-------- activism
Greenpeace Protests TotalFina
Associated Press December 27, 1999 Filed at 4:01 p.m. EST
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/i/AP-France-Oil-Spill.html
PARIS (AP) -- White-suited Greenpeace protesters on Monday smeared oil and dumped the cadavers of petrol-coated sea birds at the headquarters of TotalFina, blaming the Franco-Belgian oil group for an ecological disaster on France's northwestern shores.
Waving banners reading ``Totally Responsible, Finally Guilty,'' -- a word play on the company's name -- the protesters urged TotalFina to take ``legal, moral and financial responsibility'' for the thick, foul-smelling oil spill sullying stretches of some of the nation's most beautiful coastline.
``We were on the beach yesterday and there was nobody from TotalFina anywhere,'' Greenpeace leader Bruno Rebelle told Associated Press Television News.
The Maltese-registered tanker ``Erika'' broke in two on Dec. 12, pouring 3 million gallons of oil into the sea as it sank. TotalFina had chartered the 24-year-old tanker to carry refined heavy oil from Rotterdam in the Netherlands to Leghorn, Italy.
Angry protesters emptied bags filled with the sticky black cadavers at TotalFina's front door at La Defense, the corporate high-rise center outside Paris.
``We want them urgently to decide how they will clean up the beaches and recover the fuel still in the wreck,'' Rebelle said. ``They're the ones who chose this dangerous ship to carry their fuel.''
Greenpeace members also left a barrel of oil from the spill at the Spanish headquarters of TotalFina in Madrid to protest the ecological disaster in France. They waved banners that read ``TotalFina: dirty oil for Christmas.''
In an interview on France's LCI television, Thierry Desmarest, the chairman of TotalFina, said the company would ``do everything necessary to re-establish the same quality of the environment as there was before.''
According to Greenpeace, volunteers working with pails and shovels on the beaches have found the cadavers of about 6,000 sea birds. But they say that is just a fraction of the number of sea animals that will die from the oil still leaking from the submerged tanker.
French officials believe the tanker still holds about 4.3 million gallons of oil.
A new leak was spotted as the navy flew over the area Sunday. Officials said the new leak probably was caused by gale winds and rough seas that buffeted the sunken tanker over the weekend.
The affected coast stretches from northwestern Brittany to the Vendee region, an area famed for its white sandy beaches and oyster farms. Blotches of ugly oil washed up on beaches across Brittany on Monday, and workers feared they would have to clean up the same beaches again and again as new oil washes up.
-------- britain
Child leukaemia starts in the womb
Indepenent 12/27/99 By Cherry Norton, Health Correspondent
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/UK/Health/leukaemia291099.shtml
Most cases of childhood leukaemia start in the womb and are caused by a genetic defect that is not inherited, scientists have discovered.
The study of children aged two to five, suffering from the most common form of leukaemia in young people, found that those who develop it have an altered or mutated gene that arises before birth, during the development of blood cells in the foetus. The findings cast new light on the cause of childhood leukaemia, the subject of much speculation. Radiation, chemical pollution and infection have all been blamed for the illness, which affects one in 2,000 children in Britain.
The most common form, acute lymphoblastic leukaemia (ALL), accounts for 80 per cent of all cases and is diagnosed in about 400 children each year. Although most survive it with the help of drugs, some undergo bone marrow transplants, and the results can be fatal.
Scientists from the Institute of Cancer Research, who published the research in The Lancet , the medical journal, carried out blood tests on nine children and a pair of identical twins. The researchers found that the leukaemia cells taken from the children with ALL, had an altered or mutated gene.
Using highly sensitive molecular probes the researchers were able to trace back the appearance of this mutation and detect its presence in blood spot tests, routinely taken in the first month of babies' lives.
Previous research, conducted by the same team, has shown only 5 per cent of twins both develop the illness, so the researchers concluded that the mutation alone was not enough to lead to full-blown leukaemia and that some post-natal event or exposure was also necessary.
Professor Mel Greaves, from the Leukaemia Research Fund Centre at the Institute of Cancer Research in London, coauthor of the research, said: "It is the first direct evidence that the common form of leukaemia in children originates in the womb and could lead to its origins being solved in the next few years. The puzzle of childhood cancer is unfolding."
Dr Peter Rigby, chief executive of the Institute of Cancer Research, said: "We are making real progress and this new knowledge takes us further towards a complete understanding [of leukaemia]."
&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&
From: Ardel1818@aol.com
For Your Information: GAMMA RAYS: Gamma Rays are photons, or electromagnetic waves that come from the nucleus of the atom. Gamma rays are uncharged and pass through the human body at the speed of light. As gamma rays pass through the body, they may damage cells. Cesium-137 is a source of gamma radiation.
-------- du
Di Bella's care may help DU veterans and affected people
"Prevention and care of the effects from the use of Depleted Uranium"
Ethical Environmental Observatory, Italian Committee "STOP U-238!" December 27, 1999) (DU-List)
http://stop-u238.i.am
Di Bella is an italian physician working on a mix of retinoids employed in his therapy against cancer. He start working on this in 40's, he is now 88. In 1965 Di Bella start experiments with melatonin. In 1974 he start researching about somatostatin. Thousand of italian people where cared with Di Bella Therapy with great results. We know leukemia affected people who was in care since 1974 that are yet alive (1999). The best results arises when no chemotherapy or radiotherapy was adopted. Here you can find the base-mix, a list of ingredients, literature references and other information from the book "Un po' di verità sulla terapia Di Bella [Some truth from Di Bella's Therapy]- V. Brancatisano, Travel Factory Srl, December 1999". The work of Di Bella is today primarily contrasted by De Lorenzo [a former italian Health minister inquired and jailed for corruption] and his fans, i.e. Dr. Umberto Tirelli who told false data to italian TV and media about cancer healing. Another contrasting Di Bella's Therapy is Paul Calabresi rom the President (Clinton) Cancer Panel. It seem clear the connection between the (mis)conduct of WHO [remember the agreement between WHO and IAEA to hide radiation damages research results], the interests of uranium-corporation and radiotherapy related corporation in conjunction with pharmaceutical companies. This abnormal connection find a good ground between physicians oriented by pharmaceutical companies.
The therapy has four main counter-indications:
- it is cheap;
- it does not increase pharmaceutical profits (ascorbic acid, Vitamin C, cost 16 US$ for a kg. here in Italy, while taxotere (docetaxel), a dangerous cancer chemoterapic, cost about 16,000,000 US$ for a Kg);
- it is strongly contrasted by "traditional" physicians [some yet inquired or jailed for corruption];
- it has not devastating side-effects like radiotherapy or chemotherapy, so it decrease "business as usual".
Here is the base-mix that may be adopted for cancer prevention and/or therapy (posology: follow the doctor's recommendation):
-Acido retinoico (acido all-trans-retinoico, ATRA, tretinoina) [0,5 g] (to prevent leukemia)
-Vitamina A (axeroftolo palmitato) [0,5 g] (to generally prevent cancer)
-Provitamina A (beta-carotene) [2 g] (to prevent lung cancer)
-Vitamina E (alfa-tocoferolo acetato) [1000 g] (to prevent lung cancer)
More ingredients can be adopted for cancer therapy on a case-by-case
basis:
-Somatostatina (Etaxene, Ikestatina, Modustatina, Nastoren, Resurmide,
-Stilamin, Zecnil)
-Bromocriptina (Parlodel)
-Octreotide (Sandostatina)
-Lisozima
-Vitamina B1 (aneurina)
-Vitamina B6
-Vitamina C (acido ascorbico, Cebion)
-Vitamina D
-Melatonina (specifica per le leucemie)
-Selenio
-Di-idro tachisterolo (A.T. 10)
-ACTH, ormone adrenocorticotropo
-Oncocarbide
-Acidi grassi polinsaturi (PUFA, Poly Unsatured Fatty Acids)
-galattosamina
-glucosamina
-poligalattouronato
Some components adopted in cancer therapy, but in minimal amount:
-Idrossiurea
-Ciclofosfamide
Literature:
- For Di Bella publications: http://www.tinet.ch/dibella
(1) Di Bella L., Boll. S.I.B.S., 1940, XV 402
(2) Di Bella L. "Orientamenti fisiologici nella terapia delle emopatie", Bull. Med. Sci., Società e Scuola Medica Chirurgica di Bologna, Anno CXLV-Fasc. I-1974
(3) Kpthari M., Metha L.A. "Ist Krebs eine Krankheit?", Rowohlt, 1979
(4) Hudson B.S. & Co. in Lim E. O. "Excited states", 1980, 6, 92-95
(5) Shekelle R.B. et alia, Lancet, 1981, 2 1185-1190
(6) "Somatostatin in cancer therapy", 1-3 June 1981
(7) Russel J. Reiter, The Pineal, Annual Research Reviews, Eden Press, Volume 6, 1981
(8) Fukawa K., Nishimura N. et alia "Experimental studies on antitumor effects of lysozyme", Gan To Kagaku Ryoho 1982; 9(5):915-23
(9) Lubin B, Machlin LJ "Vitamin E", Ann. NY Acad. Sci. 1982
(10) Ghirlanda G., Uccioli L., Perri F. "Epidermal Growth factor, somatostatin and psioriasis", Lancet, i:65-55, 1983
(11) "Retinoids, differentiation and diseases", Ciba Foundation Synposia 113, 1985, I-i, London, Pitman
(12) Nomura N.M.Y. Cancer Res. 1985, 45, 2369-72
(13) Reubi JC "A somatostatin analogue inhibits chondrosarcoma and insulinoma tumor growth", Acta Endocrinol. 1985; 109:108-114
(14) Ziegler R.G., Amer. J. Epidemiol. 1986, 123, 1080-1093
(15) Kvols LK et alia "Treatment of the malignant carcynoid syndrome. Evaluation of a long acting somatostatin analogue", New England Journal of Medicine, 1986; 315:663-666
(16) Kvols LK et alia "Treatment of the malignant carcynoid syndrome with a long acting somatostatin analogue", Proc AM Soc Clin Oncol 6:95, 1987
(17) Lamberts SWJ, Koper JW, Reubi JC "The potential role of somatostatin analogues in the treatment of cancer", Eur J Clin Investig. 1987; 18:2188-2194
(18) Dickson RB, Lippman ME "Estrogenic regulation of growth and polypeptide growth factor secretion in human breast cancer carcinoma", Endocrine Rev. 8: 29-43, 1987
(19) Sainsbury JRC, Farndon JR, Needham GK et alia "Epidermal growth factor receptor status as predictor of early recurrence and death in breast cancer", Lancet 1987, i:1398-1402
(20) Maestroni G., Conti A., Pierpaoli W. "Pineal melatonin, its fundamental immunoregulatory role in aging and cancer", Ann N.Y. Acad. Sci. 1988
(21) Koga M, Eisman JA, Sutherland RL "Regulation of epidermal growth factor receptor levels by 1,25 dihydroxyvitamin D in human breast cancer cells", Cancer Res, 48:2734, 1988
(22) Diplock AT et alia "Vitamin E", Ann. NY Acad. Sci. 1989
(23) Reichel H, Koeffler HP, Norman AW "The role of the vitamin D endocrine system on health and disease", N England J of Med, 1989
(24) Vennin PH, Peyrat JP, Bonneterre J. "Effect of the long acting somatostatin analogue SMS 201-995 (sandostatin) in advanced breast cancer", Anticancer Res 9: 153-156, 1989
(25) Sava G., Benetti A. et alia "Lysozyme and cancer: role of exogenous lysozyme as anticancer agent", Anticancer Res 1989; 9(3):583-91
(26) Sava G., Ceschia V., Pacor S. "Mechanism of the antineoplastic action of lysozyme: evidence for host mediated effects", Anticancer Res 1989; 9(4):1175-80
(27) Stolfi R., Parisi A.M., Natoli C., Iacobelli S. "Advanced breast cancer: response to somatostatin", Anticancer Res. 10:203, 1990 (28) Dogliotti L., Berruti A. et alia "Melatonin and human cancer", J Steroid Biochem Mol Biol, December 20 1990
(29) Bower M, Colston KW, Stein RC et alia "Topical calcipotriol treatment in advanced breast cancer", Lancet, 337:701, 1991
(30) Canobbio L., Baccardo F. et alia "Treatment of advanced pancreatic carcinoma with the somatostatin analogue BIM 23014. Preliminary results of a pilot study", Cancer 1992; 69:648-650
(31) Klijn JGM, Berns PMJJ, Botenbal M. "Clinical breast cancer new developments in selection and endocrine treatment of patients", J Steroid Biochem Molec Biol 1992; 43:211-265
(32) Bendich A. "Biological functions of dietary carotinoids", Ann. N.Y. Acad. Sci. 1993, 691, 61-67
(33) Bertram J. S. "Cancer Prevention by Carotinoids" Ann. N.Y. Acad. Sci. 1993, 691, 177-191
