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Milosevic arrested, pleads innocence by George Jahn Associated Press BELGRADE, Yugoslavia—A haggard Slobodan Milosevic proclaimed his innocence of corruption chaiges linked to his dictatorial 13-year rule as authorities questioned the former president Sunday and ordered him jailed for 30 days. Though the Yugoslav government says it intends to try him at home for ruining the nation, the U.N. war crimes tribunal in The Hague, Netherlands, stepped up pressure for Milosevic to be handed over to face prosecution over alleged atrocities in Kosovo. “We are expecting him soon. It will be Milosevic in The Hague in 2001,” tribunal spokeswoman Florence Hartmann said Sunday. Another spokesman, Jim Landale, said Yugoslavia had a “binding obligation” to turn him over. Milosevic’s lawyer said the 59-year old ousted leader, now in Belgrade’s Central Prison, was exhausted and had been sedated after a 26-hour armed standoff in his besieged villa and a stormy night of negotiations that ended with his surrender to police before dawn Sunday. Barricaded in his sprawling luxury villa in Belgrade, Milosevic had reportedly at one point brandished a pistol and threatened to kill himself and members of his family. He agreed to surrender after being assured he would not be immediately turned over to The Hague. His lawyer, Toma Ftla, said Milosevic told an interrogating judge Sunday that he wasn’t guilty of “a single count of the charge sheet.” The judge ordered Milosevic held for 30 days as prosecutors gather evidence—an order Fila said his client was appealing. “He decided to defend himself. He will speak up and tell the truth,” Fila said. Prosecutors allege that as president of Serbia and later Yugoslavia, Milosevic conspired with four top aides to steal about $390 million in Yugoslav dinars and German marks from the country’s treasury. The charges carry a maximum of five years in prison. More serious charges could be raised over the months ahead, possibly including involvement in a series of political assassinations. The questioning was to resume Tuesday. Hours earlier, Milosevic was bundled into a police car and sped out of his villa to prison after he finally agreed to surrender and avoid a possibly bloody showdown. His bodyguards, with bursts of automatic weapons fire, had repulsed an attempt by police before dawn Saturday to storm the villa and seize Milosevic. Hundreds of Milosevic supporters gathered outside the gates. But police regrouped, pushed away protesters, and before dawn Sunday, scores of special forces were at the gates apparently ready to try another assault. At that point, Milosevic relented. Just before he was whisked away, his 32-year-old daughter, Marija, fired several gunshots. A police official said she was apparently aiming at a government negotiator. There were no injuries. The Beta news agency, quoting unidentified police sources, said a search of the villa turned up two armored personnel carriers, 30 automatic weapons, three machine guns, an anti tank grenade launcher, 23 pistols, 30 rifle grenades, two cases of hand grenades and several cases of machine gun and other ammunition. Justice officials said Milosevic — who as president enjoyed unrivaled deference and luxuiy—would be treated no better than any other prisoner. “He has his own room,” said Vladan Batic, justice minister of Serbia, the dominant Yugoslav republic. “He will be given food, allowed visitors, to have his own clothes and footwear, money, books, newspapers. He will not be subjected to any kind of physical harassment, no psychological pressure.” But Fila said his client would have to adjust to life behind bars. H . . Exxon passes GM to top Fortune 500 t by Matt Moore Associated Press NEW YORK —Suiging eneigy prices in the United States gave oil, gas'and power companies new fuel in their ascension of the annual Fortune 500. Oil giant Exxon Mobil Corp. surpassed automaker General Motors Corp., rising to No. 1 from No. 3 with the company’s highest-ever $210 billion in revenue for 2000. GM, which had revenue of $184.6 billion, fell to No. 3.. Other eneigy companies fared well in 2000, with Enron Corp., at No. 7, rising from No. 18. Duke Eneigy Corp. shot up to No. 17 from 69, and Reliant Eneigy Inc. made it up to No. 55 from 114. The list of the largest publicly held companies, ranked by fiscal year 2000 revenues, has been compiled annually since 1955 by the editors of Fortune. GM, which had held the top spot on the list for 15 years, now trails No. 2 Wal-Mart Stores Inc. in addition to Exxon Mobil. Eneigy companies benefited from a suige in revenue brought about by falling supplies, utility deregulation, soaring natural gas prices and OPEC’s maneuvering to keep oil prices high. In the past year, crude oil has sold for as much as $30 a