------- Index of Articles

NUCLEAR
ELECTION 2000
North Korea Faults U.S. on Power Plants
Russia starts lost satellite probe
Film Reunites Navajo Family, Probes Uranium-Mine Legacy
50 years of bombmaking: Waste may threaten Georgia water
Idaho
The bomb's legacy: Savannah River
Pacesetters
Knotty problems await next president

MILITARY
U.S. Group Claims Responsibility for Shootout in Cambodia Capital
Illinois
New York
Violence Flares in Kashmir Despite Peace Move
Iraqi Official Defies Sanctions With Flight to Damascus
Russia Backs European Plan for New Force
A Hangout That Caters to a Crowd From Space
U.N. Plan for a New Crisis Unit Opposed by Wary Poor Nations
Air Force Shifts Bombers' Missions
Charges expected soon against at least 2
States

OTHER
Curse of the Wind Turns to Farmers' Blessing
Ailing forest's problems complicated by spotted owl
Clear-cutting done with eye to appearance
'Green' ideals part of building concept
News Analysis: The Tree Trap
Treaty Talks Fail to Find Consensus in Global Warming
States
Texas
Yemen Links to bin Laden Gnaw at F.B.I. in Cole Inquiry

ACTIVISTS
DECEMBER MTG. of AfD-MN
Seattle police prepare for protests on one-year anniversary of WTO
Seattle braces for WTO anniversary
Agency for homeless teens has new fund-raising avenue
Rain Chases Protesters Away From 2 Canvassing Boards
States


-------- NUCLEAR

ELECTION 2000
Next president faces several challenges

Pioneer Planet
Sunday, November 26, 2000
Ken Moritsugu and Jonathan S. Landay WASHINGTON BUREAU
http://www.pioneerplanet.com/seven-days/2/news/docs/019479.htm

WASHINGTON No matter whether the next president is named Bush or Gore, he will have to confront a number of inescapable challenges.

The fabled U.S. economy is finally slowing down, the risk of recession growing. The baby boomers are going gray, increasing financial pressure on Social Security and Medicare with each passing year. Middle East peace negotiations are in ruins, raising risks to U.S. interests across the region -- led by dependence on its oil. Saddam Hussein remains in power in Iraq. China looms ever larger as America's leading rival. The world, in short, will not let the new president rest before it tests him.

His job will be complicated by his narrow victory. Razor-thin majorities in Congress mean that opposition lawmakers, with an eye to gaining advantage for the 2002 elections, may sabotage his initiatives at every turn.

In such an atmosphere, sweeping change such as an overhaul of Social Security is unlikely, political analysts agree. That challenge may get dumped on the next administration -- the one elected in 2004. But this new president will have an opportunity to make progress on a select group of issues: education, health care and others that share a degree of bipartisan support.

The economy: The next president faces a dual challenge here -- he must do what he can to prevent a recession, while being prepared to act if one hits.

Analysts expect the economy to slow next year to a still healthy 3 percent to 3.5 percent annual growth rate, down from about 5.2 percent this year. An unanticipated shock, such as a new oil price increase or a stock market crash, could cause a sharper slowdown -- possibly even a recession.

Political gridlock in Washington next year could be good news for the economy. If Congress and the president can't agree on new spending or tax cuts, the federal budget will remain in surplus. Most economists agree that rolling up budget surpluses is the best thing government can do to keep the economic expansion alive, because it results in the national debt being paid down, lowering pressure on interest rates.

``No matter who wins, the next president will lack a mandate to push through major economic programs costing billions of dollars,'' said Sung Won Sohn, the Minneapolis-based chief economist at Wells Fargo & Co. ``Thanks to the gridlock in Congress, more of the projected surplus can be used to pay down the national debt, lowering interest rates.''

Foreign policy and defense: From the Mideast and the Balkans to Taiwan and North Korea, the next commander in chief may face difficult choices that could decide war or peace.

Such pressure points also shape key questions about the future design of the military. The Pentagon is due to review next year the current strategy of structuring U.S. forces to fight near-simultaneous wars in the Persian Gulf and the Korean peninsula.

New thinking is required because military analysts say the defense budget, under current projections, will be inadequate to meet such challenges by $30 billion to $50 billion a year for the next several decades. Some military officials put the shortfall at up to $100 billion a year.

Finally, the next president may have to decide whether to deploy a controversial globe-spanning U.S. missile defense system. President Clinton deferred the decision to his successor. Both China and Russia oppose such a U.S. system. Deployment also could put internal stress on the NATO alliance and fray relations with European allies, who fear such a system could trigger a new nuclear arms race.

Education: The plight of America's schools may give the next president his best opportunity to forge a bipartisan majority behind changes. The American people have made clear they want improvements, and the national need is clear: A well-trained work force is the lifeblood of today's increasingly high-tech driven economy, yet many of the nation's schools are in decline.

On the campaign trail, Bush and Gore sought to define themselves by their differences. Bush pushed vouchers, which could help students attend private schools but would drain money from public systems. Gore proposed more federal money for public schools to hire teachers and to rebuild aging facilities.

Social Security and Medicare: The cost of Social Security and Medicare will skyrocket in coming decades, because of explosive growth in the elderly population and health care advances that produce more expensive drugs and treatments.

If unchecked, these costs could squeeze out other needs, from defense and education to roads. The challenge is to ensure health care and an adequate pension for seniors without bankrupting the rest of government.

-------- korea

North Korea Faults U.S. on Power Plants

Associated Press
November 26, 2000
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-NKorea-US-Nuclear.html
http://www.nandotimes.com/noframes/story/0,2107,500283895-500447222-502906984-0,00.html

SEOUL, South Korea - North Korea on Sunday denounced the United States for a delay in building two nuclear power plants in the communist nation, saying it will require a ``corresponding measure.''

In 1994, Washington, fearful that the North Koreans were working on nuclear weapons, signed an agreement with Pyongyang in which the North agreed to freeze its nuclear program.

In return, a U.S.-led international consortium is building two nuclear reactors worth $4.6 billion in North Korea. Washington promised to build the first light-water reactor by 2003, but officials now say that a delay of several years is inevitable.

North Korea says the delay caused a huge loss of badly needed electricity.

``The United States is wholly to blame for the delay of the project,'' said the Rodong Sinmun, the newspaper for the ruling Workers' Party of Korea, in a commentary.

By dragging on the project, Washington is trying to ``weaken (North Korea's) economic and military potentials and watch for a chance to stifle (North Korea) by force of arms.''

The North's outdated Soviet-designed, graphite-moderated reactors can be used to extract weapons-grade uranium, a key ingredient for making atomic bombs, experts say.

The Korean peninsula was divided into communist North Korea and pro-Western South Korea in 1945. The United States fought on the South Korean side during the 1950-53 Korean War and still keeps 37,000 troops in the South under a defense treaty.

-------- russia

Russia starts lost satellite probe

Florida Today
Nov. 26, 2000
http://www.flatoday.com/space/explore/stories/2000b/112600b.htm

MOSCOW (AP) - A preliminary investigation into the loss of an American commercial satellite indicated that launch operations were performed properly, a Russian military official said Saturday.

The QuickBird 1 was launched from the Plesetsk cosmodrome in northern Russia on Tuesday. It was the first of two satellites the Longmont, Colo.-based company Earth Watch planned to launch on Russian rockets.

The Russian Kosmos-3 rocket carrying the satellite ascended without trouble, but controllers lost contact with it.

A preliminary analysis showed that Plesetsk personnel involved in the launch performed properly, Col. Ilshat Baichurin, head of the Russian Strategic Missile Forces' press service, told the Interfax news agency.

Plesetsk is under the jurisdiction of the Strategic Missile Forces.

Earlier, Interfax said specialists at the Russian Aerospace Agency believe the second stage of the rocket shut down too early and that the satellite would likely plunge back into the Earth's atmosphere.

Baichurin said a commission including specialists from the Russian Aerospace Agency and the Defense Ministry would continue the investigation.

U.S. companies often use Russian space facilities to launch commercial satellites. The rockets are usually considered reliable and a good bargain compared with European and American competitors.

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

Film Reunites Navajo Family, Probes Uranium-Mine Legacy

Salt Lake Tribune
Sunday, November 26, 2000
BY MATT KELLEY THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.sltrib.com/11262000/nation_w/47706.htm

WASHINGTON -- The film gathered dust for decades, a silent 28-minute documentary titled "Navaho Boy: The Monument Valley Story," about a Navajo family whose home was the backdrop for one of John Wayne's most famous Westerns.

Years later, non-Indian filmmakers traveled to the land of otherworldly stone promontories to locate the people and stories behind the blurry, Technicolor images. They found Elsie Mae Cly Begay, matriarch of a family still strong in its Navajo traditions but sickened by uranium mining's radioactive legacy and grieving over a brother taken away by white missionaries 40 years before.

The film's return set off a chain of events that led to the brother's reunion with the family he had never known -- as well as the discovery that the traditional dwelling where Begay lived for years was dangerously radioactive. Now the Cly family is chronicled in another documentary, "The Return of Navajo Boy," being shown at independent film festivals and on public television stations across the country.

"Things happened because of the camera coming back into their lives," director Jeff Spitz said after a screening at the Smithsonian Institution last week. "It led to the recapture of a lot of family history, the expression of a lot of pain, and the return of Elsie's brother, who many people thought was a myth."

The Cly family -- pronounced "klah," it's an English rendition of a Navajo term meaning "left-handed" -- has lived for generations in Monument Valley, a stretch of high desert on the Arizona-Utah border studded with rock formations that look like huge mittens and chimney spires. The photographers and filmmakers who came to the exotic landscape in the mid-1900s took thousands of pictures of the family's daily life: Herding sheep, weaving rugs, wrapping their long hair into the traditional Navajo bun at the back of the neck.

One of the visitors was Robert Kennedy, a Chicago businessman whose midlife crisis found him trying his hand at moviemaking. Kennedy shot "Navajo Boy," depicting events in the Cly family's life as well as a traditional healing ceremony performed for Elsie Zina Cly, Begay's mother.

Kennedy's son, Bill Kennedy, began trying to find his father's film subjects in the 1980s, and hooked up with Spitz in 1997, when they first traveled to the Navajo reservation.

A better-known visitor to the Clys was director John Ford, who used Monument Valley as a dramatic backdrop for his classic 1956 Western, "The Searchers," starring John Wayne. Some Cly relatives even worked as extras, playing some of the "Commanches" who had kidnapped the niece of Wayne's character, played by Natalie Wood.

Wayne also stopped by the Cly home one day. Spotting an infant boy -- Elsie Zina Cly's son -- he asked the child's name. When told the boy did not yet have a name, the actor suggested one that stuck: John Wayne Cly.

The lung ailment that prompted the healing ceremony took Elsie Zina Cly's life sometime after that. Records of that time are hard to come by, and the Cly siblings do not have birth certificates, but little John Wayne was only about 2 years old.

A missionary couple adopted the boy, telling the family they would return him in four years. They never did.

John Wayne Cly grew up in New Mexico with other Indian foster brothers and sisters. In the movie, he tells of watching cars on the highway and dreaming that his Navajo family would pull up and take him away.

"All my life I felt I never fit in with anyone," he said.

About three years ago, he read a newspaper article about the Chicago filmmakers who had found the family that were the subjects of an amateur documentary, and how one of them was Bernie Cly, Begay's brother and a former uranium miner seeking compensation from the government. John Wayne Cly had found his family.

The documentary captures John Wayne Cly's reunion, his nervous approach to the family he had not seen in 40 years and the fierce, wailing hug from Begay, his long-lost sister.

"I hope I'm not a disappointment to you," John Wayne Cly says during the reunion.

He hasn't been, Begay said. The siblings now visit frequently, and John Wayne Cly, now in his mid-40s, is starting to learn the Navajo language that he had lost but his siblings prefer.

John Wayne Cly's siblings recently held a traditional Navajo ceremony for him -- the Blessing Way, a ritual for someone who has returned after a long journey.

Filmmakers weren't the only outsiders who came to Monument Valley in the 1940s and 1950s.

The vast Navajo reservation, spanning parts of New Mexico, Arizona and Utah, holds extensive deposits of uranium. As the Cold War nuclear arms race heated up, mining companies dug hundreds of shafts and open pits in the area to extract the valuable and deadly mineral.

