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mouth. They wrapped me up in a rug and threw me on the bed and told me that if I tried to alert anyone they would come and get me. At about 3:30 a.m. I managed to untie myself and I went into the living room and there was somebody there. I told him he wasn’t going to order me around in my own house. He said do what you want. I went to the telephone but it was disconnected. At 5 a.m. the man left. “I am convinced it was a paramilitary group that made my husband disappear. He had been arrested several times, then released. On September 4, 1980, he was captured by the DIN [national investigative police] for three days and held incommunicado. They denied having arrested him and he showed up in a poor neighborhood of Tegucigalpa. On December 23, 1980, they held him for five days. He was tortured. Then he was picked up soon after that. They forced whiskey up his nose, burned his lips with cigarettes and broke his ribs. They applied the hood [a plastic bag put over the head which blocks light and sound] and they put chalk in his ears. Then they beat him up and left him for dead along the highway that goes to Olancha. A taxi driver found him and brought him home. Then the men broke into our house June 11. General Alvarez said my husband may have disappeared himself something the left does all the time, he said.” She says she is harassed by telephone calls iii the middle of the night. Airplanes buzz her house, helicopters hover over it three or four times a day. “I was fired from my job as an accountant’s assistant. I can’t get a job. They all know my name. I live off my parents.” She sniffs dryly. When they say goodbye, they take our hands in both of theirs and look straight into our eyes. POLITICAL INTELLIGENCE Here Comes the Judge Six people are in the Jefferson County jail for refusing to stand when a judge walked into the courtroom. Judge Donald Floyd sentenced them to 30 days in jail for contempt of court. The six, some of them religious fundamentalists, are members of an informal group that meets to discuss constitutional issues. They remained seated during the appeals trial of Charles E. Krupps, a member of the group. Krupps was appealing a lower court conviction for carrying no liability insurance. Friends of the jailed told the Houston Chronicle they did not stand because their religious beliefs prohibited them from paying tribute to anyone but God. Judge Floyd, who had sent a warning to the people via the court bailiff, says, “They never told me why they didn’t stand. I read in the paper that it was because of their religious beliefs, but they never told me that. I bent over backward trying to keep from putting them in jail, but they didn’t give me any reason to substantiate an exception.” Judge Floyd cites 600 years of tradition as the reason people should stand when a judge enters a courtroom. v Those free-wheeling statistical alchemists are at it again. Despite new findings about potential health hazards for children, the federal government has halted efforts to remove lead-based paint from public housing projects. Herbert Needleman, director of behavioral sciences at the University of Pittsburgh, said the government is using “the magic of statistics” to justify withdrawal from lead poisoning prevention programs. The Environmental Pro tection Agency is ordering lead out of gasoline, Needleman said in an interview, “but HUD is not taking it out of houses.” Meanwhile, Back at the Ranch .. . 1/’ A report by Frank Trejo of the Fort Worth Star Telegram suggests that Texas not immune to its own brand of statistical hoodoo. Presently, figures being bandied about by Texas Department of Human Resources officials seem to indicate an actual decrease in the number of children and single-parent households living in poverty in Tarrant County. For example, from January 1983 to January of this year, the number of Tarrant County households receiving Aid to Families with Dependent Chilthan 11 percent. But Martha Carroll, assistant to the regional director for income assistance services, acknowledges that the figures can be deceiving because the maximum income a family can have and receive AFDC is so low that few qualify. Under the requirements for food stamps, a family of three is considered below the poverty level if it has an income of $705 a month or less. But the most that same family can make and qualify for AFDC is $167 a month, including child support. Consider . . . $167 for the entire month. 1/ This month’s helpful hint comes from the employee-relations wizards at General Dynamics. When you sense staff members getting a little down maybe your F-16’s have been acting up lately, or maybe On the hostage crisis, John Henry Faulk says, “Reagan doesn’t know a Shiite from Shinola. ” the feds are coming down kind of hard on you this month in a situation like this, your best bet is to throw a party, and then make sure everybody knows that, by gum, those fellas up at the Pentagon are paying for it, too. The nation’s third largest defense contractor has developed a new corporate billing policy, under which it is deemed proper to charge the Pentagon for the cost of Christmas parties, picnics and the use of corporate aircraft. According to a report in the Providence Journal, Pentagon spokesman Jack Powers said the new company policy is “unacceptable” and is one of the reasons the Defense Department has not yet agreed to give new submarine contracts or to resume payments to the corporation for overhead costs. Under the new policy, General Dynamics also says, it may be proper to bill the government for baby-sitting, dog boarding and the cost of alcoholic beverages, but that it has decided not to do so because the charges “by their description would lead to an erroneous perception” or are the types of things 14 JULY 12, 1985 ;*41.0*, 110r-ilagnfirr -4* .41104.