6B
Friday, February 10, 1995
NATION/WORLD
UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Bombing suspect enters plea
Iraqi pleads not guilty to terrorist act
The Associated Press
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — Police found a little surprise this week when they arrested the man suspected of masterminding the World Trade Center bombing: explosives in his bag, hidden in toy cars.
"He was found with explosives ... and chemicals used in making bombs," Interior Minister Nasrulah Babar, who supervises Pakistan's police, said yesterday as he described the arrest of Ramzi Ahmed Yousef.
Nabbed Tuesday in Pakistan, Yousef was secretly whisked to the United States in a U.S. government plane. In New York yesterday, he pleaded not guilty to 11 counts relating to the Feb. 26, 1993, bombing of the Manhattan landmark.
That attack on the world's second-tallest building killed six people, injured more than 1,000 others, caused $500 million in damage and introduced Americans to the fear of international terrorism.
Clean-shaven and dressed in a blue double-breasted suit, Yousef
appeared calm and spoke fewer than 10 words during his brief appearance before U.S. District Judge John F. Keenan. "I plead not guilty," he said in English, waving off an interpreter. He told the judge he understood the indictment.
The most serious charges Yousef faces are punishable by life in prison without parole. Yousef was being held without bond until his next court appearance on Wednesday.
Authorities say Yousef, who came to the United States in 1992, bought and mixed the chemicals for the bombs that exploded in a van parked under the 110-story twin towers.
Yousef, who had been living with two other bombing suspects in Jersey City, N.J., escaped the night of the bombing, using an alias to fly to Iraq via Pakistan. His fingerprints were found on two bomb-making manuals seized by authorities and on containers of bomb-making chemicals, authorities say.
Last Sunday, Yousef arrived in Pakistan on a flight from Bangkok, Thailand, according to Babar, the interior minister. He was tailed by plainclothes police for two days, then arrested Tuesday at a Holiday Inn.
"He was under surveillance from the time he arrived," Babar told The Associated Press.
against terrorism." The State Department had posted a $2 million reward for Yousef's capture, but it was not clear if anyone would get the money.
Babar said two suitcases were found in Yousef's hotel room: one empty and the other with the toy cars. But he gave several conflicting statements about the case that could not be immediately reconciled.
President Clinton called the arrest "a major step forward in the fight
The interior minister and other senior officials said initially that Yousef, 27, was carrying a passport and travel documents from his native Iraq. He used the alias of All Khan, one of them said.
But Babar said later Yousef was traveling on a fake Pakistani passport.
The interior minister told the AP that Yousef was immediately handed over to the Americans, who whisked him out of the country Tuesday.
"We turned him over to the Americans, and told them to take him out of here." Babar said.
But he told the British Broadcasting Corp. that before being handed over to U.S. officials, Yousef was interrogated by Pakistani authorities and admitted to being involved in the 1983 Trade Center bombing.
The FBI said it almost nabbed Yousef last month in the Philippines, where he was linked to a failed plot to assassinate the pope, but Yousef slipped out of Manila.
U. S. prosecutors believe Yousef received military training from Afghan rebel groups that maintained bases in western Pakistan.
The Afghan groups received billions of dollars in U.S. aid during the 1980s for their campaign against Soviet troops and the Afghan communist government, which was toppled in 1992. Substantial sums were used to train militants from Arab countries.
Four men were convicted last March of carrying out the trade center bombing, and they received life sentences. Another pleaded guilty to a minor role. A seventh suspect is still a fugitive.
Yousef's apprehension is the second stunning development this week in the prosecution of the alleged terror campaign. On Monday, Siddig Ibrahim Siddig Ali, who had been accused of masterminding a planned wave of terror, confessed and agreed to cooperate with prosecutors.
Ron Kuby, Siddig Ali's lawyer before he switched sides, said he was certain there was no connection between Siddig Ali's cooperation and Yousef's capture.
Some Pakistaniis have protested their country's willingness to extradite suspected drug dealers and terrorists to the United States. But Babar said that was not an issue.
"A terrorist anywhere is a terrorist," he said. "A crime anywhere is a crime against humanity."
New technique kills cancer cells
The Associated Press
The technique may be tested on humans this summer.
