-------- NUCLEAR (by country)

Mike Sigov: U.S.-Russian relations get a welcome thaw

Toledo Blade
September 10, 2000
http://www.toledoblade.com/editorial/sigov/0i10sigo.htm

There's hope again for better United States-Russian relations and a safer world.

Just as Americans were worried that relations were freezing, President Clinton made a sweeping announcement that he would delay the deployment of the national missile defense system.

Mr. Clinton said he wouldn't authorize deployment of the $60 billion system because the technology is unproven.

But more importantly, he admitted there was another reason: opposition from Russia, China, and other countries.

This move allows Russia, an ardent opponent of the U.S. "Star Wars" plans, to save face - and money.

Shortly after Mr. Clinton made his announcement, Russian ministry of defense released information about a major military reform plan that would cut the number of Russian troops by 350,000 and effectively reduce the number of land-based nuclear missiles. After the cuts, Russia would still have a 850,000-man armed forces.

These plans have been on the burner for a while, but so far they have been blocked by the opposition from old-timers in the parliament and in the military. The biggest arguments against cutting the military were the expansion of NATO, the bombing of Kosovo, and most recently, the U.S. national missile defense plans.

In Russia, these developments have been widely seen as a threat to national security. Recently, the Kremlin has largely stopped complaining about Kosovo bombing and NATO expansion.

To the Kremlin, the most important goal has been to solicit investments from Western powers and to write off at least a part of Russia's huge foreign debt.

Helping to make this case even further have been Russia's recent military misfortunes in Chechnya and the Kursk submarine tragedy.

Now that the news about the delay of the U.S. nuclear missile program has reached Russia, the hawks are panicking. In fact, they are so desperate that they commit to making dangerous predictions about the United Sates, which - if untrue - can backfire.

Col.-Gen. Valery Manilov, first deputy chief of staff of Russia's armed forces, called President Clinton's announcement "a false-bottomed suitcase."

"The U.S. President is saving face politically by placing the decision on the future administration's shoulders while saying that the decision will be taken regardless of the Russian position," Colonel-General Manilov told reporters.

He spoke despite the fact that his boss, President Vladimir Putin, had praised President Clinton for delaying deployment of a national missile-defense system, which, he said "raised the authority of the United States."

The general's defiance of his own president shows how little control the Russian president has over the military brass, despite common belief that President Putin is a strong-armed leader.

Mr. Clinton's announcement turned out to be a welcome gift to Mr. Putin, who, for once, is doing something to make Russia less of a threat to the world.

Mr. Putin told the Interfax agency in a recent interview that he was sure Mr. Clinton's decision was in the American interest, and that hopefully "the position of Russia was taken into account."

Building on the momentum, he used the podium of the United Nation's summit in New York last week to announce two disarmament initiatives.

First, the Russian president called a United Nations conference on prevention of placing weapons in outer space, that could be read: "Make sure that the U.S. 'Star Wars' plans don't get off the ground."

Second, he has proposed to ban the use of plutonium and enriched uranium at nuclear power plants. The two products are used in nuclear weapons and are therefore a prime target for pilfering.

This move is worth looking into because it could make these products less accessible for terrorists, especially in Russia with its security problems.

So let the Russian president take some credit for Mr. Clinton's praiseworthy decision to delay the deployment of a highly questionable weapon system.

It serves a good purpose even if Mr. Putin is exaggerating his own role.

Mike Sigov, a Russian-born journalist, is a staff writer for The Blade.

-------- china

U.S.-China Trade Pact on Track for Final Passage

Yahoo News
Sunday September 10 10:06 AM ET updated 10:38 PM ET Sep 10
By Adam Entous
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20000910/pl/china_congress_dc_9.html

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Clinton's historic trade pact with China is headed for final passage in the U.S. Senate, supporters say, despite a last ditch offensive by critics of Beijing's record on human rights and alleged role in weapons proliferation.

After months of delay, Senate leaders said they expected a final vote by Friday on legislation that would grant permanent normal trade relations (PNTR) to China. Clinton's allies predicted it would pass by a large margin.

But vocal critics of Communist China, led by North Carolina Republican Sen. Jesse Helms, said they would introduce at least 10 amendments this week that could scuttle the trade bill, including a controversial plan calling for sanctions against China for alleged proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.

If any of the amendments are adopted, the trade bill would have to be sent back to a bitterly divided House of Representatives. The House approved the trade bill in May after a bitter fight between big business and organized labor, but is unlikely to do so again so close to the November election, many lawmakers said.

Clinton has made passage of PNTR a top legislative priority for his final year in office.

Once approved by the Senate and signed into law by the president, the bill would end the annual ritual of reviewing Beijing's trade status and guarantee Chinese goods the same low-tariff access to the U.S. market as products from nearly every other nation.

In exchange, China has agreed to open a wide range of markets to U.S. businesses. The deal is part of an agreement that set the stage for Beijing to join the Geneva-based World Trade Organization (WTO) later this year.

Encourage Economic And Political Reforms In China

In lobbying lawmakers to support the trade pact, Clinton argued that PNTR would bolster U.S. national security by encouraging economic and political reforms in China.

U.S. business groups touted the economic benefits of the pact, saying it would open the vast Chinese marketplace, potentially the world's largest with 1.3 billion consumers.

The opposition countered that the trade bill would reward a Communist regime that threatens Taiwan and oppresses its own people, and it cited new allegations China sold missile technology to Pakistan.

U.S. labor unions, a key Democratic constituency, warned that closer trade ties could cost hundreds of thousands of U.S. jobs as American companies move their factories to China to take advantage of lower wages for workers.

Despite opposition from organized labor, PNTR is expected to garner broad bipartisan support in the Senate. Sixty-five senators in the 100-member chamber said in a Reuters poll they would vote in favor of permanent normal trade relations, enough to override a vote-blocking filibuster.

Supporters of the trade pact defeated three amendments last week, and were confident they would convince the Senate to reject the rest, including the nonproliferation plan drawn up by Republican Sen. Fred Thompson of Tennessee and backed by Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott of Mississippi.

But Lott predicted the nonproliferation issue would ``test the will of the Senate.''

``It's a very serious matter,'' he said. ``Chinese nuclear weapons proliferation is something that we have to be concerned about, and I'm convinced it continues to this day. We need a way to monitor it and there should be a way to propose sanctions.''

The Senate will debate Thompson's amendment on Monday. Other proposals call for the United States to increase military support for Taiwan, and for China to improve human rights, eliminate prison labor and allow workers to form unions.

Helms said he would offer five amendments before a final vote on PNTR, including measures calling on China to cease forced abortions and for Washington to impose duties on China if it fails to live up to its WTO commitments.

-------- depleted uranium

URANIUM REPORT SNUBS LAB PROJECT

by Glenn Roberts, Jr.,
Oakland (California) Tribune
Sunday, September 10, 2000:
From: Steve Wagner [mailto:hanforddownwinder@yahoo.com]

LIVERMORE -- A draft federal report on options for about 800,000 tons of depleted uranium -- left over from decades of nuclear weapons development -- rejects a Livermore Lab laser technology that could convert some of the material to nuclear fuel.

Lawerence Livermore Laboratory spent 26 years and $2 billion developing a technique that used colored lasers to separate radiation-rich uranium from depleted uranium, which is mildly radioactive and more stable.

The draft report, "Depleted Uranium Hexafluoride Materials Use Roadmap," states that "other laser-based processes are more promising," and the Energy Department "should not invest" in using that technology for reducing the fast stores of depleted uranium.

The report, released Thursday, instead recommended disposal, long-term storage and the production of heavy concrete as more promising options for the depleted uranium, which is stored in many forms at Energy Department sites across the nation.

Reusing the material as electrodes, counterweights, high-traction devices, oil well equipment or as a catalyst for automotive exhaust are among the other options that should be considered, the report states.

Depleted uranium, a dense metal that is three times heavier than steel, has been used to strengthen tank armor and to produce armor-piercing weapons, such as bullets and tank rounds.

The material was first used in combat by U.S. troops in the Gulf War. Some governments and environmental groups have condemned its use in warfare, as uranium dust from exploding munitions can lodge in the lungs if inhaled and possibly cause respiratory problems.

The draft report seeks to convert depleted uranium hexafluoride to more usable forms, such as uranium oxide, uranium metal or a combination of both.

Known as Atomic Vapor Laser Isotope Separation, the Livermore Lab uranium enrichment project employed 550 workers when it was abandoned by its corporate sponsor in June 1999.

Lab researchers attempted to demonstrate that the technology was ready for a full-scale enrichment factory to supply the nuclear power industry with enriched uranium, a key ingredient for nuclear fuel.

-------- europe

Brussels to sue UK on dismantling of nuclear site

09-10-00
Reuters
From: Ndunlks@aol.com

BRUSSELS, Sept 10 (Reuters) - The European Commission said on Sunday it would sue Britain over its plans to dismantle the site at the Sellafield nuclear plant of one of the world's worst nuclear disasters.

A Commission spokeswoman said the European Union's executive body said the dismantling was subject to EU law and could not be undertaken independently by Britain.

``There will be a case before the court to test whether the Euratom Treaty applies to this installation,'' the spokeswoman said. ``The Commission holds that it does, and the UK says it doesn't.''

A fire in October 1957 destroyed the core of a plutonium-producing reactor at Windscale, as the plant was then known, sending clouds of radioactivity into the atmosphere. An official report said the leaked radiation could have caused dozens of cancer deaths.

If the site falls under the Euratom treaty, which controls nuclear activities in the 15-member bloc, EU laws on radiation detection and environmental impact would be applied.

British Nuclear Fuels (BNFL), which owns Sellafield -- now a reprocessing plant -- came under pressure earlier this year after nuclear fuel was sent to customers with false data, an act that sparked import bans by Germany, Japan and Switzerland.

Britain's Independent on Sunday newspaper said news of the EU prosecution would intensify the pressure on ministers to reconsider the planned privatisation of the firm, already postponed until 2002.

-------- russia

A Missile-Free Russia

New York Times
September 10, 2000
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/09/10/opinion/L10MIS.html

To the Editor:

Geoffrey E. Forden (Op-Ed, Sept. 6) suggests that the United States pay $160 million to get Russia's early- warning satellites functioning so it won't launch missiles in error. Russia is a helpless giant, and life for its people gets worse every day. Why does it, as he says, have missiles ready to launch on a few minutes' notice and targeted against the United States?

Russia should instead do what Ukraine did: scrap its atomic hardware and try to take care of its people. RALPH KESSLER

Berkeley, Calif., Sept. 6, 2000

---

Russia Poised to Cut Military by One Third

New York Times
September 10, 2000
By PATRICK E. TYLER
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/09/10/world/10RUSS.html

MOSCOW, Sept. 9 - Late last month, President Vladimir V. Putin faced a room full of angry Russians, the relatives of the 118 men who perished on the nuclear submarine Kursk. He told them bluntly that Russia "had to have a smaller army," one that was better equipped and "technically perfect" to protect soldiers and sailors from disaster and defend national interests.

On Friday, Defense Minister Marshal Igor D. Sergeyev appeared to promise just such a force. While visiting a tank test range outside Moscow, he was asked by reporters to comment on a report that the armed forces would be reduced by 350,000 between 2001 and 2003, a cut of about one-third, from 1.2 million members to about 850,000.

"Decisions to that effect have been made," he said, "and proposals on how to proceed are being drafted for the president."

Marshal Sergeyev's almost offhand confirmation that Mr. Putin has approved deep cuts in the military followed weeks of speculation in the Russian news media and a marathon session between Mr. Putin and his national security advisers Aug. 11 on the future of the military.

That meeting occurred a day before the Kursk sank during military maneuvers in the Barents Sea.

When Mr. Putin later met with the families of the Kursk crew, he hinted that profound decisions on the reconstruction of Russia's armed forces had been made. He told them that "one has to live according to one's income" and that Russia had "wasted money" trying to support the military structure that the Soviet Union had maintained during the cold war. What the country needed, he made plain, was a smaller force.

"These decisions have been passed," Mr. Putin said.

The details of the secret session between Mr. Putin and his advisers still have to emerge fully. But reports in the Russian press this week said that Mr. Putin had decided to cut 400,000 members of Russia's armed forces, including its many domestic security and intelligence forces. Marshal Sergeyev's comments were in response to these reports.

Russian military officials say the force-reduction plan will reach Mr. Putin's desk in the coming days. It seems clear that the Russian leader is undertaking one of the most difficult military reorganizations since the heyday of the Soviet Union, when Moscow supported 4.3 million troops in uniform, masses of tank divisions facing Europe, a deep-water navy and a strategic nuclear arsenal rivaling that of the United States.

Marshal Sergeyev did not give a detailed breakdown of the cuts envisaged, but military officials have been quoted as saying that ground forces are to be cut by 180,000, the navy by more than 50,000, the air force by about 40,000, Interior Ministry troops by 20,000, the Federal Security Service and Government Communications Service by 25,000 and other security forces by 15,000 or more.

Mr. Putin returned from New York this morning and closeted himself with his senior advisers as members of Parliament and the military establishment weighed in on the debate over military power.

The chairman of the Parliament's budget committee, Aleksandr Zhukov, said the draft 2001 budget envisages a very large growth in expenditure for the military, suggesting that Mr. Putin may be pursuing a strategy of raising pay levels in the military as he slashes its numbers.

After years of contraction that have thrown millions of Russian officers and soldiers into a depressed economy on meager pensions, Mr. Putin now faces the politically wrenching task of cutting hundreds of thousands more active-duty slots. Many of these people may be ill- prepared to find work in a market economy that, while improving, has contracted by nearly half over the past decade.

Russia inherited a two-million- member military establishment after the Soviet Union broke up in 1991, and President Boris N. Yeltsin struggled unsuccessfully to cut it to 1.5 million during his first term in office. After Mr. Yeltsin's re-election in 1996, he appointed Marshal Sergeyev as defense minister and over the next four years was able to reduce the level from 1.7 million to 1.2 million by attrition and early retirements.

The newspaper Kommersant reported today that as many as 200,000 military personnel are currently near retirement and nearly 100,000 empty slots in the military are unfilled. But the newspaper added that even if the problem can be partly solved through a decrease in the number of conscripts, the upcoming reduction will be the widest.

The former deputy commander of Russian ground forces, Eduard A. Vorobyov, now a member of Parliament, said the sinking of the Kursk has given Mr. Putin a political impetus to push forward quickly with painful cuts.

"I think it is a certain impulse for everybody," he said, "including the president as the supreme commander. No matter whether we wanted to or not, we had to come to the decision made today."

The retired general became famous for resigning his commission rather than command the Russian assault on the rebellious republic of Chechnya in December 1994. His endorsement of Mr. Putin's plan indicated that there is significant political support among at least some military leaders for a rational restructuring of the armed forces, even if that means further cuts.

When Mr. Putin met with his security advisers last month, he told his commanders that the structure of the armed forces is hardly optimal.

"How can it be considered optimal if training is not conducted in many units, pilots almost do not fly and sailors almost do not put to sea?" he asked.

Mr. Putin said he was after a "balanced decision," one that his advisers said would plan for rebuilding the military over 15 years with a greater emphasis on conventional forces and a reduction in the autonomy and prestige of the Strategic Rocket Forces, which have been under separate command since the 1970's.

The Russian leader did not specifically refer to the military's performance in the past year in Chechnya. Military commanders there have complained that they have been fighting with outdated tanks, helicopters and aircraft while Russia's military industries sell their best products and technology abroad.

And due to the unpopularity of military service, the army has failed to meet its monthly conscript quotas in the face of widespread draft avoidance.

---

Siberia Nuclear Plant Shut Down

The Associated Press
09-10-00
From: Ndunlks@aol.com
http://usatoday.com/news/nlead.htm

YEKATERINBURG, Russia (AP) - A nuclear power plant in Siberia was shut down after an unexplained power surge, officials said Sunday. No radiation leaks were reported.

The sole working reactor at the Beloyarskaya plant, in the Sverdlovsk region, automatically went off-line Saturday because of the surge, said Oleg Sarayev, director of the plant.

``It is the first time in 35 years we've experienced this type of situation,'' Sarayev said. He said the surge came from the regional power grid, but its cause was not clear.

The shutdown at reactor No. 3 did not present any danger and no leaks or other damage were registered, Sarayev said. He said the plant would be switched back on by Monday.

Reactor No. 3 has been operating since 1980, according to the Russian government. The plant's other two reactors were decommissioned in 1981 and 1989.

Like Russia's other nuclear power stations, the Beloyarskaya plant has seen several breakdowns and accidents in recent years, including fires and a leak of radioactive water. In 1978, eight workers at the plant suffered radiation exposure after a fire, according to environmental watchdog Greenpeace.

----

Russia denies report on submarine tragedy

USA Today
09/10/00
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/nw1.htm#cast

MOSCOW - Russian officials on Friday hotly denied that a government investigation concluded that the Kursk nuclear submarine was sunk by a missile fired by a Russian ship. ''This is nonsense. Cruisers never carry real warheads, only training weapons, during military exercises,'' said a spokeswoman for the special commission head, Deputy Prime Minister Ilya Klebanov. According to the Berliner Zeitung report, Russia's Federal Security Service concluded that the Kursk was hit by a new anti-submarine rocket fired by a nuclear-powered cruiser, the Peter the Great. Both vessels were taking part in naval exercises in the Barents Sea on Aug. 12 when the Kursk sank. All 118 men on board perished.

-------- u.s. nuc facilities
-------- new mexico

Plea agreement could free Wen Ho Lee this week, sources say

CNN
September 10, 2000
http://www.cnn.com/2000/LAW/09/10/wenholee.plea.02/index.html

DENVER, Colorado -- Wen Ho Lee, the fired Los Alamos National Laboratory scientist, has agreed to plead guilty on Monday to one felony count of mishandling classified information and could walk away a free man, two government sources said on Sunday.

http://www.cnn.com/2000/LAW/09/10/wenholee.plea.02/map.colorado.denver.jpg

If the deal is approved, Lee, 60, would be released without conditions, possibly as early as this week. The Taiwanese-born U.S. citizen had been facing a November trial in which he could have been sentenced to life in prison if convicted on 59 counts of mishandling classified information while working at the lab in New Mexico.

The sources tell CNN that Lee has agreed to cooperate with the Justice Department and will tell them what happened to a number of missing computer tapes which held classified information about nuclear weapons design. Three other tapes with information Lee allegedly downloaded have been recovered.

The sources also said there is no evidence of espionage. Lee never has been charged with espionage, but throughout the case, federal prosecutors had claimed that he posed a threat to U.S. national security.

Lee was indicted on December 10 with the 59 counts of illegally copying what federal prosecutors called "the crown jewels" of U.S. nuclear weapons design. He pleaded not guilty to all counts.

He was fired last year before the indictment and has been in solitary confinement in jail since December. His trial had been set for November 6.

Charges never included espionage

Federal authorities had originally launched an investigation into Lee for allegedly providing nuclear secrets to China. The indictment said he downloaded classified information to an unsecured computer and duplicated tapes of sensitive nuclear weapons information.

Lee's attorneys had argued that the government exaggerated the importance of the materials Lee allegedly mishandled. They further charged that prosecutors singled out Lee, while ignoring similar incidents at Department of Energy facilities.

Some of Lee's supporters claimed that his ethnic background was also a factor in the case.

Last month, U.S. District Judge James Parker, in Albuquerque, New Mexico, had urged both sides to consider a plea agreement, and he approved a defense request to release Lee on $1 million bail. Federal prosecutors appealed the ruling, and Lee remained in jail.

Parker had said "it is no longer indisputable ... that the missing tapes contain crown jewel information about the nation's nuclear weapons program."

Parker also said he was concerned that an FBI agent admitted that some testimony he originally gave was incorrect.

Parker had ordered Lee's release on the $1 million bail and set out a 12-point list of "highly restrictive" conditions for Lee. Those conditions included limiting him to his house and back yard and subjecting his wife to searches by the FBI when she went out or came home.

Just minutes before Lee was scheduled to be set free on September 1, the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver issued an order stopping him from going home.

---

Wen Ho Lee Cops A Plea

NewsMax
Sunday, Sept. 10, 2000
UPI
http://www.newsmax.com/articles/?a=2000/9/10/182939

WASHINGTON - Jailed scientist Wen Ho Lee will plead guilty in federal court Monday to a charge that he improperly handled U.S. nuclear secrets while working at the Los Alamos nuclear laboratory, CNN reported.

Lee has been jailed since December on 59 counts stemming from his alleged downloading of classified material into his personal computer. Although he was never charged with espionage, investigators had feared that the Taiwan-born Lee transferred secret information to mainland China.

CNN said Sunday that, according to sources, Lee would plead guilty Monday to one count of mishandling classified information and will assist investigators in locating seven missing computer tapes that contain nuclear weapons data.

Lee will likely be sentenced to time served and released once the plea agreement is executed, CNN said.

A federal appeals court had been scheduled Monday to hear Lee's motion for bail, which had been rejected by a New Mexico court on the grounds that the missing computer tapes posed a threat to national security.

A Justice Department court filing released to United Press International Sunday evening by the FBI said U.S. District Judge James Parker in Albuquerque had found that Lee still posed a threat to national security if he was released - due to the fact that the seven computer tapes were still missing.

"The government offered considerable information that Dr. Lee's release poses a danger to the United States because of the risk that Dr. Lee will find a way to, and will be inclined to, reveal to unauthorized persons the location of the seven missing tapes," the ruling said.

Lee's arrest and the subsequent failure of the U.S. government to file espionage charges led some critics to allege that Lee had been singled out by the FBI and other security services due to his Asian background. Lee's attorneys have said Lee had been downloading files in preparation for a job search since he feared his position would be eliminated due to budget cuts.

The Justice Dept. brief, however, said Lee went to great lengths to collect classified information by telling the Los Alamos computer that the files he was downloading had been declassified. He also allegedly lied repeatedly to investigators and failed to report being contacted by persons from China's nuclear weapons program during a trip to China in the late 1980s.

---

Los Alamos Arms Case Set to Fizzle Out

Yahoo News
Sunday September 10
By Marcus Kabel
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20000910/pl/crime_scientist_dc_2.html

DALLAS (Reuters) - The U.S. government's nuclear secrets case against Los Alamos scientist Wen Ho Lee is set to end on Monday not with a bang but a whimper after new defense evidence undermined the charge that Lee endangered the ``crown jewels'' of nuclear weapons design, lawyers said.

Lee, 60, will walk out of federal court in Albuquerque a free man if a judge approves a proposed plea bargain in a hearing on Monday.

Under the deal, Lee will plead guilty to one felony count of downloading secure files to a non-secure computer. The government will drop 58 counts including 39 of ``acting with intent to harm the United States'' that could have led to life imprisonment.

Lee will also cooperate for up to six months with an ongoing FBI probe into the fate of seven missing computer tapes of nuclear data that Lee made. Lee has said he destroyed the tapes, but prosecutors have argued there is no evidence for that.

The plea bargain, which lawyers in the case said had been under negotiation for a month, comes just over a week after presiding U.S. Judge James Parker said it was no longer clear that Lee copied top secret data or acted deviously as alleged by prosecutors.

``I think this is an incredible plea bargain the government has offered. It signifies the weakness of the government case,'' said Victor Hwang, head of the Asian Law Caucus, which last month filed a friend of the court brief supporting Lee's claims he was prosecuted because of his Asian heritage.

``They're acknowledging it wasn't the big spy case everyone said it was originally,'' Hwang told Reuters.

Asian-American groups have alleged Lee was singled out because he was born in Taiwan and said the case raised the ugly shadow of past racism against Asians, including the World War Two internment of 120,000 Japanese-Americans.

Lee was fired by Los Alamos National Laboratory in March 1999 amid headline-grabbing congressional allegations of Chinese spying at the lab, but he was not charged with espionage when he was indicted last December for illegally copying files.

Prosecutors took another step back from the issue of espionage in July when they told the court Lee may have been making copies of data to bolster applications for a new job overseas, possibly in China or seven other Pacific or European countries.

Justice Department and law enforcement officials denied their case had broken down.

``What the agreement does, it creates an opportunity for us to have a sufficient level of access to Wen Ho Lee that we believe will lead to sufficient detail that we'll be able to verify what he's telling (about the seven missing tapes),'' one Justice Department official said.

``He is under an obligation to be truthful. If that proves not to be the case, the government has the option to reimpose the prosecution,'' the official said.

Lawyers familiar with the case said Judge Parker signaled a significant shift in the government's chances at trial when he ordered on August 24 that Lee be released on $1 million bail, reversing his own earlier ruling that had kept Lee jailed since his arrest in December 1999.

In an opinion filed last week supporting the release order, Parker said the case against Lee now appeared in ``somewhat mottled shades of gray'' based on testimony presented by the defense in three days of bail hearings last month.

The new evidence included an FBI agent recanting earlier testimony that Lee had deceived a Los Alamos colleague about his computer use and testimony from leading nuclear scientists that much of the data Lee copied was not top secret.

Lee has remained in jail as the government appealed Parker's order and a hearing had been scheduled on Monday in U.S. appeals court in Denver. That hearing was canceled by the plea deal.

``The government was facing the possibility that the 10th Circuit (appeals court) would release Lee this week,'' one attorney close to the case told Reuters.

``The defense also looked like it was going to win discovery of documents backing up its claim of selective prosecution, and a hearing was set September 19 on its motion to drop the indictment,'' the lawyer said.

---

Plea Deal Reached in Los Alamos Case

Yahoo News
Sunday September 10
By Marcus Kabel
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20000910/ts/crime_scientist_dc_19.html

DALLAS (Reuters) - The U.S. government has dropped all but one minor charge in a plea bargain deal with former Los Alamos scientist Wen Ho Lee, who had faced life in prison for downloading nuclear arms secrets, a federal judge and legal sources said on Sunday.

Lee, 60, will plead guilty to just one of 59 counts against him and walk out a free man after nine months in pretrial solitary confinement if U.S. District Judge John Parker accepts the deal at a hearing in Albuquerque, New Mexico, sources familiar with the case said.

``You are hereby notified that a hearing has been scheduled at 2 p.m. (4 p.m. EDT) Monday, September 11, on the parties' Plea and Disposition Agreement,'' U.S. District Judge James Parker wrote in a scheduling notice filed on Sunday.

The plea bargain supported the perception that the government's case was unraveling. Parker, who urged both sides to work on such a deal, has ruled that new defense evidence and testimony undermined prosecutors' claims that Lee copied ``the crown jewels'' of U.S. nuclear weapons design.

``I can say that Dr Lee is thrilled about the possibility that he may be rejoining his family,'' said defense attorney Mark Holscher of the Los Angeles law firm of O'Melveny and Myers.

Justice Department officials confirmed the details of the plea deal.

Law enforcement officials said the agreement did not mean their case had collapsed. They said that besides pleading guilty to mishandling classified data, Lee had agreed to cooperate with federal investigators for up to six months as they try to confirm his account that he destroyed seven missing tapes of computer data.

``From the start our primary objective has been finding out what happened to the tapes and that's more important than putting a 60-year-old man in jail,'' one law enforcement official said.

The plea agreement cancels a hearing that had been set for Monday in a U.S. appeals court in Denver, where lawyers had been set to argue over whether Lee should be released on $1 million bail under strict conditions of 24-hour surveillance.

Lee, who has previously pleaded not guilty, had faced life imprisonment if convicted on all the original counts of downloading and copying nuclear weapons design data at Los Alamos National Laboratory.

He has been in solitary confinement in a Santa Fe, New Mexico, jail since his arrest last December and was due to go on trial in November.

The Taiwan-born scientist, a naturalized U.S. citizen, was fired by Los Alamos in March 1999 amid allegations of Chinese spying at the lab. But he was not charged with espionage when federal prosecutors indicted him last December.

Lawyers familiar with the plea bargain said the government was dropping all 39 charges of acting ``with intent to harm the United States'' that could have carried a life prison term.

The government is also dropping 19 of the remaining 20 lesser counts, leaving Lee pleading guilty to one charge of downloading nuclear secrets to a computer in a non-secure part of the lab.

``This is an extremely technical violation,'' one attorney said, adding Lee would be credited for time served in detention.

``It can be expected that Dr Lee will be released free and clear if the judge approves the plea agreement,'' the attorney told Reuters.

---

Wen Ho Lee Will Plead Guilty to Lesser Crime at Los Alamos

New York Times
September 10, 2000
By JAMES STERNGOLD

LOS ANGELES, Sept. 10 -- Wen Ho Lee, the former Los Alamos scientist held in prison for nine months on federal charges that he had stolen a virtual library of nuclear weapons secrets, has agreed to plead guilty to one lesser felony count and to cooperate with government investigators, people involved in the case said today.

The deal, which could be signed by a federal district court judge in Albuquerque on Monday, would free Dr. Lee, 60, almost immediately and bring to a close one of the most important, and complex national security cases in the post-cold war era.

While the deal gives each side something it was looking for, it appears to be something of a victory for the defense after a series of courtroom successes that dealt major blows to the prosecution's case in recent weeks.

Dr. Lee, who had worked on weapons design at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, does not gain the complete exoneration he and his family had been seeking, but the single charge to which he is pleading guilty, knowingly violating security rules in downloading classified nuclear data, is a far cry from the government's initial charges that he had stolen the "crown jewels" of the weapons program with the intent of helping a foreign country.

