NUCLEAR
U.S. Draws Attention to Information Warfare Threat
What's cooking at Whitehall?
Physicist Leprince - Ringuet Dies
Iraq 'resumed' work on nuclear bomb
Divided Nations
North Koreans Celebrate Leader
Russia Tests New Nuclear-Powered Submarine
USA-Bashing Works for Putin
Chernobyl Plant To Be Built Soon
Boeing gets national missile defense contract
Be Prepared
NORAD keeps tabs on Santa
Nuclear Agency to Pay for Radiation Drug
States
Political Memo: Clinton Ending Term on a Busy Note
Summary of Bush's Opinions
MILITARY
French Inquiry Outlines Mitterrand Son's Suspected Arms Deals
Just Vote No
Massachusetts
At Least 8 Die in Car-Bomb Attack in Kashmir
Bombs rock Pakistan, Kashmir
Program Lets Donors Help Pay to Clear Minefields
Radio contact re-established with Mir
OAK RIDGE MAY PRODUCE PLUTONIUM
U.N. Workers Return to Afghanistan After Taliban Safety Pledge
Alabama
OTHER
Political thriller, Cold War reality
'13 Days': Talkin' Tough at a Time the Earth Stood Still
Fantastic development: 'Lord of Rings' trailer
Catholic charity struggles to help Navajo poor
Minnesota
Plan to Kill Coyotes Divides Colorado
A Torrent of Sludge Muddies a Town's Future
Los Angeles Department of Water and Power Daily Energy Update
Switch to Cleaner Buses
Why Shop in a Swamp?
Mining in Remote Areas
STAMFORD: MORE OYSTERS
States
The New New Imperialism
Police Officer Fatally Shoots 2 Men in Store
Possible Suspects Abound in Killing of Crusading Sheriff-Elect in Georgia
Alaska
John Pike: An Intelligence Sleuth in His Own Right
Multinationals take aim at protesters
A Stone's Throw Czech court hands extreme sentence to IMF protester
Naomi Klein looks into the future of the movement
Oregon
-------- NUCLEAR
U.S. Draws Attention to Information Warfare Threat
Associated Press
December 25, 2000 Filed at 5:29 p.m. ET
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/business/business-tech-warfare.html
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A year after the Y2K bug, U.S. officials are once again warning about perceived dangers to a United States increasingly stitched together by bits and bytes of computer code.
This time, a key stated fear is information warfare, or sneak electronic assaults that could crash power grids, financial networks, transportation systems and telecommunications, among other vital services.
National security aides trace the threat to hostile or potentially hostile governments as well as drug lords, criminal cartels and increasingly computer savvy guerrilla groups.
Some of these organizations ``are doing reconnaissance today on our networks, mapping them, looking for vulnerabilities,'' Richard Clarke, President Clinton's top aide for infrastructure protection and counterterrorism, told a Microsoft Corp. digital security conference in Redmond, Washington, on Dec. 8.
Cyberblitzes like those that briefly knocked out major Web sites in February -- including Yahoo! Inc.'s Internet gateway, eBay Inc.'s auction service and Amazon.com Inc.'s retail site -- could easily be copied on a larger scale, said Clarke, a staff member of the White House National Security Council.
``Criminals, crackers, foreign governments -- when the new president reads that intelligence briefing, he had better move pretty fast,'' he added.
Such warnings are not new from Clarke, who has frequently conjured up a ``digital Pearl Harbor,'' a reference to the Japanese surprise attack that threw the United States into the Second World War.
But Clarke and other U.S. officials seem to be stepping up a public awareness campaign, spurred by the spread of information technology, growing knowledge of malicious computer code and ever greater U.S. reliance on networked systems.
CYBERINICIDENT GROUP MEETS
On Dec. 18, the National Security Council held the first meeting of the recently formed Cyberincident Steering Group, aimed at fostering cooperation between the private sector and government to secure systems from domestic and international cyberattack.
``This meeting was an important first step in building computer security programs for the nation,'' said Peter Tippett, chief technologist for TruSecure Corp., a leading computer security company.
Among topics discussed were the creation of a rapid response system and communications between industry and government, said David Perry, the public education director for Trend Micro Inc., a maker of anti-virus products, and the co-chairman of the steering group.
The U.S. intelligence community voiced its concerns last week with the release of ``Global Trends 2015,'' a wide-ranging analysis by the CIA, its sister U.S. spy shops and outside experts.
The report said foes of a militarily dominant United States, rather than challenging it head-on, would seek to target an Achilles' heel in cyberspace or threaten the use of the deadliest chemical, nuclear or biological weapons.
``Such asymmetric approaches -- whether undertaken by states or nonstate actors -- will become the dominant characteristic of most threats to the U.S. homeland,'' the report, released by the National Intelligence Council, said.
Over time, attacks are increasingly likely to be fired off through computer networks rather than conventional arms, as ''the skill of U.S. adversaries in employing them'' evolves, the assessment said.
FBI FINGERS CHINA
It said many unnamed countries were developing such technologies to complicate what the U.S. military refers to as ''power projection'' and to undermine morale at home.
The interagency, FBI-led National Infrastructure Protection Center uses a slide depicting China's Great Wall in its standard presentation on cyberthreats, along with a quote from Sun Zi, author of a treatise on war in about 350 B.C.
``Subjugating the enemy's army without fighting is the true pinnacle of excellence,'' the FBI's slide quotes the ancient Chinese strategist as saying.
In a telltale update, the slide includes a 1999 quote from a Chinese newspaper referring to information warfare as a means of achieving strategic victory over a militarily superior enemy.
-------- britain
What's cooking at Whitehall?
The Hindu
Monday, December 25, 2000
By Hasan Suroor
http://www.indiaserver.com/thehindu/2000/12/25/stories/0325000c.htm
LONDON, DEC. 24.When three ambitious and competent politicians in the prime of their political careers are forced to share the same roof, can tensions be far behind, particularly when there is an election round the corner and new turfs and pecking orders are at stake? No wonder, Whitehall is said to be full of steam with its three main occupants jostling for space in order to improve their visibility ahead of the elections and the reshuffle that would follow.
The media grapevine is buzzing with stories that the Foreign Secretary, Mr. Robin Cook, is annoyed with his two junior Ministers, Mr. Peter Hain and Mr. Keith Vaz, for speaking out of turn in a bid to grab the headlines - and often at his cost. Apparently he is furious that a formal memo which Mr. Hain wrote to him on the U.S. defence missile system was leaked to the media which went to town with it. Mr. Hain in his memo opposed the U.S. plan and warned that Britain's support to it could provoke widespread peace protests reminiscent of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament against cruise missiles.
The Sunday Times said sources close to Mr. Cook thought Mr. Hain was guilty of ``excessive grandstanding''. It quoted a Cook source as saying: ``You should ask why it was necessary for Peter to write a formal memo like that and how it leaked. Robin has his suspicions.'' The Cook ``camp'' perceived Mr. Hain's intervention as unwarranted, and an attempt to bolster up his ``old Labour'' base with an eye on the elections. Mr. Cook is reported to be even more infuriated with Mr. Vaz for the way he handled a Commons debate on the Nice summit. Mr. Vaz has been accused of playing the ``clown'' by his critics. He is also thought to be ``arrogant'' in his dealings with his junior officials.
-------- france
Physicist Leprince - Ringuet Dies
Associated Press
December 25, 2000 Filed at 8:58 a.m. ET
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Obit-Leprince-Ringuet.html
PARIS (AP) -- Louis Leprince-Ringuet, one of the fathers of French nuclear physics and a top specialist in particle physics, has died in Paris. He was 99.
Leprince-Ringuet died Saturday at his home in Paris, a source close to the family told The Associated Press. He was a member of the Academy of Sciences and the prestigious Academie Francaise, a gathering of the country's top minds.
Helene Carrere d'Encausse, head of the Academie Francaise, said she was ``deeply saddened'' by Leprince's death, especially because he had been looking forward to reaching the age of 100.
``He was hoping to reach his 100th birthday because the academy has never had a centenarian among its members,'' she said. Academy members are entrusted with safeguarding the French language and culture.
Leprince-Ringuet was also a prolific author, publishing numerous works, including ``Cosmic Rays,'' ``Of Atoms and Man,'' and ``Science and the Happiness of Man.''
He graduated from Ecole Polytechnique in 1920 and received a doctorate in 1933. In 1959, Leprince-Ringuet was named the College of France's chair of nuclear physics.
The death of Leprince-Ringuet, who was born March 27, 1901, in the city of Arles in southern France, drew condolences from French President Jacques Chirac.
``Our country has lost one of its greatest minds,'' Chirac said in a statement Sunday. ``It is with sadness that I learned of the death of Louis Leprince-Ringuet ... a man who, throughout his life, lived the humanistic values that France represents.''
-------- iraq
Iraq 'resumed' work on nuclear bomb
The Hindu
Monday, December 25, 2000
By Hasan Suroor
http://www.indiaserver.com/thehindu/2000/12/25/stories/0325000b.htm
LONDON, DEC. 24.In what is seen as a plug for the anti-Iraqi lobby which is trying hard to resist international pressure to lift U.N. sanctions against Baghdad, The Sunday Times today reported that Iraq had `resumed' work on producing a nuclear bomb. It sourced the story to a junior Iraqi scientist who defected to Jordan after being allegedly tortured for refusing to cooperate with the authorities in Baghdad.
The report said that Mr. Salman Yassin Zweir, a 39-year-old design engineer who worked with the Iraqi Atomic Energy Commission, was being `debriefed' by American intelligence officials in Amman. He is reported to have told his interlocutors that the nuclear programme was revived in August 1998, four months before the President, Mr. Saddam Hussein, expelled the U.N. weapons inspectors. The programme had been suspended after the U.N. intervention following the 1991 Gulf War.
The timing of the report has raised questions about its motives. It is being asked why Mr. Zweir who `escaped' from Iraq two years ago chose to spoke out precisely at a time when the world opinion is growing increasingly against the sanctions.
The perception that the `disclosure' was aimed at shoring up the sanctions against Iraq is reinforced by the emphasis in The Sunday Times report on recalling the future U.S. Secretary of State, Gen. Collin Powell's statement that he would resist pressures to revoke the sanctions until Iraq accounted fully for all weapons of mass destruction. ``We're doing this to protect the people of the region...who would be targets if we did not contain (the weapons) and eliminate them,'' he had said last week, the paper recalled.
Significantly, it also speculated that the information provided by Mr. Zweir would ``raise international concern that Saddam is intent on developing weapons of mass destruction''. In another give-away comment, the report said that Gen. Powell was `` expected to use the threat to press the case in Europe for America's so-called son of star wars National Missile Defence system''. The Amman-based story had the U.S. `briefing' written all over it, though it also quoted an unnamed senior Western diplomat as saying that ``this is the first concrete evidence of what we feared might be happening''.
Mr. Zweir is reported to have said that when he refused to cooperate with what he thought was a `filthy act', he was arrested and tortured. ``He was beaten with iron bars for three weeks. After losing consciousness and following the intervention of a hospital employee who knew his family he was smuggled to a farm in southern Iraq and led to Jordan in October 1998,'' the report said.
Mr. Zweir is described as a `member of Iraq's scientific elite' who was well looked after by the Government, his salary being twice as much as that of an `average' Iraqi government official.
The report has few details about the `resumed' programme, except that the ``instruction (asking scientists to return to their duties) came in a document marked `top secret' which identified a research centre on Al-Jadriya Street, Baghdad, as the headquarters of the new operation.
---
Divided Nations
A growing number of countries fly in the face of U.N. sanctions on Iraq
In These Times
December 25, 2000
By Anthony Arnove
http://www.inthesetimes.com/web2501/arnove2501a.html
A number of countries have recently defied the U.S. government and sent planes to Baghdad, which has been under an unofficial air embargo since the Gulf War. The flights are a clear indication that the United States is growing more isolated in its support for sanctions on Iraq.
Algeria, Bahrain, Egypt, France, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, Russia, Syria, Tunisia, the United Arab Emirates and Yemen together have sent more than 30 planes with relief supplies and delegations of doctors, business people and government officials to Iraq since August, openly challenging the U.S. view that U.N. sanctions prohibit such flights.
While Egypt and Syria ignored a 1990 U.N. resolution that calls for U.N. inspection and approval of such flights--but does not openly bar them--most of the countries flying to Baghdad have given advance notice. France and Russia, both permanent members of the Security Council, which oversees and maintains the sanctions, notified the United Nations of its flights, but did not wait for clearance.
