WORLD NEWS 2 sweethearts found dead near Columbine High School by Judith Graham Knight-Ridder Newspapers February 15, 2000 LITTLETON, Colo. This shell-shocked community awoke to another horror Monday, Feb ruary 14: the slaying of two teens at a Subway sandwich shop in a strip mall only blocks from Col umbine High School. One victim, Nick Kunselman, 15, worked at the store; Stephanie Hart, 16, was his girlfriend. Both were sophomores at Columbine. As teachers told stunned stu dents of the deaths, some broke into sobs or became distraught. "People are extremely upset. There is a sense of, 'Not again, not another senseless tragedy, — said Rick Kaufman, spokesman for the Jefferson County School District. Police said they received a call just after midnight from a Sub way manager, who was driving by the shop and saw the lights on, long after the 10 p.m. closing time. She went inside and dis covered the teens, dead from ap parent gunshot wounds, accord ing to the sheriff's office. The time of death has not been deter- IRA pull by Fawn Vrazo Knight-Ridder Tribune February 15, 2000 LONDON The Irish Republican Army pulled out of Northern Ireland disarmament talks Tuesday, February 15, plunging the peace process into deepening crisis as the British and Irish governments struggled to re spond. However, the IRA made no sugges tion that it would end a cease-fire that has held since July 1997. 1n those 31 months, the paramilitary group has called off its decades-long attempt to force the British out of the province with guns and bombs. The pullout from disarmament talks followed the suspension Friday, Feb. 11, of the province's new power-shar ing government of Roman Catholics and Protestants. Britain suspended the nine-week-old government rather than risk a walkout by Protestant poli ticians angry that the IRA has made no move to turn in its illegal arsenal Bin Laden may give by Mohamad Bazzi Newsday February 21, 2000 NEW YORK Osama bin Laden may be preparing to hand control of his terrorist network to one of his top lieutenants, several Islam ists and analysts in the Middle East say. The deputy, Ayman Al-Zawahiri, has lived with bin Laden in Af ghanistan for three years and serves as his personal doctor. He stepped down last month as head of Egyptian Islamic Jihad, the group that assassinated Egyptian President Anwar Sadat in 1981 and later waged a violent campaign aimed at toppling the Egyptian government. Al-Zawahiri's move coincided with reports in the Arabic press that bin Laden is ill and has diffi culty performing daily tasks. That may be a cover story devised by bin Laden's inner circle so that he can take a back seat under grow ing American pressure, according to Islamists living in Europe and observers in Egypt. Al-Zawahiri's possible ascen dancy may not be good news for the United States, as he has a his tory of planning large terrorist op erations, such as the 1995 bomb ing of the Egyptian Embassy in Pakistan. Still, these developments reflect the success of U.S. intelligence agencies in squeezing bin Laden's network since the 1998 U.S. Em bassy bombings in East Africa. One of bin Laden's key allies, the Jihad, suffered a major blow as dozens of its members were ar rested around the world and extra dited to Egypt. The crackdown caused internal divisions that led to Al-Zawahiri's resignation. "This talk about bin Laden be ing sick might pave the way for Al- mined Police were tracking informa tion about a young white male, dressed in a red jacket and flared pants, who was seen leaving the area. They said there was a se curity monitor in the store but would not comment on whether a tape was recovered. Late Mon day, Feb. 14, no suspect had been identified. Sheriff's office spokesman Steve Davis said au thorities had not pinpointed a mo tive but had ruled out a murder suicide. Officials have assured school officials that the slayings are not related to the massacre by Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold at Col umbine High last April, which left 12 other students and one teacher dead. But the feeling that there is some kind of connection, if only because of the violence, was shared by several people who spoke Monday, Feb. 14, of living under a cloud that casts a dark shadow over the community. In the early afternoon that Mon day, Beth Nimmo, whose daugh ter, Rachel Scott, was slain in the Columbine school shootings, stood in the large parking lot s out of disarmament talks of weapons, a goal in the 1998 Good Friday peace agreement. The IRA move came on the eve of new talks between British Prime Min ister Tony Blair and his Irish counter part, Bertie Ahern, leaving both lead ers with no immediate way to rescue a peace process moving nearer and nearer to complete failure 'n recent years, the British and Irish govern ments have cooperated closely in try ing to find a way to end Catholic and Protestant bloodshed