(34) Canfield L.M. & J.G. Valenzuela, Ann. N.Y. Acad. Sci. 1993, 691, 192
(35) Greenberg E.R., Ann. N.Y. Acad. Sci. 1993, 691, 120-126
(36) Gareval H.S., Ann. N.Y. Acad. Sci. 1993, 691, 139-147
(37) Serono Symposia USA: "GHRH, GH and IGF-I", Springer Verlag, NY 1993
(38) Weckbecker G., Tolcvai L., Stolts B. "Somatostatin octreotide enhances the antineoplastic effects of tamoxifen and ovariectomy on 7, 12 DMA induced rat mammary carcinomas", Cancer Res 54; 6334-6337, 1994
(39) Canobbio L., Cannata D., Miglietta L. "Somatuline (BIM 23014) and tamoxifen treatment of postmenopausal brest cancer patients: clinical activity and effect on insulin-like growth factor-I (IGF-I) levels", Anticancer Res 15: 2687-2690, 1995
(40) Di Leo A., Bajetta E., Ferrari L. "Biological and clinical evaluation of Lantreotide (BIM 23014) a somatostatin analogue in the treatment of advanced breast cancer", Breast Cancer Res Treat 34:237-244, 1995
(41) Danesi R., Del Tacca M. "The effects of the somatostatin analog ocreotide on angiogenesis in vitro", Metabolism 45, 1996, 49-50
(42) Di Leo A., Bajetta E., Ferrari L. et alia "A dose-finding study lantreotide (a somatostatin analogue) in patients with colorectal carcinoma", Cancer 1996, 78:35-42
(43) Serono Symposia USA: "Growth Hormone Secretagogues", Edd. Barry B.Bercu & RF Walker, Springer Verlag, NY 1996
(44) Robbins RJ "Spmatostatin and cancer", Metabolism, 13(8): 98-100 Aug 1996
(45) Di Bartolomeo M., Buzzoni R. et alia "Clinical efficacy of octreotide in the treatment of metastatic neuroendocrin tumors. A study by the Italian Trials in Medical Oncology Group", Cancer 1996; 77:402-407
(46) Klijn JG, Setjono-Ian B et alia "Novel endocrine therapies in breast cancer", Acta Oncol 1996; 35 Suppl 5:30-7
(47) Danesi R. et alia "Inhibition of experimental angiogenesis by the somatostatin analogue octreotide acetate", Clin. Cancer Res., 3(2): 265-72, Feb. 1997
(48) Mandelli F. "New strategies for the treatment of acute promyelocytic", J Intern Med Suppl 1997, 740:23-7
(49) Panzer A., Viljoen M. "The validity of melatonin as an oncostatic agent", J Pineal Res, May 1997
(50) Combs GFJ, Clark LC, Turnbull BW "Reduction of cancer mortality and incidence by selenium supplementation", Med Klin 1997, 15 September, 92 Suppl 3:42-5
(51) Sogounas G, Anagnostou A, Steiner M "DI-alpha-tocopherol induces apoptosis in erythroleukemia, prostate, amd breast cancer cells", Nutr Cancer 1997; 28(1): 30-5
(52) Reynolds C, Montone KT et alia "Expression of prolactin and its receptor in human breast carcinoma", Endocrinology, Dec 1997; 138(12): 5555-60
(53) Lissoni P., Paolorossi F., Tancini G. "A phase II RTOG study in patients with recurrent malignant astrocytoma", J Neurol. 1998, 34:193-200
(54) Brancatisano V. "Di Bella, The man, The cure, a Hope for All", Ed. Quartet Books, London 1998
(55) Neri B. et alia "Melatonin as biological response modifier in cancer patients", Anticancer Research, 18:1329-1332, 1998 (56) Alaisdair Palmer "Faith, hope and cancer", The Sunday Telegraph, October 18 1998
(57) Sheng Y. et alia "DNA repair enhancement by a combined supplement of carotenoids, nicotinamide, and zinc", Cancer Detect Prev. 22(4):284-92 1998
(58) Berghella A.M. et alia "Cancer biotherapy & radiopharmaceuticals", CNR, l'Aquila - Italia,Vol. 13,4 1998
(59) Estey EH "New agents for the treatment of acute myelogenous leukemia: focus on topotecan and retinoids", Leukemia 12 Suppl 1:S13-5, September 1998
(60) Satoh K, Ida Y et alia "Induction of apoptosis by cooperative action of vitamins C and E", Anticancer Res 18(6A):4371-5, Nov-Dec 1998
(61) Ishihara S, Hassan S et alia "Growth inhibitory effects of somatostatin on human leukemia cell lines mediated by somatostatin receptor subtype 1", Peptides 1999; 20(3):313-8
(62) Reyes J.L. "Compared to what?", BMJ online, January 22 1999 http://www.bmj.com
(63) Marcus Mullner "Di Bella's therapy: the last word?", British Medical Journal, January 23 1999, 318:208-209 http://www.bmj.com
(64) Iacona I. et alia "The stability of all-trans retinoic acid in retinoid solutions of Di Bella's Cure" Dip. di Farmac., IRCCS Policl. S. Matteo, Pavia, Boll Chim Farm, Jan 1999, 138:1, 1-6
(65) Marcus Mullner, Stephen JW Evans, British Medical Journal 1999, 318:1073 http://www.bmj.com
(66) Hayes A.J., L Y Li, M E Lippman "Science, medicine and the future - Antivascular therapy: a new approach to cancer treatment", British Medical Journal, March 1999, Vol.318 p.855
(67) O'Byrne et alia "Phase II study of RC-160 (vapreotide), an octapeptide analogue of somatostatin, in the treatment of metastatic breast cancer", Br J Cancer, 79(9-10):1413-8, March 1999
(68) Lissoni P, Tancini G, Paolorossi F et alia "Chemoneuroendocrine therapy of metastatic breast cancer with persistent thrombocytopenia with weekly low-dose epirubicin plus melatonin: a phase II study", J Pineal Res 1999 April; 26 (3): 169-73
(69) Sheu JR et alia "Comparison of the relative activities of alpha-tocopherol and PMC on platelet aggregation and antioxydative activity", Life Sci 1999; 65(2): 197-206
(70) Albini A. et alia "Somatostatin controls Kaposi's sarcoma tumor growth through inhibition of angiogenesis", INRC, Genova, April 1999
(71) "Vitamin E May Prove to Be A Weapon Against Lung Cancer", Cancer, November 1999, http://www2.cancer.org/zine/crc_news.cfm?story=001_11161999_0&ct=1
To get the Di Bella care in Italy, you can contact Patrizia Mizzon at: AIAN, Associazione Italiana Ammalati Neoplastici, via Magna Grecia 39 - Roma, Phone: 0039 6 77200984 / 77201318 http://www.aian.org
Marco Saba
O/E/A - Osservatorio Etico Ambientale
Comitato "STOP U-238!"
Milano - Italy
Phone: 0039 338 5838282
http://stop-u238.i.am
-------- iraq
U.N. Orders Iraq To Pay El Al $7M
The Associated Press Monday, Dec. 27, 1999; 10:58 a.m. EST
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/aponline/19991227/aponline105819_000.htm
JERUSALEM -- The United Nations commission on compensation for damage during the 1991 Gulf war has ordered Iraq to pay Israel's national airline nearly $7 million, a Justice Ministry official said Monday.
El Al Israel Airlines sued Iraq for damages from the war, when Iraq fired 39 Scud missiles at Israel. Justice Ministry official Benny Rubin said the U.N. commission, meeting in Geneva, awarded El Al $6,977,711.
Rubin said most of the award was for the cost of moving El Al's entire fleet out of Israel during the war.
El Al has not yet been paid, said airline official Yoram Galon. The money must be deducted from Iraq's limited oil production under U.N. sanctions. "We will have a second celebration when see actually get the money," Galon told Israel radio.
He said El Al's total claim was for $70 million, but the commission refused to compensate the airline for the drop in passengers flying to and from Israel because of the war.
Rubin said two Israeli families were also awarded damages last week. One family is to receive $135,500 and the other $66,000, he said, to compensate them for property damage from Iraqi missile attacks.
Justice Ministry spokesman Ido Baum said that Israel's government, businesses and citizens have sued Iraq for "billions of dollars." So far the commission has approved about $45 million, but only $2.6 million has been paid.
-------- japan
Okinawan Mayor OKs New U.S. Base
Associated Press December 27, 1999 Filed at 6:20 a.m. EST
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/i/AP-Japan-US-Military.html
TOKYO (AP) -- A mayor in Okinawa on Monday approved a plan to relocate a major U.S. Marine Corps airfield from another part of the island to his city.
But Nago Mayor Tateo Kishimoto also said the base can only stay there for 15 years, a time limit few believe Japan's central government or the United States would accept.
The U.S. government had no immediate comment about Kishimoto's decision and the time limit he proposed for the new base. A spokesman at the U.S. Embassy in Tokyo declined to comment on specifics of the Nago decision.
In July, Nago, a seaside city of 55,000 people in northern Okinawa, will host the Group of Eight summit of the world's leading industrialized nations.
President Clinton plans to attend, becoming the first U.S. president to visit Okinawa since America relinquished the island's postwar administration to Japan in 1972.
On Monday, 100 people visited Kishimoto's office in Nago just before he announced his decision, demanding that he refuse to allow the new airfield to be moved to the city.
Three years ago, Washington and Tokyo agreed to move the unpopular airfield from Futenma, where it is currently located. The sprawling heliport and airstrip have long been the focus of complaints over noise and potential danger to residents.
Efforts to reduce the burden of U.S. military facilities on Okinawa also have been intense since an outpouring of public anger over the 1995 rape of a schoolgirl by two U.S. Marines and a sailor.
In Tokyo on Monday, Japanese Prime Minister Keizo Obuchi quickly welcomed Kishimoto's decision, although he said it amounted to a ``new burden to local residents'' in Nago.
Obuchi, who did not mention the proposed 15-year time limit in his statement, pledged to assist with the economic development plans of the city in southern Japan.
Earlier, his government said it would spend the equivalent of $970 million over the next 10 years to spur economic development near the new U.S. military base. Obuchi's Cabinet is scheduled to meet Tuesday and is expected to accept the city's decision.
In a nationally televised news conference, Kishimoto said Nago already has a large U.S. military facility but that he decided to accept another one after ``considering a long history of base issues in Okinawa and many factors.''
Kishimoto's decision also came four days after the Nago City Council voted 17-10 to build the heliport in the city. The mayor accepted an earlier proposal by Okinawa Prefectural Gov. Keiichi Inamine to limit the facility's use to 15 years.
The Marine Corps Air Station at Futenma is a heliport and airstrip first used by U.S. troops in 1945 as a B-29 base. It is located 25 miles southwest of Nago in the more populated southern part of Okinawa island.
Roughly 3,700 personnel and 71 aircraft, mostly helicopters, are deployed at Futenma, which is one of only two U.S. Marine airfields outside of the United States.
The other is on the Japanese island of Kyushu.
About two-thirds of the more than 50,000 U.S. military personnel stationed in Japan are in Okinawa, a small island on Japan's southern fringe, 1,000 miles southwest of Tokyo.
-------- kazakhstan
U.S.-Kazakhstan Agree To Close Nuclear Reactor
Russia Today Monday, Dec 27 at Prague 09:26 pm, N.Y. 03:26 pm
http://www.russiatoday.com/news.php3?id=120237
WASHINGTON, Dec 22, 1999 -- (Reuters) The Republic of Kazakhstan agreed this week to close and decommission a plutonium-producing nuclear reactor in response to concerns about its security, U.S. officials said on Tuesday.
U.S. Secretary of Energy Bill Richardson and Kazakh Minister Vladimir Shkolnik signed an implementing agreement on Sunday to permanently close the BN-350 nuclear reactor in Aktau, Western Kazakhstan, located near the Iranian border.
U.S. officials were concerned about the vulnerability of its security system and disposition of weapons-usable plutonium in spent fuel stored at the reactor site. DOE has already provided basic fire safety equipment to the reactor and Y2K-ready computers for the plant information system.
Working with U.S. nuclear experts, Kazakhstan officials will begin the process of removing the plutonium for long-term storage. Richardson said a joint U.S.-Kazakh group will launch a study on long-term storage options early next year.
"These agreements are strong steps that reemphasize the commitment of the United States and Kazakhstan to stem weapons proliferation and promote nuclear safety," Richardson told reporters during the U.S.-Kazakhstan Bilateral Commission meeting.
The United States is the largest source of foreign investment in oil-rich Kazakhstan.
-------- korea
S. Koreans Protest Nuclear Plants
Associated Press December 27, 1999 Filed at 7:44 a.m. EST
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/i/AP-SKorea-Nuclear-Protest.html
SEOUL, South Korea (AP) -- About 1,000 villagers and environmentalists staged a rally Monday to demand that the South Korean government scrap plans to build more nuclear power plants.
South Korea has 15 nuclear power plants in operation and five more under construction. It plans to build 11 others by 2015. The country gets 40 percent of its electricity from nuclear energy.
``Nuclear power plants can create havoc,'' said Seok Kwang-hoon, a spokesman for Green Korea, an environmental group.