The mines provided plentiful jobs, though the work was strenuous and the miners never were warned of uranium's dangers, let alone given safety equipment beyond hardhats.

By the late 1970s, the mines were closing and many miners were dying of lung cancer, emphysema or other radiation-related ailments.

Whole communities were affected, too. Children played in the huge piles of tailings, the rocks left over from uranium mining and milling.

Miners brought home yellow uranium dust on their clothes. The mines helped speed the flow of radioactivity into drinking water supplies.

People used stones striped with yellow uranium ore to build homes.

People kept getting sick, often with lung problems like the one that felled Begay's mother.

"Then we discovered it is the uranium," Begay explained. "The medicine man can't fix that." Under pressure from Navajo and other uranium miners, Congress in 1990 passed the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act.

Navajo miners have criticized the law, saying its requirements are so strict that many deserving miners cannot get compensation. Bernie Cly, for example, had part of a lung removed because of cancer but had his compensation claim denied because he had smoked tobacco during traditional ceremonies.

Congress changed the law this year to remove many of those impediments, increased compensation to $150,000 and included free medical care for the mine-related illnesses. Federal officials finally approved Bernie Cly's compensation application last week, Spitz said.

Earlier this year, officials tested radioactivity levels in Begay's hogan -- a traditional Navajo dwelling where Begay and her family had lived for years. The hogan's stone floor has the telltale yellowish stripes of uranium ore. Radiation levels inside are up to 100 times acceptable levels.

The Environmental Protection Agency told Begay to keep out of the hogan and last week agreed to help the family tear down the structure and rebuild it without radioactive materials.

Begay and Spitz say they hope "The Return of Navajo Boy" will aid efforts to expand compensation to miners' relatives and others sickened by radiation, as well as clean up the radioactive mess that still plagues Navajo communities.

-------- u.s. nuc facilities

-------- georgia

50 years of bombmaking: Waste may threaten Georgia water

Atlanta Journal-Constitution
SUNDAY November 26, 2000
Charles Seabrook
http://www.accessatlanta.com/partners/ajc/epaper/editions/sunday/news_a302da3ed1c5605f0024.html

Jackson, S.C. --- Concerned that radioactive pollution from the sprawling Savannah River Site in South Carolina may seep into Georgia's groundwater, state environmental regulators plan to set up a three-person station in Augusta to track the contamination.

Gov. Roy Barnes and Georgia's environmental officials worry that radioactive tritium, which already has seeped into the ground under the 198,000-acre SRS, will migrate under the Savannah River and contaminate Georgia's vast aquifers, which provide drinking water for thousands of Georgians.

The pollution is the byproduct of 50 years of top-secret, often frenzied efforts to make the basic ingredients of hydrogen bombs --- plutonium and tritium. Their production has left portions of SRS among the most contaminated places on Earth.

On Tuesday, government officials and SRS employees --- current and former --- will mark the 50th anniversary of the day the government announced the plant would be built. In separate ceremonies, the more than 6,500 men, women and children who were forced out of their homes to make way for the plant also will be honored. Two towns in South Carolina --- Ellenton and Dunbarton --- and several smaller communities were demolished to make way for producing the H-bomb ingredients.

The production of the materials, however, also generated millions of gallons of highly radioactive wastes and other pollution. Cleaning it up and restoring the damaged environment may cost more than $40 billion.

Georgia officials are asking the Department of Energy, which owns SRS, for more than $2.7 million to track the contamination. DOE has balked over the dollar amount. It says the low levels of tritium found by Georgia officials in monitoring wells in Burke County are from atmospheric depositions and disputes the state's contention that the radioactive material is coming from SRS through the ground- water.

-------- idaho

USA Today
11/26/00
States
http://usatoday.com/news/states/all50.htm

Idaho

Idaho Falls - A type of plutonium used to power spacecraft will likely be produced at the Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory. U.S. Energy Secretary Bill Richardson said the INEEL is the preferred site along with Oak Ridge, Tenn., for producing the plutonium-238 that will then be processed in Tennessee. A final decision on the project is expected in January.

-------- south carolina

The bomb's legacy: Savannah River is the only thing separating state from some of the worst pollution on Earth.

Atlanta Journal-Constitution
SUNDAY • November 26, 2000
Charles Seabrook - Staff Sunday, November 26, 2000
http://www.accessatlanta.com/partners/ajc/epaper/editions/sunday/local_news_a302da3dd1c5619c0073.html

Jackson, S.C. --- Once they were thriving, close-knit railroad towns in South Carolina near the Savannah River. But in the early 1950s, the towns of Dunbarton and Ellenton and surrounding communities were obliterated almost overnight.

The hydrogen bomb did them in. No bomb fell on them. Instead, the nation's frenzied effort to build thousands of thermonuclear weapons caused their demise.

Tuesday will mark the day 50 years ago when the residents first learned that the now-defunct Atomic Energy Commission was going to take their homes, schools, businesses --- their entire towns --- to build an immense complex to make the H-bomb's basic ingredients --- plutonium and tritium.

Plutonium, one of the most dangerous materials on Earth, sets off the nuclear chain reaction in bombs. Tritium, the "H" in H-bombs, is a hydrogen isotope that boosts the explosive power of the weapons, making them far deadlier than the bombs that destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

The government grabbed 198,000 acres of prime farmland, forests and swamp along the Savannah River near Aiken, just across the Georgia border to create the Savannah River Plant. The 6,500 men, men, women and children living within the future plant's boundaries were given 18 months to move elsewhere.

When they left, their abandoned communities were leveled.

In their place rose five nuclear reactors, housed in massive concrete structures with walls five feet thick, which churned out tons of plutonium and tritium through the late 1980s.

The nuclear materials are no longer made at the sprawling plant, now known as the Savannah River Site. The end of the Cold War and the break-up of the former Soviet Union greatly diminished the need for new H-bombs, and thus the need for the reactors' products.

Yet, the nation and the states of South Carolina and Georgia in years to come will have to grapple with the damage of a half-century of bomb-making -- massive contamination that made large portions of SRS some of the most polluted spots on Earth.

Now, the main mission of SRS is cleaning up the enormous pollution created by the reactors and their support facilities. That includes the more than 34 million gallons of high-level liquid radioactive wastes stored in 49 aging underground tanks, some of which have leaked over the years. Pollution seeping from other SRS facilities also has greatly contaminated the groundwater under the plant. Environmental officials say that the groundwater under some areas of the plant is loaded with millions of picocuries of tritium and high levels of other radioactive materials per liter of water. ( A tritium concentration of 20,000 picocuries of radiation in one liter of water is the federal drinking-water limit.)

Cleaning up the pollution eventually may top $40 billion. Meanwhile, Georgia environmental regulators and Gov. Roy Barnes worry that radioactive tritium will migrate from the plant, move under the Savannah River and contaminate Georgia's vast underground aquifers, prime sources of drinking water for tens of thousands of people.

"Georgia's valuable groundwater resources provide the life-blood of our economy in the Southeast and we can ill-afford to have them degraded by operations at SRS," Barnes warned the Department of Energy, which owns the plant, in a letter last year.

A recent National Research Council report says radioactive debris is so entrenched at SRS that the sprawling plant might never be completely clean, no matter how much money is spent.

Even so, the federal government has chosen SRS for other major new missions to handle vast quantities of radioactive materials from other nuclear defense sites around the country and overseas. Earlier this year the Energy Department tapped SRS to disassemble "plutonium pits" from decommissioned nuclear warheads and to dispose of surplus plutonium from other nuclear defense sites --- 55 tons of the highly radioactive material.

About 36 tons of the plutonium will be blended with uranium and other materials to make a controversial fuel called mixed-oxides (MOX), which would be burned in commercial power plants. The rest will be baked into ceramic pucks and then encased in a non-porous glass. The glass logs will be stored at SRS until a permanent disposal site becomes available in Nevada.

The plutonium disposal project will require the building of three new huge facilities at SRS at a cost of more than $1.4 billion. Construction is expected to begin within a couple of years.

Also slated for construction at SRS beginning next year is a new $400-million Tritium Extraction Facility. SRS already recycles tritium from decommissioned warheads. But unlike other bomb ingredients --- plutonium and uranium --- tritium decays at a fairly quick rate of 5.5 percent a year. Therefore, new supplies of tritium must be produced to replenish the tritium decaying in the atomic warheads that are still part of the nation's nuclear arsenal.

At first, the DOE intended to build a new $4.5 billion state-of-the-art reactor to produce the tritium. Most likely the reactor would have been built at SRS. But the agency decided it could save taxpayers millions of dollars by contracting with commercial power reactors to make tritium. In a highly controversial decision, reactors operated by the Tennessee Valley Authority to generate electricity were chosen for the tritium production.

The tritium generated by TVA will be shipped to SRS, where the radioactive material will be separated from contaminants and then packaged and shipped to other nuclear defense facilities for installation in hydrogen bombs.

Still another new mission for SRS is to "blend down" highly enriched uranium from retired nuclear weapons and leftover defense reactor fuel and convert it into commercial reactor fuel.

The new responsibilities will add about another 1,000 jobs at the plant, which already employs nearly 14,000. (Peak operational employment was 25,000 in 1990.)

The new missions, however, raise the specter of tractor-trailer rigs under heavy guard hauling big casks of radioactive material over busy public highways --- a notion that doesn't set well with environmentalists and Georgia environmental officials.

"We're concerned that the DOE's decisions will result in more nuclear material being transported through Georgia and more contamination at SRS," says Jim Setser, head of the radiation protection branch of the state Environmental Protection Division.

But on Tuesday, when SRS observes its 50th anniversary during several scheduled ceremonies, the focus will be on the vital role that the plant played in the nation's defense during the last half century. Those who gave up their homes to make it happen also will be honored and feted.

"I wouldn't call it a celebration," says Margaret Anderson, 83, of Barnwell, S.C. "I look on it more as a reunion of old friends and neighbors who were scattered all about after the bomb plant came in."

She was Dunbarton's town clerk on that crisp Nov. 28, 1950 when a state senator called, asking her to round up as quickly as possible the mayor, town council members and other local bigwigs. He had an urgent announcement of utmost importance to make, the senator said.

"It was the first time we learned that the government was going to build this plant," Anderson recalled. "To say we were shocked is an understatement. Our whole town would be gone."

A veil of secrecy

Actually, the first steps towards Anderson's old homeplace's demise were laid down years earlier. The year 1945 saw the beginning of the atomic age with the nuclear destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Four years later, the Soviet Union shocked the world when it exploded its own nuclear bomb. The United States no longer had a monopoly on nuclear weapons, and it needed an even more awesome bomb to counter the Soviet threat.

That new weapon was the H-bomb. It had the power to obliterate an area of 100 square miles, whereas the weapons that had laid waste to the Japanese cities could wipe out an area of only 4.7 square miles.

In January 1950, President Harry S. Truman signed the order to proceed with the development of the H-Bomb. A few months later, in a top secret letter, the Atomic Energy Commission asked the duPont corporation to choose a site and then design, build and operate a plant to make plutonium and tritium for mass production of the bomb.

DuPont considered more than 80 potential sites in the Southeast alone before opting for the tract along the gently-flowing Savannah. Most of the concrete and steel produced in the United States during the early 1950s went into building SRS's reactors and other facilities. At the peak of construction in September 1952, more than 38,000 people worked there. The construction project, shrouded in top secrecy, was a stupendous engineering feat, ranking with the building of the Panama Canal and Hoover Dam in magnitude and scope. Truman had asked the prime contractor, E.I. duPont de Nemours and Company, to exercise utmost urgency and secrecy in building the plant.

Less than 10 percent of the 198,000-acre site was used for the production facilities. The vast portion of the plant would be kept in a natural state as a security zone and safety buffer to protect the public from radiation.

Within three years of the day when the people of Dunbarton and Ellenton first learned of the fate of their towns, five nuclear reactors along with chemical separation facilities nearly three football fields long and other massive support structures had risen where the communities once stood.

Between 1953 and 1955, all five reactors went critical and began producing plutonium and tritium by the tons. The entire operation was a top military secret. Anti-aircraft artillery guns lined the main buildings, protecting them from possible air raids by Soviet aircraft.

"I could not even tell my family what I did," said Brent Rankin, a long-time SRS manager who now heads the plant's environmental and safety office. "We did not know where the material we made was sent, and we were not supposed to ask."

