News Digest
Separatists warn of 'another Waco* in Ibxas
FORT DAVIS, Texas — Two armored personnel carriers rolled
into place Tuesday in the siege of the Texas secessionists as their leader’s
, lawyer warned of “another Waco” if officers move in for an arrest.
“There’s the potential for a lot of killing, and that’s what we want
to stop,” said Terry O’Rourke, the lawyer for Richard McLaren, the
self-proclaimed ambassador of the Republic of Texas.
McLaren and his followers have been holed up in the mountain
community since Sunday, when they took two neighbors hostage in
retaliation for the arrest of two followers. They released both hostages
Monday in exchange for one of the jailed comrades, who had been
arrested on weapons charges.
ny 1 uesuay, nearly iuu siaie anu ieuerai omcers were siauoneu
within two miles of the trailer the group calls its “embassy” in the
rugged Davis Mountains, 175 miles southeast of El Paso.
Witness: McVeigh told me plans to bomb Oklahoma City
DENVER—Angry at the government, Timothy McVeigh disclosed
in October 1994 that he was going to blow up the federal building in
Oklahoma City because it was “an easy target,” a former friend testi
fied Tuesday.
“He said that he and Terry (Nichols) would do it together, that Terry
would mix the bomb,” said Lori Fortier, one of the prosecution’s star
witnesses at the bombing trial.
She said that McVeigh specifically mentioned “the federal build
ing” in Oklahoma City, though he didn’t refer to it by its name, the
Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building.
McVeigh also specified the kind of bomb he was planning to use.
“He was thinking about using racing fuel and ammonium nitrate,”
she said. “He was going to put... like a fuse inside the barrels.”
McVeigh showed how he planned to arrange the bomb for maxi
mum damage, using soup cans he got from the cupboard, she said: “He
placed the soup cans on the floor in the same arrangement he was
going to arrange the barrels in the truck.”
Hope, pride mark LA riots' fifth anniversary
LOS ANGELES — There was hope and pride Tuesday in South
Central Los Angeles, five years to the day after the area erupted in rage
and flames following the acquittal of four policemen in the first Rodney
King beating trial.
Community leaders unveiled the site of a new supermarket as proof
of their efforts to replace some of the more than 1,000 buildings de
stroyed in the three days of looting and violence that left 55 dead.
“It’s the fastest rebound of any urbancivil disturbance in the nation
... and yet, in my view, it’s still too slow ” said City Councilman Mark
Ridley-Thomas, whose inner city district suffered $100 million worth
of damage.
“It’s tough, methodical, tedious work to rebuild a community.”
As he spoke, crews prepared to demolish a shopping center on south
Western Avenue that was looted and destroyed in the rioting.
The $10 million Superior Warehouse — one of five supermarkets
rebuilt or under construction in the area — will open in its place this
year and provide 150 jobs, Ridley-Thomas said.
Army sergeant guilty of rape
Some say the soldier’s
prosecution was
racially motivated.
ABERDEEN PROVING
GROUND, Md. (AP) — A drill in
structor was convicted Tuesday of rap
ing six women trainees in the most
serious case yet to come out of the sex
scandal that has rocked the Army.
Staff Sgt. Delmar G. Simpson, 32,
could get life in prison for his convic
tion on 18 of 19 rape counts.
The 6-foot-4 soldier stood at atten
tion, unflinching, as the verdicts were
read in rapid-fire succession by the
head of the military jury. Simpson,
who has been behind bars since his
arrest in September, left the courtroom
holding hands with his wife, who is
stationed at an Army post in Virginia,
i Prosecutors said Simpson raped
the women at Aberdeen in 1995 and
1996, mostly by intimidating them
with his size, his superior rank and
implied threats of harm or punish
ment. One trainee said Simpson
threatened to kill her if she told about
having sex with him.
Women’s advocates — who con
sidered the court-martial a test of how
serious the Army is about sexual mis
conduct — said the case underscores
the need for an independent investi
gation of how the military handles
such complaints.
“The military chain Of command
is broken, and until that is fixed they
are nothing more than accessories to
the fact,” said Karen Johnson, a re
tired Air Force lieutenant colonel and
vice president of the National Orga
nization for Women.
A NAACP leader charged that the
prosecution was racially motivated.
Simpson is black; four of the rape vic
tims are white.
The jury of three white men, two
black men and (Hie white woman, all
of. superior rank, will decide
Simpson’s sentence after hearing ad
ditional testimony, beginning Monday.
Simpson already has pleaded guilty
to having consensual sex with 11
trainees, including five of the rape vic
tims. He could get up to 32 years in
prison on those charges and five
sexual-harassment offenses he admit
ted.
The judge ordered lawyers on both
sides not to talk about the case before
the sentencing.
Simpson is at the center of the most
politically and racially charged case
to emerge from a sex scandal that
Army Secretary Togo D. West Jr.
called “the worst we’ve seen” — a
scandal that has exposed the com
plexities of integrating women into the
military and renewed debate over the
issue.
Since the scandal broke in Novem
ber, the Army has fielded more than
1,200 sexual misconduct complaints
and opened more than 300 criminal
investigations at U.S. installations
around the world.
Chicago columnist Mike Koyko dies
CHICAGO (AP) — Mike Royko,
the Pulitzer Prize-winning newspaper
columnist whose biting sarcasm and
empathy for the common man cap
tured the gritty essence of Chicago for
more than three decades, died Tues
day. He was 64.
Royko, whose Chicago Tribune
column was syndicated to more than
600 newspapers nationwide, under
went surgery last week for an aneu
rysm, a rupture or weakening of a
blood vessel.
