------- Index of Articles

NUCLEAR
Beseiged British nuclear ship docks to Japanese protest
Lake City plans meeting to talk about depleted uranium use
North Korea is believed capable of making nuclear arms
Bush Is Pressed on Pyongyang
Sub sabotage charges accuse 23-year-old sailor from N.Y.
Criticism follows bid to switch nuclear program
AILING MINERS WHO DUG URANIUM LEFT ONLY WITH GOVERNMENT IOUS
Oak Ridge cleanup firm hit with fine over fire
State threatens Hanford cleanup suit
State threatens Hanford cleanup suit
US told to make China its No 1 enemy

MILITARY
Military might is on display in Pakistan
Debate over Iraq center stage before Arab summit
Mir hurtles into Pacific From
Belgrade Sends Suspect to U.N. Tribunal

OTHER
A Flawed Timber Market
Livestock Epidemic Widens Its Menace for British Farms
The Agenda: Oil, Gas, Water, Trees
Officials Link Leaking Barge to Oily Globs on L.I. Shore
City Trash Follows Long and Winding Road
Ford plant shut to disinfect for legionella bacteria
Britain to slaughter near foot-and-mouth sites
Farmers Joining State Efforts Against Bioengineered Crops
AMOCO RESISTS RESOLUTION
Compensating Abner Louima
Moscow plans spy revenge
Chinese military official defects to U.S.
C.I.A. Had Ability to Plant Bay of Pigs News
Russia Expels 4 Americans and Vows 'Other Measures'
Skirmishing Over Spies
U.S. Policy on Russia - A Tougher Stance
Ex-Wife of Cuban Spy Is Awarded $20 Million
Defection of Senior Chinese Officer Is Confirmed
FBI to give polygraphs to 500 employees
Skirmishing Over Spies

ACTIVISTS
SIGNATURES NEEDED FOR NO NUKE POWER
nuclear links
Fighting for Their Smoking Rights
David McTaggart, a Builder of Greenpeace, Dies at 69
Animal rights protesters to defy police over demonstration


-------- NUCLEAR

Beseiged British nuclear ship docks to Japanese protest

Australian Broadcasting Corporation
This Bulletin: Sat, 24 Mar 2001 17:26 AEDT
http://www.abc.net.au/news/newslink/weekly/newsnat-24mar2001-42.htm

An armed nuclear ship carrying plutonium is unloading in Japan after a nine-week voyage from Europe, via Australia and the South Pacific.

The cargo is said to contain enough plutonium to make 20 nuclear weapons.

Three hundred Japanese protesters and 300 Japanese police met the British-flagged Pacific Teal at the port of Kariwa in Nigatta, North north-east of Tokyo.

As nuclear workers unloaded casks containing 28 rods of plutonium-uranium-oxide fuel reprocessed from Japanese nuclear waste, British Police in full riot gear looked on from the boat, one of them playing bagpipes.

In its voyage through the Tasman, the Pacific Teal had to take evasive action to avoid a Australian and New Zealand protest yachts.

The enriched fuel is being returned to Japan for use alongside uranium in nuclear power plants, although so far no local authority has given permission for its use.

-------- depleted uranium

Lake City plans meeting to talk about depleted uranium use

By The Examiner staff, March 24, 2001
http://examiner.net/stories/032401/new_032401012.shtml

Lake City officials will present more information about depleted uranium and its use at the Lake City Army Ammu-nition Plant at the Reclamation Advisory Board meeting Tues-day night.

The meeting begins at 7 p.m. in Building 6, just inside the main entrance to Lake City at the junction of Missouri 7 and 78. The meeting is open to the public.

Lake City staff and representatives of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission will respond to questions raised at the last RAB meeting about the possibility of depleted uranium particles traveling off the plant site.

A representative of the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry will also be on hand to speak about the Lake City health assessment released last year. RAB members had questioned some details of the report, including the methods used for data collection.

Also on Tuesday's agenda, Lake City officials will present a status report on clean-up projects in the Northeast corner. Staff will preview new water treatment technologies being considered for the clean-up.

-------- korea

North Korea is believed capable of making nuclear arms

Seattle Times
Nation & World : Saturday, March 24, 2001
World Digest
http://archives.seattletimes.nwsource.com/cgi-bin/texis/web/vortex/display?slug=wdig24&date=20010324

SEOUL, South Korea - North Korea is believed to be capable of making one or two nuclear bombs and may have about 3,000 nuclear experts trained in Russia and China, a South Korean government think tank said yesterday.