But by 1988, all five reactors stood idle for the first time since they were cranked up in the 1950s. Two of them had been taken permanently out of service years earlier. Prompting the shut-down of the other three operational reactors were serious concerns about their safety, sparked in large part by the Chernobyl disaster in 1986. Also influencing the decision was a notice from duPont officials that the company would not continue to manage the site.

Westinghouse Savannah River Company assumed management of the plant in 1989 and renamed it the Savannah River Site.

The shut-downs were supposed to be temporary until the reactors could be upgraded and refurbished. The government spent billions of dollars towards that goal, including $88 million to build an enormous 900-foot tall cooling tower that was never used. The reactors were never restarted. The Cold War was over, the Soviet Union had disintegrated, and America found itself with thousands of surplus nuclear warheads.

'A sense of patriotism'

But back in early 1950, the folks in Dunbarton (pop. 300) and Ellenton (pop. 739) and the surrounding farm communities --- Leigh, Meyers Mill, Hawthorne, Robbins --- had no idea of the fate that awaited their homeplaces.

The communities were idyllic spots where people led Mayberry-like existences. Kids skated down sidewalks. Little boys played marbles in the schoolyard. Little girls skipped rope in front yards. Men clad in overalls sat on benches in front of the stores and chatted for hours about hunting, the weather, the Friday night football game. Women tended their sweet roses and waved to neighbors over backyard fences. In the evening, families sat on the front porch after supper. Everybody was at church on Sunday.

"I look back on it now, and it was almost a perfect life," said Charles Meyer, 74, who now lives in Atlanta. The community of Meyers Mill that was leveled to make way for the plant was named for his family. "Everybody knew everybody. Neighbors helped neighbors. They weren't prying into one another's business; they were there if you needed them."

Dunbarton was the same way, said Joanne Zobel, 72, a retired school teacher who now lives in Aiken.

"We all seemed to be kin to each other," said Zobel, who grew up in Dunbarton. "We all got along so well."

She was a 22-year-old teacher in Columbia when she came home on the afternoon of Nov. 28, 1950, and read the evening paper's front-page story announcing the coming of the plant. "I immediately called my parents," she recalled. "Everyone was stunned. I was planning to get married that June, and I heard that they were going to tear down the church. That made me upset, so we decided to get married in March. We were the last couple to marry in the (Dunbarton Baptist Church) before it was torn down."

The thousands of people uprooted from their homes scattered about all over. Some hired housemovers to haul their homes intact to new towns or new farms. Some established a new town called New Ellenton, just across SRS's eastern boundary. But for most, life would never be the same. Once close neighbors had moved far away from one another and would never see each other again except on rare occasions such as reunions.

"I had no idea where a lot of the people I once knew went," Zobel said.

But despite the tremendous upheaval in their lives, most of the evicted people seemed to accept the change with minimal complaint, Zobel said. "There was a sense of patriotism among most of us, that we were sacrificing our homes for the good of the country," she said.

There was some bitterness, though. A poignant hand-painted sign posted on the road out of Ellenton, before the town was demolished, said: "It is hard to understand why our town must be destroyed to make a bomb that will destroy someone else's town that they love as much as we love ours."

> ON THE WEB: The Savannah River Site Community celebration: www.srs.gov

-------- tennessee

Pacesetters

Alabama Live
11/26/00
http://www.al.com/news/huntsville/Nov2000/26-e20522.html

High tech/computers

Dr. Robert I. Van Hook, the retiring president of Lockheed Martin Energy Systems, will join the board of Pro2Serve Professional Project Services Inc. Pro2Serve is headquartered in Oak Ridge, Tenn., and has an office in Huntsville at 555 Sparkman Drive, Suite 814. As president of Lockheed Martin Energy Systems, Van Hook guided operations of the Oak Ridge Y-12 plant for the Department of Energy. Y-12 is a manufacturing facility of the department's nuclear weapons complex and the nation's principle storehouse for highly enriched uranium.

-------- us nuc politics

Knotty problems await next president
Slim majorities in Congress may thwart progress on domestic issues.
And there is uncertainty abroad.

Philadelphia Inquirer
Sunday, November 26, 2000

By Ken Moritsugu and Jonathan S. Landay
INQUIRER WASHINGTON BUREAU
http://inq.philly.com/content/inquirer/2000/11/26/national/NEWPREZ26.htm

WASHINGTON - Whether the next president is named Bush or Gore, he will have to confront a number of inescapable challenges.

The fabled U.S. economy is finally slowing down, the risk of recession growing. The baby boomers are going gray, increasing financial pressure on Social Security and Medicare with each passing year. Middle East peace negotiations are in shambles, raising risks to U.S. interests across the region - led by dependence on its oil. Saddam Hussein remains in power in Iraq. China looms ever larger as America's rival. The world, in short, will not let the new president rest before it tests him.

His job will be complicated by his narrow victory. Microscopic majorities in Congress mean that opposition lawmakers, with an eye to gaining advantage for the 2002 elections, may sabotage his initiatives at every turn.

"You basically have two points of view split down the middle," said John Cohut, senior editor of the nonpartisan Rothenberg Political Report. "You have 50 million people angry at you and 50 million people who support you."

In such an atmosphere, sweeping change such as an overhaul of Social Security is unlikely, political analysts agree. That challenge may get dumped on the administration elected in 2004. But this new president will have an opportunity to make progress on a select group of issues: education, health care, and others that share a degree of bipartisan support.

The economy

The next president faces a dual challenge: He must do what he can to prevent a recession while being prepared to act if one hits.

The president has only limited influence on the economy, but its performance can make or break him. A strong economy helped President Clinton win reelection in 1996; four years earlier, President George Bush lost his bid for a second term amid memories of the recent recession.

Analysts expect the economy to slow next year to a still-healthy annual growth rate of 3 to 3.5 percent, down from about 5.2 percent this year. An unanticipated shock, such as an oil-price increase or a stock-market crash, could cause a sharper slowdown or possibly even a recession.

Political gridlock in Washington next year could be good news for the economy. If Congress and the president cannot agree on new spending or tax cuts, the federal budget will remain in surplus. Most economists agree that rolling up budget surpluses is the best thing government can do to keep the economic expansion alive, because it helps pay down the national debt, lowering pressure on interest rates.

"No matter who wins, the next president will lack a mandate to push through major economic programs costing billions of dollars," said Sung Won Sohn, the Minneapolis-based chief economist at Wells Fargo & Co. "Thanks to the gridlock in Congress, more of the projected surplus can be used to pay down the national debt, lowering interest rates."

A recession would change the scenario. Then, a large tax cut and spending increases might be welcomed as a way to pump up the economy.

Foreign policy and defense

From the Mideast and the Balkans to Taiwan and North Korea, the next commander in chief may face difficult choices that could decide war or peace.

Such pressure points also shape key questions about the future design of the military. The Pentagon is due to review next year the current strategy of structuring U.S. forces to fight near-simultaneous wars in the Persian Gulf and the Korean peninsula.

New thinking is required because military analysts say that the defense budget, under current projections, will be inadequate to meet such challenges by $30 billion to $50 billion a year for the next several decades. Some military officials put the shortfall at up to $100 billion a year.

The possibility that tensions on the Korean Peninsula may be easing raises hope that the size of the U.S. military presence in Asia - now 100,000 troops - may be reduced. But both North and South Korea would want some U.S. forces to remain even after reconciliation, to avert a revival of the historic competition for influence on the peninsula among China, Japan and Russia.

In the Balkans, the fall of Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic could increase calls to pull U.S. forces from Bosnia and Kosovo. But such withdrawals could hurt relations with European allies and undermine U.S. leadership of the NATO.

Barring a breakthrough by Clinton in his final days as president, his successor will inherit an Israeli-Palestinian conflict that has claimed more than 245 lives, mostly Palestinians, and a peace process bereft of much hope.

The nine-year American-led effort to contain Iraq's Hussein and the threat he poses to the oil-rich Persian Gulf will also be on the Oval Office desk from Day One. U.S. allies such as France and Turkey have allowed supplies and business executives to be flown into Baghdad in recent weeks, despite a flight ban.

Finally, the next president may have to decide whether to deploy a controversial globe-spanning U.S. missile defense system. President Clinton deferred the decision to his successor. Both China and Russia oppose such a U.S. system. Deployment also could put internal stress on NATO and fray relations with European allies, who fear such a system could trigger a new nuclear arms race.

Education

The plight of America's schools may give the next president his best opportunity to forge a bipartisan majority behind reform. Americans have made clear they want improvements, and the national need is clear: a well-trained workforce is the lifeblood of today's increasingly high-tech-driven economy, yet many of the nation's schools are in decline.

Duing the campaign, Bush and Gore sought to define themselves by their differences. Bush pushed vouchers, which could help students attend private schools but would drain money from public systems. Gore proposed more federal money for public schools to hire teachers and to rebuild aging facilities.

Behind the rhetoric, both often agreed in principle on issues such as increased federal spending for preschool education and charter schools. That suggests that after six years of legislative gridlock on education, something may happen under the new administration.

"Whoever gets in, we're likely to see some pretty big changes in the school system emanating from Washington, whether they are federal programs or the president using the bully pulpit to encourage states and local schools to enact reforms," said Thomas Toch, an education expert at the Brookings Institution, a center-left think tank.

Toch said there was a good chance that federal funding for charter schools might expand, including money to help them build facilities.

Also, compromise may be possible on preschool education. Gore pushed for universal preschool, while Bush proposed to expand the Head Start program for preschoolers to emphasize education.

Still, the possibility of progress even on education depends on both parties setting aside partisan politics.

Social Security and Medicare

The cost of Social Security and Medicare will skyrocket in coming decades, because of explosive growth in the elderly population and health-care advances that produce more expensive drugs and treatments.

If unchecked, these costs could squeeze out other national needs, including defense, education and highway improvements. The challenge is to ensure health care and an adequate pension for seniors without bankrupting the rest of government.

"This entitlement growth is the major issue facing the president, outside of the economy itself," said Eugene Steuerle, a former deputy assistant Treasury secretary and a senior fellow at the Urban Institute. "It's basically crowding out everything else."

The next president may not have to deal with this issue because the crisis is not immediate. Social Security is in good financial shape until 2015, and by some calculations, until 2037. Medicare is not projected to be in trouble until at least 2009.

However, many analysts recommend immediate action. Waiting until money runs short will create a crisis, they say. Phasing in gradual changes over many years will minimize the effect on both taxpayers and recipients.

Reform objectives are simple: The government must find more revenues for the programs, reduce their benefits, or order some combination of the two.

Bush proposes to use some of the Social Security tax to create individual retirement accounts that would be invested in bonds and stocks. Though the returns on the accounts could partially offset the projected shortfall, they will not cover it all, most analysts say.

Gore proposes patching future funding gaps in Social Security with money from the rest of the budget. That will postpone the day of reckoning but still leave the core problem unresolved.

While Social Security could be fixed with some tinkering, Medicare presents a tougher challenge, because it needs a fundamental restructuring, experts say. Adding a prescription-drug benefit to Medicare, as both candidates proposed, may be the right thing to do for seniors, but would only add to the program's costs.

Facing an evenly split Congress and lacking a mandate of his own, the next president may be able to do little more than appoint a bipartisan commission to come up with recommended solutions to both of these enormous financial problems.

Ken Moritsugu's e-mail address is kmoritsugu@krwashington.com

-------- MILITARY

-------- cambodia

U.S. Group Claims Responsibility for Shootout in Cambodia Capital

Reuters
November 26, 2000
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/crime-cambodia-shooto.html

PHNOM PENH, Nov 26 - A U.S.-based anti-communist group says it was behind a bloody shootout in Phnom Penh and has threatened to keep fighting until it overthrows the government, according to a Khmer-language radio report.

``Some forces of the Cambodian Freedom Fighters attacked the government troops in Phnom Penh...It was not terrorism. It was a real attempt to oust the government,'' an unidentified member of the group told Radio Free Asia, according to a transcript of the broadcast obtained by Reuters on Sunday.

``The forces of the Cambodian Freedom Fighters throughout the country do not walk backward...we will continue tobring freedom to our Cambodian citizens until we are successful.''

Police shot dead eight men after a gang flying the Cambodian Freedom Fighters flag went on a nearly one-hour rampage at about 1.00 a.m. (1800 GMT Thursday) on Friday.

