SEPT. 10, 1997
37lfe Jlortlanh
Page A2
News from around the world
Mobutu Sese Seko
dead at age 66
President Clinton comments on :
M other Teresa & Princess Diana Death
President Clinton said Friday that
the deaths o f two o f the world’s most
famous women, a stylish princess
and a selfless nun, offer the world “a
time o f great reflection.”
Just hours before his wife flew to
London for the funeral of Princess
Diana, Clinton stepped off the bright,
sun-splashed greens o f a M artha’s
Vineyard golf course to call Mother
Teresa o f Calcutta a woman o f pas
sion and compassion, “one o f the
giants o f our times.”
“She led by serving and showed
us the simple power o f stunning hu
mility,” he said.“She gave comfort to
the poor, the suffering and the dying,
and served as an inspiration and a
challenge to all o f us.”
Asked to compare the two women.
Clinton said he believes the world
has been profoundly moved by the
outpouring of grief in Britain for the
princess but will also ponder the life
long work o f Mother Teresa for the
poor
O f Mother Teresa he said, “Obvi
ously hundreds o f millions ofpeople
around the world looked up to Mother
Teresa and admired her.”
Weaving his words around both
deaths, he added: “1 think it will be a
time of great reflection and I hope o f
rededication.
“I think all of us were greatly moved
by the pictures from London today o f
Princess Diana’s sons and Prince
Charles and the royal family greeting
the mourners and beginning the sort
o f public grieving process along with
the private one,” Clinton said.
And referring to D iana’s funeral
he said: “1 think tomorrow will be a
sad but a very important, positive
thing.”
The president said it was too early
to say if the first lady would also
attend Mother Teresa’s funeral.
The Clintons are to end their three-
week summer vacation, the longest
they have taken in the White House,
and return to W ashington Sunday.
Separately, House Speaker Newt
Gingrich issued a statement praising
Mother Teresa’s work.
“No orphan child, no helpless
beggar, no impoverished family will
every walk alone again,” he said.
“They will walk with Mother Teresa
at their side.”
E. coli related bacteria Genetically Mapped
type o f E. coli related to the
people.”
Experts said the new genetic map
•acteria that prompted the
good news for public health and
nation ’ s largest hamburger recal is
1 has
will be o f great benefit in laboratories
been genetically mapped, a major step
where scientists have used E. coli as
toward finding new drugs or vac
a workhorse o f experimentation and
cines against certain food poison
biological discovery.
ings, researchers say.
The U niversity o f W isconsin
In a report published today in the
group beat a Japanese science team
journal Science, a team led by
by just a few days in a years-long race
Frederick Blattner o f the University
o f Wisconsin, Madison, announced
to sequence all the E. coli DNA.
B lattn er said the next step is to
the sequencing and mapping of the
find w hy 0157 and som e o ther
4,288 genes contained in the 4.6 mil
form s o f E. coli cause disease
lion base pairs o f DNA in a common
w hile m ost strains o f the m icrobe
laboratory strain o f E. coli.
are harm less and even b en eficial
‘ ’The E. coli genome we have se
quenced,” said Blattner, ‘'is closely
to dig estio n .
Hamburger contaminated by 0157
related to 0157, the E. coli that kills
A
sickened people in Colorado and led
Hudson Foods Inc. to recall 25 m il
lion pounds o f meat, the largest such
recall ever.
Hudson had to shut down some
meatpacking plants and the firm an
nounced Thursday that it was being
bought by Tyson Foods Inc.
Forms o f E. coli contamination in
applejuice, lettuce and fruit also have
been blamed in recent years for out
breaks o f infection.
Now that his team has completed
the E. coli gene map, Blattner said,
' 'one o f the first things we will do is
a comparison with 0157 so we can
pick out the g enes th at are r e
sp o n sib le for ca u sin g illn e s s .”
At the military hospital in this capi
tal early today, soldiers posted in
front waved away journalists. The
hospital workers said M obutu’s body
was in the hospital morgue.
Mobutu spent most o f his time at
a luxury hotel in Tangier, across the
Strait o f Gibraltar from Spain But in
late June, he went to Rabat to be
treated for heavy internal bleeding.
Mobutu had an entourage o f about
40 people with him in Morocco, but it
was not known if his family was with
him at his death.
Zaire was in ruins when Mobutu
was deposed, and while his fortune
was estimated in the billions, he died
with neither a title nor a country.
Mobutu arrived in Morocco on
May 23, after searching for a country
that would take him. King Hassan II
agreed to host him for a " few days,
but the deposed leader ended up
staying over three months.
He had wanted to return to his
French Riviera villa, but like many
other countries, France refused him
entry. F rench Foreign M inistry
spokesman Jacques Rummelhardt
said today his government extended
its "m o st sincere condolences” to
M obutu’s family.
The Moroccan ministries o f com
munication and the interior said the
Moroccan government had no offi
cial reaction to M obutu’s death.
During his rule, Mobutu became a
symbol o f excess and when he was
ousted after an eight-month rebellion
in May, his resource-rich country o f
45 million was in economic and politi
Mobutu Sese Seko, the Zairian
strongman who was overthrown af
ter nearly 32 years o f despotic rule
that left his mineral-rich country in
shambles, is dead at age 66.
Mobutu died Sunday o f prostate
cancer at the M ohamed V military
hospital in Rabat, said two hospital
workers who spoke on condition o f
anonymity, 'Hie Maghreb Arab Press
agency said only that Mobutu died at
9:30p.m . "a fte r a long illness.”
He had been living in exile in M o
rocco since May, following his ouster
by the rebel forces o f Laurent Kabila,
who restored the country’s old name
o f Congo.