Baghdad also resumed domestic flights on November 5, flying planes into two areas where British and American jets have flown thousands of sorties and routinely fired at Iraqi aircraft. Two Russian planes took off at the same time for Mosul, in the north, and Basra, in the south, in an open challenge to the so-called "no-fly zones." "We will continue to monitor closely any Iraqi aviation to determine whether it poses a threat to our forces, Iraq's neighbors or the Iraqi people," an unnamed spokesman for the State Department told The Associated Press.
Even Turkey, which has served as a base for the U.S.-led bombing campaign against Iraq, has flown two flights to Iraq. "The international sanctions on Iraq are clearly crumbling," the government-aligned Turkish Daily News editorialized. "The flights to Baghdad may be symbolic, but they reveal a more important trend, that more and more countries do not want to 'punish' the Iraqi people any more."
-------- korea
North Koreans Celebrate Leader
Associated Press
December 25, 2000
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-NKorea-Celebrating-Kim.html
SEOUL, South Korea (AP) -- Fireworks burst over Pyongyang on Christmas Eve, while young people danced in the streets of the North Korean capital and sang songs of praise.
The celebrations had nothing to do with Christmas: The practice of religion is severely restricted in communist North Korea, and the songs were odes to Kim Jong Il, its totalitarian leader.
The occasion was the ninth anniversary of Kim's appointment as commander of the armed forces and the 83rd anniversary of the birth of his late mother, North Korean media reported Monday.
Such state-sanctioned events are designed to maintain the personality cult that Kim cultivated long before he took power in 1994 on the death of his father, Kim Il Sung.
Kim Jong Il, known to North Koreans as ``Great Leader,'' has preserved tight control over his 22 million people despite the virtual collapse of the economy and famine in the 1990s that left hundreds of thousands dead.
This year, he pursued rapprochement with South Korea and the United States in a policy geared at least in part to attract economic aid from his old enemies. However, North Korea has shown little appetite for political or economic reforms at home.
Communist youth groups held a gala Sunday evening outside the Ministry of People's Security and a band played a song titled ``Song of General Kim Jong Il,'' according to the Korean Central News Agency, or KCNA, the North's foreign news outlet.
``Its participants danced with high pride and honor of being defenders of the revolution to the tune of such songs as 'Comrade Kim Jong Il, Lodestar', 'Pride of Youth', 'One Large Family','' KCNA said.
Theaters and cultural centers in Pyongyang and other cities hosted art performances in honor of the North Korean leader and his mother, Kim Jong Suk. She died in 1949 and is revered for her role as a rebel fighter.
Kim Jong Il, 58, was groomed for power from early childhood, and his 1991 appointment as Supreme Commander of the Korean People's Army sealed his status as his father's heir. However, he lacks the battlefield credentials his father earned as a guerrilla fighter against Japanese colonizers early in the century.
The military, which periodically highlights its feats against the Japanese and against U.S.-led United Nations troops during the 1950-53 Korean War, has more than 1 million soldiers but suffers a lack of fuel and modern equipment.
Yet the threat of its arsenal of missiles and suspected chemical and biological weapons, as well as its nuclear program, have given Pyongyang leverage in talks over the years with the United States.
``Only victory and glory are in store for the Korean people as long as there are the army and people single-heartedly united around Kim Jong Il,'' the North Korean newspaper Rodon Sinmun said in an editorial.
-------- russia
Russia Tests New Nuclear-Powered Submarine
Yahoo News
Monday December 25 12:32 PM ET
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20001225/ts/russia_submarine_dc_1.html
MOSCOW (Reuters) - Just four months after the dramatic sinking of the Kursk (news - web sites) nuclear submarine with 118 men on board, Russia has started testing a new nuclear-powered submarine, a navy spokesman said on Monday.
The spokesman said by telephone that tests of the Gepard (Cheetah), which is designed to carry cruise missiles with nuclear warheads, had started in Arctic waters in early December.
The Gepard will be Russia's 13th submarine of what NATO (news - web sites) classifies as the Akula class.
The spokesman said the Gepard was half the length of the 505-foot Kursk and would have a crew of 67.
He said it would take several months of sea tests before the Gepard was commissioned.
The sinking of the Kursk in the Arctic Barents Sea in August has raised questions about Russia's ability to maintain its nuclear-powered submarine fleet.
The Kursk is still lying on the sea bed, but Russia plans a risky and expensive operation to raise it next year.
---
USA-Bashing Works for Putin
Russia's president, in charge of a down-on-its-luck great power, misses no opportunity to needle Washington. What's his game?
MSNBC
12/25/00
By Michael Hirsh and Christian Caryl
NEWSWEEK INTERNATIONAL
http://www.msnbc.com/news/504488.asp?cp1=1
Dec. 25 issue - For many Americans, the forthcoming movie "Thirteen Days" will evoke, as entertainment, an event that has long since faded into history: the Cuban missile crisis. For many Russians, Vladimir Putin's recent trip to Cuba evoked an event that is still a raw wound: the loss of the Soviet imperium.
PUTIN DIDN'T TAKE any missiles with him on his trip to Havana, the first by a Russian leader since the fall of the Soviet Union, but he did go bearing a civilian nuclear agreement and arms contracts. Just as important, Putin brought a message of sympathy to Fidel Castro and other Latin American leaders who dislike Washington's blustery ways as the world's lone superpower. "Similar attempts at world domination were made numerous times throughout the course of history-and it is well known how they ended," Putin declared in a speech in Havana. Then he flew on to Canada-over U.S. territory-without stopping in Washington.
For the president of a nation that can't pay its bills-$157 billion in foreign debt and counting-Putin is traveling the world these days like a potentate. In his nearly 12 months in power, Putin has journeyed to Western Europe, where he trashed Washington's nuclear-missile-defense plan; to Beijing, where he pledged to bolster an anti-hegemonic (read anti-U.S.) partnership with China, and to Pyongyang, where he swooped in ahead of U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright's historic visit in late October to negotiate with the reclusive Kim Jong Il. Along the way the poker-faced Putin developed a cordial if distinctly chilly relationship with Bill Clinton, who, until Putin, never met a foreign leader he couldn't charm. But Putin has also missed no opportunity to tweak the most powerful man on earth over foreign-policy issues critical to Washington-which, by the way, he's never visited as president.
What's with all this diplomatic diddling? Many observers believe that while Putin recognizes Russia's deep limitations as a power, he's seeking to recapture a little of the Soviet Union's old stature as America's chief rival. So he's playing kibitzer in chief to American hegemony: flirting ostentatiously with U.S. rivals like Iraq and Iran; buddying up to members of the former Soviet bloc; seeking to drive a wedge between Washington and its European allies over national missile defense. Putin's main aim, in fact, may be to consolidate his power base at home. Many Russians blame their country's dire economic state and reduced geopolitical position on the United States, and the more Putin shows up Washington, the more points he scores with voters. "Some of it is just Putin being the un-Yeltsin," says Stephen Sestanovich, U.S. ambassador at large to the former Soviet states. Putin wants a "healthy distancing" from Russia's ex-superpower rival, a corrective to the Boris Yeltsin years, when Washington was Moscow's only lodestar, adds Aleksei Pushkov, a Moscow foreign-policy commentator. "America will cease to be a criterion for our foreign policy," says Pushkov. "The European and Asian directions will be strengthened."
Still, the 48-year-old Russian president remains something of a puzzle to Washington. On the one hand, Putin has reinvigorated the Kremlin. He's done this both literally, by cultivating the image of a judo buff to Yeltsin's stumbling drunk, and politically, by injecting a ringing note of reality into the discussion of Russia's problems. Putin has bluntly conceded that Russia's devastated economy has 15 years to go before it can reach even the level of Portugal, and he has targeted internal corruption and tax cheating. On the other hand, Putin, a former KGB lieutenant colonel, clearly laments the loss of the U.S.S.R. He has mercilessly attacked Chechnya and cracked down on press freedoms, and cynically exploited Russians' age-old attraction to strong, authoritarian leadership. Putin has also vowed to do whatever he can to restore Russia to its former "greatness," even while saying he wants to be part of the West.
U.S. officials admit that the halcyon days of Boris and Bill, when it seemed Washington and Moscow could be allies-like Japan and Germany after World War II-are over. But for the moment, they profess not to worry too much about Putin's global ambitions. "The truth is, nobody takes him very seriously because there isn't that much the Russians bring to the table," says James Steinberg, who retired this year as Clinton's deputy national-security adviser. "These things don't have much of a follow-up. I think it's mostly done for domestic politics."
Yet some diplomats admit the trend could be troublesome if it continues. A few weeks ago Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov blindsided U.S. policymakers by renouncing a hitherto confidential Russian pledge to the United States not to sell high-tech weapons to Iran. Just as in old Soviet days, the announcement was timed for delivery at the peak of the U.S. presidential campaign.
To some Russians, the case for continued flirting with Saddam Hussein is even stronger. Iraq still owes Russia $8 billion in Soviet-era debt, and Russian oil companies have been opening offices in Baghdad in hopes of getting access to Iraqi oil on favorable terms once U.N. sanctions against Saddam are lifted. "We can use our political connections to compensate for our lack of competitiveness," says Pushkov. Moreover, he adds, Russia has every incentive to push its way back into the Soviet Union's old alliances and client states. Why? Because leaving them free of charge was a mistake. "Experience shows that as soon as Russia left some regions, it was gone forever and we didn't get anything in return," says Pushkov.
And those are the moderates in Moscow talking. Indeed, it would be hard to overestimate the level of anti-Western suspicion circulating these days among Moscow policymakers. The new Russian foreign-policy doctrine, published last summer, bristles with talk of "threat" and "risks" whenever it comes to Russia's relations with the West. And the Russian military has recently returned to old Soviet habits by tweaking its Western rivals. In October, Russian naval planes buzzed the U.S. aircraft carrier Kitty Hawk during maneuvers in the Pacific; an elated general in Moscow announced that the fliers would be decorated for "heroism."
Putin will also pounce on President-elect George W. Bush's plans to develop a national missile defense. Lately Russia has been sending weapons to the Chinese as fast as it can-everything from Sovremenny-class destroyers to SU-27 fighters, advanced MiG jet fighters and an AWACS plane, presumably for use over Taiwan. Steinberg insists that U.S. officials don't worry too much about a Moscow-Beijing axis. The Chinese "actually have gotten kind of sour on the Russians," says Steinberg. "I think they feel like the Russians are trying to use them against the United States." Putin clearly is trying to do just that. The question is whether a nation with an economy that can't keep pace with Portugal's-and friends like Fidel Castro-can hope to take on the world's only superpower.
-------- ukraine
Chernobyl Plant To Be Built Soon
Associated Press
December 25, 2000
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Ukraine-Chernobyl.html
KIEV, Ukraine (AP) -- A plant to process liquid radioactive waste from the Chernobyl nuclear power complex will be built by the end of 2001, officials said Monday.
Construction of the processing plant began at Chernobyl about six months ago and is expected to be ready for operation in December 2001, said Valeriy Hovorov, a Chernobyl spokesman.
The plant will treat the water that was used in Chernobyl reactors and has been partially decontaminated and stored in tanks. At the new plant, the liquid waste will be solidified and placed in containers for storage, the Chernobyl press office said.
The $16 million plant, funded by the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, will employ about 100 people.
Chernobyl was the site of the world's worst nuclear disaster in 1986. The plant was shut down for good, under intense international pressure, on Dec. 15.
Hovorov said that officials planned to raise funds to build another facility that will process and store solid nuclear waste from Chernobyl. Construction of that plant, worth $37.53 million, could begin as early as March.
The complex will include a facility that will remove nuclear wastes from the Chernobyl plant and a plant that will sort, compress, burn and cement the waste in preparation for storage outside Chernobyl.
-------- u.s. nuc weapons
Boeing gets national missile defense contract
World Tribune
Monday, December 25, 2000
SPECIAL TO WORLD TRIBUNE.COM
http://www.worldtribune.com/Archive-2000/ss-military-12-25.html
WASHINGTON - The United States intends to continue its national missile defense program.
Despite a failure to decide on deployment of the defense system, the Clinton administration has approved a long-term contract that could reach $6 billion for the development of a U.S. missile umbrella. The Defense Department's Ballistic Missile Defense Organization has issued a contract to Boeing for NMD development until toward the end of 2007.
The contract, issued on Friday, did not detail the cost of the contract after 2001. Officials said that would be reviewed by the incoming administration of President-elect George W. Bush.
Officials said the Boeing contract is designed to maintain the pace of the NMD program and prevent interruption of any planned test activities. The initial contract awarded to Boeing in 1998 will expire in April.
Earlier this year, President Bill Clinton said he would leave a decision on NMD deployment to his successor.
"No decision has been made to deploy a NMD system, and this contract award does not change the current NMD system architecture or any previously planned system elements," a Pentagon statement said.
Officials said the contract has a full potential value of $13 billion. They said the Bush administration would have to approve new phases of the contract.