The two-hour rally was held in Wolsong, on the nation's southeast coast, where government officials were belatedly celebrating the dedication of two recently built nuclear plants.
About 500 riot police stood guard, but there were no reports of clashes or injuries.
The state power utility, Korea Electric Power Corp., said one plant in Wolsong has been in commercial operation since July 1998 and the other since October this year.
The two plants have been under close scrutiny since early October, when 12 gallons of radioactive water leaked from one of its reactors, exposing 22 workers to radiation.
The level of radiation was negligible and nobody was injured, but the accident aroused public concern over safety controls at South Korea's nuclear plants.
The leak touched off angry protests by local people and environmentalists. In addition to four nuclear power plants in operation in Wolsong, the government plans to build four more there.
---
N.Korea Denies Anthrax Supply Claim
Associated Press December 27, 1999 Filed at 9:08 a.m. EST
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/i/AP-NKorea-US-Anthrax.html
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/aponline/19991227/aponline090817_000.htm
SEOUL, South Korea (AP) -- North Korea on Monday rejected a U.S. claim that the communist country has drastically increased its potential to wage chemical warfare.
The U.S. claim is ``the height of impudence,'' the North's official foreign news outlet, KCNA, said in a commentary.
The government was responding to a recent U.S. decision to inoculate all of its 37,000 troops in South Korea against deadly anthrax and consider providing anthrax vaccine to the South Korean military.
As a precautionary action, the United States also decided to issue gas masks to about 50,000 civilians, most of them family members of its military personnel and embassy staffs in South Korea.
The U.S. action followed the release of a South Korean report last summer indicating that North Korea's totalitarian government has increased its chemical weapons stockpiles by up to five times in 12 years.
The North's stockpile of up to 5,000 tons of chemical weapons raises a new alarm because the reclusive state has missiles that can deliver those weapons to all of South Korea.
North Korea is also believed to have stockpiled anthrax and nine other types of biological weapons, the report said.
Anthrax is a disease normally associated with animals such as sheep or goats and can be used as a weapon when spores are released into the air and people breathe them in.
---
Powell's view
Washington Post 12/27/99
http://www.washtimes.com/national/inpol-19991227.htm
Retired Gen. Colin Powell, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, sees terrorism as a threat in the 21st century. But he doesn't think it can compare with the international political and military threats that were eradicated in this century.
"Terrorism is a threat. Rogue states are a threat, especially those that are trying to develop nuclear weapons," Mr. Powell said yesterday on NBC's "Meet the Press."
"But none of those threats can destroy our society and way of life like the threats we got rid of, such as Nazism, fascism and the Cold War," he added.
Asked what he would do to convince rogue states not to try anything rash, Mr. Powell said he'd "make it clear they would be committing suicide."
Pressed as to how he would deal with North Korea, he said, "I'd make it clear they would cease to exist as a country and a society the very next day" after the United States decided to take action.
Greg Pierce can be reached at 202/636-3285 or by e-mail (Pierce@twtmail.com)
---
S. Koreans Protest Nuclear Plants
Associated Press 07:44 AM ET 12/27/99
http://www.infobeat.com/stories/cgi/story.cgi?id=2562862910-415
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/aponline/19991227/aponline074416_000.htm
SEOUL, South Korea (AP) _ About 1,000 villagers and environmentalists staged a rally Monday to demand that the South Korean government scrap plans to build more nuclear power plants.
South Korea has 15 nuclear power plants in operation and five more under construction. It plans to build 11 others by 2015. The country gets 40 percent of its electricity from nuclear energy.
``Nuclear power plants can create havoc,'' said Seok Kwang-hoon, a spokesman for Green Korea, an environmental group.
The two-hour rally was held in Wolsong, on the nation's southeast coast, where government officials were belatedly celebrating the dedication of two recently built nuclear plants.
About 500 riot police stood guard, but there were no reports of clashes or injuries.
The state power utility, Korea Electric Power Corp., said one plant in Wolsong has been in commercial operation since July 1998 and the other since October this year.
The two plants have been under close scrutiny since early October, when 12 gallons of radioactive water leaked from one of its reactors, exposing 22 workers to radiation.
The level of radiation was negligible and nobody was injured, but the accident aroused public concern over safety controls at South Korea's nuclear plants.
The leak touched off angry protests by local people and environmentalists. In addition to four nuclear power plants in operation in Wolsong, the government plans to build four more there.
-------- russia
Rocket experts fear false signal from Kremlin
Washington Post December 27, 1999 By Rowan Scarborough THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/world/news1-19991227.htm
As the century changes on Dec. 31, a computer-generated false signal could send rocketeers on quickly paced launch procedures for Russia's 756 intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs).
Russia's deteriorating nuclear force is causing some experts to worry that a year-2000 computer glitch could spawn a false signal from early warning radars or satellites that the country is under attack.
Bruce Blair, a Brookings Institution analyst and leading authority on Russia's sprawling atomic arsenal, said the Strategic Rocket Force operates on a hair-trigger "launch on warning" doctrine.
As the century changes on Dec. 31, a computer-generated false signal could send rocketeers on quickly paced launch procedures for Russia's 756 intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs).
"They have about 2,000 weapons they can fire at the United States on a moment's notice, and the main option for firing them is 'launch on warning' at a time when their early warning network is deteriorating badly and at a time when they're suspicious of the West," said Mr. Blair, who as an Air Force officer in the 1970s manned a U.S. Minuteman missile silo.
Asked the odds of a false signal triggering an ICBM launch, Mr. Blair said, "It's clear that the likelihood of such an event is higher as a result of Y2K than it would otherwise. . . . [But] this should in all likelihood be a case of fail safe and not fail deadly."
The Pentagon, however, says there is no chance for a deadly miscalculation. The department has gone to extraordinary lengths diplomatically and financially to make sure New Year's Eve does not turn into a real-life "The Day After."
Its most visible guard against a calamity is the Center for Year 2000 Strategic Stability at Peterson Air Force Base, Colo. There, beginning Dec. 30, Russian and American officers will sit side by side at computer screens 24-hours a day. Their job: Monitor data from U.S. Space Command sensors, primarily long-range radars and satellites that detect the heat of a rocket blastoff.
"We really do not worry about Russia, missiles going off, or early-warning systems getting false reports or anything like that," said Deputy Defense Secretary John Hamre. "We're confident that will not be the case."
Added Peter Verga, a Pentagon policy-maker, "If an early warning radar in Russia fails, we think it would be because the power went out, which is a local time-zone problem, and not because there's a fundamental problem within the system."
The department, which has spent $3.6 billion on year-2000 compliance, has invested $10 million in Russian weapons computers to ensure they don't misread the date rollover to 2000. Technicians also ridded the Moscow-Washington "hot line" of any potential bugs and installed backup telephone connections.
At Peterson, a missile launch anywhere in the world will be picked up by Defense Support Program (DSP) satellites and then tracked by radars.
Inside the Peterson center, officers will know the launch location and time, whether the rocket is an ICBM or space vehicle, the "threat fan" of potential targets and projected impact point.
The center has communications links to Moscow's warning center so Russian officers in the United States can verify any launch activity detected back home.
Space Command believes that by 4 p.m. (ET) Dec. 31 - the millennium rollover in Moscow - officials will know if Russia's warning system is glitch-free.
U.S. military forces are on Greenwich Mean Time and will enter the new century at 7 p.m. (ET).
"Once we get through the Moscow rollover, we'll have a very good indication of how Moscow has gotten through the rollover," said Maj. Perry Nouis, a spokesman for the U.S. Space Command. "We think it's going to be a quiet night for everybody. That's what our hope is."
Steven Zaloga, an expert on Russian strategic weapons and an aerospace consultant, said Moscow lost a large share of its ICBM-tracking radars with the breakaway of old Soviet republics. For example, Latvia recently shut down the radar on its soil.
Russia's other mechanism for monitoring U.S. missiles, the system of orbiting Oko infrared satellites, has wide gaps in coverage because Moscow lacks the money to replace them.
"Their early warning system has so many gaps and problems with it, one would hope they have the sense to appreciate that they may get some kind of false readings," Mr. Zaloga said.
"Their command-and-control network is in very, very bad shape," he added.
"They don't have reliable missile early warning, which is really a critical element of command and control. The problem I see with the Russian government, it has a very unsophisticated and naive view of nuclear forces. The Russian military over the years has held a monopoly on distribution of information on nuclear forces."
Still, Mr. Zaloga concluded that the Russians exercise sufficient human control in Moscow to head off any rash decisions on New Year's Eve.
He said that in the early 1980s, shortly after the first Oko went into space, a satellite sent back a false-positive based on a heat signature from the sun appearing on the horizon. Fortunately, he said, a Russian officer dismissed the signal as bogus and did not initiate alert procedures.
"These missiles don't go off automatically," Mr. Zaloga said. "There is a human element in the Russian command-and-control system."
One thing is clear. Moscow and Washington approach the date switch amid worsening relations and mistrust.
Russia is particularly jittery over three developments: NATO expansion to its old Soviet borders; the air war on Serbia that showed the power and reach of American strategic bombers; and the U.S. intention to build a national defense against ballistic missiles.
Meanwhile, Washington has protested Russia's brutal military crackdown in Chechnya and is growing concerned over Moscow's increasingly bellicose statements on nuclear weapons.
In Beijing earlier this month, Russian President Boris Yeltsin said President Clinton "has forgotten Russia is a great power that possesses a nuclear arsenal."
Last week, Col. Gen. Vladimir Yakovlev, chief of the country's Strategic Rocket Force, was quoted as saying, "Russia, for objective reasons, is forced to lower the threshold for using nuclear weapons. . . . "
Mr. Blair sees the acid atmosphere as possibly leading to nuclear miscalculation. He also sees shortfalls in Pentagon planning.
For example, at the Peterson year-2000 center, Russian officers will not see the raw data that pours into the top-secret national warning center at Cheyenne Mountain 12 miles away. Instead, they will view processed signals.
The arrangement raises a dicey scenario. If Moscow's system says it is under attack, who do the Russians believe? Their own data or assurances from an American air base?
"The sole point of contact between the two militaries will be here at Peterson to make sure that no one in either country operates in a vacuum," Maj. Nouis said.
Said Mr. Blair, "As far as I can tell, we have fixed the Y2K problems with our nuclear forces. The Russians have not. They have admitted they are behind schedule. . . . This Y2K center is just a Band-Aid that diverts attention from the deeper problem of deterioration of Russian control over their nuclear arsenal"
Peter Pry's book, "War Scare: Russia and America on the Nuclear Brink," documents the poor state of the old Soviet arsenal. One would expect him to sound the alarm over the looming 2000 date change. But he's not.
"A lot of people on the left and right have really hyped the Y2K thing for different ulterior motives," Mr. Pry said. "I think it's been much exaggerated, the dangers of an electronic glitch, something going radically wrong with their computer system . . . It's hard for me to imagine a false attack happening."
Mr. Pry, a staffer on the House Armed Services Committee, said one prospect does worry him: how will the Russian generals react if an early-warning radar blacks out?
"That could be dangerous," he said. "Then you have the general staff wondering, why did it black out. 'Is this the first wave of attack?' "
Mr. Pry said year-2000 pessimists point to a 1995 incident as evidence of how Russia's weakening nuclear control could produce a fatal mistake.
In January of that year, Russian nuclear forces went on alert after the launch of a Norwegian weather rocket. Some Russians initially misinterpreted the flight as a U.S. submarine ballistic missile fired as the first stage of an all-out attack.
But rather than viewing the incident as a precursor to year-2000, Mr. Pry said it is a better indication of Russian mistrust toward the West.
"There was no mechanical failure or computer failure," said the ex-CIA analyst. "It was a human failure."
---
No Breakthrough In Russia-U.S. Missile Talks
Russia Today Monday, Dec 27 at Prague 09:26 pm, N.Y. 03:26 pm
http://www.russiatoday.com/news.php3?id=120565
MOSCOW, Dec 22, 1999 -- (Reuters) Russia and the United States failed to make headway in a row over U.S. plans to build an anti-missile defense shield, Interfax news agency said on Wednesday, citing unnamed diplomatic sources.
U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott was in Moscow to discuss arms control. But Interfax said the sides had failed to come closer over the issue of the U.S. defense shield, which would violate the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile pact unless Washington persuades Moscow to amend the treaty.
The 1972 Cold-War-era pact placed strict limits on defense systems designed to shoot down enemy missiles, under the logic that such shields would drive the Soviet Union and the United States to stockpile ever larger arsenals of nuclear warheads.
But the United States now wants to build a limited system to protect itself from nascent missile programs in countries it calls "rogue states", like Iran or North Korea.
Russia has said it would respond by increasing its offensive nuclear capability.
"If the basic foundations are changed as the Americans suggest, the treaty would lose its point," Interfax quoted its source as describing the Russian position.
