ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Thursday, April 17, 1997 TAG: 9704170080
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-6 EDITION: METRO
McVeigh judge bans comments
DENVER - The judge in the Oklahoma City bombing trial Wednesday extended his gag order beyond jury selection, barring participants from commenting publicly throughout the case against Timothy McVeigh.
U.S. District Judge Richard Matsch, who has made it clear he wants to avoid a ``circus-like atmosphere,'' wrote in his revised order there is ``no need for the trial participants to explain any aspects of the open trial.
The order applies to McVeigh, lawyers, all law enforcement personnel in the case and all court personnel.
``They are prohibited from making any comments or statements outside the courtroom, concerning any of the evidence, court rulings and opinions regarding the trial proceedings and anything concerning the jury,'' Matsch wrote.
It wasn't clear why the judge felt compelled to issue a written order, but in recent days McVeigh attorney Stephen Jones has made public comments on jury selection and the release of a report critical of the FBI crime lab.
Prosecutors have refused to comment since jury selection began.
The order was released as jury selection completed its 13th day.
-ASSOCIATED PRESS
Ex-congressman guilty of fraud, election crimes
CHICAGO - After four weeks of trial, it took a federal jury less than four hours Wednesday to convict former Representative Mel Reynolds, D-Ill., on 15 of 16 counts of bank and mortgage fraud and for violating Federal Election Commission campaign finance laws.
Reynolds was found guilty of defrauding banks and mortgage lenders of approximately $400,000 by falsifying loan applications and submitting false financial statements. A portion of that money was used for a down payment on Reynolds' $310,000 house in a Chicago suburb.
He also was found guilty of using more than $15,000 in campaign contribution checks for his personal use.
Reynolds, a former Rhodes scholar, was elected in 1992 to a largely Democratic district on Chicago's South Side and quickly gained clout as a new member of the Ways and Means Committee.
He was re-elected in 1994, but resigned in 1995 after he was convicted on multiple charges of sexual misconduct and obstruction of justice for having sex with an underage campaign volunteer. He is serving a five-year prison sentence in a state prison in East Moline, Ill., for that conviction.
-ASSOCIATED PRESS
CIA official: We did warn about chemical site
WASHINGTON - The CIA said Wednesday that it was being unfairly blamed for an incident in which thousands of U.S. troops may have been exposed to nerve gas shortly after the 1991 Persian Gulf War.
At a congressional hearing, Robert D. Walpole, the CIA's senior investigator on the issue, said ``the record is clear'' that the CIA ``provided multiple warnings to our military forces in the field'' about the possibility that chemical arms were stored at an Iraqi ammunition depot blown up by U.S. soldiers in March 1991.
The CIA has been widely criticized because it did not pass on evidence it had before the war that chemical arms had been stored in that depot, near the village of Kamisiyah, in the '80s.
Walpole pointed to several newly declassified intelligence reports showing that, during and shortly after the war, the CIA and the Defense Intelligence Agency provided military commanders with warnings that Iraqi chemical weapons had been stored in the vicinity of the dump.
-THE NEW YORK TIMES
50th national park dedicated in Samoa
PAGO PAGO, American Samoa - America's 50th national park was dedicated Wednesday on three islands covered with rain forests and surrounded by coral reef.
Workers at the National Park of American Samoa will be devoted to preserving the area's rain forest ecosystem, flying fox fruit bat habitat, coral reefs and the Samoan culture and archaeological resources, said Secretary of the Interior Bruce Babbitt.
-ASSOCIATED PRESS
Panel endorses tests for cystic fibrosis gene
BETHESDA, Md. - A panel of scientists, social workers and ethicists recommended Wednesday that any couples expecting a child or planning a pregnancy be offered testing for the cystic fibrosis gene.
But the 14-member panel said couples choosing such tests should first give ``informed consent,'' meaning they understand the fatal, inherited disease before proceeding to find out if they carry the CF gene.
The panel also recommended that the test be offered to people with family histories of the disease and the partners of cystic fibrosis victims. But it stopped short of recommending tests for the population at large.
-ASSOCIATED PRESS
Pencils on bus banned after schoolchild's injury
CORRY, Pa. - A school district banned the use of pencils on buses after a student drove a sharpened pencil 6 inches into another student's buttocks.
Pencils and pens now must be carried in book bags or purses in the Corry Area School District in northwestern Pennsylvania, transportation director Richard Farver said Wednesday.
Some students complained they won't be able to do their homework on buses.
A third-grader was holding a pencil upright on a bus seat Jan. 29 and intended to poke the other student as a joke, Farver said. The injured sixth-grader needed four hours of surgery.
The third-grader, who was suspended for five days and received counseling, was ``fooling around'' and did not realize how much damage the pencil would do, Farver said.
The sixth-grader is back in school, he said.
-ASSOCIATED PRESS
Judge orders test firing of King-assassination gun
MEMPHIS, Tenn. - A judge Wednesday ordered new firings of the rifle believed used to kill Martin Luther King Jr., but confusion over whether the case belongs in his court may delay the test.
Judge Joe Brown of the state Criminal Court said 50 rounds of the hunting rifle found near the murder scene in 1968 will be fired April 21 at the Shelby County Sheriff Department's shooting range.
Brown's order came moments after Chris Craft, the court's presiding judge in Memphis, ordered a temporary halt to any rulings in the King murder until he sorts out which judge has jurisdiction.
Craft's ruling came on a challenge from prosecutors to Brown's jurisdiction over the rifle. James Earl Ray, suffering from liver disease, is seeking new tests on the rifle in his attempt to take back his 1969 guilty plea and go to trial for the slaying.
-ASSOCIATED PRESS
LENGTH: Long : 130 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: ASSOCIATED PRESS. JENNIFER JOHNSON, a Vero Beach, Fla.,by CNBhigh school senior sits by one of her paintings in a Vero Beach
gallery. One of her paintings, of a nude woman, won a first-place
nomination in the annual Congressional Art Competition in
Washington, but was later deemed inappropriate for viewing in the
halls of Congress.