National Desk

This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.

The New York Sun

WASHINGTON


REPORT: POWELL ‘PUSHED OUT’ BY BUSH FOR SEEKING TO REIN IN ISRAEL


Secretary of State Powell, whose departure was announced last week, was given his marching orders after telling President Bush that he wanted greater power to confront Israel over the stalled Middle East peace process, the Daily Telegraph reported.


The paper cited White House officials who said that during a meeting with Mr. Bush on November 11, the day his letter of resignation was dated, Mr. Powell was not asked to stay on and gave no hints he would do so.


“The clincher came over the Mideast peace process,” an unnamed retired state department official told the Telegraph. “Powell thought he could use the credit he had banked as the president’s ‘good cop’ in foreign policy to rein in Ariel Sharon and get the peace process going. He was wrong.”


The Telegraph reported that Mr. Powell made his final pitch to remain in office for at least another year during Prime Minister Blair’s recent visit to Washington.


While Mr. Powell was reportedly preparing to step down before the start of Mr. Bush’s second term, his friends told reporters that he had changed his mind because he saw signs of progress on the peace process and wanted to see through the Iraq elections, the paper reported. The president nominated national security adviser Condoleezza Rice to replace Mr. Powell.


– Staff Reporter of the Sun


MIDWEST


FIVE DEAD, THREE INJURED IN GUN BATTLE AMONG HUNTERS


HAYWARD, Wis. – A dispute among deer hunters over a tree stand in northwestern Wisconsin yesterday erupted into a series of shootings that left five people dead and three injured, officials said.


The alleged gunman, a man from the Twin Cities area, was arrested yesterday afternoon near the county line, according to Sawyer County sheriff’s officials.


The violence began shortly after a hunting party saw a hunter occupying their tree stand, Sawyer County Chief Deputy Tim Zeigle told KSTP-TV of St. Paul, Minn. A confrontation and shooting followed.


One of the shooting victims radioed back to the deer shack for help, he said. When more hunters came to the scene, they also were shot, Mr. Zeigle said. The shootings happened in the town of Meteor in southwestern Sawyer County, County Sheriff James Meier said in a news release. Three people were taken to a local hospital, one was listed in serious condition, authorities said.


Wisconsin’s deer gun hunting season started Saturday and lasts for nine days.


– Associated Press


SOUTH


TEXAS WOMAN’S DEATH PROBED FOR MAD-COW TIE


BEAUMONT, Texas – The family of a Beaumont woman is waiting for test results to find out if she died from a form of an affliction connected to mad-cow disease.


Burnell Baize, 71, died October 16 of the rare Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, which eats holes in the brain and always causes death, the Beaumont Enterprise reported yesterday.


There are two forms of the disease.


One type is called variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease and is linked to mad-cow disease. It can be contracted by humans if they eat infected beef or nerve tissue, and possibly through blood transfusions. The more common type of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, known as classic CJD, is responsible for about one in 10,000 American deaths each year, and its cause is unknown 85% of the time. In America, there has been only one known case of variant CJD – a Florida woman who died in June after eating contaminated beef more than a decade ago in England. The only confirmed American case of mad-cow disease was found last December in Washington State. But on Thursday, Agriculture Department officials said a second case of mad-cow disease might have turned up.


The brain of Baize was taken to the National Prion Disease Pathology Surveillance Center in Ohio, where an autopsy will determine if she died of classic or variant CJD. The results are expected in about two weeks.


– Associated Press


NORTHEAST


LETTER FROM LINCOLN’S KILLER NETS RECORD PRICE BOSTON – A letter written by President Lincoln’s assassin two months before the 1865 slaying sold at auction yesterday for a record $68,000. In the letter, dated February 9, 1865, John Wilkes Booth asks a friend to send him a picture of himself “with cane & black cravat” – the one later used in his wanted poster.


The previous high for a Booth letter was $38,000, according to Stuart Whitehurst, vice president of Skinner Inc. auctioneers. The buyer was Joe Maddalena, a Beverly Hills-based historical-document dealer. Mr. Maddalena, who bid by phone, said Booth “is the rarest American autograph.”


“When he killed Lincoln, anybody who had any relationship with him burned their letters, because they were so afraid they would be linked to him,” Mr. Maddalena said. “There are only 300 known letters and he must have written thousands and thousands.”


Mr. Whitehurst estimated that only 17 Booth letters remain in private hands. This letter was addressed to family friend Orlando Tompkins of Boston, an apothecary and part owner of Boston Theatre. Booth tells Tompkins he “will get any letter sent to Fords Theatre.”


Booth was retrieving his mail at the theater on April 14, 1865, when he first heard that Lincoln would be attending “Our American Cousin” that evening. Booth, a Confederate sympathizer and former actor, returned during the play to assassinate the president.


– Associated Press


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