Section A·Page 14
The University Daily Kansan
Wednesday, December 1, 1990
Nation
Cuban boy caught in international custody struggle
The Associated Press
MIAMI — Days after he was rescued off the coast of Florida, a 5-year-old Cuban boy is starting to ask questions about his future, now caught in a political tug-of-war between Cuba and the United States.
"He's concerned," said cousin Marisleysis Gonzalez. She said Elian wants to know whether he'll be sent back to Cuba or be allowed to remain in the United States. "He told me, 'I don't want to go back, I don't want to go back.'"
Elian Gonzalez fled Cuba with his mother and stepfather in a small powerboat that sank during the 90-mile crossing to Florida. Nine people died, including his mother and stepfather. Elian was found alone Thanksgiving Day, clinging to inner tubes off the Florida coast near Fort Lauderdale.
The boy's relatives have been careful about talking to him about the two days he spent afloat after the overloaded, 17-foot powerboat sank. The subject is not brought up unless Elian initiates the discussion, family members said.
For now, Elian spends his days playing with new toys and getting acquainted with three young cousins about his age. A stream of family and friends have visited with gifts ranging from jewelry to jigsaw puzzles.
Family members here want him to stay, saying he will have a better life off the communist island. His father has demanded he be returned to Cuba.
Elian was told that his mother was missing and not that she had drowned. But as of yesterday, the boy's lawyer, Spencer Eig, said Elian was aware of his mother's death. Eig declined to elaborate.
"I'm tired," Gonzalez said in a telephone interview from her home in the Little Havana neighborhood of Miami. "I just want to clean my house."
proven too much for the boy's relatives. They said yesterday that they would no longer talk to reporters about Elan.
The crush of media attention has
He has become the center of an international custody battle. From politicians to exile groups, everyone has an opinion about what's best for Elian.
"If people are taking that perilous journey ... my feeling is he should stay here," Gov. Jeb Bush said.
The Cuban American National Foundation distributed flyers with a picture of Elian and the phrase "Another child victim of Fidel Castro" to delegates attending the World Trade Organization meeting in Seattle.
Elian's father, Juan Miguel Gonzalez, already has called on Cuba's Foreign Ministry to help him file a request demanding that his son be returned.
"I want my son to be returned to me as soon as possible." Gonzalez said in a telephone interview from his home in the coastal community of Cardenas, east of Havana. "That is all I am going to say because I am not giving any more interviews."
Eig has said that he would like to see the case resolved amicably outside of a courtroom by working out an arrangement with the boy's father, so he could visit Elian in the United States.
But unless the family can prove the boy's father is an unfit parent, a state family court judge would have to return him to his father because he is the remaining biological parent, said Bernard Perlmutter, director of the University of Miami's Children and Youth Law Clinic.
Bradley talks issues, gets hip
The Associated Press
DERRY, N.H. — With a new photogenic-blue dress shirt and individualized flattery for voters, Bill Bradley appears to be borrowing the trademark styles of Al Gore even as he tries to sharpen policy differences with the vice president.
Bradley's town-hall meeting yesterday on health care, his foreign policy discussion at Tufts University on Monday and a guncontrol forum today in Ohio are all meant to punch up his argument that Gore has shown little commitment or accomplishment on these issues.
At Tufts, he cast the Clinton Gore administration's foreign policy as shortsighted and driven by polls and focus groups to score domestic points.
In Manchester yesterday, Bradley said Gore has turned his back on the goal of providing health care to all Americans.
After weeks of decrying Gore's scare tactics on Social Security
and Medicare, Bradley told a WNDS-TV voter forum Monday night that he regards both programs as sacred trusts.
discussion by reasonable people out to shore up the retirement program for the next 75 years will have to consider some controversial options:
But, he added, any bipartisan
Bradley; vies for the Democratic presidential nomination.
higher-yielding assets, allow more immigrants in, so more people will be paying, use a part of the (federal budget) surplus, or you have higher levels of economic growth," Bradley said.