Dr. Lee was also expected to drop accusations that he had been unfairly singled out for prosecution because he is Chinese American. Dr. Lee, a naturalized American citizen, was born on Taiwan, and initially had been investigated on suspicions that he had given weapons secrets to China, even though it is a bitter enemy of Taiwan.

He had been indicted last December on 59 felony counts with a maximum penalty of life in prison. After filing the indictment the government dropped any suggestion of espionage, and now it is apparently dropping any suggestion that he acted with the intention of hurting the United States and helping a hostile power.

In return, Dr. Lee has agreed to explain why he did such a massive amount of downloading, totaling 806 megabytes, people familiar with the case said. Perhaps more important, he was expected to explain exactly what he did with seven computer tapes of data that are missing.

The government has said that Dr. Lee downloaded the data, involving nuclear weapons design and testing information, onto 10 computer tapes and that it found only three. Dr. Lee has said previously through his lawyers that he destroyed the other 7, but he has provided no evidence. The plea agreement would be contingent on Dr. Lee's responding fully and accurately to all the government's questions.

---

Jailed Scientist OKs Plea Agreement

Washington Post
Sunday, Sept. 10, 2000; 10:39 p.m. EDT
By Richard Benke
Associated Press Writer
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/aponline/20000910/aponline223952_000.htm

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. -- Los Alamos scientist Wen Ho Lee, who was fired and jailed on charges of mishandling nuclear weapons secrets, has agreed to plead guilty to one charge and will cooperate with federal investigators, Justice Department sources said Sunday.

Lee is expected to be released after a hearing Monday and be sentenced to time already served, ending a 3-year-old case that has been marked by allegations of espionage and racial profiling.

The accusations began as an offshoot of a Chinese espionage case with dire accusations that Lee had downloaded the "crown jewels" of American science, might be poised to hand them over to a foreign power and might even be spirited away by spies in helicopters. The government ultimately backed down from nearly all those charges.

"Dr. Lee and his family are thrilled at the prospect that he may be released unconditionally tomorrow," defense attorney Mark Holscher said Sunday, adding that he cannot elaborate on terms of the settlement because they have not yet been filed.

"Dr. Lee very much wants to go home to his family," he said.

The government sources, speaking on condition of anonymity, said a key turning point in the two months of plea discussions was Lee's agreement to explain what happened to seven computer tapes, onto which he was accused of downloading sensitive information. Lee has said the tapes were destroyed, now he will better explain how, the officials said.

"The location and fate of the tapes were always of paramount concern," one of the officials said.

The sources said Lee will plead guilty to one of the 59 counts against him of unlawful gathering of national defense information.

Lee also will agree to hold himself completely available for federal investigators and cooperate with them over the next six months, the sources said, and it was expected that Lee would drop his allegations that prosecutors went after him because he is Chinese-American.

U.S. District Judge James Parker announced that a plea agreement had been reached in a brief order Sunday. A Monday appeals court hearing in Denver on Lee's bail, which Parker had approved, was canceled.

Lee, 60, was accused of downloading restricted material about nuclear weapons to unsecured computers and tapes while working at Los Alamos National Laboratory. His trial had been set for Nov. 6, and he could have faced life in prison if convicted on all 59 counts.

Lee has been jailed since his arrest Dec. 10.

Parker signed a release order for Lee to be freed on $1 million bail last month before the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver stayed his order. Parker had set strict conditions for his release, including electronic monitoring, restrictions on travel and limits on the number of people with whom Lee could communicate. It was not immediately known if those conditions would still be enforced under the plea agreement.

Prosecutors have said releasing Lee would be a risk because he could pass on the tapes or communicate their contents to foreign governments.

Many scientific groups have protested the conditions of the Taiwan-born Lee's arrest, saying he has been the target of ethnic and racial profiling by the government.

"It's an astonishing development and an amazing retreat by the government," said Steve Aftergood, who directs the Project on Government Secrecy at the Federation of American Scientists in Washington, D.C. "They had evidently decided he was not working in the interest of a foreign power or to the detriment of the United States. It's only regrettable that conclusion was not reached many months ago."

In the White Rock neighborhood where Lee lives, his neighbors Don and Jean Marshall said they were planning a party to welcome him home.

"We'd like to have people here, line the street. We have a bunch of flags for people to wave" to show that neighbors believe in the justice system, Don Marshall said.

-------- ohio

D.C. Dispatches Franklinton floodwall project gets $11 million in Senate bill

Columbus Dispatch
Sunday, September 10, 2000
by Jonathan Riskind Dispatch Washington Bureau Chief
http://www.dispatch.com/news/newsfea00/sep00/416638.html

The Franklinton floodwall received an $11 million installment in the $22.5 billion energy-and-water spending bill for 2001 approved by the full Senate last week.

The House version approved earlier this year was slightly less generous, containing $10 million for construction work on the project along the Scioto River. The difference must be worked out in a House-Senate conference committee.

President Clinton's budget originally sought $6 million, but Columbus officials said $15 million was needed to keep the project flowing at a good pace. The current figures would keep construction moving, but not as fast.

The $127 million, 7.2-mile floodwall is designed to protect thousands of residents and buildings on the West Side. The city of Columbus is contributing 30 percent of the cost -- about $38 million -- with the rest paid by the federal government.

Meanwhile, Ohio Sens. Mike DeWine and George V. Voinovich, both Republicans, said the floodwall money was just part of the allocation for Ohio projects in the energy-and- water legislation. Also included was $2 million for repairs to the Cleveland harbor.

In addition, the bill contained money for Energy Department worker-assistant and cleanup projects, including $24.5 million for a program assisting workers who are losing their jobs at current and former Energy Department nuclear sites such as the privatized Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant in Piketon, Ohio. In addition, $33 million was appropriated for a project to build depleted-uranium recycling plants in Piketon and a sister facility in Paducah, Ky.

The bill also contained $38.3 million for medical screening programs of current and former Energy workers. DeWine said he has requested that $4.3 million of that be earmarked for Piketon workers concerned that they have been exposed to harmful radiation and chemicals in past years.

Hyde, Clinton deal setbacks to nuclear-worker payout plan

The chairman of the House Judiciary Committee has added his voice to lawmakers trying to hold up passage of legislation compensating Cold War-era nuclear workers sickened after being exposed to radiation and other harmful materials.

Rep. Henry J. Hyde, R-Ill., co-authored a letter obtained by The Dispatch last week asking that the legislation be dropped from a defense-authorization bill that a House-Senate conference committee is expected to pass as early as this week.

In another blow to the bill's prospects this year, the Clinton administration is considering an announcement Monday that it is opposed to the bill allowing eligible workers to receive both a lump-sum payment of $200,000 and lifetime health benefits, sources said last week.

The legislation, included in the Senate version of the defense bill with the support of Ohio Republican Sens. Mike DeWine and George V. Voinovich, has been under fire for several weeks from House members such as Hyde.

The House members say the issue needs to be the subject of hearings in the House Judiciary Com-mittee and brought to the floor separate from the overall defense bill. Some lawmakers apparently also are concerned about creating an "entitlement program,'' as Hyde called it in his letter to conference committee members.

It is estimated that a total of nearly 5,500 former and current workers at the Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant in Piketon, Ohio, a sister facility in Kentucky and a now-closed enrichment plant in Tennessee would be eligible for compensation during the next decade. In all, more than 10,800 nuclear workers nationwide would benefit at a cost of $2.3 billion during the first five years and $3.8 billion during 10 years, according to congressional estimates.

A hearing is scheduled for Thursday in the judiciary committee's immigration and claims subcommittee on the compensation bill. But the legislation already may have been dropped from the defense bill by then, and proponents say they are dubious the bill can pass in the limited legislative time left this year on its own or attached to another piece of legislation.

The Clinton administration proposed a more-limited compensation program this year asking for either $100,000 lump-sum payments or health benefits.

An Energy Department source confirmed that White House officials met last week to discuss the administration's position on the more expansive Senate proposal. But the official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said only "it was a productive meeting, and we expect to have the details worked out in the near future.''

-------- washington

USA Today
09/10/00
http://usatoday.com/news/states/all50.htm

Washington

Yakima - A review upheld the tactics used against the wildfire that spread across the Hanford nuclear reservation in June. There had been speculation that the Fish and Wildlife Service hampered firefighting efforts. A draft report by an interagency fire team finds that the incident commander attacked the fire quickly and tried to prevent it from spreading.

-------- u.s. nuc weapons

Launch aborted The next president will make the call on missile defense

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Sunday, September 10, 2000
http://www.post-gazette.com/forum/20000910edabm1.asp

President Clinton has done what prudence dictates on the proposed missile defense system: He has decided to leave a decision on deployment to his successor. With two of the three latest tests being failures, with Russia and NATO allies deeply concerned about the system's possible destabilizing effects on arms control, the president is right 60 billion times over - that being the estimated total dollar cost of the system.

In making his decision, Mr. Clinton struck a balance between the nature of the threat facing the nation in the near term and the wisdom of pressing on regardless now.

The Pentagon's artificial deadline sought to have a missile defense system operational by the year 2005, although Mr. Clinton suggested that in reality it would be 2006 or 2007 if construction began immediately - and that, if the next president decided to go ahead, the system could be built in the same time frame.

But even if the delay were a couple of years, the threat facing the United States is not so critical that the country cannot wait until it can be assured of fielding a system that actually works. Only a Hannibal could make use of a white elephant, and $60 billion is a lot of hay to feed it.

Of course, for all its technological challenges, a viable missile defense system is not necessarily a pipe dream. As the Post-Gazette has observed before, Russia and the NATO allies are concerned precisely because they believe the United States can build such a system. But it will take time.

Fortunately, time is still on our side, although the clock is running. The threat from rogue states - now politely called states of concern - appears serious but not critical. If anything, the danger may have receded a little because North Korea, one of the principal worries that propelled this project, has agreed to a moratorium on missile testing and is in the process of opening up to its southern neighbor and the rest of the world after years of isolation.

In his Sept. 1 speech at Georgetown University, Mr. Clinton did not downplay the future threats posed by "the rapid spread of technology across increasingly porous borders," allowing more states, terrorists and criminal syndicates to gain access to "chemical, biological or even nuclear weapons."

Of course, such threats would not be removed by building a missile defense system, which would offer no protection against a car or suitcase bomb. The United States will have to rely on old-fashioned deterrence, which has kept nuclear weapons at bay for half a century.

But as the president correctly observed: "No one suggests that the NMD [national missile defense] would ever substitute for diplomacy or for deterrence. But such a system, if it worked properly, could give us an extra dimension of insurance in a world where proliferation has complicated the task of preserving the peace."

So it is not a matter of the United States being left naked to attack because Mr. Clinton prevaricates. And as proliferation is part of the problem, the nation must seriously ask itself whether its security is enhanced or weakened by breaking the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, which the Post-Gazette believes is a key to past and future arms-control agreements.

It may be that instead of building a land-based system in the Aleutian Islands, a cheaper, more flexible sea-based system can be developed without overturning the ABM treaty. These are vital questions for debate in the current presidential race. It is where they belong.

-------- MILITARY (by country)

Week in Review Desk The World; Shop Till You Drop Bombs

New York Times
September 10, 2000
By TOM ZELLER
http://archives.nytimes.com/archives/search/fastweb?getdoc+allyears2-qpass+db365+577385+0+wAAA+Shop%7ETill%7EYou%7EDrop%7EBombs

International arms sales have reached a four-year peak at nearly $30.3 billion, according to a recent report by the Congressional Research Service, with the largest exporters being the United States, Russia, Germany and China. But the report did not encompass another growth area: the gray market, where legally marketed weapons slip into unintended hands. Nor did it take note of the number of wars being fought with homemade tools. Here is a sample of some of the weapons included in the official survey, and others that weren't, as they may appear in an international arms catalog.

-------- britain

Britain Reviews Security in S.Leone After Raid

Yahoo News
Sunday September 10 6:17 PM ET updated 10:27 PM ET Sep 10
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20000910/wl/britain_hostages_dc_7.html

FREETOWN (Reuters) - Britain is reviewing security for its forces in Sierra Leone in case of revenge attacks by rebels after a weekend raid freed six British soldiers held captive by rebels in the jungle of the West African state.

A lightning raid on Sunday by 150 British soldiers, including paratroopers, freed the six members of the Royal Irish Regiment and a Sierra Leonean officer held hostage by the self-styled West Side Boys since August 25.

One of the British servicemen taking part in the raid was killed in fighting, in which military sources said 25 rebels were killed and 18 captured, including a key commander.

Military sources said 12 British soldiers were also wounded, one seriously.

In London, defense sources said Britain was reviewing its overall security in the former British colony as a precaution against revenge attacks by the West Side Boys.

``If we feel additional precautions need to be taken, then they will be implemented,'' one source said.

But they said the rescue operation did not affect Britain's attitude toward Sierra Leone, where a special unit of British soldiers is training the new Sierra Leone Army following a 1999 peace deal to end a civil war that has rumbled on since 1991.

The British hostages had been members of the unit. Five other British soldiers taken at the same time had been released earlier by the rebels.

Helicopter Backing In Raid

Defense sources said the British assault troops backed by five helicopters staged the dawn raid against around 200 rebels at their base in an area of jungle and swamp east of the capital Freetown.

``I believe this operation reflects our unflinching commitment to the people and the armed forces of Sierra Leone,'' Brigadier Gordon Hughes, commander of the British force in Sierra Leone, told reporters on Sunday.

The rescued British soldiers were aboard a Royal Fleet Auxiliary vessel in Freetown, where they received medical checks and were being debriefed before flying home, officials said.

The West Side Boys include former soldiers who briefly toppled elected President Ahmad Tejan Kabbah in 1997.

British Defense Minister Geoffrey Hoon said the decision to mount the rescue followed repeated threats by the maverick group to kill their captives and when it became clear that the West Side Boys' negotiators were making unreasonable demands.

``The captors had threatened repeatedly to kill the hostages, and indeed we understand that mock executions had taken place,'' he said.

The operation was a further demonstration of the refusal of successive British governments to do deals with ``terrorists'' and hostage takers, he added.

Brigadier Hughes said the West Side Boys had been heavily armed, with mortars and machineguns. He said women fighters were among those killed.

Two-Pronged Attack

Defense sources in London described the assault as a two-pronged helicopter attack against two rebel camps simultaneously.

They estimated 50 to 60 rebels were north of a river running through the area, with another group to the south covering them with heavy-machinegun fire. Some of the rebels pulled back to the edge of the jungle when they were attacked.

The sources said the operation lasted about 90 minutes and at time firing was very heavy. The hostages had been rescued and were on their way out by helicopter within 20 minutes of the start of the raid.

The defense sources said the raiding troops also recovered three vehicles lost when the hostages were originally captured.

Some of the helicopters were used to provide fire support during the raid, the sources said.

The West Side Boys, once allies of the rebel Revolutionary United Front (RUF) in Sierra Leone, had fought alongside government troops against the RUF when the United Front rebels derailed the peace deal in May.

The RUF briefly took hundreds of United Nations peacekeepers hostage. Britain then helped the U.N. put its peacekeeping mission back on track.

But the West Side Boys subsequently returned to the bush after a dispute over supplies and status. They had made various demands for the release of the British hostages, ranging from the release of comrades jailed in Freetown and immunity from arrest and prosecution to a formal role in the peace process.

---

How Britain Hones the Skills of Killers Foreign Affairs News

FreeRepublic "A Conservative News Forum"
9/10/00
Telegraph
Philip Sherwell
http://www.FreeRepublic.com/perl/latest?t=8
http://www.FreeRepublic.com/perl/profile?op=show&user=H.R.%20Gross
http://www.FreeRepublic.com/forum/a39bba9a04867.htm

A NOTORIOUS Sierra Leonean woman army officer nicknamed "Cut Hands", who headed a unit of rebel soldiers responsible for massacres, arson and hacking off the limbs of civilians, last week completed military training by British Army instructors, The Telegraph can reveal.

Adama Toronka, a tough and wiry figure who looks older than her 29 years, joined the Sierra Leonean army in 1991. After the Nigerians ousted the junta in 1998, Toronka was among the majority of soldiers who joined forces in the bush with Revolutionary United Front rebels. They briefly stormed back into Freetown early last year and were driven back into the jungle for a second time by the Nigerians. Following last year's Lome peace deal the rebel soldiers were invited to join a reformed armed forces after a screening process. Toronka enjoyed her retraining - she said: "the whites took good care of us" - and is looking forward to life in the new 9th battalion.

During an investigation by The Telegraph, several witnesses have identified the two Adamas as the same person - meaning that British instructors have been unwittingly honing the military skills of a woman accused by civilians of horrific crimes. In Sierra Leone, however, different rules apply: the Lome peace accord signed 14 months ago provides an amnesty for all offences committed before then in the vicious civil war.

In a series of consistent accounts, the witnesses described how Adama "Cut Hands" would order the loosely-knit unit she commanded to kill and maim. They showed me a mango tree in Calaba Town whose roots still bear deep scars from a sharp blade, and described how her soldiers used the tree's base as a chopping block to hack off hands with machetes.

In the Old Wharf district, one of those who identified her was an old man. He sobbed increasingly hysterically: "Adama Cut Hands, Adama Cut Hands." Once wealthy by Freetown standards, the Old Wharf man resident - whose name is being withheld for his own protection - is a broken man after his several homes were first pillaged and then burned by her troops.

Old Wharf was also the scene of the slaughter of 13 men and a woman at the hands of the group of soldiers she commanded. The next day, Adama "Cut Hands" told two locals that she had ordered the deaths because people at Old Wharf had refused to provide her with a boat to flee the previous year when the military junta was driven from power.

Her men then turned their sights on nearby Calaba Town. Last week, locals led us to a mango tree whose thick roots are criss-crossed with the scars of a sharp blade. Here, they explained, the soldiers had hacked off the hands of local civilians with machetes. By the time they finished, the bark had turned black with blood and flies were swarming around the congealed gore.

It is unclear from eyewitnesses whether "Major Cut Hands" presided over the atrocities or whether she took part in them. Such tales are commonplace in Sierra Leone. All the factions have records of shocking cruelty and, in the army's case, treachery.

Last week, a beaming Pte Adama Toronka marched off the parade ground at Benguema training camp in her neat new fatigues with a British Army SLR rifle slung across her shoulder. She was among 994 members of the "new" Sierra Leonean army who underwent a six-week British training blitz designed to turn a rabble with a history of coups, incompetence and atrocities into a reliable fighting force.

About 2,000 "new" soldiers - most drawn from the ranks of the discredited old army - have been rushed through a cursory screening process before being trained, first by the Royal Anglians and then by the Royal Irish Regiment. Lt Cdr Tony Cramp, Ministry of Defence spokesman, said last night: "The cornerstone of our training programme is creating a humanitarian, responsible new army. The screening process was put in place in June at a time when there was an urgent imperative to train more troops as there was a direct threat on Freetown from the rebels.

At present, recruits have their criminal records checked, are given a short interview about their past, put through a medical test - and then sent to Benguema for six weeks' training. Lt Cdr Tony Cramp said: "However, the intention is that they will all be fully screened at a later date when the current situation eases. At that stage, some of those who have gone through the current training process will be screened out." He acknowledged that even some of the militiamen holding British soldiers captive could qualify for British training under the current scheme.

Capt Sam Rosenfeld, the senior training officer, said: "I can only work with the soldiers I am given. I get who I get and I train who I train. But we have tried to instill the ethos of a British soldier. I am confident we have succeeded."

As well as basic infantry skills, the trainees were drilled on the Geneva Convention and the principles of human rights and ethical soldiering by, among others, the chaplain. Both Capt Rosenfeld and Padre Joseph Moesel believe the message has sunk in. Nonetheless, say critics, six weeks is much too brief to teach bad soldiers new ways, especially as the junior officer corps is largely made up of those who served in the junta before taking to the bush.

Last night Toronka, 29, now a private, denied that she was "Cut Hands" and said that she had been confused with another soldier called Adama, who has since died. However, when The Telegraph showed photos of several women soldiers to witnesses in the eastern suburbs who had lived through that reign of terror, they all picked her out, independently and unprompted, as Adama "Cut Hands". Indeed, at the Benguema camp, one of her colleagues said that Toronka had been known by that nickname until just two months ago, when superiors ordered the soldiers to stop using it.

Francis Maude, the shadow foreign secretary, said: "There is a perfectly good case for training up a proper army, but there is always a danger of gesture politics when the Government wants to be seen to be doing something. I think the British soldiers would be horrified if they find that the trainees have been involved in such appalling acts."

A common refrain around Freetown - from local residents to aid workers and United Nations officials - is that the country's next coup collaborators are being trained at Benguema. Corinne Dufka of Human Rights Watch said: "Sierra Leone needs an army, but we are against war criminals and serial human rights abusers being included in its ranks." Sierra Leonean soldiers "have never considered it their duty to serve their country. Six weeks is too short to change that".

One of the few army "loyalists" who never turned against the government is more blunt about his newly trained comrades. He said: "The British are making a big mistake if they think they can retrain these people. They have killed, raped and burned before and they will do it again."

British officials counter that the training course is a step in the right direction. "The aim of the programme is to develop a professional, democratically accountable armed force for Sierra Leone so that they can take responsibility for the security of their own country," said the Ministry of Defence spokesman.

Watching last week's passing out parade was Mohammed, a young man in baggy dungarees selected for the next batch of trainees. He is a former West Side Boy whose "bush name" was the ungrammatical "Kill Man Without No Law".

During the screening process, he was not questioned about whether he had committed atrocities, he said, as "they weren't interested in that". However, when asked by The Telegraph, he admitted to burning houses and abducting two young boys as porters and two young women as "bush wives". Did that mean rape? "That's what men do," he explained with a smile. Mohammed begins his training with the Royal Irish Regiment next week.

The case of Adama "Cut Hands" and the continuing hostage crisis are the latest embarrassments for the Government as it tries to fit Sierra Leone into its much-vaunted "ethical" foreign policy. Negotiations for the release of the six British soldiers and a Sierra Leonean liaison officer held by the West Side Boys dragged on yesterday as preparations were advanced for a possible military rescue operation. The gang has launched a fresh wave of extortion, kidnappings and rape along the main highway east of Freetown in recent days.

FreeRepublic , LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794

---

Thatcher: Blair Wants to Abolish Britain

Free Republic "A Conservative News Forum"
9/10/00
Foreign Affairs News
Telegraph
Joe Murphy
http://www.FreeRepublic.com/perl/latest?t=8
http://www.FreeRepublic.com/perl/profile?op=show&user=H.R.%20Gross
http://www.FreeRepublic.com/perl/redirect?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.telegraph.co.uk%2Fet%3Fac%3D000118613908976%26rtmo%3DLlSx3lSd%26atmo%3Drrrrrrvs%26pg%3D%2Fet%2F00%2F9%2F10%2Fnmag10.html
http://www.FreeRepublic.com/forum/a39bba8c647ab.htm

BARONESS THATCHER accused Tony Blair of seeking to "abolish Britain" in a speech in which she also said that Michael Heseltine was a "non-Labour fellow traveller" for supporting a single European currency.

The attack was launched at a dinner of 40 wealthy businessmen and senior Conservatives, including William Hague, on Monday. Lady Thatcher, who was guest of honour at the Conservative-organised Keep the Pound campaign event held at the independent Sussex House School in London, said Labour would deploy the Government's full resources to persuade people to vote yes to a single currency in a referendum.

She said: "The Prime Minister and his Government know that on this they must win. For unless they abolish sterling they will never attain their wider goal of abolishing Britain as a distinct, self-confident, independent nation. The Prime Minister can claim until he is blue in the face that the decision all depends on economic criteria for convergence but this is nothing more than a cynical and ever more transparent ploy."

In a speech which was taped by one of the guests, Lady Thatcher said that during the Cold War "the Socialists thought their time had come and today's Cabinet ministers were singing The Red Flag and hoping the Soviets would win". She made a clear reference to Mr Heseltine, the former Deputy Prime Minister, whose memoirs are critical of her antipathy towards Europe, as a "non-Labour fellow traveller".

"To all of this, I say: no, no no," she declared, echoing her famous Commons remarks after the Bruges summit. According to guests at the dinner, Mr Hague nodded vigorously throughout her speech and led the audience in warm applause at the end. Lady Thatcher praised him for "having the guts and patriotism to fight for Britain's sovereignty."

The speech appeared to confirm that Lady Thatcher is ready to play a leading role in the campaign against monetary union. It will dismay Mr Blair who has attempted to use flattery and informal contacts to foster friendly relations with Lady Thatcher. He invited her to Number 10 to give him advice during the Kosovo conflict and has praised her strong leadership.

Peter Mandelson, the Northern Ireland Secretary, showed the Government's anxiety about the single currency yesterday when he rewrote a speech at the last minute to tone down remarks in favour of it. Mr Mandelson also had a good word for Lady Thatcher's record. He said: "Thatcherism halted Britain's relative decline."

FreeRepublic , LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794

-------- china

China Premier Orders Probe of Deadly Xinjiang Blast

Yahoo News
Sunday September 10 1:59 AM ET updated 4:30 AM ET Sep 10
By Matt Pottinger
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20000910/wl/china_explosion_dc_8.html

BEIJING (Reuters) - Chinese Premier Zhu Rongji has ordered officials to step up their probe into a deadly explosion that killed 60 people and injured more than 170 in the western region of Xinjiang late on Friday.

State television said on Sunday that Zhu had ordered investigators to work swiftly to find out what caused a truck carrying explosives to blow up on Friday night in the western suburbs of Urumqi, capital of Xinjiang.

The region has been wracked by separatist violence for years, but a police official said the blast was an accident.

``When this type of accident occurs, we all feel sad,'' state television quoted Zhu as saying as he visited the injured in hospital on Sunday. Television footage showed the premier at the bedside of a bandaged child.

``The government will take a responsible attitude toward handling this accident,'' he said.

The official Xinhua news agency put the number of injured at 173, scaled down from its earlier report of 309. It gave no reason for the discrepancy.

Local Chinese authorities said they had set up a special task force to find the cause of the explosion.

One official at the regional level Public Security headquarters dismissed the possibility the blast was related to separatist violence that periodically erupted in Xinjiang, saying it was triggered by a traffic accident.

``It was purely a traffic accident,'' said the official, who declined to be identified. ``It was not man-made.''

Task Force Investigates

A city police officer said on Sunday the special task force was already working on the case.

Asked whether the blast may have been an attack by ethnic minority Uighur separatists, she said: ``The cause has not been determined, the task force is still investigating.''

Xinhua said the explosives had been intended for disposal and described the blast as an accident.

Zhu was in the city of Urumqi on Saturday for a meeting with Robert Rubin, former U.S. Treasury secretary and a senior official of Citigroup, and was apparently in Xinjiang at the time of the blast.

A Citigroup spokeswoman said Zhu made no mention of the incident in the meeting with executives.

Beijing keeps a tight grip on the sensitive border region, where Muslim Uighurs have carried out bombings and assassinations against the Chinese authorities since 1996.

Uighur militants have been struggling for decades to establish an independent state they call East Turkestan in Xinjiang, which borders Afghanistan, Pakistan, three former Soviet Central Asian republics, Russia and Mongolia.

---

Explosion in Northwest China Kills 60

New York Times
September 10, 2000
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/09/10/world/10BANG.html

BEIJING, Sept. 9 - A truck taking explosives for disposal blew up Friday evening in a northwest region that has been the scene of dissent by Muslim inhabitants, killing 60 people, officials and state media said today.

The New China News Agency reported the casualty count in the explosion, in Urumqi, the capital of Xinjiang, and officials with the city police and government confirmed it.

Investigators said they believe the explosion was an accident, although they have not ruled out terrorism.

The explosion occurred around 5:30 p.m. on a major artery in the sprawling industrial city's western suburbs that was crowded with residents leaving work.

Explosives are widely available for construction and accidents are common. But Xinjiang also is the scene of the most violent internal threat faced by the government.

Uighurs, Turkic Muslims who are the region's largest ethnic group, have long resisted Chinese rule. Since the mid-1990's, militant separatists have waged a campaign of bombings and assassinations against Chinese. China began a crackdown in 1996 but has failed to calm the unrest, though Urumqi, a largely Chinese city, has seen few separatist attacks.

---

Truck explodes in China, killing 60

USA Today
09/10/00- Updated 08:49 AM ET
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/nw1.htm#cast

BEIJING - A truck carrying explosives blew up in China's restive Muslim northwest, killing 60 people, injuring 173 and scorching vehicles and homes, officials and state media said Saturday. Investigators believe the Friday explosion in the Xinjiang region was an accident, although they have not ruled out terrorism, media reports said. Some among the 90 injured are now permanently blinded or crippled. The explosives in the truck were used for construction projects.

-------- colombia

America's Drug Habit Fuels War in Colombia

Free Republic "A Conservative News Forum"
September 10, 2000
Foreign Affairs Editorial Opinion (Published)
San Jose Mercury News
BY GEORGE F. WILL
http://www.FreeRepublic.com/forum/a39bbfd3a72f3.htm

PRESIDENT Clinton's assurances that the United States will not get involved in the Colombian civil war that the United States already is involved in (with military personnel, equipment, training, financing, intelligence) make sense if you think of the helicopters as farm implements. The 60 transport and attack helicopters, and most of the other elements in the recent $1.3 billion installment of U.S. aid, look warlike. However, the administration says the aid is essentially agricultural. It is all about controlling crops -- particularly the coca fields that provide upward of 90 percent of the cocaine that reaches the American market.