The Education Center of Unification said in a report that communist North Korea is believed to be able to make bombs with plutonium extracted from its Soviet-designed reactors.

Under a 1994 deal with the United States, North Korea agreed to suspend its suspected nuclear-weapons program. But some experts, including those writing the think-tank report, say there should be a system to verify that.

---

Bush Is Pressed on Pyongyang

International Herald Tribune
AP
Saturday, March 24, 2001
http://www.iht.com/articles/14538.htm

WASHINGTON The head of the Arms Control Association and two former U.S. negotiators urged President George W. Bush on Friday to reopen negotiations with North Korea to curb its ballistic missile program.

Denouncing Mr. Bush's decision to suspend talks with Pyongyang, Spurgeon Keeny Jr., president of the private association, said Mr. Bush's "handling of the affair is one of the most serious diplomatic blunders of the post-Cold War era."

Mr. Keeny, a former U.S. arms control official, said Mr. Bush had embarrassed the South Korean president, Kim Dae Jung, and mistakenly claimed a missile agreement with North Korea could not be verified.

In fact, Mr. Keeny said at a news conference, North Korea has observed the terms of a 1994 agreement with the United States freezing its nuclear weapons program.

Morton Halperin, a former U.S. negotiator who headed the State Department's policy planning office in the Clinton administration, and Robert Gallucci, chief negotiator with North Korea on the nuclear accord, also urged Mr. Bush to hold talks with Pyongyang on missile curbs.

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

Sub sabotage charges accuse 23-year-old sailor from N.Y.

The Oregonian
Saturday, March 24, 2001
From The Associated Press
http://www.oregonlive.com/news/oregonian/index.ssf?/news/oregonian/01/03/nw_71sub24.frame

BREMERTON, Wash. -- A sailor has been ordered to face a court-martial on accusations he sabotaged and stole equipment from a Trident nuclear missile submarine.

Missile Technician 2nd Class Ernesto G. Cimmino, 23, of Scotia, N.Y., was charged this week with sabotage, larceny, conspiracy, obstruction of justice and illegal drug use, among other offenses.

Cimmino is accused of damaging more than 100 cables aboard the USS Alaska with the intent of harming national defense. The submarine was at the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard at Bremerton last year for repairs and improvements.

The cables damaged operated the submarine's missile systems, internal communications, ventilation, lighting and the torpedo room.

Cimmino will be tried at a general court-martial, the most serious level of military trial.

He remains in custody in the brig inside Naval Submarine Base Bangor on Washington's Hood Canal.

If convicted of all charges, Cimmino could face 82 years in prison, a dishonorable discharge, reduction in rank and forfeiture of pay.

A preliminary hearing could take place next week. No date has been set for the court-martial, Navy officials said.

Cimmino also is accused of stealing a missile emergency alarm, prescription and nonprescription drugs, a camera, cutting tools and his commanding officer's stateroom nameplate.

Other charges include lying to Navy investigators and using methamphetamine, LSD and cocaine.

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

Criticism follows bid to switch nuclear program

Philadelphia Inquirer
Saturday, March 24, 2001
News in Brief In the Nation
http://inq.philly.com/content/inquirer/2001/03/24/national/BITS24.htm

Labor Secretary Elaine Chao has asked the White House to shift responsibility for a new program to compensate sick nuclear workers from her agency to the Justice Department, eliciting a bipartisan round of criticism from lawmakers who say the move could badly delay disbursement of the money. Chao said the Labor Department did not have the infrastructure to administer the Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation Program, passed last year by Congress with an initial appropriation of $60.4 million. Justice should run it because the department already makes payments to uranium miners and people living downwind from nuclear test sites, Chao said.

--------

AILING MINERS WHO DUG URANIUM LEFT ONLY WITH GOVERNMENT IOUS

From: magnu96196@aol.com
Sat, 24 Mar 2001
By Judith Graham Tribune staff reporter March 23, 2001
http://www.chicago.tribune.com/version1/article/0,1575,SAV-0103230156,00.html

GRAND JUNCTION, Colo. The Atomic Age was made possible by men in this area who did the dirty work of blowing up mountains with dynamite, shoveling rocks out of dusty mines and driving them to mills where uranium was extracted.

Now the U.S. is breaking promises to these workers as they sit incapacitated, disheartened and dying.

