News Digest
President condemns Israel for violence
■Palestinian leader Yasser
Arafat told Qinton that his
people did not start thefighting.
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
WASHINGTON - Palestinian
leader Yasser Arafat met for more
than two hours Wednesday with
President Qinton, then emerged
with bitter condemnation of load
for die wave of violence that has
shattered already faint peace
hopes.
After shaking hands with
Qinton and giving him a goodbye
salute at the White House door,
Arafat told reporters standing on a
rain-swept driveway: "I am not the
one who initiated the violence.”
"My tanks are not sieging
Israeli towns,” Arafat said, inter
rupting his interpreter to make
sure his views were correctly
relayed. "We are facing a very dan
gerous situation that is really
injuring the peace process.”
Despite his comments, how
ever, the Palestinian leader said: "I
reiterated my firm commitment
to making peace” and said the
outcome depends on the efforts
that Qinton exerts.
Arafat raised with the presi
dent his proposal that the United
Nations set up an international
force to protect Palestinians from
Israel He did not say how Qinton
reacted, but the State Department
has dismissed the idea all week.
Resuming negotiations with
Israel appeared a highly remote
possibility.
“We’re now in a very difficult
cycle,” Clinton’s assistant for
national security Sandy Berger
said before the meeting. “The
president is focused on what he
can do in the next few months to
try to reduce the violence and
resume a political process.”
Rejecting any notion Clinton's
influence has waned with his term
running out, Berger said “the busi
Courtney Keaty/Newsmakers
Palestinian militia leader Houssein Abyat, 34, is transported after being killed Thursday by a missile fired from an Israeli helicopter into his car Wednesday in Beit Sahour near
the West Bank town of Bethlehem. A local Palestinian woman also was killed and more than Mothers were wounded.
ness of the presidency goes on.”
Once optimistic plans to mold
a final settlement between
Palestinian leader Arafat and
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak,
who comes calling Sunday, are in
disarray, shattered by their differ
ences on Jerusalem and five weeks
of violence on the West Bank and
Gaza Strip and in Israel
On Thursday, Israeli combat
helicopters rocketed a pickup
truck packed with Palestinian
guerrillas on West Bank, killing
one and critically wounding
another. Hie Israeli army said the
assault implemented a new policy
of targeting ringleaders.
Two passers-by were killed
and 11 others were injured.
Berger declined to address the
incident specifically, but said in a
general way that “violence breeds
violence and we must find a way
to break this cycle.
“It’s important for people on
both sides to do all they can to try
to achieve that”
Barak said Wednesday on
Israeli television that he would
seek no resumption of peace talks.
“I go to Washington to ensure
that the end of violence that was
agreed on at Sharm el-Sheik is car
ried out, if that is possible. That is
all,” he said, referring to an
Egyptian resort where Clinton
mediated a truce last month.
“It's still die U.S.'s intention to
work with the parties to help them
try to achieve what they are in a
position to achieve, what they
want to achieve,” State
Department spokesman Richard
Boucher said Wednesday before
Arafat arrived a little after mid
night
Arafat is requesting that the
United Nations establish an inter
national protective force to shield
Palestinians from Israeli soldiers
and police.
A bite into the past:
Dinosaur discovered
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
ROME - Italian paleontogists
said Thursday they have identi
fied a new species of dinosaur,
which lived 200 million years ago
and is one of the oldest meat-eat
ing reptiles ever found.
According to fossil fragments
found in a quarry in northern
Italy, the dinosaur was 26.4 feet
long, had alongneck and weighed
over a ton, Giorgio Tferuzzi, super
visor of paleontology at Milan's
Museum of Natural History, told
The Associated Press. Each of its
sharp teeth measured 2.8 inches,
he said.
It is believed to have lived in
the early Jurassic era, usually asso
ciated with more primitive forms
of carnivorous dinosaurs. The
Jurassic era spanned from 208 to
140 million years ago.
“It is the world's oldest three
fingered dinosaur, and one of the
oldest overall,* researcher
Cristiano Dal Sasso said in an
interview.
The dinosaur, tentatively
called Saltriosaur after the name
of the quarry where the fossils
were found, is very similar to
another predator, the American
Allosaur, but is believed to be 20
million years older.