The law governing U.S. intervention includes this language: ``The president shall ensure that if any helicopter procured with funds under this heading is used to aid or abet the operations of an illegal self-defense group or illegal security cooperative, than such helicopter shall be immediately returned to the United States.'' Imagine how reliably this will be enforced.

Conceivably, important U.S. interests are implicated in the Colombian government's fight with the more than 17,000-strong forces of Marxist insurgency in the civil war, now in its fourth decade, that has killed 35,000 people, and displaced 2 million in the last 10 years. Political violence has killed 280,000 since the middle of the 19th century. Do makers of U.S. policy understand this long-simmering stew of class conflict, ideological war and ethnic vendettas?

They advertise their policy as drug control through crop extermination. The president, delivering the money that will buy military equipment, said: ``We have no military objective.'' And: ``Our approach is both pro-peace and anti-drug.'' As though the civil war and the anti-narcotics campaign can be separated when the left-wing forces that control half the country are getting hundreds of millions of dollars a year by protecting and taxing coca fields.

The U.S. policy -- peace through herbicides -- aims to neutralize the left-wing forces by impoverishing them. But already those forces are diversifying. The Wall Street Journal reports: ``Armed with automatic rifles and personal computers, guerrillas often stop traffic, check motorists' bank records, then detain anyone whose family might be able to afford a lucrative ransom.'' There are an average of seven kidnappings a day, and the Journal reports that every morning Colombia's largest radio network ``links its 169 stations with its stations in Miami, New York, Panama and Paris. It opens its lines to relatives of kidnap victims who broadcast messages they hope will be heard by their missing loved ones.''

Speaking of diversification, does anyone doubt that, in the extremely unlikely event that Colombia is cleansed of the offensive crops, cultivation of them will be promptly increased elsewhere? In spite of Colombia's efforts, coca cultivation increased 140 percent in the last five years, partly because the United States financed the reduction of Bolivia's coca crop. However, the pressure on Colombia's coca growers is ``working'': Some of them have planted crops (and the seeds of future conflicts) across the border in Peru. And guerrillas have made incursions into Panama and Ecuador for refuge. And the price of cocaine in the United States has plummeted for two decades.

Will the United States ever learn? As long as it has a $50 billion annual demand for an easily smuggled substance made in poor nations, the demand will be served. An anecdote is apposite.

A presidential adviser was fresh from persuading the French government to smash the ``French connection'' by which heroin destined for America was refined from Turkish opium in Marseilles. Boarding a helicopter to Camp David to bring his glad tidings to President Nixon, the adviser, Pat Moynihan, who then still had Harvard's faith in government's efficacy, found himself traveling with Labor Secretary George Shultz, embodiment of University of Chicago realism about powerful appetites creating markets in spite of governments' objections. When Moynihan (who tells this story) told Shultz about his achievement in France, this conversation ensued.

Shultz, dryly: ``Good.''

Moynihan: ``No, really, this is a big event.''

Shultz, drier still: ``Good.''

Moynihan: ``I suppose you think that so long as there is a demand for drugs, there will continue to be a supply.''

Shultz: ``You know, there's hope for you yet.''

That is more than can be confidently said for U.S. policy in Colombia, which seems barren of historical sense. ``The enduring achievement of historical study,'' said British historian Sir Lewis Namier, ``is a historical sense -- and intuitive understanding -- of how things do not work.'' Such a sense should produce policy. Instead, the most that can be hoped is that U.S. policy in Colombia may, painfully and tardily, produce such sense.

George F. Will is a columnist for the Washington Post.

---

An Aimless War in Colombia Creates a Nation of Victims

New York Times
Swptember 10, 2000
By CLIFFORD KRAUSS
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/09/10/world/10COLO.html

CARTAGENA, Colombia - Something terrible happened to Venecia Barona Mosquera, something senseless but horribly common among the people who have been displaced from the parts of Colombia brutalized by war and who have sought uncertain refuge here in the squalor of a shantytown named Nelson Mandela.

Ms. Barona left her village, Chicorodo, one morning in June to cut sugar cane, and when she returned she found her father and two brothers shot to death. Her 10-year-old daughter, Judith, was lying half-conscious under a mango tree, her skull crushed by a rifle butt.

Ultra-right paramilitaries had killed more than 20 people, punishing the villagers for giving food to an insistent Marxist guerrilla band who had been roaming the northern province of Antioquia.

So the 28-year-old Ms. Barona immediately packed up her things and headed here to Cartagena, with her bleeding daughter bundled in her arms. Judith died a few days later.

"I could never go back," she said, a tear tracing her cheek. "But at least I can calm down here. Now I'm looking for a good man to help me."

Nelson Mandela, where 45,000 people live under rusty corrugated roofs and sheets of plastic, may seem an unlikely place to seek calm. But it is growing every day with people like Ms. Barona, one of an estimated 150,000 Colombians driven from their homes this year alone as they have been squeezed between leftist guerrillas and paramilitaries loosely linked to local military units.

An estimated two million Colombians have been uprooted in recent years, according to the Consultancy for Human Rights and the Displaced, a research group, more than were sent fleeing by the war in Kosovo last year. Of all the countries of the world suffering from the miseries of war, only Sudan and Angola have more displaced people.

And now, with the United States poised to deliver a new $1.3 billion aid package, most of it for the military, ordinary Colombians and officials fear that the war will intensify and that the number of people displaced will increase.

Those being displaced are mostly simple rural people, though some are middle class, who want only to live and work in peace and do not care to choose a side in a war in which not choosing a side has become an impossible luxury.

More than half are the victims of the paramilitaries, who seek to drain towns of suspected guerrilla sympathizers but sometimes simply do the dirty work for large landowners who want to expand their holdings for cattle raising, coca growing or mining.

Those displaced bring few usable skills for surviving in the already overburdened cities to which they have flocked - places like Cartagena, Bogotá, Medellín and Cali. The urban squalor that is gathering in these cities breeds despair, family violence and crime, and the shantytowns increasingly serve as recruitment centers for guerrilla and paramilitary groups, flush with drug money to provide decent food and clothes to their fighters.

"You can't settle the war in Colombia without dealing with the problem of the displaced," said Jorge Rojas, the director of the consultancy. "It's central."

The displaced are part of an even larger phenomenon that includes some 800,000 Colombians who have fled the country of 40 million people over the last four years. Many have sheltered themselves across the borders with Panama and Venezuela, becoming international refugees and an increasing burden for Colombia's neighbors. Thousands more middle class and wealthy Colombians have fled the violence for life in the United States.

United States and Colombian officials acknowledge the problem of the displaced but say they must focus more effort on finding new homes, jobs and alternative crops for coca growers and other people who will see their livelihoods and homes affected by the fighting.

Of the $7.5 billion in the new "Plan Colombia" that was kicked off when President Clinton visited with President Andrés Pastrana in Cartagena recently, $500 million is allotted directly to helping the displaced and $1 billion for alternative crop development. But the primary aim of the plan is to reduce coca cultivation by 50 percent in five years and to extend the reach of the central government.

In Nelson Mandela, where displaced people have squatted on tiny plots of land without titles, few have running water and most steal their electricity from a public utility company that looks the other way.

Cartagena's mayor, Gina Benedetti de Vélez, said she needs $50 million a year to take care of the housing, education and health needs of the displaced population growing in shantytowns like Nelson Mandela, but that would be nearly one-third of her entire city budget. "We simply don't have the capacity to take care of these people," she said.

The first settlers who came here six years ago were apparently full of faith in the future. The mostly black and mulatto Colombians here named their new community after the South Africa leader out of black pride, and they named their streets Hope, Bethlehem and Victory.

But today there is misery everywhere in Nelson Mandela - barefoot children go to schools without notebooks, fathers plunge holes in industrial water pipes to give their families contaminated water, mothers poke through garbage to salvage refuse to sell. But what stands out most are the harrowing stories of brutality that forced these people to leave their homes in the first place.

One of those stories was that of Ms. Barona, whose family was killed and who is now alone but determined to go on. With wood donated by the Catholic Church, she is building a new shack for herself. She borrowed 50 cents from one of her new neighbors to start a business selling bags of fresh water, and now she is making a dollar a day.

Another is that of Eloy Terán, 54, who abandoned the town of San Onofre in Sucre Province with his wife and nine children four months ago after life simply became intolerable. Guerrillas and paramilitaries, he said, started invading the town last December on alternating weeks, killing the corn, banana and rice farmers and their families at random.

"I can't tell you why they killed," he said, shrugging and swinging his legs nervously from the side of a makeshift table. "They killed our friends, our neighbors, and then the point came when we decided we couldn't take it anymore, and we just decided to leave."

"The people are stuck like pieces of cheese between slices of bread," said the Rev. Rafael Castillo, a priest who works in Nelson Mandela. "In this kind of irregular war, you are forced to define yourself on one side or the other, and the civilian population suffers atrocities from both sides."

Juan Llorente, a 50-year-old cattle rancher who once lived outside the town of Turbo, allowed an army patrol to sleep in his house for two nights last September. "I never thought I'd have a problem," he recalled, since it's a custom in Colombia to be hospitable."

The very next day after the army unit left, eight guerrillas of Colombia's largest rebel group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, came by the house and took away his 20-year-old son, Neilson José. A few days later, Neilson José was found along a road with three bullet holes in his head.

Mr. Llorente immediately left for Cartagena with his wife, four surviving children and five grandchildren. They were so scared, they left their 60 head of cattle behind, which Mr. Llorente said the guerrillas have since stolen.

"I wake up in the middle of the night thinking about where I am going to find food the next day," said Mr. Llorente, a man whose clothes and mannerisms reflect a middle- class background. "I was never a rich man, but I wasn't poor, either. But now, I am a hungry man."

Gradually, too, the war is bearing down on Nelson Mandela and other barrios full of the displaced. Father Castillo said that, of the 15 people killed in the community this year, six were taken from their homes in the middle of the night by unidentified men thought to be either guerrillas or paramilitaries.

Two months ago a local rebel unit kidnapped an engineer working to build two schools in Nelson Mandela and demanded $250,000 in ransom. "They knew we had donation money to help the displaced," Father Castillo said, and a settlement was eventually worked out for a $10,000 payment.

"We asked them: `Why are you destroying what you say you want to construct for the poor,'" he recalled. "A comandante answered, `I know we make mistakes, but you have to pay.'"

-------- iraq

Saddam Calls Up Army Reserves

NewsMax
Sunday, Sept. 10, 2000
http://www.newsmax.com/articles/?a=2000/9/9/215945

Despite a Sept. 5 denial by the Iraqi Embassy in Bangladesh, reported in the Times of India, reliable sources report that Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein is indeed suffering from usually fatal lymphatic cancer.

London's Arabic newspaper Al-Quds Al-Arabi reports that Iraq has called up its military reserves, in a move that the paper believes is related to the escalating media campaign waged by Iraq against Saudi Arabia and Kuwait.

But other experts think the call-up may be more ominous and may be a result of Saddam's possible health crisis.

The paper said that in the last few weeks Saddam Hussein has met with high-ranking army, air force and air defense commanders and his son Qusayy, who is in charge of the Republican Guard.

According to Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, London's Al-Sharq Al-Awsat newspaper wrote on Sept. 3 that Saddam is so critically ill he has set up a family council headed by his second-oldest son, Qusayy, to handle affairs in the event he is too sick to do the job any longer.

The newspaper reported that an Iraqi doctor told them previous reports have indicated that the Iraqi president suffers from "pain in the joints, disturbed breathing, a weakened respiratory system, weak eyesight, and a lack of concentration."

The doctor also told Al-Sharq Al-Awsat that a security committee headed by the president's secretary, Abd Humud, has decided that no Iraqi physician is allowed to treat Saddam. The medical team treating Saddam, he said, is headed by French, German and Swiss doctors.

Another "independent" Iraqi source reported that Saddam presided over a family meeting attended by Humud, his sons Udayy and Qusayy, and his three brothers Barzan, Watban, and Sab'awi, when it was decided that the family council would be set up under Qusayy to run the nation's affairs.

According to the Al-Sharq Al-Awsat newspaper report, "all presidential instructions which reach the ministries are now countersigned by Major-General Abd Humud," adding that backstage Qusayy is already acting like the president, making decisions on both internal and external matters, especially on the question of Iraqi Kurdistan and the attempt to retake the three Kurdish governorates of Irbil, Dahuk, and Al-Sulaymaniyah.

-------- korea

Nkorea Envoy in Seoul May Talk About Korean Summit

Yahoo News
Sunday September 10
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20000910/ts/korea_north_dc_2.html

SEOUL (Reuters) - North Korea's top envoy arrived in Seoul on Monday for a trip which is expected to discuss arrangements for a visit to the capital by the Stalinist state's leader Kim Jong-il.

The visit follows an announcement on Sunday that North and South Korea will march together for the first time at an Olympic opening ceremony at the Sydney Games on Friday, the latest sign of warming ties between the longterm foes.

Kim Yong-sun, secretary of North Korea's Workers' Party and chairman of the Asia-Pacific Peace Committee, flew to Seoul's Kimpo Airport on a direct flight from Pyongyang with six other delegates.

Details of his visit to South Korea during the major three-day Chusok or Thanksgiving holiday from Monday to Wednesday, have not been released.

But analysts have said the visit would discuss the North Korean leader's planned visit to South Korea.

Kim had accepted an invitation to visit South Korea ``at an appropriate time'' when the South's leader Kim Dae-jung made a historic visit to Pyongyang in June.

Local media have reported that food aid and top level military talks later this month would also be on the agenda of Kim Yong-sun's visit.

Local YTN television said Kim would tour historic sites and major industrial complexes, including Pohang Iron and Steel Corp (05490.KS), before meeting with President Kim Dae-jung on Thursday.

-------- russia

Influential Russian Political Show Pulled From TV

Yahoo News
Saturday September 9
By Peter Graff
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20000909/wl/media_russia_dc_2.html

MOSCOW (Reuters) - One of Russia's most influential television programs was pulled from the air on Saturday, the latest volley in a bruising battle for the country's airwaves that has pitted the Kremlin against once powerful media bosses.

Konstantin Ernst, director of ORT television, said in a statement he had replaced the weekly Sergei Dorenko Show with a regular news broadcast because Dorenko had refused to keep silent on a tussle for control of the station's shares.

But Dorenko told Ekho Moskvy radio he thought the order had come from President Vladimir Putin himself.

``Ersnt cannot take such a decision himself,'' Dorenko said. ``I meet with the president once a month, and without his decision, nobody can touch a hair on my head.''

Dorenko's often stridently political show was the flagship program on ORT, once the main state broadcaster of the Soviet Union, now 49 percent owned by businessman Boris Berezovsky, who has been feuding with the Kremlin for control of his share.

Although the other 51 percent of ORT is held by the state, Berezovsky says he has called the shots at the station for years. Dorenko is Berezovsky's close ally, and the cancelling of his show will be seen as a setback for the financier.

Rival Gives Sympathetic Coverage

In an unusual twist, officials at ORT's heated rival, commercial channel NTV, initially said they planned to show portions of Dorenko's program themselves.

``We can't show the entire program, because it is the property of ORT, but we are planning to give the airwaves to Dorenko and let him show excerpts,'' NTV Editor in Chief Vladimir Kulistikov told Reuters.

In the end, NTV did not show excerpts of Dorenko's show, but broadcast portions of an interview he gave to Ekho Moskvy, NTV's sister radio station.

ORT did not mention the scandal in the newscast that replaced Dorenko's program.

Dorenko said the transcript of his program was available on his Web site (dorenko.ru). By Saturday evening the full text had not been posted, but the title of the first report on the canceled program was listed as ``The Kremlin against society.''

The main television networks are virtually the only nation-wide sources of information in a country spread across eleven time zones.

Berezovsky's battle for his stake in ORT has turned into a noisy row at a time when Putin has made clear he intends to rein in the country's commercial media.

This week Berezovsky said Kremlin aides had threatened to jail him if he did not relinquish his stake. Instead, he offered to give control of his shares in trust for four years to a group of journalists and intellectuals.

The Kremlin did not comment on Berezovsky's claim he was threatened, but Putin has praised his offer to relinquish control of his stake.

Ernst's statement said he had canceled Dorenko's show after the journalist refused ``to refrain from commentary on the conflict between the state and private shareholders in (ORT).''

But Dorenko told Ekho Moskvy he thought Putin was personally angered by his reporting on last month's Kursk submarine disaster, in which 118 men died.

``I went to (the Kursk's base) Vidyayevo and did my reporting, not hiding my interviews with the widows and those who served alongside the victims. (Putin) came back from America and gave his answer,'' Dorenko said.

Putin has said it is important for Russia to have a ``free'' press, but he has fiercely attacked the businessmen who own the country's commercial media, saying they use the airwaves to settle business scores and battle ``against the state.''

-------- space

Shuttle Atlantis Docks to Space Station

Yahoo News
Sunday September 10 12:02 PM ET updated 11:05 PM ET Sep 10
By Brad Liston
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20000910/ts/space_shuttle_dc_9.html

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (Reuters) - With a final whisper from the control jets on space shuttle Atlantis, astronaut Terrence Wilcutt gently docked the orbiter with the International Space Station on Sunday, the loss of a key navigational tool apparently of no concern in what NASA called a ``textbook rendezvous.''

This was the third time a U.S. shuttle had docked at the orbital construction site. The Atlantis crew will spend at least five days outfitting the station to prepare for the first long-duration crew's arrival in November.

From 1,000 feet away, the station appeared on television monitors at Mission Control like a tiny hummingbird hovering outside the shuttle's window.

As Atlantis inched closer, the station revealed itself to be an ungainly combination of tubular modules and connecting nodes stacked 13 stories high. As construction continues through at least 2006, the station will only appear less like a human habitat as it sprouts modules in every direction.

Still, it will be home to rotating crews for at least 15 years, as NASA and its partners in Russia, Europe, Canada and Japan conduct science and study the ways humans can adapt physically and psychologically to long-term space travel.

``Atlantis and the International Space Station are now one vehicle orbiting the Earth,'' said NASA commentator Rob Navias, the voice of Mission Control in Houston. ``A textbook rendezvous throughout the course of the night.''

``The crew flew flawlessly. The vehicle flew flawlessly,'' added lead flight director Phil Engelauf.

Wilcutt, a U.S. Marine Corps colonel making his fourth space flight, managed the docking despite the malfunction of a navigational tool called a star tracker, mounted near the overhead window used during the maneuver. Instead, he made do with other navigational tools available on the shuttle.

The primary goal of the five U.S. astronauts and two Russian cosmonauts aboard Atlantis is to outfit the Russian Zvezda module, headquarters for expeditionary crews during station construction.

The 20-ton Zvezda was stripped of much of its hardware in Russia to lighten its weight during liftoff last July. The Atlantis crew will unload about three tons of hardware and supplies from the shuttle's pressurized cargo hold and an unmanned Russian Progress cargo ship already docked to the station.

Among the supplies are a toilet, office equipment, exercise gear and Russian/English dictionaries to be used by the Russo-American expeditionary crews.

Bill Shepherd, commander of the first crew, known as Expedition One, watched the docking from Russian Mission Control near Moscow. He and his Russian crewmates, Sergei Krikalev and Yuri Gidzenko, are scheduled to ride a Soyuz spacecraft into orbit in less than two months.

Before the space crew begins to open the hatches connecting the station's three existing modules, astronaut Ed Lu and cosmonaut Yuri Malenchenko will perform a 6 1/2-hour spacewalk connecting power and data cables to Zvezda early on Monday.

NASA, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, has 20 spacewalks planned for the next 12 to 18 months as the space agency accelerates its schedule of assembly launches.

``We're excited to finally be into this surge stage of space station assembly,'' said Mike Hess, a spacewalk mission manager at the astronaut training center in Houston. ``Some of our (astronaut) crews have been working on these missions three, four, even five years.''

The shuttle has enough fuel to extend the 11-day mission one day, giving the crew enough time to begin installation work that would otherwise be left for future crews. NASA said a decision on that won't be made until docked operations are well under way.

---

Space Shuttle Atlantis Blasts Off

New York Times
September 10, 2000
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/09/08/science/Space-Shuttle.html

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- Space shuttle Atlantis blasted into orbit and gave chase to the international space station on Friday, providing a perfect kickoff to the torrent of launches that lies ahead.

It was the first time a space shuttle took off on its first try since John Glenn's return to orbit in 1998.

What's more, Atlantis' launch was flawless, welcome news for a space agency planning to fly to the space station eight times over the next year.

``It's a great day,'' said NASA's new launch director, Mike Leinbach.

All week, NASA had worried that rain might postpone Atlantis' delivery mission with a load of supplies. But the storm remained offshore, allowing the shuttle boosters to ignite at 8:45 a.m., right on time.

``Make station into a home,'' Launch Control urged the seven astronauts and cosmonauts.

``We intend to do just that,'' replied commander Terrence Wilcutt.

The uninhabited space station was soaring over Hungary, 6,600 miles away, when Atlantis vaulted off the pad. It should catch up early Sunday.

Wilcutt and his crew will arrive at a space station that's nearly twice as big as it was the last time astronauts visited in May. The reason is Russia's Zvezda control module, which soared in July after more than two years of delay.

Because of its heft, Zvezda had to be launched without most of its contents. Those went up on a Russian supply ship that docked in August.

The five Americans and two Russians will have to unload the supply ship as well as the shuttle.

Among the thousands of pounds of gear for use by the first permanent crew, due to arrive in November: oxygen generator, carbon-dioxide removal system, color TV monitor, ham radio, exercise machine, batteries, wrenches, sockets, flashlights and, not to be forgotten, a toilet.

There are also American and Russian meals, a food warmer, gas masks, note pads, pens, Russian-to-English and English-to-Russian dictionaries, towels, toothpaste, soap, sunblock and no-rinse shampoo.

The shuttle crew members will have just four days to haul everything into the space station and put it away or set it up, unless they can conserve enough power for an extra day. Shuttle officials are optimistic the flight will be extended to 12 days, thanks to Atlantis' on-time launch.

Before anyone ventures inside, though, two of the crew will go out on a spacewalk.

Astronaut Edward Lu and cosmonaut Yuri Malenchenko will hook up power and data cables between Zvezda and the rest of the Russian segment on Monday, and install a 6 1/2-foot boom for an instrument that measures Earth's magnetic field.

They will have to climb 110 feet up the 140-foot space station, hand over hand, to do the job. No one has ever ventured so far from the shuttle while tethered.

Even more spacewalks -- four -- are planned for the next shuttle visit, by Discovery next month. That's when the real construction work begins; astronauts will attach the first piece of truss, or framework, to the complex.

The U.S. power supply will go up on Endeavour in November, and the American lab, Destiny, will fly on Atlantis in January.

NASA expects construction to last well into 2006.

-------- u.n.

Third World leaders deliver harsh truths to Millennium Summit

By David Usborne, in New York,
UK Independent,
10 September 2000
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/World/Americas/2000-09/summit100900.shtml

No one can be more pleased in the wake of the Millennium Summit in New York than Count Carlos Maruulo di Condojanni. In the official summit photo, published in most of the world's press earlier this week, he was the man at the top left corner - the one with the enigmatic grin (left).

By inserting himself into what is surely the most exclusive family photo of all time, the Count pulled off quite some trick. He has a grand title, for sure - Grand Chancellor of the Sovereign Military Order of Malta - but that does not make him leader of a nation. The order, in fact, is a stamp-issuing authority based near the Spanish Steps in Rome.

It took an entire day before the UN protocol department could identify the stranger in the picture.

Sharp words were exchanged into the final hours of the extraordinary Millennium Summit in New York as leaders of several nations took a last opportunity late on Friday to speak their minds about a world where they see the privileged few still exploiting the many.

The plain speaking - some delivered at the summit site itself and some in oratory at other venues around the city - became one of the distinguishing features of a historic gathering of world leaders, which encouraged honest exchange and dispensed almost entirely with ceremony and pomp. Almost the only exception was the group photograph.

In spite of the conflicting currents of opinion and ideology, the meeting went off without mishap. The 147 leaders even managed to adopt an eight-page declaration. Though its goals were wildly ambitious - for instance, it pledged to halve those living on under one dollar a day by 2015 - at least it had the blessing of the most powerful on the planet.

Among those determined to dispel all self-congratulation and inject some discomfort into the proceedings were Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe, Thabo Mbeki of South Africa and - this goes without saying - Communism's last firebrand, Fidel Castro.

President Castro, who grabbed the headlines by shaking President Clinton's hand on Wednesday, left UN headquarters early on Friday to address his own rally at the Riverside Church in Manhattan's Morningside Heights. "The world is undergoing a catastrophic situation," he bellowed. "Don't believe the experts who feign optimism and ignore the cruel realities of the developing world."

The evening before, President Mugabe had similarly used a church setting, though in Harlem, to excoriate the critics of his land-seizure policy. He was barely less incendiary in tone when his time at the summit podium came on Friday. "Our conscience is clear. We will not go back. We shall continue to effect economic and social justice for all our people without fear or favour,'' he told the hall.

"We have sought to redress this inequity through a fast track land reform and resettlement programme. My country, my government, my party and my person are labelled "land grabbers", demonised, reviled and threatened with sanctions in the face of accusations of reverse-racism.''

Mr Mugabe summoned fresh passion to decry the continuing divide between the rich and the poor. "If the new millennium, like the last, remains an age of hegemonic empires and conquerors doing the same old things in new technological ways, remains the age of the master race, the master economy and the master state, then I am afraid we in developing countries will have to stand up as a matter of principle and say, 'Not again'."

Mr Mugabe, however, became the only leader to leave New York with more than a copy of the final declaration. As he left the Harlem church he was served with a civil lawsuit filed in US district court alleging that he orchestrated a campaign of violence to keep his political party in office ahead of Zimbabwe's election.

The plaintiffs, who filed the case under a 211-year-old law that allows foreigners to sue for violations of international law, include relatives of three people slain and a political opponent who claims she was attacked. The lawsuit seeks about $400 million in damages from Mr Mugabe, the Washington Post reported yesterday.

Indonesia found itself chastised in the closing hours of the summit. An emergency session of the Security Council condemned the killing of three UN workers earlier last week in West Timor and lambasted Jakarta for its failure to ensure security there.

In a resolution, the council said it was "appalled" by what it called "this outrageous and contemptible act against unarmed international staff who were in West Timor to help refugees". It told Indonesia to take "immediate and effective measures" to protect foreign personnel on its territory.

The UN Secretary General Kofi Annan urged the leaders to go home remembering what they had committed themselves to. "It lies in your power, and therefore it is your responsibility, to reach the goals that you have defined. Only you can determine whether the United Nations rises to the challenge,'' Annan said.

----

Nigeria: Sack UN force commander
The leaked report criticises Nigerian peackeepers

BBC News
Sunday, 10 September, 2000
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/africa/newsid_917000/917962.stm

The Nigerian military has demanded the dismissal of the Indian commander of UN forces in Sierra Leone General Vijay Jetley.

The move follows the publication of a leaked memorandum allegedly written by General Jetley containing allegations that Nigeria had deliberately sought to sabotage the peace mission.

"We are not going to serve under that man in whatever circumstances," said Nigerian chief of army staff General Victor Malu.

The report accuses senior Nigerian officers of maintaining close contacts with local rebel groups, and being more interested in pursuing business deals.

The leaked memorandum was published in the British Guardian newspaper on Saturday, but according to General Malu the document had been circulating for some time.

General Malu said that Nigeria had protested to the UN over the matter several weeks ago, but had as yet received no response.

Speaking to the BBC from his holiday home in Delhi, General Jetley said he could not recall writing the report and declined to comment.

However, BBC West Africa correspondent Mark Doyle says that although the exact source of the memorandum has been questioned, its content will surprise few people in Sierra Leone.

Conspiracy

The four page document purportedly written by General Jetley contains allegations of a Nigerian-backed conspiracy to remove him from his post.

The general goes on to allege that three senior Nigerian officers were heavily involved in diamond smuggling rackets in Sierra Leone.

However, according to General Malu, the Indian commander was "trying to justify his ineptitude, inaction and inefficiency in the leadership of a multinational force."

General Malu pointed out Nigeria's significant contribution to successive peace missions in Sierra Leone, and refuted allegations of involvement in diamond smuggling.

"No Nigerian officer or soldier was ever caught in illegal mining activities or found with diamonds," he said.

Divisions

Disagreements over peacekeeping stretch back to the earliest days of the mission to end Sierra Leone's vicious civil war.

In one instance, a senior Indian officer, speaking to the BBC on condition of anonymity, said the Nigerians had refused an order by the Indian force commander to deploy troops to the front line town of Masiaka.

A senior Nigerian officer confirmed this, but defended the decision and accused the Indians of taking a back seat in the peacekeeping mission and making his men do all the dangerous jobs.

Nigeria initially requested command of the mission - but was turned down by Western countries including Britain and the United States because of its patchy record in previous attempts to restore peace.

---

US Covered Up for Kosovo "Ally"

FreeRepublic "A Conservative News Forum"
September 10, 2000
Foreign Affairs News
The Observer/Guardian
Nick Wood
http://www.FreeRepublic.com/perl/latest?t=8
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US 'covered up' for Kosovo ally

Nick Wood in Pristina reports on a UN claim that American officials withheld evidence linking a leading politician to a gunfight, drugs and war crimes.