--------
Be Prepared
New York Times
December 25, 2000
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/12/25/opinion/L25MIS.html
To the Editor:
Re "Prelude to a Missile Defense" (editorial, Dec. 19):
The success of the Reykjavik meeting of Presidents Mikhail S. Gorbachev and Ronald Reagan in 1986 hinged on the Strategic Defense Initiative. When Mr. Reagan refused to abandon the program, the discussions collapsed. If the concept was so badly flawed, why didn't the Soviets ignore our folly, or encourage us to squander our military resources on ineffective weapons?
Instead, Soviet concern was so great that it was a major immediate cause of the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Today, we again face strong opposition by unfriendly foreign nations to a costly American missile defense program. Such opposition constitutes evidence of its potential success - evidence that far outweighs negative views about the program.
JOSEPH SILVERMAN Chevy Chase, Md.,
---
NORAD keeps tabs on Santa
Denver Rocky Mountain News
December 25, 2000
Associated Press
http://www.spokesmanreview.com/news-story.asp?date=122500&ID=s899967
http://insidedenver.com/news/1225nora5.shtml
COLORADO SPRINGS - A general and NORAD staff members of all ranks continued the tradition of tracking the progress of Santa Claus on Christmas Eve and fielding questions from worried and curious youngsters.
About 120 off-duty staff members of the North American Aerospace Defense Command volunteered Sunday to answer thousands of phone calls ranging from "When is Santa getting to my house?" to "Is Santa lactose-intolerant?" said NORAD spokesman Maj. Jamie Robertson. One common question was, "Does Santa exist?"
"Santa is very much alive in the hearts of parents and children around the world," comes the reply from the volunteers, Robertson said.
NORAD's Web site had logged about 70 million hits as of 9 p.m. Last year, the site had 52 million hits in less than 24 hours.
NORAD was to track Santa from 5 a.m. Christmas Eve to 3 a.m. today.
The joint U.S.-Canadian operation, which monitors man-made objects in space and events around the world that could signal a nuclear missile attack, continued normal vigilance from deep inside Cheyenne Mountain.
Personnel coming off their shifts stayed to help answer phone calls. Lt. Gen. George Macdonald, a Canadian and deputy commander of NORAD, also pitched in.
"We have a very serious mission, so come Dec. 24 it's nice to do this," Robertson said.
Six members of the public affairs team tried to answer about 2,300 e-mails received from 34 countries by 9 p.m.
"Dear Norad. My first and only thought by watching your pictures was that your NORAD may only find Santa Clauses on the radar and no bombs and other bad things," wrote one youngster from Germany.
To which Maj. Barry Venable replied, "Dear Max. We feel the same way you do! Thanks for the note. Merry Christmas."
According to NORAD, Santa was expected to be in Colorado about 12:20 a.m. today.
-------- u.s. nuc facilities
Nuclear Agency to Pay for Radiation Drug
New York Times
December 25, 2000
By MATTHEW L. WALD
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/12/25/science/25NUKE.html?pagewanted=all
ROCKVILLE, Md., Dec. 23 - Eighteen years after it promised to decide how best to protect the public in a reactor accident, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission said on Friday that it would require the states to consider stockpiling a drug to protect against thyroid cancer and that it would pay for the pills for any state that wanted them.
The commission has apparently spent more on considering whether to pay for the pills than on what the pills themselves would cost. Last year the commission told Congress that it had spent $2.6 million studying the use of the drug, potassium iodide. With an average of 80,000 people living within 10 miles of each of 70 reactor sites around the country, and with the maximum anticipated use being two pills, at 20 cents each, per person, the pills would cost less than $2.4 million if every state wanted them. Several states, however, have decided against them.
The commission has budgeted $400,000 for the first year.
The decision on Friday reversed a vote in April 1999 not to pay for states to stockpile potassium iodide. That vote reversed a decision in June 1997 to provide the drug.
But the argument goes back much further, to the investigation of the Three Mile Island reactor accident in 1979. That accident set off a scramble by federal officials and pharmaceutical companies to manufacture the drug, which is only effective if taken before exposure to radiation or in the first few hours afterward. Potassium iodide saturates the thyroid gland and prevents the body from absorbing the radioactive iodine that is sometimes present in the air after a reactor accident.
After the commission that investigated the Three Mile Island accident strongly recommended the creation of regional stockpiles of the drug, the N.R.C. promised Congress it would develop a policy by September 1982.
It took until 1985 to develop a policy, which generally discouraged the use of potassium iodide. But that came just a few months before the Chernobyl nuclear accident in Ukraine, which changed the minds of many Western experts. The authorities in Poland distributed potassium iodide, and experts said there were fewer cases of thyroid cancer there as a result.
In 1988, a staff lawyer at the commission, Peter G. Crane, who had thyroid cancer caused by exposure to radiation as a child, filed an official dissent on the N.R.C.'s position. Later, acting as a member of the public, he filed a petition for it to be reconsidered. That petition was the basis of Friday's action.
A decision to use potassium iodide in this country would be up to local or state officials. Some public health officials fear that if they provide it, people might refuse to evacuate in the belief that they were immune to radiation. Potassium iodide protects only the thyroid.
Some accidents release iodine 131, which is readily absorbed by the human body and concentrated in the thyroid. Other radioactive isotopes emit different kinds of radiation, which can damage the lung, the bone marrow or other organs.
Participants in the debate say they are surprised at how long the debate on stockpiling has taken. A commission staff paper suggested in 1994 that the debate might cost more than the drug.
That position was endorsed by William F. McNutt, who is a senior policy adviser at the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which works with the states on emergency plans, and the chairman of a multi agency subcommittee on potassium iodide. "There have been comments made: Why don't we just decide to buy it, it's a cheap drug and we're spending an awful lot of money analyzing it," Mr. McNutt said.
The chairman of the commission, Richard A. Meserve, said he could not explain why the commission had reversed itself twice in the last three years, except that the composition of the five-member panel had changed over that time. He said that his panel had resolved many issues much faster, including renewal of licenses on nuclear power plants and regulation of companies that make nuclear fuel.
"It has taken an awfully large amount of attention by the commissioners," he acknowledged.
So much, in fact, that half of Friday's decision - to require states to consider putting potassium iodide in their emergency plans - is old hat for most of the commissioners.
"Oh, they flip-flopped," said Andrew Simpson, a planning supervisor in the Pennsylvania Emergency Management Agency in Harrisburg on Friday, when told of the vote. "Clearly, requiring the states to consider whether to use it or not is a non sequitur; all states have continually done that."
All states are supposed to have supplies for emergency workers who would be called upon to stay in a radiation zone, and some have stocks for populations considered difficult to move, like prisoners or nursing home residents. Tennessee, Arizona and Alabama have supplies for the general population. Officials in some states, including New Jersey, said Friday that they would probably re- evaluate their positions in light of the latest vote.
But some experts say that the drug would be difficult to distribute in an emergency, and that if pills were distributed in advance, to homes and institutions, members of the public would lose track of them before they were needed.
-------- arkansas
USA Today
12/25/00
States
http://usatoday.com/news/states/all50.htm\
Arkansas
Russellville - Initial reports show that Entergy Arkansas shouldn't have any problems renewing its nuclear power plant license. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission says the company needs to show an adequate maintenance program is in place over the next 20 years.
-------- us nuc politics
Political Memo: Clinton Ending Term on a Busy Note
New York Times
December 25, 2000
By RICHARD W. STEVENSON
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/12/25/politics/25BILL.html?pagewanted=all
WASHINGTON, Dec. 24 - Just in case there was any doubt, it is now official: Bill Clinton is not going quietly.
His days as president are dwindling. But over the past few weeks he has proved intent on using the powers of his office right to the end, focusing attention on his agenda and himself, buffing his record for the history books and infuriating his enemies one last time.
On one day he announced new regulations to limit emissions from diesel-powered trucks and buses. On another he imposed new restrictions on the release of medical information by doctors and hospitals.
He has issued rules that would bar federal agencies from giving contracts to companies with a record of breaking labor, environmental or other laws, and set out new requirements for workplace health and safety. Early next month he is expected to make good on a promise to put at least 40 million acres of federal land off limits for road building and other development.
Even as he is putting a final imprint on a broad swath of domestic policy issues through new regulations, rules and executive orders, he is taking a final crack at diplomacy.
He has gathered Israeli and Palestinian negotiators to see whether it is possible to put peace talks back on track after months of violence and recriminations in the Middle East. And he is weighing whether to go to North Korea before his term ends to complete a deal to end that country's missile program.
Never mind his decision to put on the presidential limousines new license plates that strike a blow on behalf of efforts to grant statehood to the District of Columbia by featuring the phrase, "Taxation Without Representation."
All departing presidents tie up loose ends, do favors for various friends and constituencies and, if being succeeded by a member of the other party, poke a thumb or two in the eyes of the opposition.
But with his job approval ratings near their highs, Congress at home and his party eager for a few wins before Republicans sweep back into the White House, Mr. Clinton seems to be taking special delight in flexing his political muscles even as he begins packing.
"All outgoing presidents, where you've got an incoming president of a different party, do as much as possible to set their policy intentions in place through whatever means available," said Charles O. Jones, an emeritus professor of political science at the University of Wisconsin.
"My strong impression is that the Clinton folks are more active than other administrations, which follows in part from one of the more positive characteristics of this president, his policy-wonkishness," Mr. Jones said. "There have been few presidents who so relish the job."
His late-term activism has already brought a vow from President-elect George W. Bush's aides to review and possibly undo much of what Mr. Clinton has done through executive action in the final weeks of his presidency, especially on the regulatory front.
It has also left opponents of his actions steaming that they have lost big policy fights just when they thought they were about to benefit from a friendlier new administration.
"I've been sitting around here for the last few days sulking and moaning about what you do with a system that waits for Congress to go home and then puts out through the back door 30,000 pages of regulations that you couldn't get through the front door of the White House," said Thomas J. Donohue, president of the United States Chamber of Commerce, which objects to a flurry of new regulations affecting business.
"The president has the right, right up to the 20th of January, to act presidential and instruct the agencies of his administration as he sees fit," Mr. Donohue said. "But let's not kid anybody. They couldn't get this stuff through if Congress was here."
White House officials said the president's actions have been entirely appropriate, and in most cases are the result of years of work and public hearings. The complaints of interest groups that do not like the outcome, they said, are sour grapes.
"The people of the United States elected him for two full four-year terms, and he intends to use every one of those precious days to move the country forward," said John D. Podesta, Mr. Clinton's chief of staff. "He is going to do what he believes is in the public interest, including these regulations, most of which have been in the works for some time."
It is no coincidence that half a dozen or more environmental, health, safety and privacy issues have reached the president's desk for action in his final weeks on the job.
Two years ago Mr. Podesta took a broad look at the ideas and initiatives bubbling up through cabinet departments and agencies, made a judgment about which ones the administration would particularly like to accomplish before leaving office and set out a timetable for moving them through the bureaucracy before Jan. 20, 2001.
To make sure there would be time to finish rules limiting emissions from diesel engines in trucks and buses, for example, the administration streamlined the process by which the proposal would be vetted by various agencies and disputes between them resolved.
Similarly, the administration planned ahead for a provision in health care legislation passed by Congress in 1996 that called for the president to develop regulations on the privacy of medical records if Congress did not do so itself within three years. When Congress did not act, the administration was ready.
"The president has had a sense that he has authority that comes from statutes as well as from the Constitution that he can exercise to make progress for the American people, especially in areas where special interests have a hammerlock on Congress," Mr. Podesta said.
"What we recognized and got on track for was the need to have a timetable and make sure what we wanted to accomplish could be accomplished by the end of the administration," he said.
On foreign policy, Mr. Clinton has had to tread more lightly, weighing his desire to chalk up a few more accomplishments against the reality that it is in no one's interests to make agreements that his successor will not be in favor of carrying out.
"We take account of the notion that 30-odd days from now we're not going to be here," Mr. Podesta said.
On the foreign policy front, more than on domestic policy, the incoming administration is giving Mr. Clinton some running room.
"On matters of foreign policy," said Ari Fleischer, Mr. Bush's spokesman, "the president-elect will be very respectful of the fact that it's important for our nation to have one voice."
Mr. Clinton's aides said he intends to keep doing his job all he way to the end. Mr. Jones, the political scientist, said he has a vision of Mr. Clinton's staff coming to the Oval Office just before noon on Jan. 20 and saying to the president: "It's time to leave. Come out from under the desk now."
