The daily Nebraskan. ([Lincoln, Neb.) 1901-current, October 19, 2000, Page 2, Image 2
News Digest Officials work to contain Ebola THE ASSOCIATED PRESS KABEDE OPONG, Uganda - Esther Awete was found dead six weeks ago in her round, gray mud hut by her mother and sisters, five days after she fell ill with a fever. In keeping with custom, her body was kept in her hut for two days to allow friends and family to take part in the funeral. Awete’s family and closest friends ritually bathed her body, buried her less than 30 feet from where she died and then washed their hands in a communal basin as a sign of unity. What they did not know was that Awete’s body had become a time bomb carrying the deadly Ebola virus. That was on Sept 27. Now, her mother, three sisters and three other relatives are dead and the virus has spread across a 15-mile radius, killing 39 people and infecting as many as 63 oth ers. EDOia is transmraea inrougn contact with bodily fluids, such as mucus, saliva and blood, and can be passed through a simple handshake. Four days after expo sure, flu-like symptoms set in, fol lowed by bloody diarrhea and vomiting. Ten to 15 days later, the victims "bleed out” through the nose, mouth and eyes. Blood and other bodily fluids also begin seeping through the skin, pro ducing painful Misters. How Awete - so far the first person known to have contracted Ebola in Uganda - became infect ed is a mystery. In fact, researchers have no idea where the virus lives in between out breaks, which are often years and hundreds of miles apart “People had fears after the second victim,” said Justin Okot, a police officer who lived in the compound next to Awete. “It was after the eighth victim, that’s when we suspected this is a new disease.” More help arrived Wednesday when a team from the World Health Organization brought in boxes of protective garments, gloves and a washing machine, as well as the expertise needed to fight Ebola. “Containment of the out break should not be a problem,” said Dr. Guenael Rodier, a senior WHO official and veteran of a half-dozen Ebola outbreaks in West Africa. “Simple measures will avoid the spread of the dis ease from person to person and that is what we are going to work on.” He said investigators from the U.S.-based Centers for Disease Control were bringing sophisti cated equipment not available in Uganda that is required to con firm infection with Ebola. In recent days, anyone with early symptoms of the disease has been quarantined and count ed as a potential victim. TODAY Sunny high 82, low 57 Mostly sunny high 76, low 49 Boy gives lead in suicide bombing | President Bin Clinton speaks during a memorial service for the sailors of the USS Cole Wednesday in Norfolk, Va. Clinton attended the service to honor the wounded and dead from the Ui. Navy destroyer that was bombed while on a refueling stop in the Yemen port of Aden. ■ Clinton warns attackers that justice will prevail ata memorial service for sailors. THE ASSOCIATED PRESS ADEN, Yemen - Crew members of the USS Cole worked to restore their damaged warship and searched for the bodies of those still miss ing Wednesday, even as Americans back home paid tribute at a memorial service to 17 sailors who died in the explosion. U.S. and Yemeni authorities are investigat ing the apparent suicide bombing. A 12-year old Yemeni boy provided a lead in foe investiga tion, Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh said Wednesday in a television interview. At the tearful service in Norfolk, Va., President Clinton mourned the dead and sternly warned those who organized the Oct 12 attack. “You will not find a safe harbor, for we will find you and justice will prevail,” he said. Aboard the Cole, sailors who held a small memorial on Sunday continued bailing water from die crippled vessel and searching fo,r the bodies of four crew members still riiissing. “They are trying to finish their job, trying to find the remains,” said Lt. Terrence Dudley, a spokesman for the U.S. 5th Fleet Eight bodies pulled from the wreckage on Tuesday were flown to the United States, Navy officials said. Five recovered earlier have already been returned for burial. Mostofthe39 sailors injured in the blast have returned to the United States, though two were being treated at a U.S. military hospital in Germany. The investigation is focused on an Aden neighborhood surrounding an apartment where police found bomb-making equipment on Monday. Neighbors said police had questioned the landlord and a real estate agent who found the apartment for two men who have been missing since the attack. Yemeni officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity, identified the possible suspects only as non-Yemeni Arabs. A Yemeni boy told authorities that a beard ed man wearing glasses gave him small change and told him to watch his car near the port on the day of the bombing, Saleh said Wednesday on the popular Arab satellite news station Al Jazeera. According to the boy, the man then took to the sea in a rubber boat he had carried atop the car and did not return, Saleh said. Yemeni police were apparently able to trace the man back to the apartment. Officials believe a small rubber boat packed with explosives was maneuvered next to the Cole by two suicide bombers and then detonat ed. Moments before the