The Associated Press
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti Ä U.S. Special Forces teams are hunting two small bands of anti-government gunmen through villages in rugged southwestern Haiti, a U.S. commander said Monday.
So far the Green Berets have seized 64 weapons from the two groups' caches, the commander said, but only one man has been detained.
The hunt attests to continued instability in the countryside more than a month after U.S. troops landed in Haiti to oversee a transition from dictatorship to democracy under President Jean-Bertrand Aristide.
Aristide, who was returned to power Oct. 15, was expected to announce shortly his selection of businessman and longtime supporter Smarck Michel as prime minister. The choice was a gesture to Haiti's
business community, which remains nervous about the populist policies Aristide pursued in seven months as president before being overthrown by the military in 1991.
The manhunt in the Les Cayes area near the southwestern tip is probably just a snapshot of troubles across much of rural Haiti.
Because of the limited size of the U.S. force, "there's Haitian-on-Haitian violence when we don't have people on the ground," acknowledged Brig. Gen. Dick Potter, commander of the Special Operations units based in 27 outlying locations.
ùùù
WASHINGTON Ä A woman imprisoned for the attempted murder of a doctor who performed abortions faces 30 felony counts in attacks on nine abortion clinics in several states, the Justice Department announced today.
Rachelle Ranae "Shelley" Shannon was indicted by grand juries in Sacramento, Calif., and Portland, Ore., for attacks in 1992 and 1993, Justice spokesman John Russell said.
Shannon, 38, is serving a 10-year prison sentence for the wounding of Wichita, Kan., physician George Tiller in August 1993.
In addition to arson attacks, she is charged with injecting butyric acid Ä described by the department as a noxious, foul-smelling substance Ä into the walls of clinics in Reno, Nev., and Chico, Calif., and using napalm in the firebombing of a Sacramento clinic.
"Violence against clinics which provide reproductive health services constitutes domestic terrorism," Charles J. Stevens, U.S. attorney in Sacramento, said in a statement.
ùùù
HOUSTON Ä After days of flood and fire, there was some good news for southeast Texas on Monday.
Traffic moved through the Houston Ship Channel and crews said they were running ahead of schedule in their efforts to clean up 200,000 gallons of spilled fuel and oil.
"I feel pretty confident that by Wednesday we will have gotten the bulk of the oil up, or at least 95 percent," said Coast Guard Capt. Richard Ford, coordinator of the cleanup.
The channel was closed a week ago because of flooding caused by torrential rains. It reopened Sunday evening after waters receded and a sunken tugboat was removed from near the mouth of the San Jacinto River. The waterway east of Houston leads into the Houston Ship Channel Ä one of the nation's busiest ports Ä and empties into Galveston Bay.
Before opening to traffic, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers vessels scanned the channel and a portion of Galveston Bay with radar and metal detectors for cars, mobile homes or other large objects that may have been carried there by floodwaters. Nothing was found. Until Sunday, the channel had been open only to barges during daylight and not to oceangoing vessels.
Officials believe that swirling water or debris from the swollen river ruptured at least four pipelines Thursday, causing fires that raced across water and burned homes and boats. Officials allowed one of two ruptured lines belonging to Colonial Pipeline Co. to continue to burn Monday.