Special report: Kosovo Sunday September 10, 2000 The Observer

American officials in Kosovo are being accused of interfering with an investigation into a senior Kosovo Albanian politician implicated in murder, drug-trafficking and war crimes.

Ramush Haradinaj, a former commander of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), was the key US military and intelligence asset in Kosovo during the civil war and the Nato bombing campaign that followed.

In the latest twist in the saga of an increasingly flawed electoral process, United Nations police in the province complain that US personnel withheld evidence about a gunfight involving Haradinaj, who is now head of one of the province's leading political groups.

UN investigators leading the case say US officials based at their main base, Camp Bondsteel, removed forensic evidence from the scene of the gun battle, including bullets retrieved from walls. The incident, which took place in the village of Strellc in the west of Kosovo, is well out of the US Army's area of responsibility, which lies in the south-east of the province.

Following the shooting Haradinaj, known almost universally in the province as simply Ramush, was flown by helicopter to Camp Bondsteel and then onto Germany to be treated in an US Army hospital for shrapnel wounds. UN investigators were denied access to him during that time.

Evidence from the incident was eventually handed over after angry phone calls from Fred Pascoe, the American policeman heading the UN investigation.

The news of American reluctance to co-operate with the investigation comes amid a catalogue of accusations linking Haradinaj to murder, drugs trafficking and war crimes.

The shooting revolved around a dispute between Haradinaj and members of the Musaj family, who accuse him of ordering the murder of their brother and three other men shortly after the arrival of Nato troops in Kosovo in June 1999. The men were all part of FARK (Armed Force of the Republic of Kosovo ), a rival group to the Kosovo Liberation Army.

Three Musaj brothers had visited Haradinaj's father to demand the bones of their brother, a right they had according to Albanian custom. Haradinaj admits he went to the Musaj family home at around one in the morning to stop the brothers from visiting his father again.

This is the second time this year Haradinaj has been caught up in violence. He was injured in a fight with Russian soldiers at a K-For checkpoint in the spring. Western diplomats say he has damaged his party's prospects in UN-organised local elections due this October.

This latest incident does not appear to have damaged his contacts with US military or political figures.

His party officials were invited to a discussion on the future of Kosovo at a meeting organised by the US state department. He himself is currently in Washington on a fund-raising trip and as the guest of a US Congressman, Benjamin Gillman.

His standing with the international community is summed up by British officials who describe him as 'one of the few former commanders of the KLA who can deliver'. They say he was crucial in smoothing over the transition of the KLA from a guerrilla army to a civilian-based national guard.

But British military personnel who liaised with Haradinaj before and during the Nato bombing campaign paint a different picture. One former soldier, who served with the Kosovo Verification Mission, described him as 'a psychopath' and accused him of terrorising his own men and the local population into loyalty to him. 'He would beat his own men to maintain a kind of military discipline,' he said.

'Someone would pass him some information and he would disappear for two hours. The end result would be several bodies in a ditch,' he added

The man said he was also present when Ramush 'went to deal with' an Albanian family who had let Serb police into their house. The incident matches a human rights report issued by the OSCE (Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe) last year in which seven masked men entered a house in the village of Gornja Lucka. Two men were beaten and a third was taken to a nearby canal and never seen again.

During this time the same former soldier says Haradinaj was maintaining daily contact with American military personnel in the US and that these links were then taken over by Nato at the beginning of the bombing campaign in Kosovo.

Another alleged victim of Ramush's men was Suad Qorraj, who had operated a satellite telephone for a rival KLA commander during the war. His family say he went missing from the town of Decani on 23 June 1999, two weeks after the end of the war. On 1 August Suad's charred remains were found in a nearby forest. The burial notice said he had been 'killed by Serbs'.

A year on from Suad's death, Haradinaj still wields considerable power in western Kosovo. 'He can very easily bring the area to a halt,' says Robert Charmbury, UN administrator of the biggest town in the region, Pec, citing as evidence the fight against Russian peace keepers in which the town was 'blockaded in minutes'.

The Alliance party has strong representation on local municipal boards and is discussing the possibility of a pact with the Kosovan Democratic Party (PDK), led by Hashim Thaci, former political leader of the KLA. Such a deal might squeeze out the favourites to win in the region, the Democratic League of Kosovo, in October's elections.

Whatever the outcome of the polls, senior UN officials are concerned about Haradinaj's long-term impact on the province. One aide claims Haradinaj is now financed by two men, Naser Kelmendi and Ekrem Lluka, both of whom are suspected to be involved in smuggling. UN police reports, seen by The Observer, go further and describe Lluka as trafficking drugs and cigarettes in Greece, Kosovo, Albania and Italy.

Meanwhile the Musaj brothers are worried about what Haradinaj will do in the next few weeks. 'If he doesn't attack us before the elections he'll attack us afterwards,' said Sadic Musaj. He and his brother have already built up the walls around their compound in case of another attack. He doubts however whether anybody will take action against Ramush. 'Nothing will happen, he has strong people behind him.'

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World Kosovo Serbs kept away from anti-violence rally by threat of violence

Yahoo News
Sunday, September 10 8:17 PM SGT
http://sg.dailynews.yahoo.com/headlines/world/afp/article.html?s=singapore/headlines/000910/world/afp/Kosovo_Serbs_kept_away_from_anti-violence_rally_by_threat_of_violence.html

PRISTINA, Yugoslavia, Sept 10 (AFP) - Members of Kosovo's Serbian minority gathered to pray for peace at an Orthodox monastery Sunday, after missing a "Day against violence" for security reasons, a community spokesman said.

Father Sava Janjic said that Serbian representatives had been warned by "highly placed" UN officials not to attend a rally held in Pristina on Saturday to launch a campaign for tolerance.

But a spokeswoman for UN administrator Bernard Kouchner, said that he had been "very disappointed" that a representative of the Serbian National Council (SNV), Rada Trajkovic, had not come to the rally.

"We heard that Bishop Artemije (president of the SNV) had told her not to come," Susan Manuel said.

For his part, Sava, Artemije's spokesman, said: "From a very high level from the UN mission we were told that it was not safe to be together, it could have been dangerous, there could have been attacks. We listened to the advice.

"We must be aware that people can be killed in the streets because they speak another language."

Around 6,000 Kosovo Albanians packed the centre of Pristina Saturday for a rally held as part of a campaign against the political and ethnic violence that has wracked Kosovo since the end of its civil war.

The leaders of Kosovo's Albanian and Serbian communities met in Airlie House, Virginia in July under US auspices to sign a joint declaration in favour of tolerance, but attempts to transform the goodwill into action once the parties returned to Kosovo have been dogged by disagreement.

At Saturday's rally the province's chief UN adminsitrator, Bernard Kouchner, provoked a barrage of boos and whistles when he repeated a phrase -- "everyone in Kosovo is equal" -- in Serbian.

Members of Kosovo's Bosniak and Turk minorities addressed the crowd and were well received, but hatred of the Serbs still runs high and a plan to allow moderate Serb leaders to address the rally was abandoned.

"We understood that the day was an opportunity for Kosovo Albanians to express their strong opposition to violence," Sava said, "The Serbs are not able to do anything they have to be patient."

Sava said that Serbs would gather on the first day of every month at the monastery in Gracanica, central Kosovo, to pray for an end to violence.

Hundreds of Serbs have been killed or injured and around 187,000 non-Albanians, 90 percent of them Serbs, have fled Kosovo since Kouchner's UN mission took over the province in June last year, according to the latest figures from the UN High Commission for Refugees.

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Reform at the U.N.

New York Times
September 10, 2000
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/09/10/opinion/L10SEC.html

To the Editor:

Re "Annan Says All Nations Must Cooperate to Solve Problems Like War and Poverty" (news article, Sept. 6):

Creating more permanent members for the Security Council of the United Nations is an overdue reform. Membership of this body should include Brazil, Canada, India, Nigeria, Germany and Japan. Furthermore, no member should have the power of veto. A veto, however, could be brought about by the votes of one- third of all members. Africa must have at least one permanent seat in this most august of forums.

ERNEST UKEY London, Sept. 6, 2000

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Industry's Global Role

New York Times
September 10, 2000
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/09/10/opinion/L10GLO.html

To the Editor:

In a Sept. 3 front-page article, Mark Malloch Brown, administrator of the United Nations Development Program, is quoted as saying "the primary source of finance for development is going to come out of the private portion of the global and national economy."

This overlooks two important points: Policy decisions that emerge from national legislatures undergo a system of checks and balances and reflect the will of the people. If critical decisions become a reflection of private interests, what countervailing forces will balance these decisions?

Second, private companies are profit-driven and answer first and foremost to their stockholders. How can vital problems like environmental degradation and global working conditions be addressed by multinational corporations with interests that may vary widely from the majority of the world population's?

MICHAEL DESTEFANO Brooklyn, Sept. 3, 2000

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Premier of India Hails Summit

New York Times
September 10, 2000
By JIM O'GRADY
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/09/10/nyregion/10STAT.html

The prime minister of India, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, took to a stage on a Little League baseball diamond on Staten Island yesterday at a rally for about 2,000 Indian-American supporters. He spoke for about an hour, and in American political lingo, he seemed to succeed in pleasing his base.

Speaking slowly in Hindi, and remaining seated because of arthritis in his knees, Mr. Vajpayee, 75, began by praising the recently concluded Millennium Summit at the United Nations, in which he and more than 150 other government leaders took part. And with about 50 Hindu clerics occupying another stage to his right, he told the audience of immigrants that they could be particularly proud of India for its policy of religious tolerance.

Both remarks had controversial undertones.

At the summit meeting last week, Mr. Vajpayee criticized Pakistan's military ruler, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, for telling leaders at the United Nations that "the people of Kashmir remain deprived of justice." The largely Hindu India and the predominantly Muslim Pakistan have disputed ownership of Kashmir since both gained independence in 1947.

When Mr. Vajpayee's turn came to address the summit meeting, he reinforced India's claim that the current Kashmiri separatist movement relied on terrorism and support from Pakistan.

Coming on the heels of that dispute, yesterday's event drew about 50 Pakistani-American demonstrators, who stood behind police barricades and held signs that read, "Indian Forces Out of Kashmir" and "Don't Lie, Vajpayee."

Bindu Doshi, a 41-year-old social worker from Flushing, Queens, who came dressed in a purple sari, said she, too, came to hear about Kashmir. "I'm interested to know how the prime minister is going to tackle the terrorism that is going on there," she said. She added that she had tried to speak about the issue to the demonstrators, but a police officer separated them when discussion became too heated.

And the prime minister's expressions of support for religious tolerance in India were not as simple as they may have seemed.

Mr. Vajpayee presides over a 24- party coalition government as the leader of the Bharatiya Janata party. Keeping that coalition together for two years has not been easy, said Prakash Parekh, the executive editor of News India, a New York-based English-language magazine on Indian affairs.

Mr. Parekh said in an interview yesterday that Mr. Vajpayee's moderation on religious issues has made him "tremendously popular amongst Americans of Indian origin," while rankling some coalition members whose parties have strong religious affiliations.

But among those who came to hear him, there seemed to be little but enthusiasm for the prime minister. The crowd was primed for his entrance with upbeat ragas played on a sound system and a cleric who led a rousing chant of "victory to Mother India."

Mr. Vajpayee entered to a standing ovation from the well-appointed crowd, which remained standing through renditions of the American and Indian national anthems.

Shefali Asthana, a recent graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said she came from Boston for "the great honor" of hearing Mr. Vajpayee speak. "Growing up, I've always been taught that India is the mother of my heritage," she said. "I am here because he represents that, and not so much for the politics."

Though Mr. Vajpayee's visit to Staten Island drew a crowd yesterday, he has been to the borough many times before on less high-profile visits. He is a friend of Mukund Mody, a rally organizer who lives in Todt Hill, not far from South Beach, where the Little League baseball field is located.

The rally concluded with a fund- raising dinner for several hundred supporters under an enormous tent. Navtej Sarna, a spokesman at the Indian Embassy in Washington, said the rally was the only large public event scheduled during the prime minister's 10-day visit to the United States, which concludes on Sept. 17 with a state dinner at the White House. He said Mr. Vajpayee is scheduled to address a joint session of Congress on Sept. 14, followed the next day by "full-scale bilateral talks" with President Clinton.

-------- u.s.

Congress Poised for Big Increase in U.S. Spending

New York Times
September 10, 2000
By STEVEN A. HOLMES
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/09/10/politics/10SPEN.html

WASHINGTON, Sept. 9 - Cushioned by a growing surplus, Congress is poised to approve large increases in spending by federal agencies, pushing the national budget to record levels.

Top-ranking Republicans predict that the perennial year-end wrangling between Congress and the White House will result in a federal budget for the 2001 fiscal year that allocates at least $614 billion, and probably quite a bit more, for discretionary spending.

That figure would represent a 5 percent increase over the $586 billion Congress approved last year after a heated debate with the Clinton administration that delayed final approval of the last spending bills until Nov. 19, seven weeks after the beginning of the fiscal year on Oct. 1.

The figure would also exceed the nearly $600 billion Congress set in April as a ceiling for discretionary spending for the coming fiscal year. Discretionary spending includes everything in the budget except the automatic payments for items like Social Security benefits and interest payments on the national debt.

"I think everyone recognizes that we're going to have to lift the budget caps," as the limits on discretionary spending are known, said Senator Ted Stevens, a Republican of Alaska who is chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee.

The widespread view among Congressional Republicans that federal spending will rise significantly in the next budget is causing disquiet among the party's more conservative fiscal hawks. Some of them console themselves by pointing out that the increases are taking place during a time of federal budget surpluses rather than deficits.

The increase in spending is brought on not only by the anticipated surplus, but also by pressures from the White House to agree to some of its priorities as a condition for letting members of Congress leave town for the campaign, and by the demands of individual lawmakers on their leaders for some fiscal bacon to take home to their districts.

A $288 billion measure for the military that includes a 3.7 percent pay raise for American soldiers, sailors and aviators has already been approved by Congress and signed by President Clinton, putting Congress well along the path to exceeding the $600 billion mark.

Those bills that are left would pay for foreign aid and domestic, non- military items - everything from the federal courts, air traffic control radars and interstate highways, to schools, the Head Start program, veterans' hospitals, water treatment plants, national parks and the National Endowment for the Arts.

Since the Republican takeover of Congress in 1994 these items have prompted down-to-the wire fights between Congress and the administration, and, in 1995, the brief shutdown of the government, an action that inflicted grave political wounds on Congressional Republicans.

The fact that many Republicans are supporting expanded federal spending illustrates how the blossoming surplus and the desire to maintain the fragile majority in Congress have eroded the Republicans' traditional fiscal restraints.

"The era of relative fiscal conservatism that the Reagan folks tried to implement is over," said Stanley E. Collender, a managing director of the Federal Budget Consulting Group at Fleischman-Hillard, a public relations company.

Last year, Congress approved a budget that technically was within spending ceilings mandated by the Balanced Budget Act of 1997. But the lawmakers were able to stay under the ceilings only by declaring $24 billion in spending for items like the financing of the 2000 Census to be emergencies and not subject to the law's restrictions.

This year, however, Congress appears to be ready to dispense with such gimmicks and unabashedly approve large spending increases.

"The caps are irrelevant," said Senator Slade Gorton, a Republican from Washington State who is chairman of the Interior Subcommittee of the Senate Appropriations Committee. "Nobody pays any attention to them anymore."

This year's tussle will focus on a few major spending bills and the battles will be as much over how the money is spent as how much is allocated. Also, some fights will be over legislative language known as riders that are attached to spending bills.

Some of the most notable battles will be fought over these bills:

¶ The Labor-Health and Human Services bill: Always one of the most contentious of the spending measures, this year's version will involve a fight over Mr. Clinton's proposal to provide $1.3 billion for school repairs and $1.8 billion for the president's seven-year program to hire 100,000 teachers. Congress wants to spend less on both initiatives and give school boards the option of spending the money for other purposes.

The Interior bill: Versions passed by the Senate and the House are at least $1 billion less than Mr. Clinton requested. Also the House version provides only $184 million - far less than the $600 million Mr. Clinton wants - for the "Lands Legacy" program, which allows the government to purchase and protect environmentally sensitive land.

The Foreign Operations bill: This $13.3 billion foreign aid bill will feature the perennial fight over whether the government can finance international family planning organizations that use their own money to perform abortions in foreign countries or lobby foreign governments on abortion policy.

With Democrats needing only seven seats to gain control of the House and with a sense that even their Senate majority is threatened, Republicans are eager to reach quick agreement with Mr. Clinton over the spending bills so that they can return to campaign for re-election.

The pressure could well bring Congressional leaders to accept spending increases in negotiations with the White House, some Republicans say.

"We know Clinton's going to want more money," said Representative Ray LaHood, Republican of Illinois. "It's just a matter of what's the amount. I don't even know if we're going to ask him how he's going to spend it. It's, `How much do you want?' "

At a meeting on Thursday, Speaker J. Dennis Hastert told his Republican colleagues that they should be prepared to loosen the purse strings when it comes to the 11 spending bills Congress still must approve to keep the government running, said several people who attended the session.

As he left the meeting, however, Mr. Hastert was noncommittal over how much spending Republicans would be willing to support, or if they would support any increase at all.

"We haven't made that decision yet," Mr. Hastert said.

Discussions between White House and Congressional staffers on the spending bills will begin on Monday, said a senior administration official who spoke on the condition of anonymity. The official stressed that the two sides would merely "catalog the list of things that needed to be addressed," and would not engage in substantive negotiations.

Republicans are deeply worried that they will be drawn into protracted debates with the White House. Since the government shutdown in 1995, many say that the White House has gained political leverage and could keep upping the ante.

"After the White House won in '95, they knew they had gained the upper hand," said a Congressional staff member involved in the budget process. "The White House knew that any government shutdown would be blamed on the Republicans. So they no longer had any desire to compromise."

But Republican leaders worry that if they give in to the higher levels of spending that are requested by the White House, they will be deluged by requests from many of their own members - especially those locked in tight re-election races - to finance their pet projects.

"I get handed letters every day with more and requests from members," said Representative C. W. Young, chairman of the House Appropriations Committee. The longer the process is played out, Mr. Young added, the more requests he will get.

The prospect of further demands for increases from the White House and other members of Congress leads some Republicans to predict that the final budget for discretionary spending will even exceed what the administration originally sought.

"The president wanted $621 billion. It will be much higher than that," said Representative John E. Porter, an Illinois Republican who is chairman of the subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee that provides money for the Labor, Health and Human Services and Education departments.

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Foreign policy deals looking tougher

USA Today
09/10/00- Updated 08:24 PM ET
By Barbara Slavin, USA TODAY
http://usatoday.com/news/washdc/ncssun03.htm

WASHINGTON - There comes a point in every lame duck administration when foreign leaders begin to hedge their bets, looking toward the next occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

Some observers think that moment has now come for Bill Clinton, and that big breakthroughs in U.S. foreign policy will have to wait until after Election Day.

"The U.S. ship of state is pulling into port for a command change," says Donald Gregg, president of the Korea Society. North Korea is not about to "do us any favors" after its leaders were subjected to a humiliating search by American Airlines last week, prompting them to cancel plans to attend the U.N. Millennium Summit, he says.

But veteran U.S. diplomats say presidents can pull off last-minute agreements if the sides are close. President Bush, for example, signed the broadest arms-reduction pact in history with the Russians on Jan. 3, 1993 - just 17 days before he ceded power to Clinton. Unsure about Clinton, then-Russian President Boris Yeltsin was as eager as Bush to nail down an agreement.

"There may be a rush to closure," says Edward Djerejian, a former assistant secretary of State. But when agreements need to be underwritten by major aid packages, as is the case with Israeli-Arab negotiations, "the parties want to insure that compromises are made to an administration that can carry out its commitments," Djerejian says.

Clinton, who has devoted more time than any other president to the Middle East, would love to cap his presidency with a final deal between Israel and Palestinians.

"The president remains committed to it," White House chief of staff John Podesta told the Fox News Sunday television program.

Giving Clinton one more chance, Palestinians postponed Sunday a plan to declare unilateral statehood Wednesday, the seventh anniversary of the signing of the first Palestinian-Israeli agreement on the White House lawn. Lower-level consultations are to resume today at the United Nations.

But it is getting late to submit to Congress the multibillion-dollar package that would upgrade Israeli security and compensate Palestinian refugees remaining outside a Palestinian state. With the possibility that Israel will face new elections soon and the key sticking point - Jerusalem - so contentious, both Palestinians and Israelis appear to be retrenching and repositioning themselves for a negotiating hiatus.

The outcome of the Nov. 7 elections could have an impact on some unfinished foreign business, experts say. Chas Freeman, a former ambassador and assistant secretary of Defense, recalls being involved "in a very high risk negotiation" at the end of the Reagan administration, trying to get Cuban troops out of Angola and South African forces to quit Namibia.

"It was enormously complicated by election-eve politics," Freeman says. "The Angolans thought a Democratic administration would be easier on them; the South Africans wondered about doing a deal that could be undone by the next administration. But we managed to bring the whole thing to closure. It helped when it became clear that the Republicans would continue in office."

Among countries calculating the effect of a U.S. change:

Iran. Both Republican candidate George W. Bush and Democrat Al Gore say they will maintain U.S. trade sanctions until Iran changes objectionable behavior on terrorism and toward religious minorities. But "the Iranians think that if Bush becomes president, the oil companies will have carte blanche," says Haleh Esfandiari, an Iran expert at the Woodrow Wilson Center. North Korea. A Bush win could prod the Pyongyang government to expel a handful of Japanese terrorists. Their presence keeps North Korea on a State Department list of terrorist-sponsoring states, which led to last week's undiplomatic search.

But it is already too late for this administration to remove North Korea from the list because a six-month notification to Congress is required.

U.S. officials are also pursuing discussions to curb North Korea's missile development by having other nations launch Korean satellites, an idea first raised by North Korean leader Kim Jong Il with Russian leader Vladimir Putin. But experts say the North Koreans are unlikely to make concessions now that Clinton has met their key objective - postponing deployment of missile defenses targeted largely toward North Korea. "It's a dormant period," Gregg says.

China. The Senate this week is expected to approve permanent normal trade status for China, the key unfinished business for both countries. However, Clinton's suggestions to Chinese President Jiang Zemin at the United Nations last week that China resume talks with Taiwan and curb missile exports to Pakistan were received with little enthusiasm.

For those within the administration, the last few months are a mixed bag, State Department officials concede. On the one hand, there is a feeling that it is possible to take risks, particularly after the presidential elections are over. On the other hand, there is concern about ensuring continuity in U.S. foreign policy.

"The general proposition is that the more lame you are, the more difficult it is to start something new," says Richard Haass, a senior member of President Bush's National Security Council. An exception was Bush's intervention in Somalia in support of U.N. peacekeeping.

With new appointments stalled and the incumbent administration hemorrhaging talent, Freeman says, "the country goes into a period of extreme self-absorption and it takes a serious event, indeed, to awaken us from our coma."

-------- OTHER
-------- environment

Engineers of Power Inside the Army Corps

Washington Post
Sunday , September 10, 2000 ; A01
By Michael Grunwald
http://washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A38140-2000Sep8.html?GXHC_gx_session_id_FutureTenseContentServer=3eb07928888f8438

EAST PRAIRIE, Mo. - The developer of a huge project to control flooding in Missouri's soggy southeastern bootheel expects to drain 36,000 acres of wetlands along the Mississippi River. That's almost enough wetlands to cover the District of Columbia - and nearly twice as many as all of America's developers were permitted to touch last year.

The developer plans to plug a quarter-mile gap in an earthen levee to lock the river into its channel, then build two giant pumps to get rid of rain. But while the $65 million venture is being promoted as an economic lifeline for water-weary East Prairie, the developer's fine print suggests this farm town will flood almost as often after it's built.

The consensus in the Clinton administration is that this megaproject must be stopped. "An environmental debacle," says a White House aide. "Absolutely ridiculous," scoffs Bill Hartwig, a regional Fish and Wildlife Service director. "A crazy idea," agrees James Lee Witt, head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency. "Probably the dumbest project around," says a top Environmental Protection Agency official.

The Army Corps of Engineers is part of the Clinton administration, too. It is a public works agency in the Pentagon chain of command, reporting to an assistant Army secretary. It is also an environmental agency, legally responsible for protecting the nation's dwindling wetlands - ecologically sensitive areas ranging from seasonally flooded farmland to year-round swamps. But the Corps has a different take on the St. John's Bayou-New Madrid Floodway Project.

It's the developer.

And in many ways, this pariah of a project is par for the Corps, one of the oldest, largest and most unusual agencies in the federal government. It is an executive branch bureaucracy that takes marching orders from Congress, a military-run organization with an overwhelmingly civilian work force, an environmental regulator despised by environmentalists. The Corps has $62 billion worth of civil works projects underway - three times the federal spending on cancer research over the last decade. It has about 35,000 employees - more than the Energy, Labor and Education departments put together.

This series will explore how an agency born as a regiment in George Washington's army has built clout in the city that bears his name, and how it uses that clout to reconfigure the American landscape. A Washington Post review of Corps activities across the nation, supported by more than 1,000 interviews and tens of thousands of pages of documents, found that the agency is converting its strong congressional relationships into billions of dollars' worth of taxpayer-funded water projects, many with significant environmental costs and minimal economic benefits.

Members of Congress authorize the projects to steer federal money to their districts, and the Corps often justifies them with questionable technical studies. This pro-construction mentality has been fueled by Corps commanders, who have launched an agency-wide campaign to "seek growth opportunities," internal memos show. The result is a fragmented national network of channelized rivers and deepened ports, cobbled together by log-rolling and deal-cutting by individual lawmakers, instead of comprehensive planning by federal officials.

The East Prairie plan has the hallmarks of many of the Corps projects reviewed by The Post. It has fierce support from local residents as well as a fervent congressional advocate, Rep. Jo Ann Emerson (R-Mo.). The Corps justified it with a distorted cost-benefit analysis - the assumptions included a 2.5 percent interest rate that dates back to the Eisenhower administration - and deflected strong objections from environmental agencies. The bulk of the project's benefits will flow to a few well-connected local farmers, but the federal rules that would have forced them to help pay for it were waived in Washington. And despite the administration's outrage, the project may soon become a reality.

Corps commanders refused scores of interview requests, under orders from Gen. Joe Ballard, the agency's recently retired chief engineer. But in written responses to questions from The Post, and in their public statements, they have called the Corps a model of public service, firmly committed to promoting economic development, newly dedicated to conserving ecosystems and federal funds as well. They describe the Corps as an apolitical military organization, simply following orders produced by the democratic process.

Earlier this year - after a whistle-blower charged that Corps officials had manipulated an economic study to justify billion-dollar lock expansions on the Mississippi River, and after leaked documents showed that senior commanders had drawn up a "Project Growth Initiative" to boost the agency's budget and expand its missions - Ballard angrily told a Senate subcommittee that the Corps is not a "rogue agency."

"I am confident that the Army Corps of Engineers is pursuing its mission with the utmost professionalism and integrity, and will continue to serve this nation well," he said. Almost all modern presidents have clashed with the Corps - and the Corps has usually won. Presidents Roosevelt, Truman, Johnson and Nixon all considered reforms that went nowhere. In 1977, President Carter tried to kill a "hit list" of 19 water projects, an effort that not only failed, but permanently damaged his relationship with Congress. In 1986, President Reagan did force Congress to make local communities pay more for Corps projects, but only in exchange for a costly new round of projects. This spring, President Clinton's Army secretary, Louis Caldera, tried to reaffirm executive branch control of the Corps, only to withdraw his proposed reforms a week later after a Capitol Hill backlash.

Now another intense battle is raging over the Corps - over who should control the agency, whether it should grow or shrink, and how much it should shift its focus from construction projects that degrade the environment to restoration projects that clean up old damage. It may not be the sexiest of Beltway brawls, but it will have a dramatic effect on America.

Corps levees and floodwalls protect millions of homes, farms and businesses. Its coastal ports and barge channels carry 2 billion tons of freight annually. Its dams generate one-fourth of America's hydroelectric power. Its water recreation sites attract more visitors than the National Park Service's. Its land holdings would cover Vermont and New Hampshire.

But the Corps may have its greatest impact on nature. It quietly presides over many of the nation's hottest environmental issues, from oil drilling on Alaska's North Slope to dam removal on the Snake River to water wars on the Missouri River to restoration of Florida's Everglades. It is in the thick of furors over endangered species, endangered rivers, ocean dumping, beach erosion, agricultural pollution, floodplain sprawl. It cleans up industrial and nuclear waste. In its regulatory role, it approves thousands of private projects that destroy modest amounts of wetlands; in its construction role, it is pushing several public projects that could destroy huge amounts of wetlands. So the future direction of the Corps will help determine the future health of America's environment.

To conservationists, that is not a comforting thought. They know the Corps as a dredge-and-destroy agency that builds massive dams, dikes and levees, domesticating wild rivers into straight and narrow barge canals. Its leaders have pledged to reinvent the Corps as a "greener" organization, but they still battle traditional environmental agencies on almost every major issue. To many environmentalists, the Corps is still Public Enemy Number One, and almost all of its major projects are still greeted with environmental lawsuits.

"The Corps still doesn't get it," said Hartwig, whose Fish and Wildlife regional office is fighting the project in East Prairie. "They still think they can defeat Mother Nature with brilliant engineering. They talk about the environment, but they don't really believe in it."