blast, two men were seen standing on the deck of a small vessel alongside the destroyer, U.S. authorities said. A 40-by-40-foot hole was blown into the Cole’s hull and the small boat disintegrated into “con fetti size” pieces. The independent Yemeni newspaper A1 Ayyam reported Wednesday that the landlord said he rented the apartment for a month to at least one non-Yemeni Arab with an unspecified Gulf accent. A1 Ayyam said police determined one tenant gave die landlord forged identifica tion. The paper said the tenants parked a fiber glass boat near the apartment yard. The boat was now missing. Yemeni officials would give no further information on the explosives material found in the apartment. They said the missing men arrived in Yemen four days before the attack. Saleh defended Yemen’s role in the investi gation, bristling at an interviewer’s suggestion that it was dominated by Americans. He also saidYemen wouldnot allow any of its citizens to be interrogated by U.S. investigators, as a mat ter of “sovereignty.” A senior U.S. administration official said U.S. FBI director Louis Freeh believes the gov ernment ofYemen “is now cooperating fully and genuinely” in the investigation. Freeh told the White House he was heading for Yemen as part of the investigation. The bombing, for which no one has claimed responsibility, may be the deadliest terrorist attack on the U.S. military since the 1996 bombing of an Air Force barracks in Saudi Arabia that killed 19. Report concludes first lady testified falsely THE ASSOCIATED PRESS WASHINGTON Independent Counsel Robert Ray concluded Hillary Rodham Clinton gave "factually false” tes timony when she denied having a role in the White House travel office firings. His final report Wednesday gave ammunition to , her Senate rival three weeks before Election Day. Ray said he decided not to prosecute Clinton because he could not prove she intended to deceive or even knew that her contacts with White House aides had instigated the May 1993 fir ings. But he wrote that the evi dence established beyond a rea sonable doubt that Clinton, dur ing eight separate conversations with senior presidential aides and advisers, helped prompt the firings of seven White House trav el office workers. The dismissals spurred one of the earliest controversies of her husband’s presidency. “Mrs. Clinton... played a role in the decision to fire the employ ees and... thus, her statement to the contrary under oath to this office is factually false,” Ray con cluded in a report that divulged testimony she gave to prosecu tors. Ray wrote that she made “fac tually inaccurate" statements to criminal investigators and Congress about the matter. Locked in a tight race for a Senate seat from New York, Clinton dismissed the findings during a campaign stop in Syracuse, N.Y. “Most New Yorkers and Americans have made up their minds about this," she said. Asked if she was concerned about the report’s release so close to the election, she added: “That's something I have no control over.” Her attorney, David Kendall, immediately assailed the prose Mrs. Clinton... played a role m the decision to fire the employees and... thus, her statement to the contrary under oath to this office is factually false .” cutor’s conclusions as “highly unfair and misleading.” “The suggestion that Mrs. Clinton’s testimony was ‘factually inaccurate’ as to her role in this matter is contradicted by the final report itself, which recognizes she may not have even been aware of any influence she may have had on the firing decision," Kendall wrote in reply to the report. Rep. Rick Lazio, Clinton’s Republican opponent in the Senate race, seized on the report, to raise new questions about credibility. Robert Ray independent counsel “We believe that character counts in public service and... we believe that integrity needs to be restored in our public servants," Lazio said. The report cited several for mer White House officials for being uncooperative, among them former White House chief of staff Mack McLarty; former deputy chief of staff Harold Ickes; Lisa Caputo, Mrs. Clinton’s for mer press secretary; Patsy Thomasson, a former deputy in the White House Office of Administration; and Jeff Eller, a former deputy press secretary. Z)cM/)’Nebraskan Editor Sarah Baker Managing Editor Bradley Davis Associate News Editor Kimberly Sweet Opinion Editor Samuel McKewon Sports Editor, Matthew Hansen Arts Editor Dane Stickney Copy Desk Co-Chief: Lindsay Young Copy Desk Co-Chief: Danell McCoy Photo Chief: Heather Glenboski Art Director Melanie Falk Design Chief: Andrew Broer Web Editor Gregg Stearns Assistant Web Editor Tanner Graham Questions? Comments? Ask for the appropriate section editor at (402)472-2588 or e-mail: dn@unl.edu General Manager: Dan Shattil Publications Board Russell Willbanks, Chairman: (402) 436-7226 Professional Adviser: Don Walton, (402) 473-7248 Advertising Manager: Nick Partsch, (402) 472-2589 Assistant Ad Manager: Nicole Woita Classified Ad Manager: Nikki Bruner Circulation Manager Imtiyaz Khan rax i\umDer: 1 /o i World Wide Web: www.dailyneb.com The Daily Nebraskan (USPS144-080) is published by the UNL Publications Board, 20 Nebraska Union, 1400 R St, Lincoln, NE 68588-0448, Monday through Friday during the academic year; weekly during the summer sessions. The