January 29, 1996
Web posted at: 11:00 a.m. EST
SAN DIEGO, California (CNN) -- A baby girl who died minutes after being separated from her Siamese twin may provide the key to her sister's survival, doctors say.
On Saturday night, as doctors were announcing the successful surgery to separate the girls, another doctor walked in and said one of them had died.
Sarahi Morales, who was born with a weak heart, died within an hour of the six-hour surgery that separated her from her sister, Sarah.
Surgeons will use some of Sarahi's tissue and bones to build a chest wall for Sarah, who is 17 days old. Sarah remained in critical but stable condition.
"The family agreed and was quite anxious to see if any portion of Sarahi . . . has the opportunity to help Sarah," said Dr. John J. Lamberti, a heart specialist who participated in the surgery.
NEW YORK (CNN) -- The Federal Aviation Administration has spent more than $500 million for an air traffic control system that is not finished after 15 years and is now outdated, The New York Times reported Monday.
In 1981, President Ronald Reagan promised to modernize the system after he fired 11,000 air traffic control workers who had gone on strike.
The current equipment used by controllers to direct thousands of flights nationwide is so fragile that technicians are afraid to work on it, the Times said.
No accidents have been attributed to system breakdowns, but flights have been delayed because of air traffic control problems that cost airlines $5 billion a year, according to the newspaper report.
Current and former government officials blamed the FAA's mismanagement of the project and problems with contractors for the delays and higher costs.
SAN FRANCISCO (CNN) -- San Francisco's Board of Supervisors is to vote Monday on a proposal that would let symbolic domestic partnership marriages be performed in the city.
Since 1991, at least 3,000 unmarried heterosexual and gay couples in the Bay area have obtained certificates recognizing them as domestic partners.
The proposed ceremony, which could be performed for homosexual or heterosexual couples, would carry no legal weight. But it would honor the existence of a domestic partnership to a greater degree than the certificate.
"Certainly we would rather have something that is legally binding, but a step in the right direction is better than nothing," said Stephen Share, who married Tom Miner in 1994 at the Unitarian Universalist Church, which has long supported the gay community.
"Having it noted and for the record, `Yes, I stand up for my partner' . . . it's one more chink in the armor of institutionalized homophobia," said Lori Guidos.
HANOVER, New Jersey (CNN) -- The Episcopal Diocese of Newark has deemed suicide morally acceptable for the terminally ill and those suffering from constant physical pain, departing from centuries of conventional Christian doctrine.
A majority of the 200 delegates at the diocese's annual convention voted Saturday to adopt such a resolution. Delegates also agreed that assisted-suicide is morally acceptable in such cases.
The resolution will be considered at the national Episcopal Church convention in 18 months, Bishop John Shelby Spong said.
The vote resulted from a year-long study by a diocesan task force. Its members found that although Christian theology commands respect for human life, modern medicine can extend life "far beyond the point where a reasonable quality of life exists."
"Nowhere in the Bible does it say that there is a value to suffering simply for the sake of suffering," said the Reverend Lawrence Falkowski of Holy Trinity Church.
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AP and Reuters news services contributed to these reports.
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