News Digest
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page 2____Friday; October 11,1996
Time Warner, Tomer Broadcasting merge
The deal will create
the world’s largest
media company.
NEW YORK (AP) — Sharehold
ers of Time Warner and Turner Broad
casting System voted overwhelmingly
Thursday to approve a $7.5 billion
merger creating the world’s largest
media and entertainment company.
■fiimer Broadcasting shareholders
voted 99.75 percent in favor of the
deal, about five hours after Time
Warner stockholders voted 98.23 per
cent in favor.
“This is a dream,” said a triumphant
Ted T\imer, the founder and chairman
of Turner Broadcasting who now will
become a vice chairman and largest
single shareholder in the merged com
pany.
“Considering the difficulties we had
with this merger... it was quite a job to
get it completed,” Turner said after
announcing the vote that followed a
tough antitrust review by the Federal
Trade Commission, a lawsuit from en
tertainment partner U S West Inc. and
widespread doubt over Turner’s abil
ity to accept a No. 2 role.
After a final motion was made to
adjourn Turner Broadcasting’s final
shareholder meeting, a tearful Turner
dabbed his eyes with a handkerchief.
“This is the company that I’ve al
Mexican government unearths
likely clues to killing conspiracy
MEXICO CITY (AP)—Bones,
hair and a mud-covered human skull
discovered at a ranch belonging to
a former president’s brother may
strengthen the case against him in
one of Mexico’s most notorious
political killings.
Mexican prosecutors suspect
that the remains, unearthed Wednes
day, are those of a man who con
spired with Raul Salinas de Gortari
to kill a political rival.
Raul Salinas is the elder brother
of former President Carlos Salinas.
Scion of a powerful political clan,
Carlos Salinas left Mexico in dis
grace soon after his term ended in
December 1994; he was blamed for
corruption and the collapse of the
country’s economy.
Raul Salinas has been jailed
since February 1995 on charges of
plotting the murder of a top ruling
party official, Jose Francisco Ruiz
Massieu.
But prosecutors say
Wednesday’s discovery could rep
resent powerful new evidence in the
case against Raul Salinas if foren
sic tests identify the remains as
those of Salinas’ alleged conspira
tor, Manuel Munoz Rocha.
Munoz Rocha, a federal con
gressman for the ruling Institutional
Revolutionary Party, disappeared
after the Sept. 28,1994, slaying of
Ruiz Massieu in Mexico City.
Attorney General Antonio
Lozano Gracia said the bones found
Wednesday were those of a man and
that authorities were treating the
case as a homicide.
SOUL
S UPPORT
THURSDAY, OCT, 17, 7:30pm
_UNION BALLROOM, S3_
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1
ways dreamed of and we are now here,
complete, one team and one family,”
Time Warner Chairman Gerald Levin
said at a shareholders meeting earlier.
Once the final paperwork on the
deal is completed Tliursday, the really
hard work begins. Time Warner execu
tives will have to mesh two companies
with very different management cul
tures—one led by button-down New
Yorker Levin, the other by swashbuck
ling Himer of Atlanta—but each rich
in household names they sell every day.
Time Warner’s Bugs Bunny, HBO and
Sports Illustrated are as familiar as
Turner’s CNN and Atlanta Braves.
On Wednesday, Rupert Murdoch’s
News Corp. followed through on a
threat to sue Time Warner for alleg
edly violating antitrust laws and break
ing an agreement by declining to carry
its new Fox News Channel cm its cable
systems.
The lawsuit came just one day af
ter the New York State attorney
general’s office subpoenaed Time
Warner to request documents for its
own inquiry into whether the company
violated antitrust laws by deciding not
to run the Fox channel in New York
State.
The lawsuit should not have any im
mediate effect on the deal with Turner
Broadcasting.
As a condition for the merger, Time
Warner was required by federal anti
trust regulators to carry a second all
news channel on some of its cable sys
terns, in addition to the Rimer-owned
Cable News Network.
Fox has argued that Time Warner,
the nation’s second-largest cable op
erator, violated its agreement to carry
the Fox News Channel and put on ri
val MSNBC instead.
