Ashcroft
advances
to Senate
■Democrats say a filibuster
will not be imposed on the
attorney general nominee.
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
WASHINGTON
Republicans pushed John
Ashcroft's attorney general nomi
nation to the Senate floor Ttiesday
by a narrow 10-8 Judiciary
Committee vote. All but one
Democrat voted against him.
While the committee vote was
close, a leading Democratic
opponent, Sen. Edward M.
Kennedy of Massachusetts, aban
doned any idea of trying to stop
the nomination with a filibuster.
That means Senate approval for
the strongly conservative former
Missouri senator is all but
assured.
as expected, all nine
Republicans on the committee
enthusiastically endorsed
Ashcroft
Russ Feingold of Wisconsin
was the only one of nine
Democrats to support him.
Senate Republican leader Trent
Lott, asserting Ashcroft has the
support of all 50 GOP senators,
said he would like to see the full
Senate vote on confirmation by
Thursday, completing President
Bush’s Cabinet It was uncertain
whether that would happen.
Feingold called his support
“an olive branch” to die new GOP
White House but “not a white
flag.” He urged Bush to re-nomi
nate for a U.S. judgeship Ronnie
White, a black Missouri Supreme
Court judge whose nomination to
the bench was quashed by
Ashcroft
White, a witness against
Ashcroft during hearings two
weeks ago, accused the former
senator of grossly distorting his
record on the death penafty.
Other Ashcroft critics argue he did
that for political gain.
Senate Democratic leader*
Tom Daschle of South Dakota
announced his opposition to
Ashcroft in a harsh denunciation
of the former senator's views on
women’s and workers’ rights, civil
rights and separation of church
and state.
ucvauoc ui Alio ciiuiiiiuuo
authority and discretion, the
attorney .general, more than any
other Cabinet member, has the
power to protector erode decades
of progress on civil rights in
America,” Daschle said. "John
Ashcroft has shown a pattern of
insensitivity throughout, his
career”
Meanwhile, Kennedy indicat
ed he would not object to fixing a
time for a final vote, saying he
hoped to focus public attention
not on a Senate process, but on
Ashcroft’s positions.
Kennedy said he had already
decided against a filibuster when
Missouri Sen. Jean Carnahan
spoke against it during a
Democratic caucus meeting
Tuesday.
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Paula Bronstein/Newsmakers
At a 10-story apartment building in Ahmedabad, India, on Monday, rescue workers continue in full force to search for bodies.Tens of thousands have died in this disaster so far,
and an accurate count may never be known.
Quake draws international efforts
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
AHMEDABAD, India -
Pakistan put aside its bitter rival
ry with India on Tuesday and
joined earthquake relief efforts,
but heavy equipment and explo
sives brought in to clear debris
signaled that hope of finding
survivors had all but vanished.
Experts say few people could
survive more than 100 hours
buried in rubble left by Friday’s
temblor, and much of the atten
tion shifted to getting tents,
blankets and medical care to the
living.
Officials have counted 7,148
bodies, but estimates of how
high the death toll could rise var
ied widely. Defense Minister
George Fernandes estimated
100,000 may have died; Home
Minister Haren Pandya said he
believed the figure to be
between 15,000 and 20,000.
Prime Minister Atal Bihari
Vajpayee said it was impossible
and improper to guess.
Aid from around the world
was pouring into western India -
a 747 loaded with water purifica
tion equipment from the United
States, a $500,000 mobile hospi
tal from Denmark and an air
force plane filled with tents and
blankets from Pakistan. With
nighttime temperatures about
41 degrees in the quake zone,
blankets were a high priority.
“I have come on a humani
tarian mission,” said Ilyas Khan,
director of Pakistan’s emergency
relief agency. “People are suffer
ing.
Pakistan, which has fought
three wars with India and is
locked in a nuclear Cold War
with its rival, said a second relief
plane would be sent Wednesday
and a third on Thursday.
Friday’s 7.9-magnitude
quake flattened the towns of
Bhuj and An jar in India’s western
Gujarat state, which borders
Pakistan, leaving damage esti
mated at up to $5.5 billion.
Despite aftershocks witti magni
tudes ranging up to 4.5 in the
Bhuj area, there were no reports
of new damage or casualties.
