Senate panel OKs healthcare plan, 14-9

WASHINGTON, Oct. 13 (UPI) -- The U.S. Senate Finance Committee approved its $829 billion healthcare reform package Tuesday on a 14-9 vote, with one Republican on the prevailing side.

Sen. Olympia Snowe, R-Maine, a moderate, broke with her party to vote to send the bill out of committee, but cautioned she was voting because she wants to keep the healthcare reform debate moving forward.

"I voted for it because it's the right thing to do," Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla., said.

Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, called Tuesday's committee vote "just battle No. 1. We're a long way from a single-payer system," which he said Democrats have wanted "from day one."

Before he knew of the vote outcome, President Barack Obama thanked the committee "for plowing forward on what we all agree is a complicated issue."

The bill, put before the committee by Chairman Max Baucus, D-Mont, is the only one of five healthcare plans in Congress that does not contain a public health insurance option, offering instead healthcare cooperatives to compete with private insurance carriers. Next, Democratic leaders will meld the Finance Committee bill with a plan approved by the Senate health committee in July.

Leaders in the House are trying to blend the three measures it passed earlier this year as well.

The Congressional Budget Office said the Finance Committee bill would increase the number of insured Americans from 83 percent to 94 percent without adding to the deficit, as well as reduce the deficit by $81 billion over 10 years.

Terrorist trials could move to New York

NEW YORK, Oct. 13 (UPI) -- Five suspects in the World Trade Center attacks likely would be moved to New York if federal indictments are brought against them, authorities said.

The suspects, including Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the alleged mastermind of the attacks, have been held at the Guantanamo Bay prison camp since their arrest.

U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder and U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates are to decide by mid-November whether to scrap military trials that have been mired in legal issues in favor of federal trials, an Obama administration official told The New York Daily News Tuesday. The story did not identify the official.

Civilian prosecutors likely would seek the death penalty because military prosecutors sought that punishment, the official told the News.

The federal trials likely would be held in the Southern District Court of New York, just blocks from the trade center reconstruction project, the site of the worst devastation caused in the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, authorities said.

Dozens of U.S. fugitives thought in Cuba

WASHINGTON, Oct. 13 (UPI) -- Dozens of American fugitives are hiding out in Cuba beyond the reach of U.S. law, officials say.

The surrender this week of accused 1968 plane hijacker Luis Armando Pena Soltren, 66, to U.S. authorities has focused attention on other fugitives thought to be in Cuba, including Joanne Chesimard, 62, also known as Assata Shakur, ABC News reported Tuesday.

Chesimard, a former activist with the Black Liberation Army, was convicted of murder in the 1977 shooting death of a New Jersey state trooper, escaped from jail in 1979 and was last seen in Cuba in 1984, where she reportedly is still believed to be living underground.

Another U.S. fugitive believed living in Cuba is Victor Manuel Gerena, whom authorities say has been sought since 1984 after allegedly stealing $7 million in a heist of the Wells Fargo armored car depot in Connecticut to finance a Puerto Rican separatist group, ABC said.

The U.S. broadcaster said the FBI believes Gerena is still in Cuba and has offered up to $1 million for information leading to his capture.

Latino farmers argue discrimination case

WASHINGTON, Oct. 13 (UPI) -- Latino farmers pursued their discrimination case in Washington Tuesday, arguing they were denied U.S. Department of Agriculture loans based on their heritage.

Known as the Garcia case, the Latino farmers attempted to have their case granted class-action status when they first filed the lawsuit in 2000. The same status in a similar case ended up with a $1 billion settlement for 15,000 African-American farmers in 1997, CNN reported Tuesday.

A federal judge denied class-action status for the Garcia case. Tuesday's hearing was convened by U.S. District Judge James Robertson to hear arguments for reaching a settlement, CNN said.

Justice Department attorney Lisa Ann Olson said, "it is not in the interest of the United States," to settle the case, although the farmers' attorney Stephen Hill said, "the discrimination we're talking about has been well-documented."

In 1997, former U.S. Agriculture Secretary Dan Glickman testified at a congressional hearing that the USDA had a history of discrimination.

"Good people lost their farmland not because of bad weather, bad crops, but because the color of their skin," Glickman said.

6.2 quake rocks off Sulawesi in Indonesia

JAKARTA, Oct. 13 (UPI) -- A 6.2-magnitude earthquake rumbled Tuesday near the northern tip of Sulawesi Island in Indonesia, weather officials said.

The underwater earthquake struck near Halmahera, about 155 miles north-northeast of Ternate, Moluccas; 249 miles east-northeast of Manado, Sulawesi; and 303 miles of General Santos, Mindanao.

There were no immediate reports of injury or damage, The Jakarta Post reported. It also did not trigger a tsunami warning.

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