News briefs for September 29, 1999

Wednesday, Sept. 29, 1999 | 11:57 a.m.

Subcritical weapons experiment planned

The Department of Energy's Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory will conduct a subcritical weapons experiment 1,000 feet below the surface of the Nevada Test Site on Thursday.

Called Oboe 1, the experiment is the government's seventh in a series since the DOE began ensuring the safety and reliability of nuclear weapons without full-scale below-ground nuclear explosions.

President George Bush halted underground nuclear weapons blasts in September 1992. The DOE launched subcritical experiments on July 2, 1997, to test small amounts of plutonium to check on how it behaves as it ages in the weapons stored in the U.S. arsenal.

Test Site workers have prepared steel vessels in the tunnels and alcoves of U1a, a complex 85 miles northwest of Las Vegas. The steel canisters are designed to contain any contamination from Thursday's explosion so the underground cavern can be reused for Livermore's series, DOE spokesman Derek Scammell said.

Hunting curtails bike, horse activity

The Bureau of Land Management is temporarily closing a few mountain bike and equestrian trails in the Red Rock Canyon National Conservation Area for the first 10 days of game-bird hunting season.

Mountain bike and horseback-riding trails south of State Route 160 will be closed from Saturday through Oct. 11 to avoid conflicts during the period in which hunting use is heaviest. Trails north of the highway will remain open.

Trails south of the highway will reopen Oct. 12, but hunting season will continue. Equestrians and mountain bikers should wear orange for visibility and use caution when using those trails, BLM officials said.

Four charge in slot machine scheme

Four people were indicted Tuesday by a federal grand jury on money-laundering charges in what could be a multimillion dollar national slot machine scam.

The indictment says Bao Ming Lin, 42, Feng Ying Liu, 33, He Biao Liu, 32, and Jin Xie Qiong, 43, ground down legitimate casino tokens valued at $1 or $2 and then used them again and again in slot machines across the country, including some in Las Vegas and Laughlin.

FBI Special Agent Kevin Caudle said the shaved tokens would simply pass through the slot machine, allowing the suspects to keep using them time after time.

The group is believed to have won more than $300,000 between February and November 1998, Caudle said.

"But it may exceed several million by the time it's all said and done," Caudle said, noting an investigation is ongoing.

The proceeds were divided among the person who inserted the shaved tokens, the person who cashed in the legitimate tokens and the one who acted as look-out, the indictment states.

The four defendants were charged with money-laundering conspiracy and aiding and abetting.