public has access to the Publications Board. Readers are encouraged to submit story ideas and comments to the Daily Nebraskan by calling (402)472-2588. Subscriptions are $60 for one year. ' Postmaster Send address changes to the Daily Nebraskan, 20 Nebraska Union, 1400 R St., Lincoln, NE 68588-0448. Periodical postage paid at Lincoln, NE. ALL MATERIAL COPYRIGHT 2000 DAILY NEBRASKAN Bush's mom'famously loval' THE ASSOCIATED PRESS LANSING, Mich. - Don't tell former first lady Barbara Bush that her son, George W., is unpopular with women. “I don’t believe that, dear,” the Bush family matriarch kindly told a reporter cit ing polls showing the Republican trailing Democrat A1 Gore among women voters. Yet Barbara Bush, Bush’s wife Laura and other prominent GOP women, including Lynne Cheney, wife of Bush run ning mate Dick Cheney, hit the road Wednesday in this state where the election is close to tell voters not to believe Democratic criticisms of Bush, the Texas governor. “I’m famously loyal to my son, and when they say things that aren’t true, I’m really upset,” Barbara Bush said in the library of a children’s museum here. The 75-year-old wife of former » President Bush said she suspected many voters know her son is the type to keep his promises. “They know he’ll keep them in real life or his mother will come get him,” she joked. Barbara Bush spoke with the confi dence and bemusement of someone who’s lived a political life. When a reporter asked why women who are independent voters would support Bush, she interrupted, “I get it. I know what independent women are.” Recent polls show Gore with a lead of 3 to 9 percentage points among women. Bush said she believed her son would win on Nov. 7, but admitted being nervous. “I’m in agony in general. I didn’t watch one debate, I’m so nervous,” she said, later adding that she watched Tuesday night’s debate in St. Louis and thought he did great. The Associated Press ■ Washington High-speed trains to run Boston-Washington route America's first high-speed train crept through fake fog to a dramatically choreographed arrival Wednesday, carrying no passengers but many hopes for reviving rail travel throughout the country. Amtrak officials announced the train, Acela Express, will begin regularly scheduled trips between Boston and Washington on Dec. 11. The new train is the first of 20 that will reach speeds of up to 150 mph. The train’s tilting technology .will be most useful on the wind ing route between New York and Boston. Amtrak expects that trip, which now takes just over four hours, will improve to three hours, 23 minutes by mid December and just over three hours in two to three years as more track improvements are made. The trip between Washington and New York, now three hours, will be cut to two hours, 44 min utes. ■ Washington Officials disavow memo banning editorial A State Department memo randum sought to squelch a pro posed Voice of America editorial denouncing the terror attack that killed 17 American sailors because officials thought it might offend Palestinian listeners. Department officials moved quickly to disavow the memo and gave their blessing to the edi torial Wednesday, blaming the episode on a procedural glitch. Nonetheless, questions per sisted about the official explana tion, because the department cleared the editorial only after the memo recommending its disapproval was leaked to the media. The editorial condemned the attack on the USS Cole in Yemen’s Aden port and reaffirmed a long standing U.S. policy of not nego tiating with terrorists and of bringing to justice people who ■ Washington attack U.S. citizens or interests. Senate passes bill easing Cuban trade embaigo The Senate gave final con gressional approval Wednesday to a bill modestly easing the trade embargo on Cuba and providing $3.6 billion in disaster assistance and other election-year aid to farmers. President Clinton has agreed to sign the $78 billion agricultural spending bill, which also will allow the import of U.S.-made prescription drugs that are sold more cheaply abroad. The bill, which the Senate approved 86-8, would allow sales of food to Cuba for the first time in four decades, but the move is largely symbolic, because it bars the federal government or U.S. banks from financing the ship ments. Farm groups that are eager to trade with Cuba say the legisla ■ Germany tion is a start. Two neo-Nazis convicted in vandalism incident WEIMAR - Two admitted neo-Nazis were convicted and sentenced Tuesday in a vandal ism attack at the former Buchenwald concentration camp where they smeared swastikas on plaques the day before Germany celebrated 10 years of reunification. Thomas Fritzwanker, 20, and RalfWolf, 22, were sentenced to eight months and six months, respectively, on charges of prop erty damage and public display of banned symbols. They appeared at court in the eastern city of Weimar with typi cal skinhead shaved heads and covered their faces to deter pho tographers. Both could have faced up to three years. Germany has pledged to crack down on neo-Nazis after a string of vandalism incidents and attacks on foreigners that left at least three people dead this sum mer. Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder’s center-left govern ment has urged justice officials to punish neo-Nazi activity swiftly.