WEDNESDAY, JUNE 18,2003
NEWS IN BRIEF
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN = 19
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gram in stores display models who are mostly white, as does the company's catalog, the lawsuit alleges. The company also encouraged recruitment from overwhelmingly white fraternities and sororities, it said.
When it did hire minorities,it channeled them to stock room and overnight shifts and reduced their hours,the suit said.
Mother pleads guilty to using twins to commit bank robbery
TOMS RIVER, N.J. — The mother of two teenage girls accused of robbing a bank last year has admitted her role in the crime, saying she drove the twin sisters to the bank and knew they had a toy gun.
Kathleen Wortman Jones pleaded guilty Monday to armed robbery and using a juvenile to commit a criminal offense. Prosecutors said the family staged the Oct. 29 robbery at the Sun National Bank branch so they could make a mortgage payment on their home.
Jones, 36, faces up to 30 years in prison when she is sentenced Aug. 15.
Jones said she drove her oldest daughter and one of the then 14-year-old twins to the bank, but the older girl backed out and Jones returned later that day with both twins. The girls then allegedly stole about $3,050.
The twins, now 15, are charged with armed robbery, theft and weapons offenses and are being held in a youth detention center. Their now 17-year-old sister received probation.
EPA decontaminates offices after 2001 anthrax attack
WASHINGTON The Environmental Protection Agency spent $27 million over three months to decontaminate Capitol Hill offices after the anthrax attack of October, 2001, examining 10,000 samples from 26 buildings, according to a congressional report released Tuesday.
On Oct. 15, 2001, just a month after the Sept. 11 attacks, an anthrax-bearing letter was opened in the office of then-Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle (D.S.D.). Traces of the toxin were found in other areas of the Capitol, apparently the result of the exposure of other letters in the mail system, and thousands of workers were treated with antibiotics as a precaution.
Five people around the country, including two postal workers, died from the attacks, but no Capitol Hill employees were harmed.
Seven of the 26 buildings from which
samples were taken were found to have traces of anthrax.
WORLD
World Health Organization says SARS stopped in tracks
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia — The chief of the World Health Organization declared Tuesday that SARS has been "stopped dead in its tracks," but experts said China held the key to whether it resurfaces.
Gro Harlem Brundtland, the WHO director-general, told a conference that the world has stopped the spread of severe acute respiratory syndrome in the nearly 100 days since international health authorities sounded the first global alert.
David Heymann, WHO executive director on communicable diseases, said the question of a big SARS reappearance depended largely on China, where it originated. Chinese officials acknowledge at least 5,327 probable cases and 346 deaths as of Monday.
"China certainly is the key to this outbreak in many respects," Heymann said. "Particularly because China has been able to contain this outbreak."
SARS has killed about 800 people and sickened more than 8,400 since first being detected in southern China in November. New cases spiked in March and April, but have plunged in recent weeks.
Thief disappears after stealing 7,680 new Harry potter books
LONDON—A thief stole a truck with thousands of copies of the new Harry Potter book from outside a warehouse just days before the international release of the next installment in the popular series, police said yesterday.
The thief stole the tractor-trailer and the copies of the much-anticipated Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix on Sunday night from the Deacon Trading Estate in northern England, where the books awaited distribution.
Merseyside police found the truck, without the books,the next morning about 20 miles from the warehouse. Authorities have made no arrests and have no suspects.
The truck contained 7,680 books, with an estimated retail value $220,000. The novel is scheduled for release Saturday.
Internet retailer Amazon.com said it had received more than 1 million advance orders for the book. Rowling's four previous Potter novels have sold more than 190 million copies in 55 languages and 200 countries.
IRAQ
New courts adopted to purge Iraqi loyalists
The Associated Press
BAGHDAD, Iraq — U.S. authorities announced creation of a new criminal court yesterday and a panel to purge judges loyal to Saddam Hussein. The U.S. military said a sweep of loyalist strongholds resulted in 400 arrests and an American soldier was killed in Baghdad.
The reforms announced by L. Paul Bremer, the top U.S. official in Iraq, are designed to upgrade a judicial system that catered to Saddam's desires rather than the rule of law.
The two new authorities — the Judicial Review Committee and the Central Criminal Court — are important steps in giving the Iraqi people a justice system they can trust and respect, Bremer said.
"The Review Committee's task is to clean up Iraq's judiciary," he said. "If the Committee finds any judge or prosecutor who violates these standards, the committee will dismiss him or her from office."
The committee will consist of three Iraqis and three members of the occupying coalition and will finish its initial work in three or four months, Bremer said.
The criminal court will help the judiciary crack down on criminals undermining Iraq's security and reconstruction. They "will be brought to justice without delay," said Bremer.
Some judges and lawyers scoffed at what they called U.S. interference in their courts.
"The Americans are an occupation force and we are the source of one of the oldest codes of law — Hammurabi's Code," judge Qassem Ayyah said. "It's like teaching a driver how to drive."
Iraq's judiciary has not recovered from the war. Most courts have been looted or destroyed and remain closed. Bremer made his announcement at the reopening of the Iraqi Judicial College, which was looted during the war. It was renovated with U.S. money.
Despite attempts to stop loyalists, an Army soldier riding in a Humvee with the 1st Armored Division's 1st Brigade was shot and killed by a sniper in Baghdad late Monday.
The U.S. military said raids began Sunday on Iraqi homes and businesses in Baghdad and northern Iraq were meant to "isolate and defeat remaining pockets of resistance."
Liberian government signs cease-fire with rebel forces
ACCRA, Ghana一Liberia's government and rebels signed a cease-fire pact yesterday in the country's three-year civil war, which escalated in recent weeks with insurgents fighting up to the edge of the West African nation's capital.
All sides said just before the signing that the deal included a provision that President Charles Taylor resign within 30 days. Authorities did not immediately release a copy of the signed accord, however, and with the ceremony still under way it was impossible to immediately confirm that the key provision remained.
As the Ghana talks opened early this month, a U.N.-backed tribunal indicted him for alleged war crimes in neighboring Sierra Leone.
The past three years of rebellion have uprooted more than 1.3 million Liberians, sending hundreds of thousands of them fleeing into neighboring countries.Rights groups said both sides in the war had killed, raped, robbed and kidnapped civilians.
The government has lost control of all but 40 percent of the country to the rebels over the past year.
Sniper kills American soldier in Humvee while patrolling Iraq
KHALDIYAH,Iraq — A sniper killed a U.S. soldier on patrol in Baghdad with a single shot, the military said Tuesday.
The sniper shot the soldier from the 1st Armored Division's 1st Brigade in the back as he rode in a Humvee about 11:30 p.m. Monday, said bridegale spokesman Lt. Alex Kasarda. The gunman escaped.
Military officials said it was likely the bullet penetrated the soldier's flak vest, possibly by entering at an angle that missed an armored ceramic plate. The soldier's name was withheld until his family could be notified.
About 50 American soldiers have died from hostile fire or in accidents in Iraq since the United States declared major combat operations over on May1.
The Associated Press