Latest News Gannett Suburban April 23, 1992 A3 Protesters ers back to Buffalo Brewster crash kills one, hurts one The Associated Press One person was killed and another seriously injured early this morning after a car collided with an empty chartered bus on Route 312 1 near Minor Road in Brewster. Details were sketchy, but Putnam County Sheriff's Department spokeswoman Suzanne Heller said a car driving west on Route 312 apparently crossed the center line during a curve and collided with the bus head-on about 5:50 a.m. A passenger in the car was killed and the driver was in serious condition at Putnam Hospital Center this morning. Their identities were not released pending notification of family members. Mayor: Don't pay us in pebbles The Associated Press NEW MILFORD, Conn.
This town's top official expects taxes to be paid in hard currency, but that means cash, not rocks. The town's largest tax delinquent has offered to pay the $500,000 in back taxes with stones from his gravel mine. But Mayor Liba Furhman said no thanks. "The object of our tax collection program is collect money not gravel," Furhman said yesterday. The mayor has instructed attorney Jeffrey Sienkiewicz to reject the proposal.
Real estate developer Ronald Strol offered the stones for taxes deal as part of a bankruptcy reorganization plan filed in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Bridgeport. NATION Climbers saved from Mt. Rainier The Associated Press ASHFORD, Wash. Three New York City climbers trapped by a snowstorm near the summit of Mount Rainier were in good condition after being rescued by helicopter, a Mount Rainier National Park spokesman said.
The climbers were reported missing by a fourth member of their party on Tuesday afternoon. They were trapped by the storm near Gibralter Rock, about 12,600 feet up the mountain in southwest Washington. After spending the night in a snow cave on the mountain with only one sleeping bag among them, the climbers were found Wednesday by three park rangers, Henges said. Rangers said the men made a basic mountaineering mistake that could have cost them their lives: they decided to descend from the summit by a different route from the one they followed up the mountain. 'Little Rascal' term: 12 lives The Associated Press FARMVILLE, N.C.
Convicted day care center child molester Robert F. Kelly Jr. was sentenced today to life in prison after maintaining his innocence and telling a judge, "I have not done these things." Judge D. Marsh McLelland rejected a plea for leniency and gave Kelly 12 consecutive life terms in one of America's longest child-molestation cases. The judge said there were no mitigating circ*mstances.
Kelly, who owned the now-closed Little Rascals Day Care Center in Edenton, was found guilty yesterday of sexually abusing 12 children, ages 4 to 7. Kelly, 44, faced up to 40 life terms plus 590 years in prison. Panel: Iraq had fewer soldiers The Associated Press WASHINGTON The United States and its allies faced an Iraqi military force that was less than half the 500,000 the Pentagon claimed when the ground war to free Kuwait began, a congressional report said today. The report by the House Armed Services Committee estimated that the Iraqi force, battered by aerial bombing, had been reduced to about 183,000 troops when the ground war began on Feb. 23, 1991.
The Defense Department consistently claimed during the Persian Gulf War that more than 500,000 Iraqi troops were in the region. The panel addressed the one major issue the Pentagon avoided in its war report the number of Iraqi troops involved in the conflict. But like the Pentagon, it offered no estimate of overall Iraqi casualties. WORLD 5 French linked to spy ring The Associated Press PARIS Several French citizens have been arrested in connection with an espionage ring operated by Russia in Belgium and France, judicial officials said today. The arrests come two weeks after Belgium expelled four Russians, including two embassy diplomats, and lodged a formal protest to Russian authorities about alleged espionage.
In France, the state counterespionage agency has arrested at least five people at least one on spying charges and is interrogating them, the sources said. Details about the suspects were not released. Mine blast kills 14 on bus The Associated Press MOSCOW A passenger bus hit a land mine in the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region and exploded, killing at least 14 people, a report said today. Six Slavic separatists, meanwhile, were killed in overnight fighting with ethnic Romanians in the breakaway Trans- Dniester area of eastern Moldova, officials said. The mine explosion occurred late yesterday, the ITAR-TASS news agency quoted the Nagorno-Karabakh defense committee as saying.
