-Caveat Lector-
1. Mexican Bank Execs Found Guilty of Laundering Drug-Money
2. Bickering at UN over Kosovo: "National sovereignty an archaic
concept"
3. Iraq Accuses Iran of Missile Attack
4. Bin Laden on TV, Calls for Jihad Against US
5. Public Television Airs 'Gay Awareness' Film Aimed at Young Children
6. N. Korea / S. Korea Naval Skirmish
7. Yugoslavia Balks at NATO Deal
8. Monsanto Workers "Radiated" Without Their Knowledge
9. Human Genome Project -- Some Genes To Be Corporate "Private Property"
10. Family Sues Russia for $250 Million, for Property Lost in 1917
Revolution
________________________________________________________
3 Guilty of Laundering Millions
By DARA AKIKO WILLIAMS
LOS ANGELES (AP) - Three Mexican businessmen were convicted Thursday of
laundering tens of millions of dollars for a Colombian drug cartel.
Three others were acquitted in the case, which accused 40 Mexican and
Venezuelan businessmen and bankers of helping drug cartel members launder
their money.
The arrests were part of a three-year U.S. Customs sting that spanned
several countries. The operation raised tensions between the United States
and Mexico, which was kept in the dark about the investigation into its
citizens.
Agents arrested 167 people, including top Mexican bankers and
executives, in the sting.
Convicted of conspiracy and money laundering on Thursday were Jose Reyes
Ortega Gonzales, a former manager of banking operations for Bancomer in
Tepatitlan, Mexico; Manuel Barraza Leon, a Bancomer branch manager in
Tijuana; and Alfonso Labrada Gurrola, who worked at a Tijuana law firm that
represented banks.
Acquitted were Javier Alcala Navarro; Katy Kissel Belfer, a broker at
CBI International Securities in Mexico City; and Fernando Barragan Reyes, a
stock broker.
U.S. customs officials seized $100 million from 14 banks and dozens of
individuals who were accused of laundering money for the Cali drug cartel in
Colombia, and the Juarez cartel in Mexico.
Mexico accused the United States of intruding on Mexican sovereignty by
conducting a sting without its involvement. Two of the largest banks pleaded
guilty in March to money laundering charges.
Last month, seven defendants were indicted for laundering money for the
Cali cartel and pleaded guilty to charges of conspiracy or drug trafficking.
Their sentences were pending. Others are awaiting trial.
"The Netherlands denounced as "anachronistic" the argument that a
nation's
sovereignty is more important than the human rights of groups living within
it."
U.S., Cuba Trade Insults Over Kosovo
By NICOLE WINFIELD
UNITED NATIONS (AP) - The United States and Cuba traded insults and
accusations Thursday in a Security Council discussion of Kosovo that
degenerated into a diplomatic slugfest over colonialism and the battle
between big and small powers.
Cuba launched the back-and-forth with a rambling speech to the council
in support of Yugoslavia and condemning NATO's airstrikes as a genocide that
served merely to consolidate U.S. control over the world.
``NATO's war has filled the coffers of smart-weapons manufacturers and
producers of silly TV shows,'' Cuban Ambassador Bruno Rodriguez Parrilla
said.
Deputy U.S. Ambassador Peter Burleigh said he was so shocked by the
ambassador's ``total avoidance to the human realities in Kosovo'' that he
felt compelled to respond.
``Apparently, the well-documented phenomenon of massive ethnic
cleansing, the terrorization and brutalization of the civilian population is
not allowed to register on the official Cuban mind,'' Burleigh said.
The Cuban ambassador responded by saying he only spoke of facts that had
been omitted by council members in the day's debate on a resolution
authorizing an international peace force for Kosovo.
The debate was held, he said, so the United States could use the United
Nations to legitimize its attack on Yugoslavia.
The Netherlands joined in the acrimonious fight to denounce Cuba for
clinging ``pathetically'' to the argument that the sovereignty of a country
is more important than the protection of its own people.
``We can perhaps explain the Cuban representative's statement as an
illustration of the anachronism that Cuba itself increasingly represents,''
said the deputy Dutch ambassador, Alphons Hamer.
