Associated Press
VALENCE, France-Armed with shears and machetes, supporters of militant farmer Jose Bove went on a rampage through test sites for genetically modified corn in southeastern France yesterday.
Members of Bove's Farmer's Confederation union led a group of 250 activists through cornfields in the Drome region, as part of an ongoing protest against genetically modified crops, regional officials said.
After slashing their way through 2,400 square yards of corn, the protesters dumped the crops outside the offices of the region's administrative headquarters in Valence.
"The planet cannot be turned into a vast laboratory," said Rene Louail, a spokesman for the Farmer's Confederation.
Among the test sites attacked yesterday were fields used by U.S. biotechnology giant Monsanto Co. in the southeastern village of Salettes. Other cornfields in nearby Cleon d'Adran were also destroyed, officials said.
The farmers' group is demanding that tests for genetically modified crops be conducted in confined areas to avoid cross-pollination with natural crops nearby.
Bove has repeatedly demanded that tests on genetically modified crops be halted. He has issued ultimatums, saying if the government did not rip up the fields, his followers would do it themselves.
Bove, a sheep farmer, has become a folk hero to anti-globalization activists in France and abroad since ransacking an unfinished McDonald's restaurant in the central town of Millau in 1999.


Sacramento Ukrainians bury victims
Associated Press
SACRAMENTO, Calif.-A police helicopter circled overhead yesterday as more than 5,000 members of the city's Eastern European community packed a church for the funeral of six members of a Ukrainian immigrant family slain last week.
More than 20 Sacramento County sheriff's deputies, many of them in plainclothes, stood watch for fear the relative believed responsible for the killings might surface at the service. The funerals concluded without violence.
Nikolay Soltys, 27, is suspected of slashing the throats of his pregnant wife, 3-year-old son, aunt, uncle and two young cousins during a rampage that spanned several hours on Aug. 20.
"Today is the day of our trouble, the day of our sorrow that is inexpressible," the Rev. Vladimir Lashchuk said in Russian at Bethany Slavic Missionary Church. "No one thought their lives would end so quickly."
Anatolly Nakonchay, the oldest of Soltys' wife's four brothers, said there were periods of "disquiet and domestic unrest" between the couple.
"There were episodes where I and my brothers had to physically intervene," Nakonchay said in an interview at the church.
When his sister, Lyubov, decided to leave Ukraine to join Soltys in the United States, "There were many who asked her not to go. Her answer was 'I want my son Sergey to have a father,'" Nakonchay said.
Soltys tops the FBI's 10 Most Wanted list and a $70,000 reward was offered for his arrest. "America's Most Wanted" on Fox carried the case Saturday night, generating more than 100 tips. Still more tips flowed in to a Sacramento command center on four telephone hot lines, one of them set aside for people speaking Ukrainian and Russian.
Investigators said Soltys most likely remains in the Sacramento area and at least a dozen of Soltys' relatives were under police protection in the area.
However, the search expanded last week to Russian-Ukrainian communities in San Francisco and Oregon, and police were paying special attention to Seattle; Charlotte, N.C.; and Binghamton, N.Y., where Soltys once lived or had family ties.


Dozens enroll in boot camp despite death
Associated Press
PHOENIX-Less than two months after a 14-year-old boy died while attending a boot camp run by the America's Buffalo Soldiers Re-Enactors Association, dozens of parents registered their children in the group's 13-weekend program.
A handful of people also gathered at the registration site, a Scottsdale park, on Saturday to complain that the group's founder, Charles Long, is going ahead with the program even as he remains under investigation after the boy's death.
''They need to be accountable,'' said Amy Daniels, who pulled her daughter out of the summer camp before it started. ''A child died. Why aren't more people outraged?''
The president of the Buffalo Soldiers parents association, however, defended Long's tough-love camps.
''I understand the concerns and fears of others, and it was a very tragic loss that Tony Haynes passed away,'' Theresa Triplett said. ''But the basics of this program are very good.''
The 13-week camp, beginning Sept. 8 at the park and moving to several locations, is the same Anthony Haynes had attended.
When he slashed his mother's tires because he didn't want to attend the final weekend, Haynes was sent to the group's tougher summer desert survival camp in Buckeye.
He died July 1 of complications from near-drowning and dehydration from heat exposure, according to the final autopsy report released Thursday.
The teen-ager was made to stay in direct sunlight for up to five hours in 111-degree heat, the report said. When he became delirious and started eating dirt, camp supervisors took him to a motel and left him in the bathtub to cool off.
They returned to find him face down in the water and took him back to the camp, where they called 911. He never regained consciousness.
While nobody has been charged and the medical examiner ruled his death accidental, Maricopa County authorities are investigating Haynes' death and allegations of abuse at the camp.