News In Brief
A detention hearing for alleged spy Robert Hanssen was to be held in federal court in Washington. Prosecutors were expected to request that the veteran FBI agent be jailed without bond as the case proceeds, on grounds that he remains a threat to national security and is likely to try to flee the US. Hanssen has been held at an undisclosed detention facility since shortly after his arrest Feb. 18. He is accused of spying for Moscow since 1984 in exchange for $1.4 million in money and diamonds.
Ex-President Clinton is considering an offer to be questioned privately by senators about his controversial last-minute pardons, an aide said. Both Senate and House committees are investigating whether the pardons, including one granted to fugitive billionaire Marc Rich, were linked to political contributions. Two key players, Rich's ex-wife, Denise, who contributed $450,000 to Clinton's library project in Arkansas, and her friend, Beth Dozoretz, who pledged to raise $1 million for the library, have refused to testify before the House.
The Coast Guard seized 8.8 tons of cocaine from a rusty fishing boat off the coast of Mexico Sunday, capping what officials says is one of its most productive weeks of antidrug patrol. The seizure was the fourth-largest of its kind. Guard officials say in six days they did as much work as in all of 1996, arresting 24 people and seizing 28,845 pounds of cocaine.
A media avalanche was forecast for the May 16 execution of Timothy McVeigh at the federal penitentiary in Terre Haute, Ind. According to the prison warden, 1,300 representatives of news outlets have indicated plans to cover the event, necessitating portable buildings, trailers and staging platforms outside the prison. Hundreds of survivors and family members of victims of the April 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, for which McVeigh was convicted, are waiting to hear whether they'll be permitted to view the execution via closed-circuit television.
A $4 billion, nuclear-powered aircraft carrier was christened in the name of former President Ronald Reagan. His wife, Nancy, led the ceremony Sunday in Newport News, Va., on the couple's 49th wedding anniversary. President Bush stood alongside her, hailing Reagan as an advocate of naval power. Reagan, who no longer appears in public because of Alzheimer's disease, was home in California recovering from surgery.
Hundreds of airline flights were canceled, more than 1 million students were excused from school, and supermarkets were cleaned out as a massive winter storm threatened to heap up to three feet of snow on the Northeast. Nonessential employees were advised to stay home in Massachusetts, New Jersey, Connecticut, and New York City suburbs. The storm is expected to peak with blizzard conditions today. (Story, page 1.)
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