---
Russia Sends Military Satellite Into Orbit
Russia Today Dec 27, 1999
http://www.russiatoday.com/news.php3?id=121146
MOSCOW, -- (Reuters) A Russian Tsiklon-2 booster rocket carrying a military satellite blasted into orbit on Sunday from the Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, Itar-Tass news agency said.
The launch, the last planned by Russia this year, was delayed twice over the last week, first by bad weather and then by a technical hitch.
The satellite, one of the Kosmos series, will be tracked by military radar, the agency quoted officials from Russia's Strategic Rocket Forces as saying. The Tsiklon-2 rocket is a converted Soviet-era ballistic missile.
The Russian military, living on a shoestring since the collapse of the Soviet Union, has in the past complained that up to 70 percent of its fleet of satellites have become obsolete and should be replaced.
Russia's space program has been plagued by a series of high-profile crashes of its Proton boosters and the loss of several multi-million dollar satellites.
The crashes have also complicated relations with Kazakhstan, which has claimed that earlier crashes caused ecological damage to the ex-Soviet state and briefly suspended all Russian launches from Baikonur.
----------- sweden
Swedes Prepare for High-Tech War
New York Times December 27, 1999 By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/library/tech/99/12/biztech/articles/28sweden.html
STOCKHOLM, Sweden -- The Swedish government plans to train special information technology soldiers to protect the nation's military computer systems from hackers, a newspaper reported Monday.
The government has issued a directive to the armed forces to train ``IT soldiers'' to be able to destroy hostile systems as well as protect Swedish computer systems, according to the daily Svenska Dagbladet.
``On the one hand we must be able to protect our own IT systems, on the other and in the long run be able to jam or knock out others,'' Col. Michael Moore said, according to the newspaper.
Computer experts in Sweden will conduct an exercise next year that will be modeled on a U.S. cyberwar game in 1997 where experts used software to crack codes and gain access to command systems at military bases and aircraft carriers.
A Swedish military delegation visited the Pentagon in October to study the issue.
``During a couple of days we got an insight into the problems and possibilities of IT warfare,'' Ingvar Aakesson of the defense department was quoted as saying. ``My impression is that the Americans have decided to share their experiences in this very special area with others to a much bigger extent than before.''
-------- us nuc weapons facilities
Judge Mulls Bail for Nuke Scientist
Associated Press December 27, 1999 Filed at 4:05 p.m. EST
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/a/AP-Scientist-Secrets.html
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) -- A fired Los Alamos scientist accused of mishandling nuclear secrets was back in court today as a judge considered whether he should remain behind bars without bail until his trial. An expert said he moved computer files to areas easily accessable by hackers.
Outside the federal courthouse, supporters of Wen Ho Lee rallied with signs reading ``Free Wen Ho Lee'' and ``Justice for All.'' Supporters say the government is trying to make him a scapegoat.
The hearing before U.S. District Judge James Parker was on a defense appeal of a magistrate's order denying $100,000 bail for Lee.
U.S. Magistrate Don Svet ruled Dec. 13 that freeing Lee until his trial would pose a ``clear and present danger to the national security of the United States.''
Taiwanese-born Lee, 60, a naturalized U.S. citizen, was fired in March and indicted Dec. 10. He was accused of transferring nuclear secrets to his desktop computer and portable data tapes and could face life in prison if convicted. The indictment doesn't accuse him of passing classified information to any foreign government.
Lee has said he is innocent.
He listened attentively today as Cheryl L. Wampler, a computer security expert at Los Alamos, testified that it would take a ``concerted effort to collect the files'' Lee is accused of downloading.
Wampler said it allegedly took Lee 40 hours over several months in 1993 and 1994 to download the files. She said Lee took classified files and declassified them by putting them in areas that could be reached by anyone. Her testimony was similar to that of a lab official who testified at Lee's arraignment.
Since Lee's firing, lab personnel have twice shut down the unsecured computer system to erase classified files Lee transfered, Wampler said.
``The files were open to not very sophisticated hackers on the Internet,'' Wampler said.
Attorneys have said a trial might not be held for 10 to 12 months, but prosecutors say holding Lee without bail that long shouldn't matter.
``Even if this court were to assume that Lee would be detained for one year prior to trial, that period of detention would not violate Lee's Fifth Amendment due-process right,'' U.S. Attorney John Kelly and First Assistant U.S. Attorney Robert Gorence told Parker in written pleadings Thursday.
Lee is charged with 59 counts under the Atomic Energy and Espionage Acts. The charges allege transfer of classified material from secure to unsecure computers and to computer tapes, seven of which remain missing.
``Those missing tapes, in the hands of an unauthorized possessor, pose a mortal danger to every American,'' Kelly and Gorence said in their court documents.
The defense contends the tapes were destroyed.
The prosecutors said Lee speaks Chinese, has relatives living overseas and has sought foreign employment, indicating ``ability and willingness to live abroad.''
Even in jail, they said, Lee would be not be allowed telephone access, family visits would be monitored, no one else except his lawyers could visit him and communications in Chinese would be banned.
``These restrictions have been imposed because detention by itself cannot reasonably assure that Lee will not disclose classified information that would endanger the nation's security,'' Kelly and Gorence said.
Lee could face life in prison if convicted.
---
Kentucky: contaminated ground water trickling from under Paducah
USA Today 12/27/99
http://www.usatoday.com/news/states/kymain.htm
Monday, December 27 Paducah - A University of Kentucky study shows that contaminated ground water trickling from under the Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant has leaked into a stream that flows into the Ohio River, according to a report by The Courier-Journal of Louisville. Researchers have discovered trichloroethylene, a degreasing solvent thought to cause cancer, and radioactive technetium-99 in Little Bayou Creek. ---
Radioactive Material Found In Stream
Monday December 27 2:51 PM ET
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/headlines/local/sta te/kentucky/story.html?s=v/rs/19991227/ky/index_2.html#1</A>
(PADUCAH) -- Paducah's Gaseous Diffusion Plant is at the center of more cover-up allegations. University of Kentucky researchers report they have found evidence of contamination in the Little Bayou Creek near the uranium enrichment plant. The scientists found radioactive technetium-99 (teck-net-eeum) in the stream, which flows into a public wildlife area. The creek also feeds a recreation area visited by thousands of Kentuckians each year. Researchers say the level of contamination is unclear, but any public exposure that may have occurred needs to be addressed.
--------
Bay Area Brains Scientists whose discoveries helped define the 20th century
San Francisco Chronicle Monday, December 27, 1999
Carl T. Hall, Chronicle Science Writer
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/1999/12/27/MN58816.DTL
As the calendar draws toward a historic turning point, it's clear that some of the most significant advances in 20th century science and medicine have been made in Northern California.
It was not always so. During the first half of the century, scientific institutions on the East Coast held the leading edge in fundamental physics, chemistry and other fields.
But that began to change with the advent of the West Coast defense build-up, the era of silicon and the rise to scientific prominence of Stanford University and the University of California at Berkeley.
``In the '30s, '40s and '50s you would not say California was leading,'' said M.R.C. Greenwood, chancellor of the University of California at Santa Cruz and chairperson of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. ``Now, we really are at the cutting edge.''
Deciding which scientific advances are the most important is an arbitrary business, and any short list undoubtedly will leave plenty to argue about.
It's also tricky determining just where credit belongs. Virtually all lasting scientific contributions were built on past discoveries and the work of scientists all over the world.
``Science is a social enterprise in which many people are involved in nearly every discovery,'' said Roger Hahn, a historian at the University of California at Berkeley. ``There's a continuum.''
Nonetheless, some 20th century scientific milestones, all with links to the Bay Area, seem likely to endure: Vacuum tubes
Vacuum tube amplifiers, used to power radios and televisions before the transistor came along, can be traced to turn-of-the-century Palo Alto resident and physicist-inventor Lee De Forest. In 1907, De Forest patented the ``Audion tube,'' a highly sensitive receiver of radio signals, set up historic broadcasts in New York and San Francisco and invented the first method for putting sound on film. But De Forest, known as ``the father of radio,'' never got much credit during his lifetime.
Atom smashers
Ernest O. Lawrence, founder of what came to be known as the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, won the Nobel for physics in 1939 for his invention of the cyclotron. The device was the first circular particle accelerator, one of the most important tools for the study of subatomic particles and the fundamental structure of matter. It also opened the door for the use of radioactive isotopes in medicine, creating the field of modern nuclear medicine. Linear accelerators
At Stanford, Professor William W. Hansen and two students, brothers Russell and Sigurd Varian, developed a high-frequency amplifier to produce microwaves, called the klystron tube. High-energy physics and the Stanford Linear Accelerator -- conceived in 1956 by Robert Hofstadter -- followed, as did modern radar systems.
Cancer researcher Henry Seymour Kaplan, who had unlocked some of the key secrets of Hodgkin's disease and other lymphomas, proposed the first medical linear accelerator, built by Stanford physicist Edward Ginzton. Photosynthesis
Using a form of carbon produced with the Berkeley lab's cyclotron, UC's Melvin Calvin and colleagues unlocked the secrets of fundamental plant biology, in particular the process by which light and carbon dioxide are converted to energy.
The work won Calvin the Nobel prize in 1951, while the carbon he used, carbon-14, became a ubiquitous tool for dating materials in seismology, archaeology and other fields. Plutonium discovery
Edwin McMillan and Glenn Seaborg of the Lawrence Berkeley lab shared the Nobel in chemistry in 1951 for the discovery of plutonium and other elements with nuclei heavier than uranium, previously thought to have been the upper limit in the periodic table of elements.
It made plutonium-based nuclear weapons possible, among other immediate uses, and altered the scientific understanding of nature's building blocks. Much of the work was done in partnership with Al Ghiorsl, still working as a nuclear scientist at the lab. The laser
Invention of the first laser was based in part on theoretical work on laser spectroscopy performed in the early 1960s by Stanford physicist Arthur Schawlow. He was awarded a Nobel in 1981 for that achievement, which also led to the creation of Spectra Physics, the largest laser company in the world, and several other companies. Genetic engineering
Thirty years ago, Stanford biochemist Paul Berg developed techniques for splicing genes into mammalian cells. That work won him the Nobel Prize in chemistry in 1980 and helped lay the foundation for recombinant DNA technology.
Later, Herbert Boyer of the University of California at San Francisco and Stanley Cohen of Stanford discovered the key enzymes allowing foreign genes to be spliced into bacteria. That paved the way for the first bioengineered protein drugs -- and gave birth to the biotech industry. Asteroids and evolution:
UC Berkeley physicist Luis Alvarez was first known for contributions to elementary particle physics, for which he won a Nobel Prize in 1968. In 1980, he and his son Walter Alvarez, a UC Berkeley geologist, were the first to propose the notion that an asteroid or comet collision with Earth some 65 million years ago could explain the demise of the dinosaurs and many other living plants and animals. More recent evidence of a gigantic meteor crater beneath the ocean off the Yucatan seems to confirm that once-heretical notion. Expanding universe
Observations made possible by the orbiting Hubble Space Telescope and the two giant Keck telescopes in Hawaii have led to a steady stream of astonishing discoveries in astronomy and cosmology. One such finding concerns the idea that the universe is ``running away from itself,'' expanding at an ever-increasing rate ever since the Big Bang.
Astrophysicist Saul Perlmutter at the Lawrence Berkeley lab, honored by Science magazine last year for the ``breakthrough of the year'' discovery, has been at the forefront of this work, as have cosmologist Adam Riess and astronomer Alex Filippenko, both at the University of California at Berkeley. Other worlds
Twenty-eight planets have been discovered so far to be circulating stars other than our own sun. Twenty-five of them are credited to a team of astronomers including Geoffrey Marcy of UC Berkeley and Steven Vogt of UC Santa Cruz.
The findings are somewhat tentative, based primarily on gravitational irregularities rather than direct observation, and of course, there's no evidence of life or even of conditions that might support life as we know it outside our solar system. But the existence of so many ``extrasolar'' planets suggests some earthshaking possibilities out there.
``So there is such a thing as inspiration I suppose. But one has to be ready for it. I dont know what made me ready for it at that monment, except I didnt have anything else to do. I had to sit and wait, and perhaps that in itself has some moral.''
-- Melvin Calvin
``People often say to me, `I don't see how you can work in physics; it's so complicated and difficult.' But actually physics is the simplest of all the sciences; it only seems difficult because physicists talk to each other in a language that most people don't understand -- the language of mathematics.''
-- Luis Alvarez
``I have always been very fond of California, and San Francisco in particular. It was there that I did some of my most important work ..., where I opened the first broadcasting station to transmit orchestra music.''
-- Lee De Forest
``Scientific achievement is rooted in the past, is cultivated to full stature by many contemporaries and flourishes only in a favorable environment.''
-- Ernest Lawrence
``I've always thought (naivete) has a great deal to do with the success of any venture. Whatever you want to do, if you overanalyze it, start looking at all the pluses and all the minuses, you might never start.''