WASHINGTON — Researchers experimenting with mice have created a cancer "smart bomb" that attacks and kills leukemia cells without harming normal cells.
F. M. Uckun of the University of Minnesota-Minneapolis said yesterday that the smart bomb was actually an antibody that would attach to a receptor molecule found only on the surface of leukemia cells.
"The antibody is the missile," Uckun said.
Hooked to the missile is the payload — a chemical that actually kills the leukemia cell.
"Normal tissue is not affected," he said. "Only the leukemia cells are going to die."
Uckun, author of a study appearing today in the journal Science, said the same smart bomb technique for the targeted delivery of a killing chemical could also be used for some cancers of the breast, ovaries and brain.
In the study, Uckun and his team injected human leukemia cancer cells into laboratory mice that had no immune system. The cancer, called B-cell precursor leukemia, is the most common form of childhood cancer and the second-most common form of acute leukemia in adults.
The leukemia cells thrived inside
the mice and thus created for the researchers a way of testing the targeted therapy.
Uckun said earlier studies had shown that a molecule called protein tyrosine kinase was essential to the survival of leukemia cells. Studies also have shown that a synthetic chemical called genistein could block the action of the kinase.
But the problem was how to get the genistein inside the cancer cells. And the solution was the smart bomb.
Uckun said that on the surface of the leukemia cells was a molecule receptor called CD19. Experiments showed a laboratory-grown antibody called B43 would attach directly to CD19 but to no other receptor. To make the smart bomb, the researchers joined the B43 antibody with the cancer-killing genistein.
The smart bomb was injected into 10 mice with human leukemia. Their survival rates were compared with 110 untreated mice with leukemia.
All the untreated mice died within 61 days, and all the mice treated with the smart bomb lived for more than 120 days. Later studies on the treated mice showed that 99.999 percent of the leukemia cells were killed.
Other leukemia-infected mice received the chemotherapy that is now used on humans.
He said the findings suggested that a treatment including cycles of the drugs and then the smart bomb could be very effective against leukemia.
Doctors split on nomination
The Associated Press
WASHINGTON — Congress' five doctors are divided on the nomination of Henry W. Foster Jr. to be surgeon general, reflecting splits not only between parties but in attitudes toward abortion.
Freshman Republican Reps. David Weldon of Florida and Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, both outspoken foes of abortion, said Foster was unsuitable to be the country's chief public health advocate.
But Rep. Jim McDermott, a Democrat and psychiatrist from Seattle, said that in performing abortions Foster did what any obstetrician might do.
Two other doctors in Congress, Sen. Bill Frist of Tennessee and Rep. Greg Ganske of Iowa, are reserving judgment but are voicing concerns about the varying accounts Foster and the White House have given.
"There's no claim that this man is not a good physician or anything else" he said. "From my standpoint, the decision shouldn't be based on whether he did this or that kind of thing. It's just another bogus argument that they're coming up with."
Ganske, a surgeon from Des Moines, who supports a woman's right to abortion in the first trimester, said in a statement: "We may find that Foster has not leveled with the White House. The issue then becomes a matter of trust. If Foster has not been
forthright with his background, then I would certainly call into question the nomination."
Frist said it was unfair to focus on that issue, but he wanted to know the precise number of abortions Foster performed and why they were performed.
McDermott questioned whether some would blackball a physician who engaged in fetal-tissue research to find a cure for juvenile diabetes.
"Whatever his particular professional responsibility was, as long as it's ethical and within the law, to me that's its immaterial," said the former Foreign-Service psychiatrist. "To start trying to find a politically correct doctor who believes X, Y or Z simply to take away from the office."
Coburn — a family practitioner who delivered up to 300 babies a year in Muskogee, Okla, and lectured teens in schools and churches on abstinence — said, "Political correctness is the reason we have an AIDS epidemic today."
Coburn does not believe that being in favor of abortion rights automatically disqualifies someone for surgeon general.
"But I absolutely don't think that's what we need in this country at this time," said Coburn, who backs abortion only to save the life of the mother. "The safe sex message has not worked. It's full of holes. It's like sending kids out to skydive with parachutes that only open five times
out of six.
