Archive of stories

4-20-2001 ^South American leaders seek US trade preferences at Americas summit< ^AP Photos< ^By ANDREW SELSKY= ^Associated Press Writer=    QUEBEC (AP) _ Declaring that free trade can help fight drug trafficking, a group of Latin American heads of state urged President Bush on Friday to grant wider trade concessions, saying current anti-drug strategies have produced few results.    Assembled at the Summit of the Americas, the presidents of Colombia, Peru, Bolivia and Ecuador told Bush in a letter that their countries have made sacrifices to stem the flow of drugs to the United States and beyond, and that it was time for Washington to provide more investments and open its markets to products from the region.    "Today the scourge of drugs is still amongst us _ despite the unremitting efforts of the Andean countries in their struggle against illicit drugs," said the letter, which was given to Bush during a meeting he held with Andean heads of state.    Washington

4-22-2001 ^Bush, Fox and Chretien _ the Three Amigos _ work to cement ties< ^By ANDREW SELSKY= ^Associated Press Writer=    QUEBEC (AP) _ Their nations bound together in a free-trade accord, the leaders of the United States, Mexico and Canada are being dubbed "the Three Amigos."    The schmoozing between President Bush, Mexican President Vicente Fox and Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien came during the Summit of the Americas, in which 34 heads of state agreed to forge a free-trade accord extending from Argentina to Alaska.    They held their own mini-summit on Sunday afternoon, meeting over lunch to discuss their continental relationship. Before entering the talks, the trio grinned and clasped their six hands together in unity.    Chretien turned to photographers and cracked: "I have to keep these two guys ..."    "Intact," Bush chimed in.    "Strong," concluded Chretien, who dubbed the threesome "the Three Amigos" at a

3-14-2004 ^AP Enterprise: Moroccan suspect in Madrid bombing is tied to Sept. 11 suspect, court document shows< ^By ANDREW SELSKY= ^Associated Press Writer=    MADRID, Spain (AP) _ One of the three Moroccans arrested in the Madrid train bombings was a follower of a suspected al-Qaida member jailed in Spain for allegedly helping plan the Sept. 11 attacks in the United States, according to court documents reviewed by The Associated Press.    It was the latest suggestion that Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida terrorist group may have been involved in the bombings.    A Sept. 17, 2003 indictment calls Jamal Zougam, 30, a "follower" of Imad Yarkas, the alleged leader of Spain's al-Qaida cell who was jailed for allegedly helping plan the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on New York and Washington. Yarkas, whose alias is Abu Dahdah, remains in Spanish custody.    The indictment targets Yarkas and 34 others, including bin Laden, for terrorist activities connected to al-Qaida. Zoug

3-16-2004 ^Six Moroccans suspected of involvement in Madrid train bombing< ^By ANDREW SELSKY= ^Associated Press Writer=    MADRID, Spain (AP) _ Police reportedly now suspect at least six Moroccans took part in the Madrid train bombings, and the United States is assisting a growing international investigation that is increasingly focused on Islamic militants possibly linked to al-Qaida.    A 45-year-old woman died of her injuries Tuesday, raising the death toll from Thursday's bombings to 201. Of the more than 1,600 wounded, eight are in critical condition.    Cardinal Antonio Rouco Varela led a Mass at Madrid's cathedral Tuesday night remembering the victims of the bloodiest terrorist attack in Spain's history.    "The tragic attacks of March 11 have sunk us all into deep pain," intoned Varela, a huge black ribbon hanging from a wall above the altar. "To kill your own kind, to kill a brother, is to attack God himself."    The main suspect in

3-19-2004 ^Spaniards see red upon hearing top U.S. defense official's comments on bullfighting and Iraq< ^By ANDREW SELSKY= ^Associated Press Writer=    MADRID, Spain (AP) _ From a fire station to a Madrid bar brimming with bullfighting paraphernalia, Spaniards said Friday they were offended by a senior Pentagon official's remark that bullfighting shows they are a brave people and they shouldn't run in the face of terrorism.    They saw the comment by Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz as narrow-minded and promoting a stereotype.    "This is an ignorant comment," snapped Madrid firefighter Juan Carlos Yunquera, sitting on a bench outside his firehouse. "For a top official, it shows he doesn't know what he's talking about."    Yunquera, who heard the American official's remarks on the radio, pointed out that Spaniards overwhelmingly opposed the war in Iraq, even as Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar joined President Bush's &qu