Joseph Westphal, the Clinton appointee who oversees the Corps, argues that it is unfair to dwell on the past, on ancient boondoggles built under orders from Congress in eras oblivious to ecological concerns. The real story, he says, is that the Corps has begun to appreciate the value of flora and fauna, and that its spending on environmental programs has quadrupled since 1992. The modern Corps is planting trees, creating wetlands, even dismantling a few of its dams, dikes and levees. It is restoring some of the river bends and backwaters it once wiped out, chauffeuring salmon past the fish-pulverizing dams it once built, and preparing to lead a $7.8 billion effort to undo the damage it once inflicted upon the Everglades.

"I can't say there's as much progress as I'd like, but there's definitely progress, real progress," said Westphal, the assistant Army secretary for civil works.

Westphal, an amiable political science professor who once ran the congressional Sun Belt Caucus, is supposed to supervise the civil works program, but he has rarely intervened in Corps decisions. Even though the overwhelming majority of the agency's employees are civilians, military commanders run its 49 districts and divisions, where the real work gets done. And under Ballard, a three-star general who pounds out e-mails in capital letters, the Corps virtually declared independence from the Clinton administration.

So while the Corps is showing some signs of modernization, it is also marching ahead with a new round of old-style projects, from the world's largest water pump in the Mississippi Delta to the world's largest beach replenishment along the New Jersey coast, from a $641 million lock replacement in a New Orleans canal to a $377 million harbor deepening in Wilmington, N.C. Local interests propose the projects, and members of Congress ram them into law, but none of them could happen without the cooperation of the Corps.

The East Prairie project is particularly anachronistic, and not only because of its outsize impact on wetlands. Its main flood control protection is not for East Prairie, but for waterlogged farmland in a sparsely inhabited area called the New Madrid Floodway. It's called a floodway because in a serious Mississippi rise, the Corps is supposed to let the river overwhelm the entire 180-square-mile area to protect more populated river communities.

In other words, the Corps is now trying to provide flood protection for an area it may end up flooding on purpose.

"It's just insane," says Mark Boone, a fisheries biologist for the Missouri Department of Conservation. "It's like the rest of the world woke up, and the Corps is still asleep."

So on one hand, the federal government is paying people billions of dollars to move homes and businesses away from floodplains; on the other hand, the Corps is pushing an economic development project not only in a natural floodplain, but in an official floodway. Meanwhile, at a time when the nation is officially committed to restoring wetlands - which serve as kitchens and nurseries for countless species, filter water that ends up in faucets, and reduce flood damages by absorbing excess water - this project would destroy wetlands.

The project would also boost agricultural production in Missouri when the government is spending billions to take flood-prone farmland out of production - and billions more to prop up and bail out farmers suffering from low prices, which have been depressed by overproduction. And while an executive order by President Clinton promoted "nonstructural" approaches to reducing flood damages, this levee-and-pump project is decidedly structural.

"On a lot of levels, the project makes no sense," said FEMA's Witt.

The Perennial Campaign

In the beginning the Mississippi ran free, meandering around hairpin turns, changing channels like a bored teenager. It was a complex river of sloughs, sandbars and side channels, flooding across its valley every spring, nourishing thick canopies of oak, cottonwood and cypress. Its bard, Mark Twain, wrote that mankind simply "cannot tame that lawless stream, cannot curb it or confine it, cannot say to it Go here or Go there, and make it obey."

The Corps of Engineers has never accepted "cannot."

Today the river has been tamed into a reliable commercial waterway by the Corps, confined within earthen levees by the Corps, straightened and shortened and simplified by the Corps. Its valley has been cleared and converted from swampland to farmland, and cities have sprouted along its banks. It has been imprisoned into a single channel, where its barges float half the nation's inland freight.

It's also a sick river.

Corps levees look like ordinary hills along the riverbank, but they have severed the Mississippi from more than 90 percent of its floodplain, eliminating millions of acres of wetlands that had attracted fish, shorebirds and other wildlife. Dams and dikes that stabilized the main barge channel have degraded biologically diverse back channels. The river's water quality has deteriorated steadily, pouring pesticides into the Gulf of Mexico's oxygen-deprived "dead zone." And changes in sediment flows have depleted Louisiana's coastal marshes, which are vanishing so fast that some experts are calling for a restoration project twice the size of the Everglades mission.

The story of the Mississippi is in many ways the story of the Corps' civil works program, which has focused on the river ever since Congress inaugurated it with $75,000 in 1824. The transformation of the Mississippi reflects the can-do genius of the Corps, an energetic military organization that fortified Bunker Hill, built the Washington Monument, surveyed the West, dug the Panama Canal and supervised the Manhattan Project. (Its motto, "Essayons," is French for "Let us try.") But it also illustrates the hubris of the Corps, an agency that has historically treated nature as an enemy to be conquered, equating engineering and control with progress.

Today, its leaders speak about "working in harmony with nature," but the Corps still proudly mobilizes for its "Annual Campaign Against the Mighty Mississippi." Burton Kemp, a former Corps geologist in Mississippi, says no one should be surprised when the agency takes a militaristic approach to the environment. "I'm afraid it's not the Corps of Scientists. It's not the Corps of Biologists," he sighed. "It's the Corps of Engineers."

The Annual Campaign began in earnest after the Civil War, when a headstrong Corps general named Andrew Humphreys, fresh from losing half his division in the Union's disastrous charge at Fredericksburg, launched his equally disastrous "levees-only" policy for controlling the Mississippi. As John Barry recounted in his history, "Rising Tide," the plan was revealed as a colossal blunder in the 1927 flood, when levee breaks left nearly 1 million people homeless and 16 million acres underwater. Humphreys underestimated the power of the Mississippi, which drains two of every five drops of rain that fall on the continental United States. His levees cut off the river's outlets, so all that water squeezed between them had nowhere to go but up.

Nevertheless, Congress gave the Corps full power over the river in 1928, and the agency revised its strategy. It continued to strengthen and extend the Mississippi levees - they are now longer than the Great Wall of China - but it also built a system of reservoirs, cutoffs and diversions to ease the pressure on them. The system included the New Madrid Floodway, an emergency relief valve, 180 extra square miles of room for the river to spread out over in case of high water.

The plan called for the river to enter the floodway up in Birds Point, where the Corps would dynamite a hole in the levee, and return to its channel down in New Madrid, where the Corps left a 1,500-foot gap in the levee. The Corps executed the plan in 1937, and it helped save upstream communities such as Cairo, Ill. In 1997, the Corps again had barges loaded with explosives and ready to blow, but the upstream flood subsided just in time.

Here in the waterlogged agricultural bootheel of southeast Missouri, though, that gap is about as popular as the corn borer or boll weevil. The Corps has used the emergency plan to drown the area only once. But the Mississippi backs through the gap and into the floodway almost every spring, damaging crops, blocking roads, flushing thick streams of wriggling fish into the fields. The area is still known as Swampeast Missouri, and its residents see the gap as a physical symbol of unfairness, a separation between them and better-off, better-educated, better-protected communities.

The floodway project would finally close the gap.

"The Corps built flood control for everyone else: It's our turn now," says Martha Ellen Black, director of a family support center in East Prairie. "We don't deserve to live like people in a Third World country. We have a right to equal protection."

Closing the Gap

East Prairie sent President Clinton a strange promotional video a few years ago, almost bragging that half its 4,000 residents have no high school diploma, that a third of them live in poverty. "Living the American Dream in East Prairie is a little harder," the narrator intoned. Today, town officials eagerly show off 1989 photographs of the public housing authority's offices underwater, of the nursing home surrounded by sandbags, of national champion oak trees drowning in an eight-foot deluge. Floods, they say, are the root of their problems.

And the Corps project is supposed to change everything.

Locals expect it to attract new businesses, ensure emergency access, promote tourism, bolster schools, revive civic pride, even stop mysterious waterborne fungal infections. And while East Prairie is not actually located in the floodway, supporters are quick to cite the project's benefits for the largest town that is, Pinhook, whose 52 residents all happen to be black; they settled in the floodway because whites wouldn't sell them land anywhere else.

The entire area considers the project a matter of survival - and an entitlement, since every other community along the Mississippi seems to have a Corps project. So Rep. Emerson has carried on a crusade begun by her late husband and predecessor, Rep. Bill Emerson, relentlessly pressuring Corps officials, lunching with Westphal, steering funds the project's way. She has also led the fight on Capitol Hill against the administration's efforts to "green" the Corps.

"The elite environmentalist types want to disenfranchise these people, but I'm going to fight for them," said Emerson, a former restaurant industry lobbyist who is a member of the Appropriations Committee. "They're an endangered species, too, as much as any of these mussels or fish or whatever."

Congress first authorized the levee closure in 1954, but the Corps never got the go-ahead to move dirt. Then in 1986, Bill Emerson tucked an expanded project into the Water Resources Development Act. That was not hard for a member of the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, which oversees the Corps. On Capitol Hill, it is still considered almost bad form to oppose a water project in another member's district, much less a mere authorization, which does not ensure funding. Corps authorizations have long been viewed as congressional prerogatives, nearly as automatic as the franking privilege or special license plates.

But 1986 was the year President Reagan challenged the prerogative, holding a pork-loaded water bill hostage until Congress agreed to boost local cost-sharing requirements. That put the floodway project on hold, because the "local sponsor," the area's levee board, could not pay its share. The break came in 1994, when Clinton declared ailing East Prairie a rural "enterprise community," and Bill Emerson drafted an amendment allowing federal enterprise funds to cover most of the project's local burden. His amendment became law after his death in 1996, and Vice President Gore's office approved the use of federal funds for the project.

So the Corps began a study.

The Corps is supposed to conduct objective studies of proposed water projects, but it also has an obvious interest in their outcome, since it only gets to build the projects it deems worthwhile. The agency's "Strategic Vision" specifically urges Corps commanders to "target new work," and several regional commanders have pledged to set specific goals for mission and budget growth. So there is a strong incentive for Corps study managers to reach pro-project conclusions: If they don't, key legislators get angry and the Corps doesn't grow.

In fact, one Corps memo last year announced that in order to "grow the civil works program," generals in headquarters and the Mississippi Valley Division had agreed to "get creative" with economic and environmental studies. "They will be looking for ways to get [studies] to 'yes' as fast as possible," it declared. "We have been encouraged to have our study managers not take 'no' for an answer. The push to grow the program is coming from the top down." And the administration has delegated all technical oversight of Corps studies back to the Corps; Westphal merely provides "policy review," and rarely alters recommendations.

The East Prairie study was assigned to the Memphis District, which is part of the Mississippi Valley Division. In April 1999, the district reached a preliminary conclusion that the benefits slightly outweighed the costs. Last week, the Corps issued its final report, conceding that the project would cause "some loss in wetland function and value" but proposing to "overcompensate" for the losses by planting oak trees on 9,500 acres.

"The Corps says this is a worthwhile project," said Terry Redfering, president of the local Chamber of Commerce. "What else is there to say?"

Quite a bit, according to environmentalists, anti-tax activists, scientists and economists. They point out that the Corps justified the project with 1996 crop prices, which have plummeted. It justified the levee portion with a 1954 interest rate, which has tripled. (The agency says it used the rate from the year the levee was first authorized.)

Corps documents also suggest the project will have little impact on most of East Prairie itself. The agency's analysts concluded that the town is now subject to flooding about once a decade - and will still be subject to flooding about once a decade when the project is done.

Instead, the Corps found that more than 90 percent of the project's benefits would go to local corn and soybean farmers, who could increase their yields a bit if they didn't have to worry about floods. According to county land maps, the five farmers on the levee board, the "local sponsor," own more than 15,000 acres in the affected floodplain. But when the nonprofit group Environmental Defense proposed a cheaper alternative designed to improve East Prairie's drainage but leave the already subsidized farmland alone, the Corps said no.

"This project is agricultural drainage masquerading as urban flood control," says Environmental Defense senior attorney Tim Searchinger. "It's a federal gift to a few special interests."

Meanwhile, biologists describe the project as an environmental catastrophe. It would break the last natural connection to the Mississippi between Cape Girardeau, Mo., and Helena, Ark., eliminating Missouri's last swath of backwater floodplain with direct access to the river. It would cut off the seasonal floods that sustain the area's giant bottomland hardwoods - and help fish spawn outside the Mississippi's punishing currents.

Overall, the Corps predicted the project will only eliminate 167 acres of wetlands overall, an estimate Searchinger said was "directly contradicted" by the agency's own data. The Corps acknowledged that it would reduce flooding on 8,000 acres of forested wetlands and 28,000 acres of agricultural wetlands. By contrast, in its regulatory role under the Clean Water Act, the Corps permitted more than 4,000 development projects last year, affecting less than 22,000 acres of wetlands.

The EPA has ranked the floodway project "environmentally unsatisfactory," its worst rating. The Fish and Wildlife Service and the Missouri Department of Conservation have been vehemently opposed, too. Robert Sheehan and Katie Dugger, scientists whose research the Corps relied on in its environmental analysis, have submitted affidavits flatly disputing that analysis, warning of severe impacts to mussels, fish and endangered least terns. Scientists and federal agencies have also said the Corps plan to "mitigate" the damages with reforestation is inadequate even if it works, and that it probably won't work.

Community leaders reply that agricultural wetlands shouldn't count as real wetlands, and that the project's opponents care more about shorebirds and fish than people. On a tour in his plane, Dee Dill, a farmer on the levee board, pointed out miles of cornfields puddled with rain. "This area isn't a swamp anymore; it's an agricultural community," he said. "It's fine if you want to save the world, but don't do it at our expense."

On a tour in a Missouri Department of Conservation skiff, David Wissehr, a wildlife biologist, showed the area from a different angle. He pointed out angular terns swooping into streams and ditches for fish, squeaking like trampolines. A silver carp jumped two feet out of a bayou. Great blue herons flapped above the oaks. "This is a special place, and there aren't a lot like it anymore," he said. "Cut it off from the river, and you kill it."

'America's River'

This spring, the White House went to war with the Corps over the Mississippi River.

The battleground was a draft presidential order directing the Corps to "chart a new direction" for the river. The directive noted that studies have attributed half the nation's wetland losses to Corps projects along the Mississippi. It said that "the benefits of flood damage reduction have come at great expense to the floodplain and riverine ecosystems associated with the Mississippi River, which we have come to know as America's River."

The directive also would have forced the Corps to adopt higher environmental standards, review all projects affecting more than 500 acres of wetlands, and "ensure that federal water resource projects do not work against the purposes of other major federal programs, projects and expenditures."

In other words, it would have halted projects like East Prairie's.

Then Emerson found out about it. She promptly wrote a scathing letter to Clinton, calling the draft language "an extraordinary and damaging expansion of executive authority" and warning that it would "seriously undermine" federal antipoverty initiatives in the Mississippi Delta. She rounded up a bipartisan coalition of 45 co-signers. Rep. Bud Shuster (R-Pa.), the chairman of the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, wrote his own blistering letter of protest. So did Sen. Christopher Bond (R-Mo.), the most aggressive supporter of the Mississippi River lock expansions further upstream.

That was the last anyone has heard about the "new direction" order. White House aides say it's on hold. "There's too much political heat," one said. They are afraid that if Clinton issues it, Congress will just block it with legislation.

"I think it's buried. I hope it's buried," Emerson said.

Emerson believes the Corps should stick to its current direction: controlling rivers, valuing farmers over wildlife, turning uninhabited wetlands into productive dry land. Corps defenders say that without its herculean efforts to reroute water, there would be no future for floodplain communities such as Omaha or St. Louis or New Orleans - or Pinhook, the little town in the floodway. Jim Robinson, the patriarch of Pinhook, believes that if the Corps can close the levee gap, blacks from all over Missouri will flock to the area, reviving his tiny community.

But environmentalists point out that the floodway was never supposed to attract a revival; it was supposed to remain undeveloped. That's the flip side of Corps flood control projects: They can instill a false sense of security, luring pioneers into floodplains, accelerating demands for even more protection. Despite $100 billion worth of Corps projects, flood emergencies, damages and deaths are on the rise, and the federal government is spending more money than ever to move Americans out of harm's way. Meanwhile, most of the wetlands of the Mississippi basin have been drained by farmers or paved by developers, often with Corps permits. That means that most of the runoff from 31 states and two Canadian provinces now flows straight to the river, which means that it takes less water to create a horrific flood.

"We could be headed for 1927 all over again," warned Ron Nassar, coordinator of the Lower Mississippi Valley Conservation Committee, a group representing natural resource agencies from eight states. "This is a turning point for the Corps."

Environmentalists and administration officials want the Corps to turn from structural flood "control" to non-structural flood damage reduction: buying and reforesting floodplain farmland, waterproofing and elevating homes and roads, leaving nature to its own devices and moving people away from water. The idea is to save wildlife while reducing the amount of marginal farmland and river's-edge development the government needs to bail out after floods, and spending less money on giant engineering projects.

The president's Council on Environmental Quality is no longer pressing to revamp the Corps approach to flood control. But it is still considering a move to hold up three particularly intrusive structural projects. One is the floodway plan in Missouri. The other two are in the Mississippi Delta itself: the Big Sunflower River dredging project and the Yazoo Pump. The $62 million Big Sunflower initiative could endanger an ancient mussel colony believed to be the world's densest concentration of living creatures. The original plan for the $181 million pump proposed to drain three times as much wetlands acreage as the floodway project in Missouri.

The three projects are all designed to divert water away from farmers, to help them increase their yields. But the farm economy is swooning, despite record yields and record levels of federal largess. Sam Hamilton, the Fish and Wildlife Service's Southeast regional director, recently suggested in a harsh letter to the Corps that the agrarian status quo is "unsustainable" and that its policies have been "instrumental in transforming" an ecologically vibrant Mississippi River ecosystem "into a region that is considered impoverished by most social, economic and environmental standards."

But even if Clinton does try to stop the projects before his term ends, he will have to contend with Emerson, not to mention Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott (R-Miss.) and Senate Agriculture Committee Chairman Thad Cochran (R-Miss.), the protectors of the Delta projects. As Sen. George Voinovich (R-Ohio) blurted out at a recent hearing, the Corps doesn't necessarily answer to the president. Voinovich, chairman of the subcommittee that oversees the Corps, pointedly reminded his colleagues who really decides which water projects become reality.

"We don't care what the Corps cost-benefit is," Voinovich said. "We're going to build it anyhow because Congress says it's going to be built. Somebody's in charge of some appropriations committee, or another committee, and jams it through."

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Global Waffling Global Waffling: When Will We Be Sure?

New York Times
September 10, 2000
By ANDREW C. REVKIN
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/09/10/weekinreview/10REVK.html

WHEN several eminent scientists returned recently from a tourist cruise to the North Pole aboard a Russian icebreaker and reported finding water, not ice, at the top of the world, the image resonated far and wide, providing a call to arms for scientists and environmentalists who for years had been trying to convince politicians and the public that heat-trapping gases from tail pipes, power plants, even methane-belching cattle, could disrupt the climate.

But on second look, things were not nearly so simple. Although arctic experts said there were many signs of warming, including a thinning and shrinking of the polar ice cap, there was no way to link a patch of sun- dappled water at the pole to climate change.

So the question of what is happening to climate - and whether people or natural forces are to blame - returned to the realm of nuanced, statistical fuzziness, where it has been for nearly 20 years.

What a moment to lose potential clarion calls. Hundreds of negotiators from industrialized countries are to convene this week in Lyon, France, and again in late November in The Hague to try to firm up ways to cut emissions of greenhouse gases under a 1997 climate treaty called the Kyoto Protocol. The treaty was signed by the United States and 84 other countries but is in danger of falling apart because of disagreements over how to make and measure cuts.

Most climate experts are certain that global warming is real and that it threatens ecology and human prosperity, and a growing number say it is well under way. But policy makers, always eager for black and white, have once again found science offering shades of gray.

Indeed, global warming is a classic example of the persistent mismatch between the language of science and the needs of policy.

Science operates by steadily chipping away at ideas through experiments or observations, eventually revealing truths, but often obliquely - by eliminating what is not true. The bigger the idea, the harder it often is to verify with precision. The result is persistent debate, whether the issue is how to manage forests to reduce wildfires, how to set limits for chemicals in food to prevent cancer, or - in this case - how to figure out whether people are dangerously fiddling with the global thermostat.

But before policy makers can try to sell potentially costly or difficult solutions, say, taxing fossil fuels, they need to build a clear and compelling case that strong action is called for.

The lesson in all of this, according to climate scientists - some of whom think humanity is already in big trouble - is that no one should expect some alarm bell to start ringing to summon societies to take action.

The evidence is subtle and complex, and probably will be so for a long time to come, said Jerry D. Mahlman, who is retiring as director of the federal Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory in Princeton, N.J. "This is going to be incremental forever," he said.

Those increments continue to add up, he and other climate experts said. Past climate ups and downs mostly mesh well with natural variations in the brightness of the sun or the cooling effect of parasol-like plumes of particles spewed by big volcanoes. But the recent warming, according to several recent studies, only correlates well with one thing: the buildup of carbon dioxide, methane and the other greenhouse gases.

Hints that warming is being caused by emissions from industry and other human activities have been extracted from air bubbles trapped in ancient ice, from variations in tree rings, from the quick retreat of alpine glaciers. Thermometers dropped deep in the ocean and in holes bored in permafrost show warming patterns that do not match up with natural influences like changes in the sun's brightness.

Still, the subtleties have allowed warming skeptics ample opportunity to challenge the idea. Some, like Richard S. Lindzen, a meteorologist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, have built durable counterarguments, saying the links connecting the earth's oceans, air and "cryosphere," its frozen places, are impossible to elucidate with sufficient confidence to predict much beyond next week's weather.

In an interview, Dr. Lindzen acknowledged the arctic warming trend and slight global warming measured in the last century, but said it all is well within the realm of natural variation or measurement error - and not yet within our power to understand.

"This is a field that was in a primitive state when it assumed a policy importance a few years ago," Dr. Lindzen said. "Suddenly we've declared thousands of people in a primitive field as world experts, and they're trying to have their day." And reports last week that boats had traversed the normally frozen Northwest Passage and northern rivers and lakes were freezing later and thawing earlier were countered with the response that this seeming meltdown could still be ascribed to natural wiggles in temperature or ocean currents.

But most scientists, including some who work with Dr. Lindzen at M.I.T., say the balance of data has shifted firmly toward a conclusion that people, through their impact on the atmosphere, are influencing climate now and will have even more impact in coming years.

Somehow, many experts say, if the threat is to be countered, societies will have to figure out a way to act in the face of gray uncertainty, to deal aggressively with a problem that lacks the attributes of a crisis. That is no easy task.

Dr. Mahlman has pretty much given up on that hope, saying that many countries, including the United States, have essentially decided that the focus is going to be on painless, low-cost fixes like growing trees to sop up the most common greenhouse gas, carbon dioxide, and on adapting to coming warming instead of countering it.

"We just don't want to face up to it," he said, adding that people do not want to change their lifestyle or the economy "for the sake of avoiding future costs."

He and others stress that the real challenge with global warming and similar issues is that, by the time the impact becomes too clear to debate, it will be far too late to do anything about it.

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Hole in ozone layer is biggest ever

USA Today
09/10/00
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/nw1.htm#cast

GENEVA - The hole in the ozone layer is now three times larger than the United States - its biggest size ever, scientists at NASA said Friday. U.N. weather experts said the hole over the Antarctic is growing earlier in the year than usual. Measurements of ozone depletion vary from year-to-year, making it difficult for scientists to determine the long-term environmental impact of changes in the ozone layer. Still, this year's hole - large and early - caught atmospheric experts off-guard. NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., detected an ozone hole of about 11 million square miles on Sept. 3. That was the biggest ever, beating the previous record of 10.5 million square miles on Sept. 19, 1998, it said.

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Stricter Watershed Protections

New York Times
September 10, 2000
Metro Digest
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/09/10/nyregion/10DIGE.html

The federal government has announced new and tougher restrictions on building in wetlands within the New York City watershed.

The stricter rules, involving wetlands as small as one-tenth of an acre, will mainly affect Westchester, Putnam and Dutchess Counties, said Joseph J. Seebode, an official with the Army Corps of Engineers.

The new rules require developers to obtain federal permits for any new construction projects, including individual homes, in wetlands.

Tiny pieces of wetlands, added together, can contribute to a region's water quality, said Jeffrey Odefey of Riverkeeper, a Hudson River environmental organization. "These are critical little pieces," he said. "There are lots of them, and together they provide filtration and flood control."

Environmental organizations and the New York City Council have been lobbying for stronger federal protection of wetlands around the 1,969 square miles of watershed for months.

In the vast watershed region west of the Hudson River, federal regulations, passed last spring and tougher than previous ones, will continue to apply. (NYT)

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USA Today
09/10/00
http://usatoday.com/news/states/all50.htm

California

Yosemite National Park - The state has filed a cleanup and abatement order against Yosemite after a 200,000-gallon spill of park sewage into the Merced River in late July. The spill during testing of a sewer line contaminated about 14 miles of the river beyond the park and lasted until mid-August. The order means that Yosemite could face $10,000-a-day fines for future spills.

Florida

DeLand - Manatee numbers are growing to the point that state wildlife officials are talking about listing the marine mammals as "threatened" instead of "endangered." But environmentalists say the species as a whole remains too close to oblivion for Florida to consider changing the status. Any change would be largely symbolic, since the animals would remain protected.

Illinois

Springfield - Archer Daniels Midland Co. agreed to pay a $10,000 civil fine eight years after leaking storage tanks killed 150,000 fish in a Christian County creek. ADM also agreed to reimburse the state about $9,000 for the dead fish. The storage tanks leased at the South Central Terminal Site leaked ammonium sulfate, a grain-processing byproduct used as fertilizer.

North Carolina

Raleigh - The state revoked a permit for a granite quarry visible from the Appalachian Trail. It said the mine would be unsightly and noisy. Land Resources Director Charles Gardner granted Clark Stone Co. a permit in May 1999. But when trees were cleared to begin mining, it ruined the view from Hump Mountain. Gardner withdrew the permit when hikers' groups and local residents protested.

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USA Today
09/10/00
http://usatoday.com/news/states/all50.htm

Montana

Billings - A trial judge erred when he dismissed a lawsuit filed by the family of a man who died of exposure to cold after officers ejected him from a bar, a federal appeals court has ruled. The decision by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals means the lawsuit against four officers will proceed in federal court. The officers ejected Lance Munger, 35, from a Glasgow bar in March 1995. He left without his coat, and his body was found the next morning in a nearby alley.

South Carolina

Denmark - The four-member Denmark Police Department is eligible for a federal grant of $16,481 that it probably won't get. The Local Law Enforcement Block Grant program requires an Internet application and the police department has no computer. "We're still stubby pencil over here," said Chief Joseph Jenkins. Sen. Strom Thurmond has written Attorney General Janet Reno, telling her the application process is unfair to small departments.

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Is the Balkans the new Latin America?
Bulgarian paper says: 'CIA is tutoring Serbian group, Otpor'

Emporers Clothes
From the Bulgarian newspaper, "The Monitor"
09/10/00
http://emperors-clothes.com/news/cialectures.htm
Translated by Blagovesta Doncheva
Commentary by Jared Israel follows "The Monitor' article.
www.tenc.net Emperor's Clothes

Introductory note: The following article from the Bulgarian newspaper, 'The Monitor' raises serious charges about the Yugoslav 'opposition' group, Otpor. My commentary, 'Otpor: the Message Ain't hidden Any more', follows 'The Monitor' piece. Please let me make two things clear.

First, I think Yugoslavia, like every country, needs a viable opposition. If only one view is heard, or even if only one view is credible, decay sets in. Second, I do not think Americans should meddle in Yugoslavia's internal affairs. I do not think Americans should meddle in the internal affairs of any other country. Period.

But the US is already meddling; that presents a problem. The meddling must be addressed by US citizens even though it involves a sort of interference in Yugoslavia's internal affairs.

The US has poured vast sums into destabilizing Yugoslavia. No one knows exactly how much; surely it is over $100,000,000. (1) The intent is to corrupt. How can this help but distort the Yugoslav political process, especially since draconian sanctions, imposed on Serbia by the US, have greatly multiplied the value of US dollars. Absent this bribe money and an honest opposition could develop. There could be real debate. The Yugoslavs would gain. But in the presence of vast sums, dangled to lure people, especially young people, to treason, how can there be productive political struggle? This is a crime, no less than NATO's 78 day bombing campaign. -- Jared Israel

From 'The Monitor'

"I hate to be first!" This Bruce Willis line applies to everything we at 'The Monitor' have said about the US presence in the Balkans in general and in Bulgaria in particular.

Several times we've published the truth about US intrusions. We've noticed that following our exposes, events seem to proceed in a predictable fashion..

In the first stage those in power deny that anything is happening.

In the second stage they make a few admissions, though painfully.

This was the case when the Yankees demanded bases in Bulgaria. While one member of the ruling "elite" denied it, another had already admitted it. In the end everything we said proved true..

It was the same with the CIA center in Sofia, whose existence we exposed last year. And it was the same in with the meetings between Yugoslav 'opposition' activists and Ambassador Miles and his covert agents, a meeting that took place last year, in the Sheraton Hotel in Sofia.

"No such thing happened," Ambassador Miles said at first. He was of course lying. Later he had to admit he had shared a meal with Yugoslavs.

