Copyright 2000 P.G. Publishing Co.
Pittsburgh
Post-Gazette
May 4, 2000, Thursday, SOONER EDITION
SECTION: NATIONAL, Pg. A-9, NATIONAL BRIEFS
LENGTH: 612 words
HEADLINE: NO
HEADLINE
BODY:
Colombian wins extradition
shield
PHILADELPHIA -- Colombian lawyer and anti-drug crusader Victor
Tafur will not be extradited to his homeland to face drug trafficking charges, a
judge ruled yesterday.
Tafur had been sought by Colombian authorities
since September on charges he helped finance the largest cocaine shipment ever
seized in Colombia, a seven-ton cache intercepted in the Caribbean port of
Cartagena in December 1998.
But U.S. Magistrate Judge Charles Smith, who
had expressed doubts about the government's case from the start, said U.S.
prosecutors failed to show probable cause for Tafur's extradition. Tafur, 36,
would have been the first fugitive returned to Colombia on drug charges since
the two countries signed an extradition treaty in 1979. The treaty was written
in part by Tafur's father, Donald Rodrigo Tafur, a former senator who was killed
in March 1992 outside his son's home in Cali, Columbia, in what was presumed to
be a settling of accounts by drug traffickers.
Tafur has been in the
United States since last year, recovering from injuries sustained in a plane
crash and pursuing his master's degree at Pace University in White Plains, N.Y.
Special ed funding
WASHINGTON -- The House agreed yesterday to
live up to a promise made a quarter-century ago by backing a gradual increase in
federal aid to special education from $ 5 billion this year to $ 25 billion in
2010.
Full funding for the Individuals With Disabilities
Education Act has been a top priority of Republicans, but the 421-3
vote reflected strong backing from Democrats as well. The money would still have
to be approved in annual budget bills.
The near-unanimous House vote
contrasted with a partisan fight in the Senate, where Republicans used their
majority to advance their own measure governing the federal education effort for
grades K-12 and reject a Democratic alternative.
USDA's apple purchase
WASHINGTON -- The Agriculture Department will make a large purchase of
apple products for school lunches and government food programs to help growers
get rid of a huge surplus.
The department will buy nearly 1.65 million
cases of applesauce, juice and slices. It will take bids from growers around the
country and buy the cheapest apples for delivery from July 1 to Sept. 30, George
Chartier, spokesman for the USDA's agricultural marketing service, said
yesterday.
Apple farmers from Eastern states, including Pennsylvania,
have been lobbying the federal government to buy apples to keep the 59 million
bushels sitting in storage as of April 1 from going to waste.
Osprey
clearance due
WASHINGTON -- The Marine Corps' top general is ready to
give the go-ahead to resume flying the MV-22 Osprey aircraft, nearly one month
after one crashed in Arizona, killing 19 Marines, an official said yesterday.
The Marines planned to announced today that Gen. James Jones, commandant
of the Marine Corps, has cleared the fleet of Osprey hybrid helicopter-airplanes
to return to the air, according to a defense official.
The April 8 crash
remains under investigation, the official said. It was the Marines' deadliest
air crash since 1989.
Also in the nation . . .
Mississippi
yesterday became the third state to ban gay couples from adopting children.
Democratic Gov. Ronnie Musgrove signed the bill after it easily cleared the
Legislature in the final days of the recently concluded 2000 session. Florida
and Utah have similar laws . . . Jurors in the federal racketeering trial of
former Louisiana Gov. Edwin Edwards were sent home yesterday, marking the second
day in a row that deliberations in the four-month trial were stalled.
LOAD-DATE: May 5, 2000 
