10/09/2001 - Updated 09:31 PM ET

Spotlight is gone, but non-war news rolls on

By Martin Kasindorf, USA TODAY

Many news stories that preoccupied Americans before the terror attacks and U.S. military strikes in Afghanistan have all but disappeared from public view. But as the media radar sweeps elsewhere, these once-absorbing narratives don't stop generating their mystery, sorrow or whimsy.

Here is a briefing on some of what else has been happening since Sept. 11:

Gary Condit and Chandra Levy. Signs that attention has shifted from the seven-term member of Congress and a missing intern from his rural home district: The news cameras are gone from the Modesto, Calif., lawn of Robert and Susan Levy, the parents of 24-year-old Chandra Levy. And Condit, 53, is quietly testing prospects for re-election next year.

The Levy family has said Chandra told them she was having an affair with Condit. Washington police have said he acknowledged the affair to them.

Condit's aides are circulating petitions to collect the 3,000 voter signatures that would be one way to put the conservative Democrat on the March primary ballot. He also could pay a filing fee.

California political observers say Condit's campaign for an eighth term is an uphill slog. Redistricting has made the constituency more Democratic but also more urban, liberal, black and Latino; 40% of voters will be new, and all they know of Condit is what they've seen in tabloid scandal headlines.

Levy hasn't been seen since April 30. Police have said Condit is not a suspect in her disappearance.

Texas child killings. A judge ordered Andrea Yates, the Clear Lake, Texas, mother accused of drowning her five children in a bathtub in June, to stand trial beginning Jan. 7 for the deaths of three of the children. Prosecutors are holding two more capital murder charges for a possible second trial if she is acquitted. She has pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity.

Police say Yates, 37, summoned them to the family's suburban Houston home and admitted killing the children. Her mental state will be the main issue in the trial, expected to last more than a month.

Florida's 2002 election. The events of Sept. 11 have quieted and shrunk the field of Democrats seeking the nomination to challenge Republican Gov. Jeb Bush. The election had shaped up as a sequel to the state's 2000 presidential election recount brawl between George W. Bush and Al Gore. Now, every Democrat avoids criticizing the governor, President Bush's younger brother.

Joining the trend against partisanship is former attorney general Janet Reno, who announced Sept. 4 that she was in the race.

"I think it is important to renew our commitment to stand behind our president as one nation, united," she said last week. Instead of attacking the governor, Reno makes speeches about schools, health care and the environment.

Some rival Democrats are dropping out. Rep. Jim Davis of Tampa quit Sept. 6 in acknowledgment of front-runner Reno's name recognition. Douglas (Pete) Peterson, a former member of Congress who had quit as ambassador to Vietnam to run for governor, pulled out Sept. 22. He said he didn't want to appear partisan when President Bush needs support.

In another race that will bring reminders of the 36-day presidential election impasse, Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris, 44, announced that she is running for a safely Republican seat in Congress. Harris, who had been the Republican presidential campaign's Florida co-chair along with Jeb Bush, incensed Democrats but pleased Republicans with her official rulings during the recount flap.

Shark attacks. Sharks wrought havoc off U.S. beaches this summer. The predators killed two swimmers over the Labor Day weekend. Two severely injured survivors of attacks remain hospitalized.

Jessie Arbogast, 8, of Ocean Springs, Miss., is listed in fair condition in his third stay at Sacred Heart Children's Hospital in Pensacola, Fla., since he was attacked near Pensacola.

The boy's uncle wrestled the shark to shore, where a park ranger killed it. Surgeons reattached Jessie's severed right arm. A wounded leg is healing well, doctors say. Jessie is still not able to talk or walk.

Natalia Slobodskaya, 23, a graduate student at George Washington University in Washington is in "fair but stable" condition at Sentara Norfolk General Hospital in Norfolk, Va.

Wading in Avon, N.C., on Sept. 3, she and her boyfriend, Sergei Zaloukaev, 28, were attacked. He bled to death from injuries. She lost her left foot. Now walking with the aid of a prosthesis, "she will be discharged fairly soon," hospital spokeswoman Ann Keffer says.

Also on Labor Day weekend, a bull shark snatched a 10-year-old Virginia boy, David Peltier, at Virginia Beach, Va. David died the next day.

Mayor jailed on child sex charges. A year ago, Philip Giordano, 38, seemed on a climb to the peak of Republican politics in Connecticut. The three-term mayor of Waterbury, Giordano was the GOP nominee against Democratic Sen. Joe Lieberman, who was running for re-election while running for vice president.

Losing to Lieberman was the beginning of bigger troubles for Giordano. FBI wiretaps during a secret investigation of suspected City Hall corruption picked up evidence that the mayor was arranging with a convicted prostitute for sex with two girls, cousins ages 9 and 10, federal court documents say.

On July 26, the FBI arrested Giordano, the married father of three. He pleaded not guilty on Sept. 21 to a 14-count sexual misconduct indictment. Each of two charges of violating the girls' civil rights carries a maximum penalty of life in prison and a $250,000 fine.

State officials filed 18 additional charges involving the same alleged sexual encounters.

Mayor Daley's book club. Chicagoans have been flocking to library branches and bookstores in response to Mayor Richard Daley's request in August to read his favorite novel, Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird. Discussion groups this week at libraries, coffeehouses and the headquarters of Boeing Co. and Playboy Enterprises during the city's library celebration week will be well-attended, Chicago Public Library communications officer Christine Roderick says.

"We were so afraid that with the terrorism and everything, it would kind of fall off the vine," Roderick says. "That hasn't happened." The library system's 3,200 copies of the book, including 2,000 added for the reading push, "are flying off the shelves, and bookstores are reporting sales in huge amounts."

-- Anonymous, October 10, 2001

Answers

http://ens-news.com/ens/oct2001/2001L-10-08-02.html

Environment Australian Sharks to Be Shot on Sight

PERTH, Australia, October 8, 2001 (ENS) - Western Australian fisheries officers and police have been handed the authority to shoot sharks on sight if they threaten swimmers at beaches near Perth under a new plan introduced by the state government.

A spokesman for Western Australian state Fisheries Minister Kim Chance said that if swimmers are endangered and the sharks cannot be driven away, officials can and will shoot them.

In Australia it is the start of the spring-summer season when surf- ski enthusiasts take to the coastal waters. Fears over shark attacks at Perth beaches this summer have emerged after a claim the state government has failed to act to protect swimmers.

White shark (Photo courtesy Dan Jonsson) The mayor of the Perth beach town of Cottesloe, John Hammond, is urging a tryout for new sonar technology which would give swimmers and life guards early warning of sharks. Cottesloe beach was the scene of a number of attacks in recent times, including a fatal attack on Ken Crew, 49, whose leg was torn off by a 15 foot white pointer last November. His friend was seriously injured.

The shark was followed by fisheries officials after the attack, but they could not kill it because the former government had no such response plan. Chance's spokesman said the new plan would avoid any unnecessary delays in destroying sharks that pose an immediate threat to the public.

A spokeswoman for the state Fisheries Department said a government taskforce, set up after last year's attack, would report to Parliament in about three weeks. She said the department and others have been using sonar technology to detect sharks for years.

[end snip]

-- Anonymous, October 10, 2001