The fighting was the worst Cambodia has seen since the July 1997 overthrow of then-First Prime Minister Prince Norodom Ranariddh.

Police have arrested more than 60 suspects since the shootout, including a Cambodian-American apprehended at Siem Reap airport on Saturday evening, Phnom Penh military police chief Chhin Chan Por told Reuters on Sunday.

Prime Minister Hun Sen on Saturday night called on the United States to assist in the arrest and possible extradition of the leader of an anti-communist group operating out of the United States, though he did not mention the Cambodian Freedom Fighters by name.

Hun Sen also pledged a $500 reward for anyone finding a leader of the gang that led the Friday morning attack in the capital.

The U.S. State Department said on Sunday that it was aware of Hun Sen's statements but could not confirm that a U.S. citizen was involved in the Phnom Penh attack.

``We are aware of reports to that effect but cannot confirm the information,'' an official told Reuters.

The United States is in the middle of a long holiday weekend that began on Thursday, and government offices do not reopen until Monday morning.

The Cambodian Freedom Fighters' leader, Chhun Yasith, is a Cambodian-American living in Long Beach, California.

Cambodia does not have an extradition treaty with the United States, according to a Phnom Penh-based diplomat.

The Cambodian capital was back to normal by Sunday, though heavily armed police and military were on hand Saturday night when Hun Sen returned from a meeting of ASEAN leaders in Singapore.

-------- drug war

USA Today
11/26/00
States
http://usatoday.com/news/states/all50.htm

Illinois

Springfield - The state Supreme Court made clear that it's unwise to sit next to a bag of marijuana and tell police you're having a party. When Jennifer Schmalz did that, she gave authorities enough evidence to convict her of drug possession, the court said. Schmalz contended that merely being near the substance didn't equate to possession; the judges upheld her conviction.

---

USA Today
11/26/00
States
http://usatoday.com/news/states/all50.htm

New York

Albany - People who use or store illegal drugs in their apartments can be evicted, the state's Appellate Division court ruled. A tenant in Ithaca sued to prevent his eviction, arguing that the ordinance that allowed it was unconstitutional. But the court ruled unanimously that state laws allow leases to be revoked when illegal activities occur on the property.

-------- india/pakistan

Violence Flares in Kashmir Despite Peace Move

Reuters
November 26, 2000 Filed at 12:12 p.m. ET
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-kashmir.html

NEW DELHI (Reuters) - India prepared Sunday for a month-long truce in its offensive against separatist guerrillas in Kashmir, undaunted by further bloodshed in the week since it announced the cease-fire was going to start.

Across the line dividing the region, Kashmiri politicians were set to meet to discuss their response to the gesture.

Frontline groups have been skeptical about the planned suspension of the decade-long offensive during the Muslim holy month Ramadan, which is expected to start Monday or Tuesday depending on the sighting of the moon.

But while the Indian army set ground rules at the weekend for its troops, instructing them to stop search and destroy missions and retaliate only in self-defense, top officials met in New Delhi to discuss possibly building on the peace gesture.

``Ground is being prepared for (peace) talks but no formal initiative has been taken so far,'' Girish Saxena, governor of Jammu and Kashmir state, was quoted by Tribune newspaper as saying after a meeting on internal security.

He said the killing of 11 people in two incidents during the weekend was not unexpected, but the government wanted peace.

At Muzaffarabad in the Pakistan-ruled part of Kashmir, Abdul Ghani Lone, a separatist based in India's Srinagar, told Reuters he would meet Kashmiri counterparts in the first such meeting since a rebellion erupted 11 years ago.

``We have not arrived at a final conclusion but plan to meet again to discuss the cease-fire and a long-term strategy on Kashmir,'' said Lone, a senior member of the All Parties Hurriyat (freedom) Conference, which bands more than 20 separatist groups.

At Gurgaon on the outskirts of the Indian capital, the chairman of the Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF), a moderate separatist group, joined a U.S.-based mediator for a round of ``track two'' diplomacy on Kashmir.

JKLF's Yasin Malik, describing Vajpayee as charismatic and honest, told reporters the leader had the chance to emulate assassinated Israeli premier Yitzhak Rabin's Middle East peace initiative if he would involve Pakistan in the peace talks.

``We will have to take every party into confidence,'' he said.

But India's Interior Minister Lal Krishna Advani Sunday ruled out the possibility of including Islamabad in any talks with militants, even as he appealed to Pakistan to take advantage of the second peace initiative.

``As a proof of response to our goodwill gesture, Pakistan should immediately stop cross-border terrorism,'' Advani said during a visit to the India-Pakistan border in the northern town of Amritsar.

India says it cannot talk to Pakistan unless it stops arming and training separatists in fomenting violence in Kashmir, a charge rejected by Pakistan.

The pro-Pakistan Hizbul Mujahideen announced a two-week unilateral cease-fire in July to consider a peace process but that collapsed after India refused to include Pakistan.

A sign of what might have developed then emerged Saturday during an Indian visit by Mansoor Ijaz, member of the Council of Foreign Relations, New York, an influential think-tank considered close to Washington.

Ijaz played a key mediating role at that time.

The Times of India quoted Ijaz, an American of Pakistani origin, as saying that India was in August prepared to involve Pakistan in the talks, but met with a hard-line response from the Hizbul after early signals of conciliation.

He described Pakistan's military ruler General Pervez Musharraf as someone facing pressure from hard-line Islamists, India and the international community over his nuclear program.

Lone, who met the general, described Musharraf as a ''forthright and straightforward'' person who desired a peaceful solution of the Kashmir problem. ``We discussed the cease-fire and he said that if there is sincerity in the Indian offer then they should agree to tripartite talks.''

``Even though it is a minor step, yet it is a good gesture,'' he said of the Indian truce.

NO LET-UP IN VIOLENCE

Despite talk of peace in Delhi, however, there was little let-up in violence in Kashmir. Twenty people, including 10 guerrillas, have been killed in shootouts since Friday evening.

Three people were wounded in Pakistani shelling across the military line dividing Kashmir between India and Pakistan since Saturday, police said.

Militants ambushed and killed four Indian soldiers within hours of the Indian army's truce instructions Saturday.

A spokesman of the Pakistan-based militant Al-Badr group called newspaper offices in Srinagar and claimed responsibility for the attack which took place in Kupwara district.

The weekend's violence followed the killing of five Hindus that day in the region's Kishtwar town and the murder of six Sikh truck drivers and associates at Banihal Tuesday.

Jammu, the winter capital of Jammu and Kashmir, Saturday observed a strike against the Kishtwar killings.

-------- iraq

Iraqi Official Defies Sanctions With Flight to Damascus

New York Times
November 26, 2000
By AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/11/26/world/26IRAQ.html

DAMASCUS, Syria, Nov. 25 - The Iraqi deputy prime minister, Tariq Aziz, flew to Damascus today, becoming the first Iraqi official to fly out of Baghdad since the United Nations imposed sanctions on Iraq 10 years ago, officials said.

"There is no embargo on civil aviation," Mr. Aziz said after meeting with the Syrian foreign minister, Farouk al- Shara. "That is an American lie. We are now resuming travel in a normal way."

He said afterward that he was making a stopover on his way to China.

The move comes as an increasing number of countries, including Syria, are challenging an international air embargo imposed on Iraq since its 1990 invasion of its southern neighbor, Kuwait.

-------- russia

Russia Backs European Plan for New Force

New York Times
November 26, 2000
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/11/26/world/26RUSS.html

BERLIN, Nov. 25 - Russia is ready to cooperate with the new military force being drawn up by the European Union, Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov said today.

"We consider it completely natural, the effort by Europe with their own forces to provide for their own security," Mr. Ivanov told leading European policy makers and analysts at a forum on Europe. "And in a crisis situation, we are ready for constructive cooperation."

European countries announced this week that they would form their own rapid reaction force outside NATO, which depends heavily on American military might and formed the West's primary cold war buffer against the former Soviet Union.

The 15 member countries of the European Union said they would create a force of up to 60,000 ground troops from among member armies by 2003 to deal with regional conflicts and humanitarian crises.

"The possibility of a Russian contribution in the conduct of European Union operations in regulating crises will be studied," Mr. Ivanov said. "I am sure that this will open good possibilities for our joint contribution to strengthening stability and security in Europe."

Mr. Ivanov's remarks could raise American fears of losing influence in European peacekeeping operations, and his remarks sought to highlight cases where American and European interests have diverged.

For example, Mr. Ivanov mentioned Europe's differences with Washington over the possible development by the United States of a national defense against ballistic missiles. "We very much appreciate that a whole series of leading European governments have come out with us and the overwhelming majority of the world in defense of strategic stability," he said. "One would like to believe that the series of supporters on our continent for the preservation of the ABM treaty will expand," he added, referring to the 1972 Antiballistic Missile Treaty between Moscow and Washington that does not currently permit deployment of the kind of system the American military envisages.

Warning that a failure to follow international norms would lead to chaos, Mr. Ivanov cited the 1999 American-led NATO air war against Yugoslavia as an example of NATO gone astray.

"Unfortunately, the well-known events in the Balkans in the spring of 1999 are evidence that such an alternative cannot be excluded," he said. "After the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia, there was again talk in the world that maintaining security was only possible by military means, including through the acquisition of weapons of mass destruction.

"I am sure that such a negative development of events is not in the interests of a single European government."

A day after President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia received the Palestinian leader, Yasir Arafat, in Moscow, Mr. Ivanov also called for the European Union to be more involved in Middle East peace talks.

"Russia, as a cosponsor of the Middle East peace process, believes that the European Union should take a more active role in its international mediation," he said. "The very proximity and approaches on these questions between Moscow and Brussels allows us to act in tandem and if necessary, in a joint effort."

-------- space

A Hangout That Caters to a Crowd From Space

New York Times
November 26, 2000
By JIM YARDLEY
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/11/26/technology/26BAR.html

WEBSTER, Tex. - For anyone unmoved by sentiment, the Outpost Tavern might not seem worth saving. The old red building is practically falling down. A tangle of bushes growing up an outside wall seems ready to swallow the place. Outside, there is a faint smell of sewage.

But push inside through the swinging doors shaped like two bikini-clad women and sentiment clearly rules the day. Every neighborhood bar has regulars, but the Outpost's neighborhood is NASA and the nearby Johnson Space Center. The walls are lined with photographs of smiling, blue-suited astronauts, not sports stars. Many of the people who come to nurse beers and trade gossip are the engineers, technicians and private contractors who help send people into space. Astronauts drop by, too.

"It's like a second home for a lot of people," said Larry Keyser, who served as assistant flight director on Apollo 13, as he sipped a tap beer from a mug commemorating a space shuttle mission.

For a space program dependent on cutting-edge technology, the Outpost is a decidedly low-tech watering hole, so much so that the local fire marshal recently came close to shutting the place down. The building is constructed partly from a wooden World War II barracks, and the marshal determined that the outdated grill on which thousands of Outpost burgers had been cooked was a fire hazard. So he ordered the grill closed.

No grill meant no lunch crowd, which meant more debts for the bar's owners, Stan and Sharon Aden. They bought the place four years ago from the estate of its fabled proprietor, Gene Ross, with the modest business plan of keeping it going for the faithful and breaking even at the cash register. But competition from newer bars and restaurants had cut into business, and the loss of the lunch crowd was seemingly a fatal blow.

So in late September the Adens convened a meeting of regulars to deliver a blunt message.

"I told them we were going to close it down on Oct. 27," Sharon Aden said.

Years ago, she substituted as an Outpost waitress when her daughter had pneumonia; she never left. The thought of closing distressed her, but building a new grill meant pouring at least $10,000 into a place already losing money.

What she had not anticipated was the reaction at the meeting that night. Regulars like Mr. Keyser vowed to keep the Outpost open. Word quickly spread through the NASA community. A "Save the Outpost" Web site was born. Roger Mitchell, a friend of the Adens' and a NASA employee, took charge of a fund-raising campaign as donations began pouring in.

"It's sort of a human space flight tradition," said Bob Crippen, commander of the first space shuttle mission, who stopped by the Outpost in October when visiting NASA for an annual checkup.

The building, just off NASA Road One, had known different incarnations when Gene Ross opened it as the Outpost Tavern in 1981. According to lore, George Abbey, now director of the Johnson Space Center, stopped by for a beer not long after it opened. Mr. Abbey was then head of flight operations, and Mr. Ross remarked that he could use some photos of astronauts to spruce up the place. Mr. Abbey sent over a box of pictures, and soon the astronauts themselves began to show up.