---
Plutonium fears
Kentucky's Top 10 news stories listed By The Associated Press
Evansville Courier & Press Monday, December 27, 1999
http://www.courierpress.com/cgi-bin/view.cgi?199912/27+kentucky122799_news.html+19991227
Since 1952, the sprawling 3,400-acre complex outside Paducah quietly kept America's atomic age working. But not all was as it appears now. In 1999, it was revealed that some of the thousands of workers at the plant may have been exposed to far more dangerous radiation than from processing uranium. Energy Secretary Bill Richardson apologized to workers and promised to seek compensation for any medical problems that may have been caused. There are also concerns about damage to the environment from what was the fifth biggest story in Kentucky in 1999....
-------- us nuc weapons
U.S. Vulnerable to Missile Strikes
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
San Francisco Chronicle Thursday, December 30, 1999
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/1999/12/30/ED75109.DTL
Editor -- In response to Mr. Katz's letter of December 15, in which he criticizes Sen. McCain's advocacy for an anti-missile defense system, I would like to express my concern that the letter was weighted in rhetoric and light on facts. China, Russia, Iraq, Libya and North Korea are either in the process of acquiring or already possess ICBMs armed with nuclear warheads, which are capable of striking the U.S. or our troops abroad. At the moment, we are incapable of stopping even one ICBM launched against us. It is true that possible ABM systems might not be effective against every missile they encounter, but we are dealing with millions of American lives that can be saved if just a good number are intercepted.
This does not even take into account the deterrent effect that such a system would have against rogue nations pondering an attack, once they realize they have no guarantee their missiles will hit their targets. The projected cost for various systems is around $8 billion, which considering that the spending would be stretched over several years, and current budget predictions, would likely consume more than 2 percent of our defense expenditures. I would hope that the American people come to realize that an anti-missile defense system is not only a priority, but a necessity.
BIJAN J. ZADEH
San Francisco
---
Why the Test Ban Is Safe for Us
Don't let a vital agreement be killed by quibbles.
By Richard L. Garwin Washington Post Monday, December 27, 1999; Page A25
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/1999-12/27/026l-122799-idx.html
In his op-ed article of Nov. 23, former secretary of state Henry Kissinger expresses concern about verification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT), the ability to maintain the U.S. stockpile of nuclear warheads and the lack of "meaningful sanctions" for violating the CTBT. I believe that an extensive set of Senate hearings--not the rush to judgment that we got--would have resolved these issues in the minds of many.
In 1950 I began work at the Los Alamos National Laboratory on fission weapons, innovations in nuclear explosion testing and early thermonuclear weapons. I served the Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon administrations on the President's Science Advisory Committee and in other roles dealing with national security technology and arms control. When Kissinger was national security adviser to President Nixon, I met with him frequently as a member of his small, informal technical advisory panel. In recent years, I have studied CTBT issues for the Department of Energy (DOE), especially our ability to maintain a stockpile of nuclear weapons of existing type that is safe and reliable without nuclear explosion testing.
Regarding verification: The CTBT's international monitoring system will detect all global events that release energy equivalent to the detonation of 1,000 tons or more of high explosive, and will locate these events within a radius of 18 kilometers.
Sensors of low-frequency sound in the atmosphere and oceans and detectors of airborne radioactivity will complete the system. Existing seismic detection capabilities that will supplement the CTBT's are in many cases far more sensitive than the minimum planned for the CTBT. For instance, existing seismo-meters in Pakistan would have detected additional tests of 10 tons' explosive yield at the Indian test range in May 1998; and seismometers in the Nordic countries often could detect an explosion of one ton at the Russian test site at Novaya Zemlya.
A country that cares about its role in the community of nations would not lightly violate a CTBT in the hope that it could evade detection. Efforts to evade detection by exploding the nuclear weapon in a large underground cavity are particularly chancy for a nation without testing experience.
The ability to keep U.S. nuclear weapons (now numbering some 10,000 weapons of about 10 types) safe and reliable under a CTBT depends on an improved surveillance program for the health of the weapons in the stockpile, as has long been practiced. Each weapon type in the stockpile has had its production verification test and would not normally be fired again no matter how long it remained in the stockpile. But every year, 11 units of each type are randomly withdrawn from the stockpile and inspected--one of them thoroughly disassembled to detect corrosion or other problems of aging.
Now as in the past, incipient deterioration would result in replacement of the offending item throughout the affected stockpile: gaskets, lubricants, etc. For the few components that can be operated only during a nuclear explosion, periodic remanufacture of the plutonium primary nuclear explosive in the thermonuclear weapon, or the uranium and lithium-deuterium secondary, would maintain the reliability of the stockpile without degradation, if the remanufactured nuclear components fall within the range of variability of the original manufacturing run. The CTBT question is not whether the stockpile is perfectly reliable but whether it is as reliable as it was in the days of nuclear testing.
Under the $45 billion Science-Based Stockpile Stewardship program, enormous strides in computing, in measurement of purely high-explosive tests and in laboratory experiments dealing with the transport of radiation already serve to increase our understanding of the stockpile beyond what it was in the old days. As the program matures, confidence in reliability should increase, but only if the DOE has the requisite manufacturing capability, which is now beginning to function. Adequacy of the manufacturing complex is not a CTBT question, but it deserves more attention by DOE.
The "traditional" means of maintaining a reliable stockpile by the substitution of new types of nuclear weapons (each with a single production verification test) in no way improves the reliability of the stockpile. Instead, the historical concentration of serious stockpile problems within the first four years of a weapon's presence in the stockpile implies that constant introduction of new designs increases the likelihood of stockpile problems.
As for Kissinger's plaint about the "lack of meaningful sanctions" in the CTBT: Sanctions are rare, almost to the point of nonexistence, in such treaties, including those for which he was responsible. Violation of one treaty or norm can bring retaliation in other domains.
The search for agreement on "precise and tough sanctions" is a prescription for indefinite delay that will imperil not only the CTBT but the Non-Proliferation Treaty and the web of constraints on the acquisition of weapons of mass destruction.
The writer is Philip D. Reed senior fellow for science and technology at the Council on Foreign Relations.
---
Sorties against missile defenses
Washington Times December 27, 1999 James Hackett
http://www.washtimes.com/commentary/comment1-19991227.htm
The opponents of a national missile defense never give up. They argued for years that missile defenses would not work, but six successful intercepts in flight tests this year have shattered that argument. Now they have a new theme - deploying defenses would be "a rush to failure," because it is a high-risk effort. President Clinton, they say, should not decide whether to deploy missile defenses next summer, as he has promised to do.
But a failure to order deployment would leave a huge government program up in the air. The current work to develop but not deploy missile defenses soon will hit a dead end. Decisions are needed urgently not only to deploy, but on how many sites to build and where to put them - in Alaska or North Dakota, or both. Also needed is a decision on how many interceptors to deploy - 20, 100 or more. Work must be done soon to prepare the sites, but it cannot proceed without these decisions.
Mr. Clinton is willing to build theater missile defenses to protect troops in the field and U.S. allies, but he is reluctant to approve a homeland defense to avoid violating the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty with the defunct Soviet Union. He thought he could turn Russia and China into strategic partners, and the missile threat would just fade away. But neither Moscow nor Beijing became U.S. allies, and now Russia's huge arsenal of nuclear-tipped missiles is even more dangerous as its economy sinks, its command and control system deteriorates, and U.S.-Russian relations worsen. To make matters worse, missile technology will not stay in the nonproliferation bottle the administration tries to keep it in as other countries develop, test and deploy new missiles of increasing range and capability.
Despite the growing danger, missile-defense opponents and their supporters in the media continue to defend a policy of mutual assured destruction combined with arms control and unwavering adherence to the ABM treaty. But each new missile test by unfriendly regimes convinces more congressional Democrats to support deployment. Mr. Clinton tried to get on the missile defense bandwagon by promising to develop and test missile-defense technologies, but then assured his left wing that he would make no decision whether to deploy until summer 2000.
Supporters of a national missile defense are understandably suspicious about the timing. It would be illogical to make a major policy decision that would commit the next president just months before an election. Consequently, many believe Mr. Clinton intends to defer a decision to his successor. The idea that a decision should be deferred first arose publicly last month following release of a technical report by a panel of missile defense experts. Chaired by former Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Larry Welch, the panel said the current plan to deploy a limited national missile defense by 2005, if the president decides to deploy one, is on such a tight schedule that the Defense Department might consider deferring a deployment readiness review scheduled for July 2000.
This highly technical recommendation was seized upon by opponents as a reason to defer the president's deployment decision. Much of the mainstream media echoed the cry for deferral. But that is not what the Welch panel suggested. The 40-page report does not mention the presidential decision. It deals only with technical risks and offers advice to the Defense Department on ways to reduce them.
The report was written before the first missile intercept, which was con-ducted Oct. 2 with spec- tacular results. The sim-ulated warhead was more advanced than those possessed by any country except Russia. Yet, the interceptor successfully located and tracked the target, discriminated between the warhead, a decoy balloon and other objects, and achieved a direct hit. The Welch panel had warned about the high risk of conducting such a complicated intercept on the first attempt, but it was a complete success.
Gen. Welch said his group emphasized that developing advanced technologies involves a risk of schedule delays and things not going right, but that does not mean the program is not working. He said his report does not recommend a delay in the president's decision to deploy. Then in a Dec. 2 interview, Maj. Gen. Willie Nance, the program's manager, said if the program is to get defenses in the field by 2005 it is critical to select the site and decide other deployment details at the time the deployment decision is made. To keep the program on schedule, a decision is needed no later than next summer.
Baker Spring of the Heritage Foundation asks what if President Kennedy said we would go to the moon, but only after all technical risks were eliminated. We probably would still be waiting. President Kennedy gave the order to get there by the end of the decade despite the risks, and government and industry rose to the challenge. Mr. Clinton should follow that example and order a national missile defense to be deployed within five years. If he does not, the next president will, but valuable time will be lost.
---
The price of apathy For a missile defense now
Arkansas Press-Gazette 12/27/99
http://www.ardemgaz.com/today/edi/wedit127.html
FEW DEFENSE measures have been (a) so necessary, and (b) so ridiculed as Ronald Reagan's SDI, which stands for Strategic Defense Initiative. From the first time he proposed that daring idea, it was tagged Star Wars. The nickname may have been meant to suggest that it was just another of the Gipper's nutty sci-fi ideas (like winning the Cold War?) but by now the necessity of such a program has become undeniable--even to this administration. One test after another shows that Star Wars isn't just something out of Buck Rogers but a practical idea. It is possible to "hit a bullet with a bullet"--it's now been done above the Pacific in an early test.
But there's a legal, or at least legalistic, hang-up: the old Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty with what used to be the Soviet Union, aka the Evil Empire. The treaty forbids deploying any such defensive system, on the theory--remember this was 1972--that a defensive anti-missile system would make nuclear war more likely. For its possessor would be encouraged to launch a nuclear strike, confident it could defend against any retaliation. That sort of Strangelovian theorizing about the arms race was all bound up with the conventional assumptions about nuclear strategy back then, which were summed up by the acronym MAD--as in Mutually Assured Destruction. There had to be something better, and Star Wars is it.
In proposing Star Wars, Ronald Reagan hoped to break the hold that the old doomsday strategy had imposed on the world, and he proposed to show his good will by sharing our Star Wars system with the Russians. The offer still stands, but the Russians, although no longer Soviets, still reject any changes in the treaty.
Pity. For with a number of rogue states fast developing their own missiles and nuclear programs, America remains naked to its missile-armed enemies. As the Clinton administration has begun to understand at this dangerously late date. The administration has moved ever so quietly, almost secretly, to re-open negotiations with the Russians (it tends to be ashamed of its best ideas) but Moscow is in no mood to be reasonable. The late unpleasantness over Kosovo seems to have aroused its inferiority complex. And the current unpleasantness over Chechnya isn't helping, either, as Boris Yeltsin's latest bombast about his nuclear weaponry demonstrates.
But the great danger doesn't come from Boris Yeltsin's vodka-fueled speechifying, but from other and lesser powers. A number of other regimes are now in the market for nuclear equalizers--and fast on their way to developing them.
For example: Red China, our "strategic partner," continues to expand its missile bases opposite Taiwan. By the end of the year, which fast looms, it should have a total of 200 intermediate-range missiles pointed across the strait. And it objects, forcefully, to any plan to deploy an anti-missile defense on Taiwan. Of course. It's so much easier to intimidate a small country if it can be denied an adequate defense.
Then there are those other troublesome customers working quietly--indeed, secretly--on developing their own nuclear missiles, and they may not give the world any warning before deciding to fire away some unexpected day: Iran, Iraq, and of course North Korea--another nation this administration has tried to appease, with the usual unfortunate results.
The proper response to such threats is not appeasement but defense. Happily, the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty allows either the Soviet Union or the United States to withdraw from the treaty within six months should either nation feel that its security demands an anti-ballistic missile defense. That was one reason among many why the Senate rejected the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, for it might have interfered with this country's need to keep its nuclear weaponry up to date. The next step is to withdraw from the old, outdated ABM treaty.
