Search for crash survivors ends
Large piece ofEgyptAir flight wreckage found, debris search continues
NEWPORT, R.I. (AP) - Coast
Guard search crews gave up hope
Monday of finding anyone alive from
EgyptAir Flight 990 but found a large
piece of wreckage and detected a sig
nal believed to be from one of the
plane’s black boxes.
If Navy divers can retrieve the
flight data recorder and cockpit voice
recorder from the ocean floor off
Nantucket, the devices could provide
vital clues for investigators who as yet
have no explanation for the crash.
Jim Hall, chairman of the
National Transportation Safety Board,
cautioned that the investigation could
be long. And he said die hunt for the
black boxes would be difficult.
“Remember that we are dealing
with water 250 feet deep, and recover
ing and locating small objects like
recorders is a daunting effort,” he said
at search headquarters in Newport.
Because terrorism has not been
ruled out, the FBI said it is sending
bomb experts and other investigators
to Newport. But authorities stressed
there was no evidence of foul play.
“Nothing has been ruled in.
Nothing has been ruled out,”
President Clinton said in Oslo,
Norway, where he was attending
Middle East peace talks.
The Cairo-bound Boeing 767 was
carrying 217 people when it plunged
into the Atlantic from 33,000 feet
early Sunday, a half hour after leaving
New York’s Kennedy Airport. The
plane went down without a distress
call or any other indication of trouble
from the pilots.
Among the passengers were about
30 Egyptian military officers, mostly
pilots who had been training in the
United States, Pentagon spokesman
Kenneth Bacon said. The passengers
also included 106 Americans, includ
ing 54 people bound for a two-week
trip to Egypt and the Nile.
The debris collected so far - some
of it by student sailors from the U S.
Merchant Marine Academy - includ
ed shoes, purses and teddy bears.
None of the retrieved debris has
any bum marks that might indicate a
fire or explosion, search officials
said.
The Coast Guard, fearing bad
weather today, stepped up its search
for debris and human remains.
“It is in everyone’s best interest to
no longer expect we will find sur
vivors,” said Coast Guard Rear Adm.
Richard M. Larrabee.
Larrabee, speaking 35 hours after
the crash, said the decision was based
partly on the chilly water. The average
lift expectancy in water of 58 degrees
u
It is in everyone s best interest to no longer
expect we will find survivors”
Richard M. Larrabee
Coast Guard rear admiral
is five to six hours.
Searchers found what Larrabee
called a “significant piece” of the air
craft, large enough to require a crane.
They also located a signal, most likely
one of the plane’s black boxes, while
scouring the search area south of
Nantucket.
The Navy will use underwater
sonar equipment to try to pinpoint the
wreckage and the black boxes. The
USS Grapple, a sonar-equipped sal
vage ship that helped retrieve wreck
age from the 1996 crash of TWA
Flight 800 off Long Island and the
1998 crash of Swissair Flight 111 off
Nova Scotia, was expected to arrive
from Virginia today.
As of midday Monday, only one
body had "been recovered, but
Larrabee said searchers had “begun to
see evidence of further human
remains.” He would not elaborate.
Flights were being arranged to
carry victims’ relatives to Rhode
Island so they could be close to the
search operation.
After the crash, investigators were
sent to check on the EgyptAir ground
crew at Kennedy.
“As far as my knowledge goes,
everyone seems to have checked out,
and everyone cooperated,” said
Robert Kelly, general manager of avi
ation for the Port Authority of New
York and New Jersey, which operates
the airport.
The plane’s co-pilot, Adel Anwar,
had been on his way back to Egypt to
get married on Friday. Eager to help
with wedding preparations, he had
swapped shifts and had taken a col
league’s place in the cockpit that fate
ful night.
“It was just another regular flight,”
Anwar’s tearful brother, Tarek, said in
Cairo. “Or so we thought.”
Clinton offers to help
in Mid peace
OSLO, Norway (AP) - Clinton
offered strong encouragement
Monday to help Israeli-Palestinian
negotiations to resolve “the really hard
part” of their decades-old conflict
“I wouldn’t rule out anything,” said
Clinton, eager to crown his checkered
presidency with a historic peace agree
ment “There is nothing I would not do
if I thought it would genuinely help to
build a lasting peace in the Middle
East”
The president met separately with
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak and
Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat on die
eve of a three-way meeting among
them.
Visiting Oslo’s hilltop palace,
Clinton reviewed troops with King
Harald.
Committed tcTreaching a final
peace agreement by next September,
Barak suggested Oslo could set a date
for a Camp David-type negotiating
session early next year, possibly in
Washington.
Arafat said he could go along with
that idea. For Clinton to agree, he
would “have to see that there would be
engagement on substance that showed
some promise,” a senior administra
tion official said.
It was in Oslo, during Rabin’s
administration, that secret negotiations
produced a breakthrough agreement
between Israel and the Palestinians,
feuding since Jewish settlers started
going to Palestine 100 years ago.
By mid-February, negotiators are
to present the outlines of an agreement.
The final accord is to be reached by
September 2000. The two sides are to
meet Monday to begin the first round
of final status talks.
i _
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■ Aid arrives for people
without food, shelter or
drinking water.
