■ Jerusalem
Pope speaks of persecution
at Holocaust memorial
JERUSALEM (AP) - Standing
before the ashes of death camp vic
tims in the candlelit shadows of
Israel’s Holocaust memorial, a vis
ibly moved Pope John Paill II told
the Jewish people on Thursday that
his church is “deeply saddened” by
Christian persecution of Jews
through the centuries.
The tribute in the drafty stone
halls of the Yad Vashem Memorial
was both historic and personal for
a pope who lost boyhood friends in
the Nazi genocide. But it did not
satisfy those looking for an apolo
gy from the leader of the world’s 1
billion Roman Catholics for the
church’s official silence amidst the
mass killing of Europe’s Jews.
The somber ceremony attend
ed by Israeli officials, Holocaust
survivors and Jewish friends from
the pope’s own hometown in
Poland was punctuated by small,
touching moments as well as grand
gestures.
■ Germany
Authorities agree on
division of Nazi victim fund
BERLIN (AP) - Clearing the
last major obstacle to compensat
ing aging victims of Nazi-era
forced and slave labor, negotiators
agreed Thursday on how to divide
a $5 billion German fund with
hopes of starting payments by
year’s end.
Under the deal, about 240,000
slave laborers - those who were
put to work in concentration camps
and had been expected to die doing
their jobs - would receive up to
$7,500 each. More than 1 million
forced laborers, who worked in
factories outside camps, would get
up to $2,500 each.
“We have taken a huge step for
ward today,” said Deputy Treasury
Secretary Stuart Eizenstat, the U.S.
government envoy to the talks.
“This brings this process a sub
stantial step closer to completion.”
All sides agreed in December
on the size of the fund, to'be split
equally by German government
and industry.
But negotiators had been wran
gling over how to divide the money
among various groups.
■ Washington, D.C.
First Roman Catholic House
chaplain sworn in
WASHINGTON (AP) -
Speaker Dennis Hasten appointed
a Chicago priest, the Rev. Daniel P.
Coughlin, as House chaplain on
Thursday and blamed Democrats
for “whispered hints in dark
places” that anti-Catholic bias
infected a four-month controversy
over the post.
Coughlin was sworn in within
minutes as the first Roman
Catholic to hold the position of
ministering to lawmakers and their
families. He won bipartisan
applause in the well of the Jlouse, a
sharp contrast to the partisan
struggle that prompted an earlier
choice, the Rev. Charles Wright, to
withdraw.
Coughlin, the vicar for priests
in the Chicago archdiocese, flew to
Washington earlier in the day. He
called his appointment “terribly
unexpected.”
With the appointment, Hastert
sought to end ,a controversy that
roiled the House for months and
t prompted. Republicans to woijy
* ; al?put the polltipal hnpaet of alle
gations of anti-Catholic bias. f
Boy holds classmates at gunpoint
■ me iz-year-oia told
police he wanted to be in
jail with his mother.
LISBON, Ohio (AP) - A 12
year-old who told authorities he
wanted to be with his mother in jail
briefly held his sixth-grade class at
gunpoint Thursday before a teacher
persuaded him to give up the
weapon.
No one was hurt, and no charges
were immediately filed against the
boy, who was taken into custody.
The boy said “his biological
mother was in jail, and he wanted to
visit her, be with her,” said Anthony
Krukowski, superintendent of
Lisbon schools.
Police did not confirm immedi
ately whether the mother was in jail.
Police Chief John Higgins said
the weapon was a loaded, 9 mm
semiautomatic. The boy apparently
brought the gun from home and con
cealed it in his clothes, Krukowski
saiu.
About 8:45 a.m., the boy stood
up in his classroom at McKinley
Elementary School, pointed the gun
at the floor and told his fellow stu
dents and teacher to get down,
Higgins and Krukowski said.
A student in the hall overheard
the exchange and summoned another
teacher, Linda Robb, Krukowski
said.
Robb stood in the doorway of the
classroom and asked the boy if she
could talk to him. The two walked
out into the hallway and hugged, and
the boy handed the gun over to Robb,
police said.
The student, who was not identi
fied, was taken into custody by
police in Lisbon, which is about 25
miles south of Youngstown in north
eastern Ohio, near the West Virginia
and Pennsylvania state lines.
The Vindicator newspaper of
Youngstown reported that the boy
was on crossing duty with another
sixth-grader, Katie Hartman, on
** ... How can we all come together to
give our children better values? ”
Vice President Al Gore
Thursday morning. The girl said that
at the end of their duty the boy told
her: “Goodbye, Katie. I won’t be
back.”
She asked what he meant, but he
didn’t answer.
Sixth-graders were sent home,
but the other students were kept in
class because the district didn’t want
younger children going home with
out making sure their parents knew,
Krukowski said.
The school, which has about 650
students from kindergarten through
sixth grade, will be closed on Friday
but will be open for student counsel
ing.
“Naturally the students were
shook up, any time you have an inci
dent like that,” Krukowski said.