BUT IN an otherwise statesmanlike tour of the diplomatic and military horizon last month, the GOP's once presumptive presidential nominee, known only as W., came out in favor of renegotiating this 25-year-old treaty with the Russians. Unfortunately, the Russians don't show any interest at all in that good idea. And they're not likely to until Washington announces that, six months from now, the United States of America will exercise its right to withdraw from a treaty that is now more of an invitation than a deterrent to aggression.
Such an announcement, the equivalent of a diplomatic two-by-four, would finally get Moscow's attention, and productive negotiations might finally begin. For sharing a missile defense with the Russians might benefit both countries--and it would certainly deter quite mad regimes, like those in Iraq and North Korea, that have never been constrained by either reason or decency.
When would be the best time to abrogate this treaty, and begin perfecting and deploying an adequate defense against this growing threat from any number of unpredictable directions? About 1987, when both Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher were pushing that good idea. By now the hour has grown late, and the danger greater. What are we waiting for? Remember Pearl Harbor. That's not just an historic slogan; it's a lesson we forget at our and the world's peril.
This article was published on Monday, December 27, 1999
---
Siren Test Soon To Be in the Past
By The Associated Press New York Times December 27, 1999 Filed at 3:15 a.m. EST
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/a/AP-Baltimore-Sirens.html
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/aponline/19991227/aponline031543_000.htm
BALTIMORE (AP) -- For the generation of Americans raised during the peak of the Cold War, a blaring air raid siren brings back memories of crouching beneath a school desk to protect from a nuclear blast.
The Cold War and the Soviet Union might both be long gone these days, but every Monday afternoon those same sirens have been tested over downtown Baltimore.
The sirens now are meant to alert city residents about impending natural disasters, terrorist attacks or hazardous material incidents. More practically, they signal nothing more than the end of the lunch hour.
But sometime in the new year, the Monday 1 p.m. tradition will become history - and not a week too soon for some who hate the noise or misunderstand its purpose.
"That means it's one o'clock and all's well," said Lisa Tomlinson between cigarette drags outside a downtown office building as the sirens wailed.
This summer, the city council approved a $600,000 upgrade of the current antiquated phone line-based system of 112 sirens sprinkled throughout Baltimore.
The new network of 20 to 30 radio-controlled sirens will not need to be tested on regular basis, ending what is weekly headache for many city residents and institutions.
"We have gotten complaints about the system because some of the sirens are attached to private buildings, including a nursing home," said Richard McCoy, the city's Director of Emergency Management.
Johns Hopkins University officials, who referred to the test as "the minute of noise," complained about the siren on their property until it was removed this summer, McCoy said.
He plans to coordinate the installation of the new sirens with a public education campaign about what they mean, and what to do if they ever sound.
"The complacency level is such that most people don't know," McCoy said.
The attendants at a downtown parking said they understood - sort of.
"If people are trying to bomb this place, the alarm tells people to get into the bunkers," said Gerald Minor, shouting through the wail.
Exactly where those bunkers were, he didn't know.
Baltimore installed the siren system in 1952 as part of a national campaign to prepare the country for a nuclear attack from the Soviet Union. The sirens were intended to alert people to head for newly built bunkers to survive.
With the close of the Cold War in the late 1980s, the federal government stopped funding local civil defense programs, passing responsibility to municipalities. Baltimore chose to keep its system and shift the focus to natural disasters and other emergencies, McCoy said.
Sirens are common in areas of the country susceptible to natural disasters. Earthquake-prone San Francisco has roughly one siren per square mile, and tests its system every Tuesday at noon.
Omaha, Neb., which sits perilously close to Tornado Alley, sounds its civil defense sirens on the first Saturday of every month.
But in Baltimore, the threat of natural disaster isn't so great. After nearly 50 years, the alarm has never sounded for a real emergency, McCoy said.
He hopes to install the new system by the end of the year. After that, all tests will be silent, doing away with the weekly klaxon blast throughout the city.
"The next time you hear it," McCoy said, "it will be for real."
---
Time magazine honors Einstein
Mohandas Gandhi, FDR were under consideration
BETH J. HARPAZ ASSOCIATED PRESS St. Paul Pioneer Press Published: Monday, December 27, 1999
http://www.pioneerplanet.com/seven-days/1/news/docs/037553.htm
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/aponline/19991227/aponline060453_000.htm
http://www.bergen.com/news/ein199912278.htm
http://detnews.com/1999/nation/9912/27/12270109.htm
http://www.herald.com/content/today/docs/059457.htm
NEW YORK
Describing him as a locksmith of mysteries, from the atom to the universe, Time magazine named Albert Einstein its Person of the Century on Sunday.
``When we look back in 100 years, we'll remember the fight for freedom and the fight for civil rights, but above all, we're going to realize how science and technology changed our world,'' said Time's managing editor, Walter Isaacson.
Einstein, born in Germany in 1879, developed the theory of relativity, which rejects the concept of absolute motion and explains why motion, speed and mass appear different depending on the observer's frame of reference.
The theory laid the groundwork for spectacular technological developments and observations in many fields, including gravitation and the study of the cosmos, and nuclear fission.
Einstein won the 1921 Nobel Prize in physics. In 1933, he immigrated to the United States to take a post at Princeton University. A year later, the property he left behind in Germany was confiscated by the Nazi government because he was Jewish.
``In a century that will be remembered foremost for its science and technology -- in particular for our ability to understand and then harness the forces of the atom and universe -- one person clearly stands out as both the greatest mind and paramount icon of our age: The kindly, absent-minded professor whose wild halo of hair, piercing eyes, engaging humanity and extraordinary brilliance made his face a symbol and his name a synonym for genius, Albert Einstein,'' the magazine said.
Einstein was partly responsible for President Franklin D. Roosevelt's decision to pursue making an atom bomb. He wrote to the president in 1939 warning that Germany could be repeating American experiments with uranium and suggesting that those experiments could produce a powerful bomb.
He later said: ``If I had only known, I would have been a locksmith.''
Einstein died in 1955.
Time's runners-up for Person of the Century were President Roosevelt, who the magazine said represented the triumph of democracy and freedom over fascism and communism; and Mohandas Gandhi, who it picked to symbolize the ability of individuals to resist authority to secure civil rights and personal liberties.
-------- terrorism
Ex-chief says CIA hurt by own rules
USA Today 12/27/99- Updated 11:47 AM ET
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washdc/ncsmon01.htm
WASHINGTON - The Central Intelligence Agency's efforts to spy on terrorist groups are hurt by the agency's own rules, former CIA Director James Woolsey says.
Woolsey, who ran the agency from 1993 to 1995, said Sunday that President Clinton should look at changing the rules governing how foreigners are accepted as informants.
''The CIA overseas operates under guidelines that were adopted in late 1995, which makes it difficult - not impossible - but makes it difficult to recruit people who are human rights violators as spies,'' Woolsey said on ''Fox News Sunday.''
''Well, if you're spying on a terrorist group, everybody in it is a human rights violator.''
The agency says those rules do not stand in the CIA's way.
''We are working extremely hard to counter terrorism,'' CIA spokesman Mark Mansfield said. ''There are no restrictions that are preventing us or hindering us from doing that.''
The agency in 1995 raised the standards by which it accepts foreigners as spies. The move came on the heels of reports that a Guatemalan CIA informant murdered the husband of an American.
Then-CIA Director John Deutch said in a 1996 speech at Georgetown University that case officers in the field must obtain prior approval from senior managers before working with certain sources.
''We all know we must deal with unsavory characters in the intelligence business,'' Deutch said. ''The question is, will we do it in a smart and discriminating way? The answer is yes, and our performance proves it can be done successfully.''
But three years later, amid new terrorist threats, the rules hamper the agency's efforts to gauge the plans of terrorists, Woolsey said.
Asked whether he was urging Clinton to lift those restrictions, he replied: ''Not lift, but perhaps look at changes. It's a very good idea to stop things from happening by maybe being a little more flexible with your guidelines. I think the CIA ones really should be.''
--------
Four People Arrested at U.S.-Canadian Border
New York Times December 27, 1999 By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/yr/mo/day/late/27arrest.html
http://www.usatoday.com/news/ndsmon01.htm
SEATTLE -- Four people, including one with suspected terrorist links, were arrested by the U.S. Border Patrol at a U.S.-Canada border crossing, Canadian law enforcement officials said.
The group -- three men and a woman -- was arrested by U.S. officials Sunday afternoon at the Blaine, Wash., checkpoint, the officials said.
The U.S. Border Patrol and FBI officials in Seattle and Washington, D.C., refused to comment or confirm the arrests.
Their identities and citizenships were not known, but the men were in the United States illegally and had driven to the crossing from Pennsylvania in a rental car, said Constable Archie Alafriz of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.
The arrests occurred after the woman parked her car at a duty-free shop on the Canadian side of the border and walked across to join them, Alafriz said.
He said it appeared the Border Patrol had been monitoring the three men, and after the woman met them, ``the Border Patrol checked with the FBI to confirm their sourcing -- the identity of the fellow'' before all were arrested.
A search by RCMP officers and a bomb-sniffing dog found no explosives or suspicious materials in the woman's car, Alafriz said.
``We reported back to the Border Patrol that there's no evidence of any terrorist paraphernalia in the vehicle,'' he said.
The crossing -- one of the busiest in the United States -- was shut down for 2 1/2 hours, he said.
The arrests come in the wake of heightened security precautions at all U.S. border crossings as officials gird against possible terrorist attacks in the coming days.
On Dec. 14, Ahmed Ressam, an Algerian national, was arrested by U.S. authorities as he arrived from Canada by ferry at Port Angeles, Wash.
Authorities reported finding nitroglycerin and other explosives, as well as timing devices, in the trunk of Ressam's rental car.
Ressam, 32, has pleaded innocent to charges of illegal explosives smuggling and providing false immigration information to U.S. Customs agents. He is being held near Seattle by federal authorities.
Federal authorities said Abdelmajed Dahoumane, a suspected accomplice to Ressam, was reported spotted by an airline ticket agent on Dec. 17 in Bellingham, Wash., about 20 miles south of the Blaine crossing.
News reports has Dahoumane stayed with Ressam in a Vancouver, British Columbia, motel in the weeks before Ressam's arrest. He has since been sought in Canada and the United States.
A Canadian woman and a male Algerian companion were arrested at a border crossing in Vermont on Dec. 19. The woman, Lucia Garofalo, has been linked by federal prosecutors to what they described as a terrorist group operating in Europe and Algeria.
U.S. and Canadian authorities traced Garofalo's cellular phone and car to an organization called the Algerian Islamic League, prosecutors said. They said the group's founder is an arms trafficker for terrorists.
Garofalo, 35, and Bouabide Chamchi, 20, were charged with conspiring to misuse a false passport and offenses related to the transportation of aliens into and inside the United States.
---
7 Border Arrests, But No Terror Link
Associated Press December 27, 1999 Filed at 5:08 p.m. EST
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/a/AP-Border-Arrests.html
SEATTLE (AP) -- Seven Jordanians were arrested at the Canadian border on what officials Monday called routine illegal immigration charges -- not terrorist suspicions, as originally announced.
Three men, two women and two children were taken into custody by U.S. officials Sunday afternoon near the checkpoint at Blaine, Wash. The crossing was shut down for more than two hours.
One of the women, who was with a toddler and was legally in Canada, had left her car at a duty-free shop on the Canadian side and walked across the border without stopping at a checkpoint, authorities said.
U.S. Border officials picked her up and then found five other people who were waiting to meet her -- three men, a woman and a baby, said Sharon Gavin, a spokeswoman for the Immigration and Naturalization Service. They were arrested for overstaying their visas, authorities said.
``She was apparently coming over to meet up with her husband,'' Ms. Gavin said. ``It now looks like a routine smuggling case and trying to reunite a family.''
Hours after the arrests, Constable Archie Alafriz of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police had reported that at least one of the men who was arrested ``had an affiliation with a known terrorist group.''
But the FBI said Monday that authorities had misinterpreted a criminal record in Philadelphia that said the man once made ``terroristic threats,'' a phrase that can be applied to several kinds of violence.
``It looks like, in reviewing that record, it is in connection with assault or domestic violence,'' FBI agent Roberta Burroughs said. ``We have no reason to believe at this time that these people have any ties to terrorist organizations.''
All seven will be processed for deportation, Ms. Gavin said.
U.S. border crossings are on heightened security as officials gird against possible terrorist attacks this week.
An Algerian man, Ahmed Ressam, was charged with trying to smuggle nitroglycerin, other explosives and timing devices into the United States from Canada on Dec. 14. American and Canadian authorities are looking for a suspected accomplice.
Five days after Ressam's arrest, a Canadian woman and an Algerian man were arrested at a remote border crossing in Vermont. The woman, Lucia Garofalo, has been linked by federal prosecutors to what they described as a terrorist group operating in Europe and Algeria.
---
Trump Unveils Anti-Terrorism Ideas
New York Times December 27, 1999 Filed at 3:28 p.m. EST Associated Press
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/p/AP-Trump-Book.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The nation should prepare for terrorist attacks by stockpiling antibiotics in big cities and developing sensors to warn of biological devices, Donald Trump says in a new book.