---
Summary of Bush's Opinions
Associated Press
December 25, 2000 Filed at 12:57 a.m. ET
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/politics/AP-Bush-Agenda-Glance.html?pagewanted=all
ABORTION:
Opposes abortion rights except in cases of rape or incest or when a woman's life is endangered. Would nominate ``strict constructionists'' to Supreme Court, taken by some to mean justices sympathetic to abortion restrictions. Said he was disappointed by federal approval of the abortion pill but did not think a president could overturn it. Would sign ban on procedure called partial birth abortion by critics.
CAMPAIGN FINANCE:
Ban unregulated ``soft money'' from corporations and unions but not individuals. Allow political ``issue ads.'' Increase disclosure.
CIVIL RIGHTS:
Opposes racial preferences inherent in affirmative action, supports existing ``don't ask, don't tell'' policy on gays in military. Opposes gay marriage.
DEATH PENALTY:
Supports.
DEFENSE:
Sees nuclear stockpile as excessive and favors cuts even if Russia does not match them. Would build robust missile defense system, seeking Russia's agreement to amend Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty, but proceeding if necessary without such agreement. Supports $20 billion more for weapons research and development over five years, and $1 billion more a year for military pay raise, giving average soldier $750 more in first year.
EDUCATION:
Proposes $47 billion, 10-year plan. In first five years, $5 billion more for literacy, $8 billion more for college scholarships and grants, $300 million fund (rising to $500 million) to reward states that improve achievement based on increased student assessments. Five percent cut in education money to states where performance lags. Let families save, tax-free, $5,000 per year per student for education expenses at all ages. More spending flexibility for states that administer national test to samplings of students or a compatible state test approved by Washington. More charter schools.
Would let federal tax dollars be used to help parents send children to private schools, when public schools in poor areas fail to meet standards for three years.
ENVIRONMENT-ENERGY:
Increase domestic production and exploration, including in the protected Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska. Increase reliance on natural gas. Halve capital gains taxes when landowner sells property for conservation. Supports $50 million in matching grants with states for landowners to restore habitat or protect rare species while farming or ranching. Opposes unilateral extension of federal control over forests, seashores and monument properties. Opposes ratification of Kyoto agreement on global warming.
FARM AID:
Supports eventual ``transition to a market economy.'' Sets aside extra $7.6 billion for crop insurance over 10 years.
GUN CONTROL:
Raise age for handgun possession to 21. Background checks at gun shows if they are instant. Would sign a bill requiring child-safety locks to be sold with guns. Says existing gun laws have not been adequately enforced. Says it's up to states whether law-abiding citizens should be allowed to carry concealed guns.
HEALTH CARE:
Tax credit of up to $2,000 per family to help low-income working Americans buy health insurance. Expand tax-free medical savings accounts that can be used to pay for health expenses. Add 1,300 rural health care centers. Create $158 billion plan to cover prescription drugs for the elderly poor and subsidize choice in drug plans for other Medicare beneficiaries.
IMMIGRATION:
More visas for highly skilled workers and temporary farm laborers. Spend $500 million over five years to speed processing of immigration applications. Split Immigration and Naturalization Service into two services devoted to welcoming legal immigrants and cracking down on illegal ones.
INTERNET:
Extend moratorium on new Internet sales taxes at least through 2006. Wants to spend $400 million over five years to improve education value of Internet use in schools.^------
PRIVACY:
``I will ensure Americans can exercise their right to know how their information is collected, how it will be used, and to accept or decline the collection or dissemination of this information, especially sensitive medical, genetic, and financial information. ... I will prohibit genetic discrimination, criminalize identity theft, and guarantee the privacy of medical and sensitive financial records. I will also make it a criminal offense to sell a person's Social Security number without his or her express consent.''
RETIREMENT:
Give workers option of staying entirely in Social Security system or else investing a portion of their Social Security taxes in individual retirement accounts, taking a smaller payout from the program when they retire but supplementing their benefits with the private investments.
For younger workers, has not ruled out further increase in age for receiving Social Security benefits.
TAXES:
Cut all income tax rates, with lowest rate dropping to 10 percent and highest to 33 percent. Double child tax credit to $1,000. Charitable deductions could be taken by people who don't itemize. Promises no increase in personal or corporate tax rates. Eliminate inheritance tax. Reduce marriage penalty paid by many two-income couples by allowing a deduction of 10 percent of the lower-earning spouse's salary, up to $30,000. Estimated cost through 2010: at least $1.3 trillion.
TRADE:
Negotiate more trade agreements. Give priority to a free-trade agreement for the Western Hemisphere.
WELFARE:
Proposes $8 billion plan in first year to encourage churches and other groups to assume more responsibility for needy through tax breaks and other incentives.
-------- MILITARY
-------- arms sales
French Inquiry Outlines Mitterrand Son's Suspected Arms Deals
New York Times
December 25, 2000
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/12/25/world/25FRAN.html
PARIS, Dec. 24 - The son of François Mitterrand, the longtime former president, appeared likely to spend Christmas behind bars after being jailed on suspicion of playing a part in illegal arms sales to Angola, judicial sources said on Friday.
Jean-Christophe Mitterrand, once his father's adviser for African affairs, was put under investigation and sent to the forbidding Santé prison in Paris late Thursday. He was jailed after hours of interrogation by two investigating magistrates.
His lawyer filed an urgent request for his release on Friday morning, but courts usually take several days to consider such a motion and the Christmas holiday should delay it even more, the judicial sources said.
Mr. Mitterrand, 54, was held on suspicion of influence peddling, complicity in arms trafficking and abuse of confidential and company funds in relation to large sales of Russian arms to Angola in the early 1990's.
He has admitted that he received, in his numbered Swiss bank account, $1.8 million from an arms dealer, Pierre Falcone. But Mr. Mitterrand denied that the money in his account had anything to do with the $500 million arms deal.
"That is not linked to arms trafficking or influence peddling," said his lawyer, Jean-Pierre Versini- Campinchi. "There is not even a shadow of a start of a suspicion about this."
Jailing a public figure under judicial investigation, a step just short of charging someone, is rare in France.
The judicial sources said magistrates told Mr. Mitterrand that he was being held because evidence might be lost if he was freed.
Increasingly, daring magistrates have begun resorting to such measures in a campaign to investigate charges of high-level corruption that used to be ignored.
A popular novelist, Paul-Loup Sulitzer, was also put under investigation in the case but was released after questioning.
Mr. Mitterrand, an Agence France-Presse correspondent in Africa from 1973 to 1981, was his father's African strategy adviser from 1986 to 1992 as leader of a so-called "African cell." Working behind the scenes, he quietly handled France's often complicated relations with leaders of its former colonies in Africa. Nicknamed "Papa-ma-dit" (Daddy told me) for his frequent references to the president, he has been reported to be on close personal terms with many African leaders.
François Mitterrand, a Socialist, served two terms as president, from 1981 until 1995. He died in 1996.
The arms dealer, Mr. Falcone, is being investigated on suspicion of illicit arms trading and tax fraud over the alleged unauthorized sale of Russian-made weapons, helicopters and fighter jets to Angola in 1993.
Magistrates are also looking into arms sales to other African countries that might have involved Mr. Mitterrand as a middleman introducing Mr. Falcone to his African contacts, the sources said.
The investigation into the arms sales stem from evidence found during searches linked to an unrelated scandal about political party slush funds. It has widened in recent weeks to touch several well-known figures with African ties.
Police officers have searched the home of Jacques Attali, a former top Mitterrand aide and former head of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, and offices of Charles Pasqua, the former interior minister.
The French financial crime squad has also placed a former director of the state arms export company, Bernard Poussier, under investigation in the widening case.
-------- drug war
Just Vote No
The war on drugs loses at the polls
In These Times
December 25, 2000
By Salim Muwakkil
http://www.inthesetimes.com/web2501/muwakkil2501a.html
The results of the presidential vote may hang in limbo, but there seems to be little doubt that voters are ready to retreat from this nation's war on drugs. On November 7 there were drug policy issues on the ballots of seven states, and voters opted to reform drug laws in five of them. More and more Americans are concluding that the drug war has been a colossal failure; rather than curb drug abuse, it has fueled a murderous underground economy, corroded the civil liberties of all U.S. citizens, and transformed the world's leading democracy into the world's leading jailer.
The Lindesmith Center Drug Policy Foundation, which is funded by financier George Soros, joined with the Campaign for New Drug Polices to co-sponsor ballot measures in California, Colorado, Massachusetts, Nevada, Oregon and Utah this fall. (Voters in Alaska defeated an initiative calling for the legalization of marijuana, which the groups did not sponsor.)
Their biggest victory was in California, where voters passed Proposition 36, a measure that will require treatment instead of jail for those arrested for drug possession or use. The initiative, which passed by a 61 to 39 percent margin, also provides treatment instead of a return to prison for parolees who test positive for drugs. Prop 36 allocates $120 million a year to pay for expanded drug treatment, supplemented by job and literacy training and family counseling. "We won a very significant and hopefully trend-setting victory in California," says Bill Zimmerman, executive director of the Campaign for New Drug Policies. "I think Proposition 36 will teach elected officials that voters want drug policies that are safer, cheaper, smarter and more effective."
Arizona voters passed a similar proposition four years ago, requiring drug treatment rather than jail for first-time drug offenders. According to a recent report by the Arizona Supreme Court, the policy has been a success. But since California has the highest incarceration rate for drug use in the nation, and is often seen as a bellwether for national trends, the state's voters may have given a nudge to others who bemoaned the disastrous consequences of the drug war, but were intimidated from speaking out by drug war propaganda.
Since California voters first approved of medical marijuana in 1996, seven other states have followed suit. In this election, Nevada and Colorado voters passed initiatives to make marijuana legal for medical use upon the recommendation of a physician. Residents with certain illnesses will be eligible for credentials that permit them to possess or cultivate marijuana for their own use.
When California passed its medical marijuana initiative, Gen. Barry McCaffrey, the outgoing czar of the Office of National Drug Control Policy, and other officials of the Clinton administration threatened to take away the license of any doctor who dared to recommend marijuana for their patients. But the Lindesmith Center and the ACLU joined several physicians in a lawsuit against McCaffrey's office for violating their First Amendment rights. The plaintiffs recently won a ruling that enjoined the federal government from taking any action.
Other states where medical marijuana measures have passed are quietly adjusting to the provisions of the initiatives. "These laws are on the books and they're working," Zimmerman says. "Medical patients are using marijuana with impunity."
Meanwhile, in a major blow to the drug warriors, voters in Oregon and Utah decided to end the practice that allows law enforcement agencies to seize and sell the assets of drug crime suspects. Without any proof of guilt, police in most states can confiscate the property of any drug suspect and profit from the proceeds of selling it. This provides a perverse incentive for police to pursue drug cases. Ethan Nadelman, executive director of the Lindesmith Center, says it's no coincidence that the number of drug arrests keeps increasing. "They are double what they were in the '80s, because policy priorities have shifted in inappropriate ways to target drug offenders," he notes. "Why? Unfortunately, because that's where the money is."
Property may still be seized with probable cause in Oregon and Utah. However, the proceeds of the forfeitures will now go into new education or drug treatment funds instead of into the pockets of law enforcement agencies. In Oregon, the measure passed with 66 percent of the vote, and in Utah the margin of victory was 69 percent to 31 percent. "The measures passed with such wide majorities because they united people across the policy spectrum," Zimmerman says, pointing out that Utah is one of the most conservative states in the country. "Liberals interested in defending human rights were united with conservatives interested in protecting property rights, and both groups felt their rights were being violated by the current asset-forfeiture laws. It was a right-left coalition."
The news for drug war opponents wasn't so good in Massachusetts, where voters defeated an initiative that would have reformed the system of property seizures and provided treatment instead of jail for low-level, nonviolent drug offenders. Zimmerman blames the loss on the measure's offer of treatment to low-level drug dealers as well as users. "Sympathy may be growing for drug users," he says, "but that sympathy does not extend to drug dealers." But Nadelman points out that, since 1996, 17 out of 19 initiatives and referendums have passed around the country in favor of drug policy reform. "But in the past year," he adds, "there have been more victories in state legislatures for drug policy reform than in the past 25 years put together."
This year Hawaii became the first state to approve medical marijuana through the legislative process; and along with the North Dakota legislature, Hawaii decided to legalize the cultivation of industrial hemp. The Vermont legislature established a methadone treatment program for heroin addicts. New York, New Hampshire and Rhode Island all passed pivotal legislation to make sterile needles more available to addicts to help stem the still-raging AIDS pandemic.
What's more, black leadership finally is jumping on the bandwagon. The Rev. Jesse Jackson and Rep. Charles Rangel (D-New York) once led the charge for the drug war, but now complain about how punitive drug policies fuel the racial imbalances of the "corrections-industrial complex." Reps. Maxine Waters (D-California) and John Conyers (D-Michigan) also have added their voices to the growing chorus. Even Republicans like New Mexico Gov. Gary Johnson and Salt Lake City Mayor Rocky Anderson have become consistent critics of drug war tactics. Johnson has gone so far as to argue that marijuana should be legalized.