"As the shuttle program started to ramp up in the early 1980's, more and more people came into the Outpost," said Mr. Mitchell, the bar's unofficial historian. "It kind of became the astronaut hangout."

It became a tradition for shuttle crews to buy a keg of beer and hold parties before a mission and after a safe landing. There are also parties when crews or promotions are announced; the most recent was for the crew of the shuttle scheduled to be launched in February.

The Outpost became such a part of NASA lore that scenes from three movies have been shot there, most recently "Space Cowboys." Engineers have been seen scribbling on napkins, trying to work out problems that had eluded them at work.

"There is no Building 99 in NASA, but this was given the official designation of Building 99," Mr. Keyser said. "When someone said, `Where are we going to debrief?' the answer was Building 99."

The walls are practically a history of the shuttle program. One wall is lined with photographs of the crew of the Challenger, which exploded in 1986; the explosion was treated here like a death in the family. Other walls have photographs of Eileen M. Collins, the first woman to command a shuttle crew, and William M. Shepherd, the American commander on board the international space station.

"I'm a space geek," Mr. Mitchell admitted without shame as he showed off the bar. "We're all space geeks here. You kind of have to be."

For now, the faithful seem to have saved the Outpost. More than $9,000 was raised, including donations from astronauts, enough to build a new grill. The grill reopened, and people hungry for the brick-sized Outpost burgers began trickling back in.

"I have been overwhelmed," Ms. Aden said.

Everyone realizes that the future remains uncertain for the Outpost. It sits on a very expensive piece of real estate in a rapidly developing commercial corridor. Other repairs are still needed; the bathroom floors give a little, and the air-conditioning does not place a premium on cooling.

But for now, the bar has survived, largely unchanged, to the relief of its faithful.

"It looks just like I remember it looking in the early 80's," said Mr. Crippen, the former shuttle commander, who is now president of Thiokol, a maker of rocket propulsion systems. "I think every once in a while they move the pool table."

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

U.N. Plan for a New Crisis Unit Opposed by Wary Poor Nations

New York Times
November 26, 2000
By BARBARA CROSSETTE
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/11/26/world/26PEAC.html

Proposals for a new unit for gathering information and improving planning for United Nations peacekeepers, which officials see as crucial to faster and more effective responses to crises, could be blocked by developing nations in the General Assembly in the next few weeks.

Some diplomats from the developing world, opening another fissure between rich and poor nations in the organization, say they are wary of giving the United Nations what amounts to intelligence-gathering functions. Others say that the proposed unit is redundant, since the existing Department of Political Affairs is supposed to be watching world trouble spots.

"Many delegations feel that it has not been satisfactorily explained to us why the D.P.A. has fallen short in this function," said Kamalesh Sharma, India's ambassador to the United Nations. "This is very puzzling. If the department is not doing its work, then what is it doing?" He said that this critique represented "a prevalent sentiment in the Nonaligned Movement."

The proposed policy planning staff, which would draw on expertise from several departments, was one of many recommendations in a report produced in the summer by a panel of outside experts led by Lakhdar Brahimi, a former Algerian foreign minister and frequent trouble shooter for the United Nations.

In an interview at the time his report was published, Mr. Brahimi said his own experience as an envoy of the secretary general, on assignments from Haiti to the Middle East and Afghanistan, had given him firsthand knowledge of the shortcomings of United Nations information collection and analysis.

His proposal was widely welcomed at first as a way to give peacekeepers, who can take months to reach a crisis, a sharper operation. The Security Council passed a unanimous resolution on Nov. 13 commending the report and promising to do its part by giving clearer mandates to peacekeeping operations.

The Council suggested that deadlines for fielding missions should be set at 30 days for traditional operations and 90 days for more complex deployments. It underlined the need for better analysis and planning.

But recently, as General Assembly committees have begun to consider specific recommendations, contained in a second report by Deputy Secretary General Louise Frechette, a host of objections arose, with Egypt, Pakistan and India among the sharpest critics.

Many poor nations say that more money should be spent on development, not peacekeeping. Western diplomats say that this inverts the order of things: without a stable environment, development aid is wasted. In any case, they say, the expenditure would be small because experts would be drawn from the United Nations' existing staff.

Countries that provide troops for many missions, most of them in the developing world, are also attacking the richer countries for their unwillingness to send their own soldiers to peacekeeping operations, saying that the system suffers from a kind of apartheid, where rich countries order the missions and pay the bills and poor countries send their troops to die. Bangladesh tried to set a quota of troop contributions for the Security Council's five permanent members - Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States - but was rebuffed.

Mr. Sharma of India, which is a leading peacekeeping participant, said that if the United Nations needed better intelligence it should listen more to people in the field. "The Security Council doesn't consult people on the ground," he said. "But the information these people have is what is required."

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

Air Force Shifts Bombers' Missions

Associated Press
November 26, 2000 Filed at 12:25 p.m. ET
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Bomber-Bases.html

WASHINGTON (AP) -- One of the more remarkable feats of the U.S. air war over Kosovo last year was the 30-hour roundtrip combat mission of B-2 stealth bombers flying from their base in Missouri. It was a point of pride for the Air Force that its bombers could deliver blows from such a distance.

Now the Air Force is quietly shifting its approach, hoping to get more bang from its bombers by preparing to have them carry out more wartime missions from air bases outside the continental United States.

All bombers in the Air Force fleet are now based at home: the B-2s at Whiteman Air Force Base, Mo.; B-52s at Barksdale Air Force Base, La., and Minot Air Force Base, N.D.; and B-1s in Texas, Idaho and South Dakota.

The Air Force is not planning to permanently base any of the planes abroad. Rather, it is building up a capability to send them -- in times of crisis -- to spots like the Pacific island of Guam from which they could rearm, refuel and be sustained by ground crews much closer to potential combat zones like Korea and the Persian Gulf.

``The closer you can get them to the fight ... the more effective they become,'' Gen. Michael Ryan, the Air Force chief of staff, said in a recent interview.

For bombers to operate for extended periods outside their continental U.S. bases, they need more than a place to land and park. They need access to extra fuel, for example, and lots of extra weapons.

Thus cruise missiles of the kind that B-52 bombers fired in the Kosovo air war are being stockpiled at Anderson Air Force Base in Guam, marking the first time these missiles have been stored outside the continental United States.

The Air Force also plans to stockpile other new, precision-guided weapons on Guam and elsewhere. These include Joint Direct Attack Munitions that B-2 stealth bombers can launch, as well as Joint Standoff Weapons that B-1 bombers are being readied to use in the future.

Besides Guam, the Air Force has in mind three other ``forward operating locations,'' as they are known in military lingo. They are Diego Garcia, a British-controlled island in the central Indian Ocean; the British air base Fairford, 65 miles west of London; and a Middle East location that the Air Force will not identify publicly but which Ryan said ``we're looking at'' for what he termed ``other capabilities.''

The idea is to enable bombers, in a short-notice crisis, to fly from their home bases in the United States, attack their targets and then proceed to Guam or another ``forward operation location'' to reload and return to combat. This gives them a quick restrike capability they now lack, Ryan said. It also would reduce, though not eliminate, the need for midair refuelings.

Although the B-2s are said to have performed as well as, or better than, expected in the Kosovo campaign, their contribution could have been greater if they were not forced to fly all the way from Missouri.

``That was not our preferred way of operating,'' Ryan said.

B-2s have never flown combat missions from an overseas base. That is mainly because the special material on the bombers' skin that makes them hard to detect on radar must be repaired in climate-controlled conditions. Harsh weather conditions do not prevent the B-2s from performing their mission, but the regular upkeep required to keep the planes stealthy cannot be done as effectively in regular aircraft hangars.

One solution is setting up special hangars at Fairford, Diego Garcia and Guam to shelter B-2s. The Air Force has contracted with American Spaceframes Fabricators Inc. of Crystal River, Fla., to build a 125-foot long B-2 shelter with aluminum trusses, sloping walls and the strength to withstand winds of 110 mph. Some of the shelters will have temperature and humidity controls; others will be less sophisticated.

Testing of the shelters is to begin shortly, and if they work as expected the Air Force likely will buy about a dozen, Ryan said.

Loren Thompson, a defense analyst at the Lexington Institute in Arlington, Va., said the move to upgrade overseas bases for the bomber fleet is part of a little-recognized shift in Air Force thinking.

``It's smart,'' he said. ``It's like having twice as many bombers,'' if they can operate closer to the war front.

The move reflects a subtle change in the main mission of bombers, now that the chief security threats to U.S. interests are smaller countries like Korea, Iraq or Yugoslavia, instead of the former Soviet Union.

``In the latter part of the Cold War we kind of hunkered down with our bomber force,'' Ryan said. He recalled that locations in North Africa, East Asia and elsewhere from which bombers could be launched for nuclear attacks on the Soviet Union were abandoned as the threat of all-out nuclear war receded.

Now that bombers are geared almost entirely to conventional, rather than nuclear, missions, the Air Force can use them more efficiently if they can re-arm, refuel and get repaired at strategically located overseas sites.

The near disappearance of a nuclear mission for the bombers also has made it easier to persuade countries like Britain to accept U.S. bombers.

``The political downside to having bombers forward is now gone,'' Ryan said. ``They've lost their nuclear taint.''

---

Charges expected soon against at least 2

USA Today
11/26/00- Updated 02:35 PM ET
http://usatoday.com/news/world/nwssun02.htm

ADEN, Yemen (AP) - Yemeni investigators are ready to charge at least two people in the apparent terrorist attack on the USS Cole, a source said Sunday, six weeks after an explosion tore through the warship as it sat in Aden's harbor.

Charges are expected to be filed as soon as this week against the two suspects, the source said. They could be sentenced to death if convicted.

But any charges are unlikely to mean the end of the probe: U.S. investigators suspect an international conspiracy was behind the bombing.

Seventeen U.S. sailors were killed and 39 more injured on Oct. 12, when two suicide bombers steered a small boat laden with explosives alongside the Cole and detonated it while the destroyer was refueling. U.S. and Yemeni officials have said the attack appeared to be a carefully planned, well-financed operation, and the bomb materials were expertly prepared.

The Yemeni source close to the investigation would not identify the two men he described as main suspects about to be charged. But last week, other sources said authorities had detained six Yemeni men they believe were key accomplices - including one who was allegedly in charge of the operation in Yemen.

American officials have said they believe the operation was carried out by a network of small cells of two or three people, probably from one or more anti-American Islamist organizations, including Yemen's Islamic Jihad, Egypt's al-Gamaa al-Islamiya and Saudi dissident Osama bin Laden's followers.

Bin Laden, an exiled Saudi millionaire, lives in Afghanistan. U.S. officials believe he ordered the 1998 bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania that killed 224 people.

Officials have suggested that the Cole attackers were from various Arab countries, including Yemen, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia, and that they may be operating from both Afghanistan and Yemen.

A Yemeni security official, also speaking on condition of anonymity Sunday, said investigations revealed that an Egyptian suspect whom he identified only as Hamdi fled Yemen a month before the bombing along with five others, including a Libyan man. He said all six men had links to Islamic Jihad, but he did not elaborate further.

The first Yemeni source said the charges planned against at least two suspects included carrying out the attack, threatening state security, forming an armed gang and possessing explosives.

Conviction on all four charges would carry a minimum sentence of 10 years in prison, the source said, adding that the suspects could be executed if convicted of threatening state security or carrying out the bombings. Most executions in Yemen are by firing squad and are performed in public to set an example.

The prosecution will review the case by Tuesday before filing charges, the source said on condition of anonymity. The prosecutor declined to comment Sunday.

In Yemen, a court generally sets a trial date within a few days of charges being filed. That date usually is within a week. According to Yemeni law, the trial will take place in Aden, where the attack took place, the source said.

In the weeks after the attack, Yemeni investigators rounded up scores of people for questioning, from known Islamic fundamentalists to people who lived near any of the Aden buildings the bombers used as staging grounds. Yemeni authorities also have detained lower- and midlevel Yemeni security officials - an embarrassing acknowledgment that some within their government sympathize with anti-American groups.