Some of the dead were children, it said without elaborating. Earlier versions of some stories may appear elsewhere in this newspaper. After arrests in suburbs, Operation Rescue moves to blockade city clinic The Associated Press BUFFALO Operation Rescue's abortion protests shifted to a clinic Buffalo this morning, a day after nearly 200 anti-abortion protesters were rested for kneeling in the street block the entrance to a suburban clinic. About 100 abortion-rights demonstrators massed in front of the Erie Medical Center clinic and a similar number of anti-abortion protesters were across the street. Police strung rows of orange plastic snow fencing in the street, where about three dozen officers were stationed to keep the two sides apart.
Another 20 officers lined the enin trance to the clinic. Police read a federal judge's injunction over ar- lhorn warning anti-abortion protesters to they face arrest if they come within 15 feet of a clinic's door. "This is not going to be Wichita," said Mary Lou Greenberg of New York City, an abortion-rights demonstrator. "It's probably going to be the last gasp of Operation Rescue. We draw the line here in Buffalo." Operation Rescue president Keith Tucci, who had a prolonged screaming match with Greenberg outside the High Street clinic this morning, said there could be more arrests this morning.
Eighteen anti-abortion demonstrators got into a parking garage behind the clinic and stood praying at two back entrances to the center for about an hour this morning. But when police backed up a van and prepared to arrest the protesters, they dispersed, said an not 00 Seismologist Dr. Lucy Jones holds her 19-month-old son Niels Hauksson as she points to the recordings of many aftershocks following an earthquake that registered 6.1 on the Richter scale. Dr. Jones sald the chance of a major quake known as the "Big One" could be as high as 25 percent within three days.
Is the Big One next? The Associated Press 60 seconds. fault, said Lucy Jones, a seismologLOS ANGELES A strong "It was a terrible shaking," said ist for the U.S. Geological Survey. earthquake shook Southern Califor- Mary Gibson of Desert Hot Springs. In Los Angeles, Fire Departnia, damaging utility lines and de- "We were just getting ready to go ment spokesman Wells said sert towns, causing minor injuries to bed, and the whole house just there were no immediate reports of and raising official worry that the shook.
It felt like an eternity." damage or injuries in the nation's catastrophic Big One could be on As dozens of aftershocks rum- second-largest city. the way. bled through the region, officials Shaking was felt at Dodger StaThe quake struck at 9:50 p.m. warned residents to be ready for an dium but didn't interrupt a baseyesterday and measured 6.1 on the even bigger one. But the risk of ball game there.
Richter scale. Buildings swayed in that happening diminished within Initial reports that the quake downtown Los Angeles, and tremo- hours. measured 6.3 on the Richter scale rs were felt as far away as Arizona The quake was centered 110 were followed by a warning from and Nevada and from San Diego to miles east of downtown Los An- USGS to be ready for a 7.5 earthSanta Barbara, 200 miles up the geles in Desert Hot Springs. It was quake the so-called Big One. coast.
along an unnamed north-to-south Jones said the chance of the Big Witnesses' estimates of the fault in the mountains about five One striking could be as high as 2 25 quake's duration ranged from 10 to miles from the big San Andreas percent within three days. Ex-Mayor Marion Barry out of prison The Associated Press LORETTO, Pa. Marion Barry's dishwashing days behind bars are over. The former Washington mayor was released without fanfare today from a federal prison after a serving six-month sentence for cocaine possession. "There were no crowds.
It was a typical inmate release," prison spokesman Ron Hamm said. Barry was released about 5:30 a.m. Supporters in six buses planned to join him in a prayer service at noon in nearby Johnstown before escorting Barry back to the city he governed for three terms. "We love Marion Barry for the good things he has done for the city," said Betsy Tibbs, who boarded one of the buses. Another supporter said Barry had been singled out for persecution in a city full of crooks.
"Marion Barry was done wrong," Johnny L. Lee said. "He is not the only person who has done a crime." Where Barry was spending his first hours of freedom wasn't immediately clear. At a room registered under Barry's name at a Johnstown hotel, a woman answering the phone this morning said she didn't know the mayor and said he was not there. Barry was caught in an FBI sting and convicted in 1990 in a trial that featured a videotape of him smoking crack in a hotel room.