banel, while in some parts of the United States last summer, gasoline cost more than $2 a gallon. Other energy firms advancing included Texaco Inc., which went from No. 28 to No. 16; Chevron Corp. was ranked No. 20, up from No. 35; and Dynegy Inc., which rose to No. 54 from No. 112. San Francisco-based Chevron agreed to buy Texaco last October for $35.1 billion in stock, plus assumed debt of $7.5 billion. The Internet slowdown and uncertainty about the economy hurt a number of companies, particularly telecom firms that slid in the rankings. AT&T Corp. fell from No. 8 to No. 9. But a merger helped Verizon Communications Inc., formed when Bell Atlantic and GTE combined in May, leapfrog from No. 33 to the No. 10 spot, past rivals WorldCom Inc., No. 32, and SBC Communications, No. 14. America Online Inc., which became the first purely Internet company to break into the list last year at No. 337, rose to No. 271. Since then, it has become AOL Time Warner Inc. by way of its acquisition of Time Warner. The combined companies’ revenue of $36.2 billion would have made it No. 39 on the new list, though it wasn’t counted there because the deal didn’t close until early this year. Computer companies were led by International Business Machines Corp., which stayed in the top 10 but fell from sixth last year to No. 8. Microsoft Corp. rose to 79 from 84, and Cisco Systems Inc., which makes equipment for the Internet, advanced to 107 from 146, despite the dot-com crash. PC maker Dell Computer Corp. rose to 48 from 56, and Apple Computer Inc. rose from 285 to 236. Compaq Computer Corp., meanwhile, fell from 20 to 27. Wil-Mart, which remained in the No. 2 spot, had revenues of more than $ 193.2 billion. The top 10 also included Ford Motor Co. at No. 4, a position it held last year. General Electric stayed at the No. 5 position while Citigroup Inc., the largest financial services company in the nation, rose from seventh place to No. 6. Crews prepare to clear Aspen crash wreckage by Judith Kohler Associated Press ASPEN, Colo. — Crews on Sunday prepared to remove the wreckage of a charter jet that slammed into a hillside, killing all 18 people aboard, as investigators looked into why air traffic controllers were unaware of new landing restrictions. The Gulfstream III approached the Aspen-Pitkin County Airport on instruments in bad weather Thursday night when it crashed near the runway. Two days earlier, the Federal Aviation Administration issued a notice saying planes shouldn’t make instrument landings at the airport at night, said Carol Camiody, the National Transportation Safety Board’s acting chairwoman. Carmody said pilots leaving other airports for Aspen had received the notice, but controllers at the Aspen airport had not and weren’t warning incoming pilots. “I find it troubling, no question,” Camiody said. Carmody said she didn’t know why the notice had not reached the Aspen tower personnel. There might have been some confusion about the notice because it wasn’t worded clearly, she said. Rick Daniluk, a former 727 pilot who frequently flies charter aircraft at Aspen, called the notice ambiguous. He said the pilot of the Gulfstream might have thought the notice meant he could still attempt an instrument landing, but could not circle to get a better angle on the runway. Three planes trying to land before the Gulfstream had been forced to abort approaches. Only one managed to land. Controllers also didn’t turn away a plane carrying Colorado Gov. Bill Owens, which landed at the airport a little more than an hour after the crash. The plane carrying nine NTSB investigators to Aspen the next day also missed approaches before landing, said NTSB spokesman Terry Williams. The FAA later clarified the notice to say that no instrument landings were allowed after dark. Carmody said crews would begin removing the wreckage of the plane from a hillside near the mountain airport Sunday; work was expected to be completed by Tuesday. , China fighter jet collides with U.S. Navy airplane by Joe McDonald Associated Press BEIJING —AU.S. Navy surveillance plane collided with a Chinese fighter jet sent to intercept it over the South China Sea on Sunday and made an emeigency landing in China. The Chinese government said the fighter crashed and its pilot was missing. “The U.S. side has total responsibility for this event,” the Chinese Foreign Ministry said in a statement read late Sunday on state television. The collision happened Sunday morning off the southern Chinese island of Hainan, according to China and U.S. military spokesmen. The American EP-3 plane landed at a military airfield on Hainan. The status of the crew and control of the plane on the ground were unclear. None of the 24 crew members was injured, said Col. John Bratton, a spokesman for the U.S. Pacific Command in Hawaii. Chinese officials