Around the world
MERCY MISSION: Barbara Bush arrived at the Croatian port of Split Tuesday on a two-day humanitarian mission to deliver medical relief supplies to hospitals in war-torn Croatia and neighboring Bosnia-Herzegovina. Sponsored by the U.S. non-governmental humanitarian organization Americares, sent Bush, its designated "ambassador at large," to the region with 640,000 pounds of aid supplies worth $2.4 million.CRASH: A Laotian airliner crashed into a mountain in north-central Laos, killing all 17 people aboard, including one American. The Lao Aviation flight struck the mountain Monday while approaching the airport at Phong Savan, 100 miles northeast of Laos' capital, Vientiane, the state news agency KPL said. The agency reported 15 passengers and two crew members were aboard the Chinese-built Y-12 airplane and said all aboard died, according to a diplomat in Vientiane who saw the report.
RECAPTURED: Police in Sao Paulo, Brazil, have recaptured a reputed drug lord who was among Brazil's most wanted criminals, authorities said Tuesday. Abidiel Pinto Rabelo, 39, was seized by detectives Monday in Campo Grande, capital of the interior state of Mato Grosso do Sul, when he left the luxury house he was living in with his family. He became Brazil's most hunted drug-trafficker in July after he was sprung from police custody by a gang of 10 armed men while returning from a dental appointment in Sao Paulo.
Across the nation
SECRET: An Austin, Texas, judge in the trial of 11 Branch Davidians ordered that the jurors' identities be kept secret and that the attorneys not talk to the media. U.S. District Judge Walter Smith of Waco said Monday that he wanted to keep the jurors anonymous to ensure their safety during the trial, scheduled to begin Jan. 10 in San Antonio.
SATISFIED: A soldier in Fort Bliss, Texas, who said a sergeant sexually assaulted her during the gulf war is satisfied by his guilty plea to a lesser charge, her lawyer said. The case made headlines when she told Congress the Army reprimanded her after she said she was attacked.
CHARGED: A Hughes Aircraft employee in Orlando, Fla., has beencharged with trying to sell rival McDonnell Douglas confidential information on a $3 billion contract for Tomahawk cruise missiles. Rock A. Lee, 37, a program manager for the Tomahawk maintenance facility at Hughes-General Dynamics in San Diego, offered bid and pricing information for $50,000, the FBI said.
In Washington
RELEASE: FBI files on Jack Ruby, the Dallas nightclub operator who killed Lee Harvey Oswald, are being made public without the blacked-out portions on previous releases. Release of 21,224 pages by the National Archives Tuesday is the first of a half million pages or more of FBI materials related to the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Ruby killed Oswald two days after Oswald killed Kennedy.