EVENTS
CLINIC SHOOTING ENDS IN CONVICTION Anti-abortion activist Michael Griffin was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison Saturday for the shooting of a doctor who was arriving at a clinic to perform abortions. The jury deliberated for two hours and 40 minutes before convicting Mr. Griffin in the slaying of David Gunn. A few minutes after the verdict was announced, Circuit Judge John Parnham sentenced Griffin, a former Pensacola, Fla., chemical worker, to life in prison with no chance of parole for 25 years. The prosecution had agreed not to seek the death penalty. Dr. Gunn was shot three times behind a Pensacola abortion clinic while a protest was under way in front of the building on March 10, 1993. Gunn was the first doctor slain as a result of violence against US abortion clinics. Arson, bombings, chemical attacks, and break-ins have taken place at other abortion clinics across the nation. Serbian bombings
Serb aircraft bombed a Muslim area of northern Bosnia yesterday, less then a week after NATO jet fighters shot down four Serb war planes on a similar sortie, Sarajevo radio reported. The Serb bombing run over Maglaj was reported by Croatian television. UN officials in Zagreb said they had no information on any Serb air attack, and there was no immediate response from NATO. If true, the reported airstrikes were a flagrant violation of a UN-mandated no-fly zone over Bosnia and a clear challenge to NATO's newly demonstrated resolve to punish warring parties in the former Yugoslavia. Space shuttle in orbit
The space shuttle Columbia went into orbit Friday on a 14-day scientific mission. On Saturday, NASA struggled to understand unusually high pressure readings in a fuel line for one of space shuttle Columbia's three auxiliary power units. But astronauts on board discounted the problems as minor, and officials said it was too soon to tell if the problem would require the mission to end early. Aristide rejects plan
UN Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali failed on Saturday to persuade Haiti's exiled president Jean-Bertrand Aristide to accept a US-backed plan to end the island's political crisis. Mr. Aristide again called for a full-trade embargo against Haiti to put more pressure on the government, which is led by the military that ousted him more than two years ago. The plan would leave Haiti's violent military largely in place and does not secure Aristide's return to power. New smuggling laws
Organizers of human smuggling operations in China can be executed under a new law designed to stem the flow of illegal emigrants, reports said yesterday. The law, approved Saturday by China's nominal parliament, comes after a year in which thousands of Chinese sneaked out of the country, many headed for the US. Washington urged Beijing to take strong measures to curb the illegal emigration. The new law stipulates punishment of up to life imprisonment for the heads of smuggling gangs. Smugglers can face the death penalty if they murder, injure, or rape the illegal emigrants or if they harm officials investigating their activity. The previous maximum jail term for human smuggling was five years.
