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NewsDigest Netanyahu denies wrongdoing Police urge attorney general to indict former Israel prime minister JERUSALEM (AP) - Delivering an motional television appeal, for mer Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu angrily denied any wrongdoing Tuesday after police urged he attorney general to indict him and his wife on corruption charges. During a 50-minute interview, Netanyahu occasionally used props and paused dramatically to empha size his innocence and to accuse police of trumping up the charges against him. Police said Netanyahu and his wife, Sara, accepted favors from a contractor, kept 700 presents meant to be state property, including a gold en letter opener from U.S. Vice President A1 Gore, and tried to influ ence others to alter their testimony in the case. If tried and convicted of the most serious charge, obstruction of jus tice, Netanyahu could be sentenced to up to seven years in prison. Netanyahu, 50, who was tossed out by voters 10 months ago, launched a counter-offensive against the police in an apparent attempt to rescue his political future. During the TV appearance, the former leader mentioned his son and recently deceased mother as he denied the allegations - even, at one point, brandishing a supposedly valuable brooch which he said an appraiser had valued at $ 1. “The whole thing is ridiculous,” Netanyahu said during the prime time interview. Apparently relishing the under dog role, the 50-year-old politician accused police of making up the charges, saying he was being perse cuted by the political establishment because of his hardline views. Shlomo Ben-Ami, the police minister, denied police acted in bad faith. “The police did not, do not, and as long as I am responsible for police, will not have a political agen da,” he said. Police said that a seven-month investigation indicated that Netanyahu should be charged with fraud, attempted misuse of state funds, breach of trust and obstruc tion of justice. His lawyer, Yaacov Weinroth, called the police report “sloppy.” The attorney general, Elyakim Rubinstein, will make the final deci sion on whether to indict. Asked what the most difficult moment was since the probe began, Netanyahu said his 8-year-old son Yair was tormented at school because of the probe and his mother, Cila, died with the charges still hang ing over him. OPEC OKs increase in oil production Iran voices opp VIENNA, Austria (AP) - OPEC ignored objections of its second biggest member Tuesday and agreed to increase oil production, but perhaps not enough to bring down gasoline prices in the United States. In a rare departure from its consensus approach, ministers of the 11-nation cartel were expected to announce this morning that nine mem bers would raise produc tion by a total of at least 1.45 million barrels a day. That appears to be well short of what analysts have said would be needed to stop oil and gasoline prices from continuing a rise that has seen crude triple over the past 12 months. The Clinton adminis tration had been lobbying for a rise of 2 million to 2.5 million barrels a day to bring down gasoline prices that in the United States have risen from below $ 1 a gallon just over a year ago to an average of almost $1.60. An official statement was awaited to explain the action after a six-hour meeting at OPEC’s head quarters in Vienna, broke up Tuesday night without a unanimous decision. Iran, the No. 2 OPEC oil producer, refused to endorse the action, saying the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries should not be a position in non-consensus vote ” Our difference is on principle and not on merely a few barrels." Bijan Namdar Zangeneh Iran’s oil minister ruooer stamp. The agreement also excludes Iraq, which never was part of the original production cuts last year that sent prices surging. Bijan Namdar Zangeneh, Iran’s oil minis ter, told reporters he believed production should be increased by less than 1 million barrels a day and objected to attempts by others to push through an agreement to boost output by some 1.7 million barrels. While Zangeneh did not mention other OPEC countries by name, Saudi Arabia - OPEC’s leading producer - had led the drive to raise output as much as 7 percent from official quotas, or by 1.7 million barrels. “Our difference is on principle and not on mere ly a few barrels,” Zangeneh told reporters after the meeting broke up. “In my view, OPEC is not an organization to rubber stamp a decision already made.” Zangeneh insisted that only a limited increase in output was justified and that there is no shortage of crude oil. urfcC pumps more than 26 million barrels of crude each day, or about 35 percent of the world's supply. Key non-OPEC producers, such as Mexico and Norway, have said they were watching to see what OPEC will do before adjusting their own output. This was not the first time Iran refused to join in a decision by its OPEC colleagues. In 1992, Iran refused to endorse an agreement that the rest of OPEC made to cut produc tion by 668,000 barrels a day, arguing that the cuts didn’t go far enough. Alarmed at the surge in oil prices, which sent heat ing oil costs soaring in the winter and gasoline prices skyrocketing, the United States had lobbied hard in recent weeks for OPEC to relax its constraints on production. U.S. Defense Secretary William Cohen travels next week to the Middle East. A Pentagon spokesman said Tuesday that Cohen would call for increased oil production when he meets counter parts from such OPEC members as Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Qatar. Supreme Court limits power of police tips ■ Search and seizure from anonymous tips curtailed in decision. WASHINGTON (AP) - The Supreme Court sharply curtailed police power to rely on anonymous tips to stop and search people. The unanimous ruling Tuesday was a victory for civil rights organizations but a police group said the nation’s streets may become more dangerous. The court said Miami police acted unlawfully when in 1995 they searched and arrested a juvenile for carrying a gun after an anonymous tele phone caller said someone matching his description had a concealed weapon. “The question is whether an anonymous tip ... is, without more, sufficient to justify a police officer’s stop and frisk of that