Navajos claim Utah wasted $100 mln
SALT LAKE CITY (AP) - When auditors reviewed Utah's handling of an
oil-and-gas royalty trust set up by Congress to benefit Navajo Indians, one
state lawmaker likened the chronicle of abuses to a cheap novel. More than
$62 million had gone into the trust but only $12 million remained by 1991.
The rest, the auditors found, was lost to lax oversight, payoffs, bribes
and ill-conceived business ventures. Now, a federal judge has ruled the
Navajos can go ahead with their claim that Utah must make up for abuses
dating to the trust's creation in 1933. Their estimate of the damage - $100
million. The Navajos are Utah's poorest residents. Many reservation areas
have no running water or electricity and unemployment runs up to 50%. See
full story
<http://www.infobeat.com/stories/cgi/story.cgi?id=2559084831-ac1>
Macedonia abruptly empties border
SKOPJE, Macedonia (AP) - For tens of thousands of Kosovo Albanians stranded
in a fetid no-man's land between their homeland and Macedonia, deliverance
came at a speed that left their last few belongings - and their lives -
scattered. People who had already lost their homes, lands and livelihoods
in the forced flight from Kosovo found in rescue that they had still more
left to lose. "My father, brothers and mother, and one child," said one
woman, listing the loved ones from whom she had been separated after
Macedonia's decision to empty out a makeshift refugee camp on its border
overnight. By dawn Wednesday, Macedonian authorities had dispersed 35,000
or more of the refugees from the squalid, septic border enclave. The
majority were sent to NATO tent camps inside Macedonia. See full story
<http://www.infobeat.com/stories/cgi/story.cgi?id=2559085215-21d> *** Also:
Signs of genocide seen in Kosovo, see full story
<http://www.infobeat.com/stories/cgi/story.cgi?id=25590852! 79-c6a> ***
Sidebar: Countries' Kosovo relief donations, see full story
<http://www.infobeat.com/stories/cgi/story.cgi?id=2559088219-403> ***
Kosovo refugees: How many; where. See full
story<http://www.infobeat.com/stories/cgi/story.cgi?id=2559088498-f3d> ***
And: Turks rally behind Kosovo refugees, see full
story<http://www.infobeat.com/stories/cgi/story.cgi?id=2559089500-407>
Hewlett Packard, EPA reach agreement
CORVALLIS, Ore. (AP) - Hewlett Packard Co. and the U.S. Environmental
Protection Agency have reached an agreement that may settle a complaint
filed against the high-tech firm in September. The settlement would
dramatically reduce the fines HP faces, in part because the company
admitted problems with chemical records at its Corvallis plant before the
investigation was complete. The EPA initially sought $2.5 million in fines.
A motion filed Friday seeks permission for the EPA to drop one charge and
reduce the fines to $112,000 on the remaining three charges. See full story
<http://www.infobeat.com/stories/cgi/story.cgi?id=2559087069-bf1>