“What’s interesting about this
dinosaur is that it is more special
ized, it is closely related to the
more advanced species," said
Thomas R. Holtz, a paleontologist
at the Department of Geology at
the University of Maryland at
r
This specimen will
be helpful in terms of
the reconstruction of
the dinosaurs' history
and interrelations
between various
groups. ”
Thomas R. Holtz
paleontologist
College Park.
The fossils were found
entombed in a limestone block in
a quarry in Saltrio, north of Milan
near the Swiss border, in 1996.
Researchers just started studying
them last year.
They include more than a
hundred bone fragments, the
longest measuring 16 inches -
altogether less than 10 percent of
the entire skeleton. One tooth was
also found.
Holtz said that 200 million
years ago was a critical time for the
evolution of meat-eating
dinosaurs. It was then that they
started evolving into truly fierce
predators.
“This specimen will be helpful
in terms of the reconstruction of
the dinosaurs' history and interre
lations between various groups,”
Holtz said.
The Saltriosaur fossils will go
on display Friday at Natural
History museums in both Milan
and Besano, near the quarry.
Report: Cancer drug safe
■The new medication may
not be a full cure but may help
some patients, doctors said.
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
AMSTERDAM, Netherlands -
Eagerly awaited test results on a
much-publicized new cancer
drug designed to stop tumors by
cutting off their blood supply indi
cate the medication is safe and
shows promising signs it may help
control the disease.
However, the results released
Thursday suggest the drug endo
statin is unlikely to be the kind of
across-the-board cancer cure that
many had hoped for.
The drug was tested on termi
nally ill cancer patients largely to
assess its safety.
No dramatic recoveries have
so far been seen among the 61
patients studied.
“Some patients benefited, but
many did not," said one of the
chief investigators, Dr. Roy Herbst,
an assistant professor of medicine
at the M.D. Anderson Cancer
Center in Houston. “These
patients were very sick. Most of
their tumors are going to grow no
matter what you do.”
The best results were seen in a
50-year-old man with cancer in
his jaw. His tumor shrank by 62
percent in eight weeks.
A tumor in the pancreas of
another patient shrank by 19 per
cent after he had been taking the
drug for ayear.
In five other cases, the disease
remained stable, with the tumor
neither progressing nor shrinking.
Despite the lack of cures, the
“Some patients benefited, but many did not.
These patients were very sick. Most of their
tumors are going to grow no matter what you
do.
Dr. Roy Herbst
assistant professor of medicine at the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center
testing provided some evidence
that the drug may cut off a tumor's
blood supply, as intended, offer
inghope the approach could work
better in patients who are less des
perately ill
Blood flow through the
tumors became less robust and
chemicals involved in blood ves
sel creation diminished as
patients were given increasingly
higher doses of endostatin.
No serious side effects were
noticed in any of the patients, the
scientists said
While some experts consid
ered the test results “tremendous
ly promising,” others were cau
tiously optimistic.
The recent discovery that
angiogenesis, or the creation of
new blood vessels, is vital to a
tumor’s survival has been the
basis for the hottest area in cancer
research.
Drugs that attack the process
are called angiogenesis inhibitors.
Endostatin is one of dozens of
such drugs, which are at varying
stages of development and attack
i blood vessel growth from different
angles.
"Many of them have shown
little toxicity, and this is not the
first to show a response,” said
William Li, head of the Boston
based Angiogenesis Foundation,
a nonprofit information clearing
house that tracks research in the
field.
"But it's unprecedented at this
stage of testing to have such a
comprehensive measurement of
markers that indicate there might
be a benefit,” he added.
Tracking the indirect indica
tors has allowed scientists to see
more promising signs earlier in
the research than normal, Ii said.
Besides M.D. Anderson, the
Dana-Farber Cancer Center in
Boston and the University of
Wisconsin Comprehensive
Cancer Center in Madison con
ducted the studies.
The Boston study was spon
sored by the drug's maker,
EntreMed of Rockville, Md., while
the other two were funded by the
U.S. National Cancer Institute.
Some experts predict endo
statin and the other drugs will in
most cases halt cancer growth,
turning the disease from an acute
fatal illness to a low-level ongoing
condition, like diabetes or arthri
tis.
