Casper Star-Tribune from Casper, Wyoming • 1

J. Inside: Maris has tha home run record of 61, i SOt In 1961 fctxitrirt A Rp" NORTHWEST AIRLINES PILOTS STRIKE A3 FEW WYO COMPLAINTS OVER US WEST STRIKE Dl Home runt Games played 54 134 CLASSROOM TURNS CRIME SCENE 1 UhAra Maria tuaa B6 KC6W Mailt' total Hi 04 Mm numb of untt ihwj i ii li mil jmw ii ii ii in WYOMING'S STATEWIDE NEWSPAPER FOUNDED IN 1891 3 AG Hill named to Pow wow preparations TTLT ft rwR ma jj. ula va-iL. jjlss 62 yo high court 'L i By JOAN BARRON Star-Tribune capital bureau CHEYENNE Gov. Jim Ger-inger announced the appointment of his attorney general, Bill Hill, to the Wyoming Supreme Court on Friday.

Hill, 50, succeeds Justice William Taylor who will step down Nov. 2 when he reaches the mandatory retirement age of 70. Taylor stepped down as chief justice of the court July 1. Geringer chose Hill, 50, from a list of three nominees recommended by the Judicial Nominating Commission. The other candidates were two district judges Nancy Guthrie of the Ninth Judicial District, Riverton, and Barton Voight of the Eighth Judicial Dis trict, Douglas.

Geringer said the appointment his first to the state's high court wasn't easy. "This was not a slam-dunk," Geringer said during a telephone news conference Friday afternoon. The difficulty, he said, was in choosing among three highly qualified people "with the realization that this is a decision that will affect Wyoming for many years to come." He said any appointment affects the supreme court for the next 20 years. Moreover, two more appointments to the supreme court will be coming up in the next two years, he noted. Geringer said he urged Guthrie and Voight to consider Please see HILL, A8 7 Sullivan nominated U.S.

ambassador to Ireland liniTv.i Tir UirnnfTM.i-.-Jk. Vr RICHARD ALAN HANNONStar-TrlbuiM Henry Howell, of the Northern Ute tribe of Fort Duchesne, Utah, and Chris Carusona of Ruidoso, N.M., a member of the Oneida tribe from Wisconsin, assist Jake Hill of Fort Washakie as they erect a tipi In preparation for the Red Nation International Pow Wow at Fort Washakie on Friday. See story, CI. Mobil will pay feds $45 million 'mm-vmzk -f On Government Oversight, a watchdog group, under the provisions of the False Claims Act. The Justice Department joined the litigation last February and brought Its own case against Mobil and five other corporations Texaco, Amoco, Conoco, Burlington Resources and Shell Oil.

The case was originally filed in 1996 by private citizens on behalf of the government and named eight other companies and their Please see MOBIL, A8 imr Company denies knowingly underpaying oil royalties 'It's a high honor and privilege, a great responsibility and MIKE SULLIVAN the Kennedy school in 1996. "It's a high honor and privilege, a great responsibility and challenge," Sullivan told the Star-Tribune upon learning of his nomination. If confirmed by the Senate, Sullivan will replace Jean Kennedy Smith, whose controversial five-year term is the longest of any U.S. ambassador in Ireland. Smith, like Sullivan, Is a descendent of Irish immigrants who was not known for Please see SULLIVAN, A8 Hurricane mdm 'Our position was that what we did was BILL CUMMINGS, MOBIL OIL SPOKESMAN 'We usually don't enter into substantial settlements based on honest disagreement' CHRIS WATNEY, JUSTICE DEPARTMENT By CHRIS TOLLEFSON Washington, D.C.

bureau WASHINGTON Mobil Oil Corp. has agreed to pay $45 million to settle a suit by the federal government alleging that the company systematically and purposefully under-reported the value of oil it produced on public land over a 17-year period In order to avoid paying millions of dollars In royalties. An unspecified amount of the settlement will go to the state of Wyoming, due to the By DAVID L. MARCUS and ADAM PERTMAN The Boston Globe WASHINGTON Snubbing several prominent East Coast contenders, President Clinton Friday chose Michael J. Sullivan, a former Wyoming governor and early supporter, as his nominee for ambassador to Ireland.

Sullivan, known for his cowboy boots and his candid conversations, is far better known for his domestic political aavvy than his knowledge of Ireland. But he Is close to President Clinton and has Republican support, too. "That's a marvelous stroke," said former Senator Alan Simpson, a Wyoming Republican who Is now director of the Institute of Politics at Harvard's John Kennedy School of Government. "Knowing Boston and the Irish community there, let me tell you, they got one of their own." Sullivan also has a Cambridge, tie he taught at Correction: Workers employer identified A caption for the front-page photograph Monday of two men engaged in testing soils near the Star-Tribune's property In Casper Incorrectly identified the employer of the workers shown, Rick Gunderson works for Mor-rison-Knudsen, and Chad Dover-spike works for Retec. The Star-Tribune regrets the error.