Rodriguez Parrilla responded with one last lick.
``The colonial powers of yesteryear cannot come here and give us lessons
of humanism today,'' he said.
Group in Iraq Accuses Iran of Attack
BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) - An Iranian guerrilla group based inside Iraq claimed
that Iran launched Scud missiles Thursday at one of its camps.
The missiles hit the Ashraf camp, 70 miles northeast of Baghdad, said
Shahin Gobadi of the Mujahedeen Khalq. It was uncertain how many missiles
were launched, and there was no word on casualties. The report couldnn't be
independently confirmed.
The alleged Scud attacks follow an explosion in Baghdad on Wednesday
that killed six senior members of the Mujahedeen. The group blamed the
government of Iran for explosion, which also killed one Iraqi and injured 37
people.
Earlier Thursday, Iran's state-run radio issued a denial of Tehran's
involvement in the bomb blast.
The Mujahedeen Khalq was formed more than a decade ago to overthrow the
Islamic regime in Iran.
Bin Laden Calls for Holy War on U.S.
By FAIZA SALEH AMBAH
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) - Millions of Arabs were able to watch Osama
bin Laden for the first time on Thursday as he called for a holy war against
his No. 1 enemy - the United States.
In a 90-minute program aired by the Qatar-based al-Jazeera satellite
channel, bin Laden expressed his admiration for the people who bombed
American forces in Saudi Arabia in 1995 and 1996 and said that all Americans
are targets.
``They violate our land and occupy it and steal the Muslims'
possessions, and when faced by resistance they call it terrorism,'' bin Laden
said in an interview with the Arab world's most popular television channel,
watched by millions in the Middle East, North Africa and Europe.
It was uncertain when or where the interview took place. Sources at
al-Jazeera said it was several months old, when bin Laden was living in a
hideout in Afghanistan. It was not clear why the interview was not aired
earlier.
Bin Laden has been interviewed by the Western media, but this was the
first time an Arabic broadcast of an interview was made available to millions
of Arabs.
The government-owned al-Jazeera, accessible to satellite subscribers,
regularly discusses issues usually untouched by Arab media. Satellite
ownership is extremely common in the Gulf states, and access to the channel
throughout the rest of the Middle East, North Africa and Europe puts the
channel's viewership in the millions.
Sources at the station said some Gulf states had put pressure on
al-Jazeera not to air Thursday's bin Laden program. Station manager Mohammad
Jasim al-Ali would not comment on the reports.
``People all over the Gulf and the Middle East were glued to their seats
tonight,'' said Abdul-Bari Atwan, editor of the London-based newspaper
al-Quds al-Arabi.
``They have never seen bin Laden speak in Arabic before. This is the
first time an Arabic station has given him a platform,'' said Atwan, who was
one of the commentators on the program.
Washington accuses bin Laden, a Saudi millionaire stripped of his
citizenship by Riyadh, of masterminding the deadly Aug. 7, 1998, bombings of
the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, which killed 224 people and injured
thousands.
Bin Laden, wearing a camouflage jacket and white turban and sporting a
long, graying beard, denied he was behind the embassy bombings, but said he
admired the people who carried out those attacks and two deadly bombings in
Saudi Arabia that have killed 24 Americans since 1995.
``I have high regard and respect for those men who erased the disgrace
from the forehead of our nation,'' bin Laden said, sitting cross-legged on
the floor of a tent, a Kalashnikov rifle propped by his side.
Bin Laden, who is in his mid-40s, has consistently demanded the eviction
of the estimated 5,000 U.S. forces based in Saudi Arabia.
The United States has offered a $5 million reward for information
leading to bin Laden's arrest, and on Monday the FBI put him on its ``Ten
Most Wanted'' list.
Bin Laden is said to be on the move again after falling out with his
former hosts, the Taliban religious militia that rules Afghanistan.
Washington says he is still in hiding in the country.