"That's exactly what a condom is for a teenager. It only works five out of six times."
Weldon is even blunter in dismissing Clinton's choice: No one who performed abortions should be surgeon general.
"It's the taking of human life," said Weldon, an internist. "Granted, it's not like shooting your neighbor with a sawed-off shotgun, but there's nobody in the medical profession who can justifiably stand up and say, 'It's not human. It's not alive.'"
He called Foster — who ran a program in Nashville that encourage teen abstinence but also distributed condoms — an open advocate for the teaching of use of condoms to children to prevent teen-age pregnancy, venereal disease and the spread of AIDS.
"That is very, very irresponsible," he said.
"We had a sexual revolution in the 1960s that basically said that the old, Judeo-Christian philosophy that marriage being the only appropriate place for sex was thrown out the window, and we developed this free-sex philosophy in our culture," Weldon said. "The birth-control pill helped usher that in, and legalized abortion kind of put the final stamp on it.
"So what do we have to show for it? We have an unprecedented epidemic of teen-age pregnancy, venereal disease and now AIDS." he said.
Solo Atlantic swim may not float
Associated Press
OISTINS, Barbados — They laughed at Guy Delage when he set off to swim the Atlantic, his life riding on a high-tech kickboard and a supply raft bearing a fax machine and foie gras for New Year's Eve.
When he struggled onto the white sand beach yesterday, his odyssey done, some were still laughing. They wondered if he'd really done much swimming at all. But they had to admit that whether he was really out for science or publicity, 45 days of dodging sharks, reefs and 10-foot waves was at least, well, an adventure.
Delage, 42, was all elan when he set out Dec. 16 from the Cape Verde Islands, off the west coast of Africa. He said he was eager to experience "absolute solitude" and "a real risk of dying." He vowed: "Better to die in the jaws of a shark than in bed."
It was a considerably chastened Delage who came ashore yesterday in his gray and black wetsuit. Delage said his adventure brought him depression, fatigue, loneliness and danger. The sea paid him a final indignity Wednesday by slamming him on a reef.
There was plenty of indignity from sports journalists, too. And plenty of questions about whether he really swam the 2,400-mile route, or just rode on his accompanying 15-foot
In daily position reports sent by radio satellite from his raft, Delage said he held onto a kickboard as he struggled through high waves for up to 10 hours a day, sleeping on the raft by night. The arrangements, along with his using flippers while in the water, prompted some condescending comments when he set out on his trip.
The French newspaper Le Monde commented in December that the venture puts Delage in "that book of records — in between the world accordion champion and the person who can eat the most snails."
Delage's average speed at certain points was 1.8 mph, according to the Paris-based Sector Oceanantes support group.
A column in Wednesday's Le Figaro newspaper in Paris questioned the logic of Delage's swim but celebrated his tenacity.
The voyage was full of danger. He reported shark sightings and at one point lost his supply raft for 21/2 hours and became exhausted trying to retrieve it.
supply raft across strong westward currents.
Despite the lack of verification on his journey, the sheer human adventure of crossing the Atlantic alone captured the imagination of wellwishers here.
"At first Frenchmen thought he was
But a tight knot of sharp-elbowed French journalists, many of them saying they had bought "exclusive" rights from Delage for his story, left a sour impression that something else had prompted his adventure.
As Delage kicked toward shore in this south coast town, his wife, Katherine, sobbed in joy. Nine-year-old Thomas broke away from the family and sprinted back and forth on the waterline, waving the French tricolor.
Katherine breast-stroked out to meet him, and Guy took off his face mask to kiss her. Then he hugged his eldest son and 5-year-old Clement, whom he carried onto the beach.
crazy, but now we respect his inner strength," tourist Pierre Gobin said as he and about 1,000 others watched Delage swim ashore.
Years earlier, he flew across the ocean in an ultralight plane.
"It's finished for me," Delage told The Associated Press. "I will do another thing now."
Delage, speaking through a thick, Walrus-like mustache, looked weary and wary as he approached a horde of international journalists and well-wishers—his first extended face-to-face exposure to people since he left.
But he relaxed as he gave interviews, and his wife sighed in relief.
"I'm just delighted," she said, "that the trip is over."
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