Volume CXXXI, Number 21 April 12, 2002 f

News briefs

Plans were announced Tuesday by Secretary of State Colin Powell to meet up with Yasser Arafat this Saturday.

In what seems like an attempt to mediate the two parties, Powell plans to sit down with Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon in Jerusalem when he arrives there on Friday. The following day Powell plans to visit Ramallah, where he will meet with Arafat through Monday.

Powell will most likely act as a correspondent between the two, should the situation require his services. The process looks to be long and drawn out, as he has made no plans yet to depart the Middle East for the United States.

Edward Lutes, a 15-year veteran of the Seaside Heights, New Jersey police department, was found dead in his car Wednesday morning of a self-inflicted gunshot wound. Lutes was sought Tuesday night for several shooting deaths that prosecutors are attributing to him.

Lutes is believed to have entered the home of one of his Dover Township neighbors, where he shot and killed both inhabitants. He then, according to prosecutors, entered another home where he shot and killed three. A sixth victim was found shot in the street, the victim (whose name is being withheld) survived and was taken to the hospital.

Lutes then apparently drove to the home the Seaside Heights police Chief, James Costello. Lutes shot Costello several times in the limbs as his superior exited his home. Costello survived the incident.

The shooting rampage is the second one to involve a police officer in the Dover Township in the past two months. In February, John Mabie, a retired police officer of Newark, NJ was charged with the shooting deaths of his granddaughter and three neighbors.

In an address to a less than 200 members of the legal, medical, and religious communities on Wednesday, President Bush made public his appeal to the Senate to approve legislation that would ban the cloning of human embryos.

A ban on human cloning was passed by the House this past July.

The ban Bush seeks would not be a complete ban on human cloning, however. Many senators oppose cloning as a means of creating fully grown humans, and are supportive of the benefits of stem cell research..

Plans for former Mexican President Ernesto Zedillo to join the Yale community were announced last week.

Zedillo, who held the Mexican presidency from 1994 to 2000, will now serve as Director of the Yale Center for the Study of Globalization. It is anticipated that under Zedillo, the center will seek to improve world poverty.

Zedillo is no stranger to the New Haven campus, having received a Ph.D. in Economics from Yale in 1981. He is slated to start his new position in September.