Public TV Airs Gay Awareness Film
By KIM CURTIS
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) - A teacher asks a fourth-grader what being gay means. The
confused boy explains haltingly that it has something to do with black people
marrying white people.
Asked what words they thought of to describe gay people, the class
suggests ``pervert,'' ``weird,'' ``funny,'' ``fancy,'' ``sick'' and
``gross.''
Elsewhere, a first-grader volunteers that she knows two gay men. They
live in Nebraska.
``Kids are absorbing information. Some of it's accurate and some of it's
really off the wall,'' said filmmaker Debra Chasnoff.
Her documentary, ``It's Elementary,'' began airing on dozens of public
television stations this month despite having been turned down by the
national PBS organization.
Conservative groups have long complained about the film, which has been
shown at teacher-training seminars, parent-teacher association meetings, and
churches and synogogues since 1996.
The American Family Association, a conservative Christian group based in
Biloxi, Miss., has urged its members to protest the broadcast. It and other
groups have suggested PBS stations air a rebuttal video, ``Suffer the
Children.''
``You don't commend a destructive activity to someone just to make them
feel better. That's what ``It's Elementary'' does,'' said David Miller of the
AFA. At least one major PBS station, KCTS in Seattle, agreed to put the
rebuttal on the air.
``It's Elementary,'' filmed in classrooms in San Francisco; New York;
Cambridge, Mass.; and Madison, Wis., eavesdrops on teacher-student
discussions about stereotypes.
So far, 89 of the country's 347 public television stations plan to run
``It's Elementary,'' Chasnoff said. At least 80 have turned it down, she
said.
After national PBS executives rejected the documentary, KQED-TV in San
Francisco helped Chasnoff get American Public Television to distribute it,
with financial support from the Ford Foundation, the Streisand Foundation and
James C. Hormel, whom President Clinton appointed last week as the nation's
first openly gay ambassador.
WNET in New York broadcast it last Thursday, drawing about 172,000
viewers, an average prime-time audience, said station executive Stella
Giammasi.
``We got a lot of nasty calls before we aired this program from what
seemed like a pressure group,'' Giammasi said. Afterward, he said, the
station received 19 responses from viewers, eight negative and 11 positive.
Chasnoff, a lesbian who has two sons ages 10 and 5, said she made the
film to inspire parents and teachers to try to raise children's sensitivity
to gay issues.
``I really wanted to see if we could make a film to open up the public
dialogue ... and encourage adults to rethink their assumptions,'' she said
from her San Francisco office. ``To say it's not OK to have negative
stereotypes about gay people. Gay people exist and should be treated
respectfully like everyone else.''
She said she is considering a lawsuit over the rebuttal video since
``Suffer the Children'' uses much of her documentary without permission.
S. Korea Navy Repels N. Korea Boats
By PAUL SHIN
SEOUL, South Korea (AP) - South Korean warships bumped and repelled three
North Korean patrol boats Friday in the fourth day of a tense armed standoff
in disputed waters in the Yellow Sea.
No gunfire was reported, but a South Korean lawmaker said the incident
``came close to an armed clash.''
Four South Korean high-speed patrol boats intentionally bumped into the
North Korean ships. ``It's part of our strategy to push the North Korean
infiltrators back into their waters,'' said a South Korean Navy lieutenant
commander, who gave only his last name, Han.
North Korean warships have been sailing in and out of rich crab fishing
areas in the disputed waters since Tuesday. Their main mission appears to be
guarding northern fishing vessels operating in the area, ministry officials
said.
Six North Korean patrol boats again took up positions inside the rich
crab fishing area before dawn Friday, escorting about a dozen fishing boats,
the South Korean Defense Ministry said.
After being bumped by the southern vessels, the North Korean ships
suffered ``substantial damage'' and retreated along with the three other
undamaged ships, Han said. One South Korean ship was returning to base after
suffering a hole in its hull, he said.
``The situation came close to an armed clash,'' lawmaker Han Young-soo
told reporters after a closed-door briefing by navy officials. ``After the
collision, the North Korean ships trained their guns at us, and we responded
in kind. It was a close call.''
