OCR Text |
Show wmoi r 5 OTORLD A4 WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 7. 1998 Till DAILY HI RAI D GLOBAL iaDDDdDs CGDiminiteir C32FINQ 5 hurt in City Hall shooting - RIVERSIDE, Calif. (AP) An armed postal worker who once worked for the city took the mayor and two council members hostage Tuesday, then waged a gun battle with police when the officers heard shots fired. Five people, including a policeman and the gunman, were wounded. The shooting began about 8 a.m. as the City Council was preparing to meet in a City Hall annex, some 60 miles east of Los Angeles. Joseph L. Neale Jr., 48, barged into the council lounge and locked the door, police said. Councilman Chuck Beaty was hit in the face and shoulder and was in critical condition. Councilwoman Laura Pearson was hospitalized with a hip wound. Mayor Ron Loveridge was grazed by a bullet and Councilwoman Terri Thompson was treated for unspecified pain. Vandals hit Notre Dame Vandals lopped off statue on the Notre Dame Cathedral and smashed five other statue heads with a hammer, officials said Tuesday. The damage to the grand cathedral, one of France's most prized masterpieces, took place at the Portal of St. Anne, where some of the church's oldest statues look out onto the grand square in front. The portal is being restored and is under scaffolding. 13th-centur- impeachment inquiry, to rushed counter Republican plans while still underscoring their disapproval of President Clinton's affair with Monica Lewinsky. At the White House, spokesman Joe Lockhart accused the GOP leadership of using the impeachment issue "to embarrass the president" open-ende- d Democrats WASHINGTON (AP) Chrysler Corp. is recalling 685,000 cars that are prone to rolling away, under some circumstances, when left late-mod- in park, the government and the company said Tuesday. Models being recalled are the Chrysler Cirrus and Dodge Stratus from model years and the Breeze and Plymouth Chrysler Sebring from model years Dealers will notify motorists in December about bringing their cars in to be fixed for free, said company spokesman Mike Aberlich. 1995-199- 8 1996-199- Glenn back at launch pad A CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) beaming John Glenn arrived for launch rehearsal Tuesday, his first in decades. senator was accomThe panied by the six astronauts who will blast off with him later this month aboard space shuttle Discovery. He flew from Houston in the back seat of a training jet piloted by his commander, Curtis Brown Jr. When asked how it felt to be back, Glenn replied "Great! Great!" and flashed a thumbs-up- . Digital TV on the air The road WASHINGTON (AP) to digital TV has been rocky, but 42 stations will begin broadcasting in format in the new razor-sharNovember. The National Association of Broadcasters announcement Tuesday tried to deflect blame away from the industry over what has been a bumpy transition from analog to digital technology. All TV stations must make the switch to digital by 2006. p high-qualit- y Bribery charges rock race CHICAGO (AP) Secretary of State George Ryan's campaign for governor was rocked Tuesday as fed- eral prosecutors charged that driver's license testing officials made political contributions with bribe money. Prosecutors announced the indictment of five people previously arrestscandal. ed in the Ryan, a Republican whose office oversees the driver's license program, was not mentioned in the indictment and prosecutors said he was not a subject of the investigation. license-sellin- g Majority leader Dick Armey. said the issue would come to the fl(xr for a vote on Thursday. Republican officials expressed confidence they would prevail, thus making Clinton the third president in history to face possible impeachment proceedings. "The fact of the matter is, it is about obstruction of justice. It is about lying to the American people," Armey told reporters Tuesday. "It is about using all the instruments, and many of the people in the White House ... to go out and tell a story that the president himself knew to be untrue." rolled House Judiciary The GOP-con- t Committee approved a sweeping impeachment inquiry in a party-lin- e vote on Monday, after first brushing aside two Democratic alternatives. With midterm elections less than a month away, political calculations weighed heavily as the issue moved toward a vote on the House floor. Democrats caucused the day to discuss during privately their response to the GOP proposal. Leaders are likely to redraft a plan Rank-and-fil- e offered in the Judiciary Committee on Monday that would have limited the scope of the inquiry to the Lewinsky affair, and called for it to be concluded by Nov. 25. A second proposal defeated on Monday, offered by Rep. Howard would have Berman, committee to first decide the required Counsel whether Independent Kenneth Starr's allegations, if proven, would constitute impeachable offenses. If so, the Judiciary Committee would then be empowered to investigate with unlimited time. Santa Anas die down Firefighters race to get blazes under control By JEFF WONG y Chrysler recalls cars Press Writer With a House WASHINGTON vote set for Thursday on launching an PARIS (AP) the head of a and produce political gain for Republicans at the polls this fall. By DAVID ESPO Associated OTP impaachme'S planus Associated Press Writer BANNING; Calif. r, Backfires and dying winds helped firefighters Tuesday in the battle to control blazes that have scorched more than 28,000 acres of brushlands. Temperatures remained hot and humidity low but the Santa Ana winds that had rapidly spread the fires eased in the region 90 miles east of Los