News Currents

UNITED STATES

Texas billionaire Ross Perot, who is considering an independent run for the presidency, said Sunday that he favors higher taxes for the rich. "When you have been as fortunate as I have been, you certainly can contribute more than people who are just trying to make ends meet,..." he said.... The trade magazine Aviation Week and Space Technology was expected to publish this week results of its one-year investigation into the Defense Department's strategy for short-circuiting the massive power stations arou nd Baghdad and also protecting its pilots from a huge network of surface-to-air missiles. Speculation centers around Tomahawk cruise missiles carrying spools of thin carbon wire to short-circuit Iraq's electronics. JUSTICE

Three years after the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Scotland, a trial began yesterday in New York to determine whether the defunct airline is liable. One question centers on failing to follow federal security procedures, including failing to match bags with passengers.... Former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev says he is willing to testify about a massacre in Lithuania that helped trigger the collapse of the Soviet Union and his own downfall. Lithuanian President Vytautas Landsbergis said that Gor bachev's willingness to cooperate could be a result of letters from Landsbergis to Russian President Boris Yeltsin. AFRICA

Winnie Mandela gave South Africans a rare glimpse into her personal history, saying on an extensive TV interview that years of state harassment during Nelson Mandela's 27-year imprisonment taught a "little countryside girl how to hate." She was 28 when her husband of four years began a life jail term. In the interview on Sunday, Mrs. Mandela said she would continue to pursue her political career. She has been sentenced to six years in prison for kidnapping and being an accessory to assaults against four youths but is free on bail pending appeal. LATIN AMERICA AND THE CARIBBEAN

Manslaughter charges will be brought against nine state officials who did nothing to prevent a devastating sewer explosion in Guadalajara, Mexican Attorney General Ignacio Morales Lechuga said Sunday. He said that the main cause of last Wednesday's disaster, in which up to 250 people died, was a extensive gasoline leak from a pipeline owned and run by the state-owned monolith Petroleos Mexicanos.... Peru said yesterday it had repeatedly complained to US officials that American antidrug planes ignored loc al air traffic regulations before two Peruvian jets fired on a US Air Force plane Friday, military sources said Sunday. The sources said US antinarcotics agents in Peru were known to disregard assigned air traffic routes, ignore altitude regulations, and fly in areas not covered by joint US-Peruvian accords for fighting the drug trade.