assured the United States the crew is safe, and American diplomats were going to Hainan to see them, said U.S. Ambassador Joseph Prueher. He said he had talked several times with U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell. “It appears also the Chinese have lost an aircraft, and we’re sorry that occurred,” Prueher, a retired Navy admiral and commander of U.S. forces in the Pacific, said as he left his Embassy at 1:15 a.m. on Monday. President Bush was briefed on the episode Sunday morning, an administration official said. The U.S. plane was on a routine surveillance flight in international airspace when two Chinese fighters intercepted it, said Bratton. The EP-3 is an unaimed four-engine propeller driven plane equipped to listen in on radio signals and monitor radar sites. China claims most of the South China Sea as its territorial waters — a claim rejected by countries that use the vast expanse of ocean for shipping. The collision appeared to be an accident, and the Chinese did not force the plane down, Bratton said. Cmdr. Rex Totty, another spokesman for the Pacific Command, said the Navy talked with the crew after they landed but had no contact since then. The incident comes at an uneasy time in U.S.-China relations. The Bush administration has taken a more wary attitude toward Beijing, and China’s recent detention of two scholars with links to the United States has further raised distrust. The collision coincided with news reports Sunday that U.S. military experts will recommend new weapons sales to Taiwan that could heighten tensions with Beijing. China regards Taiwan as a renegade province and has protested American weapons sales to the island democracy. McVeigh says he would have crashed truck into building Associated Press BUFFALO, N.Y. — Driving down a street with fuses already lit and their smoke filling the cab of his rented Ryder truck, Timothy McVeigh was prepared to crash his mobile bomb right into the Oklahoma City federal building if necessary. “If I needed to, I was ready to stay in the truck and protect it with gunfire until the bomb blew up,” McVeigh says in excerpts from a new book, “American Terrorist: Timothy McVeigh and the Oklahoma City Bombing,” in the April 9 issue of Newsweek. Instead, McVeigh says, he breathed a sigh of relief when he arrived at the building on April 19, 1995, because no cars were sitting in front to block his chosen parking spots. When the truck bomb exploded, it killed 168 people. McVeigh, 32, is scheduled to be executed May 16. “I’ll be glad to leave,” he says. “Truth is, I determined mostly through my travels that this world just doesn’t hold anything for me.” While being held in a federal high-security prison, McVeigh met Unabomber Theodore Kaczynski, who told authors Lou Michel and Dan Herbeck he found McVeigh likable, but thought the Oklahoma City bombing was “unnecessarily inhumane.” In 75 hours of prison interviews, McVeigh talked to Michel and Herbeck, reporters for The Buffalo News, about how and why he bombed the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building. Buffalo is near his hometown of Pendleton, N.Y. McVeigh said he acted “as calmly as any delivery-truck driver making a routine drop-off,” parking right below the tinted windows of the America’s Kids Day Care Center on the building’s second floor. Among those killed were 19 children. Michel told ABC’s PrimeTinie Thursday last week that McVeigh’s only regret was that their deaths proved to be a public relations nightmare. Authorities have said the truck contained 4,000 pounds to 4,800 pounds of explosives, but McVeigh told the authors it was more than a ton heavier. As he drove toward the building, McVeigh stopped to ignite a five-minute fuse, which soon filled the cab with acrid smoke. McVeigh said he had to roll down both windows to let some of the smoke out. A block from the federal building, McVeigh had to stop for a traffic light, and he lit a second fose, one he had measured at about two minutes. McVeigh told the authors that both fuses were burning when he parked the truck and walked away. In the next 30 seconds, he said, perhaps a dozen people saw him. He was wearing a nondescript blue windbreaker over a T-shirt. On the front of the shirt was a drawing of Abraham Lincoln and the Latin phrase that John Wilkes Booth screamed after he assassinated Lincoln — “sic semper tyrannis,” or “thus ever to tyrants.” On the back was a picture of a tree dripping blood and a quotation from Thomas Jefferson: “The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.” McVeigh says the bomb was intended to avenge raids by federal agents at the Branch Davidian compound at Whco, Texas, and the cabin of white separatist Randy Weaver at Ruby Ridge, Idaho. About 150 yards from the building, he says, he started jogging and wondered if