"Those political victories are part of a broader strategy to promote more sensible drug policies," Nadelman says. "For too long drug policies have been driven by a combination of ignorance, fear, prejudice and profit. We want policy based on common sense, science, public health and human rights."
---
USA Today
12/25/00
States
http://usatoday.com/news/states/all50.htm\
Massachusetts
Harwich - Julia Spooner, 19, allegedly was drunk when she crashed her car into a tree and was accused of hiding marijuana in her baby's diaper, police said. Emergency workers found the drug as they treated the baby, 15 months old. Spooner was thrown from the car but was not badly hurt. Hospital officials would not disclose the baby's condition.
-------- india
At Least 8 Die in Car-Bomb Attack in Kashmir
New York Times
December 25, 2000 Filed at 1:28 p.m. ET
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-kashmir.html
SRINAGAR, India (Reuters) - A pro-Pakistan militant group claimed responsibility for a car bomb on Monday that killed at least eight people in Indian-ruled Kashmir, including four Indian soldiers.
Around 20 people, including seven soldiers, were also wounded by the explosion near the army headquarters in Srinagar, the main city in India's Jammu and Kashmir state.
``Our militants parked the car near army headquarters and detonated the bomb planted in the car with a remote control device,'' a spokesman for the Jamiat-ul-Mujahideen group told newspaper offices in Srinagar by telephone.
``Our Mujahideen (holy warriors) reached their hideouts safely after carrying out the explosion.''
Jamiat-ul-Mujahideen is fighting to merge Jammu and Kashmir with neighboring Pakistan. This was its first major attack in over a year.
The 11-year-old rebellion against Indian rule in Kashmir has claimed more than 30,000 lives.
There have been a series of similar attacks in Kashmir since Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee announced a unilateral cease-fire on November 28 for the Islamic holy month of Ramadan, and later extended it for another month.
INDIA SAYS PEACE MOVES WILL CONTINUE
Around 30 Indian security force personnel have died in such attacks since the cease-fire began.
A shock attack by a militant group on an army camp inside the Indian capital's 17th century Red Fort claimed three lives on Friday, spreading the violence beyond the Himalayan region and prompting a huge security alert.
Indian Defense Minister George Fernandes told reporters in Srinagar that the peace process in Kashmir would continue despite militants' attempts to scuttle it, United News of India reported.
But a frontline Kashmiri militant group, Hizbul Mujahideen, said that even if at some stage it entered dialogue with the Indian government, it would not lay down arms.
``We are still carrying on attacks on security forces,'' Hizbul spokesman Commander Masood said in a statement to newspaper offices in Srinagar.
Monday's explosion was in Badami Bagh, which lies in the southern part of Srinagar, the summer capital of Jammu and Kashmir, India's only Muslim-majority state.
The army said the blast had also set a nearby market on fire.
Indian troops sealed off the site and kept journalists away.
A Pakistani infiltrator, a militant and a special police officer were also killed in separate incidents on Monday, an official said.
In addition, two civilians were injured in separate grenade attacks in Srinagar.
In April this year, a suicide bomber from another pro-Pakistani militant group, Jaish-e-Mohammad (Army of Mohammad), killed himself and injured six Indian soldiers at exactly the spot where Monday's car bombing took place.
India controls 45 percent of the Himalayan territory of Kashmir, Pakistan a third and China the rest.
---
Bombs rock Pakistan, Kashmir
USA Today
12/25/00- Updated 12:45 PM ET
http://usatoday.com/news/world/nwsmon02.htm
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Pakistan-Explosion.html
LAHORE, Pakistan (AP) - Bombs went off in four Pakistani cities Monday, including a powerful blast that ripped through a crowded market in this eastern border city, police said. Some 45 people were injured.
Meanwhile, in the Indian-controlled portion of Kashmir, a car bomb went off outside army headquarters Monday, killing six people and wounding 23 others. India blamed Islamic militants for the attack.
A Pakistan-based rebel group called the Jamaat-ul Mujahedeen claimed responsibility for the Kashmir explosion in telephone calls to local newspapers.
In Pakistan, the first bomb ripped through a crowded market in the eastern border city of Lahore, injuring 36 people, while the second bomb exploded at a railway station in Faisalabad, also in eastern Punjab province, wounding three people, they said.
Six people were injured in an explosion on a passenger bus in Hyderabad in the southern Sindh province. A blast in Kharian, 70 miles north of Lahore, did not cause any injuries.
No group claimed responsibility for any of the blasts, but Pakistani police accused arch-rival India of seeking retaliation for last weekend's attack on India's historic Red Fort in the heart of its capital, New Delhi.
Islamic militants from the Pakistani-based Lashkar-e-Tayyaba took responsibility for the Red Fort attack that killed three people, including two soldiers.
''We were expecting Indian-sponsored terrorist activities after mujahedeen (holy warriors) hit New Delhi's Red Fort,'' Malik Asif Hayyat, Inspector General of the Punjab Police told The Associated Press.
There was no immediate reaction from India to the accusations.
The explosion in Lahore, the provincial capital of Punjab, caused a fire that destroyed several stalls and shattered glass in nearby buildings in Lunda Bazaar, located near the congested Delhi Gate neighborhood, they said.
The bomb was apparently left in a shopping bag near stalls selling used clothing. The explosion triggered a stampede as fire and smoke billowed from the stores.
The bombing occurred as people were busy shopping for the Muslim festival of Eid-ul Fitr, which follows the end of the Islamic holy month of Ramadan. The festival begins on Wednesday.
''I was buying clothes for my children when a deafening bang threw me on the ground,'' said Mohammed Alamgir, 32, one of the victims at a state-run hospital. ''I felt a wave of heat and fire burn my face ... then I don't remember what happened.''
In Faisalabad, located 90 miles west of Lahore, the bomb exploded at a time when there were few people at the railway station, injuring three.
Pakistan has been rocked by dozens of explosions this year killing more than 100 people. Many of the blasts have occurred in Pakistan's eastern Punjab province, which borders its rival and neighbor India.
Police routinely blame India for the attacks, and few people have been arrested in connection with the bombings. Pakistan and India often accuse each other of sponsoring terrorism and each country denies the charge.
Relations between the two countries has never been easy, but in recent years it has deteriorated. The main cause of dissension is Kashmir, divided between the two neighbors after British rule of South Asia ended in 1947.
-------- land mines
Program Lets Donors Help Pay to Clear Minefields
New York Times
December 25, 2000
By BARBARA CROSSETTE
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/12/25/world/25NATI.html
UNITED NATIONS, Dec. 22 - Land mines bear little resemblance to paper cups and plastic bags, but a successful method of collecting American roadside trash is serving as a model for clearing minefields in Asia, Africa and Europe.
"Adopt a highway" has become Adopt-a-Minefield under a program created by two American organizations with close ties to the United Nations.
"It's an amazing story," said William H. Luers, chairman and president of the United Nations Association of the United States, which runs the program in partnership with the Better World Fund, a foundation created by Ted Turner, the founder of CNN.
The two organizations work with the State Department and the United Nations Development Program, which manages the project for the United Nations and its mine-clearing experts.
"Adopt-a-Minefield is an idea that grabs people," said Mr. Luers, a former ambassador and later president of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. "One member of our board called up about eight of his friends and raised $380,000. It's something you can pay for that gets done and helps save lives - direct."
The price? For $30,000, a donor supports the professional demining of about 10,000 square yards of deadly terrain, which can be chosen from a Web site, www.landmines.org. Sixty minefields have been adopted, and 20 of them have been cleared.
In February, when Mr. Luers' group enhances the Web site, he said, satellite photography and interactive searching will allow donors to "see" the place they choose. "You're going to able to zoom down on your minefield," he said.
The idea of adopting a minefield first took shape in the fall of 1997, when the International Treaty to Ban Land Mines was opened for signing in Ottawa.
The treaty itself was a unique agreement that grew out of the initiative of private advocacy groups and government leaders acting outside the United Nations system. One of the adoption program's supporters is Jody Williams, who won the 1997 Nobel Peace Prize for her campaign to ban land mines.
By the end of this year, the program had raised more than $2.5 million for the removal of mines in Afghanistan, Bosnia, Cambodia, Croatia and Mozambique.
Sometimes the contributions were small - even $10 helps. Donors include schoolchildren and millionaires.
The task is staggering. Afghanistan alone has between five million and seven million land mines, the legacy of Soviet occupation and civil war. Cambodia is close behind, with four million to six million mines. Mozambique and Bosnia have up to a million mines each and Croatia about 500,000. Everywhere, they are maiming and killing farmers who try to return to their fields and children who do not understand that what looks like a metal toy is really a lethal weapon.
The American program got off to a slow start, however. After the death in August 1997 of Diana, Princess of Wales, who had made land mine clearance her special charity, interest faded.
Two British celebrities are now taking up the reins of the campaign in England - the former Beatle Sir Paul McCartney and Heather Mills, a model and ski instructor who lost a leg in a traffic accident.
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Radio contact re-established with Mir
USA Today
12/26/00- Updated 06:05 PM ET
http://usatoday.com/news/world/nwstue05.htm
KOROLYOV, Russia (AP) - A 20-hour loss of contact with Mir fed fears that the troubled space station would plunge out of control, but after regaining contact with the vessel Mission Control said Tuesday that it was in no rush to send a rescue crew or hasten the Mir's scheduled descent.
Russian ground controllers in Korolyov, just north of Moscow, lost contact with Mir on Monday morning, and worked nearly around the clock to restore contact. A weak signal was heard Tuesday afternoon.
During the next radio linkup, they activated reserve batteries and declared the battle won. Mission Control chief Vladimir Solovyov blamed the mishap on a loss of power on the station.
''First we breathed a half breath, and then took a full chest of air,'' Solovyov told reporters, his face pale and haggard from lack of sleep.
Despite the scare, Solovyov said officials were not in a hurry to send a rescue crew or hasten Mir's descent.
''The Mir will not fall on your head on New Year's Eve,'' he said. ''We have a plan to bid farewell to the Mir in a civilized and organized way.''
After years of debate over what to do with the nearly 15-year-old space station, seen as the last major symbol of Soviet space glory, the government said last month that the 140-ton Mir would be brought down into the Pacific Ocean, 900 to 1,200 miles east of Australia on Feb. 27-28.
Solovyov said two cosmonauts would be ready to blast off for the Mir and direct the descent should problems arise.
If Mir's descent is uncontrolled, large fragments could survive its fiery plunge through the Earth's atmosphere and potentially wreak havoc on the ground.
But even an uncontrolled drop would take at least three months because of the Mir's 250-mile distance from the Earth, officials said.
Solovyov said the loss of radio contact occurred because Mir's batteries had suddenly lost most of their power - an event he described as unprecedented. ''It was one of the worst breakdowns in our history,'' he said.
Mission Control spokesman Valery Lyndin said the information received during the hookups showed that the station had normal cabin pressure and temperature, and its systems were working normally.
Recharging the batteries through the station's solar panels should take until Wednesday morning, Solovyov said. It would take a few more days to analyze the data transmitted from the Mir to determine what caused the breakdown.
Observers long have been worried about the Mir's safety. However, after a fire and near-disastrous collision with an unmanned cargo ship in 1997 followed by a series of computer glitches, the Mir had been running relatively smoothly this year.
The Mir had only one, 73-day manned mission this year. Russian space officials decided in November to dump the Mir since it had no funds to keep it aloft and it could no longer guarantee the safety of its operation.
When the station was launched Feb. 20, 1986, it was the epitome of the Soviet technological edge, and it has far surpassed the three to five years it was expected to last.
Officials have said Russia should concentrate its funds on the new international space station instead of the Mir - something NASA has been urging for years. NASA is leading the 16-nation international project, which has suffered repeated delays because of funding problems for Russian modules.
NASA declined to comment on the latest Mir mishap.
A Soviet satellite crashed into northern Canada in 1978, in a major embarrassment for the Soviet leadership. Nobody was hurt, but radioactive fragments were scattered over the wilderness.
The unoccupied U.S. Skylab space station fell to Earth in 1979 when its orbit deteriorated faster than anticipated, spreading debris over western Australia. No one was hurt.
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OAK RIDGE MAY PRODUCE PLUTONIUM
The Tennesseean -- December 25, 2000
OAK RIDGE, Tenn. (AP) -- The Oak Ridge National Laboratory is expected to be tapped next month to help in plutonium production for the space program, a development that would bring $34 million for renovations to the nuclear lab.
The U.S. Department of Energy has identified Oak Ridge as one of two sites under consideration to help produce plutonium-238 and serve as the primary processing facility of radioactive material.
