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The Bismarck Tribune from Bismarck, North Dakota • 2

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Bismarck, North Dakota
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Nation-World 2A Saturday, July 27, 2002 Bismarck Tribune BlSM.ARCKITUBUNE.COM urder plot rocks Czech politics I I I Russia plans nuclear reactors in Iran MOSCOW (A?) Russia wants to build six nuclear reactors in Iran and help its southern neighbor explore Caspian Sea oil fields, the government said Friday in a resolution certain to complicate Moscow's warming relations with Washington. The government released a 10-year proposal for cooperation with Iran that would dramatically expand ties beyond Russia's much-criticized $800 million contract for completion of a nuclear reactor at the Iranian port of Bushehr. While U.S.-Russian relations have blossomed since President Vladimir Putin offered his support for the U.S.-led war on terror, the Bushehr deal has remained a sticking point. The United States accuses Iran of sponsoring terrorism and has said Russian assistance is helping Iran develop nuclear weapons. Moscow has dismissed the accusations, saying the aid only serves civilian purposes and that the construction is under international control.

Now, the new cooperation plan takes the nuclear deal even further, envisdaging a total of six Russian-built nuclear reactors in Iran four at Bushehr and two at a yet-to-be-built plant in Akhvaz. Revised Medicare drug bill readied WASHINGTON (AP) Several Democrats have signed off on a scaled-back Medicare drug benefit proposal that would help mostly low-income elderly or those who already have spent a significant amount of money on medicine, senators said Friday. The plan will be made public next week, probably Tuesday. "There are those that believe we need a down payment of some form or shape even if it has to be a catastrophic proposal," Sen. Edward Kennedy, the chairman of the Senate's health committee, told the Associated Press.

"Certainly, I think at this point, the majority of Democratic members feel that way." Kennedy, predicted the plan would have bipartisan support. Final details of the measure were being worked out by Sen. Bob Graham, and Republican Sen. Gordon Smith of Oregon. Producer sues the Osbournes LOS ANGELES (AP) A producer has sued Ozzy Osbourne and the rock musician's wife, claiming the couple stole the idea for their hit MTV reality series "The Osbournes" from him.

Plaintiff Gary Binkow said he met on several occasions with the couple and executives from Miramax TV between 1999 and 2000 to discuss "a real-life docu-sitcom" about their family, according to the lawsuit filed Thursday in Los Angeles Superior Court. The court papers include what Binkow said was a copy of his original treatment of the proposed series from January 2000, registered with the Writers Guild of America, The Hollywood Reporter reported Friday. The lawsuit seeks unspecified damages for breach of contract and fraud. Lisa Vega, a spokeswoman for the family, said previously published reports have made it clear that Binkow was not the show's creator. MTV was not named in the lawsuit.

Suharto's son receives prison term JAKARTA, Indonesia (AP) The playboy son of former dictator Suharto was convicted Friday of ordering the murder of a Czech Karel Rziepel, nicknamed Lemon, is seen July 23 at Vimperk, Czech Republic. After Rziepel reported to police he was allegedly hired to murder Czech investigative reporter Sabina Slonkova, Czech police arrested four people. of post-communist nations embracing democracy, becoming a top European Union candidate and largely avoiding economic and political tumult. The prospect of corrupt government officials ready to eliminate anyone who exposes their wrongdoing has many Czechs worried their country is more hard-edged than it had seemed. It reminds many of journalists threatened or killed in South America, or Russia, Ukraine and other East European nations and former Soviet republics.