The companies also must deal with
the unpleasant task of laying off about
1,000 employees whose jobs will be
come redundant.
the fear of pink slips.has been es
pecially jolting to employees at Rimer,
who until the merger had seen their
ranks grow steadily. The already ac
tive rumor mill in Atlanta no doubt
turned faster when it was disclosed
Wednesday that son Teddy Rimer was
among those to be fired.
Three charged witht m.nigs, robberies
Members of white supremacist group call Yahweh’ their defense
SPOKANE, Wash. (AP) — Three
men with links to white supremacist
groups were charged with robbing
banks and setting off pipe bombs at a
newspaper office and an abortion clinic
as diversions.
“Yahweh is my defense,” defendant
Jay Merrell told U.S.Magistrate Judge
Cynthia Imbrogno on Wednesday as
the men were charged.
“I’ll ask for nothing from the state,”
Merrell added, saying he would not
seek bail.
“Yahweh,” an English rendering of
the Hebrew name for God, is a term
frequently used in the white separatist
Christian Identity religion.
Merrell, Charles Barbee, 44, and
Robert Berry, 42, all from the
Sandpoint, Idaho, area, were each
charged with nine counts of bank rob
bery, auto theft and use of bombs to
rob a bank. Berry also was charged
with being a felon in possession of a
gun.
If convicted, they could face life in
prison without parole.
No one was injured in the bomb
ings. The robberies netted $108,666,
documents showed.
The bombers left letters with mark
ings of the Phineas Priesthood, a shad
owy white supremacist organization
opposed to interracial marriage, abor
tion and homosexuality.
At least four masked men in cam
ouflage, carrying assault rifles and
shotguns, held up the bank both times.
In the first holdup, the fleeing robbers
detonated a pipe bomb inside the bank,
shouting references to the Montana
Freemen.
The robbery occurred a week after
the FBI arrested leaders of the Free
men in Montana.
In the April robbery, a pre-holdup
bomb blast damaged a branch office
of The Spokesman-Review of Spo
kane; before the July heist, a Planned
Parenthood clinic was bombed.
All three men said they understood
their legal rights, but refused to sign
documents stating they did. Merrell
said he did not want a court-appointed
lawyer. Berry declined to make a fi
nancial statement proving he could not
afford to hire his own lawyer.
The three were arrested Tuesday at
a convenience store near Yakima,
Wash., where officers seized weapons
and explosives from two sports-utility
vehicles and a mini-van they were driv
ing, witnesses said.
Btitzibans cards viewing pom chaimel
BOURNEMOUTH, England (AP)
—The government has decided to bar
Britons from watching pornographic
programs beamed across Europe by a
French satellite TV channel.
Heritage Secretary Virginia
Bottomley told the Conservative Party
conference Thursday that she has
signed an order banning the sale of so
called “smart cards” needed to receive
transmissions by the channel Rendez
vous.
“As a politician and a parent, I will
not tolerate gratuitous violence and
filth on television,” Bottomley said.
An estimated 20,000 Britons have
purchased the cards needed to receive
Rendez-Vous, which specializes in
hard-core pom films.
The government cannot stop pom
channels beaming into Britain, kit can
outlaw the sale of equipment needed
to receive the shows.
Museum buys newfound Kembrandt sketch
AMSTERDAM, Netherlands (AP) i
—An Amsterdam museum unveiled a <
previously unknown ink drawing by the
Dutch master Rembrandt on Thursday. ,
The Rijksmuseum recently pur- :
chased the drawing for an undisclosed
sum after experts determined it was a
genuine Rembrandt.
Museum spokesman Frans van de 1
Avert said the portrait came from a for- 1
eign collector who approached the
i
nuseum to seek advice on the
Irawing’s authenticity.
The unsigned drawing, dated 1638
md titled “Portrait of Willem Bartolsz
Ruyter,” shows a Dutch actor leaning
forward and resting on his elbows.
The Rijksmusuem is renowned for
ts superb collection of 16th and 17th
century Dutch paintings, including
Rembrandt’s “Night Watch.”
—;
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