0: fact that some of the oil in question was produced on federal land In the state. Without admitting wrongdoing, Mobil also reached a separate settlement with the state of Texas for million Friday that covers similar allegations lodged by Texas over production on state lands there. The case against Mobil was part of a sweeping suit brought against most of the nation's major integrated oil companies by a group of private citizens and the Project his apartment lost power. By late Friday afternoon, the storm again was downgraded to a tropical storm when winds dropped below hurricane-force 74 mph to 70 mph. The storm was 265 miles south-southwest of Nantucket Island In Massachusetts and moving to the northeast at 13 mph.

Tropical storm warnings were in effect from Watch Hill, R.I., to Plymouth, Mass. Before moving out to sea, the storm sat motionless for hours, unleashing Intense winds and heavy rains directly onto the shore, which is lined with resort hotels. Initial damage assessment In the city was $13.3 million, officials said. voy to the powerful Communist bloc in Russia's lower house of Parliament, the Duma, said Yeltsin had already agreed to cede key portions of the almost-dictatorial powers of the Russian presidency. The president's representative to the Duma, Alexander Kotenkov, and the Communist Duma speaker, Gennady Se-leznyov, said in a news conference that they had reached broad agreement on a new economic policy and on changes to the 1993 constitution that is the foundation of presidential power.

Kotenkov said Yeltsin has Please see RUSSIA, A8 Bonnie regains strength Kemmerer school finance lawsuit in judge's hands Catches Virginia by surprise State maintains district not harmed by funding cap By KERRY DRAKE Star-Tribune capital bureau CHEYENNE Lincoln County School District No. 1 has not been harmed by a cap the state of Wyoming placed on the district's revenues since it is still able to spend its considerable cash reserves, attorneys for the state argued Friday. The district's counsel, however, maintained the state singled out Lincoln County for punishment simply because of Its historic wealth and has effec tively robbed it of the two-year transition period to a cost-based funding system other districts have been allowed. First Judicial District Court Judge Nicholas Kalokathis took the school finance case under advisement and said he will issue a written opinion in about 10 days. The Kemmerer school district wants the judge to declare unconstitutional a $250,000 cap on "hold harmless" payments the state makes to districts that will lose funds during the transition to the new school finance system, which Is based on spending per student.

During the two-day trial, the state defended the cap as a Please see SUIT, A8 BySONJABARISIC Associated Press VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. -Just when people had let their guard down, Bonnie regained hurricane force and slapped the Virginia coast Friday, peeling off roofs, flattening trees, tearing boats from their moorings and knocking out power to 300,000 homes. Even local emergency officials were caught by surprise; they had closed their offices for the night Thursday when the storm picked up steam over warm ocean water and became a hurricane again. Despite rumors, Yeltsin says he will not resign "Who would have expected it to intensify Into a hurricane? We expected a tropical storm with wind. To find we actually had a hurricane was a strange phenomenon," said Mark C.

Marchbank, the resort city's deputy coordinator for emergency management. In the only deaths reported during the storm, a 12-year-old girl was killed in North Carolina's Currituck County, near the Virginia state line, when a tree fell on her house Thursday night, and a 50-year-old man in Myrtle Beach, S.C., was electrocuted Wednesday while checking his generator after Instructions given to the Central Bank and the government "spelled out in detail what should be done" and would be strictly obeyed. And he took pains to portray the country's new prime minister, Victor Chernomyrdin, as a subordinate and not a pretender to his throne. "He has been given as much power as he is entitled to as a prime minister In any developed country," Yeltsin said. "This was given to back up strategic tasks.

So, consult the president. AH the rest you have a free hand. Take decisions." But even before he spoke -slowly, with stilted speech and almost painful pauses his en with national brand coupons in The grouch wonder if he'll come back with a brogue? Index CALENDAR A2 CASPER AREA B6 CLASSIFIED C2B CLICK AND CLACK C7 COMICS D6 CROSSWORD C4 GENERATIONS CI LANDERS, BRQMPTON B5 MARKETS B4 MOVIES B5 OBITUARIES B3 OPINION A6 RELIGION A7 SPORTS D15 WEATHER A2 WYOMING Bl U.S. stocks fall as Russian turmoil threatens profits By MICHAEL WINES The New York Times MOSCOW Boris Yeltsin, reclaiming a bit of his old defiant nature, insisted on national television Friday night that he would serve out his term as Russia's president and that, for him, resignation was Impossible. But rumors and reality alike suggested Friday that his presidency.

If It does last, Is rushing toward figurehead status. In excerpts from an interview broadcast on the RTP television network, Yeltsin cast himself as once again In command of his nation's Increasingly desperate financial situation. He said new Save money By PHIL SERAFINO Bloomberg News NEW YORK U.S. stocks fell for a third day on signs that Russia's debt default and currency devaluation, and slowing growth in other emerging markets, are hurting U.S. corporate profits.

Microsoft Corp. and other computer-related stocks led the decline. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 23.94, or 0.3 percent, to 8142.53 in midafter-noon trading Friday, paring a 154.47-point loss that left it up Just 1.3 percent for the year. At its low, the average was down 591 points, or 6.9 percent, since Tuesday. Please see STOCKS, A8 or 2660550.

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