NATION IN BRIEF : WASHINGTON, D.C. : President Deplores Bombings in Letter

President Bush sent New Year’s greetings to civil rights leader Benjamin L. Hooks and deplored the recent spate of racially motivated bomb attacks and threats in the South. “The recent bombings make it clear we have not totally beaten back the evils of bigotry and racial prejudice. We cannot let up in the fight against racism,” Bush wrote in the two-paragraph letter to the executive director of the NAACP. The series of mail bombs included one that killed a federal judge, Robert S. Vance, in Alabama, and a civil rights attorney, Robert Robinson, in Georgia.