Around the world
IDENTIFIED: The Islamic militant who blew himself up in a crowded Tel Aviv street March 4, killing 13 people, has been identified, Palestinian sources said Friday. The sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the bomber was Ramzi Obeid, 24, from Khan Yunis, a member of the Islamic Jihad organization. The sources told the Associated Press in Jerusalem that Obeid's parents had informed the Palestinian police about his disappearance and provided a photo-graph. Israeli pathologists confirmed that Obeid was the suicide bomber, Israel Radio reported.
SHUTDOWN: Russian nuclear reg-ulatory officials ordered a research reactor shut down on Friday after the second accident there in less than two months, a Moscow news report said. The State Nuclear Safety Oversight Committee made the decision after an air conditioner inside the nuclear reactor building caught fire Friday, the ITAR-Tass news agency reported. The blaze was extinguished, and no one was exposed to radiation, it quoted the committee as saying. The committee, however, decided to indefinitely suspend operations of the VK-50 reactor at a nuclear research center in the town of Dimitrovgrad on the Volga River, about 450 miles east of Moscow.
IDLING: Hundreds of Argentine tramps plan to gather at the fashionable beach resort of Mar del Plata in September to promote idleness at their first national summit, tramp rep-re-sentatives said Friday in Buenos Aires. "The unemployed and workaholics interested in rehabilitation will be allowed to attend as observers," said Pedro Ribeiro, a member of the Association of Free Wanderers of Mar del Plata, quoted by the state-owned Telam news agency. He said those attending the summit would espouse a philosophy of freedom, anti-consumerism and ecology.
Across the nation
IN JURY'S HANDS: The worst case of abortion clinic violence in U.S. history went to a Boston jury Friday that must decide if accused killer John Salvi is insane or guilty of first-degree murder. "If the Commonwealth (state of Massachusetts) fails to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant is legally sane, then you must return a verdict of not guilty by reason of insanity," Judge Barbara Dortch-Okara instructed jurors. Salvi was charged with two counts of first-degree murder in the shooting death of Shannon Lowney, 25, and Lee Ann Nichols, 38, and assaults against five other people during attacks on two Brookline, Massachusetts, abortion clinics on Dec. 30, 1994.
ARRESTED: A 13-year-old boy was being held Friday in the disappearance of a 14-year-old girl who authorities fear was drugged, raped and kidnapped. A 28-year-old man was still being sought. Raina Shirley has been missing since Wednesday afternoon, when the alleged assault occurred. Her clothing and backpack were found on the outskirts of Potter Valley, Calif., about 150 miles north of San Francisco. Raina and a 13-year-old girlfriend accepted a ride Wednesday afternoon with the two suspects, whom they knew, the Mendocino County Sheriff's Department said. The missing girl's friend was found dazed, stumbling down a street. She told authorities she had been drugged, raped and then released.
CHAIN GANG: An Arizona prisoner who was attacked with a garden hoe by a fellow death-row inmate while both worked on a chain gang has filed a federal civil rights lawsuit. Aryon Williams, 29, contends in his lawsuit that death-row inmates should be banned from work crews because they have nothing to lose by being violent. Arizona is the third state to use chain gangs, joining Alabama and Florida, but the only one to use death row inmates. Williams was attacked Jan. 10 as he worked on a chain gang tending a 19-acre prison vegetable garden. A guard fired birdshot at the attacker, and some of the pellets struck Williams, causing minor injuries.
Other news . . .
AN APPEALS COURT in Anchorage, Alaska, ordered a new criminal trial Friday for the captain of the ill-fated Exxon Valdez supertanker, saying the jury was instructed improperly. . . . SOME 47 people being deported from Saudi Arabia for residency violations were killed when their vehicle overturned, the official Saudi Press Agency said Friday in Dubai. . . . RAGING GRASS and brush fires consumed about 25,000 acres and destroyed some buildings in northern Texas but there were no deaths or injuries, officials said Friday.