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Floodwaters continue to drown Midwest states i by Jenny Price Associated Press PRAIRIE DU CHIEN, Wis. — Flooding on the swollen Mississippi River pushed downstream Thursday, inundating basements and streets as workers and residents rushed to shore up dikes and build sandbag levees. In Wisconsin, Gov. Scott McCallum called in the National Guard to help distribute 20,000 sandbags Thursday as emergency crews fought the rising river in Crawford County. “Our people that we’ve had out there sandbagging and trucking — they’re starting to get tired,” said county assistant emetgency management director Gary Knickerbocker. “So, hopefully, they’ll be able to get some rest.” The river climbed to 23.49 feet Thursday at Prairie du Chien, flooding the business district, and was expected to crest Friday at 23.8 feet, National Weather Service meteorologist Dan Jones said. In 1965, the river topped out at a record 25.4 feet. From her front porch, Lois Puckett surveyed flooded Main Street. Water lapped against her front steps, and the two-story home was surrounded by water on three sides. More than 300 sandbags were holding back the flood. “I just hope it crests when they say it’s going to crest,” she said. People in La Crosse, about 60 miles north of Prairie du Chien, were bracing themselves for rain predicted Thursday night, said county emergency management director A1 Spaulding. The Mississippi crested Wednesday at 16.41 feet at La Crosse, but dropped to 16.24 feet by Thursday, Spaulding said. “The flood is by no means over, even though we reached this crest. We could get this rain and get a new crest — even higher,” Spaulding said. Amtrak said its passenger route between Chicago and Minneapolis remained closed by high water Thursday. Freight train .traffic also was affected. The Mississippi River remained closed to barges and pleasure craft. Further upstream, in St. Paul, Minn., the Mississippi crested Thursday at 23.4 feet — almost 10 feet above flood stage—and was expected to begin a slow fall over the next two weeks, the National Weather Service said. In Davenport, Iowa, the only major urban area on the upper Mississippi that lacks flood control structures, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has helped the city build a clay levee reinforced with plastic and sandbags to keep floodwaters out of the riverfront business district. The river was 3 feet above the 15 foot flood stage Thursday. The National Weather Service predicted a crest from 21.5 to 22.5 feet on Tuesday or Wednesday. The record was 22.63 feet in 1993. Davenport Public Works Director Dee Bruemmer said if crest predictions remain near 22 feet, the city should avoid major damage. “The critical point is 22 feet. If we’re under that, we’ll be just fine,” Bruemmer said. “But, the river and Mother Nature f — Castro holds ceremony to celebrate anniversary of Bay of Pigs invasion by Anita Snow Associated Press PLAYA GIRON, Cuba — With a tank, a mortar and anti-aircraft artillery as a backdrop, Cuban President Fidel Castro on Thursday saluted the veterans and victims of Cuba’s Cold War triumph in the 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion. At a ceremony on the coastline where his forces claimed victory over a CIA trained exile army 40 years ago, Castro spoke of “remembering the fallen, remembering the humble sons of the nation who pushed forward into the crushing blow of the pride and arrogance of the empire.” “Today is a day of glory that nothing and no one can erase from history,” the 74-year-old Castro said, looking out at thousands of Bay of Pigs veterans from a stage surrounded by palm trees and decorated with heavy artillery. He used the occasion to recast a U.N. vote to condemn his country’s human rights record as a “moral defeat” for the United States. He said the U.N. censure — narrowly approved in a 22-20 vote Wfednesday by the 53-nation U.N. Human Rights Commission—was not a blow to communist Cuba. Before Castro rose to address the crowd of men, many with rows of military medals pinned to the commemorative T shirts distributed at the event, veteran Ernesto Robaina Figueroa told his former comrades-in-amis “there is no powerful enemy for a people who know what they are fighting for.” The men, now in their 60s, 70s and 80s, cheered and waved small paper Cuban flags in response. Most of the Cubans who gathered