"I am afraid this is going to look to the outside world like something that happens in Russia or Colombia, but not here," said painter Pavel Janota, 45. Supreme Court justice ana sentenced to 15 years in prison in a case that symbolizes Indonesia struggle to rein in judicial corruption and the abuses that defined the Suharto By ONDREJ HEJMA Associated Press Writer PRAGUE, Czech Republic When a tattooed junkie known in the underworld as "Lemon" told police he was hired to kill a journalist, few thought that the plot would turn into a national scandal involving senior figures in the Czech government. But Sabina Slonkova, the alleged target of the killing, is no ordinary reporter. Her articles on corruption and wrongdoing in the highest echelons of Czech politics have earned her dozens of enemies apparently including some Sabina Slonkova targeted. in the foreign ministry she said were making money illegally from government property.

Police say Karel Srba, once a senior aide to ex-foreign minister Jan Kavan, hired "Lemon" after she wrote about the alleged scam. The petty criminal, whose real name is Karel Rziepel, told police this month that he was given a pack of plastic explosives to kill Slonkova but bought a gun instead before finally deciding to go to police. Srba and three other suspects are under arrest. Now under police protection, Slonkova, a 29-year old investigative reporter for the daily Mlada Fronta Dnes, says she remains shaken. "I started thinking this was a bad joke, a provocation of some kina," she told a reporter.

"Unfortunately it turned out it was not so." "I'll have to think about how to organize my life, how to protect myself," said Slonkova, who has a 3-year-old son. But the affair goes beyond Slonkova and her fears for her safety. The Czech Republic has prided itself on leading the pack Suspect murder By JOHN GEROME Associated Press Writer NASHVILLE, Tenn. Kevin Hughes' job was compiling a country music magazine's record charts and deciding which albums got a "bullet. One night in 1989, as he left a recording studio along Nashville's storied Music Row, he was gunned down.

This week, 13 years later, a former Nashville record promoter was charged with the slaying in an arrest sorrite industry insiders say casts a spotlight on crooked practices in the country music business back then. Richard F. D'Antonio, 56, was arrested Wednesday in Las Vegas and charged in the slaying of Hughes, a 23-year-old researcher for now-defunct Cash Box magazine who was shot by a gunman in a ski mask. Police said the shooting was related to the two men's work in the music industry. They would not elaborate.

But Jim Sharp, editor at Cash Box until 1986 and a longtime fixture in the city's music industry, said he and many others who worked on Music Row were interviewed by police over years. And he said police examined several leads, including the possibility that Hughes was killed because he refused to manipulate the record charts. Sharp and others said the practice was once widespread in Nashville. Record promoters working mostly for small, independent labels would give gifts to radio programmers in exchange for airplay and to chart researchers for a "bullet" signifying the record is climbing the charts. era.

A verdict like Friday's would have been unthinkable during Suharto's 32-year reign, when the rich and powerful were almost always beyond the law's reach. Advocates for judicial reform hope the ruling will put other former Suharto cronies on notice and possibly signal a' more honest approach to doling out justice in a country widely seen as among Asia's most corrupt. Still, some Indonesians scoffed at the 15- arrested in 1989 on Music Row Hutomo Mandala Putra sentenced contracts before he was fired last year amid allegations of corruption. From March 2001 to March 2002, Slonkova wrote a series of articles describing a deal in which the Foreign Ministry leased a building in Moscow, owned by the Czech state, to a private firm under suspicious circumstances. She also published a list of properties owned by Srba, hugely surpassing his official income that prompted an investigation by financial authorities.

Kavan in New York and unavailable for comment Friday is refusing to step down from either the General Assembly presidency or his parliK; ment seat. If he did quit partial: ment, it would cost Prime Min-; ister Vladimir Spidla his ty in the 200-seat resulting in a government The affair could also mine trust in another leading Czech politician Milos Zeman, who was prime minis-" ter during Kavan's stint in foreign ministry and now has good chance of succeeding-'. Havel after his term expires January. Some are whether Zeman knew about the alleged Moscow wrongdoings." For Slonkova, Kavan was' guilty if nothing'else of protect-" ing people like Srba, 'a who enjoyed the unlimited trust of trie former foreign min- ister." guys (like they were 'otherwise they would not; behave the way they did," she added. The controversy has also prompted police to reopen an investigation into an attack on reporter Martin Reznicek, who was beaten up two years ago after he wrote about alleged corruption involving the sale of state property to private own-- Tarn convinced the two cases-are related," said Jan-Vidirh, head of the Parliament's security committee.

