The Week In Review

November 9, 1999

The Tosco refinery in Wilmington, California burned out of control for almost one hour today, the cause, an explosion which set off an underground tank. Witnesses say the black smoke could be seen for miles drifting toward Long Beach.
Noone was injured and the cause of the explosion is still unknown.

Nine Japanese nuclear power plants have violated health and saftey laws according to Japanese officials.
The inspections were promted by Japan's worst ever nuclear accident which exposed 69 workers to radiation at a uranium plant. Officials say that critical saftey steps were skipped.
Inspectors checked the nine plants and found 25 saftey and health violations. Government officials say that the violations did not put anyone at risk and no one will face charges.

The NTSB reports that a robot recovered the flight data recorder from EgyptAir Flight 990 today. The recorder was damaged but crash investigators say that they can extract the data. Investigators hope to find out what caused the Boeing 767 to crash into the water off the coast of Nantucket, Massachusetts nine days ago. More than 150 individual data items can be recorded on the device and investigators hope it can tell them about the planes altitude, speed, spin, roll and when loss of electricity occured.
Investigators are still searching for the cockpit voice recorder.

40 year old Bryan Uyesugi was indicted today for the murders of seven employees at a Hawaii Xerox office. Uyesugi is accused of walking into the wharehouse and shooting six fellow repairmen and his supervisor.
He is being held on seven million dollars bond and faces charges of first and second degree murder, which by Hawaii law are punishable by life in prision without parole.
His attorneys may plead insanity.

Red Cross officials estimate that the death toll from the cyclone that hit eastern India may be near 10,000.
Officially the death toll stands at more than 34-hundred, but officials say that is off because many of the bodies were either buried or cremated before help arrived.
Bodies are still being pulled from ponds and roadsides, and the stench of dead bodies can be smelt for miles according to Army officials.
Orissa, one of the poorest states in India, can expect to see more death and illness because of this cyclone officials say.
More than 10 million people lost homes, livestock and their livelihood.

Ten years ago today the Berlin Wall fell, and today Germans are remembering what it was like. People recalled memories of the frenzied atmosphere as the wall came down, telling stories of serving warm drinks to the West Berliners and lifting baracades for cars to pass through even though the guards would not.

Over 700 people gathered today to pay their respects to Daisy Bates. Mrs. Bates was a civil rights leader best know for her help in intergrating Central High School in 1957.
Many mourners at the funeral service wore buttons with her picture on them.
A private burial service followed.

Someone at Yale University is saying that Presidential candidate George W. Bush had mediocre grades when he attended Yale.
The papers, which are supposed to be Bush's grades, published this week in The New Yorker Magazine show that Bush did an average job while attending Yale. Two of the grades listed were for political science and history, which happend to be his major area of study.
Officials at Yale will not say wheter the reports are real, and Bush's campaign denies that the documents are an official transcript.
According to the report Bush's grades were mostly in the 70's, where 100 is the top mark on the grading scale. Mr. Bush has admited that his GPA at Yale can be described as a "gentleman's C."

November 10, 1999

An apparent attack on two investigators from the Chief Prosecuters department in Columbia has injured eight people.
As the car carrying the two went by a 14 pound bomb, that had been placed in a gutter, went off at a crossroads in La Esmarelda, in Bogota, injuring two government officals and six bystanders, one of which was a child.
To this point no one has claimed responsibility for the bombing.

Rev. Jesse Jackson was in Decatur Illinois today to help ease tensions as two of the city's high schools reopened.
All of the uneasiness stems from a fight at a high shcool football game in which seven students were suspended from shcool. Law suits have been filed on behalf of those students who were expelled to reinstate them, but criminal charges of mob action have been file against four of the young people.
Two people being charged are students of the school, one boy withdrew from school and another wasn't a student at the time of the fight.

Judge Joe Bob Golden rejected a motion for change of venue in the dragging death trial of Shawn Berry.
Golden ruled that the motion was filed by Berry's attorney to delay the trial.
With this ruling the way was cleared for the Jasper County jury to hear opening arguments.
In another note from Jasper, CBS producer Mary Mapes will not be going to jail. CBS attorneys and Jasper county prosecuters negotiated late into the night to reach a comprimise.
CBS agreed to post the transcript of the interview on its web site and provide a copy of the transcript to Jasper county officials. In return Mapes would not go to jail and the tapes would not need to be provided.