LESHWAR, India (AP) - Bodies
were hanging from trees and floating
through towns Monday when rescuers
finally arrived with aid for survivors
of one of the most powerful cyclones
ever to strike India, where thousands
were feared dead.
After three days without food,
shelter or clean drinking water, vil
lagers in eastern Orissa state looked to
the skies when helicopters showed up
to drop packets of protein-rich food.
Military boats appeared on the
horizon in the Bay of Bengal to evacu
ate those marooned on housetops and
hilltops.
“This is the worst flooding in 100
years. I would say it is the worst in
India’s history,” said Asim Kumar
Vaishnav, chief administrator of
Baleshwar, the state capital.
With heavy rains abating, officials
started to count the dead and search
for the missing from the cyclone,
which crashed into die coast on Friday
with winds of 155 mph after building
steam in the bay for five days.
Meteorologists classified the
storm as a supercyclone, one of the
strongest in the region this century.
United News of India quoted an
unidentified official as estimating the
death toll at 3,000 to 5,000. But the
hardest hit areas remained inaccessi
ble, indicating the death toll could be
much higher.
Millions of people were left home
less by the cyclone, which stirred up
tidal surges that inundated 87 miles of
Orissa’s coast. In Bhubaneswar,
200,000 people - nearly one of every
six residents - lost their homes. Entire
slums were washed away, Press Trust
of India said.
With the weather improving, air,
rail and road links were slowly
restored tp major cities, but telephone
and electric lines remained inopera
ble. The cyclone destroyed major
industrial plants in the city of Cuttack,
just north of die state capital.
Food riots erupted in
Bhubaneswar, which had no power,
drinking water or fresh food, Press
Trust reported.
Residents stopped vehicles carry
ing emergency relief and looted them,
the agency said.
Desperate farmers ripped a 300
foot gash in the main coastal highway
to try to drain their fields of sea water.
The water gushing through the breach
was 15 feet deep and would take days
to repair, highway engineer A.K.
Parhy said.
Human bodies and animal car
casses floated on a huge expanse of
water in the port town of Paradwip, 50
miles east of Bhubaneswar, Press
Trust of India reported. Almost all the
town’s mud houses were wiped away,
and a high voltage transmission tower
was a mangled heap of steel. The rail
road tracks leading to the port were
underwater. .'
About 50 miles north of Paradwip,
P.L. Panda, a minister in Orissa’s state
government, saw seven bodies hang
ing from trees during a survey of his
rural district of Bhadrak, said an aide,
R.P. Behera. Elsewhere in the district,
three people were electrocuted by sub
merged electric poles, he told The
Associated Press.
Naval and coast guard vessels
searched the rough seas for at least 20
missing fishing trawlers carrying at
least 200 men.
Soldiers in motor boats and oar
powered, flat-bottom rafts scoured the
waters for marooned civilians who
sought shelter on patches of high
ground or the roofs of their homes.
(lout
case
LARAMIE, Wyo. (AP) - The
judge in the Matthew Shepard mur
der case barred the man on trial
Monday from using a “gay panic”
defense. -
Lawyers for Aaron McKinney
rested their case several hours later.
District Judge Barton Voigt ruled
that the strategy adopted by
McKinney’s lawyers in the beating
death of the gay college student is
akin to temporary insanity or a
diminished-capacity defense - both
of which are prohibited under
Wyoming law.
wnat me defendant is trying to
do is to raise a mental status defense
that is not recognized by Wyoming
law, and of which there has been no
notice and no opportunity for the
court or opposing counsel to consid
er before trial,” he said “Even if rele
vant, the evidence will mislead and
confuse the jury.”
McKinney, 22, could get the
death penalty if convicted of murder
ing Shepard, who was lashed to a
fence and left to die on die prairie last
year- S
A “gay panic” or “homosexual
panic” defense is built on the theory
that a person with latent gay tenden
cies will have an uncontrollable, vio
lent reaction when propositioned by a
homosexual.
McKinney’s lawyers have said
McKinney flew into a drug-induced
rage after a sexual advance by
Shepard triggered memones of trau
matic, youthful homosexual
episodes.
■ Washington
Supreme Court to rule on
pat-down search question
WASHINGTON (AP) - The
Supreme Court said Monday it will
decide whether police can stop and
frisk someone based on an anony
mous tip that a person of matching
clothing and location is carrying a
concealed gun.
The justices said they will hear
Florida prosecutors’ argument that
anonymous tips about possession of
concealed weapons create a “unique
situation” and a pat-down search was
only a minimal intrusion on privacy.
A ruling is expected by next summer.
The Florida Supreme Court ruled
that such a tip did not justify a war
rantless search of three youths stand
ing on a Miami street corner who
were not engaging in any suspicious
conduct
■Washington
Washington high school
cancels classes after threat
REDMOND, Wash. (AP) -
Classes were canceled Monday at a
high school after threats were made
in an Internet chat room to kill every
one in the school.
The threats were violent enough
and specific enough to be taken seri
ously, Lake Washington School
District spokesman Richard Duval
said. King County Sheriff’is detec
tives are investigating.
“I’ve got a feeling itls not going to
take very long until we find out who’s
responsible,” sheriff’s spokesman
John Urquhart said.
Officials planned to search the
school again before deciding
whether to reopen it today.