Terrorism expert Frank Cilluffo said in a recent interview that in preparing to charge their own citizens, the Yemenis have showed they are serious about the investigation. But tracing the plot from Yemen will be difficult because those involved were reportedly organized into small, autonomous cells and may be unable to provide investigators much information about the other plotters.

''You may have one person doing the bidding of another without even knowing it,'' said Cilluffo, director of the terrorism task force at the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies.

---

USA Today
11/26/00
States
http://usatoday.com/news/states/all50.htm

Maine

Portland - Management and the Machinists union are at odds over the number of shipbuilders who quit Bath Iron Works after a 55-day strike. The union says 500 workers left; the company contends fewer than 100 didn't return. Some 4,800 workers ended the walkout over wages, benefits and job security in mid-October.

Minnesota

Duluth - Commercial loggers will clear wind-damaged trees in the Superior National Forest, and forestry agencies will burn about 10%. A windstorm July 4, 1999, felled millions of trees across northeastern Minnesota. Loggers praised the plan, calling the 1,800 acres of timber too valuable to let rot or burn. Environmentalists said the plan involves too much logging and road-building.

New Mexico

Santa Fe - The state has levied a fine against Navajo Refining Co. over air quality violations at the Artesia oil refinery. Under the agreement, Navajo, which operates the largest oil refinery in New Mexico, agreed to pay a fine, but the amount wasn't made public in a news release from the state Environment Department. The settlement covers several violations in 1998 and 1999.

-------- OTHER

-------- alternative energy

Curse of the Wind Turns to Farmers' Blessing

New York Times
November 26, 2000
By DOUGLAS JEHL
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/11/26/national/26WIND.html

LAKE BENTON, Minn. - For generations, the bittersweet question around the Schardin family table was this: What in God's name was Theodore Schardin thinking in 1884 when he stopped his wagon here, on a desolate ridge blasted by every last gust of wind that swept across the prairies?

All of a sudden, though, the Schardins and others who have ended up trying to eke out a living in some of America's windiest parts have found themselves feeling pretty lucky that their forefathers staked out land exactly where they did.

That blasted wind, it turns out, was worth something after all. In a boom that seemed unimaginable a few years ago, it has become the nation's fastest-growing source of electricity, with capacity expected to double in the next 13 months. And as utility companies race to line up new supplies, farmers like Conrad Schardin are counting crisp cash in their pockets and eyeing the sleek windmills known as turbines in their fields.

"Basically, they're paying me to let the wind blow," said Mr. Schardin, 38, who has found that selling wind rights to his great-grandfather's homestead can earn him a lot more than annual crops of corn and beans.

Turning wind into power is nothing new, of course. Windmills were common in the Midwest until the arrival of rural electrification, and commercial wind farms have contributed to California's electricity supply since 1981, as part of the response to successive energy crises.

But what is now under way, most experts say, is a transformation on a much larger scale. With the development of bigger, more sophisticated turbines, the cost of wind-generated electricity, once seen as prohibitive, is now nearly competitive with that of its rivals, all but eliminating what was once a major barrier.

Around the world, wind generation of electricity expanded by 39 percent in 1999 alone. In Denmark, wind already supplies 10 percent of the country's electricity, while in Germany's northernmost state, Schleswig-Holstein, it supplies some 14 percent of all electricity.

For now, wind still generates far less than 1 percent of the nation's electricity, with the bulk of the projects in California. But across the country, wind is increasingly being regarded by utility companies as worthy of a larger role as the utilities struggle to meet soaring electrical demands at a time when oil and gas prices are steep and volatile.

By the end of next year, the Energy Department projects, some 4,600 megawatts of wind power generation will be in place, enough to provide for 1.7 million households. That would be an increase from 2,500 megawatts today. Both Vice President Al Gore and Gov. George W. Bush of Texas support tax incentives to promote the use of wind over the more polluting fuels, so most experts believe that no matter who ends up in the White House, the trend is unlikely to wane.

"My belief is the current boom will continue," said Charles Lindemann, director of energy supply policy at the Edison Electric Institute, an arm of the utility industry.

This is giving rise to bold new dreams in places like Lake Benton; Storm Lake, Iowa; and Pecos County, Tex., which are or soon will be home to some of the biggest wind farms in the world.

With several large projects scheduled to be completed next year, Texas, best known for oil and gas, is now expected to be the next center of wind power development. Ranchers and farmers better accustomed to being paid for what lies under the ground are being offered royalties for what blows across it.

"We've got lots of wind," said Pat Wood, Mr. Bush's appointee as chairman of the Texas Public Utilities Commission, "and it's about time that people figured out a way to make some money off it."

In Minnesota, landowners in the Lake Benton area can earn about $2,000 a year for each of the 200-foot- tall turbines that stretch across 30 miles of farmland on the high ground known as Buffalo Ridge. Some farms have one or two of the turbines; others have more than a dozen. Each turbine takes up just one-eighth of an acre, and farmers and ranchers are free to use the remaining land, though few crops clear more than $40 an acre.

"We cussed that wind for years," said Jim Nichols, a Lincoln County commissioner, "and now it is turning out to be a godsend."

Wind farms have sprung up recently in other parts of the United States, including Pennsylvania and West Virginia. A $16 million project recently began operating in Madison, N.Y., about 80 miles west of Albany. But because the amount of power available increases exponentially with wind speed, the attention of large-scale projects has been fixed on places ranked even higher for wind energy potential by the Energy Department, including the Great Plains states and Texas, regarded as the Saudi Arabia and Kuwait of wind power.

Together, South Dakota, North Dakota and Texas have sufficient wind resources to provide electricity for the entire United States, according to studies cited by Energy Secretary Bill Richardson. Last year, Mr. Richardson set a goal of making wind's share of American electrical capacity 5 percent by 2020.

Of the 10 states ranked highest for wind potential, 7 are in the Midwest, because of a combination of wind constancy and the availability of open land. Minnesota is just ninth on the list, but utility officials say the winds that blow across Buffalo Ridge, in the far southwestern corner of the state, are tough to beat.

At an average speed of 15 miles an hour, the winds there generate nearly twice as much electricity as 12- mile-an-hour winds, because the total power generated is a function of wind speed cubed. Xcel Energy, Minnesota's largest utility, buys the electricity under contract for three to four cents a kilowatt-hour, not much more than the cost of power generated by gas-fired turbines, the current source of choice for utilities seeking new capacity.

In Minnesota, the main momentum in the shift toward wind has come from the Legislature, which in 1994 imposed a requirement calling for Northern States Power, Xcel's predecessor, to have 425 megawatts of wind power capacity in service or under contract by the end of 2002.

That arrangement was part of a bargain that has allowed the utility's nuclear power plant to stay in operation, and officials at Xcel say they are on track to meet the goal.

To date, similar mandates set by California, Iowa, Texas and other states have been the driving force in persuading utilities to turn toward wind as an alternative to conventional sources like coal (the leading nonrenewable energy source), natural gas and nuclear and hydroelectric power.

But in Texas, where a deadline does not take effect until 2009, utilities are moving so quickly to approve wind power projects that state officials now say they are likely to meet the 2,000-megawatt target several years early. The goal, which amounts to about 3 percent of Texas's generating capacity, was set last year by the Legislature and signed by Governor Bush as part of the rules for utility deregulation.

With wind capacity expected to hit 4,600 megawatts by the end of 2001, the country would be four years ahead of a pace outlined just last year when Mr. Richardson, the energy secretary, set a 5,000-megawatt target to be reached by 2005.

One reason for the current development blitz has been a Congressional decision to extend for at least another year what is effectively a subsidy for wind power operations. Developers are guaranteed a tax credit of 1.5 cents per kilowatt-hour for their first 10 years of operation, which is allowing them to market wind power for as little as three cents, even though the best-case production cost is at least a cent higher.

Because it produces no emissions, is entirely renewable and does not require dams or underground mines, wind power ranks as one of the cleanest sources of electricity, but it still has drawbacks. One is that production is hostage to the wind, so that until storage technology can be developed, utilities that rely on it must also arrange for backup power sources.

Another is that the turbines produce enough noise to bother some nearby residents, and that is stirring citizens' opposition to at least one project now under review, near tract developments and farmland in Addison, Wis.

Separately, environmental concerns forced the transplantation of another project, in the Tehachapi Mountains north of Los Angeles, after the Audubon Society warned that the turbines would pose a danger to flyways used by the endangered California condor.

In states like North Dakota, which is ranked No. 1 in the nation in wind resources but still lacks a wind farm of its own, another obstacle to wind development is a shortage of transmission lines, a vital link in moving power from the rural areas where it can best be produced to the population centers where it is most needed.

Even so, officials like Mr. Nichols have begun to sketch plans for an enormous wind power network that would stretch across three Great Plains states and be connected to the power grids that supply Milwaukee and Chicago. And in South Dakota, though projects are still in the talking stage, brokers have begun to make their way from farm to farm, offering royalties for wind rights.

In places like Lake Benton, elected officials and farmers say they see the windmills as nothing but a gain, even if they do dwarf the grain silos that are a more familiar feature of the landscape. Property taxes paid by developers will cover 35 percent of this year's county budget, and landowners flush with royalties say the windmills hardly disrupt their ordinary farm operations.

Mr. Schardin, who sold 90 acres of wind rights for a one-time payment, said the $40,500 he pocketed was nearly as much as the going rate for the land. With the money, he and his family have settled old debts and put some money away for retirement, something he had never really envisioned.

"I think the windmills are neat," he said in his living room, as the bitter wind outside turned a little snow into a blizzard. "When you're out there in the fields, and you look up, they're sort of mesmerizing."

-------- environment

Ailing forest's problems complicated by spotted owl
The same conditions that make the fire-prone woods near Cache Mountain a logging candidate also lure the endangered birds

oregonlive.com
Sunday, November 26, 2000

By Michael Milstein of The Oregonian staff
http://www.oregonlive.com/news/oregonian/index.ssf?/news/oregonian/00/11/lc_11trees26.frame

SISTERS -- In the shadows of Mount Washington and Cache Mountain, a once stately ponderosa pine forest has grown thick with fir trees that don't belong there and now are dying.

If a wildfire started in hot, dry weather, it might burn thousands of acres in the blink of an eye.

That makes this slice of the Deschutes National Forest an ideal target for $1.6 billion in new federal wildfire money that includes $278 million for reducing fuel buildup to prevent blazes such as those that scorched the West last summer.

But the northern spotted owl has moved into these woods, lured by the same dense timber that could feed a ferocious fire. Environmental protections for the owl, a barometer of Northwest old-growth forests, mean that resurrecting the open ponderosa forest may not be easy, fast, cheap or even possible.

In the end, it seems, cleaning up clogged and flammable forests across the West may be no less sensitive than logging or anything else that alters the forests. Reducing fire danger sounds simple and straightforward on a national scale, especially with the government throwing millions of dollars behind it. But it grows far touchier when applied to timber stands that are home to people and sensitive wildlife like the spotted owl.

"It's a juggling act is what it is," said Kris Martinson of the U.S. Forest Service, who is charting a future for more than 10,000 acres west of Sisters known as the McCache Late Successional Reserve. "The same characteristics that make spotted owl habitat here are also heavily unstable and vulnerable to fire."

Though the McCache covers only a sliver of the Deschutes National Forest on the east slopes of the Cascades, it has all the ingredients prominent in the Western wildfire puzzle: overcrowded and dying trees, vulnerable homes and cabins, past logging of the most fire-resistant trees, wildlife that needs forests, a timber industry hungry for wood, and conservationists defensive of whatever timber remains.

Each year brings more decay and disease, which makes the forests even more fire-prone, less valuable and, consequently, more costly for taxpayers to clean up.

The $278 million Congress appropriated after the summer's wildfires represents only a small part of the $12 billion the General Accounting Office estimates it will cost to thin tinder on 39 million acres of national forest land considered at high risk for catastrophic wildfires. Even the Forest Service's most ambitious plans would leave 10 million of those acres ripe for fires 15 years from now, the GAO said.

The test of time "It took 100 years to get this way, and it may take 100 years to get it back, if we can," Deschutes forester Brian Tandy said. "This isn't going to be an easy process. This forest has been manipulated a long time, and now we're talking about moving it in a whole different direction."

In the McCache, named in a McDonald's-style takeoff of nearby Cache Mountain, the stakes stand especially high. Not only because of the owl, which could lose its habitat to fire, but also because people have built homes and cabins nearby.

