Chicago Tribune from Chicago, Illinois • Page 111

mm 149th Year No. 31S Chicago Tribune Dow close 4922.75 593.96 Indiana makes its pitch to Bears Up 50.94 Volume 373,140,000 i -A i closed fH i Blue-chip stocks closed with another record high Wednesday, as Wall Street reacted calmly to an announcement by Federal Reserve policymakers that the central bank will hold interest rates steady. Blue-chips gained as Corp. said it has offered a buyout to more than half its 1 5 1 ,000 managers. up.

Milium i ami-rii AP pnoio Closed 'til further, notice: U.S. Park Service Police Officer P.G. Carroll stood at the closed Lincoln Memorial in Washington on Non-essential federal workers got another day off as President Clinton and the Republican Congress, remained at odds over budget priorities. o. end' suuit Jr.

Xt Heulws miiou or shmtdowi Clinton, GOP leadership continue sparring over deficit; Gingrich says budget-crisis 'could well last 90 days' Peres to form new government GARY, Ind. (AP) The Chicago Bears would move to a new $205 million open-air stadium in Gary under a proposal presented Wednesday by a group of Indiana investors who want to lure the team across the state line. The stadium would seat 75,000 people and have 135 luxury sky-, boxes at a site just west of the Gary Regional Airport, according to the $482 million plan unveiled by Northwest Indiana Chicago-land Entertainment or NICE. The Bears have a lease to continue playing at Chicago's Soldier Field through the 1999 season. If Bears President Mike MpCas-key accepts NICE'S offer, the Gary stadium would be ready for the 2000 season.

The Gary stadium would be about a half hour from downtown Chicago, officials said. The team would continue to be called the Chicago Bears. "This plan is a winner for all Bears fans because it assures that the Chicago Bears will stay in the Chicagoland area," said Bill Well-man, chairman of the NICE board. Gary Neale, chairman of utility holding company NIPSCO Industries and a spokesman for the investor group, said the project has two phases. The first, which would cost nearly $312 million, would include the stadium, an entertainment midway, a Chicago Bears hall of fame and parking for 25,000 cars.

The second phase, which would cost $170 million, would have a nine-hole golf course, a landscape park, hotels and a foot retail shopping area. The project would generate nearly 14,000 construction jobs as well as nearly 3,000 permanent jobs, said Neale, chairman of NIP-SCO Industries, a power and gas utility holding company. Funding for the project, which is to be called Planet Park, would come mostly from private funds. NICE would issue taxable bonds to cover the costs of building the stadium and the rest of the phase one. Once the park were built, NICE would lease it to Lake County, which would sublease it to the Bears and other users.

NICE would recoup its costs through lease rentals, which would come from a combination of public and private funds. NICE expects proceeds from personal seat licenses, club seats, parking and concessions to help pay for the loans. A new 0.5 percent economic development income tax in Lake County would be used to build roads, sidewalks and sewers for the project Chicago has proposed remodeling the Bears' current home, Soldier Field, for $156 million, adding 4,000 seats and 64 skyboxes and generating about $20 million in new revenue. Chicago Mayor Richard Daley believes the Bears will opt to stay in Chicago because it would maintain the team's long ties to the city and a new lease arrangement would let the team make at least $5 million a year more in concession deals, spokesman Jim Williams said. The Bears expect to make a decision by December.

State officials have said that until a deal is reached they will not comment publicly on the negotiations. Associated Press WASHINGTON Hundreds of thousands of government workers got another day off Wednesday as President Clinton and the Republican-controlled Congress remained at an impasse over the budget. Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin dipped into two government trust funds to avoid default Chances were slim that the partial government shutdown would end soon. Wednesday's chapter of the war of words opened with House Speaker Newt Gingrich saying Republican negotiators were ready to renew talks but warning reporters the crisis "could well last 90 days." If that happens, he said, Congress would remain in session through Thanksgiving and Christmas. Gingrich said the House might act by Wednesday night on a short-term measure to end the shutdown, along with a provision committing Clinton to a seven-year balanced budget The measure would be stripped of a Medicare premium increase that was in the bill Clinton vetoed, Gingrich indicated.

But Majority Leader Richard Armey (R-Texas) said no decision on timing had been made. Earlier, Gingrich raised the prospect that Congress might rush through legislation "in the next day or two" to reopen veterans offices, passport offices and Social Security offices so new applications could be taken. But Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle called that "only the latest in a series of silly ideas emanating from the speaker's office." Senate Democrats have enough votes to block such bills. "It's crazy. These little piecemeal appropriations are meaningless and a ploy to divert attention from the real question," Daschle said.

