shifter said in a news conference today, We go public when it appears that our quiet entreaties have not been adequately responded to. South African police fired bird shot and tear gas into a black funeral procession today,

causing pall bearers to drop the coffins and mourners to flee in panic. It was a funeral for riot victims in the Cooma Black Township. Police had ordered that no more than 100 attend the service or 25 from each victim's family. About 5000 mourners turned out. And they further defied police orders by carrying the coffins on foot rather than in hearses. Police say the rule against carrying coffins on foot is intended to avert potential riots. There were four mourners wounded by the birdshot today.' [Gail Harris] 'The Soviet Union launched two cosmonauts into space today, the first manned space shot since the U.S. shuttle Challenger exploded in January. This launching lifted the usual Soviet veil of secrecy with live television coverage. The two cosmonauts are scheduled to link up with the Soviet space laboratory in a couple of days. Both men hold endurance records for the time they've spent in space- 237 days. Europe's space probe Geoto got closer to Halley's Comet tonight than anything ever has

and for hours sent out pictures that were incredibly detailed. Then just 18 seconds before the spacecraft reached its closest point to the nucleus of the comet the signal vanished. Project officials were worried at first that the craft had blown up as it hit a wall of dust from the comet. But they have received some additional signals that indicate the spacecraft is still operating although it's very unstable. The closest Giato got to the core of the comet, according to scientists, was about three hundred and twenty five miles.' [Lyden] 'That's our news. Tomorrow night the arguments before Judge Lynch on whether former Governor King's libel charges against the Boston Globe are ripe for trial. I'm Christopher Lyden. Goodnight.' [Harris] 'And I'm Gail Harris. Thank you for joining us. Good night.'