In some cases, the cancer may
be wiped out completely, while in
others, the drugs may need to be
used in combination with
chemotherapy and radiation.
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U.N.: Lift sanctions on Cuba
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
UNITED NATIONS - The General
Assembly resoundingly criticized the
United States on Thursday for maintaining
sanctions on Cuba for nearly four decades
and urged Washington to lift them as soon
as possible.
The nonbinding, Cuban-drafted reso
lution passed with 167 votes in favor - the
widest margin in the nine years that Cuba
has brought the initiative to the United
Nations. Only the United States, Israel and
the Marshall Islands voted against it Four
countries abstained.
The resolution, introduced by Cuban
Foreign Minister Felipe Perez Roque, was
nearly identical to ones approved in years
past, even though U.S. legislation
approved last month allows sales of
American food and medicine to the com
munist island.
Weather
TODAY
Partly cloudy
high 42, low 33
TOMORROW SUNDAY
Rain and snow Scattered snow
high 38, low 27 high 34, low 22
World/Nation
The Associated Press
■Russia
Officials study crew's log
found in sunken Kursk
MOSCOW - In the latest grim
find from the sunkeirsubmarine
Kursk, Russian officials said
Thursday they were studying
fragments of a ship’s log recovered
by the divers who pulled 12 bod
ies from the wreck.
“We recovered what we could
- certain notes and the log book
from the fourth compartment of
the Kursk,” the Interfax news
agency quoted Deputy Prime
Minister Ilya Klebanov as saying
One note, from an as-yet
unidentified sailor, described 23
crew members as suffering from
carbon-monoxide poisoning
from a fire and despairing of
reaching the surface because of
the crushing water pressure at a
depth of more than 330 feet
Klebanov’s spokeswoman
Oksana Onishchenko said the
divers found only “unreadable”
fragments of the log. "There was
nothing related to the accident”
Onishchenko said.
The log was retrieved by
divers who cut holes in the hull in
a risky 18-day operation on the
bottom of die Barents Sea.
All 118 men aboard died. Most
of the bodies were not recovered
because they were either
destroyed by the explosions or
unreachable in the tangled
wreckage
■ Washington, D.G
House to look into early calk
by networks on election night
A House telecommunications
panel will hold hearings as early
as nextweek on the television net
works’ early calls of the presiden
tial race in Florida and their possi
ble impact on voters elsewhere.
Rep. Billy Ihuzin, chairman of
the House Commerce
Committee’s telecommunica
tions subcommittee, planned
Thursday to announce the panel’s
intention to invite TV network
officials to testify. A spokesman
said the hearings could be set as
early as next week, when
Congress must return for a lame
duck session to finish this year's
budget
Between 6:49 p.m. and 7 pm.
CDT Tuesday, NBC, CBS, CNN,
Fox, ABC and The Associated
Press all called Florida, with its
decisive 25 electoral votes, for
Vice President A1 Gore. Polls were
still open in several Western
states.
At about 8:55 p.m. CST, the
networks and AP began taking
back those projections based on
the actual Florida vote count that
showed a tight race between
Democrat Gore and Republican
George W. Bush.
■ Kentucky
Governor, union leaders face
reinstated campaign charges
FRANKFORT - Charges
against two top aides to Gov. Paul
Patton and two union leaders
accused of conspiring to violate
campaign finance laws were rein
stated Thursday by an appeals
court
The charges, stemming from
Patton’s 1995 election, had been
thrown out last year when a judge
said the laws on spending limits
were unconstitutionally vague.
But in a 2-1 decision, the state
appeals court said the four were
veteran politicians who knew die
rules.
Prosecutors allege the union
carried Ross on its payroll so the
campaign would not have to pay
his salary, and that Fields and
Winstead were appointed to
important state positions as a
reward for their help.
■Kuwait
Police arrest Kuwaitis
in alleged bombing plot
Police on Thursday
announced the arrests of three
Kuwaitis and seizure of a large
quantity of explosives in an
alleged plot that a local newspa
per said was directed at U.S. tar
gets in other countries.
The newspaper, Al-Qabas,
said the arrested men had links to
terror mastermind Osama bin
Laden.
A fourth suspect was still at
large, the Kuwaiti Interior
Ministry said.
The ministry's statement
described him as “a citizen of a
North African country.”
