April 11, 1992

Exploiting the relaxation of travel restrictions in the former Soviet Union, emigre criminals in the United States have begun importing con artists, extortionists and hired murderers who carry out contract crimes for small sums of money and then disappear back home, law-enforcement officials say. The intercontinental criminal traffic is the most striking way in which a small but violent underworld of emigre criminals has evolved to take advantage of the breakup of the Soviet Union. And although no one can know the extent of the crime, law-enforcement officials in New York and Los Angelessay they are starting to see evidence of such joint ventures in crime.

A California judge sentenced Charles H. Keating Jr. to 10 years in prison today for duping depositors at the Lincoln Savings and Loan Association into purchasing high-risk junk bonds issued by Lincoln's parent company. Judge Lance A. Ito of the California Superior Court in Los Angeles imposed the prison sentence, the maximum, after hearing emotional testimony for much of the day from purchasers of the bonds. The investors, many of them elderly, blamed Mr. Keating for crippling financial losses they suffered when the bonds became worthless. Judge Ito also imposed a $250,000 fine on Mr. Keating, who has asserted that he is broke. Rejects Community Service Judge Ito rejected arguments by Stephen C. Neal, the lawyer for Mr. Keating, who argued that his client should be sentenced to community service. Mr. Keating, a 68-year-old financier and real estate developer from Phoenix, could be paroled after five years.

An explosion killed at least 2 people and injured 80. Hours later another car bomb exploded in London, but no one was reported hurt. Page 5.

Apparently trying to counter the notion of policy paralysis in the White House and a re-election campaign adrift, President Bush answered reporters' questions in the Rose Garden for an hour today, discoursing on matters ranging from Peru to Perot and from parks to perks. On the substantive issues he addressed -- welfare, for example, and the environment, health, education and the economy -- Mr. Bush broke little new ground. But he displayed a Presidential mastery of those topics and used the occasion to rail against Congress and to deny reports that he had brought his son George to Washington to put the White House and the campaign in order.

The Bush Administration is savoring the drug conviction of Gen. Manuel Antonio Noriega as a final triumph over the deposed dictator. But its own studies show that toppling him failed to stanch the flow of illicit narcotics through Panama. Further, critics in Congress and elsewhere are saying that the Government built its case against the general by making far too many costly deals with drug traffickers and other criminals to get them to testify against the defendant.