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Nation in brief
© St. Petersburg Times, published January 12, 2003
FORT LAUDERDALE -- A vice president of the company that claims to have cloned the first human baby was served Saturday with a witness subpoena to appear at a hearing in a lawsuit asking the state to appoint a guardian for the child.
Thomas Kaenzig was served with the subpoena before speaking at the Money World 2003 conference in Fort Lauderdale, said Bernard Siegel, the attorney who filed the lawsuit.
The subpoena orders Kaenzig to appear at a Jan. 22 hearing. He also was served with summonses asking Clonaid to divulge the whereabouts of the baby and the mother.
Kaenzig would not speak about the documents and Clonaid spokeswoman Nadine Gary declined to comment.
At the conference Saturday, Kaenzig said the parents of the baby, known as Eve, feared losing her through government or court action.
"They have been waiting many, many years for this baby to be here and they are very happy that the baby is here," he said. "And all of a sudden, somebody comes and wants to take it away from them. . . . That's why we had to delay the DNA matching process."
NEW YORK -- Robert F. Kennedy Jr. says his cousin Michael Skakel was railroaded in the Martha Moxley murder case and convicted largely because of an inflamed media, led by author Dominick Dunne. In the edition of the Atlantic Monthly on newsstands this week, Kennedy brands Skakel's attorney, Mickey Sherman, a "less-than-zealous defense lawyer" whose interest was "courting the press and ingratiating himself" with Dunne.
Kennedy, a son of the assassinated U.S. attorney general, writes that Dunne began a vendetta against his rich and powerful family with a Vanity Fair article in 1991.
Dunne kept the spotlight on Skakel by spreading false information about the case and became a "driving force" behind the prosecution, Kennedy says in his article, A Miscarriage of Justice.
Skakel is serving 20 years to life.
SANTA CLARITA, Calif. -- A tree-sitter protesting the planned removal of a 400-year-old oak tree was hauled off a platform where he had been living since Nov. 1, but said the legal fight would continue.
"I still think we can get some legal recourse to keep the tree where it is," a sun- and windburned John Quigley told supporters late Friday after sheriff's deputies escorted him down from the tree dubbed "Old Glory."
Hours after a judge issued an eviction order for Quigley, Los Angeles County's sheriff's deputies broke a device chaining him to the tree, reaching him with a fire department ladder that extended to his platform.
"I did all that I could. I was there to the end," Quigley said. "I practice nonviolent principles, Gandhi's principles."
Quigley had climbed up into the tree Nov. 1 in an attempt to stop developers from removing it to widen a road leading to a future residential development. His efforts attracted nationwide attention and brought a steady stream of residents, celebrities, folk singers and the just plain curious.