The action came as South Korea began massing destroyers and other combat
ships Friday to end ``at whatever cost'' a four-day confrontation with North
Korea.
``Our primary goal is to resolve the issue peacefully, but we can't let
the situation drag on,'' said Defense Ministry spokesman Brig. Gen. Cha
Young-koo. ``We'll use all means to end it at whatever cost.''
Cha declined to elaborate on preparations, but ministry officials,
speaking on condition of anonymity, said ``scores'' of frigates, destroyers
and other combat ships will be mobilized to block North Korean naval ships
from moving into the disputed zone.
The army and air force will also provide support in case of emergency,
officials said.
The disputed waters lie south of a U.N.-imposed sea border, midway
between the North Korean mainland and five South Korean islands, 60 miles
northwest of Seoul. North Korea has contested the sea border since the late
1970s.
The two Koreas, divided into the communist North and the capitalist
South in 1945, remain technically at war, with no peace treaty signed at the
end of the 1950-53 Korean War. Their border is the world's most heavily
armed, with nearly 2 million troops deployed on both sides.
The American-led U.N. Command and North Korea signed the armistice that
ended the Korean conflict. But they never agreed on a border in the Yellow
Sea off Korea's western coast.
The U.N. Command unilaterally demarcated the maritime frontier in 1953
and created a buffer zone just south of it to avoid armed clashes.
North Korea has been sending fishing boats and naval ships into the zone
20 to 30 times a year. But when challenged by South Korean patrol boats, they
usually withdrew quickly.
Yugoslavia Balks at UN Kosovo Deal
By NICOLE WINFIELD
UNITED NATIONS (AP) - The U.N. Security Council's approval of an
international peace force for Kosovo paves the way for the return of ethnic
Albanian refugees to their homeland. But Yugoslavia is already balking at
the terms of the deal.
Yugoslavia's U.N. representative, Vladislav Jovanovic, said Thursday the
resolution authorizing the force and a U.N.-organized civilian administration
for Kosovo would turn the Serb province into a protectorate, opening the way
for its secession from Yugoslavia.
He also said the force's indefinite mandate was ``absolutely
unacceptable'' to Belgrade because a prolonged international presence in
Kosovo would violate its sovereignty. Instead, Jovanovic proposed that the
force be reviewed by the Security Council every three to six months, as most
U.N. missions are.
Under the resolution adopted by the council Thursday, however, the
mission is clearly set up as lasting an initial 12 months and ``to continue
thereafter unless the Security Council decides otherwise.''
The Yugoslav reaction doesn't bode well for the missions, which were
expected to get under way as early as today with the first troops moving into
Kosovo and the arrival of an advance U.N. team in Pristina over the weekend.
``Today we are seeing at least the beginning of the end of a dark and
desolate chapter in the history of the Balkans,'' Secretary-General Kofi
Annan told the council.
He cautioned that even with the resolution codifying the peace plan,
adopted 14-0 with China abstaining, Kosovo's future was far from secure.
``Let no one be in any doubt about the magnitude of our challenge. After
the violence, the human rights abuses, the expulsions and the devastation of
the last year, the task of restoring Kosovo to a semblance of normal life is
immense,'' he said.
The resolution authorizes NATO and other countries to use ``all
necessary means'' to protect returning ethnic Albanians. It asks the United
Nations to establish an interim administration for the Serb province,
including a local peace force, judiciary and other institutions, that would
give its residents ``substantial autonomy'' from Belgrade.
Many ambassadors lamented that the resolution set out terms nearly equal
to those in peace plans proposed in France earlier in the year that were
rejected by Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic.
``What a tragedy for the Serb people that NATO allies had to act, after
trying every other avenue, with force,'' said British Ambassador Jeremy
Greenstock.
Dutch Ambassador Peter van Walsum similarly chastised countries that had
argued against NATO intervention, saying their arguments that Yugoslavia's
right to sovereignty was more important than protecting an entire people bore
no weight at the end of the 20th century.
``Today, we regard it as a generally accepted rule of international law
that no sovereign state has the right to terrorize its own citizens,'' he
said.
