News In Brief
With the chief of watch looking on, a civilian pulled the levers that propelled the submarine USS Greeneville to the ocean's surface, where it sank a Japanese fishing trawler, officials confirmed. The civilian reportedly was part of a 16-person tour arranged by a retired admiral. The Navy also acknowledged that the sub was about 3,000 yards outside a recommended testing area when it ran the surfacing drill off the coast of Hawaii. The Coast Guard was to consider ending its six-day search for nine missing people from the trawler.
Suspicions that money influenced ex-President Clinton's last-minute pardon of Marc Rich simmered as a federal prosecutor in New York launched a criminal probe into Rich's records. US Attorney Mary Jo White said Clinton pardoned him without consulting her office. The billionaire fugitive was indicted by that office in 1983 for fraud. Clinton again defended the pardon in a statement issued through his transition office.
The trial for the 1998 bombing of two US embassies in Africa continued with two more witnesses linking a key defendant to Osama bin Laden, the Saudi political dissident and suspected terrorism-financier accused of engineering the attacks. An Egyptian pilot testified that Wadih El-Hage, one of four defendants on trial in New York, recruited him in 1993 to buy a private jet for bin Laden. According to the other witness, El-Hage went to Tanzania in 1996 to identify the remains of a man believed to have been bin Laden's military commander.
The Senate Ethics Committee OK'd Hillary Rodham Clinton's $8 million book deal, which was sealed before she took her oath of office to represent New York. She submitted the agreement to the panel's review to clear up questions surrounding it, aides said.
Evolution was back in Kansas classrooms a year and a half after the state's Board of Education voted to remove it from teachings on the origin of man. New state science standards will include references to Charles Darwin's theory of natural selection, which traces all life back to simple forms that began evolving billions of years ago. Kansas, which faced international rebuke for its 1999 decision, is one of several states to challenge evolution's accepted place in science. Above, board member Steve Abrams, who cast one of three dissenting votes, argues with Mary Bingman, a concerned citizen.
The number of households seeking government help with soaring heating bills is up by more than 25 percent from last winter, a nationwide survey found. Despite $2.26 million that the federal government has distributed for heating assistance, states from Maine to New Mexico have said they can't meet the mounting requests, which are submitted under a program for low-income families.
(c) Copyright 2001. The Christian Science Publishing Society