Piracy

A former Federal Express pilot was sentenced to life in prison Friday for attacking a FedEx jet crew with a hammer and spear gun at 18,000 feet. Auburn Calloway, 42, was convicted in March of attempted air piracy and interfering with a crew member. Jurors rejected his claim that he was insane when he attacked the three-man crew.

Four people are being held on suspicion of video piracy after a police raid in El Monte yielded 3,000 counterfeit blockbusters, including a not-yet-released video of the Disney hit "Pocahontas," and "Forrest Gump." On Tuesday, El Monte police and investigators from the Motion Picture Assn. of America seized the pirated videos, duplicating equipment and packaging material from six businesses and homes in El Monte, Baldwin Park and La Puente.

Jim Williams has sold high-speed audiocassette duplicating machines to record companies around the world, from China to Canada. * In the process, the president of Gauss / Electro Sound has helped build the Sun Valley-based company into one of the world's leading players in a very specialized and crucial part of the music business. His machines, which cost up to $125,000, are used to mass-produce copies of music cassettes, and they can turn out an entire cassette in as little as seven seconds.

A Los Angeles man has been arrested on suspicion of selling bogus Walt Disney Co. videotapes at Southland swap meets. Police arrested Leonard Averbukh, 43, Thursday and seized about 200 of the tapes, according to Detective John Metcalf of the LAPD's bunco forgery Division.

No fewer than eight U.S.-China working groups were immersed in last-ditch bargaining Thursday, seeking to further what both sides described as progress toward averting a trade war over copyright piracy. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Chen Jian sounded a positive note on prospects for striking a deal before Sunday, when about $2 billion in bruising mutual trade sanctions are to take effect.

Chinese and U.S. negotiators edged closer this weekend to settling a dispute over copyright and intellectual property issues that has threatened to engage the two countries in a bitter trade war. In a significant advance, the U.S. Embassy in Beijing said Saturday that the two sides were talking about specific measures to increase enforcement of copyright and trademark laws.

Police confiscated about 200,000 illegally copied movie videotapes, mainly Chinese martial arts and pornography films dubbed in Vietnamese, in a series of raids Tuesday at eight Little Saigon video stores, authorities said. Dozens of Westminster police officers and detectives fanned out to serve search warrants to operators of unlicensed videotape duplication centers, one with as many as 500 VCRs running when police arrived, Lt. Bill Lewis said.

When the United States announced plans to slap 100% punitive tariffs on $1.08 billion of Chinese imports, prompting China to threaten retaliation against American imports, the rhetoric had all the trappings of an impending trade war. But close observers of the trade relationship between the two great Pacific powers say the Saturday actions, while potentially serious, represent more posturing than fighting and are unlikely to have a significant economic impact on either nation.

The Clinton Administration is prepared to announce today the imposition of trade sanctions worth hundreds of millions of dollars against Chinese goods if China does not agree to stop pirating American software, compact disks, films and other copyrighted material. "We expect that we'll have an announcement tomorrow morning . . ," U.S. Trade Representative Mickey Kantor said Friday. "We're not going to hesitate . . . if there's no agreement."

Barely 48 hours after slapping China with the most massive trade sanctions ever, the White House announced Monday that U.S. and Chinese representatives will resume negotiations next week as they try to back away from a potential trade war. But even as the two nations sought to ease a seemingly intractable dispute over piracy of videos, compact discs and other copyrighted products, U.S. Trade Representative Mickey Kantor said that "piracy of U.S.