A fund created by Congress in 1990 to compensate sick uranium miners has periodically run dry over the past 10 months, sparking embarrassment in Washington and outrage in the region where most of the mining for the Cold War's most precious ore took place.

Instead of paying claims, the government is handing IOUs to some of these workers, many of whom are dying of incurable lung diseases caused by their exposure to high radiation levels underground. The government apologized to the miners more than a decade ago, officially acknowledging responsibility for involuntarily subjecting them to "increased risk of injury and disease" while they were serving the nation's security interests in the 1940s, '50s and '60s.

As partial compensation, Washington promised $100,000 to those who became sick, or to their surviving relatives, under the 1990 Radiation Exposure Compensation Act. Also covered by the fund are people who worked at the government's nuclear test sites and those who lived downwind from where tests were conducted.

Payments began in 1992 but stopped last spring, when money in the compensation trust fund unexpectedly ran out. When this year's appropriations were received in January, 96 claims were paid, using most of the available funds. The government has 179 outstanding IOUs; another 2,121 claims are awaiting action. Officials estimate more than 20,000 people worked in mines and related jobs in Colorado, Utah, Arizona and New Mexico.

Robert Key, 63, got his letter from the Justice Department in August. The news initially was good: His claim for $100,000 had been approved.

Then came the bad news.

"Regretfully, because the money available to pay claims has been exhausted, we are unable to send a compensation payment to you at this time," the letter explained. "When Congress provides additional funds, we will contact you."

Key, who has severe pulmonary fibrosis, an incurable lung disease that requires him to live on oxygen pumped through a hole in his neck 24 hours a day, was stunned. Seven months later, he hasn't received a cent.

"We've got this huge surplus. We're talking about a $1.6 trillion tax cut, and we can't pay our debts to people who did the dirty work for the Cold War," he said at his home in Grand Junction, a center of uranium mining during the Cold War.

"I think it stinks."

The problem is getting attention in Congress. Sens. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) and Pete Domenici (R-N.M.) this month introduced legislation calling for $84 million in emergency appropriations for the program.

Program may be expanded

Another bill sponsored by the two senators would turn the radiation compensation program into an entitlement program, immune from the vagaries of Congress' budgetary process. Rep. Scott McInnis (R-Colo.) last week brought a companion bill before the House. Hatch also has called for a General Accounting Office investigation of the Justice Department, focusing on the program's administration.

Hatch aides say no one expects the extra money to become available before late summer or early fall.

Some miners and other uranium workers aren't sure they will live long enough to get what they believe they are owed.

Since October, according to Becky Rockwell, a private investigator in Durango who helps miners prepare claims, eight of her clients with IOUs have died empty-handed. Lawyer Keith Killian of Grand Junction has seen two clients with claims awaiting approval die since the new year; three more died before they could gather the documentation needed to file a claim.

Congress relaxed requirements for the radiation compensation program last year--just after the fund ran out of money. It also extended payments to sick uranium mill workers and ore haulers, based on new scientific studies of illnesses in these groups.

Both actions ensured that hundreds of claims that had been denied would be resubmitted along with a large number of new claims. Last October around 600 claims were outstanding, and now that number has risen more than threefold.

Instead of appropriating a substantially larger amount, Congress authorized $10.8 million. According to Hatch's aides, a request for extra funding from the Justice Department came too late for action.

"If the money is going to be coming, I would like to see it come before it's too late for me," said Paul Wayne Hill, 69, who used to load trucks with uranium ore and drive them over unpaved mountain roads to the mills.

On his 49th wedding anniversary in January 2000, Hill was diagnosed with a rapidly advancing form of lung cancer. His claim for compensation hasn't been processed.

Of the 100 people who worked with him at the old Lumsden mine in Colorado, he figures all but two are dead. Like him, they used to drink the water that trickled down the side of the mine, unaware that it was contaminated.

During deer hunting season, the workers would hang a carcass in a cool spot inside the mine and cut off pieces of the venison at mealtime, not knowing it, too, had soaked up radiation.

"If I had known the radiation was going to get to me, I wouldn't have done it," Hill said.

Report: Government negligent

A 1995 report from the nation's Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiment concluded that the federal government did virtually nothing for two decades to lessen the risks for miners, despite definitive evidence from Europe that uranium miners got lung cancer and other illnesses from their work.