Now our warning, announced while US CIA head Tenet was still in Sofia, has proved true as well.

All the pretentious analyses about the reasons for the CIA boss's visit are reduced to (and exposed as) just another brutal order to today's Bulgarian rulers - to keep selling our country's sovereignty, providing another country's spy organizations with a center for operations against a neighboring country. Yugoslavia.

The latest admission comes in the BBC report that a ten-day special course starts in Sofia today (August 28).

In that course U.S. spies will lecture and instruct Serb activists from the group "Otpor."

Lecture and instruct in what?

Will they tell them how to create the appearance of a mass movement by banging pots and pans? A CIA trade mark, accompanying its coups, this was used in Brazil in 1961, in Chili in 1973, and in Bulgaria in 1990. Or, maybe, the Serbs will be taught how to destroy and set fire to a Parliament building? That was tried in Sofia in 1997. There are many ways to destabilize a Balkan country, but the specialists from beyond the ocean don't rack their brains uselessly or rely on imagination. They strictly follow tried and true methods - it's all modular, plug and play.. If it worked before, use it again. This style of work is a matter of principle with the Great Spies.

It seems that for the U.S.A., Latin America has moved to the Balkans. And Bulgaria's ruling men and women are now no more than puppets of the same type as those colonels whom Washington used with such gusto when they colonized south of the Panama Canal. The sad thing is that both our rulers and we ourselves know full well what lies in store for those who serve as puppets and go-betweens in the US elite's dirty game...

--

Otpor: The Message isn't Hidden Anymore

'The Monitor'
8-28-00

According to the Bulgarian newspaper, 'Monitor', the Yugoslav group, Otpor, is being trained by the CIA to provoke and destabilize Yugoslavia.

What exactly is this Otpor? What are its beliefs? Does it have a program?

Otpor lists some demands on its website: "Free University; Free elections; Free media." These demands suggest Otpor opposes the Yugoslav status quo. But what does Otpor stand for?

Clicking on "Who we are" doesn't help. Other than attacking Slobodan Milosevich, the closest Otpor gets to a position statement is a discussion of its cartoon-like symbol:

"The symbol of the student RESISTANCE is the clenched fist.. The fist itself is conceived as the symbol of individual initiative, that the time and energy of every single person should be invested to bring about change. This symbol of personal courage was born with the first public manifestation of RESISTANCE, a leaflet called "Bite the System". (our emphasis)

Where's the beef?

Aside from a vaguely free market-ish reference to "every single person" being "invested to bring about change" - what's the program?

The stenciled image of a clenched fist was first produced during the Harvard Strike of 1969. I was a student activist at Harvard. The fist was drawn by kids at the Graduate School of Design. It appeared on posters with a very clear list of demands: Strike to get the Reserve Officer Training Corps off campus; Strike to stop the expansion of the Harvard Medical School into working class neighborhoods. (Harvard was evicting people from their homes.) And so on. You could agree or disagree, but there was no ambiguity.

Does Otpor merely posture, imitating symbols of student protests past? Or is there a hidden message?

Sometimes you can find the message hidden in the details. Otpor's outlook emerges clearly when it describes its actions. The title of one of their web pages is: "Hey, Chief, when are you going to Hague?"

'The Hague' refers to the War Crimes Tribunal for Yugoslavia. The 'Chief', of course, is Milosevich.

Here's the text:

"On August 8th, 1999 OTPOR! activists in Nis held a birthday 'celebration' for president Slobodan Milosevic. The protesters (over 2000 citizens of Nis) had a chance to write down their birthday wishes on a big birthday-card located next to the main stage. One of the OTPOR! Activists received presents on behalf of president Milosevic. The presents included a one way ticket to Hague, prisoner cover-all's, books written by Mira Markovic (his wife), handcuffs, and a big red-star shaped cake. The cake was later given away to the protestors."

Ahh, now we're getting somewhere.

The indictment of Slobodan Milosevic by the ICTY (War Crimes Tribunal) is based on claims that Yugoslav forces under his command committed war crimes in Kosovo. This of course is the heart of NATO's justification for the 78 bombing campaign against Yugoslavia. We have argued that these accusations are lies.

Our arguments are not based on air. We have studied the record and concluded that it was NATO, not Yugoslavia which committed war crimes in Kosovo. Not Yugoslavia and NATO (as some people say) but NATO alone.

We have asked some of those who support NATO's charges to justify their accusations. Give us some hard evidence. We await a meaningful response. We grow older. We wait.

The ICTY's purpose in indicting Mr. Milosevich (and slandering the Yugoslav Army) is to blame the victim and thereby blunt opposition to NATO. If someone can prove we're wrong, we'll drop the issue. We defend truth, not war criminals.

It is impossible (or at least grotesquely unprincipled) to support the indictment of Milosevich unless one also supports the justification for that indictment, NATO's claim that Serbian forces deliberately murdered civilians in the village of Racak and elsewhere.

Indeed, the indictment was brought in order to provide the Western mass media with talking points to justify the attack on Yugoslavia.

Given Otpor's support for the War Crimes Tribunal, which is truly hated in Yugoslavia for its Star Chamber methods, (2) it's clearly anti-Serb purpose and its open control by and dependence on NATO (3), how much support could Otpor have in Yugoslavia?

I would suggest Otpor has precious little support inside Yugoslavia, but it is viewed with misty eyes by some people in the Serbian Diaspora, who are torn between opposition to NATO and to Milosevich, and also by certain non-Serbs, such as the editors of Z magazine, who profess opposition to NATO policy while arguing that Yugoslavia is guilty of war crimes.

Otpor appeals to these rather different groups precisely because it combines symbols of rebellion with vagueness of demands and ambiguity about who is guilty in Yugoslavia - the West and its proxy forces or "the Milosevich regime".

By the way, why is the Yugoslav government more of a 'regime' than any other government? Yugoslav political life certainly allows a greater divergence of opinion than, for example, the US where neither of the two main candidates for President seems to be aware that the US bombed a sovereign country for 78 days, or that the US is sponsoring the slaughter of civilians in Colombia. What major newspaper in the US has allowed the antiwar opposition to publish its side? Indeed, the percentage of Yugoslavs who voted for the different parties in Yugoslavia's governing coalition is probably as high as or higher than the percentage of US voters who vote for anyone in US presidential elections. But nobody talks about 'the Clinton regime' do they?

Getting back to Otpor, what kind of people would help the bombers of their country divert blame to their country's leaders and people? Because clearly, if Milosevich is a new Hitler, as Mr. Clinton wants us to believe, then wouldn't that make the Serbs the new Nazis? What is the word for someone who betrays his own people while they are under attack?

Perhaps the fact that the CIA is apparently training Otpor in Sofia will clarify things for people who are fooled by Otpor's image. Hopefully they will realize that Otpor's purpose is to take provocative actions in concert with US covert agents inside and outside Yugoslavia, especially around the upcoming elections, to give the false impression that the Yugoslav government is a "dictatorial regime" deserving punishment. We must put the blame for provocations where it belongs: on the US government and its proxy forces, such as Otpor.

Many people in the US and other countries now say they want to build an antiwar movement which opposes Western intervention on a "humanitarian basis" in other people's affairs.

Excellent. But an anti-interventionist movement earns that name by action. The US government is now using forces in Yugoslavia which the Western media has mislabeled 'democratic' to launch provocations in order to justify further US intervention. Everything that has gone on in Kosovo and Montenegro, and recent developments in the Yugoslav 'opposition' ( including the apparent training sessions in Sofia for Otpor) confirm this. To be anti-intervention it is not enough for a movement to oppose open attacks on target countries such as the 78 day bombing campaign unleashed last year on Yugoslavia. It is necessary to expose the lies and provocations used by Imperial elements in the Western elite, working through their proxies, to create a political base of support for intervention. People who say they are against intervention but support the lies that serve as the justification for intervention are in fact providing a critical support for the interventionists - for they aid it in isolating the intended victims of attack even as if they say "This attack is the wrong method for solving this problem."

The CIA is illegally meddling in Yugoslavia's internal affairs. The misguided young people in Otpor are apparently being used as a foil.

Let's expose this trick.

- Jared Israel, 9-10-00

Further reading:

(1) On July 29, 1999 the US Senate held hearings on how to most effectively use the Serbian 'opposition' to effect US plans in Yugoslavia. Go to http://www.emperors-clothes.com/analysis/hearin.htm

(2) 'Back to the dark ages?' at http://emperors-clothes.com/articles/jared/bac.htm

(3) An Impartial Tribunal? Really? at http://emperors-clothes.com/analysis/Impartial.htm

(4) Otpor's website is www.otpor.com

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-------- terrorism

South Africa Warns Group After Fatal Attack on Judge

New York Times
September 10, 2000
By HENRI E. CAUVIN
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/09/10/world/10AFRI.html

PRETORIA, South Africa, Sept. 9 - South Africa's minister of justice, incensed by the assassination this week of a judge who has presided over an important terrorism trial in Cape Town, has said he will ban the organization suspected in the slaying if the group continues what authorities say is a two-year campaign of bombings and terror.

The minister, Penuell Maduna, said that the slaying of Magistrate Pieter Theron marked a steep escalation of the conflict with a Muslim group, People Against Gangsterism and Drugs, or Pagad, and would meet with a stern response.

An antiterrorism bill that would permit the banning of suspected terrorist organizations was presented last month for public comment and, if passed, would provide the government with a powerful but controversial tool in combating acts like this week's assassination and the string of 20 bombings in the Cape Town area since June 1998.

While the proposed law includes safeguards unknown in the apartheid era, any move to outlaw the group would carry considerable historical import in a country where the current governing party was a banned organization for years during the rule of the white-minority regime.

Officials say the group has evolved from a sometimes violent vigilante operation with thugs and drug dealers as its targets into a group harboring a cell of terrorists intent on destabilizing a government that group leaders see as hostile to some of their Islamic tenets.

"If indeed Pagad leaves this country with no alternative but to have the executive impose a ban upon them, we will do so," Mr. Maduna said.

The organization is suspected of orchestrating as many as 20 bombings in and around Cape Town, including eight this year. In the deadliest attack, three people were killed in an August 1998 blast at the Planet Hollywood restaurant.

This week's assassination was by far the boldest attack since that Magistrate Theron was arriving home in the Plumstead suburb late Thursday afternoon when he was ambushed by a passing car. The occupants opened fire, striking the 50- year-old judge in the head and torso and killing him instantly.

While the government has blamed People Against Gangsterism, the group itself has strongly denied any involvement. Abidah Roberts, national secretary of the group, said in an interview on Friday evening that her organization was not involved in the slaying and that by jumping to conclusions, the government was undermining its own investigation.

Magistrate Theron had recently convicted a member of the group in a firearms case and was hearing another case in which two members were charged in connection with a pipe-bomb explosion outside a police station, officials said.

The slaying stunned the country. Cape Town, a popular tourist destination, has found its reputation sullied and now faces the reality that not even the justice system and the people who serve it are safe. The minister of safety and security, Steve Tshwete, announced on Friday that police and security services are stepping up protection for judges and prosecutors involved in cases against members of People Against Gangsterism.

Mr. Tshwete said that in at least one such case, government lawyers were taunted with threats of "one prosecutor, one bullet," a sinister play on the old "one settler, one bullet" mantra of radicals battling apartheid. And just last month, Mr. Tshwete said, authorities arrested four people at the center of a reported plot to kill another judge.

Officials are also considering moving some of the trials out of Cape Town and holding others in jails in an effort to limit attacks and intimidation and to allow the cases to proceed.

Mr. Maduna said on Friday that police may have been alerted of a possible plot to kill a Cape Town judge this week, but failed to act. "If it turns out that that is true, then indeed we have to deal with the people who handled it," Mr. Maduna said. "If we were given information, we ought to have acted."

-------- activists

ACLU Lawsuit Exposes DC Police Wrongs

by David Barrows
Sun Sep 10 2000
1730-B Corcoran Street, N.W
Washington, DC 20009
202 234-1717
webresponse@intowner.com www.intowner.com/
http://dc.indymedia.org/display.php3?article_id=3985

Last spring this newspaper reported on the impending lawsuits alleging illegal seizures and sweep arrests, as well as charges of physical abuse of many demonstrators who protested against the International Monetary Fund (IMF)during the weekend of April 15, 2000, including arguably illegal arrests of journalists and observers present, many of whom had their cameras smashed, videos and photographs confiscated. (See, "Twisted Priorities? Police Actions During IMF Protests Protested," InTowner, May 2000, page 1.) or see http://dc.indymedia.org/display.php3?article_id=3469

Federal Agency Constitutional Wrongs

[from September 2000 issue] On July 27, The American Civil Liberties Union of the National Capital Area, the National Police Accountability Project of the National Lawyers Guild, and the Partnership for Civil Justice, and two law firms filed a class action law suit in District Court on behalf of the Mobilization for Global Justice and other organizations, individuals and class representatives of those who participated in last April's protests downtown (including substantial numbers of residents of Adams Morgan, Mt. Pleasant, Columbia Heights, and Dupont and Logan Circles).

Named as defendants along with the District of Columbia, were DC Police Chief Charles Ramsey, FBI Director Louis Freeh and officials of the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, the Drug Enforcement Administration, Federal Emergency Management Agency, and the National Park Service. Also named were officials of the U.S. Capitol Police and the U.S. Secret Service, as well as "unknown Federal Agents, in their individual capacities." All the named defendants are charged with collaborating to violate the First and Fourth Amendments of the Constitution by having actively interfered with the right to assemble and the right to free speech; also, with search and seizure without reasonable cause.

The Office of the Corporation Counsel for the District of Columbia is also charged with deliberately violating its agreement with lawyers representing the demonstrators whose possessions and political literature was seized for reasons later withdrawn by police. This agreement to return all confiscated materials was to avoid a scheduled hearing before Federal Judge Thomas Hogan. However, when the demonstration participants went to recover their confiscated items the following day they were threatened with arrest with the result that political literature, which also had been confiscated, was not able to be distributed. It was not until well after all demonstrations were over that most of the literature was returned, although many items have never been returned, particularly film.

Late on the afternoon of September 5, The InTowner received a faxed response from Leigh Slaughter, Special DC Deputy Corporation Counsel, in reply to a request for comment on how the Corporation Counsel was responding to charges that it violated its agreement with the demonstrators' lawyers by not returning confiscated materials, including their political literature, until the demonstrations were over, thereby violating an agreement that had resulted in the demonstrators' lawyers having withdrawn their request for a hearing before U.S. District Court Judge Thomas Hogan. Slaughter's reply stated, "There was no such agreement between the demonstration lawyers and the Office of Corporation Counsel."

But, contradicting this claim of no agreement was the copy provided plaintiff attorneys Mara Verheyden-Hilliard and Carl Messineo bearing the signature of Tom Kroger, Assistant DC Corporation Counsel, of what appears to in fact be that very agreement claimed by the plaintiffs. Among other assurances, it states:

"This document is to confirm the salient details of our conversation and agreement. The District of Columbia will allow two persons to enter The Convergence Center, located at 1328 Florida Avenue, N.W. Washington, DC, for the purpose of identifying and removing First Amendment protected materials and medical supplies located therein. One person will assist District fire and law enforcement officials with identifying . . . [the materials].

"The Chambers of the Honorable Judge Hogan will be notified that the Emergency hearing on the Complaint alleging Constitutional violations based on the District of Columbia's alleged failure to release said items, shall be cancelled, based on this understanding and agreement."

Furthermore, the suit charges that the closing of the old Manhattan Laundry Building on Florida Avenue in the Shaw neighborhood was "pretextual" and quotes Mayor Anthony Williams as saying that the arrests were "preventative" and "proactive." Terrence Gainer, Executive Assistant Chief of Police is quoted by the plaintiffs as saying, "We started licking our chops" when they learned that there might be possible fire code violations. . . ." Further, the suit charges that Police Chief Ramsey said, "It would be helpful to us if we could discombobulate the protesters. We let [them] have some of their puppets so they could have their day too, to be heard themselves. We have to give a little. Otherwise, if we take everything from them, it would turn violent."

Among other charges leveled by the suit is the particularly serious one that "Metropolitan Police Officers maintained a widespread practice, known to and apparently approved of by District policymakers, of removing or concealing their badge numbers and name tags. This widespread misconduct, in violation of police regulation, reflects the consciousness of guilt of the police force and evidences an intent to avoid accountability for the actions of the MPD, and supports the inference that defendants acted in knowing and intentional disregard for the rights of plaintiffs."

The District of Columbia is also charged with the dissemination of false information about the demonstrators and as casting them as violent. The asserted evidence of violent intentions which formed the basis for justifying the action to close down the Convergence Center is refuted by the plaintiffs' complaint, summarized as follows: The alleged Molotov cocktail was actually a plastic soda bottle with rags in it; the alleged string of bullets was actually a "Mexican ornament, a string of empty shells"; and the presumed pepper spray was actually onions, peppers and other vegetables used for making gazpacho soup. Active spreading of fear and misrepresentations by police officials is blamed for the cancellation of the debate on the role of the IMF (World Bank) that had been scheduled at American University and was to have featured Ralph Nader.

The National Capital ACLU's press release announcing the filing of the lawsuit states, among other things, that "[I]n this country, the government is supposed to protect the Constitutional right to protest. But, the evidence in this case will show that D.C. and federal officials deliberately sabotaged those rights. We recognize that some demonstrators engaged in civil disobedience last April. But we expect the police to obey the law, whether or not others do."

Among other things, the suit alleges, "Plaintiff IAC [International Action Committee] informed the MPD that they wished to walk to Dupont Circle from which location they would disperse. Metropolitan Police Department officials stated that the demonstrators could proceed up 20th Street to Dupont Circle for that purpose. However, as plaintiffs moved up 20th Street, police in riot gear surrounded the procession, preventing movement or dispersal. Before trapping the procession, the police did not order plaintiffs to disperse. After blocking the procession, the police did not allow plaintiffs to disperse even when individuals asked to be allowed to leave. . . ." In addition to citing the arrests of more than 600 people, including journalists and tourists, the suit levels a charge of wroingful separation of a 13-year-old girl from her mother, both of whom were present to observe record with a video camera. .

The use of excessive force in violation of both the First and Fourth Amendments is added to the charge of false arrests: "The arrestees were held in harsh conditions. They were restrained in plastic handcuffs that inflicted pain. . . . Arrestees were confined in buses and denied food and water, in some cases as long as 18 hours [as in the case of an independent television journalist] or more. Arrestees were denied use of a bathroom for hours causing discomfort and humiliation." In addition, " Arrestees were denied lawfully dispensed prescription medications for pre-existing conditions. Arrestees were denied use of a telephone to contact family members or attorneys. Metropolitan Police Department officers deliberately misinformed arrestees of the rights, falsely stating that would be detained unless they posted and forfeited fifty dollars. . . . Arrestees may not be deemed to have knowingly waived any rights when they posted and forfeited."

Police are also charged with creating "an enormous exclusion zone that insulated the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund from protest and prevented demonstrators from having their political expressions heard and seen by those within those buildings."

Officer Kervin Johnson of DC police department's the media relations office, when queried by The InTowner, stated that he had no comments about the lawsuit. Further, he informed this reporter that the DC Corporation Counsel was handling the case and that "they are our legal representatives."

Among the arrested and a plaintiff is Bette J. Hoover, Director of the DC Peace and Economic Justice/American Friends Service Committee, who was barred from her own office which is located near the Convergence Center that had been set up in the old Manhattan Laundry building in the 1300 block of Florida Avenue. She had helped in organizing the shelter in that space for the out-of-town demonstrators.

Even the region's Metro subway system is cited as playing a role in the denial of free speech by prohibiting demonstrators from taking signs that were attached to sticks onto the trains, notwithstanding that protest signs attached to sticks in Metro cars have been tolerated at other times. Infiltration by federal and DC agents was also mentioned as well as methods of intimidation such as demonstrators being shown photos of themselves.

The ACLU's press release also notes that the DC case is not isolated. "This case comes in the wake of a lawsuit filed by the ACLU in Seattle, claiming that Seattle police unconstitutionally banned protesters from demonstrating at the International Monetary Fund meeting there last fall. . . . The ACLU has also sued the cities of Philadelphia and Los Angeles where officials attempted to confine protesters at the . . . Republican and Democratic Party Conventions to small areas far removed from the convention sites. On July 20 a federal judge in Los Angeles ruled that the protesters had a right to bring their message within sight and sound of the convention, and the Philadelphia case was settled when the city agreed to make closer protest sites available."

Arthur Spitzer recently told The InTowner that this suit is still open to representing more of those whose rights were violated during the April 2000 demonstrations. Persons interested in joining the suit should submit a written request to: ACLU, 1400-20th Street, NW, Suite 119, DC 20036. Or prospective plaintiffs can fill out a form on their website, http://www.ACLU-NCA.org. In addition, Mara Verheyden-Hilliard at the Partnership for Civil Justice, Inc. (1901 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW, Suite 607, DC 20006) would not only like to hear from those whose rights were violated but would like to hear from those who stayed away from the demonstrations because they heard the demonstrations would be violent. He website for her organization can be accessed at http://www.justiceonline.org/A16. Also representing plaintiffs is attorney James R. Klimaski as well as Daniel M. Schember of the Gaffney & Schember law firm, both of the District.

----

Thousands of Colombians March for Peace

Yahoo News
Sunday September 10
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20000910/wl/colombia_march_dc_1.html

BOGOTA (Reuters) - Thousands of Colombians carrying white flags and balloons marched on Sunday to demand an end to nearly four decades of civil conflict that continues to escalate even as peace talks between the government and leftist rebels grind on.

An estimated 10,000 political figures, union leaders, workers, housewives and children walked through the streets of downtown Bogota chanting ``For peace, negotiations. For peace, cease-fire.''

Small children with their faces painted yellow, blue and red -- the national colors -- carried a huge Colombian flag, and marching bands played popular Colombian tunes as they made their way to central Bolivar Square.

Marcher Ebert Munera said the demonstration was meant to show ``the violent ones that we are all brothers and that the war has to stop so we can leave a better nation to out children and grandchildren.''

Similar marches were planned in a dozen other Colombian cities.

The marchers' demands include an immediate cease-fire, an end to the thousands of kidnappings reported each year, and assurances that civilians will cease to be targets of the war.

Civilians make up the bulk of the 35,000 people who have died in the past decade of Colombia's 36-year-old conflict, which pits leftist rebels against government troops and right-wing paramilitary squads.

In October last year an estimated 10 million Colombians took to the streets to oppose the guerrilla attacks, paramilitary massacres, kidnappings and extortion.

Little Faith In Peace Process

Polls show an overwhelming majority of Colombians have lost faith in the prospects for peace in this nation of 40 million.

Rebels of the 17,000-strong Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) agreed to begin peace talks with the government in January 1999 in exchange for a Switzerland-sized safe haven in southern Colombia that serves as a stage for the negotiations.

But 20 months of talks have yielded no concrete results. Critics say the safe haven has become a rebel-run state that serves as a virtual holding pen for the FARC kidnap victims and as a launching pad for increasing attacks on towns near the zone.

``The society supports the negotiation but we have to negotiate in peace ... because many people have stopped believing in the process and peace requires the support of society,'' march organizer Alejo Vargas said.

The calls for peace come just over a week after President Clinton symbolically kicked off a $1.3 billion dollar aid package on a one-day visit to the Colombian port city of Cartagena.

The bulk of the U.S. money will go to train and equip Colombian army anti-narcotics battalions charged with retaking control of vast coca-growing areas in southern Colombia currently held by the rebels, who earn millions of dollars a year from protecting and taxing the drug trade.

Colombian officials say they hope the military offensive will weaken the FARC and force them into negotiating in good faith. But many analysts warn it could escalate the war and push the Colombian conflict over the borders into Ecuador and Peru.

---

Five Injured in Protests at 'Business Olympics'

Yahoo News
Sunday September 10
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20000910/wl/australia_forum_dc_2.html

MELBOURNE (Reuters) - Five people, including two policemen, were injured on Monday as thousands of anti-corporate activists protested outside the World Economic Forum's Asia Pacific meeting at a Melbourne casino complex.

Police estimated about 1,500 demonstrators filled the streets around the Crown Casino hotel to voice concerns about the impact of globalization on the poor as government and international business leaders gathered inside.

Protesters linked arms to block entrances and exits to the city center complex, stopping some delegates from gaining access and delaying the summit's start by 15 minutes, while police, some on horseback, tried to hold back the crowds. About 50 baton-wielding police charged about 100 protesters who surrounded the car of conservative Western Australian state Premier Richard Court, trapping him inside for about 40 minutes as they bounced on the roof and spray painted the vehicle's body.

Court's car was turned back and did not enter the complex, although Australian Treasurer Peter Costello was among the 1,000 or so delegates seen inside the casino.

Most of the day's main speakers were shepherded safely inside the complex well before the meeting was due to begin and the large media contingent was ordered to gather before dawn to gain entry.

Ambulance spokesman Peter Jeppesen said five people, including two policemen, two protesters and one casino worker, were taken to hospital after suffering injuries in the crush and several others were treated for minor injuries at the scene.

``All five who needed hospital treatment are now stable and comfortable,'' Jeppesen told Reuters shortly before midday.

``The protest was much livelier early on this morning but it seems to have settled down a little now.''

``Business Olympics''

Police were well prepared for demonstrations at the three-day event dubbed the ``Business Olympics.''

Protest organizers forecast tens of thousands would rally to stop the Asia-Pacific forum, being held as tens of thousands of tourists and thousands of journalists descend on Australia for the 2000 Olympic Games in Sydney.

Fearing a repeat of the violence that engulfed Seattle during a World Trade Organization meeting last November, officials erected three-meter (10-foot) high barricades across access points and about 800 police were guarding the casino.

But the loose alliance of activists, waving banners accusing the forum's participants of pursuing ``Corporate Greed Not Global Justice,'' faced a tough task bid to shut down the meeting, whose guests include Microsoft Corp chairman Bill Gates and the heads of Novell Inc and Siemens AG.

Police on high alert for trouble met over the weekend with leaders of the alliance, dubbed S11 for the September 11 start date of the summit, and assured them they could protest as long as they stayed peaceful and did not damage property.

``It has been a peaceful demonstration so far with no arrests,'' a police spokeswoman told Reuters.

Friends of the Earth spokesman Cam Walker estimated up to 7,000 protesters had gathered outside the casino but the event had remained peaceful besides a few scuffles.

``I've been here since 5 a.m. (1600 GMT) and I have witnessed thousands of people in mass civil disobedience that has taken the form of physically blockading the entrances,'' he told Reuters.

But the protesters did manage to block some delegates from gaining access to the complex, forcing organizers to change plans to hold the day's lunch within the casino complex itself.

---

Police Beat Serb Activists, Rights Group Says

Yahoo News
Saturday September 9
By Branimir Pipal
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20000909/wl/yugoslavia_otpor_dc_1.html

BELGRADE (Reuters) - Seven activists from Yugoslavia's student-based Otpor protest movement received hospital treatment after being badly beaten by police with batons and chains, a human rights group said on Saturday.

Aljosa Drazovic of the Belgrade-based Humanitarian Law Fund said police had ordered the activists to the police station in the southeastern town of Vladicin Han on Friday for questioning after catching them posting banners the previous day.

Yugoslavia is due to hold crucial elections on September 24, with President Slobodan Milosevic seeking to retain power against rising opposition.

Drazovic said three of the seven activists were leaving the police station after being questioned when they met three ``drunken police inspectors'' who took them back to the station and started beating them.

``They put them all together in one room and started beating one of them with hands and batons. Then they split them into seven rooms, beating them separately,'' he said.

``The police used batons and chains and struck the activists, who were tied up, on the genitals, kidneys and heads. One of the activists, Aleksandar Radic, had a rope put around his neck,'' Drazovic said.

Hundreds Of People Demand Release

He said their ordeal ended eight hours later, after several hundred people gathered in front of the police station in the town, 320 km (200 miles) from Belgrade, demanding their release.

In Belgrade, the government said a non-governmental organization training hundreds of people to monitor the elections was a tool of the United States and would not be allowed to supervise voting.

Information Minister Goran Matic said Western powers opposed to Milosevic ``know that the objective and convincing victory of Milosevic...is something they cannot accept and they are preparing the ground to portray this as fraud.''

Western governments have said Milosevic cannot win the election legitimately but will seek to do so by fraud and intimidation.

In the western town of Cacak, where leading opposition candidate Vojislav Kostunica drew thousands of people to a pre-election rally earlier this week, police seized a television transmitter which had provided extensive coverage of the events, the independent news agency Beta said.

Drazovic said the seven Otpor activists were treated for injuries at the local hospital. The Humanitarian Law Fund said it would file criminal charges against the three police inspectors and the state.

There was no immediate comment from police on the allegations.

``Patriots Versus Traitors''

The alleged beatings were the latest sign of a growing crackdown on the movement, which ridicules the authorities, ahead of this month's watershed vote.

The government, which has portrayed the elections as a fight between Serbian patriots -- Milosevic's supporters -- and traitors following Western orders to destroy the country, calls Otpor an ''illegal terrorist organization.''

Otpor, whose name means Resistance, has called on Serbs to vote against Milosevic.

Also on Saturday, Belgrade's independent radio B2-92 reported that a group of seven unidentified men had raided Otpor's Belgrade headquarters. The group damaged the premises and kicked the activists, B2-92 said.