Gore's rival campaign for next year's Democratic presidential
nomination has seized on Social Security and Medicare as vulnerable spots for Bradley, whose voting record in the Senate and early campaign remarks were spotty on questions of privatizing Social Security, raising the eligibility age for benefits and adjusting Medicare premiums according to recipient income.
Bradley clarified in recent weeks that he does not support either means testing or a retirement-age increase.
Meanwhile, Bradley, determined to connect with voters on a personal level, debuted his stylistic touches reminiscent of Gore.
Bradley greeted his seven student questioners at Tufs with steady eye contact and an attentive response or something witty.
After Luke Noy bemoaned isolationism, the student popped right back to his seat. Bradley interrupted himself. "You disappeared," he told a startled Noy. "That's OK. I can see you now. Just so I know where you're seated, so I can talk to you."
Valujet mechanic faces fewer charges
The Associated Press
MIAMI — A jet-repair mechanic was cleared yesterday of eight hazardous materials charges in the criminal trial stemming from the crash of Valuet Flight 592.
Prosecutors failed to prove mechanic Eugene Florence recklessly caused the shipping of oxygen generators blamed for fueling a cargo fire that downed the DC-9 in May 1996, U.S. District Judge James Lawrence King ruled.
Florence still faces one count of conspiracy and two counts of lying on repair records in the trial of the airline's repair contractor, SabreTech, and two former employees.
The judge's decision drew a gradually widening smile from Florence, who had no comment afterward.
later said court rules barred her from talking about such a nice happening.
His lawyer, Jane Cosmwitz,
threw her head back in relief and
Florence removed generators from ValuJet planes and signed a work card stating he had placed required shipping caps on the used generators. SabreTech shipping department employees packaged and delivered the generators to the flight.
King reserved a ruling on a different repair-record charge against SabreTech Vice President Dahiel Gonzalez, but all other charges in the 24-count indictment stand.
If convicted, Florence faces up to 15 years on the reduced charges. Gonzalez faces up to 55 years in prison and $2.7 million in fines if convicted.
SabreTech could face up to $6 million in fines plus restitution to victims' families.
defense lawyers opened their case with testimony that the lights, air conditioners and public-address systems failed three times before takeoff on the next-to-last flight of the doomed DC-9.
A "go-no go" warning light in the cockpit was still on when the pilot closed the door with the jet on the runway before takeoff, said Donald Forman, a retired boilermaker flying from Atlanta to Miami for a cruise.
Following the judge's ruling.
Fellow passenger Pamela Hettinger also recalled the lights failing three times after pulling away from the gate and watching a mechanic work on galley floor and wall panels on the next-to-last light. The testimony supported the defense contention that electrical problems rather than oxygen generators in cargo could have caused the crash that killed all 110 people aboard.
Background checks keep guns out of wrong hands
The Associated Press
WASHINGTON—More than 160,000 people were prevented from purchasing firearms during the first year of computerized instant criminal background checks on would-be gun buyers, the Justice Department said yesterday. Nearly three out of four of them were convicted felons.
Under the National Instant Criminal Background Check System that began Dec. 1, 1998, about half the checks were done by the FBI and the remainder by states.
"The system has proven to be highly effective, performing more than 8.7 million checks in its first 12 months," said Attorney General Janet Reno. "Keeping guns out of the wrong hands has been critical to the success of our strategy for reducing gun violence."
She said it had contributed to the unprecedented 7 1/2-year decline in crime in this country.
The FBI said 71 percent of the checks it handled resulted in immediate approvals for the gun sales, with these checks taking an average of 30 seconds once the relevant data was entered by gun store sales clerks. Checks have been completed within two hours on 95 percent of all potential sales. The FBI and states have up to three days to complete the checks and halt the sale, or the gun can be sold.
Of the prospective buyers denied firearms in FBI checks, 72 percent were known felons, 12 percent convicted of domestic violence, 4 percent were abusers of illegal drugs, 3 percent were subject to domestic violence restraining orders and 3 percent were fugitives from justice.
The remaining 6 percent included the mentally ill, those with dishonorable military discharges, those who have renounced U.S. citizenship and illegal allens. Some states have other additional categories of prohibited purchasers.
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