in Northern Ire land, the six-county province that came into being when Ireland was partitioned into an independent south and a British-controlled north in 1921. An IRA statement issued late after noon Tuesday, Feb. 15, said the out lawed group had agreed to talks with an independent disarmament commis sion only if other aspects of the peace agreement including the new gov ernment remained in place. "Those who have made the politi cal process conditional on the decom missioning of silenced IRA guns are Zawahiri to assume control, at least publicly," said Diaa Rashwan, a senior researcher at the Al-Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies in Cairo, Egypt, who closely monitors Islamic mili tants worldwide. "There could be a restructuring where Al-Zawahiri would have a place next to bin Laden or even above him." Al-Zawahiri was indicted in New York last year along with bin Laden and 14 others in the U.S. Embassy bombings in Kenya and "It stands to rea son that he would begin his legacy with spectacular attacks, like he did with the Jihad." -Diaa Rashwan, researcher at Al- Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies, Cairo, Egypt Tanzania, which left more than 200 dead and thousands injured. Ana lysts believe Al-Zawahiri would want to make a big splash if he took charge of bin Laden's net work. "It stands to reason that he would begin his legacy with spec tacular attacks, like he did with the Jihad," Rashwan said. Others noted that Al-Zawahiri's departure from the Jihad exposed simmering divisions within a group that in recent years has shifted from its original goal of across the street from the Sub- mother they had to make sure his way. Rachel had worked in the younger brother was safe. shop, a popular hangout for high "He was angry, furious, going schoolers. around saying we have to do "It seems like lightning has something," his mother said, add- Columbine High School students Nicholas Kunselman, 15, and Stephanie Hart, 16, were found dead at a Subway shop near the school. struck more than once here," said Nimmo. "It brings up a lot of pain and ugly memories." Rachel's brother Craig survived the Columbine rampage by pre tending to be dead on the library floor. After he heard of the most recent killings, he locked all the doors in the house and told his responsible for the current crisis in the peace process," the statement said. The statement accused the British government of bowing to threats by the Ulster Unionist Party (UUP), Northern Ireland's major Protestant political party. Both the British government and UUP leadership "obviously have no desire to deal with the issue of arms except on their own terms," the state ment said. "Those who seek a mili tary victory in this way need to un derstand that this cannot and will not happen." Not only was the IRA immediately ending its "engagement" with the in dependent disarmament commission headed by Canadian Gen. John de Chastelain, said the statement, but the group also was withdrawing all dis armament "propositions" made to the commission since talks began last November. There was an angry reaction to the IRA pullout Tuesday night, Feb. 15, from UPP President David Trimble control to his deputy establishing an Islamic state ii Egypt to fighting a broader wai against American interests. This global focus reflects bin Laden's influence on many Islamist groups. "I don't believe that Ayman has given up on the principles of Is lamic Jihad, but he has decided to focus on other struggles," said Yasser Al-Sirri, an Egyptian exile who has ties to the group and runs the Islamic Observation Center in London. "The Jihad is an idea. It's not just one man. The Jihad ex isted before Ayman, and it will continue to exist after him." A spokesman for U.S. Attorney Mary Jo White, who is prosecut ing the embassy bombings case, declined to comment, citing the ongoing investigation. Although he has been Egypt's most wanted militant for years, Al- Zawahiri is largely unknown in the West. He became the emir, or prince, of Islamic Jihad in the early 1990 s after serving as the group's military commander. Under his leadership, the Jihad carried out a series of high-profile attacks against Egyptian military and po litical leaders. Last year, he was sentenced to death in absentia by an Egyptian military court for or ganizing an insurgency against the government. Al-Zawahiri, 48, fled from Egypt in the early 1980 s, after he was sentenced to three years in prison for belonging to an out lawed group. He spent time in sev eral European countries as well as Sudan and Afghanistan, where he first met bin Laden in the late 1980 s. At the time, bin Laden, a multimillionaire Saudi dissident, helped train and finance a cadre of "Afghan Arabs," Islamist volun teers from across the Middle East who fought against the Soviet oc cupation of Afghanistan. Many of them went on to fight in