Serbian family flees Yugoslavia
BELGRADE, Yugoslavia - Members of Yugoslavia's richest family, whose businesses flourished under former leader Slobodan Milosevic, have fled the country fearing for their lives, the family-run conglomerate said yesterday.
The Karic Brothers, the biggest private company in Yugoslavia's dominant republic of Serbia, is run by three brothers by that name. It has interests in construction, cell phone networks, media, banking and trade.
Bogoljub Karic, head of the company, told the private Beta news agency he and his family left Yugoslavia to save their lives. He did not say where the family fled.
The Karic family "has placed itself under the police protection of a foreign state," the company said in a statement released yesterday.
On Sunday "snipers with infrared aiming devices" were seen near Bogoljub Karic's house in Belgrade, the statement said.
Yugoslavia's Interior Minister Zoran Zivkovic said he had no information on any death threats against the Karic family. Serbian police denied there were any snipers near Karic's house on Sunday.
Officials are investigating Karic's Astra Bank over allegations it channeled millions of dollars into the family's private funds to build a large villa next to Milosevic's house.
The Karic brothers were recently ordered to pay about $30 million in extra taxes imposed on companies given special treatment during Milosevic's 13-year rule.
Texas fugitive frees hostages, shoots second escaped convict
Associated Press
MONTAGUE, Texas - The last of five escaped Texas inmates were captured yesterday after one of them shot the other in a standoff at a couple's farmhouse.
The men's capture ended a four-day reign of terror.
Bob Harold Leach, one of the last two men on the run, freed the farm couple they were holding hostage. Then he shot his fellow fugitive, Gerald Lynn Gantt, in the abdomen, and gave up. Gantt was hospitalized in good condition.
"It was a matter of one of the suspects wanting to come out and the other not, and a conflict between the two," District Attorney Tim Cole said. Leach "was very helpful in getting those people out, and we know it, and they know it."
Irma Forrester, one of the hostages, said Leach allowed the couple to take their medicine and kept asking if they needed anything. While Gantt was asleep, Leach quietly led the couple into the bathroom, where they crawled out the window about 3 a.m., she said.
"Everybody's got a little good in them," she said.
Leach, 38; Gantt, 20; and three others broke out of the Grayson County Jail, about 60 miles north of Dallas, last Thursday night. They jimmied the locks on their cell doors, crawled through the ventilation system and tunneled their way out through a dirt floor in the basement, leaving behind wadded-up sheets and newspapers in their bunks.
The five men had been in jail on charges including assault, kidnapping and child rape.
Grayson County Sheriff Keith Gary said the men, muddy and in their underwear, went to an apartment near the jail where one inmate's father, Gary Reynolds, let them use a shower and drove them about 30 miles south to McKinney. Reynolds has been arrested and faces charges of harboring fugitives.
The sheriff said the men had no plan to stick together after the breakout.
"I feel that Leach initially was the leader," Gary said. "I'm not sure, but somewhere along the way he lost the leadership role to Gantt."
Two of them were captured Friday in a horse stable. A third was caught Saturday night.
Judge sentences fertility doctor to more than seven years in prison for fraud
Associated Press Writer
NEW YORK - A Park Avenue fertility doctor, whose patients have included singer Celine Dion and actress Liv Ullmann, was sentenced to more than seven years in prison yesterday for tricking insurance companies into paying for procedures that were not covered.
Dr. Niels Lauersen, 64, was also ordered to pay $3.2 million in restitution and $17,500 in fines.
Tearful former patients called out to Lauersen and wished him well as the man dubbed the ''Dyno Gyno'' by the tabloids was led away.
Lauersen was convicted in January. According to prosecutors, he helped couples get pregnant by providing fertility treatments not covered by insurance. Then, he submitted bills for reimbursement for various covered treatments.
Prosecutors said he pocketed $2.5 million illegally between 1987 and 1997.
The case was closely watched by other doctors. Some experts said that what Lauersen did is a common, unspoken practice among many doctors.
''You were a medical doctor at the top of your profession and a public figure at the apex of New York society,'' U.S. District Judge William H. Pauley told Lauersen in imposing the seven-year, three-month sentence. ''Your fall from prestige has been Faustian in its dimensions.''
Defense attorney Gerald Shargel had argued for leniency, saying Lauersen had an honorable purpose - to make it affordable for women with fertility problems to have a child. Shargel said his client had treated 14,000 women, delivering 3,000 children in a single year.