6-20-1994 EDITOR'S NOTE - Indians in South America continue taking reservation land to which they feel entitled from settlers. In Colombia, the Zenu tribe is continuing despite the bloodiest attack on Indian leaders in the country's modern history. One government official said those who ambushed five men expected to kill the Indian movement by killing its leaders.    By ANDREW SELSKY- Associated Press Writer-    SAN ANDRES DE SOTAVENTO, Colombia (AP) - The three Indians - friends who grew up on the same reservation and ascended to top national posts - were barreling down a gravel road when they drove straight into an ambush.    A fusillade of bullets erupted out of the night on March 26, riddling the Indians' red pickup with some 60 holes.    The three men - leaders of the National Indigenous Organization of Colombia and a tribal chief who also served as alternate Senator - didn't have a chance. Their driver died alongside them.    Settlers are suspected in the b

11-6-1994 ^Colombian Program Trains Animals for Return to the Wild ^By ANDREW SELSKY ^Associated Press Writer    BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) _ Alerted by the flapping of wings, the jungle cat spotted its prey and pounced.    A swipe of a furry, clawed paw across the neck and the bird was dead. The margay, a small tiger-like cat native to Latin America, clamped the game hen in its jaws and padded deeper into its cage.    "He's learning well," naturalist Fernando Londono murmured approvingly as the margay deftly ripped away feathers and sank fangs into hot flesh.    The margay is an honor student at a center run by the London-based World Society for the Protection of Animals that trains animals to return to the wild.    The animals come from lawmen who raid gangs involved in the illicit trade of live wild animals. It has become a $10 billion-a-year business worldwide - third only to the trafficking of drugs and arms.    Traffickers can buy a macaw for $100 in South Amer

2-11-1993 ^Writers and Critics Battle in Prominent Book Reviews ^By ANDREW SELSKY ^Associated Press Writer    NEW YORK (AP) _ A half-century after Ernest Hemingway clobbered a critic for a review called "Bull in the Afternoon," the author-critic wars still rage in the publishing capital of the United States.    The latest salvos are fired in the letters sections of two of the nation's most prominent book reviews - The New York Times Book Review and the The New York Review of Books - providing ringside seats for more than a million readers and enraging those whose reputations are maligned and talents belittled.    Some writers become so apoplectic they find themselves at a loss for words when trying to defend their work.    "The reviewer's confusion over themes and intentions and his elephantine misstatements of fact now leave me hard put deciding where to begin," Burton Hersh wrote in the Times' after his book, "The Old Boys: The American El

7-5-1992    Undated (AP) _ EDITOR'S NOTE - For three generations a collection of family memoirs passed from attic to attic. At length, a great-great-grandnephew took a look. What he found was a saga of terror, bloodshed and intrigue, a personal account of one soldier who fought in the Russian army in World War I and witnessed the communist revolution. By ANDREW SELSKY Associated Press Writer    NEW YORK (AP) - On the night of Jan. 5, 1918, a friend whispered a warning, provided a fast horse, and Valerian Yavorsky, a 25-year-old lieutenant, escaped certain death at the hands of the Russian soldiers he commanded.    A few days later he escaped execution once again, this time by the crazed officer who commanded him. And again and again after that when his jailers held a gun to his head and forced him to watch as others were tied to a tree and shot.    When death finally came it was at age 99 after a peaceful and varied career in the United States, as a tennis pro, industrial anal

Photo: Zoe Selsky ^11-6-1990 Militants Use Confrontation to Fight Anti-Gay Violence ^By ANDREW SELSKY ^Associated Press Writer    NEW YORK (AP) _ It was a quiet night at King Tut's Wah-Wah Hut bar - if quiet is the word for an East Village saloon where tattooed toughs gather to booze, play pool and listen to heavy metal.    Gradually, a very different crowd filtered in. They wore T-shirts with the legend "Queer Nation" emblazoned over a map of the United States, and settled in under the ultraviolet-lit painting of a skull on fire.    A beefy pool player was about to take a shot when he noticed a pair of the newcomers standing beside him. His jaw dropped.    The two men were kissing, mouth to mouth.    "Oh no!" Oh no!" the man with the cue cried, retreating in revulsion to the other side of the table. "Stop that."    They ignored him. This was why they had come - to agitate, to confront people they blame for an increase in attacks on homose

