February 28, 1996
Web posted at: 12:20 a.m. EST
LEAVENWORTH, Kansas (CNN) -- The only U.S. Marine ever convicted of espionage was freed Tuesday after serving eight years in prison.
Former Sgt. Clayton Lonetree was convicted by a court-martial in 1987. The most serious charges alleged he provided the KGB with the identities of CIA agents and the floor plans of the U.S. Embassies in Moscow and Vienna.
During his court-martial, Lonetree admitted supplying blueprints of the embassy building and names of U.S. intelligence agents, but later said he was duped into the confession.
Lonetree was stationed at the U.S. embassy in Moscow in the early 1980s when his Ukrainian girlfriend introduced him to a Soviet agent.
Lonetree , 34, received a 30-year prison sentence, but it was later reduced to 15 years. Described as a model prisoner, he got additional time off for good behavior.
LOS ANGELES (CNN) -- Attempted murder and assault charges have been filed against an 18-year-old man accused of firing a stray bullet that struck an elementary school teacher in the head.
Alfredo Perez, 30, was in front of his fifth-grade class when gunfire erupted outside Figueroa Elementary School in south-central Los Angeles Thursday morning. He was teaching 23 students in the school library when shots were fired near the school. The teacher was hit in the left front forehead by a stray bullet.
Perez was in critical condition but was stable and improving, a spokesperson at Martin Luther Hospital told CNN on Tuesday.
Francis could face life in prison if convicted. He is being held on $500,000 bail bond.
DEDHAM, Massachusetts (CNN) - John Salvi began his descent into mental illness during his last year of high school when he became preoccupied with the Bible, his father testified Tuesday.
Jurors listened for 35 minutes Tuesday as John Salvi II told of his son's normal and uneventful childhood until his senior year of high school, when, he said, the teen started losing friends and began reading the Bible more and more.
The defense doesn't deny that Salvi went on a shooting spree in two clinics where abortions are performed, killing two women, but it claims he was out of touch with reality and unable to determine right from wrong. They want him sentenced to confinement in a mental institution.
Five other people were wounded in the December 30, 1994, shootings at two clinics in Brookline, a Boston suburb.
PONTIAC, Michigan (CNN) -- A neurologist testified Tuesday in Jack Kevorkian's trial that physicians who assist suicides by providing carbon monoxide are no different from those who make sleeping pills available to terminally ill patients.
Dr. Harold Klawans, a neurologist at Rush Presbyterian St. Lukes Medical Center in Chicago, said the primary duty of physicians is to relieve the pain and suffering of their patients.
Klawans was the first defense witness called by Kevorkian attorney Geoffrey Fieger. Kevorkian, a crusader for medically assisted suicide, is facing two charges in Oakland County Circuit Court of violating a ban on assisted suicide in Michigan.
Prosecutors allege Kevorkian violated the law, which expired in November 1994, when he helped Merian Frederick and Dr. Ali Khalili die in his suburban Detroit apartment in October and November 1993. Both died in Kevorkian's presence of carbon monoxide poisoning.
TEANECK, New Jersey (CNN) -- The remains of the two Americans killed in Sunday's bus-bombing attacks in Israel were flown home in flag-draped coffins Tuesday.
Sara Duker , 22, and Matthew M. Eisenfeld, 27, were among 27 people killed in two separate blasts.
Duker had been taking classes at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem and working in a school microbiology lab. She was a graduate of Barnard College in New York, just across the street from where Eisenfeld studied.
Eisenfeld was a second-year rabbinical student at the Jewish Theological Seminary, and was in the school's Jerusalem study program.
The couple had been dating, and Duker went to Israel in the fall in part to be near Eisenfeld, relatives said.
Funeral services were scheduled Tuesday for Duker in Teaneck and on Wednesday for Eisenfeld in his hometown of West Hartford, Connecticut. They will be buried side by side at the Beth El Temple Cemetery in Avon, Connecticut.
WASHINGTON (Reuter) -- House Speaker Newt Gingrich said Tuesday the Republican-led Congress may reach agreement with President Clinton within the next two weeks on a comprehensive plan to balance the budget.
"We're talking with the administration," Gingrich told reporters after a speech to the American Association of Health Plans. "It seems to me possible that there could be an administration agreement to get to a balanced budget deal in the next couple of weeks."
Gingrich said such a comprehensive plan would include reform of Medicare for the elderly, Medicaid and welfare for the poor, tax reform and other matters.
He said the budget-balancing bill could be free-standing, attached to an increase in the debt, or part of an appropriations measure.
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle and Democrats are expected Tuesday to offer Republicans an extension for Whitewater hearings. The extension will last about four more weeks, Daschle's spokeswoman told CNN.
The Democrat proposal, however, falls far short of Republican demands for an indefinite extension beyond the Senate Whitewater Committee's current limit of Thursday. Republicans say key Whitewater witnesses will be unavailable in the next few weeks.
"The notion that Republicans would have an open-ended extension is not acceptable to the [Democratic] caucus," said Ranit Schmelzer, Daschle's spokeswoman.
NASHVILLE, Tennessee (CNN) -- Legendary country comedian Minnie Pearl was hospitalized Monday, and doctors were examining her for a possible brain seizure or stroke, her spokeswoman said.
Doctors had not yet diagnosed the 83-year-old Pearl's ailment as of late Monday. Spokeswoman Judy Seal did not give further information.
Pearl, whose enthusiastic "Howdy" reverberated off Grand Ole Opry walls for more than 50 years, spent 20 years on the rural parody "Hee-Haw" as Grandpa Jones strummed the banjo and she rang out folk songs.
Pearl's trademark is a flowered straw hat with a dangling price tag. She appeared weekly on The Nashville Network until a stroke in 1991. She has not performed since then.
TAMPA, Florida (CNN) -- The Food and Drug Administration announced Monday it has begun an investigation looking into complaints that products sold as 100 percent apple juice were diluted with sugar water.
The agency made its announcement nearly a week after Minute Maid juices sued six suppliers of apple juice concentrate in Tampa federal court, claiming they sold diluted products.
Minute Maid is withdrawing all 100 percent apple juice products from warehouses, but not grocery stores because its nutrient value has not been significantly cut from FDA standards.
The agency said, without elaboration, that other brand names are affected. The FDA said U.S. apple juice sellers, who paid $10 a gallon for 100 percent concentrate but got the equivalent of 90 percent juice, were defrauded by their juice suppliers.
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- A congressional report released Tuesday said that although counterfeiting of U.S. currency overseas is increasing, it poses no threat to the nation's economy.
The report said that in fiscal 1994, an estimated $208.7 million of counterfeit currency was in circulation, a tiny fraction of the $380 billion of U.S. currency.
The General Accounting Office in its report, however, said the exact extent of the counterfeiting problem "is impossible to determine."
The agency, the investigative arm of Congress, reported that while Treasury Department and Secret Service officials believe the "counterfeiting was not economically significant, they considered any counterfeiting to be a serious problem."
![[Imagemap]](/US/images/9601/navbar.gif){kind=small}
Copyright 1996 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved. Reuters content may not be stored except for personal, non-commercial use. Republication and redissemination of Reuters content is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Reuters. Reuters shall not be liable for any errors, omissions, interruptions or delays in connection with the Reuters content or from any damages arising therefrom.
Copyright © 1996 Cable News Network, Inc.
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
External sites are not endorsed by CNN Interactive.