Information Minister Matic called the Belgrade-based Centre for Free Elections and Democracy (CESID) ``an American outpost.''

``It will not be a supervisor at the elections,'' he told a news conference. ``We do not need any delegates of American institutions whose main goal is deceit and occupation of our society.''

State television last week referred to CESID as a Western- sponsored enemy of Yugoslavia. On Friday, the organization said police removed six computers from its office.

The center has not formally applied for permission to monitor the ballot but has launched a major advertising campaign inviting people to join in checking the voting.

Matic said voter surveys showing Milosevic trailing behind Kostunica were forged.

``According to our objective surveys, Kostunica has only four percent and not 40 percent as forged surveys show, he said. He ridiculed a campaign poster showing a photo of Kostunica's eyes, saying they were the eyes of American actor Al Pacino.

---

Truckers Vow Overnight Brussels Fuel Protest

Yahoo News
Sunday September 10 6:55 PM ET updated 10:27 PM ET Sep 10
By Leslie Adler
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20000910/wl/energy_belgium_dc_1.html

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Belgian truck drivers protesting rising fuel prices stormed out of a meeting with Transport Ministry officials on Sunday and vowed to blockade Brussels through the night.

Truckers had demanded a meeting with Transport Minister Isabelle Durant or Finance Minister Didier Reynders, after accusing Reynders of having made an ``incendiary statement.''

Reynders' spokesman Pierre Jeholet said the truckers had misunderstood his remarks on television.

Up to 2,500 trucks, buses and taxis converged on Brussels on Sunday, part of a wave of protests across Europe against rising fuel prices.

Protesters originally said their demonstration would end at 3 p.m. But more than seven hours later about 300 truckers continued to tie up traffic on key roads, vowing to stay until granted a meeting with Reynders or Durant.

Pierre Darchabeau, a representative of the Professional Union for Road Transport (UPTR), accused Reynders of making ``an incendiary statement'' when he discussed the protest in an interview with Belgium's RTL television.

``He said he wouldn't do anything for the truckers,'' Darchabeau told Reuters. ``Just after that statement we decided to remain in place.''

Truckers 'Misunderstood' Minister

Jeholet told Reuters the truckers ``didn't understand or misunderstood'' Reynders' comments.

``(Reynders) said it wasn't a question of granting general measures for the sector,'' Jeholet said. He said the minister had proposed some form of reimbursement based on actual fuel bills.

Marcel Delsemme, general director of the UPTR, said union officials had not misunderstood Reynders's remarks. ``The statement of Minister Reynders provoked this,'' he said.

``We have been negotiating for more than 10 months,'' Delsemme said. ``(Reynders) has varied his position. Now he says he's not opposed to reimbursing excise taxes, but he doesn't say how much, he doesn't say how.''

Delsemme said union officials left the meeting with Transport Ministry staff members on Sunday because no progress was possible.

Transport Ministry officials said the fuel prices would be discussed in a meeting already scheduled for Monday.

The Belgian protest was launched just as a six-day blockade of French oil refineries and storage depots came to end.

Belgian protest leaders said a 50 percent rise in the cost of diesel fuel since the beginning of 1999 was threatening profitability.

Emphasizing that the problem was European in scope, they demanded action by the European Union to ensure member countries lowered fuel excise taxes, as well as moves by the Belgian government to cut costs.

---

'Panic Buying' Drains Some British Fuel Pumps

Yahoo News
Sunday September 10 7:42 PM ET updated 11:05 PM ET Sep 10
By Mike Collett-White
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20000910/ts/energy_britain_dc_1.html

LONDON (Reuters) - Panic-buying by British consumers trying to beat sporadic blockades of oil depots by protesting truckers and farmers led to fuel pumps running dry in some regions on Sunday.

The main impact was in northwest England, triggered by the blockade at Shell's refinery at Stanlow near Liverpool. The Anglo-Dutch oil giant said 100 to 120 of its 250 petrol stations in the region were dry or close to it.

BP Amoco faced similar difficulties.

``We have 140 sites in the northwest and 50 percent of these are either running very low stocks or are out. It is mainly affecting unleaded petrol and some diesel,'' a spokeswoman said.

``Across the country people are tempted to do some panic buying,'' she said. ``They are creating a situation that is not there.''

Texaco added that around 50 filling stations were affected by blockades at a refinery and three oil depots, including one in the Manchester area.

``We expect it to get worse from here over the next few days,'' a spokesman said.

Sky Television reported there were significant disruptions to traffic along major routes in Northumberland in northeast England and northern Wales caused by disgruntled hauliers.

The French-style action was in protest over British fuel prices, which are the highest in Europe.

Price levels jumped more than 40 percent from January 1999 to June 2000. Tax and duties make up about 75 percent of the price of a liter of premium unleaded petrol, currently about 0.85 pounds ($1.21), but recent crude oil price rises have squeezed drivers even further.

The Labor government, riding high in the polls and with a strong economy, refuses to cut the levies, saying the money is needed to improve health and other public services.

Budgets, Not Blockades

Labor Leader of the House of Commons Margaret Beckett blamed the latest crisis on rising oil markets.

``I think that most people are now aware that this is due to a substantial rise in the price of oil across the world,'' she told BBC Radio.

``It isn't an easy one-way bet to just simply reduce these costs,'' she added, referring to state levies. ``There will be an impact on government revenues and on what else we can do.''

Oil exporters vowed to release more crude on to world markets on Sunday in a bid to bring prices down amid a global consumer scare over the impact of fuel costs.

OPEC agreed in Vienna to increase supplies by 800,000 barrels per day, a move welcomed in Britain.

``I welcome it -- it's a start, anyway,'' John Reid, secretary of state for Scotland and speaking for the government on the petrol crisis, told BBC's World This Weekend.

Although limited, the British blockades were a rare phenomenon in a country which usually looks on impassively when workers in neighboring France take muscular direct action.

This time the demonstrators were apparently inspired by the French model after farmers and truckers there, angered by much lower fuel prices than in Britain, choked traffic and fuel deliveries around the country in the past week.

The French began lifting their blockade on Saturday after a partial victory for their campaign.

In Belgium, truck drivers protesting over fuel prices stormed out of a meeting with Transport Ministry officials on Sunday and vowed to blockade Brussels through the night.

---

French truckers end protest, lift blockades

USA Today
09/10/00- Updated 08:49 AM ET
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/nw1.htm#cast

PARIS - French truckers began lifting nationwide blockades at oil refineries and fuel depots Saturday after union leaders unanimously called for an end to a six-day protest that has strangled fuel supplies, causing airport delays and chaos at gas stations. With a majority of France's gas stations still dry, however, the removal of blockades was not expected to ease immediately the plight of motorists, who have had to line up bumper-to-bumper to fill their tanks. The Interior Ministry said 30 oil refineries and fuel depots were still blocked as of Saturday evening, compared with more than 100 earlier in the day.

---

BURGER KING BOYCOTT, IF REV. AL HAS IT HIS WAY

New York Post
Sunday, September 10, 2000
By ANDY GELLER
http://www.nypostonline.com/news/38070.htm

The Rev. Al Sharpton is threatening to call a boycott against Burger King over its dealings with an inner-city restaurant owner.

Sharpton said the world's second-largest burger chain had reneged on a pledge to open 225 inner-city restaurants.

"They've broken their commitment. They've broken their word," he charged.

Burger King is already being boycotted by Muslim groups angry that the company opened a restaurant in a Jewish West Bank settlement.

Sharpton's action stems from Burger King's dealings with La-Van Hawkins, a Detroit restaurant owner the company recruited to help it gain a foothold in inner-city markets.

In April, Hawkins filed suit against the Miami-based chain, charging it discriminated against him and reneged on a promise to help him open the 225 inner-city restaurants.

Burger King, which is struggling to turn around declining sales, then sued Hawkins, claiming he owes the firm $6.5 million in delinquent loans and royalties.

While the dispute has been playing out in the courts, Hawkins has been organizing support in the black community.

Sharpton said Burger King executives had gone back on a pledge they made "on the steps of the White House."

As a result, he plans to announce a five-day "countdown" to the boycott at a Wall Street Burger King tomorrow.

"If they don't come to the table in five days, we'll begin a national boycott," he said.

The civil-rights leader said Wall Street was chosen for the announcement because the company is trying to go public.

"Who would want to buy stock in a company involved in a national controversy?" he said.

Burger King spokeswoman Kim Miller said she knew nothing about Sharpton's threat.

"We're not going to comment on speculation," she said.

Burger King maintains it has been trying to settle the dispute with Hawkins through negotiations aided by Thomas Dortsch, president of 100 Black Men of America.

Last month, the company said it made an offer to Hawkins - the terms were not disclosed - but he turned it down.

-------- chemicals

After Complaint of Illness, Mayor Defends Spray Efforts

New York Times
September 10, 2000
By THOMAS J. LUECK
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/09/10/nyregion/10NILE.html

Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani acknowledged yesterday that a woman had been treated at an emergency room on Monday after she complained of being sprayed with a pesticide used to kill mosquitoes that spread the West Nile virus. But the mayor said there was "obviously a discrepancy" between the city's spraying schedule and the woman's account of when she was sprayed.

The woman, whose account was published yesterday in The Daily News, was quoted as saying she was drenched with the pesticide at 10:45 p.m. last Sunday as she stood on West 58th Street in Manhattan.

The Daily News article said the woman, an artist whom the newspaper did not identify, had been sprayed at point-blank range by a passing city truck. As a result, it said, she experienced severe nausea and eye problems and feared more serious long-term effects because she has a form of asthma that reacts to chemicals.

At a news conference yesterday, the mayor was joined by Health Department officials, who said they were investigating the incident.

But the officials said the woman's version conflicted with city records, which show that spraying in the area where the incident is said to have occurred did not begin until shortly before midnight last Sunday, at least an hour after the woman said she was sprayed.

But the mayor also said incidents like the one described in The Daily News might be unavoidable because of the amount of spraying that is taking place.

---

Mayor Defends Spraying After Complaint of Injury

New York Times
September 10, 2000
Metro Digest
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/09/10/nyregion/10DIGE.html

Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani acknowledged yesterday that a woman had been treated at an emergency room on Monday after she complained of being sprayed with a pesticide used to kill mosquitoes that spread the West Nile virus.

But the mayor said there was "obviously a discrepancy" between the city's spraying schedule and the woman's account of when she was sprayed.

The woman, whose account was published yesterday in The Daily News, was quoted as saying she was drenched with the pesticide at 10:45 p.m. last Sunday as she stood on West 58th Street in Manhattan.

The Daily News article, coming amid controversy over the spraying, said the woman, an artist whom the newspaper did not identify, had been sprayed at point-blank range by a passing city truck. It said she experienced severe nausea and eye problems and feared more serious long-term effects because she had a form of asthma sensitive to chemicals.

At a news conference yesterday, the mayor was joined by Health Department officials who shed little light on the incident other than to say it was under investigation.

"We do know this person," said Dr. Benjamin Mojica, the deputy health commissioner, although he also declined to identify her, citing patient confidentiality. "We intend to follow up with her and see how she is doing." Thomas J. Lueck (NYT)

-------

DOEWatch List ----A Magnum-Opus Project
Subscribe online: http://www.onelist.com
DOEWatch page: http://members.aol.com/doewatch

1. Squalene search collection one
From: magnu96196@aol.com

2. Squalene search collection two
From: magnu96196@aol.com

3. OR incinerator sold----DSSI
From: magnu96196@aol.com

4. `They never told us it would kill us'
From: magnu96196@aol.com

-------------

Message: 1
Date: Sun, 10 Sep 2000
From: magnu96196@aol.com

Squalene search collection one

Hello DOEWatch folks,

One of the signatures of health problems in the Gulf War folks is squalene antibodies. The Gulf War was indeed the most toxic war ever. Some suggest a source for squalene antibody is the vaccines. An investigation of MEDLINE cites on squalene was done and these are some of the more interesting reports. Squalene is also generated in the skin and it is a natural result of skin damage. There were perhaps many agents in the Gulf War that could be skin absorbed-----from sarin, to pesticides, to oil well products raining out. Many of these are fluoride containing compounds and these can damage skin.

---

Title The activity of HMG-CoA reductase and acetyl-CoA carboxylase in human apocrine sweat glands, sebaceous glands, and hair follicles is regulated by phosphorylation and by exogenous cholesterol.

Author Smythe CD; Greenall M; Kealey T

Address Department of Clinical Biochemistry, University of Cambridge, Addenbrooke's Hospital, UK.

Source J Invest Dermatol, 1998 Jul, 111:1, 139-48

Abstract Human apocrine and sebaceous glands function to secrete lipids, predominantly triglycerides, fatty acids, cholesterol and its esters, and, in the sebaceous gland, squalene. The enzymes that catalyze the important regulatory steps in cholesterol and fatty acid biosyntheses, 3-hydroxy-3-methylglutaryl-coenzyme A (HMG-CoA) reductase and acetyl-CoA carboxylase, respectively, were therefore studied in isolated human skin appendages, and their relevant kinetic parameters determined. The enzyme activities that were observed can account for previously described rates of incorporation of radiolabeled substrates into the appropriate lipids by glands in vitro. Reduced enzyme activities following homogenization in the presence of fluoride indicated that both of these enzymes in skin appendages are inactivated by phosphorylation. The activity of the enzyme known to catalyze this phosphorylation, the AMP-activated protein kinase, was also measured. Compactin was shown to inhibit HMG-CoA reductase in homogenates of these appendages. Conversely, incubation of whole sebaceous glands with compactin resulted in the stimulation of enzyme activity, which suggests that these appendages can respond to diminishing cholesterol levels. The effect of exogenous low density lipoprotein and 25-hydroxycholesterol on HMG-CoA reductase activity from skin appendages was investigated. HMG-CoA reductase activity in both apocrine and sebaceous glands was reduced following incubation with either low density lipoprotein or 25-hydroxycholesterol. Low density lipoprotein receptor and lipoprotein lipase mRNA expression was also detected in skin appendages. These results indicate that apocrine and sebaceous glands have the capacity to sequester dietary cholesterol and fatty acids that may have important implications for the understanding of both acne and axillary odor.

Language of Publication English

Unique Identifier 98328338

======

Title Squalene, olive oil, and cancer risk. Review and hypothesis.

Author Newmark HL

Address Strang Cancer Research Laboratory, The Rockefeller University, New York, New York 10021, USA.

Source Ann N Y Acad Sci, 1999, 889:, 193-203

Abstract Epidemiologic studies of breast and pancreatic cancer in several Mediterranean populations have demonstrated that increased dietary intake of olive oil is associated with a small decreased risk, or no increased risk, of cancer, despite a high overall lipid intake. Experimental animal models in high dietary fat and cancer also indicate that olive oil either has no effect, or a protective effect, on the prevention of a variety of chemically induced tumors. As a working hypothesis, it is proposed that the high squalene content of olive oil, as compared to other human foods, is a major factor in the cancer-risk reducing effect of olive oil. Experiments in animal models suggest a tumor-inhibiting role for squalene. A mechanism is proposed for the tumor-inhibitory activity of squalene based on its known strong inhibitory activity of HMG-COA reductase catalytic activity in vivo, thus reducing farnesyl pyrophosphate (FPP) availability for "prenylation" of ras oncogene, which relocates this oncogene to cell membranes and is required for the signal-transducing function of ras. Reduction of mutated ras oncogene activation may be useful in breast and colon cancer and may be particularly applicable to pancreatic cancers that are strongly associated with ras oncogenes.

Language of Publication English

Unique Identifier 20133673

================

Title Squalene and its potential clinical uses.

Author Kelly GS

Source Altern Med Rev, 1999 Feb, 4:1, 29-36

Abstract Squalene, an isoprenoid compound structurally similar to beta-carotene, is an intermediate metabolite in the synthesis of cholesterol. In humans, about 60 percent of dietary squalene is absorbed. It is transported in serum generally in association with very low density lipoproteins and is distributed ubiquitously in human tissues, with the greatest concentration in the skin, where it is one of the major components of skin surface lipids. Squalene is not very susceptible to peroxidation and appears to function in the skin as a quencher of singlet oxygen, protecting human skin surface from lipid peroxidation due to exposure to UV and other sources of ionizing radiation. Supplementation of squalene to mice has resulted in marked increases in cellular and non-specific immune functions in a dose-dependent manner. Squalene may also act as a "sink" for highly lipophilic xenobiotics. Since it is a nonpolar substance, it has a higher affinity for un-ionized drugs. In animals, supplementation of the diet with squalene can reduce cholesterol and triglyceride levels. In humans, squalene might be a useful addition to potentiate the effects of some cholesterol-lowering drugs. The primary therapeutic use of squalene currently is as an adjunctive therapy in a variety of cancers. Although epidemiological, experimental and animal evidence suggests anti-cancer properties, to date no human trials have been conducted to verify the role this nutrient might have in cancer therapy regimens.

Language of Publication English

Unique Identifier 99143378

=================

Title Antibodies to squalene in Gulf War syndrome.

Author Asa PB; Cao Y; Garry RF

Address Department of Microbiology, Tulane Medical School, 1430 Tulane Avenue, New Orleans, Louisiana, 70112, USA. PMBA@aol.com

Source Exp Mol Pathol, 2000 Feb, 68:1, 55-64

Abstract Gulf War Syndrome (GWS) is a multisystemic illness afflicting many Gulf War-era veterans. The molecular pathological basis for GWS has not been established. We sought to determine whether the presence of antibodies to squalene correlates with the presence of signs and symptoms of GWS. Participants in this blinded cohort study were individuals immunized for service in Desert Shield/Desert Storm during 1990-1991. They included 144 Gulf War-era veterans or military employees (58 in the blinded study), 48 blood donors, 40 systemic lupus erythematosus patients, 34 silicone breast implant recipients, and 30 chronic fatigue syndrome patients. Serum antibodies to squalene were measured. In our small cohort, the substantial majority (95%) of overtly ill deployed GWS patients had antibodies to squalene. All (100%) GWS patients immunized for service in Desert Shield/Desert Storm who did not deploy, but had the same signs and symptoms as those who did deploy, had antibodies to squalene. In contrast, none (0%) of the deployed Persian Gulf veterans not showing signs and symptoms of GWS have antibodies to squalene. Neither patients with idiopathic autoimmune disease nor healthy controls had detectable serum antibodies to squalene. The majority of symptomatic GWS patients had serum antibodies to squalene. Copyright 2000 Academic Press.

Language of Publication English

Unique Identifier 20108859

=====================

Title Farnesol-induced generation of reactive oxygen species via indirect inhibition of the mitochondrial electron transport chain in the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae.

Author Machida K; Tanaka T; Fujita K; Taniguchi M

Address Department of Biology, Graduate School of Science, Osaka City University, 3-3-138 Sugimoto, Sumiyoshi-ku, Osaka 558-8585, Japan.

Source J Bacteriol, 1998 Sep, 180:17, 4460-5

Abstract The mechanism of farnesol (FOH)-induced growth inhibition of Saccharomyces cerevisiae was studied in terms of its promotive effect on generation of reactive oxygen species (ROS). The level of ROS generation in FOH-treated cells increased five- to eightfold upon the initial 30-min incubation, while cells treated with other isoprenoid compounds, like geraniol, geranylgeraniol, and squalene, showed no ROS-generating response. The dependence of FOH-induced growth inhibition on such an oxidative stress was confirmed by the protection against such growth inhibition in the presence of an antioxidant such as alpha-tocopherol, probucol, or N-acetylcysteine. FOH could accelerate ROS generation only in cells of the wild-type grande strain, not in those of the respiration-deficient petite mutant ([rho0]), which illustrates the role of the mitochondrial electron transport chain as its origin. Among the respiratory chain inhibitors, ROS generation could be effectively eliminated with myxothiazol, which inhibits oxidation of ubiquinol to the ubisemiquinone radical by the Rieske iron-sulfur center of complex III, but not with antimycin A, an inhibitor of electron transport that is functional in further oxidation of the ubisemiquinone radical to ubiquinone in the Q cycle of complex III. Cellular oxygen consumption was inhibited immediately upon extracellular addition of FOH, whereas FOH and its possible metabolites failed to directly inhibit any oxidase activities detected with the isolated mitochondrial preparation. A protein kinase C (PKC)-dependent mechanism was suggested to exist in the inhibition of mitochondrial electron transport since FOH-induced ROS generation could be effectively eliminated with a membrane-permeable diacylglycerol analog which can activate PKC. The present study supports the idea that FOH inhibits the ability of the electron transport chain to accelerate ROS production via interference with a phosphatidylinositol type of signal.

Language of Publication English

Unique Identifier 98389659

=================

Title The role of macrophages in the induction and regulation of immunity elicited by exogenous antigens.

Author Wijburg OL; van den Dobbelsteen GP; Vadolas J; Sanders A; Strugnell RA; van Rooijen N

Address Department of Cell Biology and Immunology, Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam, The Netherlands.

Source Eur J Immunol, 1998 Feb, 28:2, 479-87

Abstract Different delivery vehicles may target to different antigen presenting cells (APC) because of their composition, size and/or physical properties. In this study, we examined the priming of cytotoxic T lymphocyte (CTL) responses to a soluble exogenous protein in vivo, using various delivery vehicles. In addition, we determined the role of macrophages as APC in vivo for each of these delivery vehicles by comparing the induction of antigen-specific CTL and serum antibodies in normal and macrophage-depleted mice. Influenza A virus-derived virosomes, liposomes and monophosphoryl lipid A/squalene (MPLSQ) efficiently induced antigen-specific CTL as well as antibody responses, of which virosomes proved to be the most efficient inducers. In mice that were immunized with cell-associated antigen, strong CTL responses but no antigen-specific antibodies were detectable, while aluminium hydroxide and aluminium phosphate elicited antigen-specific antibodies but no CTL responses. Elimination of macrophages in vivo before immunization abrogated CTL responses induced with liposomes and MPL/SQ, but did not affect induction of antigen-specific CTL with virosomes or cell-associated antigen. Importantly, serum antibody levels were not altered after macrophage depletion, regardless of the delivery vehicle used, suggesting that in the absence of macrophages, other APC may phagocytose the exogenous antigens for major histocompatibility complex (MHC) class II processing and presentation. These results suggest that soluble exogenous antigens delivered in different carrier systems may be processed differently by different APC in vivo for MHC class I- or class II-restricted presentation.

Language of Publication English

Unique Identifier 98180351

===================

Title The endogenous adjuvant squalene can induce a chronic T-cell-mediated arthritis in rats.

Author Carlson BC; Jansson AM; Larsson A; Bucht A; Lorentzen JC

Address Department of Medicine, Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden.

Source Am J Pathol, 2000 Jun, 156:6, 2057-65

Abstract Squalene is a cholesterol precursor, which stimulates the immune system nonspecifically. We demonstrate that one intradermal injection of this adjuvant lipid can induce joint-specific inflammation in arthritis-prone DA rats. Histopathological and immunohistochemical analyses revealed erosion of bone and cartilage, and that development of polyarthritis coincided with infiltration of alphabeta(+) T cells. Depletion of these cells with anti-alphabeta TcR monoclonal antibody (R73) resulted in complete recovery, whereas anti-CD8 and anti-gammadelta TcR injections were ineffective. The apparent dependence on CD4(+) T cells suggested a role for genes within the major histocompatibility complex (MHC), and this was concluded from comparative studies of MHC congenic rat strains, in which DA.1H rats were less susceptible than DA rats. Furthermore, LEW.1AV1 and PVG.1AV1 rats with MHC identical to DA rats were arthritis-resistant, demonstrating that non-MHC genes also determine susceptibility. Some of these genetic influences could be linked to previously described arthritis susceptibility loci in an F2 intercross between DA and LEW.1AV1 rats (ie, Cia3, Oia2 and Cia5). Interestingly, some F2 hybrid rats developed chronic arthritis, a phenotype not apparent in the parental inbred strains. Our demonstration that an autoadjuvant can trigger chronic, immune-mediated joint-specific inflammation may give clues to the pathogenesis of rheumatoid arthritis, and it raises new questions concerning the role of endogenous molecules with adjuvant properties in chronic inflammatory diseases.

Language of Publication English

Unique Identifier 20313122

==========================

Title The mode of action of immunological adjuvants.

Author Allison AC

Address Dawa Corporation, Belmont, CA, USA.

Source Dev Biol Stand, 1998, 92:, 3-11

Abstract Adjuvants augment immune responses to antigens and influence the balance between cell-mediated and humoral responses, as well as the isotypes of antibodies formed. New adjuvant formulations include antigen-carrying vehicles and small molecules with immunomodulating activity. Widely used two-phase vehicles comprise liposomes and microfluidized squalene or squalane emulsions. These are believed to target antigens to antigen-presenting cells, including dendritic cells (DC), follicular dendritic cells (FDC) and B-lymphocytes. Activation of complement generates C3d, which binds CR2 (CD21) on FDC and B-lymphocytes, thereby stimulating the proliferation of the latter and the generation of B-memory. Targeting of antigens to DC may favour cell-mediated immunity. Immunomodulating agents induce the production of cytokine cascades. In a primary cascade at injection sites TNF-alpha, GM-CSF and IL-1 are produced. TNF-alpha promotes migration of DC to lymphoid tissues, while GM-CSF and IL-1 accelerate the maturation of DC into efficient antigen-presenting cells for T-lymphocytes. In a secondary cytokine cascade in draining lymph nodes, DC produce IL-12, which induces Th1 responses with the production of IFN-gamma. The cytokines elicit cell-mediated immune responses and the formation of antibodies of protective isotypes, such as IgG2a in the mouse and IgG1 in humans. Antibodies of these isotypes activate complement and collaborate with antibody-dependent effector cells in protective immune responses.

Language of Publication English

Unique Identifier 98214873

====================

Title Green tea polyphenols: novel and potent inhibitors of squalene epoxidase.

Author Abe I; Seki T; Umehara K; Miyase T; Noguchi H; Sakakibara J; Ono T

Address University of Shizuoka, School of Pharmaceutical Sciences, 52-1 Yada, Shizuoka, 422-8526, Japan. abei@ys7.u-shizuoka-ken.ac.jp

Source Biochem Biophys Res Commun, 2000 Feb, 268:3, 767-71

Abstract The green tea gallocatechins, (-)-epigallocatechin-3-O-gallate (EGCG) (IC(50) = 0.69 microM), (-)-gallocatechin-3-O-gallate (GCG) (IC(50) = 0.67 microM), (-)-epicatechin-3-O-gallate (ECG) (IC(50) = 1.3 microM), and theasinensin A (IC(50) = 0.13 microM), were found to be potent and selective inhibitors of rat squalene epoxidase (SE), a rate-limiting enzyme of cholesterol biogenesis. On the other hand, flavan-3-ols without galloyl group at C-3 did not show significant enzyme inhibition. It was demonstrated for the first time that the cholesterol lowering effect of green tea may be attributed to their potent SE inhibition activities. Inhibition kinetics revealed that EGCG inhibited SE in noncompetitive (K(I) = 0.74 microM), and non-time-dependent manner. The potent enzyme inhibition would be caused by specific binding to the enzyme, and by scavenging reactive oxygen species required for the monooxygenase reaction. Copyright 2000 Academic Press.

Language of Publication English

Unique Identifier 20145509

====================

Title Squalene-induced extrinsic lipoid pneumonia: serial radiologic findings in nine patients.

Author Lee JY; Lee KS; Kim TS; Yoon HK; Han BK; Han J; Chung MP; Kwon OJ

Address Department of Radiology, Samsung Medical Center, Sungkyunkwan University School of Medicine, Seoul, South Korea.

Source J Comput Assist Tomogr, 1999 Sep, 23:5, 730-5

Abstract PURPOSE: The purpose of this work was to demonstrate the initial and follow-up radiologic findings of squalene-induced extrinsic lipoid pneumonia. METHOD: Follow-up chest radiographs (n = 9) and high-resolution CT scans (n = 3) as well as initial radiographs (n = 9) and CT scans (n = 8) were obtained in nine patients with squalene-induced extrinsic lipoid pneumonia. The serial radiologic findings were analyzed retrospectively by three chest radiologists, focusing on the pattern and distribution of parenchymal abnormalities. RESULTS: The most frequent pattern of parenchymal abnormalities on chest radiograph was areas of ground-glass opacity (n = 9, bilateral 6), followed by consolidation (n = 7, bilateral 3) and poorly defined small nodules (n = 4, bilateral 2). The abnormalities were distributed in the right lower lung (n = 9), left lower lung (n = 6), and right middle lung (n = 6) zones. Initial CT scans (n = 8) demonstrated bilateral areas of ground-glass attenuation (n = 8), poorly defined centrilobular nodules (n = 8), crazy paving (n = 6), and consolidation (n = 3). The abnormalities were distributed in the right middle lobe (n = 8) and in both lower lobes (n = 5). Follow-up chest radiograph (n = 9) showed complete disappearance (n = 2) and decrease (n = 7) in the extent of the parenchymal abnormalities. Follow-up CT scans (n = 3) demonstrated decrease (n = 2) and no change (n = 1) in the extent of the abnormalities. CONCLUSION: Squalene-induced extrinsic lipoid pneumonia most commonly appears as areas of ground-glass attenuation mixed with poorly defined centrilobular nodules and crazy paving on CT, being distributed mainly in the right middle and both lower lobes. The lesions are indolent and remain after cessation of squalene ingestion.