Oak Ridge's High Flux Isotope Reactor and the Advanced Test Reactor at the Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Lab would split the production role, according to the latest DOE proposal.
For Oak Ridge, the new project would mean long-term work for about 70 people, and it would help solidify the lab's nuclear mission. Once the decision is final, plans will proceed for upgrades to the Radiochemical Engineering Development Center, a two-building nuclear complex.
Gordon Michaels, director of nuclear technology programs at Oak Ridge, said the staff is excited about the new work, which would bring "an interesting and challenging scientific operation."
NASA needs plutoniuim-238 to fuel probes in deep space.
Oak Ridge workers would purify the plutonium, which then would be shipped to Los Alamos National Laboratory where it would be formed into pellets used in space power systems.
Oak Ridge has never handled plutonium in large quantities, but the lab has experience in handling other highly hazardous. If approved, Oak Ridge is expected to begin plutonium production in late 2006 or early 2007.
Bruce K. Gagnon Coordinator Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space PO Box 90083 Gainesville, FL. 32607 (352) 337-9274 http://www.space4peace.org globalnet@mindspring.com
-------- u.n.
U.N. Workers Return to Afghanistan After Taliban Safety Pledge
New York Times
December 25, 2000
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/12/25/world/25AFGH.html
Se emb KABUL, Afghanistan, - Non-Afghan employees of the United Nations began returning to Afghanistan today after the Taliban militia, who rule most of the country, guaranteed that the workers would not face a violent backlash because of newly proposed sanctions against the government.
Three United Nations workers arrived in the Afghan capital, Kabul, early today, while seven others returned to the cities of Herat and Kandahar, said Erick de Mul, the United Nations coordinator for Afghanistan.
They are among about 50 workers the United Nations had pulled out of Afghanistan last week because there were fears that there would be a violent reaction to a sanctions resolution that the United Nations Security Council passed last week.
Mr. de Mul said the Taliban had guaranteed the safety of the United Nations employees, most of whom work for agencies involved in removing land mines, aiding refugees and providing food assistance.
Most employees who left will be back in Afghanistan in the coming week, he said.
"I am very happy to back here and resume work," David Pakas, a United Nations security official, told reporters after he arrived at the Kabul airport today.
The United Nations gave the Taliban a month to surrender Osama bin Laden, the Saudi-born financier of militancy who is thought to be in Afghanistan. Mr. bin Laden is wanted in the United States on charges of being behind the bombings of two United States Embassies in Africa in 1998.
The Taliban were also told by the United Nations that they must close terrorism training camps or face new sanctions proposed by the United States and Russia.
The Security Council said the sanctions would affect only the Taliban, not ordinary Afghans already devastated by a protracted civil war and a persistent drought.
However, ordinary Afghans already are suffering: the currency has plunged and prices have gone up because of the sanction threats. Thousands of people are trying to flee the country.
The sanctions call for an arms embargo on the Taliban, including foreign military assistance that is believed to be provided by Pakistan. It also calls for the closing of all Taliban offices overseas.
The sanctions will go into effect in a month if the Taliban fail to close Afghan camps that are believed to be training grounds for terrorists and to deliver Mr. bin Laden to the United States or to a third country for trial in the bombing of the American Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.
Taliban leaders have refused to hand over Mr. bin Laden. They also have denied allegations that the camps are used to train Chechen rebels, who are fighting for independence from Russia.
In November 1999, the United Nations imposed limited sanctions on the Taliban to try to force Mr. bin Laden's extradition.
The Taliban, who rule more than 95 percent of Afghanistan, including Kabul, are fighting a northern-based opposition alliance in an attempt to extend their control over the entire country.
The Taliban, mostly Sunni Muslims, practice a fundamentalist version of Islam, imposing, among other things, severe restrictions on education and work for women.
The opposition is based in the north and includes some of the commanders who have been fighting since the days when the West helped finance an effort to expel Soviet rulers. It is made up of predominantly ethnic and religious minorities.
-------- u.s.
USA Today
12/25/00
States
http://usatoday.com/news/states/all50.htm\
Alabama
Mobile - A World War II ship sailing from Gibraltar to Mobile is ahead of schedule and should arrive from Jan. 8 to Jan. 11. The LST-325 is traveling nearly 200 miles a day, spokesman Bill Norris said. Twenty-nine Navy and Coast Guard veterans, with an average age of 72, are serving as crew for the ship, which will become a national memorial.
-------- OTHER
Political thriller, Cold War reality
Bergen Record
Monday, December 25, 2000
By JIM BECKERMAN Staff Writer
http://www.bergen.com/yourtime/13days25200012251.htm
THIRTEEN DAYS: Directed by Roger Donaldson. Produced by Armyan Bernstein, Peter O. Almond, and Kevin Costner. Written by David Self. Photographed by Andrzej Bartkowiak. Edited by Conrad Buff. Music by Trevor Jones. With Kevin Costner, Bruce Greenwood, Steven Culp, Dylan Baker, Michael Fairman, Henry Strozier, Kevin Conway, and Len Cariou. 135 minutes. PG-13. At the AMC Empire, Cinema 1, Lincoln Square, and Loews Village 7 in Manhattan.
Will John F. Kennedy be tough enough to face down the Russians?
The grumbling Cold War warriors of "Thirteen Days," a thriller about the 1962 Cuban missile crisis, ask that question a lot.
For viewers seeing the event almost 40 years later, the film's suspense hinges on different questions.
Will President Kennedy (Bruce Greenwood) have the strength to stand up, not only to the Russians, but to his hotheaded generals, led by superhawk Curtis LeMay (Kevin Conway)? And will he have the acuteness to see that behind the Russian bluster, the Soviets are as scared as the Americans and are looking -- like their U.S. counterparts -- for a way to back off while saving face?
They're hardly trivial questions. The fate of the world is at stake.
"There's something immoral about abandoning your own judgment," says the film's Kennedy, and "Thirteen Days" is about how that judgment -- flying in the face of all the by-the-books military strategists -- may have saved the planet in October 1962, when it was discovered that the Russians were building missile bases in Cuba. During a tense 13 days, the ensuing game of military one-upmanship put the United States and Russia at the brink of nuclear war.
All this makes for good, old-fashioned screw-tightening suspense in this second film account of the crisis (there was a 1974 TV movie, "The Missiles of October").
The historical events are so gripping that screenwriter David Self and director Roger Donaldson didn't need to do much, except get out of the way and let the story tell itself. This they've done -- mostly.
The sheer momentum hurtles the film past its most serious flaw: the fact that Kevin Costner, playing the presidential aide at the center of the story, has no real reason to be there. He plays Kenny O'Donnell, whose historical role in the crisis was beefed up so that Costner could have a star turn.
As a way into the story, his character is meaningless -- almost from the beginning, we're inside the Oval Office with the president and his staff, so there's nothing for Costner to reveal.
Likewise, there's no reason to see him having breakfast with his family, scolding his son for a bad report card, and so on. But if Costner is an extra piece of furniture, at least he's not cluttering up the room. Once the story gets up to speed, he becomes one more suit, insignificant except for a weak Boston accent that suggests he may be overpaying his vocal coach.
The film really belongs to the supporting actors, particularly Steven Culp and Stephanie Romanov, who are dead ringers for Robert Kennedy and Jackie Kennedy. Greenwood is hit-and-miss as JFK, depending on whether he's in profile or full face, but he captures the voice and manner perfectly.
There's nervous energy to spare in this tightly wound political thriller, thanks to the ominous music of Trevor Jones and the snappy editing of Conrad Buff. The film's real marvel, though, is the visual detail.
The look of the film is authentic early Sixties, down to the flip hairdos and omnipresent car tail fins (even a hearse has tail fins). That futuristic look of the Kennedy years, so full of optimism, takes on a tremendous poignancy in light of this story about how the future almost didn't happen.
The president's military advisers, their heads full of the Munich accord and the disastrous appeasement of Hitler, see the showdown with Khrushchev as history repeating itself. Kennedy, to them, is another Neville Chamberlain, a weakling who must be forced into a more belligerent stand.
In order to follow his own instincts, Kennedy has to buck the chain of command and communicate directly with the rank-and-file soldiers. Astonished pilots and naval crewmen find themselves getting hot-line phone calls from JFK and his aides, appealing to their good sense over the heads of their generals. "Don't get shot at," they're told -- meaning, don't report any action by the enemy that will force America to retaliate. Essential, perhaps, but hard words for a soldier about to risk his life in combat.
Behind the Cold War abstractions of "our side" and "their side," the film is saying, there are just human beings -- ranging from the scared but dogged kid who flies a dangerous reconnaissance mission over Cuba to the Russian diplomat's wife, seen trembling in the antechamber of the room where the world's fate is being brokered.
No heroes here, just ordinary human beings who managed, just barely, to rise to the most difficult occasion of the 20th century. We may not be so lucky next time.
Staff Writer Jim Beckerman's e-mail address is beckerman@northjersey.com
---
FILM REVIEW
'13 Days': Talkin' Tough at a Time the Earth Stood Still
New York Times
December 25, 2000
By ELVIS MITCHELL
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/12/25/arts/25DAYS.html?pagewanted=all
Kevin Costner is suitably flinty in "13 Days," a competent, by-the-numbers recreation of the events surrounding the Cuban missile crisis of 1962. This is an attempted man's man drama, a void that needs to be filled since Mel Gibson is wearing pantyhose this season.
Mr. Costner is Kenny O'Donnell, the right hand of John F. Kennedy (Bruce Greenwood) and his brother Robert (Steven Culp), and he is so close by the Kennedys' side that you half expect him to trip over the many biographers who must have been been lurking around the White House like ninjas.
As part of the brain trust, O'Donnell, with his no-nonsense buzz cut, is the man who gets things done. "There's a word you need to learn: loyalty," he screams into the phone, and that remark establishes his character. Mr. Costner seems slightly relieved at the prospect of not having to carry "13 Days." He's evolved from being the country's little brother in movies like "Silverado" and "Field of Dreams" to everybody's big brother here. And he graciously steps aside to let the actors portraying the Kennedys move into the warmth of the spotlight. But his polite gesture is as ostentatious as his accent, and despite his politesse, he's almost always a step ahead of everyone else.
The director Roger Donaldson, who raised Mr. Costner's profile with the self- consciously steamy 1987 political thriller "No Way Out" (you could almost hear the film crew fighting to keep from bursting into laughter during the love scenes), brings an athletic rigor to this film. He uses black- and-white scenes as chapter headings, introducing new twists in the plot. Most of the picture takes place in interiors big enough for the Kennedys to run touch football scrimmages in, though there's also a loud, soaring sequence following a surveillance plane that ratchets up the G- force level.
There's no room for underplaying. "Days" features more scenes of inflated confrontation than you'll find in all of the previous Kennedy dramas combined, moments that might set Aaron Sorkin, the man behind "The West Wing" and "A Few Good Men," to chewing his fist with envy. These scenes of martial conversation pit the humane ideals of the Kennedys and O'Donnell against the hawkish bluster of men like Gen. Curtis LeMay (Kevin Conway), a man with a combative chin and a good-to-go glint in his eye.
"The Kennedys are going to destroy this country," the general growls, sounding more like a military strongman than an American armed forces leader. "The joint chiefs want to go in," O'Donnell says. "They want to make up for the Bay of Pigs." Robert F. Kennedy is just as pugnacious. "We've got a bunch of smart guys," he says. "We put 'em in a room and kick 'em," until they think of something.
Mr. Donaldson has embraced the notion of depicting many moments as either shouting matches or snatches of tense contemplation behind closed doors. No one creeps on eggshells here; characters stomp on them hard enough to detonate them. It's possible that the screenwriter David Self chose the "Clash of the Titans" school of drama to give the material a rumble and try to shake away the stench of history.
He and Mr. Donaldson may have assumed this is the only way to arouse the interest of the prime moviegoing audience, a group that wasn't even born when the most famous recreation of this epochal period, ABC's docudrama "The Missiles of October," was first shown in 1973, never mind the actual missile crisis. Coming a few months after the reverent sleepwalker's remake of "Fail Safe" on television early this year, "Days" has a vitality that sometimes borders on the hysterical.
The film has to pump up a certain amount of adrenaline if only because it condenses the Cuban missile crisis into a shade over two hours and has to recall how close the world came to cataclysm. (It manages this without showing both sides, unlike "Missiles," which included a sly fox, Nikita Khrushchev, played by Howard DaSilva). The portrait of President Kennedy by Bruce Greenwood is a startling realization; he poses to look like him, right down to the carefully choreographed strands of chestnut and copper hair on his long-suffering head. Standing with his arms folded and looking as if he were ready for a sitting at the Franklin Mint, Mr. Greenwood opens himself up a scene at a time. He understands that he must provide more than just the striking physical resemblance or the accent that's become a cultural landmark. He starts as playful but wary. He's quick with a joke, and that mental agility later suggests his mind is always racing. Even when he's seated, he's not at rest.
