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.
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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.