Three killed in N.J. dormitory fire SOUTH ORANGE, NJ. (AP) - Fire broke out at a Seton Hall University dormitory early Wednesday as hundreds slept, killing three people, injuring 58 and sending terrified stu dents crawling in pajamas through choking smoke into the freezing cold outside. Four students were critically burned. One of them suffered third degree bums over most of his body. Many of the 640 residents of Boland Hall rolled over to go back to sleep when they heard the alarm around 4:30 a.m., thinking it was another in a string of 18 false alarms set off in the six-floor building since September. But many soon heard screams for help, smelled the smoke and saw flames creep under doors. “I opened the door just to check,” Yatin Patel said. “AH the ceiling tiles were coming down. I saw a ceiling tile fall on someone.” “It was panic. Everybody was just, ‘Go! Go! Go!’’’saidNicole McFarlane, I 19. She was treated for exposure because she left her room in only a short nightgown, a jacket and hiking boots, The cause of the fire was under investigation. The tragedy cast a pall of grief over the campus of the Roman Catholic school 15 miles southwest of New York City. Classes for the 10,000 students were canceled for the week. A memori al service was planned for Wednesday. Sports events also were postponed through today. “There’s not much you can say at this time,” said Newark Archbishop Theodore McCarrick, who came to offer support “We’re glad we’re people of faith. The mystery of God’s work is always a great mystery.” Patel, who lives on the third floor, down the hall from the lounge where the blaze broke out, said he put a wet towel under his door, kicked out his window screens and threw his mattress » A •• I opened the door just to check. All the ceiling tiles were coming down. I saw a ceiling tile fall on someone.” Yatin Patel student es on the ground in case he had to jump. At least two students did jump, wit nesses said. Tim Van Wie, 18, said a friend jumped from the third floor and suffered a broken wrist and sprained ankle. Others tied sheets together to climb down from the windows, but firefighters arrived in time and rescued them by ladder. Keara Sauber, 18, saw one fellow student shivering in a T-shirt and box ers, his skin completely blackened by bums. “His skin was, like, smoking,” she said ‘ Two of those killed were found in the lounge, and one was found in a bed room nearby. Two firefighters and two police officers were among those hurt. The injuries ranged from exposure and smoke inhalation to bums. The blaze was largely confined to the lounge. Students said they frequent ly saw people smoking in the lounge, though it is prohibited. Essex County Prosecutor Donald C. Campolo would not comment on whether careless smoking may have caused the fire. The Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms was assisting in the investigation. Clinton presents health care plan WASHINGTON (AP) - President Clinton on Wednesday unveiled a whopping $110 billion package of health insurance initia tives for his final year in office, ask ing the Republican-dominated Congress to approve the largest investment in health care since Medicare was created in 1965. Less expensive versions of the programs died last year, in part because of the president’s own veto of the Republicans’ $792 billion tax cutting plan. “These proposals are a signifi cant investment in the health of Americans; another step toward giv ing every American access to quali ty health care,” the president said. About 44 millioaAmericans lack health insurance, and die presi dent’s proposal would cover about 5 million of them. The largest ingredients of Clinton’s plan are a $3,000 long term care tax credit, costing $28 bil lion over 10 years, and a $76 billion proposal to insure 4 million parents of children who receive health cov erage under Medicaid and the state Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP). Sensitive to the politics of a pres idential campaign year, the presi dent credited Vice President A1 Gore with helping shape the administra tion’s plan. He said Gore and his Democratic rival, former Sen. Bill Bradley, have proposed health pro grams more extensive than his own. “If you just look at what’s going on in the election season this year, the public cares a lot about health care, and they’re talking a lot about it,” Clinton said in an Oval Office ceremony. With the election year, health care is a hot topic. Republicans and Democrats alike are drawing up bills dealing with long-term care, drugs bought via the Internet, prescription drugs and other initiatives. “I’m pleased to see the president joining the debate as we try to find solutions to long-term care needs ” said Sen. 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'llJ * ‘e j'-khii *, vs* • .yrj»Jfc THE MILT NEEAAWAH Cuban boy’s relatives file a federal lawsuit MIAMI (AP) - Elian Gonzalez’s relatives in Miami went to federal court Wednesday to challenge the Immigration and Naturalization Service’s ruling that the 6-year-old boy must be returned to his father in Cuba. Lazaro Gonzalez, Elian’s great uncle, filed the federal lawsuit after Attorney General Janet Reno declared last week that the boy’s sta tus was an immigration matter, solely in the jurisdiction of federal law. “It is about protecting Elian’s civil and constitutional rights, the same as if he was any other child,” said Spencer Eig, a lawyer for the great-uncle. Elian has been living with his Miami relatives since he was picked up off the Florida coast on Thanksgiving Day. No hearing date was immediately set. Reno had overruled a ruling from a Miami family court judge delaying the boy’s return. But Reno postponed an INS deadline to return the boy to his father in order to give Elian’s U.S. relatives time to challenge