Florida Today from Cocoa, Florida • Page 24

11 hrnWM I STATE NEWS INSIDE LOCAL NEWS INSIDE Melbourne City Council faces about $1 .3 million in unfunded needs outlined by the city manager in his proposed 1996-1997 city budget, 1B. Attorneys and officials are unsure how to deal with a new law that puts nonexpiring death warrant for condemned inmates into place, 6B. SUNDAY, August 25, 1996 Richard Sellers, news editor, 242-3622, 3-1 1 p.m.: Insurance company wins ruling in spying case; Firm accused of hiring private eye to dig up dirt on a state regulator LL While Bankers' actions in hiring the inves tigator may be disagreeable, such activities are unrelated to the provisions of the Florida Insurance Code. The Florida Legislature has: not made such surveillance a violation of the Florida Insurance Code. 5 5 Nikki Circuit Court judge tapping the McCarty's home telephone.

Bankers officials said they wanted to dig up dirt on McCarty, who they said treated the company unfairly, but Rayner and Bankers have said the company did not request or authorize a wiretap. "It hasn't been a pleasant experience for us this last couple of months," Bankers President David K. Meehan said. "It's always gratifying to be on the positive end of an order." Insurance officials don't plan on dropping the issue, however. "We're going to ask for an expedited appeal of this order," said Dennis Silverman, an attorney Bankers admitted hiring Rayner last year to spy on Kevin McCarty, who once oversaw a state-run insurance pool with which Bankers wants to do business.

But Bankers said the department was trying to abuse its regulatory powers to publicly embarrass the company. Clark ruled the department is trying to investigate matters beyond its jurisdiction. Rayner pleaded guilty this summer in federal court to wire Associated Press TALLAHASSEE It may have been In poor taste for a St. Petersburg insurance company to hire a private eye to dig up dirt on a state regulator, but it didn't violate any state insurance laws, a Leon County judge ruled. Circuit Judge Nikki Clark on Friday denied the state Insurance Department's bid to force Bankers Insurance Co.

officials to testify and supply records about the hiring of Tallahassee private investigator Peter Rayner. for the department. "We have an obligation to determine whether there have been insurance code violations that reflect upon the fitness and trustworthiness of Bankers to dd: business in Florida, and that's, what we're going to do." Evidence sheds light on shipwreck him Irani No incidents reported with Cuban air force fe: 1 y. 1 FLORIDA BRIEFS Man, 52, gets 35 years for stalking ex-girlfriend FLORIDA TODAY wires ORLANDO Judge Dorothy Russell wasn't going to make the same mistake twice. A stalker she let out on probation only to have him again harass his ex-girlfriend was sentenced to 35 years in prison on Friday.

It was another blow to Robert Stella, who had been shot when he tried again to make contact with the object of his desire. Judy Davis has accused Stella of stalking her since March 1995, including breaking a car window and sneaking into her house. In November, Stella, 52, was sentenced to 15 years of probation after promising Russell an Orange County circuit judge, he would leave Davis alone. Six days later, Stella was arrested again after showing up at Davis' home in Conway, north of Orlando. This time, though, Davis was armed with a handgun to protect herself and she shot Stella in the chest and arm.

Davis was not charged for shooting her ex-boyfriend. Police: Boy threatens teacher ORLANDO Ten-year-old Jonathan Shad-dix wanted to be a police officer so much so he was willing to endanger his teacher to be able to save her. Orange County sheriffs deputies said the boy's plot was foiled when he told another teacher at Pine Hills Elementary School of his plans. Shaddix and his 9-year-old friend, LaJuan Sims, were charged with conspiracy to commit murder. A loaded semiautomatic handgun was found in LaJuan's desk.

Jonathan had three folding pocket knives in his backpack, the Sheriffs Office said. The boys, both emotionally handicapped fourth graders, were angry at their teacher for removing them from class Thursday after they misbehaved, school officials and deputies sheriffs' said. They planned to bring a gun to school and shoot the teacher, 30-year-old Michelle Wixson, Orange County Deputy Mike Crabb said. City wants to buy base property ORLANDO The city has decided to offer $3 million to the Pentagon for Orlando's Naval Training Center, which is shutting down by 1998. Navy officials tentatively have agreed to sell the base to Orlando, which plans to work with developers to turn the property into a village of homes, offices and businesses.