8-10-1992 ^Wealthy Town Decides To Help Illegal Aliens Find Jobs ^By ANDREW SELSKY ^Associated Press Writer    GLEN COVE, N.Y. (AP) _ As the early morning sky lightens over Glen Cove, a town with more than its share of multimillion-dollar estates, illegal aliens seeking day labor begin to gather in the cool shadows along a shopping street.    The job seekers, most from El Salvador or Honduras, arrive singly and in small groups, on foot and in battered cars. Some sip coffee at Carmine's Deli from "I Love NY" paper cups. All keep a sharp eye out for landscaping and construction contractors who drive by looking for workers.    In two hours, more than 50 of the job seekers - few of whom speak English and most of them illegal aliens - are crowding a two-block stretch of Cedar Swamp Road.    Some shopkeepers feel they deter customers, and one even periodically sprays them with a hose. But the town of 24,000 on  Long Island Sound has decided it can't make the job see

12-22-1992 ^Retransmitting to fix category code. Users of Khat in U.S. Say Narcotic Leaf Getting Bad Rap ^By ANDREW SELSKY ^Associated Press Writer    NEW YORK (AP) _ The khat chewers of Brooklyn are angry.    Behind the facades of Arab cafes and clubhouses shoehorned among yuppie bars, delis and pizza joints, a subculture of khat has existed for years.    Now, the hundreds of Yemeni and Somali immigrants who use the leafy, mild narcotic say it's been given a bad rap because of news reports that gunmen in Somalia become trigger-happy after using it.    Dr. Kevin Cahill, a tropical disease specialist in New York who has made 38 trips to Somalia, said khat alone does not seem to make people violent.    "But the anarchy in the last two years in Somalia, and possible effects of lack of food or nutrition" may be having an effect, Cahill said. "All drugs act differently with people under stress and with a lack of nutrition."    Use of khat, an illegal substa

10-20-1993 ^Brand-Name Pirates: They're Not the Real Thing ^By ANDREW SELSKY ^Associated Press Writer    BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) _ American fast-food franchises proliferate in this city nestled high in the Andes. You can grab a bite at a Pizza Hut, a Dunkin Donuts or a Whopper King.    Whopper King?    You read that right. Not Burger King, the "Home of the Whopper" that Americans are familiar with, but Whopper King, a counterfeit knockoff.    In Bogota and many other cities around the world, businesses frequently use variations of U.S. brands or duplicate them letter for letter.    In the sleek shopping districts of Bogota's wealthy northern section, there are Benny's ice cream parlors - looking just like Ben & Jerry's of Waterbury, Vt.    Benny's has the same lettering and dairy cow motif as Ben & Jerry's and sells Cherry Garcia, a top Ben & Jerry's brand. But instead of rich cherry ice cream and chunks of chocolate and cherrie

10-26-1993 ^Noose Tightens Around Escobar as Allies Captured or Killed AP Photo available ^By ANDREW SELSKY ^Associated Press Writer    BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) _ The helicopter, carrying men in combat fatigues and cradling automatic rifles, rushed over the verdant landscape toward a mountain where a shack was perched midway up its flank.    Word was that Pablo Escobar - drug kingpin, suspected mass murderer and one of the most wanted men in the world - was hiding inside.    The men leapt out as the chopper landed at the base of the mountain just outside Medellin. Another squad jumped from a helicopter at the summit.    As the two units converged, two women ran out of the shack and were quickly captured. Inside, the men - members of an elite force who've been hunting Escobar since his prison escape 15 months ago - found two assault rifles, the drug lord's personal papers and two-way radios.    But no Escobar.    He apparently had slipped into the woods just as the assaul

