News In Brief
The Cuban father of Elian Gonzalez arrived by plane in Washington "to embrace" his son. Toward that end, Juan Miguel Gonzalez, who traveled with his second wife and their six-month-old boy, was to meet soon with Justice Department officials, including Attorney General Janet Reno, a government official said. Earlier, as the elder Gonzalez left Cuba, President Fidel Castro, who has made the fight to recover Elian a national campaign, declared that "this is undisputedly the final stage."
In Miami, meanwhile, negotiations between Elian's US relatives and the Immigration and Naturalization Service resumed. Two previous days of talks failed to work out details of transferring custody to Elian's father, who said he wants to return to Cuba. The father will stay temporarily at the Bethesda, Md., home of the top Cuban diplomat in the US.
The State Department charged Lockheed Martin Corp. with 30 violations of federal-export controls. They involve scientists Lockheed sent to China in 1994 to assess a rocket motor that Asia Satellite Telecommunications Co. planned to use in launching a communications satellite. The State Department said Lockheed forwarded copies of an unedited assessment to Asiasat before Defense Department officials reviewed it for sensitive information. Lockheed officials denied the charges, which could result in a $15 million fine and a temporary ban on satellite technology exports.
For the third time in recent years, the House passed legislation banning a surgical procedure that opponents call partial-birth abortion. President Clinton has indicated he will veto the bill, as he did the first two times. The House, which voted across party lines 287-141, has enough support to override a veto. The Senate, which approved a similar measure last fall, does not, however.
Microsoft Corp. should learn within weeks what penalties the government wants to impose for violating antitrust laws, now that a federal judge has set a May 24 hearing to determine sanctions. The Justice Department and 19 states suing the software giant will have until April 28 to submit their proposed penalties, ordered US District Judge Thomas Penfield.
The Los Angeles Police Department, already involved in a corruption investigation of its Rampart Division, sustained another hit as a federal grand jury indicted a current and a former officer for falsifying evidence in a case five years ago. The federal civil rights charges are the first to be filed against the city's police since those lodged against officers involved in the 1991 beating of Rodney King, the Los Angeles Times reported, citing officials.
Scientists watching for signs of global warning say a key threat comes from glaciers in Greenland. New research, reported in the scientific journal Nature, suggests the Greenland glaciers, which are more than 9,000 miles to the north, are more likely to melt than Antarctica's second-largest ice sheet, said Kurt Cuffey, a geographer at the University of California, Berkeley. This would cause melting glaciers to swamp low-lying coastal cities in the coming century, including those in the southern half of Florida and the southern half of Louisiana, said Cuffey, the study's co-author.
(c) Copyright 2000. The Christian Science Publishing Society
