News briefs for August 24, 1999

Karpov sues over tourney in Vegas

World chess champion Anatoly Karpov has filed a breach of contract suit in the Court of Arbitration for Sport in Lausanne, Switzerland, against the World Chess Federation, seeking more than $1 million in compensation.

Karpov, angry over the championship tournament now under way at Caesars Palace, filed his petition on Aug. 19, said his spokesman Shiloh Quinn.

Quinn says reigning champion Karpov was not given a fair opportunity to defend his championship.

He said officials of FIDE, the acronym of the federation, never consulted with Karpov about the dates of the tournament and his role in the event.

The suit asks that the court require the winner of the tournament to play Karpov in a championship match.

Karpov won the world title in January 1998 for a period that he says should have lasted two years.

Police release name of man found dead

A 39-year-old Las Vegas man who is believed to have been a victim in an apparent murder suicide over the weekend has been identified by the Clark County Coroner's office as Stephen Kriza, 39, a slot machine mechanic.

Metro Police say schoolteacher William R. Stein, 57, killed his daughter's fiance and then turned the gun on himself Sunday morning.

School district officials say Stein, a teacher in Clark County since 1993, was to begin teaching at Von Tobel Middle School this year. He had taught in past years at Helen Herr Elementary School, Biltmore Opportunity School and Becker Middle School.

Police investigators say that just before 8 a.m. Sunday Metro's dispatch center received a call from a man who said he had just shot someone and was going to kill himself.

The man's daughter and her fiance were living with her father at the house at the time of the shootings, police said.

Hearing officer overturns suspension

CARSON CITY -- An employee at the Truckee Meadows Community College who gleaned pornographic material off the Internet and then shipped it to other workers got off with a written reprimand.

But account clerk Eugenia Brawdy was hit with a five-day suspension without pay by the college in Reno when she didn't follow procedures in the handling of 67 paychecks that may have been lost or stolen in the mail.

State Hearing Officer Patrick Dolan, in a decision released today, overturned the discipline given Brawdy, saying it was "disparate and disproportionate" to the punishment given the unidentified other worker.

Brawdy was suspended after putting paychecks in a drop box outside a post office. The checks were never delivered, and new ones had to be issued. The college said Brawdy was supposed to leave the mail with a clerk inside the post office.

Dolan criticized the college for its different treatment in the two cases, adding the college's "casual, cavalier handling" of the porn case shows the unequal discipline. Brawdy had alerted her superiors to the behavior of the other employee and she claimed she was being punished because she was a "whistleblower."

State officials seek federal aid for fires

CARSON CITY -- Sen. Richard Bryan, D-Nev., and Republican Gov. Kenny Guinn called on the U.S. Department of Agriculture Monday to quickly approve federal emergency funding to help ranchers in Northern Nevada who have been hit by wildland fires.

The two want Secretary of Agriculture Dan Glickman to sign a natural disaster declaration for the counties of Elko, Eureka, Humboldt, Lander and Pershing. More than 1.5 million acres in Northern Nevada have been burned this summer, destroying cattle, grazing lands, wells, fencing and irrigation systems.

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