Language of Publication English

Unique Identifier 99452488

=====================

Title Cloning, heterologous expression, and enzymological characterization of human squalene monooxygenase.

Author Laden BP; Tang Y; Porter TD

Address Graduate Center for Toxicology, University of Kentucky, Lexington, Kentucky 40536-0082, USA.

Source Arch Biochem Biophys, 2000 Feb, 374:2, 381-8

Abstract The cDNA for human squalene monooxygenase, a key enzyme in the committed pathway for cholesterol biosynthesis, was amplified from a human liver cDNA library and cloned, and the protein was expressed in Escherichia coli and purified. Kinetic analysis of the purified enzyme revealed an apparent K(m) for squalene of 7.7 &mgr;M and an apparent k(cat) of 1.1 min(-1). For FAD the apparent K(m) is 0.3 &mgr;M, consistent with a loosely bound flavin. The apparent K(m) for NADPH-cytochrome P450 reductase, the requisite electron transfer partner, is 14 nM. The amount of reductase needed for maximal activity is about threefold less than the amount of squalene monooxygenase present in the assay; thus, electron transfer to the monooxygenase is not likely to be rate limiting. Previous reports have implicated inhibition of this enzyme as the cause of a peripheral demyelination seen in weanling rats fed a diet containing tellurium. As no data were available for humans, the ability of a number of tellurium and related elemental compounds to inhibit the recombinant human enzyme was examined. Tellurite, tellurium dioxide, selenite, and selenium dioxide were inhibitory; the tellurium compounds were more potent than the selenium compounds, as indicated by their IC(50) values (17 and 37 microM, respectively). Kinetic analysis of the inhibition by tellurite suggests multiple sites of interaction with the enzyme in a noncompetitive manner with respect to squalene. Copyright 2000 Academic Press.

Language of Publication English

Unique Identifier 20132878

================

Title Permeability barrier disruption coordinately regulates mRNA levels for key enzymes of cholesterol, fatty acid, and ceramide synthesis in the epidermis.

Author Harris IR; Farrell AM; Grunfeld C; Holleran WM; Elias PM; Feingold KR

Address Department of Veterans Affairs Medical Center and Department of Dermatology, University of California, San Francisco 94121, USA.

Source J Invest Dermatol, 1997 Dec, 109:6, 783-7

Abstract The extracellular lipids of the stratum corneum, which are comprised mainly of cholesterol, fatty acids, and ceramides, are essential for epidermal permeability barrier function. Moreover, disruption of the permeability barrier results in an increased cholesterol, fatty acid, and ceramide synthesis in the underlying epidermis. This increase in lipid synthesis has been shown previously to be due to increased activities of HMG-CoA reductase, acetyl-CoA carboxylase, fatty acid synthase and serine palmitoyl transferase, key enzymes of cholesterol, fatty acid, and ceramide synthesis, respectively. In the present study, we determined whether the mRNA levels for the key enzymes required for synthesis of these three classes of lipids increase coordinately during barrier recovery. By northern blotting, the steady-state mRNA levels for HMG-CoA reductase, HMG-CoA synthase, farnesyl pyrophosphate synthase, and squalene synthase, key enzymes for cholesterol synthesis, all increased significantly after barrier disruption by either acetone or tape stripping. Additionally, the steady-state mRNA levels of acetyl-CoA carboxylase and fatty acid synthase, required for fatty acid synthesis, as well as serine palmitoyl transferase, the rate-limiting enzyme of de novo ceramide synthesis, also increased. Furthermore, artificial restoration of the permeability barrier by occlusion after barrier disruption prevented the increase in mRNA levels for all of these enzymes, except farnesyl pyrophosphate synthase, indicating a specific link of the increase in mRNA levels to barrier requirements. The parallel increase in epidermal mRNA levels for the enzymes required for cholesterol, fatty acid, and ceramide synthesis may be due to one or more transcription factors that regulate lipid requirements for permeability barrier function in keratinocytes.

Language of Publication English

Unique Identifier 98068656

------------

Message: 2
Date: Sun, 10 Sep 2000
From: magnu96196@aol.com

Squalene search collection two

Title The role of macrophages in the induction and regulation of immunity elicited by exogenous antigens.

Author Wijburg OL; van den Dobbelsteen GP; Vadolas J; Sanders A; Strugnell RA; van Rooijen N

Address Department of Cell Biology and Immunology, Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam, The Netherlands.

Source Eur J Immunol, 1998 Feb, 28:2, 479-87

Abstract Different delivery vehicles may target to different antigen presenting cells (APC) because of their composition, size and/or physical properties. In this study, we examined the priming of cytotoxic T lymphocyte (CTL) responses to a soluble exogenous protein in vivo, using various delivery vehicles. In addition, we determined the role of macrophages as APC in vivo for each of these delivery vehicles by comparing the induction of antigen-specific CTL and serum antibodies in normal and macrophage-depleted mice. Influenza A virus-derived virosomes, liposomes and monophosphoryl lipid A/squalene (MPLSQ) efficiently induced antigen-specific CTL as well as antibody responses, of which virosomes proved to be the most efficient inducers. In mice that were immunized with cell-associated antigen, strong CTL responses but no antigen-specific antibodies were detectable, while aluminium hydroxide and aluminium phosphate elicited antigen-specific antibodies but no CTL responses. Elimination of macrophages in vivo before immunization abrogated CTL responses induced with liposomes and MPL/SQ, but did not affect induction of antigen-specific CTL with virosomes or cell-associated antigen. Importantly, serum antibody levels were not altered after macrophage depletion, regardless of the delivery vehicle used, suggesting that in the absence of macrophages, other APC may phagocytose the exogenous antigens for major histocompatibility complex (MHC) class II processing and presentation. These results suggest that soluble exogenous antigens delivered in different carrier systems may be processed differently by different APC in vivo for MHC class I- or class II-restricted presentation.

Language of Publication English

Unique Identifier 98180351

===============

Title Useful 1O2 (1delta g) generator, 3-(4'-methyl-1'-naphthyl)-propionic acid, 1',4'-endoperoxide (NEPO), for dioxygenation of squalence (a skin surface lipid) in an organic solvent and bacterial killing in aqueous medium.

Author Nakano M; Kambayashi Y; Tatsuzawa H; Komiyama T; Fujimori K

Address Department of Photon and Free Radical Research, Japan Immunoresearch Laboratories, Takasaki. nakanom@jimro.otsuka.co.jp

Source FEBS Lett, 1998 Jul, 432:1-2, 9-12

Abstract 3-(4'-Methyl-1'-naphthyl)-propionic acid, 1',4'-endoperoxide (NEPO) provides singlet state of oxygen (1O2, 1delta g) at 37 degrees C in sodium phosphate buffer (pH 7.2), acetate buffer (pH 4.5), methanol or chloroform, through the retro-Diels-Alder reaction. The total amount of 1O2 generated by NEPO was calculated using the following equation: [1O2]= [NEPO]0[1-exp(-kt)], where [1O2], [NEPO]0 and k are the total amount of 1O2 produced during the time t, initial concentration of NEPO and the first-order reaction rate constant, respectively. When squalene was exposed to 1O2 which was generated thermolytically from NEPO, it was oxidized to three hydroperoxides, mono-, di- and tri-hydroperoxides, in amounts proportional to the dose of NEPO. The oxidizability of squalene was much more extensive compared with unsaturated phospholipids. Additionally, when wild-type E. coli and lycopene-producing mutant E. coli were exposed to NEPO-derived 1O2, there was significant loss of viability of wild-type E. coli but no significant loss of viability in lycopene-producing strain, suggesting that lycopene by scavenging 1O2 protected E. coli against 1O2 toxicity.

Language of Publication English

Unique Identifier 98374014

==================

Title Inhibition of cholesterol production but not of nonsterol isoprenoid products induces neuronal cell death.

Author Michikawa M; Yanagisawa K

Address Department of Dementia Research, National Institute for Longevity Sciences, Aichi, Japan.

Source J Neurochem, 1999 Jun, 72:6, 2278-85

Abstract Deficiency of nonsterol isoprenoids, intermediate metabolites of the cholesterol biosynthetic pathway, has been known to cause an inhibition of DNA synthesis and cell growth, and to induce apoptosis in nonneuronal cells. To investigate whether this is also the case in neurons, we examined the effect of a 3-hydroxy-3-methylglutaryl coenzyme A (HMG-CoA) reductase inhibitor on the viability of neuronal cultures prepared from fetal rat brains. Treatment with compactin, a competitive inhibitor of HMG-CoA reductase, induced neuronal death in a dose-dependent manner. Concurrent treatment with cholesterol, beta-migrating very low density lipoprotein, mevalonate, or squalene substantially inhibited the induction of neuronal death by compactin. Cell death was also induced by treatment with squalestatin, which specifically inhibits cholesterol biosynthesis at a site downstream from the generation of nonsterol metabolites. Furthermore, squalestatin-induced neuronal death was inhibited by concurrent incubation with squalene but not mevalonate. In contrast, cell growth of proliferating cells such as NIH 3T3 and PC12 cells was exclusively dependent on the level of nonsterol isoprenoid products and not that of cholesterol. The results of this study clearly indicate that the viability of neurons, different from that of nonneuronal cells, depends on the intracellular cholesterol content and not on the intermediate nonsterol isoprenoid products.

Language of Publication English

Unique Identifier 99277339

=================

Title Identification of arthritogenic adjuvants of self and foreign origin.

Author Lorentzen JC

Address Department of Medicine, Karolinska Hospital, Karolinska Institute, Stockholm, Sweden.

Source Scand J Immunol, 1999 Jan, 49:1, 45-50

Abstract The lack of defined triggers for human inflammatory joint diseases warrants efforts to identify candidate molecules. For this task, it may be an important lead that nonspecific activation of the immune system can precipitate arthritis in rats. Consequently, arthritis-prone rat strains were used to search for disease-triggering factors among molecules which initially induce innate defence reactions rather than specific immune responses. A variety of immunological adjuvants were investigated by intradermal injection into DA and LEW.1AV1 rats and monitoring of clinical signs for 30 days. Several arthritogenic cell-wall structures from yeast and bacteria were identified, such as beta-glucan, lipopolysaccharide and trehalosedimycolate. The test procedures also revealed arthritogens of chemical origin, such as dioctadecyldiammoniumbromide (DDA = C38H80NBr) and heptadecane (C17H36). Furthermore, it allowed the precise definition of arthritogenic determinants of lipids, since C16H34 induced arthritis, whereas the closely related linear hydrocarbons C16H32, C16H33Br and C15H32 did not. The observed pathogenicity of organic lipids raised the question of whether endogenous lipids can also precipitate arthritis. Indeed, this was true for the cholesterol precursor squalene (C30H50). In conclusion, this article describes the rational use of arthritis-prone rat strains to identify arthritogenic factors of both foreign and self origin. Although structurally unrelated, the pathogenic molecules defined here share the feature of being nonspecific triggers of the immune system. This consolidates a general principle for the induction of adjuvant arthritis which may provide clues to the aetiology of human arthritides, including rheumatoid arthritis.

Language of Publication English

Unique Identifier 99146461

================

Title Apolipoprotein E4 induces neuronal cell death under conditions of suppressed de novo cholesterol synthesis.

Author Michikawa M; Yanagisawa K

Address Department of Dementia Research, National Institute for Longevity Sciences, Morioka, Obu, Japan.

Source J Neurosci Res, 1998 Oct, 54:1, 58-67

Abstract The presence of the apolipoprotein E (apoE) allele epsilon4 is a major risk factor for the development of Alzheimer's disease (AD); however, the molecular mechanism underlying the acceleration of AD development in individuals with epsilon4 remains to be determined. To investigate the isoform-specific effects of apoE on neurons, primary neuron cultures were prepared from fetal rat cerebral cortices. Inhibition by compactin, a 3-hydroxyl-3-methylglutaryl coenzyme A reductase inhibitor of de novo cholesterol synthesis, induced premature neuronal cell death in a dose-dependent manner. In the presence of compactin at a sublethal dose to the cells, rabbit beta-migrating very low density lipoprotein (beta-VLDL) with human apoE4 (the product of epsilon4) induced premature neuronal cell death, while that with apoE3 (the product of epsilon3) did not. Neurons cultured in the presence of apoE4, beta-VLDL, and compactin were shrunken and spherical, containing condensed chromatin and fragmented DNA, features characteristic of apoptosis. The addition of intermediate metabolites of the cholesterol biosynthetic pathway, including mevalonate and squalene, rescued neuronal cells incubated with apoE4 and beta-VLDL, in the presence of compactin. These results strongly suggest that a reduction in the level of endogenously synthesized cholesterol is a prerequisite for apoE4-induced neuronal cell death.

Language of Publication English

Unique Identifier 98449599

==================

Title Stereochemistry-dependent inhibition of RAS farnesylation by farnesyl phosphonic acids.

Author Hohl RJ; Lewis KA; Cermak DM; Wiemer DF

Address Department of Internal Medicine, University of Iowa, Iowa City 52242, USA. raymond-hohl@uiowa.edu

Source Lipids, 1998 Jan, 33:1, 39-46

Abstract This investigation compares the effects of three farnesyl pyrophosphate analogs on selected aspects of isoprenoid metabolism. E,E-alpha-Hydroxyfarnesylphosphonate was prepared by an improved variation on a literature synthesis, which also gave access to the new Z,E-alpha-hydroxyfarnesyl- and alpha-hydroxygeranylphosphonates. A striking find is that only E,E-alpha-hydroxyfarnesylphosphonate induces alteration of RAS processing in intact human-derived leukemia cells and inhibits farnesyl protein transferase in enzyme assays, while the Z,E-alpha-farnesyl- and geranylphosphonates are inactive. The inhibitory activity of E,E-alpha-hydroxyfarnesylphosphonate is greater in enzyme than intact cell assays. This active compound does not significantly inhibit geranylgeranyl protein transferase I or squalene synthase, nor does it diminish cholesterol synthesis. These results indicate that the length of the terpenoid chain and olefin stereochemistry allow selective inhibition of critical enzymes of terpenoid metabolism. Discrimination was observed between inhibition of farnesyl protein transferase and squalene synthase by E,E-alpha-hydroxyfarnesylphosphonate, even though both enzymes utilize farnesyl pyrophosphate as their natural substrate.

Language of Publication English

Unique Identifier 98130948

=================

Title Serum squalene in postmenopausal women without and with coronary artery disease.

Author Rajaratnam RA; Gylling H; Miettinen TA

Address Department of Medicine, University of Helsinki, Finland.

Source Atherosclerosis, 1999 Sep, 146:1, 61-4

Abstract Squalene, found in earlier studies in human atherosclerotic plaques, was measured in the serum of postmenopausal women with coronary artery disease (CAD) (n = 25) and randomly chosen age-matched healthy controls (n = 30). The squalene concentrations of the whole population ranged from 37.5 to 115.5 microg/dl, and were higher in serum of the CAD than healthy women (91.4+/-2.6 versus 65.2+/-2.6 microg/dl, P = 0.000), a finding observed also in relation to cholesterol (43.8+/-1.8 versus 32.9+/-1.1 10(2)x mmol/mol of cholesterol, P = 0.000). The squalene concentration was also increased in chylomicrons, VLDL and d>1.006 g/ml lipoproteins, and the proportions to cholesterol in VLDL and d>1.006 g/ml lipoproteins. The respective squalene and cholesterol concentrations were related to each other in serum, VLDL and d>1.006 g/ml lipoproteins (r = 0.52, 0.85 and 0.55, respectively), whereas the correlation with triglycerides was seen only in VLDL (r = 0.84) over the whole population. Besides enhanced intestinal secretion, it remains to be shown whether higher serum squalene in postmenopausal coronary women is due to increased cholesterol synthesis or a defect in squalene conversion to lanosterol.

Language of Publication English

Unique Identifier 99415428

=================

Title Embryonic lethality and defective neural tube closure in mice lacking squalene synthase.

Author Tozawa R; Ishibashi S; Osuga J; Yagyu H; Oka T; Chen Z; Ohashi K; Perrey S; Shionoiri F; Yahagi N; Harada K; Gotoda T; Yazaki Y; Yamada N

Address Department of Metabolic Diseases, Faculty of Medicine, University of Tokyo, 7-3-1 Hongo, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo 113-8655, Japan.

Source J Biol Chem, 1999 Oct, 274:43, 30843-8

Abstract Squalene synthase (SS) catalyzes the reductive head-to-head condensation of two molecules of farnesyl diphosphate to form squalene, the first specific intermediate in the cholesterol biosynthetic pathway. We used gene targeting to knock out the mouse SS gene. The mice heterozygous for the mutation (SS+/-) were apparently normal. SS+/- mice showed 60% reduction in the hepatic mRNA levels of SS compared with SS+/+ mice. Consistently, the SS enzymatic activities were reduced by 50% in the liver and testis. Nevertheless, the hepatic cholesterol synthesis was not different between SS+/- and SS+/+ mice, and plasma lipoprotein profiles were not different irrespective of the presence of the low density lipoprotein receptor, indicating that SS is not a rate-limiting enzyme in the cholesterol biosynthetic pathway. The mice homozygous for the disrupted SS gene (SS-/-) were embryonic lethal around midgestation. E9.5-10.5 SS-/- embryos exhibited severe growth retardation and defective neural tube closure. The lethal phenotype was not rescued by supplementing the dams either with dietary squalene or cholesterol. We speculate that cholesterol is required for the development, particularly of the nervous system, and that the chorioallantoic circulatory system is not mature enough to supply the rapidly growing embryos with maternal cholesterol at this developmental stage.

Language of Publication English

Unique Identifier 99452981

--------------

Message: 3
Date: Sun, 10 Sep 2000
From: magnu96196@aol.com

OR incinerator sold----DSSI
Perma-Fix Environmental Services acquires mixed waste treatment facility

9/7/2000

Perma-Fix Environmental Services, Inc. of Atlanta, GA announced today that it has completed the acquisition of Diversified Scientific Services, Inc. (DSSI), a mixed waste facility that is permitted to treat radioactive and hazardous (mixed) and low-level radioactive waste from a subsidiary of Waste Management, Inc. The purchase price of this acquisition totaled approximately $8.5 million, consisting of $2.5 million in cash and the balance in notes.

DSSI provides mixed waste disposal services for industry, including prominent international pharmaceutical companies as well as agencies of the U.S. Government, including the Department of Energy and Department of Defense. The company operates a 30,000 sq. ft. treatment facility in Kingston, TN, and is the only commercial facility of its kind in the U.S. that is currently operating and licensed to destroy liquid organic mixed waste. During 1999, DSSI had revenues of more than $10.1 million. It is anticipated that the operations of DSSI will have an immediate benefit, allowing Perma-Fix to expand its mixed waste service capabilities.

Perma-Fix Environmental Services, Inc. provides unique hazardous, mixed and industrial waste management services. The Perma-Fix Process is a proprietary mobile treatment technology that converts hazardous waste into a non-hazardous material.

Source: Perma-Fix Environmental Services, Inc. Edited by Kate Goff Managing Editor, Solid Waste Online http://www.solidwaste.com/

----------

Message: 4
Date: Sun, 10 Sep 2000
From: magnu96196@aol.com

`They never told us it would kill us'

By Deborah Hastings
Associated Press
September 10, 2000
http://www.austin360.com/statesman/editions/today/news_15.html

COVE, Ariz. -- Inside the stifling cinderblock house of Dorothy Joe, nothing moves but waves of grief.

One by one, the old widow and her children begin to sob, as if despair were contagious. The weeping circle begins and ends with her, sitting at the dining room table, staring at weathered hands as if they held answers.

She murmurs in Navajo, describing the white man's prized uranium and how it destroyed her husband.

``They never told us it would kill us,'' says David, 38, choking on his tears. ``I'm sorry,'' the son says, drawing a deep breath. ``I'm sorry.''

They received $100,000 from the government for the death of Raymond Joe, who scraped radioactive rock from surrounding mountains to fuel the Cold War. The conflict never turned hot, but it killed Ray Joe just the same.

He died six years ago, but his family is inconsolable, as if he were just now drawing his last breath from these stagnant rooms.

Lung disease has killed at least 400 uranium miners on this reservation, according to the Uranium Radiation Victims Committee, a Navajo advocacy group.

The Navajo Nation covers 27,000 square miles in the Four Corners area of Arizona, Utah, Colorado and New Mexico.

Here lies the world's largest deposit of uranium ore, and the Navajo who have lived on it for seven centuries. Neither troubled the other until the 1940s, when mining companies began blasting holes in stippled sandstone cliffs.

Virtually unburdened by health, safety or pollution regulations, the mines ran at least two shifts every day for nearly 40 years. By the 1980s, decreased demand closed the mines. But not until Navajo workers unaware of radiation risks had loaded millions of tons of ore into open rail cars.

They wore no protective masks or clothing. They ate their lunches in holes choked with radioactive dust. They drank mine water that would have triggered a Geiger counter. They staggered home to wives who washed their filthy overalls with the family laundry.

Declassified documents

The dying started in the 1960s. In places such as Cove, there are hardly any old men left. Instead, there are poisonous dumps, contaminated springs and thousands of gaping mines.

Recently declassified documents show the government knew from the start it was playing with poison but concealed the dangers.

In 1990, Congress passed the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act and apologized for failing to protect uranium workers and their families. It ordered payments of as much as $100,000 to miners in Wyoming, Washington state and the Four Corners area, as well as to others who lived in the Nevada Test Site's fallout.

The money did not come easily. To get it, the Navajo had to produce documents that have no place among their people. Marriage certificates. Death certificates. Pieces of paper unable to convey whole truths.

A special tribal court was convened to verify marriages, births and deaths, a process that takes months. Witnesses must appear ``to verify, sometimes, a person's existence,'' said Timothy Benally, a former miner who leads the victims committee. ``We had six people die while their claims were pending.''

On July 12, Congress amended the compensation act, increasing benefits and reducing paperwork.

Still, the Navajo say it is not enough.

``Nothing can equal a human life,'' Dorothy Joe says.

Workers were unaware

For $45 a week, Navajo men worked in the mines run by the Oklahoma company Kerr- McGeen.

Johnny Sam, now 60, worked a hopper for five years beginning in 1975, examining chunks of rock under a special light to identify high-grade uranium. The good stuff was blue. The low-grade was gray.

Most was yellow, meaning average. ``Leetso'' is the Navajo word for uranium. It means ``yellow brown'' or ``yellow dirt.''

``They didn't explain to us what it did to you,'' says Sam, his dark eyes scanning the hillsides of Church Rock. Residents including Benally say there is so much radiation sickness and contamination in Four Corners it is too great to count.

Sam remembers foremen ordering miners into smoky shafts minutes after a TNT blast. The longest tunnels ran 1,800 feet, often with no ventilation. The men trudged in, their hats beaming shafts of light, their lungs filling with radioactive dust.

It's been 20 years since Sam wore a miner's hat. His breath comes hard now and his lungs burn. He's never smoked cigarettes; he blames the mines.

``Nothing bothered us right away,'' he said. ``Fifteen or 20 years later, things bother you.''

Four hours to the west, in Cove Mesa, Donald Ellison Jr., 39, tends to his 89-year-old father who has been diagnosed with lung cancer. Donald Ellison Sr. mined uranium for seven years at 40 cents an hour starting in 1947. He spends his last days herding sheep, walking the land on which he was born.

``The people use these mines to shelter their sheep,'' the younger Ellison says. ``They store hay and grain in there and then feed it to the sheep. Then they eat the sheep.''

Destroyed lives

Dorothy Joe, 66, touches the tip of each finger, ticking off the names of other widows.

``Some remarried,'' she says. ``I married my husband. I still have feelings for him. That is why I am single.''

The widows were the ones who first petitioned the government in 1960 for redress. As their husbands died, they began to talk among themselves and to notice things, like the way death started with not being able to catch a full breath.

The wives remembered other things that seized their hearts: How they used to bring uranium chunks in the house at night so their children could watch them glow in the dark. How their husbands' work clothes, covered in radioactive muck, sometimes sat in the kitchen for a week because running water didn't come to this reservation until the 1980s.

``The government destroyed this community,'' David Joe says. ``They destroyed our lives.''

--------


State police infiltrated protest groups, documents show
Search-warrant affidavits reveal an undercover operation aimed at activists in Philadelphia for the GOP convention.

By Linda K. Harris,, Craig R. McCoy and Thomas Ginsberg
9/10/00
INQUIRER STAFF WRITERS
Philadelphia Inquirer

State police undercover agents posing as demonstrators infiltrated activist groups planning the protests at the Republican National Convention, search-warrant documents made public yesterday showed.

The undercover operation was detailed in legal documents filed Aug. 1 by Philadelphia police seeking search warrants for a raid that day on a so-called "puppet warehouse" at 4100 Haverford Ave. in West Philadelphia. The documents were under a court seal until yesterday.

About 75 people were arrested in the raid at the warehouse.

The infiltration was immediately condemned yesterday by the state chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union and the city public defender's office.

"It's worse than sleazeball," said Stefan Presser, the ACLU's legal director. "This is an outrage."

Presser and other critics said dissenters needed the right to rally and to organize without fear that police were spying on them. They said they feared that police undercover officers could cross the line from intelligence-gatherers to provocateurs.

"The legality and propriety of this potentially unconstitutional police conduct will certainly be an issue at the time of trial in all of these cases," said Bradley Bridge, a senior lawyer with the defender's office.

During the convention, Police Commissioner John F. Timoney repeatedly denied that police had engaged in infiltration.

"We had not infiltrated any group," he said the day after police raided the warehouse that had become one of several gathering spots for demonstrators during the convention.

A spokeswoman for the commissioner said yesterday that he would have no comment. Lt. Susan Slawson, commander of the police public-affairs unit, said the commissioner could not talk because "it's in litigation," a reference to a civil suit filed by demonstrators challenging their arrests during the protests.

The use of state police as the undercover operatives took place as the city itself was restricted from using its own officers for such infiltration under a long-standing mayoral directive. The directive says the police may not infiltrate protest groups without the permission of the mayor, the managing director, and the police commissioner.

Mayor Street and City Solicitor Kenneth Trujillo declined comment yesterday.

In seeking search warrants, police cited the work of the undercover operatives and detailed the intelligence gathered as the convention approached. The information is sketched out in affidavits of probable cause seeking warrants to search the warehouse, a U-Haul van, another van, and a pickup that police deemed suspicious.

"This investigation is utilizing several Pennsylvania state troopers in an undercover capacity that have infiltrated several of the activist groups planning to commit numerous illegal direct actions," said one affidavit, signed by Detective William Egenlauf of the Philadelphia Police Department.

It says the state police undercover operatives arrived at the warehouse on July 27, four days before the convention began.

Once there, the agents assisted "in the construction of props to be used during protests," the affidavit says.

It says agents observed demonstrators building street barriers and "lock boxes," devices used by protesters to lock arms together when blocking streets. The papers say they overheard discussions that indicated protesters planned on "using the puppets . . . as blockades."

The operatives also reported that "persons indicated they would be throwing pies, bottles and cardboard boxes filled with water at the police," the affidavits stated.

Timoney held a news conference after the convention to display items seized during the raid, including two massive slingshots and chains wrapped in kerosene-soaked rags. Such devices were not used during the protests. Police also displayed seized "lock boxes."

Protesters have claimed the facility was nothing more than an art studio to fashion the puppets, floats and other props that were a hallmark of the demonstrations.

Demonstrators also said their protests would be nonviolent, with illegal actions limited to the blockading of streets. Their lawyers have complained that numerous people were arrested in the warehouse without any proof they had any connection to illegal items.

A key subject of controversy has been the raid on the warehouse.

The request for the search warrants for the warehouse and lengthy affidavits detailing police intelligence-gathering was made yesterday, a month after Municipal Court President Judge Louis J. Presenza approved the searches.

At the request of the District Attorney's Office, the warrants were sealed - barred from public inspection - for a month as soon as they were issued. The legal request for the warrants maintained that premature "disclosure of this affidavit could endanger the lives" of the undercover operatives.

The affidavits cite sweeping police intelligence-gathering before the convention. This included monitoring of unspecified "electronic messages" sent among demonstrators, an apparent reference to police scrutiny of Web sites and electronic mailing lists.

The police documents identified what investigators viewed as the key protest groups and their goals. Funds for one group "allegedly originate with Communist and leftist parties and from sympathetic trade unions" or from "the former Soviet-allied World Federation of Trade Unions," according to the affidavits.

The affidavits go on to identify a handful of leaders of the various groups. Among those cited by name are John Sellers and Kate Sorensen, who were later arrested during demonstrations in Center City. The two were held in jail for days in lieu of $1 million bail - a sum critics said was extraordinary. In recent interviews after their release from jail, people who were inside the warehouse said that they had suspected early on that four undercover officers were working among them. Four men - known as Tim, Harry, George and Ryan - showed up together at 41st and Haverford about a week before the convention, introducing themselves as union carpenters from Wilkes-Barre who built stages, several demonstrators said.

They were big, burly men who were older than most of the people working in the warehouse. They did not seem particularly political or well-informed, according to demonstrators. All four, however, were considered hard workers.

Soliman Lawrence, 20, of Tallahassee, Fla., worked closely with the four on a massive satirical float built for a protest march.

"They gained our trust," Lawrence said. "The fact that we didn't know them very well wasn't a big deal.

"I remember thinking to myself, 'Why does everyone who looks like that have to be a cop?'" Lawrence said. "I didn't like that I thought like that."