Bosnia, ing that Craig had come with her to the scene to leave flowers and a teddy bear for the teens who were killed. In a tobacco shop across from the Subway, Tricia Chaudion fought tears. She had had to leave her job as a maintenance worker at Clement Park, next to Colum- "We have seen the republican move ment squander the best opportunity they have had to date in order to re solve this issue . . I wonder if they have any idea of the damage that is being done to the process." The suspension of Northern Ireland's new government last week by Northern Ireland Secretary Peter Mandelson has produced new cracks in the cooperation between the Brit ish and Irish cooperation on North ern Ireland. Irish leaders had urged Britain not to suspend the Northern Ireland government, and instead to explore a last-minute proposal made last week by the IRA. The Irish government lobbied strongly against suspension, arguing that any new IRA offer should be ex plored before Mandelson pulled the plug on a new government that brought together such diverse parties as the UUP, Sinn Fein and the Demo cratic Unionist Party of anti-Catholic hard-liner lan Paisley. Chechnya, Algeria, and in other places. They now form the foun dation of bin Laden's network. In 1997, Al-Zawahiri rejoined bin Laden, 43, in Afghanistan and has been at his side ever since. In February 1998, six months before the embassy bombings in East Af rica, bin Laden announced the for mation of the World Islamic Front for Jihad Against Jews and Crusad ers, a coalition of militant groups that called on Muslims worldwide to attack Americans. The coalition included Islamic Jihad, another prominent Egyptian organization called Gama'a al-Islamiya and three lesser-known groups based in Pakistan and Bangladesh. U.S. prosecutors and some inde pendent observers believe the Jihad is the most important mem ber of bin Laden's coalition. And that has brought the group into di rect confrontation with the United States. After the embassy bomb ings, dozens of Jihad members in Albania, the United Arab Emirates, Azerbaijan, and other countries were arrested, sometimes with the involvement of U.S. intelligence, and extradited to Egypt. This crackdown reportedly crippled the Jihad's infrastructure and created divisions among its leaders, especially those living in Europe, who complained that Al- Zawahiri did not consult them be fore signing on to bin Laden's front. They blamed Al-Zawahiri for causing an unnecessary battle with the United States. "The Jihad has been undergoing a crisis since the embassy bomb ings, when the Americans went af ter many of its members all over the world and got them sent back to Egypt," said one Islamist in Cairo, who asked not to be identi fied. There's a difference between fighting the Egyptian government and taking on the entire world." F BR ARY 2 bine High, after the April shootings because she was so up set. "And now it's right in front of my face again," she whispered. Jefferson County District Atty. Dave Thomas said investigators were exploring "every possible motive" for the double slaying but declined to give details. "It's like it's never going to end, sometimes," he admitted. "It's one event after another in this community." Littleton has struggled in the past several weeks with the kill ing of 11-year-old Ray Davalos, who was found frozen and stuffed into a trash bin at a shop ping center near Columbine High. Also, just before Christ mas, Time magazine's report on chilling videotapes made by Har ris and Klebold before their kill ing spree sent waves of distress through the area. An Internet message from a Florida teen to a Columbine High student threatening to "finish the job" Harris and Kiebold had be gun, prompted authorities to close the school, and legal proceedings against the teen have received considerable media coverage in Littleton. In October, Carla Venezuela rebuild region destroyed by Serge F. Kovaleski The Washington Post February 18, 2000 CARMEN DE URIA, Venezuela— An unsettling silence, punctuated by wisps of wind, hangs over Carmen de Uria. Almost all signs of life have vanished. What was once a town is now a crater, strewed with boulders, mounds of dirt, crumpled cars, and annihilated homes. The signs of destruction make a numbing testimonial to the feroc ity with which flood waters, tum bling rock, and mudslides un leashed by last December's torren tial rains cut a swath through Carmen de Uria from the nearby Avila mountain range. Most of the town's 5,000 resi dents have moved to shelters or housing elsewhere, and at least 500 of their neighbors were killed in the catastrophe. But a handful remain, determined to rebuild, while others intermittently return to sift through the debris amid reminders of lives torn asunder: a shredded wicker rocking chair, a mangled bird cage, a bunk bed snapped in half. "This was paradise, but you may as well stick a sign in the ground that says. 