person,” Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote for the court. “We hold that it is not.” She said such “bare-bone tips” generally do not give police the reasonable suspicion of criminal conduct needed to justify the type of stop-and ffisk search the nation’s highest court has allowed for the last 32 years. The court’s unanimity caught some legal experts by surprise. Over the past two decades, a series of conserva tive-led rulings dramatically narrowed protections offered by the Constitution’s Fourth Amendment ban on unreason able police searches and seizures. “This was a slam-dunk vic tory for individual rights,” said James Tomkovicz, a University of Iowa law professor who rep resented the American Civil Liberties Union and other groups in a friend-of-the-court brief attacking searches based on anonymous tips. “The court made clear it is not going to sacrifice personal privacy whenever the magic word ‘firearm’ is mentioned,” he said. “That message was made even more emphatic by the fact the court was unani mous.” The liberal groups had attracted an unlikely ally - the National Rifle Association, whose friend-of-the-court brief had urged the justices to protect “the peaceful carrying of a firearm.” But the National Association of Police Organizations reacted angrily. “We are disappointed and, frankly, baffled by the court’s decision,” said Robert Scully, the group’s executive director. “As a consequence of this ruling, the danger to law enforcement officers and the general public will significant ly increase, and we fear that more officers and more mem bers of the public will be assaulted and murdered,” he said. In the Miami case, a youth identified in court records only as J.L. was arrested as a result of an anonymous tip that three black youths were standing outside a pawn shop and that the one in a plaid shirt was car rying a gun. The court ruled that the search of J.L. violated his Fourth Amendment rights and, as a result, the seized gun can not be used as evidence against him. The decision upheld a Florida Supreme Court ruling that had suppressed use of the gun as evidence. ^ i Editor: Josh Funk ? ^ Uglily Managing Editor: Lindsay Young |VT i-, I —- Associate News Editor: Diane Broderick Xj | I f T s\ rV s\ T \ Associate News Editor: Dane Stickney ± * ^ ttkJIVai L Opinion Editor: J.J. Harder Sports Editor: Sam McKewon A&E Editor: Sarah Baker Questions? Comments? Copy Desk Co-Chief: Jen Walker Ask for the appropriate section editor at (402) 472-2588 Copy Desk Co-Chief: Josh Krauter ore-maildn@unl.edu. „ PhotoChirf: Mike Warren Design Co-Chief: Tim Karstens Fax number: (402) 472-1761 Design Co-Chief: Diane Broderick World Wide Web: www.dailyneb.com Art Director: Melanie Falk The Daily Nebraskan (USPS 144-080) is published bv the UNL Publications Board, Web Editor: Gregg Steams Nebraska Union 20,1400 R St., Lincoln, NE 68588-0448, Monday through Friday Asst. Web Editor- Jewel Mlnarik during the academe yean y.eek^torg.jhe sumgWrspssions.The'public See acce’ss GeneralMa^er S sB Readers are encouraged to submit story ideas and comments to the Daily Nebraskan Publications Board Jessica Hofmann, by calling Chairwoman: (402)477-0527 (402)472-2588. Professional Adviser: Don Walton, Subscnptions are $60 for one year. (402) 473-7248 ,4“ M,„ag,r; >***«?. ALL MATERIAL COPYRIGHT 2000 ..., “iv..,?.. THE DAILY NEBRASKAN clJSld JSSTe Mostly cloudy high 53, low 33 Mostly cloudy high 56, low 34 ■ Georgia Train hits school bus, two children killed TENNGA, Ga. (AP) - A train slammed into a school bus Tuesday morning at an unmarked crossing near the Georgia-Tennessee line, splitting it in two and killing two children. The five other elementary school pupils on board were critical ly injured. No one on the CSX freight train was injured. The Murray County school bus was picking up children to go to Northwest Elementary School north of Chatsworth. The full-size bus had crossed into Polk County, Tenn., to turn around when it was struck by the train at about 7 a.m. ■ Florida Cuban boy’s relatives still at odds with government MIAMI (AP) - With a govern ment deadline fast approaching, Elian Gonzalez’s Miami relatives Tuesday continued to resist demands that they promise in writ ing to surrender the boy if they lose their court fight to keep him in the country. Lawyers for the family and the U.S. government met in the morning without resolving the impasse, despite threats from immigration authorities to remove the 6-year-old Cuban boy. “They said, ‘If you don’t sign the paper, we remove Elian.’They don’t tell us how,” family spokesman Armando Gutierrez said. Late Monday, the Immigration and Naturalization Service warned that Elian’s temporary permission to stay in the United States would be revoked at 9 a.m. Thursday unless the relatives provide the written guarantee. ■ Washington, D.C. Reno says she didn’t approve demolition of compound WASHINGTON (AP) - Attorney General Janet Reno testi fied Tuesday that she never gave approval for tanks to demolish the Branch Davidians’ compound near Waco, Texas - and does not believe the FBI intentionally did so - say lawyers for the sect who deposed her for their wrongful-death lawsuit against the government. But the Davidians’ lead counsel, emerging from the rare deposition of an attorney general, said Reno was less than forthcoming in dis cussing whether the FBI intended to dismantle the complex during its tear-gassing operation - an interpre tation rejected by Reno’s aides. “The only issue where we felt that she was less than candid was on the demolition,” Houston lawyer Michael Caddell said outside the Justice Department. “The problem that she’s got is she testified to Congress in 1995 that the damage done to the building was the result of tear-gas insertion. And I think it’s very difficult for her to back off of that testimony.” ■ Austria Avalanche buries skiers, at least 11 dead NIEDERSILL, Austria (AP) - An Alpine avalanche as wide as five football fields buried more than a dozen skiers underneath tons of snow Tuesday, killing at least 11 people, rescue officials said. Ten people were found dead in the area of the huge snow slide south of Salzburg. Another died later in a hospital. Two others were able to free themselves while rescuers dug out a third survivor, state television said in its evening newscast.