As his brother, Mr. Culp is more reflexive, the id the president won't allow himself to voice. They complete each other. Neither of these conceptions are particularly subtle: the Kennedys as American Landmark flashcards. Both actors still score decisively, though. They know they've got the future of 1960's Western civilization on their shoulders. And Mr. Greenwood is Canadian.
We get O'Donnell at the open and the close; "13 Days" assumes that by now almost everyone has been behind the White House walls at the end of a crucial historical juncture. Its decision not to fixate on the Kennedys may be its only new wrinkle. Instead, the movie chooses to rest its most important moments on its biggest star, an actor who represents everyman. Mr. Costner has done better work, but he's fine here. He's always more watchable when he's surly instead of selfless.
13 DAYS
Directed by Roger Donaldson; written by David Self; director of photography, Andrzej Bartkowiak; edited by Conrad Buff; music by Trevor Jones; production designer, Dennis Washington; produced by Armyan Bernstein, Peter O. Almond and Kevin Costner; released by New Line Cinema. Running time: 140 minutes. This film is rated PG-13.
WITH: Kevin Costner (Kenny O'Donnell), Bruce Greenwood (John F. Kennedy), Steven Culp (Robert F. Kennedy), Dylan Baker (Robert McNamara), Michael Fairman (Adlai Stevenson), Henry Strozier (Dean Rusk), Frank Wood (McGeorge Bundy), Kevin Conway (Gen. Curtis LeMay), Tim Kelleher (Ted Sorensen), Len Cariou (Dean Acheson) and Bill Smitrovich (Gen. Maxwell Taylor).
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Fantastic development: 'Lord of Rings' trailer
Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Monday, December 25, 2000
http://www.accessatlanta.com/partners/ajc/epaper/editions/monday/features_a364fe88245b60a1006d.html
Hollywood --- Fantasy meets reality when New Line premieres the teaser trailers to its ''The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring,'' attached exclusively to prints of its '60s Cuban Missile Crisis drama, ''Thirteen Days.''
''Days,'' starring Kevin Costner as a top John F. Kennedy aide during the tense 1962 nuclear standoff with Cuba, opens nationwide Jan. 12.
The adaptation of the first installment of J.R.R. Tolkien's fantasy trilogy, ''Lord'' stars Elijah Wood as lead hobbit Frodo, as well as Sean Astin, Ian Holm, Ian McKellen and Cate Blanchett. Budgeted at $150 million, the film will spawn a series of Marvel action toys for its holiday release in December 2001.
The official ''Lord'' site will also be relaunched Jan. 12 in multiple-language formats. New Line will post ''The Lord of the Rings'' theatrical poster online.
---
Catholic charity struggles to help Navajo poor
Washington Times
December 25, 2000
By Julia Duin
http://www.washtimes.com/national/default-20001225215657.htm
GALLUP, N.M. - When Santa Claus dropped by a one-room home 26 miles south of this western New Mexico city last week with a Christmas basket, he found Selena, a shy 13-year-old Navajo girl, and a 4-week-old baby boy.
Selena King is one of eight children crammed into this tiny home on a 24,000-square-mile Navajo reservation.
On this particular cold and sunny day, she has been pulled out of school to mind her newborn brother, Tye, while her mother, Nancy, works at an elementary school a mile away.
As the gift of Christmas foodstuffs is delivered, Selena shyly hides her face in a magazine.
"Santa" is actually several benefactors: two Roman Catholic nuns and three staff members from the Southwest Indian Foundation (SWIF). They include Joseph Esparza, a native of Gallup who remembers gathering pinon nuts on the reservation when he was young; Tom Ellefson, the man responsible for producing SWIF's wildly popular Southwestern gift catalog, and Heather Healy, 24, coordinator of special projects, who has Navajo blood.
Mindful of the legions of poor families on this massive reservation the size of West Virginia, SWIF conducts an annual giveaway of food and Christmas stockings for children and tries to help with electricity and heating bills, even with a new home.
Being Santa is not easy in this arid climate 6,500 feet above sea level. Since any precipitation tends to turn the dirt roads into an impassable mire, vans and four-wheel drives are the vehicles of choice. An area where unemployment ranges up to 50 percent and yearly household income is as little as $7,000, the reservation is a world away from Santa Fe's plush art galleries and Albuquerque's posh high desert suburbs.
Selena and her siblings are essentially fatherless. Absentee men and single mothers are a fact of life on the reservation.
"Out here," Mr. Esparza says, "the women get the jobs and support the families. That's why we insist, before helping any of the men, that [the men] show proof of looking for employment."
Mr. Esparza grumbles about the ramshackle sheet-metal stove in one corner of the dwelling, which he says is unsafe. But it's all the Kings have. Central heating is unheard of on the "rez."
Garbage is everywhere. Stacks of water buckets sit beside the stove because there is no well. Milk sits out on the table because there is no refrigerator.
Outside, several shivering dogs huddle in the cold sunlight. Five are fuzzy pups, their tiny ribs showing through dirt-matted coats. Navajos generally do not believe in spaying their animals; packs of feral dogs have become a problem on the reservation.
The King family came to SWIF's attention through the nuns, who are members of the famous Missionaries of Charity order, founded by Mother Teresa. Wrapped in swaths of the distinctive blue-and-white linen habit, they wear only heavy sweaters as covering in the frigid weather.
Chichiltah's neediest
The nuns are based in the hamlet of Chichiltah, a maze of dirt roads leading past mesas and arroyos. This area south of Gallup is known as the "checkerboard" - a mishmash of private and reservation land.
Most homes have no water, electricity, plumbing or sewer. When the SWIF staff pulls up to a tattered mobile home, they notice the family is crammed into one half; it's all they can afford to heat. A black dog wanders about.
No one answers when the nuns knock. In this phoneless society, appointments must be made in person. The family had promised to be there that morning, but a more pressing matter apparently arose.
For such reasons, SWIF's deliveries around the reservation are spread out over the week before Christmas in the form of food drop-offs at isolated churches and tribal community centers.
"That's why we don't do individual deliveries," Mr. Esparza says. "If we waited until each family is home, it would take weeks."
In the back of SWIF's truck are Christmas food baskets, each of which has been paid for by sponsors around the country who send donations of $58.60. The "baskets" are, in reality, cardboard boxes lined with red or green cellophane and piled high with canned food, raisins, fruit punch, rice, dressing, crackers, a 20-pound turkey, a 20-pound sack of potatoes and a 25-pound bag of Blue Bird flour.
This year, 1,144 of the boxes are being dropped off in towns as far north as Shiprock, N.M., and Kayenta, Ariz., and as far west as Keams Canyon, a small community on the Hopi Indian reservation in central Arizona.
The baskets going to Chichiltah were placed on the truck at the loading dock of a California Super M Market in Gallup, then driven 26 miles south on State Highway 602 through a stark December landscape of juniper, pinon and cedar trees. They end up at the fenced enclosure in which the nuns live.
Lending a hand
These women know which families are the neediest. The nuns' high-desert dwelling in Chichiltah includes a church, St. Patrick's, and one of the few decent wells in the area. The locals often show up at the nuns' doorstep for help because one of the only other local potable water sources - a nearby elementary school - allows residents to fill up their buckets only between 3 and 4 p.m. each day.
But a solution to the water problem isn't easily apparent. A water line serving 100 homes can run as high as $10 million, and Indian Health Services, a federal agency, has to arrange laying such a pipe. Water tables in this area can be as much as 1,200 feet deep, making drilling wells an expensive proposition at $10 to $15 a foot.
"It can be a very frustrating process," Mr. Esparza says.
There is spiritual thirst on the reservation as well, the sisters report. Four families became Catholics this year and about 80 people come to Sunday Mass at their small wooden church, shaped like a hogan, the traditional round Navajo dwelling. These Navajos are part of the Diocese of Gallup, the poorest Catholic diocese in the country.
Founded 32 years ago by a Franciscan Catholic priest who pitied the alcoholics who were dying of exposure on the street corners of Gallup, SWIF now operates out of a four-story building at First and Coal streets. Its main source of revenue is 8 million slickly produced catalogs sent out each year. These garner $13 million in sales and donations.
The fall catalogue, which ran 86 pages, sold everything from children's books and CDs to dolls, pottery and other crafts made at a co-op in nearby Thoreau, 10 miles east of Gallup.
So whether someone buys a $37 "gift basket" of New Mexico-grown pistachios, pinon coffee, pistachio cookies and biscotti or a $95 leather purse, 65 percent of the price is a tax-deductible contribution. The other 35 percent covers costs, including salaries for the local artisans, some of whom are reservation residents, who make the low-cost products.
With the profits, SWIF tries to alleviate the suffering caused by a 27 percent unemployment rate and substandard rural housing. Seventy-seven percent of the homes on the reservation are without phones, 54 percent must burn wood for heat and 52 percent lack plumbing.
A home for Christmas
This Christmas, SWIF is providing a dwelling to a homeless family with the help of several subcontractors and a detachment of Air Force reservists.
Now living in a friend's hogan, Freddie Wero and his two teen-age daughters hoped to move in by Christmas to their new pink house in Church Rock, a portion of the reservation just east of Gallup.
Working out of Delaware, Louisiana, Arkansas and Texas, the reservists built six houses between May and September as part of a summer training program. Before 1997, they used to destroy these structures after the program was finished. But, thanks to an Innovative Readiness Training program authorized by Congress that year, the cadets were allowed to donate the houses for humanitarian purposes.
It costs SWIF $6,000 to transport each house to Gallup. Ferried to New Mexico by trailer, they arrive split in half. They are bolted together after arrival.
"Well, you can't get these things by UPS," jokes Bill McCartney, executive director of SWIF. "These are the families who have no opportunity to get a home without some sort of housing assistance. They are short 20,000 housing units on the reservation."
Heated by a new wood-and-coal-burning stove, the bright interior of Mr. Wero's home has two sunny bedrooms facing the southwest, plus a full kitchen. Although it is wired and plumbed, bureaucratic tangles keep the dwelling from being hooked to a water line 50 feet away. An electric line comes up to within a few hundred feet to serve an adjoining property, but the owner refuses to let the local power company link a line through to the reservation.
"It's sad," Mr. Esparza says. "But what they have now is better than what they had before."
To get the house, the family had to come up with $300 for a land track survey and $250 for an "archeology clearance," to make sure no historic arrowheads or pottery shards were underneath.
Contractors were still sawing away on the cedar porch for the house last week. The goal was to fix it to the point where the family could be in by today.
Waiting for permits
Sometimes SWIF plays Santa in other ways - by bringing electricity. A few miles further to the east of Church Rock is the Iyanbito chapter, where Navajos live beneath dramatic pink and red cliffs.
This is the countryside made famous by westerns such as "Streets of Laredo," "Fort Massacre," "Raton Pass" and "Rocky Mountain," starring the likes of Errol Flynn, Kirk Douglas and Suzanne Pleshette and filmed in the area from the 1930s to the 1950s.
But reality is less romantic than what is portrayed on the silver screen. By late afternoon, the wind has whipped up the sandy soil to create a pink dust storm near the new home of Lucille Saunders.
Although the Navajo woman got her new home in October, her TV, refrigerator and microwave sit unused for lack of a "home site lease." The lease, which would allow her to have utility hookups, is at the mercy of a bureaucrat at the Bureau of Indian Affairs office in Crownpoint, a small town one hour to the east.
Currently, she gets by on gas lamps. She also cannot use the bathroom because there is no septic tank. That - plus permission for a water line - requires another permit from the BIA.
Fortunately the wood-burning stove, given to her by SWIF, works.
But again, this dwelling is a palace compared with her previous place, where the floor was warped by a water leak. If the BIA would sign the right form, she would get electricity for Christmas.
What would happen if there were no agency to play Santa to those here who lack food, homes, electricity and other basic amenities?
"They would do as they've always done," Mr. Esparza says. "They'd survive."
---
USA Today
12/25/00
States
http://usatoday.com/news/states/all50.htm\
Minnesota
St. Paul - Nearly 1,000 more people were in Minnesota homeless shelters this year than three years ago, according to a state-financed survey. The 6,300 people in shelters at the end of October was more than twice the 2,866 counted in 1991, first year of the survey.
-------- environment
Plan to Kill Coyotes Divides Colorado
New York Times
December 25, 2000
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/12/25/science/25COYO.html
DENVER, Dec. 21 - A proposal to shoot coyotes on land that includes parts of two national conservation areas has drawn the ire of conservationists who say the predator coyotes are being sacrificed to increase the number of deer for hunters.
