News Briefs
March 31, 1996
Web posted at: 11:30 p.m. EST
Cocaine tossed from Colombian freighter
HOUSTON, Texas (CNN) -- U.S. Customs agents have arrested two Colombian men for allegedly smuggling 170 pounds of cocaine worth about $7.7 million into the United States.
The agents intercepted the drug delivery before daybreak Saturday at the Houston Ship Channel after the cocaine was tossed from a docked Colombian freighter, said Roger Maier, a customs spokesman.
One of the men was taken into custody as he climbed out of the water with 66 bricks of cocaine; the other was waiting in a nearby car. They face charges of conspiracy and illegal importation of a controlled substance.
Rain, hail pummel central Florida
CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (CNN) -- A fast-moving weather system pummeled central Florida and other parts of the South on Saturday with heavy rain and some hail.
A spate of tornadoes, flooding and golfball-sized hail caused no deaths and no serious damage, authorities said.
The storm system was caused by an upper-level disturbance over the Gulf of Mexico. The bad weather caused NASA to call off Saturday's Florida landing of the shuttle Atlantis. The craft landed Sunday under clear skies in California, instead.
U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia resigning
JACKSON, Mississippi (CNN) -- Ray Mabus, the U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia, will resign from the post he has held for two years to run his family's timber business in Mississippi.
Mabus, 47, said President Clinton knew he would only stay in Saudi Arabia for two years when he was appointed in 1994. He plans to return home by May 1.
More than $16 billion in new contracts have been signed in Saudi Arabia and nearly 300,000 American jobs were created during Mabus' tenure, according to the ambassador.
Rare Passover guides on display
NEW YORK (CNN) -- Over 200 editions of the Passover Haggadah are on display at the Agudas Chassidei Chabad-Lubavitch Library in Brooklyn, including one printed in Bologna in 1540 and a Hagaddah printed in secret during the Nazi occupation of France.
The Haggadah, containing prayers and rituals recounting the Jews' exodus from Egypt 3,308 years ago, is one of the most popular Jewish texts. The exhibit provides a virtual tour of Jewish resettlement travels through the generations.
The exhibition will be open at the Library until April 2.
Plane crash kills four
WAREHAM, Massachusetts (CNN) -- A Piper Cherokee crash-landed on a Massachusetts highway, killing the two brothers aboard the plane and a mother and her child riding in a car.
Karen Wilkinson, 23, of Framingham, and her young daughter, Brittany Wilkinson-Karp, died when the plane hit their car, state police said. The other victims were the pilot, James Snyder, 49, of Newton, and his brother, Samuel Snyder, 50, of Hingham.
James Snyder had radioed that the plane's only engine was failing and he would attempt an emergency landing near Interstate 495, police said. They suspect he was trying to put the plane down in a cranberry bog near the highway.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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