Rescue workers kept up the
dark task of digging into the
debris of ruined buildings, but
they called the search for sur
vivors increasingly futile.
Tuesday afternoon marked the
critical 100-hour mark since the
quake struck.
“We talk about a limit of 100
hours, when after that the
chances of finding someone
alive drop dramatically,” said
Jochen Jakowski, the leader of a
German rescue team in An jar.
A spokesman for a Swiss
search and rescue team said his
workers were still going at full
strength in Ahmedabad,
Gujarat’s commercial center.
However, they withdrew from
Bhuj after failing to find any sur
vivors there Hiesday.
“The chances of finding
‘The chances of
finding someone are
very, very slight,
although we haven’t
given up hope
entirely,”
Joachim Ahrens
Swiss rescue team spokesman
someone are very, very slight,
although we haven’t given up
hope entirely,” Joachim Ahrens,
spokesman for the Swiss
Department of Development
and Cooperation, said from
Geneva.
The stench of death was
everywhere. Mourners wore face
coverings as they watched vic
tims be cremated; soldiers
burned incense as they perse
vered in the grim work of looking
for bodies.
Senate votes in 2 of 3 remaininq Cabinet seats
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
WASHINGTON - New Jersey Gov. Christie
Whitman and former Colorado Attorney
General Gale Norton won Senate approval
Tliesday to direct the nation’s environmental
and natural resources policies.
The Senate voted unanimously 99-0 to
confirm Whitman as administrator of the
Environmental Protection Agency after vot
ing 75-24 minutes earlier, along partisan and
geographical lines, to accept President Bush’s
choice of Norton to be secretary of the interi
or.
Most of those opposing Norton, 46, were
Senate Democrats from Eastern states. Her
most vocal support came from Senate
Republicans in Western states with a large
Dercentaee of federal-owned lands. Sen.
Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., who
backed both women, missed
the votes due to weather
related travel problems. \
The votes left all of Bush's Cabinet seats
but one - that of attorney general - filled just
10 days after his inauguration.
Whitman, 54, a two-term Republican
governor popular with lawmakers, will resign
her post one year shy of completing her sec
ond and final term.
“It's an honor,” Whitman said of her new
job at EPA. “There are hard decisions to be
made with this agency, and you can't make
everybody happy.”
Sen. Larry Craig, R-Idaho, chairman of the
Senate Energy and Natural Resources
Committee’s panel on forests and public
lands, said the Bush administration is going
to make important policy shifts on the envi
ronment.
“What you’re going to see this administra
tion say is that environmental policy will
become a rule of law again and a rule of
process and procedure with credibility,”
Craig said in an interview.
t At her confirmation hearing, Whitman
promised “a strong federal role” on environ
mental protection but said she will review
several regulations issued in the last month of
the Clinton presidency, including expensive
new diesel standards.
Norton, a past advocate of state and prop
erty rights, encountered more opposition in
becoming the government’s chief steward for
half a billion acres of federal land and natural
resources as secretary of the interior.
Republicans said they were confident
Norton could balance preserving and devel
oping those resources.
“She grew up in Colorado; she under
stands what wilderness means,” said Sen.
Bob Smith, R-N.H.
Democrats said they only hope that
Norton, a protggg of Reagan-era Interior
Secretary James Watt, doesn’t live up to their
worst fears.
Georgia legislators quell controversy with new flag design
1
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
ATLANTA - Georgia lawmakers agreed to shrink the
Confederate emblem on the state flag to a tiny symbol
Tuesday, heeding a plea from the governor to apply the
“salve of reconciliation” and avoid the turmoil that swept
South Carolina.
The 34-22 vote in the Georgia Senate virtually consigns
to history a flag that some say symbolizes Southern valor,
but others contend represents slavery. The measure won
House approval last week, and Gov. Roy Barnes promised to
sign it quickly.
“I think the people of Georgia were ready to move on,”
he said. “They were ready for this matter to be resolved.
They did not want a long, drawn-out process like they just
had in South Carolina.”
The rebel banner, added to the flag in 1956 in what some
historians say was a gesture of contempt for school desegre
gation, occupies two-thirds of the current flag.
On the new flag, it will be reduced to one of five historic
flags displayed along the bottom edge, below the state seal.