The Colorado Division of Wildlife recently drafted a plan to shoot coyotes on land and from the air to determine if they are responsible for a decline in the mule deer herds across the state.
The Colorado Wildlife Commission will vote in January on the plan and its cost, $1.5 million, both of which are subject to the approval of the State Legislature.
The state's deer population is roughly 545,000, about 90,000 fewer than the population objective.
"In some areas of the state, the deer population is where it should be," said Todd Malmsbury, a spokesman for the Division of Wildlife. "In other places, it's well below the objective."
Mr. Malmsbury said the study was prompted by hunters and outfitters who were losing business in some areas where deer herds had remained small for several years. In one effort, the number of deer licenses issued was cut back in order to stabilize deer herds.
"Politics rather than science is directing Colorado's wildlife management," said Suzanne Jones of the Wilderness Society in Denver. "This is a perennial problem in the West for hunting and predator management."
The Wilderness Society was one of five environmental groups to oppose the proposal to control coyotes in the conservation areas.
"This is absolutely the most inappropriate place to be doing this, if any place," said Ms. Jones, adding that the Western Colorado areas were places where the effect on humans would be minimal.
Each study site will be at least 200 square miles, but wildlife officials say only a small amount of the proposed study area overlaps the 122,300-acre Colorado Canyons National Conservation Area and the 57,725-acre Gunnison Gorge National Conservation Area and some private land.
One site would be observed while predator-control measures were taken at the other site. The plan came from the Predator Advisory Committee, which was appointed by the state.
The Division of Wildlife does not typically kill predators for preying on other wildlife, but the Department of Agriculture can take action when predators kill livestock.
"The goal of the project is to determine if a limited selective coyote control over a short period of time can result in an increase in the deer herd," Mr. Malmsbury said.
Advocates for the protection of predators reject that reasoning.
"They are proposing to kill wildlife to create more of another kind of wildlife for human hunters to kill," said Wendy Keefover-Ring, a spokeswoman for Sinapu, a group in Boulder that supports the reintroduction of predators like wolves to the state.
"They can reintroduce wolves and it would reduce the coyote population significantly and year- round, without spending the money to have federal cowboys shooting from airplanes," Mrs. Keefover- Ring said. "And it would be more cost-effective."
Mrs. Keefover-Ring said coyote populations greatly decreased in Yellowstone National Park after wolves were reintroduced there. And she said coyotes might not be the reason for the declining number of deer. The drop could also be a result of a loss of habitat because of swelling elk populations, growth and sprawl, fire suppression practices and a lack of coyote predators like wolves.
Sinapu is one of many groups that also oppose aerial shooting, citing its cost as one problem.
But others call it a humane and effective solution. Poisoning and trapping are banned in the state.
"We strive to be humane," said Dick Ray, a member of the advisory committee. "Poison or trapping wouldn't be instant, and neither would wolves."
Mr. Ray said the wolves would not know to kill only coyotes or elk, and might further drive down the deer population. He said there had not been a "huntable surplus" of deer for his clients in many years.
"We've seen this decline over the last 20 years," Mr. Ray said. "Finally, it's gotten to the point, where's all the deer?"
Mr. Malmsbury said the coyotes number anywhere from 75,000 to 200,000, attributing the large fluctuation to the fact that the animals are "secretive and widespread." The breeding pairs of coyotes would be selectively shot during the deer breeding season.
"There are more coyotes in this country now than when the Pilgrims landed," Mr. Malmsbury said. "There is strong pressure from some groups to kill coyotes and other predators. The agricultural community sees coyotes as a tremendous problem. They attack sheep, young cattle, deer and occasionally elk calves."
But, Mr. Malmsbury said, "environmentalists have competing interests here, just like many issues here in the West do right now."
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A Torrent of Sludge Muddies a Town's Future
New York Times
December 25, 2000
By PETER T. KILBORN
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/12/25/national/25SLUD.html?pagewanted=all
INEZ, Ky. - As Prentice Maynard was leaving for work before daybreak on Oct. 11, he noticed that Coldwater Creek was unusually high as it flowed under the bridge he took to the road.
By 7:40, when his wife, Janice, left their trailer for her job in town, the creek was an eerily still, glistening black goo that could hold a stick upright.
"I thought, `It's like pudding,' " Ms. Maynard said. "It was overflowing the stream bed. At 4:45, when I got home, it was over the driveway."
For three days the goo rose and spread. It swamped gardens and lawns along the six miles of Coldwater Creek in eastern Kentucky and coated its banks and bottom and those of neighboring 15-mile Wolf Creek to thicknesses of up to six feet.
Ms. Maynard's pudding was 250 million gallons of coal-mining sludge. And it created an environmental disaster, according to the Environmental Protection Agency, suffocating aquatic life - salamanders, frogs, fish and big snapping turtles - as it moved downstream. It has also worsened the economic disaster in this backwater pocket of central Appalachia, where, with the din of tank trucks and pumps running constantly, the cleanup is only half finished.
The slurry of watered-down coal particles, dirt, rock, clay and traces of heavy metals had burst through the bottom of the A. T. Massey Coal Company's lifeless 72-acre, 2.2-billion-gallon waste lagoon, which sits atop this Appalachian county's struggling and now terrified hollows.
For five hours starting just before midnight, 10 feet of the 90-foot depth of the lagoon raced through abandoned underground mines, smashing concrete seals the company thought strong enough to contain a spill, then shot out two mine entries and into the creeks.
Briefly before the spill, this place had some hope in the pending arrival of two new employers. On high ground six miles away, a casket company is expected to open a shop that might employ 30 or 40 workers, and in two years, a maximum security federal prison will open and employ about 200 local people.
Now any future employer will have to weigh the risks of another visit of sludge. "We were making some progress when this disaster hit," said Garry R. Lafferty, the county's deputy judge executive, its second-highest-ranking administrator. "It really backs you up."
Martin County's torrent of sludge was more than 20 times the volume of the Exxon Valdez's crude oil spill in Alaska 11 years ago. Among coal- mining spills, it was twice that of its biggest forerunner, 28 years ago in Buffalo Creek, W.Va., which killed 125 people and swallowed 500 homes. This time, though, no one was hurt.
A touchy issue involving industry, jobs and the environment, it drew a few headlines but little national interest.
As the spill rolled into 100 miles of rivers and streams, clogging water treatment plants and forcing schools, restaurants, laundries and a power plant to close before dispersing at the Ohio River, Gov. Paul E. Patton of Kentucky, a Democrat and former coal mine operator, declared a 10-county emergency.
Inez, population 470 and sinking, is where President Lyndon B. Johnson announced his War on Poverty in 1964. "I was a college kid then," said John Kirk, a lawyer in town who has filed a class-action suit for 200 homeowners against Massey and its local subsidiary, the Martin County Coal Corporation. "What Johnson did, more than anything else, was give an injection of optimism to this little place."
In the 1970's, coal companies swooped in, leasing and buying hundreds of square miles of rolling hills and valleys. The land below ground became honeycombed with tunnels and shafts. With strip mining, mountaintops became mesas.
In return, the industry delivered wages, jobs and home-building. According to Ron Crouch, director of the Kentucky State Data Center at the University of Louisville, coal mine employment leaped nearly tenfold, to 3,156 in 1980 from 364 a decade earlier. The county's population rose to 13,925 from 9,377, before beginning a gradual decline.
Incomes, once just above half the state average, reached the average by 1980. Middle-class homes and new trailers sprouted near eastern Kentucky hovels along Coldwater and Wolf Creeks. The poverty rate, more than 50 percent at the start of the War on Poverty, fell by half.
But automation took away mining jobs and the price of coal began to plunge, to just over $20 a ton today from nearly $40 at its peak. The boom began to fizzle, and today, mine employment has dropped below 900, while wages have slipped. And with no one yet willing to buy into the path of another spill, home values along the two creeks have collapsed.
Just why the October spill happened, in particular why the seals broke, is still being investigated.
By most accounts, a computer operator noticed that a conveyor belt carrying coal had stopped. Workers who were sent to check it found sludge from the lagoon pouring into a cavity, like water through a bathtub drain, near the shore on one side. From there, said Fred Stroud, the E.P.A. official at the scene who leads the federal cleanup, the sludge roared through the Swiss cheese of underground mines near the lagoon walls, breaking through the two sets of seals.
Mr. Stroud said one stream then poured out of one mine entrance, over a ravine and into the head waters of Coldwater Creek. He said the other appeared to have run a longer course through the mines, slowing down as it spilled into Wolf Creek.
The man on the hot seat here is Dennis Hatfield, president of Martin County Coal and the son of a retired local miner. He lives nearby with his wife and two children and teaches Sunday school. It is rare to hear an unkind word about him, if not about the company he runs. "He frogged and fished in the creeks," Mr. Lafferty said.
Mr. Hatfield has been deeply apologetic. Partly under orders from the state, which has cited the company for engaging in unsafe practices, Martin County Coal is picking up the cost of a cleanup, estimated at $40 million to $60 million. "We've got 500 people and 300 pieces of equipment working on this cleanup," Mr. Hatfield said.
Within hours of the spill, he was on the phone to homeowners in its path, offering motel rooms, groceries, driveway clearing, topsoil for the ruined gardens and new bridges.
The company attributes the spill to an act of God, a claim that stirs derision in this heavily Baptist community. Mr. Hatfield is less certain. "I don't know what happened," he said. "I don't think anybody else does." With lawsuits building against it, the company has taken some extra measures, like installing a Massey public relations man.
The company bought a used four- wheel-drive vehicle so Prentice Maynard can reach his trailer and the red barn where he keeps 20 beagles, and leased an apartment for Janice Maynard, who says she is too frightened to return home. But she calls the gestures meaningless. "I want them to buy me out," she said. "I want my life back."
Up Coldwater Road from the Maynards, closer to the mining site, Glenn Cornette, a 66-year-old retired strip miner, and his wife, Shirley, 60, feel similarly. Their trailer is next to that of their daughter and son-in-law, Patty and Edward McGinnis, and near the crumbling little house where Mr. McGinnis was born.
Around 3 that October morning, Mr. McGinnis was getting ready to give his wife, Patty, a ride to Grandad's Diner, where she would begin preparing breakfast for early-rising miners. On the road outside his trailer, Mr. McGinnis said he saw a company guard watching the rising creek.
"I asked him," Mr. McGinnis said, " `Have you got a pond break?' He said, `We got one seeping a little bit. It's just a seep. It will be all right.' "
Later, when Mr. Cornette arose, he said he told his wife that it looked like mud to him. "Steam was coming off of it," he said.
As daylight broke, the sludge kept rising and flooding the land where he raises vegetables. "I caught a big turtle that was going for high ground," Mr. Cornette said. A footlong snapper, he said, it was caked with mud. "I took him in and washed him off," he said, and then put him in an unaffected stream nearby.
Mr. Cornette leases the company a patch of his 90 acres for $1,065 a year. But with fears of another spill keeping them up at night, he and his wife want out. "I'm afraid of what's left up there," Mrs. Cornette said of the nearly two billion gallons still in the lagoon.
This was not the lagoon's first big leak. Six years ago, more than 100 million gallons, mostly water, escaped, doing little damage. The Mine Safety and Health Administration, a Labor Department agency, found inadequate sealing around the lagoon. The state fined the company $1,600. A plan was prepared with the federal agency to reinforce the lagoon, and the company agreed to adopt it.
"We followed up with a pretty thorough analysis," said J. Davitt McAteer, assistant secretary and head of the agency. But no one has established yet whether the company actually complied with the plan or whether the federal regulators checked to see that it had. "Obviously we weren't thorough enough," Mr. McAteer said.
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Los Angeles Department of Water and Power Daily Energy Update
Yahoo News
Press Release
Monday, December 25, 2000
http://biz.yahoo.com/bw/001225/ca_dwp.html
-- The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power forecasts a peak energy load today in Los Angeles of 2900 Megawatts (MW) and expects declining loads into the New Year.
LOS ANGELES--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Dec. 25, 2000-- -- DWP has 1,100 MW of uncommitted energy available today.
This energy will be available to California entities such as the Independent System Operator (ISO) or the California Power Exchange (PX) to assist them in meeting their normal and emergency energy needs. No power will be sold outside of the state. Throughout the energy crisis, DWP has provided surplus energy to California.
Yesterday, DWP provided 300MW per hour to the ISO.
DWP has 24 major thermal generating units at eight facilities. Today, thirteen units are operating including all ten base load units. Of the eleven units not operating, two units have scheduled major maintenance activities underway; two units are undergoing minor maintenance; and the remaining seven units are available for use as the market requires.
While electric rate increases are being sought by some utilities in California, Los Angeles City residents continue to enjoy stable rates that have remained unchanged for almost nine years. DWP provides electricity and water t