In his homeland, state radio an
nounced his death at 6 a.m. today,
commenting only that: ‘ ’In the A fri
can tradition, you don’t say anything
bad about someone who has died
and you don’t rejoice in his leaving,
even if he has caused you harm or he
had been your enem y.”
There was little reaction this morn
ing in Kinshasa, where work went on
as usual, a sign o f how indifferent
m ost Congolese had becom e to
M obutu. Even before losing power,
he spent so little time in Zaire that he
had become little more than a picture
on everyone’s walls.
If M obutu’s family wished, the
radio reported, they could bury him in
his jungle home in Gbadolite.
A familymemberinKinshasa.capi-
tal o f Congo, said Mobutu had in
formed his family that he wanted to be
cremated and have his ashes scat
tered over his old country.
cal shambles.
Mobutu was out o f Zaire during
most o f the rebel advance, recover
ing from cancer surgery in his palatial
homes in Switzerland and the south
ofFrance.
Mobutu was the last o f A frica’s
Cold War relics, an autocrat in a leop
ard-skin hat who lived like a king
while leading his potentially magnifi
cent country down a ruinous path.
The former Joseph-Desire Mobutu
seized power in a military coup on
November 24,1965, five years after
the mineral-blessed colossus once
known as the Congo o f the continent
gained independence from Belgium.
Then a colonel and the army chief
o f staff, Mobutu had earned his sol
diers’ loyalty by building up the mili
tary forces and crushing post-inde
pendence secessionist revolts.
His coup was welcomed by the
West, which was vying with the So
viets for influence on the continent,
and by Zairians weary o f the bicker
ing civilian government that couldn’t
decide how best to share power in the
ethnically diverse new nation.
Mobutu prom ised to preserve
democratic institutions and eventu
ally return the country to civilian rule.
Instead, he declared him self head
o f state, banned all other political
parties, and embarked on a decades-
long pursuit o f absolute power.
To cement his dictatorship and
keep potential rivals at bay, senior
politicians from the previous govern
ment were appointed to overseas dip
lomatic posts
lounty Hunters killed young Arizona couple
The men said they were bounty
hunters looking for a bail jumper.
That was why, they told police, they
broke into a house and mistakenly
killed the young couple inside.
But the bond for the fugitive they
sought had expired four years ago,
and a lawyer for his bail bond under
writer says the men were acting on
their own.
“What I told the Phoenix Police
Department two days ago was the
people involved in this crime are ei
ther lying about being bounty hunt
ers, which I’m certain is the case, or
they’re the world’s biggest idiots by
looking for a defendant that they
would not receive a penny for if they
found him,” lawyer Mark Bernstein
said Friday.
Five men wearing ski masks, body
armor and black military-style cloth
ing broke down the door o f Chris
Foote’s home early Sunday. Foote
fired at the men as they kicked in his
bedroom door and the men returned
fire with assault rifles, killing Foote
and his 19-year-old girlfriend. Spring
Wright.
Two o f the men, Michael Martin
Sanders and David Brackne, had
worked as bounty hunters in the past
and told officers that’s what they
were doing on Sunday, police spokes
man Mike McCullough said.
He said Sanders had worked as an
informant for several police agencies
in the Phoenix area.
“We are not the ones saying they
are bounty hunters,” McCullough
said. “Could it be something differ
ent? Absolutely.”
Sanders, Brackne and three others
- including Brackne’s son and Sand
e rs’ brother-in-law - have been
charged with second-degree murder,
aggravated assault and unlawful im
prisonment.
P a u la
Jo n es
SAFEWAY I L I )
ith Paula Corbin Jones and
her attorneys on the verge
o f bitterly parting ways, President
C linton’s camp suggested Saturday
that the prospects o f settling her
sexual harassment suit against the
president had dimmed.
In a petition dated Friday, Jones
attorneys, Joe Cammarata and Gil
Davis, cited a “difference o f opinion”
in asking U S. District Court Judge
Susan W ebber Wright for perm is
sion to withdraw from the case, ac
cording to two sources close to the
W
firing.
He laterpleaded guilty to retaliation
against a witness and served a two-
year prison term.
A fter his release, Sanders m ade
his w ay to A rizona, w here he
w orked as an inform ant for law en
forcem ent agencies such as the
M aricopa County A tto rn ey ’s o f
fice, w hich paid him from 1985 to
1987, spokesm an Bill FitzG erald
said.
Sanders was charged with assault
when he tried to barge into the wrong
house while acting as a bounty hunter
in 1990, but he was never prosecuted.
COUPON MANIA!
Attorneys petition
from her case
questions, said Stephen Krimel, vice
president and general counsel for
W EST-PA C Bail Bond G eneral
Agency in Tollhouse, Calif. He was in
Phoenix as a representative o f the bail
bond industry in California.
“It had nothing to do with bounty
hunters,” Krimel said. “It had to do
with a police informant who was out
o f control and allowed to get out o f
control.”
S anders w as fired after one
month as a county ja ile r in Texas in
1981, then was charged w ith p lo t
ting to kill s h e r if f s investigators
involved in the probe that led to his
They gave police documents indi
cating they were bounty hunters look
ing for a man who had skipped out on
a $25,000 bond in Los Angeles.
But the bond for that fugitive -
d ru n k e n -d riv in g suspect V ictor
Rodnguez Alcantar - expired in 1993,
said Bernstein, who represents Pete
Brito Bail Bonds o f Pomona, Calif.,
which provided it.
Not only does that mean that no
bounty hunters could have been au
thorized to look for Alcantar but that
even if Alcantar were found, the finder
would not be paid, he said.
Sanders’ background also raises
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