He was transferred in January to Loretto, about 60 miles from Pittsburgh, after a' fellow inmate at a prison in Petersburg, accused him of receiving oral sex from a woman in the prison visiting area. Barry denied the allegation. At Loretto, Barry worked a regular shift washing dishes, said Hamm. He started his term at Loretto living in a dorm with several other inmates and later moved to a two-man cell. Operation Rescue member, Jim Anderson.
He said leaders of the group decided they did not want the protesters to be arrested at that point. "We know appointments were delayed, and whenever we delay an appointment that gives a woman time to think," Anderson said. "One hour, one minute, it could mean life for children." Isabel Marcus, an attorney for the Erie Medical said no appointments were delaved' at the clinic this morning. The back entrance to the center is rarely used by patients. 'Bam, bam, bam' Guardian Angels founder beaten with baseball bat The Associated Press Guardian Angels founder Curtis Sliwa was attacked this morning by three bat-wielding men who jumped him near his Lower East Side home.
"You wear the red beret and the T- shirt and you are an immediate target," Sliwa said from Beth Israel hospital where he was treated and released. "Being the leader and on the radio, I'm even more of a target but that goes with wearing the red beret and the T-shirt." Sliwa, 38, was attacked from behind at about 5 a.m. at Seventh Street and Avenue A by three men who hit him with Curtis Sliwa baseball bats and then fled in a gray car, said Sgt. Tina Mohrmann, a police spokeswoman. Sliwa, who hosts a morning radio show on WABC with his wife, Lisa, had just left his home and was picking up newspapers before getting on the subway to go uptown to the radio station when he was assaulted, he said.
"I passed one car of four guys. A car door opened up and a guy popped me in the head with a sawed-off baseball bat." Sliwa said. "Then he hit me a second time as I was beginning to fall and then I dropped everything I had and started to defend myself as two more people came out of the car. "There were no words exchanged," Sliwa said. "This was just, bam, bam, bam, and when you have a sawed off baseball bat, that's a street weapon." Two Brown University students cheer as they are led from the president's office last night in Providence, R.I.
About 200 students were arrested fo for staging a daylong sit-in over financial aid problems. Students protest at Brown, Rutgers The Associated Press released, urging them to take part in PROVIDENCE, R.I. About a rally today. 250 Brown University students were arrested in a sit-in to demand that applicants to the Ivy League school be admitted without regard to their ability to pay. The university brought five charges against each student, including trespassing and disorderly conduct.
They were being released late yesterday after agreeing to appear later in court. Rally organizer Leslie Paik, 19, of San Diego met students in the police station lobby as they were He was released from Beth Israel with a cast on his left hand and stitches in the back of his head. Hawaiian sightseers' plane lost Island-hopper sent no 'mayday' signal The Associated Press HONOLULU A commercial plane that carries sightseers around the Hawaiian Islands disappeared with nine people on board while en route here from another island, authorities said. Navy and Coast Guard aircraft searched the ocean for the twin-engine aircraft that disappeared yesterday during a 250-mile flight between Hilo, on Hawaii Island, and Honolulu, on Oahu Island. "There were no reports, no Lt.
Scott Flemming of the Joint Rescue Coordination Center said Wednesday night. "All we know is that the plane didn't arrive in Honolulu and we're Eight passengers and one pilot were aboard the Scenic Tours Beech 18 tour plane that took off from Hilo Airport on Wednesday afternoon, said Coast Guard Lt. Cmdr. Frank l'abata. Scenic Tours confirmed the plane was overdue but declined to comment further yesterday.
The search was to resume at dawn today and would focus on the island of Maui, on the south face of the Haleakala Volcano, Tabata said. Scenic Tours has been in business here since 1980, and three years ago had a airplane crash on Hawaii Island that killed a pilot and 10 passengers. "This is just a start. We're not going to break down now," said Paik, who wasn't arrested. In New Jersey, meanwhile, about 40 Rutgers University students demanding a tuition freeze at the state school spent the night in the building housing the school's main switchboard.
Six campus police officers stayed with them. The protesters unchained themselves from each other at midnight yesterday but vowed to remain there until their demands are met..