He had suffered the aneurysm in
early April while vacationing in
Florida and had been hospitalized
there.
Royko’s column was a cornerstone
of the daily newspaper for generations
of Chicago readers, first in the now
defunct Chicago Daily News, later
with the Chicago Sun-Times and since
1984 with the Tribune. For most of
his career he wrote five days a week.
“I think Mike Royko brought a
a
I know one yuppie male who was thrilled
when he got a set of screwdrivers. He
said: ‘Oh, these will he perfect for prying
open shellfish.’”
Mike Boyko
Chicago THbune columnist
great deal to his readers, both in hu
mor and in skepticism and in spotting
phonies,” said longtime Chicago col
umnist Irv Kupcinet of the competing
Sun-Times. “He expressed his mind
without fear and did so no matter who
he crossed and who he hurt ”
Royko gained stature as a critic of
the late Mayor Richard J. Daley at a
time when most prominent Chicago
ans treated Daley with cautious re- \
spect. Royko’s 1971 biography, “Boss:
Richard J. Daley of Chicago,” por
trayed Daley as a shrewd, autocratic
politician who tolerated racism and
corruption.
In typical tongue-in-cheek fashion,
Royko suggested the city’s motto of
Please see ROYKO on 3
Russian citizens demand official language
MOSCOW (AP) — Imagine that
the United States, not the Soviet
Union, collapsed at the end of the Cold
War,
Suddenly, American streets were
cluttered with Russian billboards,
store shelves were filled with Russian
products and radios played the latest
hits from Moscow and Leningrad.
In reverse, this is what has hap
pened to Russia. Today, an American
arriving in Moscow is startled by the
number of signs and labels in English
and the abundance of American and
British songs on the radio.
Tbo much English?
A backlash seems to be welling up,
the Russian equivalent of the English
only movement in the United States
and the French-only movements in
France and Canada.
Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov has
led the charge, railing for restrictions
on die use of non-Russian wends in
advertising and public displays, and
encouraging a renewed pride in
Russia’s language and culture.
“You don’t see any Russian signs
in Switzerland or the United States,
so why should there be English signs
here in Russia?" Svetlana Korolyova,
deputy director of Moscow’s consumer
affairs department, asked recendy in
the English-language Moscow Times.
She was defending Luzhkov’s de
cision to make Moscow’s stores re
place signs using foreign words with
Russian ones. If stores comply, Mos
cow consumers will once again shop
at “gastronoms," not “supermarkets,”
and fill prescriptions at “aptekas,” not
y r “ , •
“drug stores.”
Critics have pointed out that
“gastronom” itself is borrowed from
French. But no matter. It sounds more
Russian than “supermarket.”
All this teeth-gnashing amuses
Leonid Krysin, a linguistics professor
at Moscow’s Russian Language Insti
tute and the author of a dictionary of
foreign terms in Russian.
Sitting at a well-worn desk in an
office redolent of dust and old books,
Krysin observes that the English in
cursion is mild compared to the ca
cophony of Turkish and Arabic words
that overwhelmed Russia in the 12th
and 13th centuries.
It s a very natural process, he
says. “Since we live on the same
planet, there’s no way we could build
walls between us.”
Of course, that’s precisely what the
Soviet Union tried to do, and in large
measure it succeeded. Even now,
there’s less American influence here
than in most world capitals.
Borrowing words
Linguist Krysin argues that, for the
most part, the torrent of English has
been “a surface phenomenon,” largely
limited to street signs and the like. “On
the whole, there aren’t very many
English borrowings in everyday
speech.”
There are many exceptions, espe
cially in specialized fields new to Rus
sia, such as banking and computers.
Here, Russians monitor “cash flow”
on their, “computers,” using “inter
faces” and ‘Tiles.”
A ride on the Moscow subway sys
a
I think we as a nation have started to
come to our senses ... and see that we
don’t have to borrow
everything from the West.”
Tania Shestoperova
tem can be a journey into some
netherworld between Moscow and
New York. Signs are a jumble of En
glish and Russian. An Adidas ad
trumpets “Feet you wear.” Ads for
Miller beer contain long blocks of
English type mixed with Russian.
How Russians react to all this de
pends in part on their age and poli
tics. Older people are particularly af
fronted, as are political conservatives.
Young people, who listen to
American and British rock and take
their fashion cues from London and
New York, are more open to English.
Much teen slang consists of Russified
English terms, such as “girla” for girl,
“rinti” for parents, “shoesiM for shoes.
Beatles were to blame
In the 1960s, the unsanctioned
popularity of the Beatles helped spur
an interest in English among Russian
youth. Now, English classes far adults
are exploding in popularity.
At one of several Moscow schools
run by English First, a language
school based in Sweden, 23-year-old
Svetlana Grekova shifts a little uneas
ily oh her chair when she is asked why
she’s studying English.
“This is what I need if I want to
get actable and reliable job,” she says
through a translator. Asked how many
, of her friends are studying English,
j&e implies without hesitation: “All of
’©iijff .
Even here at English First, there
are worries about too much English.
“I have nothing against the world
coming together, but we shouldn’t go
insane,” says Tanya Shestoperova,
personal assistant to the school’s aca
demic director.
Shestoperova, 22, has studied En
glishalmost her entire life and speaks
it better than many Americans. Still,
bar Russian pride is wounded by the
country’s headlong dive into all things
Western.
“I think we as a nation have started
to come to our senses, have started to
see our own cultural values, and see
that we don’t have to borrow every
thing from the West,” she said.
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