November 11, 1999

Fourteen people are dead and at least 50 are hurt when a bomb explodes in a passenger train in India.
The train was traveling through northern India on its way to New Delhi. Police say that the car that exploded was carrying boreder policeman and soldiers. The bomb blast tore through the floor and roof of the car causing the train to stop.
Police suspect the involvement of militants from Kashmir.

A small two engine turbo prop plane sKidded off the runway at Miegs Field in Chicago, and stopped in Lake Michigan today.
Rescue crews were dispatched immediately to the scene to search for the plane and its passengers. It is unkown at this time how many were on board.
Meigs field is a small airport in downtown Chicago that borders Lake Michigan.

An apartment building which held 24 units collapsed early today. Only one family made it out with all of its members alive.
Searchers have found the bodies of 13 people, all dead, and they estimate that there are still 70 to 75 people still in the building. Searchers have accounted for 17 survivors at this point.

Five people are dead and at least 40 more are suspected to be dead after a river boat sank today in Brazil.
Passengers who survived the accident say the boat was overloaded, with about 100 passengers, and started to sink almost immediately after leavin port.

November 12,1999

Mark Manes was sentenced to six years for his role in the Columbine High School shooting. Manes sold a Tech-9 to the two killers, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold. Although he admits selling the boys the gun he says he knew nothing of the mass murder plot.
Manes plead guilty today and is now in custody. According to legal sources Manes will have to serve at least three years before he can be considered for parole.

The retractable roof at Safeco field, the home of the AL's Seattle Mariners, was working fine earlier in the week. When workers arrived Thursday they could not get it to open. An engineer from the company who built the stadium was called in to look at the problem and found that a control panel on a roof mechanism had been unplugged.
An official from the public facilities district said that there appeared to be some human involvment with the disconnection of the electricity.
To get to the control panel in question someone would have to go through a locked gate, climb a flight of stairs, and use a wrench to open and remove the cover. If the wrong cover is removed a person could be electrocuted.
The Mariners are having the locks changed on the stadium to try and make sure this doesn't happen again.

An earthquake measuring 7.2 has hit the country of Turkey. The region in which the quake was centered was about 115 miles east of Istanbul. This quake was in the same region of Turkey as the last quake that hit there in August.
Victims are having to be treated by doctors in the hospital garden because hospital officials are scared the building may collapse.
Health officals expect the number of dead to continue to rise.

Kosovo diplomats say the relief plane that crashed there today broke into many peices and all on board were killed.
The World Food Program plane was making its daily shuttle to Kosovo from Rome when it went down in an area 10 to 15 miles outside of Pristina, the capital of Kosovo, an area which is filled with mines.
All on board, 24 people all toll, were non governmental staff.

November 13, 1999

More than 3 thousand gallons of an Arizona juice manufacturer's fresh unpasteurized orange juice is being recalled for possible salmonella poisioning.
The juice comes in clear containers in the following sizes:
Gallon
Half gallon
Quart
Pint
12 - ounce
The juice is sold under many different brand names:
Sun Orchard
Sysco
Aloha
Zupam
The dates and manufactrers codes are as follows.
9-3-0-6 with "enjoy date" of November 19.
9-3-0-9 with "enjoy date" of November 21
This is the second recall within six months for this company.

The United States and China are closer to opening more trade.
Chinese and U-S trade negotiators have started pushing their talks toward getting Beijing into the World Trade Organiztion, behind a large push from the Chinese premier.
If these talks are succesful then China could enter the international rule making body, which they have been trying to do for 13 years.
Joining the WTO would force China to follow trade rules and it would cause China to have to knock down their tarrifs and other barriers which hamper US companies form investing and selling goods in China.

Testimony by an FBI expert shows the blood found on the clothes and boots of Shawn Berry belonged to James Bryd Jr.
The prosecution wrapped up its case on Friday which included the experts testimony. Berry is the last of three men on trial for the dragging death.
The other two defendants were both found guilty and sentenced to death.
James Bryd Jr was found dead on June the seventh. He had been beaten, chained to the back of Berry's truck and dragged for three miles.

Blue Angels perform for pilots memory

This will be the season ending performance for the Blue Angels 1999 season and it will be in honor of the two pilots who lost their lives in the crash two weeks ago in Georgia.
The crash which happened on October 28th near Moody Air Force Base is still under investigation. The two pilots that were killed were Lt. Commander Kieron O'Conner and Lt. Kevin Colling.