12-2-1993 ^Drug Lord Dies In The Way He Ruled Empire ^By ANDREW SELSKY ^Associated Press Writer    BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) _ Drug lord Pablo Escobar went down the way he ruled - with a barrage of bullets.    Escobar, 44, who rose from swiping cars and gravestones to commanding the largest cocaine-exporting syndicate in the world, was shot down by a federal manhunt squad in Medellin on Thursday.    Son of a farmer and schoolteacher, the paunchy, mustachioed Escobar was hailed by some as a drug trafficking Robin Hood when he emerged on the national scene in the early 1980s.    He used some of his billions to build housing projects and soccer fields for the poor in Medellin, and he won a seat as an alternate representative in the national Congress from his hometown, Envigado.    Escobar amassed fabulous wealth by controlling shipments of coca paste to a network of clandestine jungle laboratories in Colombia and arranged flights carrying the white powder to the United States and oth

12-11-1993 ^Drug Traffickers Have Run of Colombia's Third-Largest City AP Photo BOG101 ^By ANDREW SELSKY- ^Associated Press Writer-    CALI, Colombia (AP) _ Cali was once called charming by a guidebook because of its friendly inhabitants and salsa music.    Now it's mostly dangerous.    While the government battled the more violent Medellin cocaine cartel over the past four years, a Cali gang quietly built the world's biggest cocaine distribution network, drawing a deadly infusion of guns, drugs and money into this city nestled against the lush green foothills of the Andes.    The killing of Medellin cartel leader Pablo Escobar by security forces Dec. 2 was trumpeted as a demonstration of the government's will to fight traffickers. However, Escobar was hunted not so much for trafficking cocaine but for killing hundreds of innocent Colombians in bombings and assassinations.    The real test of whether Colombia is Washington's partner in its war against drugs

12-29-1993 ^Trail of Bodies Piles Up As Hunt Is On For Escobar's Riches AP Photo NY112 ^By ANDREW SELSKY ^Associated Press Writer    BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) _ In one of the largest treasure hunts in modern times, authorities are trying to track down slain drug lord Pablo Escobar's fortune, which is believed to be scattered throughout the world.    A scramble for the loot among remnants of his Medellin cocaine cartel has already left behind a trail of bodies since Escobar was killed four weeks ago. He fell to security forces Dec. 2 in a gunfight on a Medellin rooftop.    About $1 billion in assets suspected of being Escobar's has been seized in recent years in Colombia, authorities say.    But the government believes it will find nowhere near all the holdings of the man described by Forbes magazine in 1991 as the 62nd richest in the world, with an estimated net worth of more than $2.5 billion.    "There are many places the money could be hidden, bank accounts in

1-6-1994 ^U.S. Troops Claim Beachhead in Colombia, Mingle With Vacationers AP Photo IBTR102 ^By ANDREW SELSKY ^Associated Press Writer    JUANCHACO, Colombia (AP) _ American soldiers hit the beaches of Colombia, to the bewilderment of local residents and swimsuit-clad vacationers in this rustic Pacific getaway.    The growl of U.S. Army heavy machinery intruded on the laid-back atmosphere of Juanchaco's open-air bars and restaurants Wednesday as the vehicles rolled down the black-sand beach.    A gaggle of tourists joined a few locals to watch the show, leaning against canoes or taking shelter from the sun in a gazebo.    About 135 American soldiers are rebuilding a road and constructing a school and clinic here. Most are combat engineers from Fort Rucker, Ala.; the rest are stationed in Panama.    The exercise has been criticized by Colombian congressmen who say President Cesar Gaviria invited the "gringos" without their authorization. Many suspect it's actu

1-24-1994 ^Massacre in Colombia Brings Blood, Fear, and Questions AP Photos NY110,NY15 ^By ANDREW SELSKY ^Associated Press Writer    APARTADO, Colombia (AP) _ Felix Rodriguez stood trembling outside the morgue.    "Why did they kill my son?" he asked a reporter.    The 17-year-old youth was one of least 33 people gunned down as they danced and drank in the street early Sunday.    It was the worst massacre in five years in a country where 200 people died the past 12 months in political violence in this region of northern Colombia.    Hours later the victims lay piled atop each other in the small morgue of this steamy, banana-growing town. Family members, moaning and crying, waited outside.    The shack-lined, rutted dirt road where people were partying hours before was a scene of blood stains buzzed by flies, overturned chairs, empty bottles of booze and terrified residents.    No one claimed responsibility for the massacre. Government officials blamed leftist rebel