the INS decision. Elian’s mother and stepfather were among 11 people who drowned trying to reach the United States, and the boy was rescued at sea by the Coast Guard after he was found clinging to an inner tube in the Atlantic. The INS’s top official initially ruled Elian should return to his father, and the agency rejected a sec ond asylum petition filed last week on behalf of Elian by Lazaro Gonzalez. The INS ruled that only the boy’s father can represent his son. Eig said Lazaro Gonzalez was asking the court “not to decide the issues in the case, not to take custody away from Elian’s father, not to decide whether or not Elian should go back to Cuba, simply to compel the U.S. government to give Elian a fair hearing and his day in court.” Many legal experts have insisted since the fervor over the case began that Elian’s U.S. relatives have no standing. “All along, the legal issue has been who speaks for a 6-year-old boy, and the answer is the closest surviv ing relative. That is the father,” said David Abraham, an immigration law professor at the University of Miami. The president of Cuba’s National Assembly, Ricardo Alarcon, called Elian’s Miami relatives “a bunch of kidnappers” Wednesday and said their attempts to keep the boy in the United States “ignores the American government, showing disrespect for its institutions.” Leaders of several U.S. groups that want Elian returned to his father have warned they will call for protests and acts of civil disobedi ence if the child is not sent back soon. The groups denounced Congress for considering legislation that would grant U.S. citizenship to the boy over his father’s objections. Sen. Connie Mack, R-Fla., who is sponsoring a resolution to grant citi zenship to the boy, said Wednesday: “This is an issue about what his mother wanted for the boy,” she said. “To ignore her interests and her con cern is unthinkable.” RFK nephew charged in death ■ Michael Skakel is accused in a 25-year-old homicide. BRIDGEPORT, Conn. (AP) - A nephew of Robert F. Kennedy was charged Wednesday with bludgeon ing a girl to death with a golf club in 1975, when he was 15, providing the long-awaited break in a case that frustrated police in wealthy Greenwich and raised suspicions of a Kennedy cover-up. Michael Skakel, 39, flew to Connecticut from his home in Florida and surrendered at Greenwich police headquarters after a warrant was issued for his arrest in the slaying of Martha Moxley. Because of Skakel’s age at the time of the crime, the case will be handled, at least initially, in juvenile court. Moxley was beaten with a 6-iron and stabbed in the throat with a piece of the club’s shattered shaft. For years, investigators had been trying to find the killer without suc cess. Investigators got their big break during the past year, when a one-man grand jury heard testimony from for mer patients at the Elan school, a substance abuse treatment center in Maine that Skakel attended from 1978 to 1980. Prosecutors filed court documents that said Skakel admitted killing Martha to fellow students at Elan. told and Natiii§j ■ South Carolina S.C. governor thinks flag should not be flown, COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) - Gov. Jim Hodges said Wednesday that the Confederate battle flag should be removed from the Capitol dome. It was the governor’s boldest statement yet on the issue and came two days after nearly 50,000 people rallied on the Statehouse lawn, urg ing the Legislature to bring the flag down. In his State of the State address, Hodges said it was time to resolve a matter that led a national civil rights group to boycott South Carolina amid charges of racial insensitivity. We must move the flag from the dome to a place of historical significance on the Statehouse grounds,” Hodges, a Democrat, said in a prepared copy of his speech. “The debate over the Confederate flag has claimed too much of our time and energy.” As a state legislator, Hodges supported previous attempts to remove the flag, and earlier this year he said he personally did not think it should fly above the dome. ■ Russia Military leader: Chechen conflict should end by March GROZNY, Russia (AP) - The Russian military redoubled its drive to conquer Chechen rebels on Wednesday, with troops fighting street by street in the capital, Grozny, while helicopter gunships and cannons relentlessly pounded the southern mountains. Lt. Gen. Gennady Troshev, Russia’s deputy chief commander in Chechnya, announced Wednesday that the war was expected to be over by Feb. 26, although “nobody is giving the forces any firm deadlines for end ing the operation,” the Interfax news agency reported. He did not explain how he arrived at that date. Wednesday, federal forces pushed toward the center of Grozny from several directions, trying to squeeze rebel fighters into an ever-tightening circle, the military said. ■ New York Letterman leaves hospital to recover from heart surgery NEW YORK (AP) - David Letterman left the hospital Wednesday, five days after under going quintuple bypass surgery, his spokesman said. “I think there must have been some kind of mixup. I went to the hospital to get a face-lift,” Letterman joked as he left the hos pital, according to spokesman Howard Rubenstein. Letterman, 52, was continuing to recuperate at an undisclosed location, Rubenstein said. Letterman had emergency heart surgery at New York-Presbyterian Hospital on Friday after tests showed that one of his arteries was clogged. “Dave has been an ideal patient,” said his physician, Dr. Louis Aronne. “He feels strong and strolled out of the hospital in great spirits. I am confident his recovery will con tinue along the same path.” Rubenstein said he did not know when Letterman would be able to return to the “Late Show.” CBS is airing reruns while Letterman recovers.