Greeks arrest another key terror suspect: ATHENS, Greece (AP) Greek police struck again; at the crippled-November 17 terrorist group and plucked another prized suspect: an unassuming shopkeeper accused of help- ing found Europe's most elusive urban guerrilla band. The arrest of 50-year-old Nikos Papanastasiou ently topples another pillar in a group that completely outwitted authorities during a 27-year reign of bombings, robberies and murder. It also adds to the prisingly common face emerging from an organiza-; tion that carried a reputation for fanatical secrecy and ruthless precision. Papanastasiou had run a souvenir shop in central Athens. Another alleged November 17 co-founder and mastermind, 58-year-; old Alexandras Giotopoulos, says he worked translating French texts.

Other suspected members caught in a rapid-fire series of raids in the "past weeks include a bus driver, religious icon painter and elementary school teacher. On Friday, a hospital telephone operator, Pavlos Serins, accused of being November 17's second-in-command told police that Giotopoulos was the gunman who killed CIA station chief Richard Welch in 1975 the slaying' that first brought attention to the group. Serifis, 46, admitted being a lookout in the Welch attack, police said. The extent of Papanastasiou's involvement in the Welch killing and others was nol immediately clear. A 20-yeaf statute of limitations means no one can be directly charged with slayings of Welch and others before 1982.

Police believe Papanasta? siou and Giotopoulos helped forge the ultra-left mentality of November 17 during the dying gasps of the 1967-74 military junta iri Greece. The group takes it name from the day in 1973 when tanks and! troops crushed student-led protests. -ji jo- "It's really hard to believe." The alleged plot against Slonkova could also have political fallout. Kavan who stepped down June and has, since been elected president of the U.N; General Assembly has not been directly implicated in the plot nor in the shady deals preceding it. But people in high places clearly feel his integrity has been hurt.

President Vaclav Havel on Tuesday suggested Kavan assume some responsibility for ministry wrongdoing, urging him to "resign from some of posts he is holding." Srba ran the finances at the Foreign ministry under Kavan, signing countless investment Yirawrf flhniit it Kyle Hughes described brother as a "very honest person" who loved songs and wrote poetry. Kevin Hughes moved to Nashville in 1984 to attend Belmont University and started at Cash Box as an intern. He quit school to work there full time and was at the magazine about 18 months before he was killed. "He would spend a lot of hours at Cash Box not even getting paid for it because -he wanted to get the job done right," Kyle Hughes said. D'Antonio, now a casino pit boss, was charged with first-degree murder.

He was also charged with attempted murder in the wounding of country singer Sammy Sadler during the attack. Hughes and Sadler were leaving Evergreen Records when they were confronted by a gunman. Sadler was hit in the shoulder and ran to a building. Hughes was shot as he fled. The gunman then stood over Hughes and shot him again.

He was hit three times and died of a head wound. Police believe Hughes was the target. Sadler did not immediately return calls Thursday, Ron Cot- ton of Productions, Sadler's agent, said Sadler is "scared to death" and hiding out in Texas because police say others may have been involved and more arrests are possible. D'Antonio had been interviewed in connection with the case in the past. D'Antonio has a criminal record in Alabama and Georgia that, includes drug charges, aggravated assault and aggravated burglary, police said.

Lb JWr. il' i year sentence for Hutomo Mandala Putra, better known as Tommy, saying the 40-year-old tycoon got off easy. His corivic- tion for murder, illegal weapons possession and fleeing justice could have earned him a death sentence. Girl's body found, suspect arrested VALLEY PARK, Mo. (AP) A 6-year-old gM vanished from a suburban St.