Angeles. Evacuees from area communities were allowed to return , . m . . , home. "It's starting to look real good," said Ben Stewart, spokesman for the California Department of Forestry. Smaller but damaging new fires erupted elsewhere in Southern California. A home and a houses under construction burned in separate San Diego fires. Despite the size of the firefighting effort on the lines of the big Banning-areblazes, there were no serious injuries reported Tuesday. Two firefighters died Monday a in of was killed a the crash pilot bomber and a fire captain suffered a fatal heart attack. A huge force was assembled against the two blazes burning within miles of each other in northern Riverside County: 2,500 firefighters, 11 air tankers, 13 helicopters. Mount Edna fire The grew to 23,898 acres and was still out of control but no structures were threatened. It began south of the city of Banning and swept west, south of Beaumont to The neighboring but short of the city of Badlands, half-doze- n a state-owne- d Moreno Valley. To the north, the 4,200-acr- e Taylor fire was 60 percent contained. The fire was burning between the west itili . ... 1. .t A ?... T ..'.-- . MICHAEL CAHLFIELD The Associated Press v Fire with fire: Firefighter Randy Harris of the Santa Barbara County Fire Department walks away from flames while lighting preventative backburns near Beaumont, Calif., on Tuesday. side of Beaumont and Calimesa to the west. No new losses were reported at the Taylor fire. A house, mobile home and shed were destroyed and a house roof was damaged on Monday as flames roiled among housing developments. Crews set backfires to clear out brush near isolated homes. "We're really pushing hard to get wind-fanne- Marcos so the campus could be used as a command post by firefighters battling a fire to the south. Two outbuildings burned and two vehicles were damaged before firefighters conained the blaze at about 10 acres, said John Twyman, division chief with the San Marcos Fire Department. There were no injuries reported. Santa Barbara County firefighters jumped on a spot fire that erupted a confrom a 400-acrquarter-miltrolled burn in coastal ranchland. It was controlled at 200 acres. Both big Riverside County fires began Monday as Santa Anas northeast winds from the desert interior roared down through the canyons and passes of the San Bernardino Mountains, which lie to d lines around everything," Stewart said. Firefighters were also working hard near San Diego. Six homes under construction in a development at Rancho Bernardo burned but the fire s was controlled at acres before it reached occupied homes. In San Marcos, evening classes were canceled at California State University, San e the north of Banning, Beaumont and Calimesa. Ground crews and helicopters successfully defended most homes in the Calimesa area during the Taylor fire's windblown advance Monday. Firefighters, meanwhile, mourned the two men who died fighting the water-droppin- g fires. Capt. Thomas Oscar Wall, 44, of the Orange County Fire Authority suffered a heart attack while hosing roofs in Calimesa. He was pronounced dead at a hospital. The California Department of Forestry identified the dead air tanker pilot as Gary Nagel, 62, of Columbia, Calif., a veteran of 30 years in aviation. e U.S. envoy fails to persuade Yugoslavia to end crackdown Cohen warns ground troops might be needed in Kosovo By DUSAN STOJANOMC Associated Press Writer BELGRADE, Yugoslavia A senior U.S. envoy failed again Tuesday to persuade Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic to end the crackdown in Kosovo, a diplomatic source said, raising the NATO of prospects airstrikes. Richard Holbrooke met Milosevic late Tuesday for a second day, warning that time is running out to resolve crisis. the Neither U.S. nor Yugoslav officials issued any detailed statement about the talks, but the source, who was familiar with the deliberations, said there was "no change" in Milosevic's stand. "Kosovo is more important to him than Bosnia. The American people do not understand that because seven-mont- By TOM RAUM Associated Press Writer Clinton said. "The time is now to end the violence in Kosovo." WASHINGTON The Clinton administration raised prospects Tuesday that h SA I I.M.O OS he Associated Press Waiting for word: Ethnic Albanian refugees crowd around a radio for the latest news on Tuesday. Holbrooke Bosnia was so much bloodier," said the source, who of spoke on condition anonymity. The Bosnian war ended in 1995 when Milosevic accept- Yugoslav capital of Belgrade in what appeared to be a diplomatic effort to resolve the Kosovo ed crisis. a peace agreement negotiated. Holbrooke was dispatched to the last-chanc- e airstrikes against Serbs might require a follow-up international ground force of peacekeepers in the of province Yugoslav Kosovo. Defense Secretary William Cohen told Congress that U.S. participation in such a force was "a possibility," but not one he favored. President Clinton warned that, unchecked, Serb violence in the province could lead to instability throughout the region. "The stakes are high," Cohen, facing skeptical questioning from senators weary of the long U.S. presence in nearby Bosnia, said it was "my recommendation, my insistence" that any ground force be largely composed of Europeans. Diplomatic activity intensified, here and in Belgrade, in an attempt to persuade Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic to comply with all terms of the U.N. resolution designed to force him to end all hostilities against ethnic Albanians and to let some 250,000 refugees receive humanitarian aid and return to their homes. |