on the island’s south-central coast for the ceremony, which organizers said drew 10,000 participants, were elderly men. Trained by the CIA in Guatemala at the height of the Cold War, an invasion force known as the 2506 Brigade was comprised of about 1,500 exiles determined to overthrow Castro’s government, which had brought the Soviet bloc closer than ever to the continental United States by seizing power in Cuba 28 months before. The three-day invasion failed. Without U.S. air support and running short of ammunition, more than 1,000 invaders were captured. Another 100 invaders and 151 defenders died. Victory for Cuba came on Playa Giron, a strip of goigeous, palm-dotted coastline on the Bahia de Cochinos, or Bay of Pigs. While exiles still blame their loss on President Kennedy’s refusal to provide additional air support, Cuban leaders have always maintained that they won the battle simply because they fought better. Exiles in Miami remembered the battle on Tuesday, the anniversary of the beach landing at Playa Larga at the innermost part of the Bay of Pigs, about 12 miles north. The fighting later moved south, to Playa Giron. “The Mercenaries Got This Far,” read a billboard just outside Playa Larga, showing a huge blowup of an old black and white photograph of exile soldiers taken prisoner after the battle. “Here Was Unleashed a Decisive Combat for Victory,” another nearby billboard read. Among the guests at Thursday’s ceremony were relatives of former castaway Elian Gonzalez, including the boy’s father, Juan Miguel Gonzalez, who waged a seven-month battle to return his son to Cuba from the United States. The 7-year-old boy, who was seen Wednesday afternoon at the entrance of this beach’s only hotel, was not at the event. Also absent were his stepmother and younger half brother. Cuba’s communist leadership considers Elian’s return to Cuba last June one of its major recent victories over its “imperialist” enemies. 1^ Tri Delta's i irst ^rfy "FRATS AT BAT" Y^ Softball Tournament Sunday April 22 at 1 :OOPM-until Located at the Intramural fields $2.00 Admission All proceeds benefit Richland Memorial Hospital for Children's Cancer Judge sentences fake heir to 15 years in fraud scheme by Jim Fitzgerald Associated Press WHITE PLAINS, N.Y. —The son of a Wisconsin plumber who swindled would-be investors by saying he was the sole heir to a historic Italian trust was sentenced Thursday to 15 years in prison by a judge who called his scheme4 ’one of the biggest and most outrageous frauds” he’d ever seen. Luigi Alexander, 55, declined to address the court before sentencing. Alexander, who is eligible for parole in five years, also declined to withdraw the guilty plea he entered in February, despite an earlier denial of committing grand larceny and scheming to defraud. Alexander was arrested last year in a sting operation during which he accepted a $1.8 million check from an investigator. In court, Bryan McNelis testified that Alexander bilked him of $835,000 and took $600,000 from his brother and $60,000 front his73-year-old mother, who now ‘ ’has to go look for a job.” Prosecutors said Alexander drove a Land Rover and a Bentley and affected cosmopolitan airs. He had an office in Larchmont that featured the fake D’Ellessandr’O family crest on the ceiling. His Web site boasted of degrees from nonexistent schools and purported that the D’Ellessandr’O family had successfully invested for the Vatican and Italian nobility. Alexander eventually admitted he was bom in Waukesha, Wis., rather than in Switzerland, and had done prison time for fraud in Texas and Belgium. News Briefs ■ Doctors to implant first self-contained total artificial heart WASHINGTON (AP) - An American on the brink of death soon will receive the first self-contained, mechanical total heart replacement in a landmark suigery experts hope will lead to new hope for patients with fail ing hearts. Heart suigery teams at five hospitals are trained and poised to re move a diseased natural heart and in stall in its place an electric-powered pump designed to fit inside the chest with no wires or tubes sticking % through the skin. Officials of Abiomed Inc., which developed the mechanical heart, said Wednesday that the first suigery, no later than June 30, would proceed without prior announcement and that the patient’s identity may not be released. 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