China had objected to the resolution because it didn't impose
restrictions on the use of military force.
But Deputy Chinese Ambassador Shen Guofang said China would allow it to
pass by abstaining because it did incorporate China's other main demand, that
the resolution stress the responsibility of the Security Council for the
maintenance of international peace and security.
Gov't Settles Ohio Radiation Lawsuit
MIAMISBURG, Ohio (AP) - The U.S. Department of Energy has settled a lawsuit
by hundreds of nuclear weapons plant employees who say they were exposed to
dangerous radiation and not told about it for years.
The department agreed to pay lifetime health insurance coverage for as
many as 1,800 current and former workers at the Mound nuclear plant in the
Dayton suburbs. The deal, subject to approval by a federal judge, is expected
to cost several million dollars, depending on insurance costs.
The deal requires the Energy Department to provide the coverage to Mound
workers who contract any of several types of cancer, including brain, nervous
system, bladder, bone, lung, pancreatic, digestive and oral cancers.
The plant began operating in 1948 and made triggers and detonators for
nuclear weapons. The Energy Department has halted those operations to focus
on cleaning up waste at the site, which officials want to convert into an
office park.
Twelve employees and the Oil, Chemical & Atomic Workers union filed the
lawsuit in 1995.
The settlement includes no admission of wrongdoing. Energy Secretary
Bill Richardson said it is intended to address the workers' worries about
what radiation exposure may have done to them.
The defendants were former plant operator EG&G Mound Applied
Technologies Inc. and its predecessor, Monsanto Research Corp. The Energy
Department provided the plant contract.
Gene Map May Be Completed by 2002
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) - A federal project to map the human genetic pattern could
be complete by 2002, a year earlier than predicted.
Researchers around the world trying to catalog all of the 60,000 to
90,000 genes in human DNA are making rapid progress that could bump up the
completion date, Dr. Francis Collins, director of the National Human Genome
Research Institute, said Thursday.
Identifying all human genes will make it possible to treat or prevent
cancer, inherited disorders and some diseases, experts say. Once genes are
located, researchers can determine what proteins they make and use that
knowledge to correct problems caused by mutated or inherited genes.
The federal project is competing with a privately funded effort by
Rockville, Md.-based Celera Genomics, scheduled for completion by the end of
2001.
Genes discovered by private enterprise could be reserved briefly for
exclusive use. Genes discovered by the federal researchers are released
immediately into the public domain.
Man Wins $234M Suit Against Russia
By MARK BABINECK
HOUSTON (AP) - A family of Russian descent seeking property that was seized
after the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution has won a $234 million judgment against
Russia, which failed to defend itself.
U.S. District Judge David Hittner awarded the damages Tuesday.
Lee Magness' claim was based on his family's holdings in St. Petersburg,
Russia, including a piano factory, a shopping center and a mansion. All were
absorbed by the communists after the 1917 revolution.
After the fall of communism, the Russian government prohibited the
nationalization or expropriation of foreign investments. The plaintiffs
traveled to St. Petersburg in 1994 to reclaim the family fortune once owned
by Magness' maternal grandfather, Ivan Karlovitch Schroder.
``For whatever reason, the Russian Federation and Ministry of Culture
claimed the property was not (the Magness'),'' family attorney Daniel Nelson
said. ``The expropriation we're really suing over occurred in 1994.''
The government claimed the Schroder properties, including two expensive
vintage pianos Magness tried to buy when he was there, were national
treasures, the lawsuit stated.
In an attempt to get the Russians to take notice, the Magness family
sued here in 1997 to get the court to prevent a $100 million Romanov jewel
exhibit from leaving Houston. The family wanted the exhibit held as
collateral for its alleged debt.
Russia objected, then stopped defending itself once the tour moved to
San Diego. Hittner issued a default judgment Nov. 20 after hearing evidence
only from the plaintiffs.
Russian Embassy spokesman Mikhail Shurgalin and the Russian Federation's
attorney on the case, Tim Dickinson, did not return calls Thursday by The
Associated Press.
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