ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Saturday, September 21, 1996 TAG: 9609230062
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A3 EDITION: METRO
KARACHI, Pakistan - Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto's brother was shot and killed in a gunbattle with police outside his Karachi home Friday, hospital officials said.
Witnesses said six other people also died and several others were injured in the confrontation.
Murtaza Bhutto, 42, was rushed to Mideast Hospital with six gunshot wounds in his neck and abdomen, the hospital officials said. He later died, they said.
Witnesses said the gunbattle took place after a rally called by Murtaza Bhutto, who opposes his sister and has been demanding her resignation. The brother and sister have been estranged since he returned to Pakistan in 1993 after 16 years in exile in Syria.
The witnesses said dozens of Murtaza Bhutto's supporters, all of whom were apparently armed, attacked the Karachi police chief's nearby house. The chief's guards opened fire, the witnesses said.
- Associated Press
H-bomb fallout victims going home
HONOLULU - The people of Rongelap Atoll, dusted with radioactive fallout from a 1954 hydrogen bomb test, can go home again under a $45 million resettlement agreement with the United States.
The deal provides for radiation mitigation, safe water, electrical power, construction of homes and docks, a school and government facilities, U.S. Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt said.
On March 1, 1954, U.S. nuclear test Bravo detonated on Bikini Atoll with three times the force planned. Within five hours, children on Rongelap, to the southeast, were playing in a fine, white, powdery ``snow.''
Two days later, 64 people were evacuated. Some suffered cancers of the thyroid gland associated with radiation. Three years after their evacuation, in 1957, it was decided they could return.
When they did, new medical problems arose. A series of tests, since questioned, showed higher than expected quantities of plutonium in urine samples.
In 1985, the people of Rongelap moved to Mejatto Island, about 120 miles away.
- Associated Press
LENGTH: Medium: 51 lines KEYWORDS: FATALITYby CNB