But the price may be too low. And a Southwest Florida family also wants rights to the property, complicating the picture. "The Navy will suffer sticker shock," said Herb Smetheram, director of the city's reuse commission. The $3 million offer represents a fraction of what it will cost to make use of the base, according to a city study. The city calculates that redevelopment will cost $49 million, a figure that includes demolition and infrastructure.

In return, the city expects 15-year development revenues to cover the $49 million and bring in an additional $22 million. Probe begins into prison death FORT LAUDERDALE The Broward County Sheriffs Office will investigate whether an unruly prisoner died as a result of being injected with a tranquilizer to quiet her. Valerie Young, 22, of Deerfield Beach died in the North Broward Detention Center died Wednesday morning. She was found unconscious in her cell by a deputy making rounds with a nurse at the jail. She was taken to Broward General Medical Center, where she was declared dead.

The nurse at the detention center gave Young a shot of Thorazine on Tuesday night to keep her from shouting, singing and being generally disruptive, said Howard Finkel-stein, chief assistant pubic defender. Thorazine is a powerful drug used to reduce symptoms of psychotic disorders such as schizophrenia and for the short-term treatment of severe behavioral disorders in children-It can cause involuntary muscle spasms and facial twitches. Finkelstein said Young's death is an example of the failure to place mentally ill people in proper settings. "This case epitomizes why mentally ill, nonviolent people should not be in jail," he said. Neither the Broward Sheriffs Office nor medical officials would confirm that Young received Thorazine.

i i (ly s-rT-f? A Archive, breastplate found on bottom of Pensacola Bay Associated Press PENSACOLA Documents from a Spanish archive and a soldier's breastplate recovered by divers are providing new insights about the wreck of a 16th century ship embedded in the sandy bottom of Pensacola Bay. Marine archaeologists discovered the shipwreck in 1992, but only after three years of excavation and study were they able to conclude it was part of a Spanish expedition that established Florida's first European colony in 1559. They, however, remain unsure exactly which ship it is. But a document recently discovered in Seville, Spain, provides an intriguing clue. "It had to do with the worldly goods that belonged to the shipmaster of what seems to have been the flagship," said Texas archival researcher Denise C.

Lakey. "He died when his ship wrecked on a sandbar at Ochuse, which is the word they used for Pensacola Bay, during a hurricane. He drowned on that sandbar." The document identifies the captain as Diego Lopez and his ship as El Jesus. It lists his possessions salvaged from the wreck but doesn't give any details about what happened. Until it was found, however, researchers had not known the name of the flagship or that it had wrecked on a sandbar, Lakey said in a telephone interview from her Dallas home.

"To me, those two little pieces of information are just incredibly important, even though you can't take that and say, 'OK, the archaeological site we found we're certain is El It'll take some more facts and surmising to put it all together." The shipwreck near Pensacola's Emanuel Point is in shallow water and has damage indicating it sank during a violent storm, said state underwater archaeologist Roger Smith. It was a large vessel, probably a galleon, which likely would have been the type used as the flagship. Letters to and from expedition leader Tristan de Luna indicated seven ships were lost in the hurricane. They included an unnamed vessel referred to only as "the galleon of Andonaguin," probably the owner's name, Lakey said. Previously published documents Associated Press MIAMI An exile fliers' group returned to the skies over the Florida Straits on Saturday to patrol for Cuban rafters and drop wreaths in remembrance of four comrades shot down in February by Cuban fighter jets.

The fliers for Brothers to the Rescue dropped their wreaths in the Straits about 20 miles off the coast of Cuba but cut their trip short when they encountered thunderstorms. The two planes, each with four people aboard, saw no rafters during the flight that lasted just over three hours. "We returned, because by not doing so we would have yielded to state terrorism from Cuba and political harassment from the United States," said Brothers founder Jose Basulto, who flew as a passenger in one of the planes. 'Today, we return because the underlying causes of exodus are still In effect and the loss of life continues." Basulto's pilot's license has been revoked for previous violations of Cuban airspace. Sylvia Iriondo, a Brothers volunteer who was in Basulto's plane last February when the two accompanying planes were shot down, said: "The pain doesn't go away and neither does the promise to help the rafters." The fliers group said it doesn't plan to publicize its trips, so Cuban rafters wont be lured into the Straits on those days.

