LIMA - Fifteen years ago, Florida journalist Todd Smith was slain after he ventured into Peru's jungle to investigate links between Shining Path guerrillas and the cocaine trade. At the time, Peru's Interior Ministry said the 28-year-old Tampa Tribune reporter had been captured by the Maoist rebels and possibly sold to drug traffickers for $30,000, the bounty then offered for anyone suspected of being a U.S. drug enforcement agent. A secret counterterrorism court in April 1993 sentenced Shining Path guerrilla Jose Manrique to 30 years in prison for taking part in the murder. [continues 734 words]
LIMA, Peru - Fifteen years ago, Tampa Tribune reporter Todd Smith was brutally beaten and executed after he ventured into Peru's jungle to investigate links between Shining Path guerrillas and the cocaine trade. At the time, Peru's Interior Ministry said that Smith, 28, had been captured by the Maoist rebels and possibly sold to drug traffickers for $30,000. That was the bounty then offered for anyone suspected of being a U.S. drug enforcement agent. A secret counterterrorism court in April 1993 sentenced Shining Path guerrilla Jose Manrique to 30 years in prison for taking part in Smith's murder. [continues 1101 words]
Pot Clubs Push Facility Out Of 'Oaksterdam' As city officials move to regulate the burgeoning "Oaksterdam" district, a center for gay and lesbian youth surrounded by medicinal pot clubs is looking to get away from the smoke and safety risks, the group's leaders said Monday. The decision by the Sexual Minority Alliance of Alameda County to move out of the Uptown neighborhood between City Hall and the 19th Street BART station marks the latest twist in the struggle to define Oaksterdam. [continues 505 words]
LIMA, Peru (AP) -- Peru plans to urge Secretary of State Colin L. Powell to resume the U.S.-backed antidrug flights suspended after the Peruvian air force mistakenly shot down an American missionary plane this spring. Powell is scheduled to visit Lima on Monday and Tuesday for an assembly of the Organization of American States. Foreign Minister Diego Garcia Sayan said Peruvian officials would ask for clarification of "the dates and conditions in which aerial drug-interdiction flights could restart." The missionary plane was shot from the sky April 20 after it was initially identified as a possible drug flight by a CIA-operated surveillance plane and then fired on by a Peruvian military jet. A Baptist missionary, Veronica Bowers, and her 7-month-old daughter, Charity, were killed. [continues 177 words]
LIMA, Peru -- In the only scheduled debate before Peru's presidential runoff next month, front-runner Alejandro Toledo focused on former President Alan Garcia's disastrous term in office and Garcia accused Toledo of using cocaine. The televised exchange Saturday night offered Peruvians a chance to see how Toledo, widely viewed as erratic and prone to contradict himself, measured up against Garcia, who is considered one of Latin America's great orators but whose 1985-90 term ended with the country in economic ruin. [continues 277 words]
Patients claim unique relief. How medicinal is pot? For Kathy E., a mother of four in Sonoma County, cannabis makes the difference between misery and a life that is merely uncomfortable. "It gives me relief now," said Kathy, who suffers from a chronic immune system disorder that for 15 years clouded her days with flu-like symptoms. "I do just enough to where I feel better. It gets me just to the level where I can function." But for Dr. Shan Lin, who tends to patients with the eye disease glaucoma, marijuana's benefits in reducing the short-term, damaging pressure inside the eye do not outweigh its negative effects, such as depressing patients' nervous systems. [continues 620 words]
LIMA, Peru -- A plane carrying American missionaries that apparently was mistaken for a drug flight and shot down over the Amazon had received clearance to land and moments later Peru's air force fired on it without warning, relatives said Sunday. The relatives' comments were at odds with a version by Peru's military that the plane failed to identify itself and was flying without a flight plan in an area frequented by drug traffickers. Missionary Veronica "Roni" Bowers, 35, and her infant daughter, Charity, were both killed by the Peruvian gunfire Friday, apparently by a single bullet that passed through the woman's body and entered the child's skull as she sat on her mother's lap, her brother-in-law said. [continues 745 words]
They Had Received Long Drug Sentences In a rare move, President Clinton has granted clemency to four women imprisoned on drug conspiracy charges because they received stricter sentences than the men who were involved in their crimes. White House officials gave scant details of the releases and did not want to discuss them. But Amy Pofahl, released from the Federal Correctional Institution in Dublin, said yesterday that the three others included Serena Nunn, whose cause, like Pofahl's, had been taken up by publications and several members of Congress. All four women were first-time drug offenders. [continues 774 words]
Ordinance lets police take autos of alleged drug buyers A pioneering Oakland city ordinance that allows police to seize alleged drug buyers' cars is wobbly if not flat-out baseless under California law, the American Civil Liberties Union said yesterday, citing an opinion by state lawyers. But the criticism was denounced with equal intensity by one of the city's legal advisers, who told police they can continue to enforce the law with confidence that there is no basis on which it could be overturned. [continues 664 words]