"Everybody says it's not a matter of if but when," said Don DeFranq, president of the Metolius River Forest Homeowners Association, which represents 108 cabin owners along the nearby Metolius drainage. "If a fire ever started over there, it could easily come right toward us."

Fire was once routine here. Every few decades blazes razed smaller trees and brush while largely bypassing centuries-old ponderosa pines protected by their thick, fire-resistant bark. Such regular thinning kept the forest open and sunlit and made it mostly unsuitable for spotted owls, which prefer closed woods that shield them from predators, said Lauri Turner, a Deschutes wildlife biologist.

But loggers began cutting the towering old ponderosas near the turn of the century. Smaller, faster-growing firs soon took hold, and the Forest Service extinguished the fires that had long thinned those trees. Although the firs promised a more productive timber crop, they overwhelmed any replacement ponderosas.

"Without fire, the pine just can't compete with the white fir, so the whole character of the forest changed," said Helen Maffei, a federal forest pathologist.

A forest under siege By the 1950s, the thickening forest was fraying. Spruce budworms stripped foliage from the fast-growing firs and threatened to turn the forest into a dead zone. The Forest Service sprayed DDT to quell the outbreak, and the firs continued their invasion.

"The whole system was out of balance," Maffei said.

Spotted owls, ever the opportunists, nested in the dense timber -- a step down from the mature old growth habitat they favor on the west side of the Cascades.

"This is basically the low-rent district," Martinson said.

But by 1985, the Forest Service said, 87 percent of the acreage in the McCache suited spotted owls.

Then root disease that had never gained a foothold in the dispersed ponderosa forest raced through the dense firs like underground wildfire. Bark beetles attacked and killed already stressed trees. Today many firs have turned deathly white and are ripe for burning.

By 1995, almost three-fourths of the spotted owl nesting habitat was gone, having turned into a tinder box instead. What habitat remains also could easily go up in smoke.

Turner, the biologist, finds it astonishing that the four pairs of owls nesting in the McCache are still around. "It certainly cannot be considered high-quality habitat anymore," she said.

But forest officials, under the federal Endangered Species Act, must protect spotted owl habitat, no matter what the quality. Their predicament is that protecting this owl habitat from fires puts the forest at greater risk to burn in the future.

Foresters would like to entice loggers to thin the thick, dying firs in swaths around spotted owl nests to create natural firebreaks that also might give new ponderosas a foothold. That must happen before the timber decays and loses its commercial value, otherwise the government might end up paying loggers to cut it down.

But conservationists who lament the forest's downward spiral caution against looking for an easy answer to a dilemma decades in the making. Logging the forest to remove overloaded fuel could erode owl habitat as much as a roaring fire, they said. The Forest Service might be better off leaving the owl habitat alone, even if these woods were not meant to look this way.

"Let's look at it in relationship to all the cutting we've already done, all the fragmentation of habitat we've already seen," said Tim Lillebo of the Oregon Natural Resources Council. "It's like they're saying, 'Now we know what to do.'

"We've said that for the last 50 years, and we didn't know what to do. We've seen the consequences of that in declining wildlife and watersheds."

You can reach Michael Milstein at 503-294-7689 or by e-mail at michaelmilstein@news.oregonian.com.

---

Clear-cutting done with eye to appearance
A Willamette Industries engineer seeks to make timber harvests as unobtrusive as possible

oregonlive.com
Sunday, November 26, 2000
By of The Associated Press
http://www.oregonlive.com/news/oregonian/index.ssf?/news/oregonian/00/11/nw_11log26.frame

ASTORIA -- When Steve McNulty visits Cannon Beach, he likes to stand in the parking lot and take a good long look -- his back to the ocean.

"I'll be the only one looking back at the hillside," he says. "Everyone else will be looking out at the ocean."

As planning and operations engineer for Willamette Industries, that's part of his job.

Willamette is the largest private landowner in Clatsop County. Some of its land has been cut for timber, and much more will be cut in the years to come as the company begins to harvest more around Seaside. Many of those cuts will be visible to the public. Some can be seen only from obscure vantage points that aren't often visited.

But after spending a year quizzing folks in residential areas and at tourist stops, McNulty has identified 63 points in towns and along the highways where views are a concern. By combining that information with modern technology, he can envision what a cut will look like before the saws move in.

Big timber companies didn't used to worry much about planning their cuts with perception in mind. But times have changed, and most major companies also are changing.

McNulty tries to design clear-cuts on Willamette's land that are unobtrusive -- if not pretty. Until recently, that would have entailed nothing more than erecting buffers along highways, what some call peek-a-boo logging. But that has changed, too.

"We don't want to hide everything we do, because we can't," McNulty said. "There are very few places we would avoid altogether."

With the exception of the junction at U.S. 101 and U.S. 26 and some stretches along U.S. 26, he said, Willamette intends to harvest every bit of its Clatsop County acreage that it can.

It may seem like a tall order to make clear cuts look better. But McNulty said most people seem to agree that the stark lines of a square clear cut clash with the flowing lines of natural land form. Many natural clearings fit in without disturbing the view: rock outcrops, avalanche chutes, natural bald spots on hilltops and ridges, as well as openings in the forest canopy created by fire or wind.

Natural openings in the tree line are irregular, curved, broken up by patches of trees -- not straight edges.

By altering straight lines, feathering harsh edges and creating clumps of trees, foresters such as McNulty apply the same principles that seem to work for natural openings to clear cuts.

McNulty uses global positioning system photos to tie down aerial photos to precise latitude and longitude. Geographic Information Systems mapping can overlay a proposed harvest area with information about nearby watersheds or roads.

A Canadian company creates models for Willamette that tell foresters what their cuts will look like from any of those 63 vantage points. Plenty of factors come into play. How many people are likely to see it? For how long? If a driver catches a clear cut out of the corner of her eye, she might not give it a second thought. If she's staring at it for more than 30 seconds, she probably will, McNulty said.

Size is another factor. The Astoria Column is one of the viewpoints McNulty considers when planning a cut. So is the public parking lot behind the Cannon Beach post office. From the column, an 80-acre clear cut in south county won't have much of an impact. From the parking lot, it might be another story.

Computer models can stop foresters from making a big mistake, or reveal how even a subtle adjustment might solve the visual problem. McNulty isn't just picking pleasing patterns for the cuts. The patterns must make good logging sense as well.

And he has to make sure the right logs go to the right mill at the right time of year. Some of the patterns raise logging costs, McNulty said, "but from a public relations standpoint, it warrants the economics."

---

'Green' ideals part of building concept
Masterminds of the $12 million Natural Capital Center plan to show how environmental and economic interests work together

oregonlive.com
Sunday, November 26, 2000

By Michelle Cole of The Oregonian staff
http://www.oregonlive.com/news/oregonian/index.ssf?/news/oregonian/00/11/lc_12eco26.frame

From the rain-filtering rooftop plants to the energy-efficient lights that turn themselves off when people leave a room and out into the parking lot designed to accommodate more bicycles than cars, an 1895 warehouse in Portland's gentrifying River District is being carefully refurbished to reflect the concerns of people passionate about saving the planet.

The leaders of Ecotrust, the conservation group that owns the building, promise that someday it will be known as an "environmental landmark."

When the new Jean Vollum Natural Capital Center opens next summer, conservationists will have a place to gather near a mural of the coastal rain forest or in a 2,500-square-foot conference center framed by recycled wood beams. Shoppers will find environmentally friendly products, such as fleece vests made of old soda bottles. Small-business owners will be able to inquire about a loan at a bank that promotes the marriage of environmental and economic principles.

But the Natural Capital Center isn't just something cooked up by conservationists who've had too much organic coffee.

Spencer Beebe, Ecotrust's chairman, has thought a lot about this center in the past five years. He's firm about what it will and won't be. "We don't want to make this a cozy club of enviros," Beebe said. "I don't want an ecotopia."

Instead, Beebe envisions a place that doesn't appear to exist in any other U.S. city. The Natural Capital Center will be a real-life demonstration of how environmental protection, economic development and social equity can fit together.

It will be a place, Beebe said, where people "bump into each other or ideas or displays and say, 'Gee, I never thought about that.' "

Beebe worked with The Nature Conservancy and Conservation International before founding Ecotrust 10 years ago. The nonprofit organization promotes environmental protection and economic health within the coastal temperate rain-forest zone that stretches from San Francisco to Kodiak Island, Alaska.

Much of Ecotrust's focus has been low profile and in rural areas, Beebe said. Now it's branching out into the heart of the city and into a high-profile, $12 million building project.

The organization received a $2.5 million gift from Portland philanthropist Jean Vollum and a $2 million low-interest loan from the Ford Foundation to help finance the project. Beebe hopes his organization will realize a net income of at least $200,000 when the 70,000-square-foot Natural Capital Center is fully occupied.

Today, 80 percent of the space is leased. Patagonia, a company that makes outdoor apparel and supports environmental causes, plans to open one of its largest retail stores in the country there by mid-August.

"We look forward to the synergy," said John Sterling, director of Patagonia's environmental programs. "It will be great to be sharing space with like-minded businesses and organizations."

The concept mirrors the clustering of high-tech companies, said Andrew DuBrin, an industrial psychologist who has written several books about the workplace, human behavior and management. The difference here is thematic, DuBrin said. "To put people in one place who are focusing on conservation issues is both unusual and a dramatic display of the importance of the environment."

Other tenants leasing space in the Natural Capital Center include:

• The Wild Salmon Center, which promotes salmon recovery around the world.

• ShoreBank Pacific, which advertises itself as the regulated financial institution in North America dedicated to economic revitalization and ecological restoration.

• The Certified Forest Products Council, which promotes the use of sustainably harvested wood.

• Progressive Investment Management, a company specializing in socially and environmentally responsible investments.

"We're trying to implement environmental sustainability in every aspect of our business," said Carsten Henningsen, who started Progressive Investment Management in 1982.

That means the company is avid about recycling. It also buys "carbon credits" to offset the global warming consequences of its employees' travel. When it came time to retrofit Progressive Investment Management's headquarters -- a circa 1900 Victorian house -- with energy-efficient lighting, heating, cooling, windows and insulation, Henningsen decided it made more sense to move to a building that already would have that.

The Natural Capital Center is designed to have the smallest impact on the environment possible. About 97 percent of the demolition and construction debris will be reused or recycled. Its supporting steel beams will include recycled content.

The parking lot will be made in sections that allow rainwater to seep naturally into the ground, in contrast to the impervious asphalt used in other parking lots. River rock from a demolished annex will turn into landscape decorating. Carpets will be made of recycled fibers, and paints will be nontoxic. Wood used in the project will either be recycled or certified to have been sustainably harvested.

One of the pieces yet to fall in place is signing a grocery store and/or restaurant to anchor the first floor with Patagonia.

"We'd love to have a farmers' market there," Beebe said, but farmers probably couldn't afford the rent that Ecotrust needs to charge to ensure the long-term success of its "environmental landmark."

"You've got to walk the talk," he said, "if you're encouraging people to be more environmentally and economically responsible."

You can reach Michelle Cole at 503-294-5143 or by e-mail at michellecole@news.oregonian.com.

---

News Analysis: The Tree Trap

Associated Press
November 26, 2000
By ANDREW C. REVKIN
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/11/26/science/26HAGU.html

THE HAGUE, Nov. 25 - In the end, the negotiators got lost in the trees.

After 11 days of draining and unwieldy bargaining by 170 countries over the rules for a proposed treaty to fight global warming, by this morning all the issues had been narrowed to just this one: How much credit should big forested countries get for all that photosynthesis?

In that natural chemical process, trees and other plants draw carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas, out of the air and stash the carbon in the ground or in wood, forming what experts have called carbon "sinks" and helping to cool the climate.

The United States, the world's largest producer of greenhouse gases and the country that potentially stands to face the greatest cost under any treaty, had originally said it might try to meet half its emission-cutting goal in just that way.

But other industrialized nations with fewer open spaces suspected the Americans of trying to find a way out of actually taking the hard steps of reducing their use of fossil fuels and of trying to get something for nothing - in effect, playing a "get out of jail free" card.

Despite a report issued during the conference from the Energy Department saying that the United States could reduce its fuel use though fairly simple, inexpensive changes - with almost no harm to the economy - conservation measures have long been resisted in a country where big cars, low gasoline prices and economic growth have come to be considered nearly inalienable rights.