something had gone wrong because, by his calculations, the bomb should have exploded. “Oh man, am I going to have to walk back there and shoot that damn truck?” he thought. Then the explosion lifted him off his feet. He said he had no regrets, and in fact could feel anxiety leaving his body. “It’s over,” he thought. While being held at the federal Supermax prison in Florence, Colo., McVeigh found that among neighboring inmates, he had the most in common with Kaczynski, who is serving life after a mail-bombing spree that killed three people and injured 23. At first, Kaczynski refused to speak with McVeigh because he had misgivings about the way McVeigh had executed the bombing. However, Kaczynski eventually believed that his fellow bomber had been demonized by false media reports. Kaczynski, 57, laid out his feelings about McVeigh and the bombing at Oklahoma City in an 11-page letter to the book’s authors. “On a personal level I like McVeigh and I imagine that most people would like him,” Kaczynski wrote. “He was considerate of others and knew how to deal with people effectively.” However, Kaczynski said “the bombing was a bad action because it was unnecessarily inhumane.” . World Briefs ■ Funerals held for Mideast children killed in shootings HEBRON, West Bank (AP) — Chanting Jewish settlers marched through ancient Hebron on Sunday to bury a 10-month-old girl killed in a shooting attack, while Palestinian mourners laid to rest an 11-year-old boy who died after being hit by Israeli gunfire. As both sides buried young victims of the conflict, Israel seized several members of Yasser Arafat’s Force 17 bodyguard unit, which has been accused of carrying out attacks on Israeli civilians. Angry Palestinian leaders chaiged that Israel crossed into their autonomous territory to make the arrests, a violation of interim peace accords. ■ Campaign finance vote coming today WASHINGTON (AP) -Senators from both parties predicted Sunday they will pass campaign finance re form, while opponents held out hope of derailing it if the House and Senate must compromise between competing versions of the legislation. If the Sen ate passes the bill Monday, as expect ed, the House then could reject it, go along with the Senate version word for-word, or pass its own measure. The last option was seen as most likely, lawmakers said Sunday. In that case, a small number of senators and House members would be appointed to a con ference committee that would work to resolve differences in the two versions and send a compromise back to both chambers for passage. Those negotia tions might offer an opening for foes of the legislation. The bill would restrict late campaign broadcast advertising by outside groups and political parties that support or attack candidates but escape regulation because they stop short of explicitly advocating anyone’s defeat or election. The third main provision would ease 27-year-old restrictions on donations to candidates and parties for use in direct campaign activities, in cluding raising the individual contribu tion limit to a candidate from $1,000 to $2,000. Though the House has twice previously passed campaign fi nance legislation, sponsor John Mc Cain, R-Ariz., acknowledged the bill could face significant challenges this time. ■ Nebraska sees largest increase in Hispanic population OMAHA — Dixon County, Nebras ka’s, increase from four Hispanics in 1990 to 348 last year was the largest percentage jump of any county in the United States, according to U.S. Cen sus figures. In fact, Nebraska is home to three of the four counties with the greatest percentage increases among Hispanics in the nation. Besides Dixon County, Keya Paha’s numbers soared from one to 38 and Cuming's went from 15 to 559 in the past 10 years. Georgia’s Webster County was No. 2 in the nation, going from one to 66 Hispanics. Though Hispanics are still far outnumbered, their influx has led to a minor cultural overhaul in the largely rural counties, with the number of Spanish speakers on the rise. In Wikefield, the boom was spurred by Hispanic immigrants who have come to work at M.G. Waldbaum egg pro cessing company, which employs about 800 in the community 80 miles northwest of Omaha. , ■ Teen shooting suspect in Indiana to be charged GARY, Ind. — A teenager accused of fatally shooting a student outside a high school was scheduled to be for mally charged with murder Monday. Investigators said Donald Ray Burt Jr., 17, a former student at Lew Wallace High School, admitted shooting sopho more Neal Boyd, 16, on Friday. Burt’s half-brother, Sidney Abrons, 21, told the Post-Tribune of Gary that Burt was expelled from the school nearly two years ago for truancy and a history of fighting. Abrons said Burt had been attending another school to ' earn his general education diploma and hoped to become a mechanic.