In his campaign blueprint, ``The America We Deserve,'' Trump also proposes hanging murderers and vigorously taxing the possessions of the super-rich.
Trump, the real estate developer who is considering a run for the Reform Party presidential nomination, veils some of his ideas in hypotheticals with few details.
``I bet if I started a national defense lottery, with money earmarked for preventing terrorism against U.S. cities, we would take in enough money to hire and train every spy on Earth and still have money to spare,'' he writes.
``Imagine this for a second,'' he adds. ``The National Security Lottery would sell tickets just like in a Powerball lottery but dedicate every cent to funding an anti-terrorism campaign.''
Besides his proposals for stockpiling antibiotics and developing sensor alarms for biological poisons, he said the nation needs more spies to infiltrate terrorist cells developing biological weapons.
The nation can stunt the growth of foreign terrorist groups in part by offering jobs to Russian biotechnicians, he says.
In the book Trump also:
-- Supports capital punishment. ``There is no good reason not to execute heinous criminals,'' he writes. For people such as those who dragged James Byrd Jr. to death in Texas, ``I totally reject the idea that hanging these sorts of criminals is uncivilized.''
-- Pledges to put health care reform at the top of his agenda, and seems to favor a national system like Canada's or the Federal Employees Health Benefit Program, which he calls a ``single payer plan that is affordable, well administered and provides freedom of choice.''
-- Says he will reduce the power of teachers' unions and promote school choice.
-- Hopes to reduce the nation's debt by imposing a one-time, 14.25 percent tax on people with assets of $10 million or more.
As for terrorism, he says established politicians prolong the threat by refusing to discuss it in detail.
``Their chief job, all too often, is to get re-elected,'' Trump says. ``They don't want to be the bearers of bad news.''
In fact, a government audit has put a $12 million price tag on readying a city for bioterrorism.
The congressional study estimated it would cost a city of 500,000 about $1.3 million to acquire basic equipment to prepare for a hazardous material incident and $12 million to be ``highly prepared'' for a chemical, biological, radiological or nuclear event.
For a typical hazardous materials incident, the separate report estimated $1.3 million to procure materials ranging from duct tape to mobile command posts and an additional $3.3 million to sustain the preparedness over 10 years.
For a high level of preparation, the estimates were $12.2 million for initial procurement and $42.9 million over a decade.
-------- y2k
It's all systems go for Y2K Federal authorities don't expect any big problems
Seattle Post-Intelligencer Monday, December 27, 1999 By JONATHAN D. SALANT THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.seattlep-i.com/national/mill271.shtml
WASHINGTON -- Eat, drink and be merry on New Year's Eve, because the advent of 2000 should cause few, if any, problems, a bevy of federal officials said yesterday.
Hospitals, power plants, air-traffic-control systems and prisons are all Y2K-ready, they said. The top aviation official will be in the air as the new year begins, and military personnel will be monitoring missiles with the Russians.
Indeed, officials said Americans should make no more preparations for New Year's this year than they would do for any long winter weekend.
"Our goal has been to avoid overreaction," President Clinton's top Y2K adviser, John Koskinen, said on ABC's "This Week." "We would like people to be prepared for a long midwinter weekend, but we think that's all that's necessary."
The Y2K problem arises out of the fear that older computers programmed to read just the last two digits of a year will read "00" as "1900" rather than "2000." Billions of dollars have been spent to correct the problem.
An Associated Press poll taken earlier this month found only 5 percent of respondents expecting major Y2K problems, down from 11 percent in July. The poll's margin of error was plus or minus 3 percentage points.
Even if some of the Y2K scenarios of computer failures do come true, officials said they were prepared to handle any emergencies.
"Hospitals are in the business of preparing for the unexpected," American Hospital Association Chairman Fred Brown said on ABC. "I don't think there really will be an inconvenience. The American public can feel very confident if they have go to hospitals."
Koskinen said prisons and power plants had been tested and found to be Y2K compliant.
Most emergency 911 call centers also are prepared. A December survey from the National Emergency Number Association found 98.5 percent saying their equipment was Y2K-ready, and others may have been fixed since then.
Federal Aviation Administrator Jane Garvey said she planned to be en route to San Francisco, to show her confidence that the aviation system is prepared for Y2K.
She expects no problems on domestic flights, and if there are computer glitches, air controllers can respond and space out takeoffs and departures.
Garvey said that some airlines may cancel international flights to countries that are not prepared for Y2K, but most overseas destinations favored by Americans will not be among them.
Still, experts caution that while the United States has made extensive preparations for Y2K, some other nations are not as well-prepared.
Some countries are going to wait until there are any problems before trying to correct glitches, Deputy Defense Secretary John Hamre said.
The U.S. Energy Department has reported that major systems at Russian nuclear plants should not be affected by Y2K computer bugs, but local residents could lose heat and electricity if some computers fail.
The extent of Y2K preparedness overseas is unclear. Some countries have not provided detailed information to the World Bank-funded International Y2K Cooperation Center.
Others will send people abroad. Some Russians, for example, will be spending New Year's Eve in Colorado Springs, watching U.S. satellite early-warning systems guard against a missile attack.
---
Gore Is White House Contact for Y2K
Associated Press December 27, 1999 Filed at 4:48 p.m. EST
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/w/AP-Y2K-National.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The White House's top Y2K adviser will report regularly to Vice President Al Gore this weekend as part of a multimillion-dollar effort to monitor computer problems in this country and abroad.
John Koskinen, head of the President's Council on Year 2000 Conversion, said Monday it was decided that Gore will be the White House contact on Y2K developments because ``he has been historically monitoring this issue.''
Koskinen also will be briefing President Clinton through the week, officials said.
The council's Information Coordination Center begins 24-hour operations on Thursday, collecting data on possible Y2K computer problems from about 180 countries and all 50 states. It will stay in operation through March, after the Feb. 29 leap year date, which could pose related computer problems.
Koskinen said the first focus of attention will be New Zealand, which will reach midnight at 6 a.m. EST. Of key interest is whether computer problems affect any of that country's basic public services such as power, telecommunications, air traffic control or local transportation.
He also stressed again, however, that while some countries may experience computer-related problems in the coming weeks and months, both private and public sectors in the United States have prepared well to assure that services will not be interrupted. Problems could occur in some older computers that read only the last two digits of a date and could mistake 2000, or ``00,'' for 1900.
Koskinen's office has succeeded in calming some public fears about Y2K-related breakdowns in basic services, he said. ``There is no reason for anyone to disrupt their lives in any way,'' he said.
Rumors of major failures are down, he said, and officials have seen no indication of an increase in bank withdrawals or runs on gas stations. The council's advice to Americans is to stock extra water, food and batteries as they would for a winter storm of several days.
One problem for the council, Koskinen said, will be to determine which reports of disruptions are Y2K-related and which are not. For example, about 1 percent of ATM machines normally are out of service, and people shouldn't immediately conclude that a malfunctioning ATM machine has a Y2K bug.
Since the federal government already is operating in fiscal year 2000, and credit card and other billing companies are sending out bills with 2000 dates, there have been some incidents of the 1900 date cropping up, Koskinen said, ``but these have been handled without any significant inconvenience to anyone.''
Koskinen plans to take the shuttle flight from Washington to New York on New Year's Eve to show his confidence in the safety of the nation's airways. ``I have no reason to have any concern about flying at all,'' he said. But he added that air traffic controllers could slow down arrivals, which would lead to congestion, if a computer problem appears.
---
Qatar Air Won't Fly on New Year's
Associated Press December 27, 1999 Filed at 9:36 a.m. EST
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/i/AP-Qatar-Y2K.html
DOHA, Qatar (AP) -- Qatar Airways will not operate any flights the evening of Dec. 31, an official said Monday.
The airline official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the airline was prepared for Y2K, but that most people do not want to fly as the year changes and many airports will not be allowing air traffic that evening for fear of the millennium bug.
Also Monday, Iran's national carrier Iran Air announced that it will cancel or delay flights from Dec. 31 to Jan. 1, the Islamic Republic News Agency reported.
The millennium bug is a programming glitch that could cause some computers to read ``00'' as the year 1900 instead of 2000, causing potential data loss and other problems.
---
Singapore Police Plan for 2000
Associated Press December 27, 1999 Filed at 10:13 a.m. EST
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/i/AP-Singapore-Y2K.html
SINGAPORE (AP) -- Singapore's police force has recalled reservists and brought in volunteers to patrol the streets of the island republic during New Year's Eve celebrations, government-controlled television said Monday.
With nearly 750,000 people expected to party at six different locations that night, more than 4,000 officers are expected to be on the streets. More than 3,000 officers will patrol Singapore's Orchard Road shopping district, site of a party for an expected crowd of half a million.
Police have highlighted traffic lights as one area that could be affected by the Y2K computer bug, the report on the Television Corporation of Singapore said.
Head of operations for traffic police Tee Eng Peng said some major roads and intersections will be staffed by traffic police officers during New Year's celebrations.
The police said all its systems are ready, but have set up two alternative telephone numbers just in case, the report said.
---
Securities Industry Reiterates It's Y2K Ready
Reuters December 27, 1999 Filed at 2:38 p.m. ET By Reuters
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/technology/tech-yk-markets.html
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - After spending about $5 billion over the last three years, the securities industry reiterated on Monday that it is ready for the dawn of the new century.
The two largest U.S. stock markets, and trade groups for the mutual fund and securities industries said they have successfully tested all of their systems for possible complications with the so-called Y2K bug.
The industry ``will have the resources in place over the (holiday) weekend to ensure that we can respond immediately to them,'' said Marc Lackritz, president of the Securities Industry Association (SIA), which represents more than 740 securities firms.
New York Stock Exchange and Nasdaq representatives said they will either be on site or on call when the new year begins, just in case any problems crop up.
``I am confident that the goal of 'business as usual' on Jan. 3 will be realized,'' said Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Arthur Levitt, who will be in Washington and checking in with his staff on New Year's Eve.
Virtually all of the trades processed during simulated tests conducted earlier this year went through without any Y2K complications, the SIA said. The tests involved more than 400 securities firms, stock markets and utilities.
``I am confident that the integrity of our markets will be preserved,'' said Frank Zarb, chairman and chief executive of Nasdaq's parent company, the National Association of Securities Dealers Inc.
The Y2K problem stems from a programming flaw that could cause older computers to confuse the year 2000 with 1900, possibly leading to errors or system failures.
Last month, the SEC said that all broker-dealer firms and non-bank transfer agents had indicated all of their mission critical systems were Y2K compliant.
In August, the SEC said its own mission critical systems were ready for the century date change.
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Gun sales soaring at year's end
USA Today 12/27/99- Updated 06:54 AM ET
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nlead.htm
WASHINGTON - Firearms sales are up substantially from a year ago, based on the number of background checks requested by licensed dealers. Advocates on both sides of the gun control issue say Y2K fears are among the factors in the surge in sales. As of Dec. 22, state authorities and the FBI had conducted 1 million background checks on prospective firearm buyers. That is 14.7% higher than the 871,644 checks run during December a year ago. The increase follows two busy gun-buying months. Gun dealers say December is traditionally the month of highest gun sales nationwide.
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Gun sales soaring at year's end
USA Today 12/27/99- Updated 01:16 PM ET By Gary Fields and Derrick DePledge
http://www.usatoday.com/news/ndssun05.htm
WASHINGTON - Firearms sales are up substantially from a year ago, based on the number of background checks requested by licensed dealers. Advocates on both sides of the gun control issue say Y2K fears are among the factors in the surge in sales.
As of Dec. 22, state authorities and the FBI had conducted 1 million background checks on prospective firearm buyers. That is 14.7% higher than the 871,644 checks run during December a year ago.
The increase follows two busy gun-buying months. More background checks were requested in both October and November than in December 1998, the FBI's Paul Bresson says. Gun dealers say December is traditionally the month of highest gun sales nationwide.
John Snyder of the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms said sales have increased because of hunting, Christmas gift giving and terrorism concerns.
"The fact that there are all these threats around the world makes people realize they are the final protectors of their families," he said.
A recent report by the Violence Policy Center, a gun control advocate, blames part of the surge on ads by some firearms companies. They play on worries that computer glitches caused by the Y2K bug will cause shortages and possibly result in violence.
In one ad, Wilson Combat touts its new Millennium Protector .45 Auto as a good weapon for self-defense "should one of the worst-case Y2K scenarios happen."
Wilson Combat did not answer requests for an interview.
At Koscielski's Guns, Ammo & Surplus in Minneapolis, Mark Koscielski says he has seen a huge increase in business recently: "Instead of just a few boxes of ammunition, folks are buying stuff by the case."
But Dewey Hannah of Haywood Gun Traders in Hazelwood, N.C., says he has seen a big decrease in sales since President Clinton took office. "We have common-sense mountain people up here who don't worry too much about Y2K," Hannah says.
The instant background check system has been in use since Nov. 30, 1998. A person who has been convicted of a felony cannot purchase a gun legally.