Weather
TODAY TOMORROW
Mostly cloudy Mostly cloudy
high 34, low 17 high 30, low 14
“We are one people forever woven
together in a tapestry that is Georgia
Gov. Roy Barnes
D-Ga.
On a standard 3-foot by 5-foot flag, the small flags are little
bigger than a dollar bill.
“I'm mad as a hornet," said Bill Cawthon, a member of
the Southern Heritage League. “Our flag will always remain
our flag. We will never accept the new flag.”
It wasn’t immediately clear when the new banners
would fly at state buildings. The design was unveiled just
last week.
In Mississippi, the only state besides Georgia with the
Confederate emblem in its flag, voters will decide in April
Whether to remove the symbol.
As he did before a House vote last week, Barnes
appeared before the Senate to urge the new banner’s adop
tion.
“We are one people forever woven together in a tapestry
that is Georgia,” he said. “We are all one or at least we should
be, and it is our job, our duty and our great challenge to fight
the voices of division and seek the salve of reconciliation.”
The chamber’s highest-ranking black, Democratic
leader Charles Walker, the son of a sharecropper, said: “This
flag issue has divided us. This vote today is about uniting
us."
World/Nation
The Associated Press
■ California
Man arrested after planning
Columbine-style attack
CUPERTINO - Police
arrested a 19-year-old man who
they said had dozens of pipe
bombs, Molotov cocktails and
other weapons and planned to
carry out a "Columbine-style
attack” on a community col
lege.
A1 DeGuzman was arrested
late Monday by San Jose police.
Police said DeGuzman lived
in San Jose and had attended De
Anza College. Police closed the
school Tuesday morning,
believing DeGuzman planned
to blow it up.
The man had 30 pipe
£>ombs, 20 Molotov cocktails,
several weapons and a stock of
ammunition, said sheriff’s
spokesman Capt. Cary Colla.
Police in nearby San Jose
said they learned of the arsenal
Monday from a tip.
■ Washington
Projected federal surplus
grows by a trillion
The Congressional Budget
Office has boosted its projec
tion of the federal surplus to
$3.12 trillion over the next
decade, giving new momentum
to President Bush’s calls for a big
tax cut.
The huge new figure, which
excludes additional surpluses
from Social Security, adds to the
political muscle Alan
Greenspan provided last week
to Bush’s push for a $1.6 trillion,
10-year tax cut
The influential Federal
Reserve chairman said he
believed surplus projections
were now large enough to cut
taxes, altering his previous pref
erence for debt reduction.
The latest CBO estimate,
contained in budget office doc
uments and described Tuesday
by congressional aides on con
dition of anonymity, is nearly $1
trillion higher than the $2.17
trillion the nonpartisan budget
office envisioned just last July.
The new projection covers fiscal
years 2002 through 2011, while
last summer’s estimate was for
2001 through 2010.
■ California
Woman killed by dogs
trained to guard drugs
SAN FRANCISCO - A
woman was attacked and killed
outside her apartment door by
two dogs authorities said had
been bred and trained to guard
illegal drug laboratories.
ftiane Whipple, a 33-year
old lacrosse coach, died Friday
after the five-minute attack
steps away from her door.
The dogs’ owners, lawyers
Robert Noel, 59, and his wife,
Marjorie Knoller, 45, were
Whipple’s next-door neighbors.
No immediate charges were
filed against the couple.
The dogs had been raised as
part of a business run out of
Pelican Bay State Prison by
white supremacist inmates Paid
Schneider, 38, and Dale
Bretches, 44, said Corrections
Department spokesman Russ
Heimerich.
The business bred and
trained dogs to guard criminal
operations such as metham
phetamine labs, Heimerich
said.
Noel and his wife recently
adopted Schneider as their son,
according to court papers.
Noel acquired the dogs
three months ago from Janet
Coumbs, who was raising them
for the inmates, according to
the San Francisco Chronicle.
■ England
Britain keeps morning after
pill available to public
LONDON - Britain’s House
of Lords rejected a bid to stop
sales of the “morning after’” con
traceptive pill, voting their sup
port Monday for a government
strategy to cut Europe’s highest
teen-age pregnancy rate.
Proponents of the ban fear
sales of the pregnancy-prevent
ing drug grant youngsters a
license to do as they please.
Opponents said it would
mean more unwanted pregnan
cies.