Desecration

Skulking in the dead of night in the remote and overgrown Las Pavas section of the Southern Municipal Cemetery, robbers armed with crowbars and sledgehammers first shattered the tomb's concrete vault and the granite marker that read, "To our dear wife and mother in heaven, Maria de la Cruz Aguero." Then they lifted the coffin lid and stole leg bones and the skull of the woman, who had died Sept. 9, 1993.

The body of an Ethiopian soldier killed in clashes between troops and Islamic militants was dragged through the street and pelted with stones in the Somalian capital, Mogadishu. The soldier was among two Ethiopian troops and a Somali killed in the heavy fighting. Soldiers from neighbor- ing Ethiopia have been in Somalia since helping the shaky United Nations-backed government drive an Islamic militia from power in Mogadishu and much of the country's south in December.

By a single vote, the Senate on Tuesday rejected a constitutional amendment that would have given Congress the power to ban flag burning. The tally in favor of the measure was 66 to 34, just shy of the 67 votes required for a two-thirds margin of approval. Such a majority would be necessary in the Senate and House before a constitutional amendment could be sent to the states for ratification.

The top executive of California's biggest utility Thursday apologized to an Arizona Indian tribe, promising to atone for the company's desecration of a sacred site the tribe considers a portal to the afterlife. Chief Executive Thomas King said Pacific Gas & Electric Co. "regrets the spiritual consequences to the tribe" when it built a $15-million water treatment plant in the Mojave Desert, west of the California-Arizona border.

Hundreds of angry protesters in Afghanistan's capital burned an effigy of President Obamaon Sunday, acting on rumors that American troops had desecrated the Koran. U.S. military officials emphatically denied that any copies of the Muslim holy book had been mishandled, and accused the Taliban of spreading falsehoods to incite hatred against Western forces. But the protest -- reminiscent of similar demonstrations in Iraq and elsewhere in the Muslim world in recent years -- showed how easily passions involving religious sensitivities can be stirred up even with a dearth of evidence.

Re "Flag Measure Fails by 1 Vote," June 28 God bless America -- the Bill of Rights survives. HAROLD N. BASS \o7Porter Ranch \f7 I suggest that flag wrapping, not flag burning, constitutes the most egregious desecration of the flag. Flag wrapping is the practice by politicians of wrapping themselves in the flag, especially during an election year. An excellent example of flag wrapping has just been provided by members of Congress who pushed for a constitutional amendment that would give them the power to ban flag burning by private citizens.

Re "Whose Jerusalem?" Opinion, Jan. 23 Daniela Yanai's critique of Israel's ideology of "exclusivity" shows a simplistic grasp of history. She contends the accidental discovery of ancient graves in West Jerusalem is desecration. Yanai doesn't understand the true meaning of desecration, whether committed by Jordan after seizing East Jerusalem following the 1948 war, erecting latrines on the ancient Jewish cemetery, or Muslims in France defacing Jewish graves with swastikas. The fact is that Muslims historically desecrated cemeteries and houses of worship of "nonbelievers" (Jew and Christian)

State officials said Thursday they have found no evidence of mass grave disturbances at a Mission Hills Jewish cemetery, which was accused in a class-action lawsuit of breaking open interment vaults and losing or discarding human remains to make space for new burials. The lawsuit was filed in September against Eden Memorial Park. "We have not seen any evidence of the kind of massive desecration that [is] being alleged," said Russ Heimerich, a spokesman for the state Department of Consumer Affairs, which oversees cemeteries.

Israeli police are investigating the desecration of the graves of slain Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and his widow that leftist lawmakers blamed on ultranationalists opposed to a Gaza Strip pullout plan. Authorities said vandals scrawled "murderous dog" in Hebrew on the Jerusalem tomb of Rabin, who was assassinated in 1995 by a far-right Jew incensed by his land-for-peace deals with the Palestinians.

A woman pleaded guilty to helping her husband fake his own death by digging up a corpse from a cemetery and then staging a fiery car accident in which the body was burned beyond recognition. Molly Daniels pleaded guilty Tuesday to insurance fraud and hindering apprehension. She faces a maximum of 20 years in prison. Her husband, Clayton Wayne Daniels, is in custody pending trial on arson charges.