'The ghost town of Carmen de Uria,"' said Douglas Berrotera, 30, who recently came back to salvage belongings from a heap of concrete that used to be his house. "This is science fiction turned into reality. Our small cor ner of the world has disappeared and will never exist again. All we can do is hope for some sort of sal- vation." Venezuelans are grappling with the enormity of the devastation caused by the nation's worst natu ral disaster in memory, which has made sparsely populated waste lands of numerous communities such as this one along the hard-hit northern Caribbean coast 25 miles northeast of Caracas, the capital. As the cleanup grinds on, other towns throughout the region remain without electricity or telephone ser vice and reliant on aid shipments of food and drinking water. Night time looting is said to be spiraling out of control in certain areas as the number of troops providing public security has thinned from the ini tial days of the emergency. The government is spending approxi mately $5 million a month to put up 14,000 families in shelters. In the meantime, the government of President Hugo Chavez and lo cal officials try to decide how to re construct what they have vowed will be a new and reconfigured Ven ezuela. Although an accurate assessment of the death and destruction re- ANALIIA: 1 B rt Hochhalter, mother of wounded student Anne Marie Hochhalter, fatally shot herself in a crowded Denver pawnshop. Meanwhile, new details con tinue to emerge about the Colum bine massacre. On Friday, a Col umbine commission established by Colorado Gov. Bill Owens heard testimony from the Littleton Fire Department that Harris and Klebold had stock piled 90 weapons, far more than previously disclosed, including 80 explosive devices in the school and ten at Harris' home. Among them were 11, one-and a-half-gallon propane containers, two duffel-bag bombs with 20- pound gas tanks, 27 pipe bombs, 48 carbon dioxide bombs, and seven devices with 40 or more gallons of flammable liquid, the fire department confirmed. Both of the boys' cars were filled with large amounts of ex plosives set to go off at noon, when the boys calculated that stu dents would be streaming out of the flaming cafeteria into the parking lot, fire department offi cials explained. Neither those nor many of the other bombs worked. tries to by floods mains elusive, authorities say 10,000 to 30,000 people were killed in several days of rain that began Dec. 15. Many of the victims were buried under mudslides or washed away by floods. About 150,000 people lost their homes. The cata clysm laid waste about 40,000 homes and destroyed or damaged roughly half the agricultural infra structure. Government officials, who will attend an international conference next week in Madrid to try to ob tain more foreign assistance, esti mate it would cost as much as $3O billion to rebuild the devastated ar eas. Most of the money would go to this small state of Vargas. Home to Venezuela's largest commercial seaport and a once robust tourist in dustry, Vargas suffered the greatest toll in terms of loss of life and de struction to its towns, fishing com munities, and vast neighborhoods of illegal mountainside shanties. Since mid-December, the state's population has declined so precipi tously from about 380,000 to less than 250,000 as a result of deaths from the storm and people leaving that government officials are considering reincorporating Vargas into the Federal District, which includes Caracas. Some are concerned that Vargas may no longer be viable as a state. Furthermore, it may become smaller under an ambitious reloca tion initiative slowly being imple mented by the President to ease a population glut on the Caribbean coast, where about 70 percent of the country's 23 million people live. In the town of Los Corales, where rows of abandoned luxury apart ment buildings are engulfed by banks of dried mud and a sea of boulders, the resolve to rebuild was captured in graffiti that declared, "VARGAS WILL NOT DIE." For now, however, Los Corales remains desolate. Other than work ers operating bulldozers and dump trucks, as well as some army troops, only an occasional resident can be seen plodding across what looks like a lunar landscape. Some signs of normalcy, how ever, are gradually returning to less devastated pockets of the state. In the coastal town of Naiguata, where about one-third of the population had left, a pharmacy, bakery, and grocery have reopened, and street vendors selling fruit and fish are starting to reemerge. Some resi dents are trickling back to town. While optimistic that a new but different Vargas could reemerge within a decade as a hub for inter national and local tourism, as well as service industries, Gov. Alfredo Laya lamented, "Everything has changed here, forever."
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