The exile group suspended flights after the shootdown incident, which touched off an international furor and prompted stiffer U.S. economic sanctions against Cuba. Cuban and U.S. officials had warned the fliers this weekend to stay in international airspace and avoid a further confrontation. In Washington, State Department spokesman Glyn Davies said the government has warned the group to remain in international airspace.

"Obviously, Americans are free to express themselves and, you know, if there were to be a wreath dropping in international waters, that would not pose a problem," Davies said. "But the warnings that we issued back after the shootdown by the Cuban government still stand in terms of taking care not to enter Cuban airspace, Cuban territorial waters." An average of two dozen Cubans are plucked from boats headed to the United States each month, said Petty Officer Mark Mackowiak, spokesman for the Coast Guard in Miami, which covers all of the Caribbean and most of Florida. On Aug. 12, a 47-year-old mother and a 16-month-old infant drowned after a boat carrying 31 Cubans capsized in the Florida Straits. AP CONSERVATOR JOHN BRATTON sprays plastic foam around an encrusted breastplate recovered from a 16th century Spanish shipwreck to hold the fragile piece in place as he prepares to slowly remove the encrustation at the state's shipwreck lab in Pensacola.

The Florida Division of Historical Resources has commissioned Lakey, who works for Ships of Discovery, an archaeological research group based in Corpus Texas, to coordinate archival research. A researcher she hired in Spain found the Lopez papers in the Archive of the Indies and sent a microfilm copy to her. They are among records on the possessions of people who died in the New World but left heirs in Spain. The goods were sold and the proceeds sent to the heirs. See SHIPWRECK, 7B list 11 ships of the Luna expedition, but El Jesus is not among them.

Those documents may be incorrect or incomplete, she said. Another galleon, San Juan de Ulua, had been sent back to Mexico, where the expedition originated, before the hurricane struck in September 1559, two months after the colonists arrived. Wracked by dissension and unsuccessful in finding gold or other riches, the Spanish abandoned Pensacola after two years. They did not re-establish a colony here until more than a century later. UM plans acupuncture programs HEALTH of hypertension and ulcers, as well as back pain and possibly even help in substance abuse treatment.

Acupuncture is one of the many alternative health treatments now gaining acceptance, said Sanford I. Cohen, senior vice chairman of the department of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at the university. "We have had the interest for many years, but only more recently has there been data accumulating about the roots by which some of the influences from the brain affect the rest of the body," said Cohen, who is helping organize the new program. Medical schools, including those at Harvard and Stanford, have started offering courses In acupuncture. This spring, the Food and Drug Administration reclassi fied acupuncture needles as medical devices for general use rather than experimental.

In addition, acupuncture studies are securing more research money. Western scientists have just begun to scratch the surface when it comes to determining whether and how acupuncture works. The UM program aims to change that. Most acupuncture schools train students to perform acupuncture. The UM program will be one of the first to prepare students to conduct scientific research on the ancient science.

"The problem of not having acupuncture in the medical setting is that it doesn't get researched," Cohen said. The university's program will offer students a mix of classroom and clinical education. Upon graduation, students will receive a certificate in acupuncture and be eligible to sit for Associated Press CORAL GABLES If you feel like you're sitting on needles and pins, the University of Miami has a solution for you needles and pins. The university's medical school is planning a training program in acupuncture for physicians and other health care professionals. Organizers hope to recruit students for the three-year course as early as this winter with classes starting in the fall of 1997.

And this fall, the school plans to launch a study into the effectiveness of Chinese healing art that at one time was sneered at by many in the mainstream medical establishment. No longer is acupuncture, which relies on needles to restore energy, considered quackery. The treatment can be used to relieve stress, especially In cases AP 16 Fantasy 5 tickets worth $21 ,554 each Associated Press TALLAHASSEE Sixteen people matched all five numbers in Friday's Fantasy 5 game, and each can collect $21,554.68 In addition, 1,717 people won $33 for picking four of five, and 35,054 people won $4.50 for picking three. Friday's numbers: 5-1 1-18-20-24. Lottery results, 1B.

DR. JANET KONEFAL of the University of Miami School of Medicine performs acupuncture on Sara Sanchez, who suffers from fibromyalgia. the national licensing exam. Janet Konefal, a UM associate professor of psychiatry, says she is participating in a multi-site study looking at whether acupuncture can wean addicts from cocaine. "Our hypothesis is that this study will demonstrate that acupuncture has efficacy and It can be cost-effective treatment for substance abuse," Konefal said..