But for Europeans, accustomed to high fuel taxes and Green politics, the primary goal of the treaty was to cut emissions at the source, not sop them up after the fact.

Through the final week of the conference, the United States sharply whittled down its original proposals. By dawn today, everyone later agreed, it was very close. There was a palpable sense of optimism that - after a decade of debate - the world was ready to take a step toward a cooperative, but potentially costly, effort to cut the flow of gases that scientists have linked to the warming climate.

Through the night and early this morning, environmental groups, particularly the World Wildlife Fund, helped the European delegation dissect each complicated new formula for carbon tons and trees, said Kevin R. Gurney, a climate and forest expert at Colorado State University who spent hours crunching sets of numbers provided by European negotiators to the wildlife group - one after another.

He said the final analysis came down to a 20-million-ton difference between the two sides, a minuscule amount of carbon dioxide in a world spewing 6 billion tons a year into the air.

"I think things came as close as they could come," he said. "I think they were tired and not able to translate some of that into the bottom line, and I think that did freak some of them out."

One result was that a pioneering climate deal sealed with handshakes by a few diplomats deep in the night came unglued when numbers lay under the fluorescent glare of the day.

Tonight, as he somewhat wistfully recalled that fleeting electric moment when an agreement was at hand, Jan Pronk, the president of the two-week climate meeting, compared it to the American presidential election. "At 6 o'clock this morning," he said, "it was too close to call."

People who were intimately involved with that critical moment when the tide turned say it appears that domestic political pressures, exhaustion, an exceptionally tight relationship between the Europeans and environmental groups and simply too much data to sort through in too little time all collided to destroy any environmental detente, at least for now.

In his post-game analysis tonight, Mr. Pronk said he lamented that fundamental problem with technical negotiations.

"When experts come to the table, they tend to stay too long," he said. "People leave with more questions than they had before."

On other heated issues, resolution seemed closer still. Delegates had fought over whether nuclear plants should be banned or simply not encouraged in a world combatting global warming. The technology produced no greenhouse gases, after all, but came with a load of other environmental concerns.

The compromise was the gentle verb "refrain."

There was a third bloc, the developing countries, that had its own demands, but those seemed achievable if the wealthy nations could speak with one voice, and in the end they could not.

Mr. Pronk said tonight he was disappointed, but not devastated. "I'm a professional, and I'm a believer," he said, "a professional believer."

But even as he spoke, workers dismantled the trappings of the conference, including blue and green panels bearing the logo he himself had chosen: "Work It Out."

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Treaty Talks Fail to Find Consensus in Global Warming

New York Times
November 26, 2000
By ANDREW C. REVKIN
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/11/26/science/26CLIM.html

THE HAGUE, Nov. 25 - High- stakes negotiations aimed at finishing a treaty to curb global warming collapsed today after a tense all- night bargaining session foundered on last-minute disputes between European and American negotiators.

The breakdown, after two weeks of intensive talks here, stunned many participants, environmental groups and observers, even though they had recognized from the start the enormity of trying to find common ground on ways to cut the greenhouse gases emitted by every smokestack and tailpipe from Boston to Brisbane.

"I'm gutted," said John Prescott, Britain's deputy prime minister, as he left the hall this morning after failing to negotiate a compromise between the United States and some of its allies and the European Union.

But Jan Pronk, the conference president and Dutch environment minister, did not concede defeat, and instead proposed that the meeting be suspended, with another session perhaps as soon as May.

The top American negotiator, Frank E. Loy, visibly tired and rubbing his forehead and eyes, agreed the effort should continue, even if he and the Clinton administration would be handing over the task to a new administration.

"We will not give up," Mr. Loy said. "The stakes are too high, the science too decisive, and our planet and our children too precious."

Jennifer Morgan, climate campaign director for the World Wildlife Fund, which joined a mostly European cluster of environmental groups, laid blame with the United States, by far the world's largest producer of greenhouse gases.

"The United States pushed too hard and too far," she said. "They didn't leave the time or trust to get a deal in the end."

But there was plenty of blame to go around, and from the outset the talks were riven by conflicting agendas.

Poor countries sought billions of dollars in payments to help them adapt to climate change. Rich countries sought to blunt the impact of the treaty on their economies by finding the least costly ways to cut emissions of warming gases, including planting forests as "sinks" to absorb carbon dioxide, the dominant greenhouse gas.

But today it came down to disputes between industrial powers on opposite sides of the Atlantic and a persistent disagreement over the role of trees and properly managed farmland to absorb carbon dioxide.

The lack of understanding on that issue was a key to the breakdown of the talks today, participants on both sides said, with European negotiators ultimately rejecting a compromise proposal - which early this morning seemed to have sealed a deal - as too harmful to the environment and too favorable to the United States.

The treaty the negotiators had hoped to complete, called the Kyoto Protocol, was drafted by more than 170 countries in 1997 in Japan, and this session was intended to flesh out the important fine print.

If enacted, it would commit three dozen industrialized countries to cut their greenhouse gas emissions by 2012 to at least 5 percent below emissions in 1990.

So far, however, no industrialized country has ratified the pact, and in the intervening years the emissions of most of the world's leading producers of greenhouse gases have only continued to rise, a trend that help add new urgency to the current round of talks.

When the treaty was originally drafted three years ago, the United States, Canada and other large countries said they would seek credit toward their emissions targets for forested areas, but those talks never settled on an amount. Negotiators at the current conference had hoped to arrive at one.

But no agreement could be reached. Environmental groups charged that the United States had underestimated the strength of the European Green movement and its determination to drastically reduce the use of fossil fuels. A British official said that many European countries only realized the significance of the idea of carbon "sinks" during the current meeting - and that was far too late.

Part of the problem was a cultural rift, negotiators on both sides said. The European Union, where Green Party politics is a driving force, never found a way to compromise with the United States, where the environmental movement increasingly works with industries to bring change, instead of fighting for strict top-down regulations.

"It's extremely difficult to negotiate between groups where political cultures are so different," Dominique Voynet, the French environment minister and a Green Party member, told the plenary sessions.

Around 3 a.m., Mr. Prescott, from Britain, and representatives of two other European countries met with the United States team over a compromise proposal. Members of both delegations said agreement was reached in that room.

"We physically shooks hands," Mr. Loy said. "I asked, `Are we now in full agreement, is this a deal?' I was pointing to a piece of paper. They said `yes.' "

But when that set of proposals was brought back to the rest of the European delegation, they rejected it.

"We had a hard and fast political deal," said a member of the British delegation. But that deal could not hold up to the subsequent analysis before dawn by other European countries.

"I think it is fair to say that was a pretty important opportunity that was not cashed in on," Mr. Loy said.

Moments after word escaped that the agreement had broken down, representatives of competing factions of private environmental groups held briefings for the press, shouting to be heard over the din and confusion.

Within moments, their representatives sprinted around the halls, decrying the failure and saying simply, "It's over," as they handed out hastily drafted press releases.

Earlier in the week, Jurgen Trittin, the German environment minister, explained that the opposition to forest credits in his country was deeply rooted, and that there was a clear sense at the current conference that the United States and its partners were trying to get something for nothing.

"We have strong interest groups in German society," he said. "What shall I tell them if the United States makes a fire road in a forest and flies airplanes over it and says that is an emissions project? They'd say you're ridiculous."

But some environmental groups that tend to work more closely with industry defended the American position, which focused on building a political consensus back in the United States by making sure that the agreement satisfied powerful industry and farming lobbies.

"In the long-term fight against global warming we need every tool at our disposal," said Eileen Claussen, president of the Pew Center on Global Climate Change, a Washington group. Ms. Claussen previously was part of a Clinton administration team that negotiated agreements leading up to the Kyoto Protocol.

"If we take carbon sequestration and market mechanisms out of the equation, or bog them down with such overly restrictive rules that nobody uses them," she said, "then we are limiting our ability to meet our environmental objectives."

Sani Daura, Nigeria's environmental minister and a spokesman for a bloc of developing nations called the Group of 77 and China - whose exemption from emissions targets had long been seen as the most likely source of an impasse - said that the conference failed largely because of competing economic interests in wealthy countries.

"I hope all the parties have learned their lessons," he said. "The breakdown came from selfishness and lack of political will, in particular from the North." Staff members for two senators, one Democrat and one Republican, said all was not lost, however, despite the substantial setback. The Senate had strong reservations about the Kyoto Protocol even before it was negotiated in 1997. And now there was the prospect of a new push in Washington to curb greenhouse gases, they said. "Regardless of the outcome here, the stage is set in Congress next year to consider addressing this issue in a way that makes economic and environmental sense in a coordinated fashion," one staff member said.

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USA Today
11/26/00
States
http://usatoday.com/news/states/all50.htm

Arkansas

Little Rock - Residents of a neighborhood near the state Capitol no longer have to boil their water as a safety precaution. The boil-water advisory went into effect after a 24-inch water main broke Tuesday. Officials said water-quality tests showed the water was safe.

Louisiana

Lake Charles - Some types of fish in the West Fork of the Calcasieu River are contaminated with dangerous levels of mercury and shouldn't be eaten by children and pregnant women, state authorities said. Largemouth bass, bowfin and freshwater drum are affected. Natural and manmade processes, such as volcanic activity and burning of coal and garbage, can be sources of such mercury, authorities said.

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USA Today
11/26/00
States
http://usatoday.com/news/states/all50.htm

Texas

Waxahachie - Two suburban Dallas police officers, husband and wife, have been convicted of beating and sexually torturing a 13-year-old boy in their care. The jury sentenced DeSoto police Sgt. Judith Corkran Ransom to four years in prison and Lt. William Homer Ransom to probation. The boy, now 14, functions at the level of a 6- or 7-year-old.

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Yemen Links to bin Laden Gnaw at F.B.I. in Cole Inquiry

New York Times
November 26, 2000
By JOHN F. BURNS
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/11/26/world/26SHIP.html

SANA, Yemen, Nov. 25 - When an American guided missile destroyer sailed into Aden six weeks ago, the Pentagon, in effect, was taking a conscious risk. It was making use of the best natural harbor on the Arabian peninsula, but depending for the ship's safety on a government that relies on the uncertain loyalties of army officers, Muslim clerics and tribal leaders with long-standing links to Islamic militant groups.

So far, F.B.I. officials investigating the suicide bombing of the Cole on Oct. 12, in which 17 American sailors were killed and 39 injured, say they have no evidence - at least none they have divulged - that anybody at any official level participated in the bombing, beyond the low-level suspects already arrested by President Ali Abdullah Saleh's security police for issuing false documents and helping with other logistics.

But from the beginning, F.B.I. agents have kept open an alternate possibility - that the attack may have involved powerful figures inside Yemen with close ties to Osama bin Laden, the F.B.I's most-wanted terrorist. Despite vigorous Yemeni denials, the F.B.I. has wanted to know whether any part of the Cole bombing was supported from within the government, or by powerful men with Islamic-militant credentials who live under official protection.

From a base in Afghanistan, Mr. bin Laden, the 43-year-old son of a Yemeni-born Saudi Arabian construction billionaire, reached out to Yemen for thousands of recruits for his "holy war," first against Soviet troops in Afghanistan, later against American troops in the Arabian Peninsula and the Persian Gulf. Along the way, he met men now prominent in Sana, the capital, including a top army commander, the country's most militant Muslim cleric and a prominent tribal leader. Western intelligence reports say he gave them money to send Yemeni recruits to Afghanistan, and back to Yemen when the Afghan struggle ended.

Those so-called Arab Afghans - about 3,000 Yemenis, and perhaps twice as many non-Yemeni Arabs, including Algerians, Egyptians, Iraqis, Jordanians, Somalis, Sudanese and Syrians - were then enlisted in terrorist attacks aimed at Communists who had run a separate Yemeni state from Aden between 1967 and 1990, when the two Yemens merged under President Saleh, the Sana ruler. That pact reached its culmination in a 1994 civil war. Mr. Saleh finally defeated the Communists, using large numbers of Arab Afghans formed into Islamic terrorist units as his shock troops, then rewarding their service and buying their further loyalty by bringing them into the "big tent" of his disparate government.

The F.B.I's concern over possible links to the Cole bombing appears to have grown as the Yemeni investigation of the bombing has progressed. The Yemenis, denying the F.B.I. direct access to interrogations and other key aspects of their inquiry, say that their investigation is nearly complete, that it shows that two bearded men who attac