Louis home Friday and was killed by a man who had stayed there overnight, police said. Cassandra Williamson was reported missing Friday morning from her father's home. Police said the suspect, a 24-year-old local transient who had slept on the couch, later told tnem the girl's body was at an abandoned glass factory a few blocks away. St. Louis County Police Chief Ron Battelle said the body had not been identified, "but we feel certain it is her." Battelle said Johnny Johnson was arrested but charges had not yet been filed.

Embassies alerted to phone threats WASHINGTON (AP) A flurry of telephone calls threatening the destruction of all U.S. embassies in Islamic nations within a week has prompted the State Department to alert all overseas diplomatic posts. The caller identified himself as the spokesman or interpreter for Osama bin Laden, the head of an international terror organization believed responsible for the Sept. 11 bombings in New York and Washington and other attacks. Bush administration officials said they could not authenticate the calls to the Associated Press, CNN and other news organizations over a few hours' span Thursday, but that all such reports are taken seriously.

The AP received a second such call, making similar threats, on Friday afternoon. Castro thanks members of Congress CIEGO DE AVILA, Cuba (AP) Proclaiming that friends can be found even among his country's worst enemies, Fidel Castro thanked U.S. Congress members who voted this week to ease sanctions against the communist-ruled island. Speaking at a rally Friday to mark the start of the Cuban revolution, the Cuban leader said the House vote passing the measure was a gesture of such significance that it doesn't matter if President Bush uses his veto as threatened. "Nor does it matter if new ruses and provocations are invented to annul them," Castro said in his annual address.

"I would like to express our people's gratitude to both the Democratic and Republican legislators who on that day acted intelligently and strongly, following their own beliefs," Castro told the crowd gathered in this central provincial capital. Kevin Hughes, left, was shot to death on Music Row in 1989. Sammy Sadler, right, was wounded in the shooting. "The radio stations looked at the charts," said Sharp, now publisher of American Songwriter Magazine. "If the record was still going up and bulleting, they would keep playing it." At the time, the upper half of Cash Box's list of the top 100 country records was dominated by major-label artists and the bottom half by independent-label artists.

"It sounds incredible that somebody would kill someone over chart position," said Robert Oermann, who writes about the industry. "But there was an underbelly of the music business." He said airplay is monitored electronically now, making it much harder to tamper with the charts. Hughes' job involved calling radio stations around the country to track airplay. D'Antonio had worked with Hughes at the magazine before leaving to become a promoter. 1 Investigators would not say what led to the arrest.

"We always hoped that something like this would come about," Hughes' 31-year-old brother, Kyle, said from his parents' home in Carmi, 111. We Nearly one-third of Palestinian kids malnourished JERUSALEM (AP) Nearly one-third of young Palestinian children are chronically malnourished more than four times as many as before fighting erupted with Israel, according to a study commissioned by the U.S. foreign aid agency. The U.S. Agency for International Development, or USAID, will release the data on Aug.

5. However, preliminary figures have alarmed Israeli officials at a time when the United States is pressing Israel to ease the conditions restricting daily Palestinian life and ruining the Palestinian economy. Early results, based on about a third of the total data, show 30 percent of Palestinians under the age of 6 suffer from chronic malnutrition, up from 7 percent in a USAID survey two years ago, before the current fighting began. Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres is aware of the report and will take up the issue with Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, said Peres spokesman Yoram Dori. Before the current fighting, about 125,000 Palestinians worked in Israel, and Israel regularly transferred millions of dollars of customs and taxes to the Palestinian Authority under terms of interim peace accords.

For 22 months, though, military checkpoints and curfews have prevented Palestinians from moving around or getting to jobs and have disrupted daily routines. Amid mounting criticism of the closures and concerns about their impact on the Palestinian economy, Israel decided this week to allow 4,000 Palestinian laborers into Israel and to release $42 million in tax revenues owed to the Palestinian Authority..

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