At the White House, presidential spokesman Mike McCurry said, "We don't think the speaker should pick and choose the victims of the current shutdown." Meanwhile, Rubin temporarily converted into cash $61.3 billion held in securities in two funds earmarked for federal workers' retirement That let the government pay off $25 billion in principal and interest due Wednesday. The secretary said he had little choice, but added, "This is no way for a great nation to manage its financial affairs." He said the trust funds will be repaid with interest and the beneficiaries will not suffer. Gingrich said Republicans would send a transportation spending bill to the president Wednesday, with an Interior Department appropriations bill reopening national parks, if Clinton signs it to follow by the end of the week. The House, 374-52, passed an appropriations bill funding the White House, the Treasury Department, the Internal Revenue Service, Secret Service, Customs Service and a variety of independent agencies. If passed by the Senate and signed by Clinton, it would return 95,000 furloughed employees to work.

The Rules Committee removed a provision that had held up passage for months. It would have restricted lobbying by organizations and companies receiving federal funds. With the leadership's blessing, Rep. Tim Hutchinson (R-Ark.) introduced a bill authorizing the Veterans Affairs Department to send benefit checks to military widows and their dependents and to veterans with service-connected disabilities. Daschle and House Minority Leader Dick Gephardt (D-Mo.) joined the acting Social Security commissioner at a Social Security office Wednesday to dramatize the impact of the shutdown on Americans.

Shirley Chater, the acting Social Security chief, said work has been halted on the 30,000 applications that normally come in each day for Social Security or Supplemental Security Income benefits and on 60,000 applications for new or replacement Social Security cards. Two Israeli men in their 20s, Aryre Birenbaum (left) and Yehuda RigeL attempt to hide their faces Wednesday as they are brought to court, charged with spitting on the grave of slain Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabia Elsewhere in Israel, President Ezer Weizman officially asked acting Prime Minister Shimon Peres to form a new government Under Israeli law, Peres has 21 days to form a government supported by at least 61 members in the 120-seat Knesset. There is a year left over from Rabin's term. An Israeli court on Wednesday remanded in custody for 11 days a Jewish settler woman whom police described as dominant in the plot to kill Rabin. Police told a Petah Tikva magistrates court that Margalit Harshefi, 20, like confessed assassin Yigal Amir a law student at the religious Tel Aviv university Bar Dan, played a central role in the prime minister's murder and plans to attack Arabs.

Hooters refuses to hire men The Hooters restaurant chain said Wednesday it would refuse a federal commission's recommendation that the company hire men to work alongside its Hooters Girls waitresses. "Hooters is fighting back," Mike McNeil, a vice president of Hooters, said at a news conference in Atlanta attended by 20 of the chain's young female waitresses. A lot of places serve good burgers. The Hooters Girls, with their charm and All-American sex appeal, are what our customers come for." The Atlanta-based Hooters of America called the news conference to protest a decision by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which has been investigating the 170-restaurant chain for four years. The EEOC said Hooters' policy of hiring only female waitresses amounts to sex discriminatioa But McNeil said federal law allows some gender-based hiring.

He said the Playboy organization is allowed to hire female bunnies, for example. The EEOC did not return phone calls seeking comment, perhaps because of the government shutdown. Prime minister of France outlines an ambitious welfare reform plan Prime Minister Alain Juppe pledged Wednesday the most far-reaching reform of France's indebted welfare system for more than 30 years, combining tough spending curbs and a new tax to wipe out accumulated debts. "The government will not be satisfied with a papering over the cracks again of social security; it wants a reform made to last" he told parliament to a standing ovation. Juppe said the deficit of the social security system, which funds health, pensions and family allowances, would be cut from $12.6 billion this year to $3.5 billion in 1996 and there would be a surplus in 1997.

Financial markets greeted the steeper-than-expected deficit cut with a 2 percent surge in Paris share prices. French bonds rose sharply, and the franc held steady against the mark. Economists praised the package, saying Juppe had opened the way for lower interest rates and a stronger franc by putting the emphasis on cost cutting and efficiency rather than tax hikes. COMPLETE MORNING TRIBUNE INSIDE College basketball: What's so big about the Big Ten? Nothing! Lacking an apparent national power or marquee player, the once-proud conference seems more than a bit deflated. A special preview section within Sports.

Earliest Asian hominid remains found and in South Africa. The remains found at Longgupo, known in China as the Wus-han hominid site, were dated using three scientific methods. Evidence was backed up by giant panda remains in the same geological levels. "The new evidence suggests that hominids entered Asia before 2 million years ago. Clearly the first hominid to arrive in Asia was a species other than true Homo Erectus, and one that possessed a stone-based technology," Ciochon wrote.

the University of Iowa, said in an article in the journal Nature. The oldest signs of human life in Asia had been remains of Homo Erectus in Java, Indonesia, which had been tentatively dated as 1.8 million years old. But scientists said those remains were difficult to date because of the circumstances surrounding their recovery. Archaeologists believe that man originated in Africa, where remains dating from between 3 million and 3.5 million years ago have been found in the Rift Valley Reuters LONDON Scientists said Wednesday they had found the first firm evidence that primitive man lived in Asia almost 2 million years ago, much earlier than previously believed. They based their conclusions on the lower jaw of an adult hominid and some ancient tools found in the Longgupo cave in the Sichuan province of China.

Tests had dated them at at least 1.9 million years old, the scientists' leader, Russell Ciochon, of i iii.