Few statistics are collected on monthly gun sales. But from Nov. 30, 1998, through Dec. 22, about 9.7 million background checks were done. The actual number of guns purchased could be higher because a person can buy more than one gun per background check.
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As Year 2000 Nears, U.S. Is Confident, Yet Cautious
New York Times December 27, 1999 By DAVID E. SANGER
http://www.nytimes.com/yr/mo/day/news/washpol/terrorist-tv.html
Related Article
For Worriers, Winding Down on Year 2000 (Dec. 27, 1999)
http://www.nytimes.com/library/tech/99/12/biztech/articles/27puls.html
Peering Into Unknown, U.S. Agents Monitor Millennium Trouble Spots Around World (Dec. 19, 1999)
http://www.nytimes.com/library/world/global/121999us-terrorism.html
WASHINGTON, Dec. 26 -- The government's coordinator for the year 2000 conversion said today that his concerns about the readiness of hospitals, prisons and emergency service organizations had been allayed, and Pentagon officials struck a carefully calibrated tone of caution mixed with confidence that they could deal with any terrorist attacks around the New Year's holiday.
They spoke as the government entered the last five days of preparations for possible computer malfunctions and terrorist threats. Government officials have started to show off the White House command center for dealing with threats, which keeps tabs on things like the amount of cash withdrawn from automated teller machines and suspicious activities along the borders of the United States.
Officials repeated today that they knew of no specific threats. "People are pretty geared up," one administration official said, "but there's not much new on our radar."
Appearing on the ABC News program "This Week," John A. Koskinen, the chairman of the President's Council on the Year 2000 Conversion, said that although half of the country's 911 emergency systems had not reprogrammed their computer systems six months ago, "over 95 percent of the 911 systems now report that all their work is done."
Hospitals are also ready, Mr. Koskinen said, though most of the recent concern centers on rural hospitals where computer systems might falter in processing reimbursements from health insurance companies -- a financial problem but not one that would affect the quality of care.
Similarly, Mr. Koskinen said, potential problems with automated security systems in prisons have been largely solved.
But as computer concerns have ebbed in recent weeks, they have been replaced with worries about terrorists and cults. Some former intelligence officials have predicted two or three terrorist events around the world. And Clinton administration and New York officials were clearly unhappy last week when James K. Kallstrom, former head of the F.B.I.'s New York office, said he would not go to Times Square because "if there is a strike, it will be in a large gathering."
The White House has been trying in the last few days to strike a balance between calling for vigilance and dissuading Americans from showing up at Times Square, the celebrations here on the Mall and at other large events. Mr. Kallstrom's message set exactly the tone they did not want -- even as the police get ready to control access to Times Square and as nuclear and biological response teams gather in Washington and other cities.
Also on "This Week," the deputy secretary of defense, John J. Hamre, said that "Americans should feel very confident that we'll be able to defend the country" against external threats, and he talked at length about the Russian and American teams that would be sitting side by side to examine early-warning data.
Dr. Hamre said he was no longer concerned about the possibility of an accidental Russian nuclear launching. The United States, he said, has spent $10 million helping Russia prepare for the year 2000. "We want to make sure that they felt as confident and we felt confident that there was positive control over nuclear weapons and their early warning system." he said.
"The Russians," Dr. Hamre concluded, "have been more insistent on positive control over their forces than we have, because of the nature of their society."
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PATENTS
Re-examining Patent Rights for Year 2000 Software
New York Times December 27, 1999 By TERESA RIORDAN
http://www.nytimes.com/library/tech/99/12/biztech/articles/27pate.html
Companies that are dreading possible year 2000 computer problems may have one less thing to worry about.
Last Tuesday, the U.S. patents commissioner took a first step toward revoking a controversial patent, which some fear would entitle its inventor to millions, perhaps billions, of dollars in royalties on a technology that underlies many Y2K computer fixes.
It is highly unusual for a patents commissioner to order the re-examination of a patent, but such an action usually results in the patent being revoked.
The move by the patents commissioner, Todd Dickinson, was widely praised. "Commissioner Dickinson has made a courageous decision here," said Harris Miller, president of the Information Technology Association of America.
The patent under re-examination covers "windowing," a popular quick-fix technique that can help software to make an educated guess about whether a two-digit date is meant to indicate the 20th century or the 21st century. The approach may enable a computer to avert the so-called millennium bug, in which computers that have not been fixed may read the year "00" as 1900 or not recognize it at all, resulting in potential problems.
The inventor, Bruce Dickens, of Irvine, Calif., bought the rights to patent 5,806,063 for $10,000 in April from his employer McDonnell Douglas, now owned by Boeing. The patent had been granted in 1998, but the company had never made wide use of Dickens' technique.
"I don't think Dickens is a malicious individual trying to pull a fast one -- he probably thinks this is an original idea," Miller said. "But every indication is that windowing has been around for years and maybe decades. We find the idea of patenting it laughable."
Dickens' newly formed company, Dickens2000, has sent out hundreds of letters to large companies seeking first-year royalty payments of $25,000 for every $1 billion in a company's annual revenue. For companies that did not sign up until after Jan. 1, the rate would go up 100-fold -- to $2.5 million for every $1 billion in revenue.
William Cray, Dickens' attorney, said that his client had signed up some licensees, which he declined to name. Dickens "welcomes the opportunity to have the Patent Office reconsider the patent," Cray said. "He believes it's distinguishable from other prior art and feels this will enable him to clarify his patent."
Gregory Aharonian, who publishes a patent news service on the Internet and is a frequent critic of the Patent Office, said the Dickens patent was just one of many software patents that are dubious because they do not cite "prior art" -- inventions that are similar in nature to the one claimed in a patent application.
"In general, the PTO has done an atrocious job searching out the prior art for the dozens of Y2K patents that have issued," Aharonian wrote in one of his Internet Patent News dispatches last week. "Frankly, if it is going to re-examine the Dickens patent, it might as well re-examine all the Y2K patents."
But Robert Merges, a professor of law at the University of California in Berkeley, was encouraged by what has happened in the case of Dickens' Y2K patent. In recent years, he said, there has been much debate about whether software should be patentable at all.
"Now that software is, beyond all doubt, patentable, we need to start weeding out the good inventions from the bad ones," Merges said.
And an efficient way to do that is through the Internet, he said. Dickens' patent generated a good deal of discussion on the Web, with several sites (among them, Miller's association at www.itaa.org) posting numerous examples of pertinent prior art.
"The far-flung contributors to this discussion have a great deal of collective power," Merges said. "By pulling together what might have been isolated references -- a trade journal story here, a technical paper there, an old software program sold on the market years ago, even unpublished university or corporate research -- they can assemble formidable collections of prior art."
This prior art, in turn, can be used to invalidate bad software patents, and thereby prevent holders of dubious patents from shaking down companies for undeserved royalties, Merges said.
But what if this type of prior-art policing does not work and technological innovation starts sinking in a quicksand of patent litigation?
Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., said that some kind of prescriptive legislation might be in order.
"This is going to be one of the most vexing issues facing Congress this year and in the next few years," Schumer said. "As a country we value intellectual property rights. But the recent expansion of what is patentable could have a detrimental effect on the technological expansion of our economy."
Related Sites
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http://www.itaa.org
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Federal Officials Give Reassurances of Y2K Readiness
Most Americans Won't Experience Glitches, Adviser Says
By Stephen Barr Washington Post Staff Writer Monday, December 27, 1999; Page A02
http://search.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/1999-12/27/051l-122799-idx.html
With the start of the New Year just five days away, Clinton administration officials said yesterday the Year 2000 computer problem should cause few, if any, disruptions.
"We would like people to be prepared for a long mid-winter weekend, but we think that that's all that's necessary. And for most Americans, they probably won't experience any Y2K glitches at all," said John A. Koskinen, the president's Y2K troubleshooter.
Power plants, air traffic control and federal prisons are Y2K ready, and 95 percent of 911 emergency response systems have been fixed, Koskinen and other administration officials said.
The government's top aviation safety official, Jane F. Garvey, reaffirmed that she still plans to travel cross-country on a jetliner as the New Year begins. But she acknowledged that only "a very small number" of commercial flights will be in the air on the night of Dec. 31.
Garvey, head of the Federal Aviation Administration, will be aboard the only American Airlines flight taking off that night in the continental United States. She will leave Reagan National Airport before 7 p.m. Friday--midnight Greenwich Mean Time for the air traffic control system--and land in San Francisco shortly after midnight West Coast time.
"That day, generally, not a lot of people are traveling. But we'll know more as we get closer to the day, the actual number, and we'll be watching all of them," Garvey said.
Many airlines have cut back their Friday flights by as much as 20 percent because of a lack of advance bookings. British-based Virgin Atlantic plans to shut down as a way of giving all of its employees "family time" for the holiday, Garvey said.
"Air traffic will be safe," Garvey said. "Certainly if it wasn't safe, we wouldn't allow the planes to fly, so we'd keep them on the ground." She said the destinations abroad where most Americans usually fly "are in very, very good shape."
The administration officials offered their upbeat assessments on ABC's "This Week," one of a series of appearances this month aimed at reassuring the public that Y2K presents no more of a threat than the inconveniences of a winter storm.
The White House has urged citizens to have on hand a three-day supply of food and water, batteries for flashlights and copies of important financial records. While the White House has recommended that motorists keep tanks above half full, they also have asked drivers not to overreact and top off their fuel tanks unnecessarily late this week.
The Commerce Department estimates that the nation has spent about $100 billion to avoid Y2K problems through computer repairs, system replacements and extensive tests. But not all countries have mobilized to squash the so-called millennium bug.
Russia, in particular, lags on its Y2K fixes. Yesterday, Deputy Defense Secretary John J. Hamre said the administration has spent $10 million to help Moscow, partly to avoid confusion if early warning systems give off false alarms about nuclear missile launches.
Hamre said Russian military officers will join their U.S. counterparts this week in Colorado Springs to monitor early warning systems and ensure timely communication between the two nuclear powers. "We're very confident that the missiles are just not going to be launched," Hamre said.
Asked if he was worried about hackers taking advantage of Y2K to launch cyber-attacks on defense computer networks, Hamre said the Pentagon has been working with software companies to update ways of detecting and preventing the spread of "viruses that hackers are trying to implant in systems. . . . We'll be ready for that."
Despite their overall confidence about U.S. readiness, administration officials remain worried that some small hospitals and doctors are at risk of Y2K glitches that could jeopardize their finances.
Virtually all hospitals and numerous physicians use computers to file claims for insurance payments from the federal government's Medicare and Medicaid programs, but little is known about the Y2K status of their billing systems because of incomplete responses to federal surveys.
"Most of them don't have much cash-flow cushion, and if they have difficulty with their systems and can't get reimbursed, they'll have major financial problems," said Koskinen, chairman of the President's Council on Year 2000 Conversion.
The year 2000 problem, popularly known as Y2K, stems from the use of two-digit date systems in many computers that might cause them to misinterpret "00" as 1900, not 2000, and malfunction or shut down.
Koskinen has said he expects Y2K problems to pop up as late as March as large corporations and the government process data and prepare their first end-of-the-quarter financial statements. Yesterday, he pointed out that 2000 is a leap year and "it turns out enough people didn't understand that," raising the possibility that computers may spew out bad data starting Feb. 29.
Administration officials said some programmers did not do the proper calculations when writing their software instructions and, as a result, did not give 2000 that extra day. Other programmers simply did not know 2000 is a leap year, they said.
The error should not pose any widespread problems, but Koskinen said "we will monitor whatever happens on the 29th just the way we are monitoring what happens over the weekend of January 1st."
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Times Square To Get Heavy Security
Associated Press December 27, 1999 Filed at 5:53 a.m. EST http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/a/AP-MIL-Times-Square-Security.html
NEW YORK (AP) -- While publicly downplaying ``terrorist hype,'' city officials have made Times Square the focus of an elaborate security plan that puts the nation's biggest metropolis on a virtual war footing for the millennium celebration.
The plan, code-named Archangel, will turn an area of midtown Manhattan 24 blocks long and three blocks wide into a pedestrian-only zone.
Manhole covers will be welded shut, six police helicopters will hover overhead and 8,000 officers, some with bomb-sniffing dogs, will be on duty New Year's Eve in and around Times Square.
As many as 2 million revelers are expected in Times Square alone for a 25-hour celebration of lights, lasers and noisemakers.
Mayor Rudolph Giuliani and Police Commissioner Howard Safir said they knew of no specific threats against the city, but the recent arrests of people suspected of extremist connections at U.S.-Canada border crossings in Washington and Vermont have heightened fears of terrorist acts timed to the millennium.
``There are no guarantees, but we can take every precaution that's humanly possible,'' Safir said in Sunday's edition of The New York Times. ``I think the public should come to Times Square, and I think they should not be deterred by all this terrorist hype that is going on.''
He earlier called last week's comments by former New York FBI chief James Kallstrom, who urged people to avoid Times Square, ``caving in to terrorism.'' Kallstrom later insisted he wasn't referring to terrorism.
Nev