Krukowski said he wasn’t very
familiar with the boy and was
unaware of any behavior problems.
Vice President A1 Gore, cam
paigning at a Cincinnati elementary
school, said the incident “once again
raises the question that has confront
ed us so often in the past year or two
or three.
“That is, how can we all come
together to give our children better
values?”
Gore said the student’s access to a
firearm points out the need for gun
control measures, such as child-safe
ty trigger locks.
Man opens fire
in Texas church
■ He killed himself after
injuring four others in the
church office.
PASADENA, Texas (AP) - A
man apparently spurned by an 18
year-old woman walked into a
church and opened fire, wounding
the young woman, her mother and
two others before shooting himself to
death.
It was the second church shoot
ing in Texas in the past six months.
The assailant - identified by friends
as Oscar Castillo, 32 - died in a park
ing lot after Wednesday night’s attack
inside the crowded office of the
Iglesia Cristiana Esposa del Cordero
Pentecostal church in this Houston
suburb.
Iwo ol the wounded were in crit
ical condition.
During a meeting after church
services, the gunman professed his
love for Leslie Contreras, police Sgt.
Mike Baird said.
She told him “she liked him like a
brother, but just didn’t want to be his
girlfriend,” Baird said.
Baird said the man then told her
“something bad was fixing to hap
pen.”
He got a gun, opened fire inside
the church office, then walked out
side and shot himself, police said.
“We are going through and mak
ing sure we dot all the i’s and cross
the t’s. But we are confident that the
four that were shot were attacked by
the guy who killed himself,” Baird
said Thursday. “We’re just trying to
pick up the pieces.”
Authorities had recovered the
semiautomatic pistol used in the
attack, Baird said.
Contreras, 18, was in fair condi
tion at Ben Taub Memorial Hospital
with a bullet wound in her neck. Her
mother, 38-year-old Angela
Contreras, and Carlos Matamoros,
the 43-year-old pastor, were in criti
cal condition Thursday at Hermann
Hospital. The mother was wounded
in the abdomen, and Matamoros was
shot in the chest, said Lisa Lagrone, a
hospital spokeswoman.
A 32-year-old man was grazed by
a bullet, Baird said.
Church member Jose Montana,
34, said he saw the man early
Wednesday at a nearby Wal-Mart. He
said he was making small talk with
the man - whom he knew only as
“Oscar” - when “he said he was
going to Kin someone.
“I thought he was kidding,”
Montana said. “I told myself that if I
saw him at the church tonight I would
call police.”
Castillo had been a landscaper
for about seven years and would help
out the church regularly by doing
landscaping there for free, said
Castillo’s boss, Camilo Barreda,
owner of Flori-Tex.
A friend of Castillo’s, Albaro
Espeno, said Castillo “was on drugs
a long time ago, but now he talked
about Jesus every day.”
Last September, a man spewing
anti-Baptist rhetoric walked into a
Fort Worth church and fatally shot
seven people before he killed himself
in a pew. Seven others were injured at
the Wedgwood Baptist Church by the
man, Larry G. Ashbrook.
White House faces
criminal investigation
■ Justice Department
looks into computer
glitches that prevented
searches of e-mail.
WASHINGTON (AP) - The
Justice Department has launched
a criminal inquiry into White
House computer breakdowns that
made it impossible to search
thousands of incoming e-mail in
response to congressional sub
poenas.
The investigation, to be han
dled through Justice’s campaign
finance task force, focuses on
whether the subpoenas issued to
the White House went unan
swered because of the break
downs.
The e-mail involved cam
paign fund raising and other mat
ters.
The existence of the criminal
probe was revealed in papers
filed by the White House counsel
with the U.S. District Court for
the District of Columbia in con
nection with a civil case there
involving the conservative-ori
ented legal organization Judicial
Watch.
White House lawyers asked
the court to stay its consideration
of the e-mail issues, which also
had been under the scrutiny of the
Justice Department’s civil divi
sion, until the criminal inquiry is
finished.
The White House has
acknowledged that thousands of
incoming e-mail on campaign
fund raising and other matters
could not be searched in response
to House subpoenas.
The task force also plans to
investigate whether people were
threatened with retaliation to pre
vent the existence of e-mail from
being revealed to the Justice
Department, according to the fil
ing.
A former White House con
tractor has said in court papers
that she was warned not to reveal
the e-mail problem that concealed
the messages from the Justice
Department and the House
Government Reform Committee
headed by Rep. Dan Burton, R
Ind.
lhe contractor, Betty
Lambuth, said a subordinate told
her some of the e-mail deals with
“Vice President A1 Gore’s
involvement in campaign fund
raising controversies” and “the
sale of Clinton Commerce
Department trade mission seats in
exchange for campaign contribu
tions.”
In an attached declaration, the
chief of the task force, Robert
Conrad, said that continuing the
civil inquiry “would interfere
with and potentially compromise
the task force’s own investigation
of the pending allegations.”
The task force will notify the
civil division and the court when
the criminal inquiry is finished,
Conrad said.
Net>ra:skan
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