Warnings that conditions in the mines were bad and could be helped by mandating ventilation went unheeded. When the U.S. Public Health Service mounted a major epidemiological study of the miners' health, it was on the condition that miners not be told what illnesses were being tracked or why.

Key is among the many miners who were struck later in life. When he worked in Colorado's mines from 1959 to 1963, the money was good. But the air was stale and the noise deafening; every night he would come home with a pounding headache.

After four years, Key quit for easier work, never imaging that 35 years later he would find it hard to walk up the stairs or bend over to pick up the morning paper. He lives tied to a 50-foot hose that delivers oxygen from a nearby tank.

"That feeling that you can't get air, and that there is nothing you can do, is tough, really tough," Key said. "And now, this situation with the government, I guess I have just lost faith."

-------- tennessee

Oak Ridge cleanup firm hit with fine over fire last year

Knoxville News-Sentinel
March 24, 2001
By Frank Munger, News-Sentinel senior writer
http://www.knoxnews.com/business/26186.shtml

OAK RIDGE -- BNFL has been fined $41,250 for safety violations related to a fire last year at its Oak Ridge cleanup site. The U.S. Department of Energy announced the fine as part of its enforcement of the Price-Anderson Amendments Act, which requires action against government contractors violating nuclear safety standards.

The April 4, 2000, metal fire occurred during cleanup activities in the K-33 Building, a former uranium-enrichment facility on the Energy Department's Oak Ridge reservation. The fire was contained in a bundle of metal tubes in an assembly being decontaminated.

DOE's investigation determined that BNFL, the American subsidiary of British Nuclear Fuels, did not follow established procedures or conduct an effective effort to identify and correct the problems.

"As a result, safety and worker hazards were not fully identified or analyzed," DOE said in a press statement.

The preliminary "notice of violation" was issued March 19 and becomes final within 30 days unless challenged by BNFL, DOE said.

In a statement issued by BNFL, the company said, "We took immediate steps to find the root cause of the incident. Such metal reactions were anticipated, analyzed and planned for, and it is clear that our overall approach to work safety was a key factor in that no injuries, personnel uptake or environmental contamination took place."

BNFL said it took responsibility for the incident and for the enforcement of penalties.

"We have revamped and improved our approach to this type of activity to ensure that these self-sustaining metal reactions do not occur," the company said in a statement.

However, Normal Hammitt, a BNFL spokesman, said the company objected to a statement in DOE's press release that said the fire released uranium into the work environment.

"We feel this is an inaccurate statement," Hammitt said. "We have no documentation of the incident which states that any uranium was released into the building as a result of the fire/reaction."

Frank Munger can be reached at 865-482-9213 or twig1@knoxnews.infi.net.

-------- washington

State threatens Hanford cleanup suit

Seattle Post-Intelligencer
Saturday, March 24, 2001
By LINDA ASHTON THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://seattlep-i.nwsource.com/local/hanford24.shtml
http://archives.seattletimes.nwsource.com/cgi-bin/texis/web/vortex/display?slug=hanford24m&date=20010324

YAKIMA -- The state is threatening to sue the U.S. Department of Energy if it fails to start construction on a radioactive waste treatment plant at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation this summer, a deadline the DOE has said it cannot meet.

State Attorney General Christine Gregoire yesterday instructed her staff to prepare a legal case against the federal government, which is obligated under a 1989 agreement to start construction on the glassification plant by July 31.

Construction is not expected to begin until July 31, 2002, in part because the project was delayed by the firing of the original contractor last year.

"If we are going to clean up this waste in our lifetime, we must move forward now," Gregoire said. "We cannot and we will not allow the legacy of untreated nuclear waste to be left for yet another generation to cope with."

Energy Department spokesman Guy Schein in Richland said he had no comment.

The plant is considered essential for dealing with Hanford's most critical cleanup problem -- 54 million gallons of highly radioactive waste left over from Cold War-era plutonium production.

Sixty-seven of the 177 underground tanks have leaked more than 1 million gallons of waste, contaminating groundwater and threatening the Columbia River. The Energy Department and its contractors have been pumping liquid waste from the older, leak-prone, single-shell tanks into newer, double-wall tanks.

Under the 1989 Tri-Party Agreement among the DOE, the state and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the glassification plant will be used to prepare about 10 percent of the waste for permanent storage as glass logs. Under the agreement, the state can sue the federal government to enforce compliance with cleanup deadlines.

--------

State threatens Hanford cleanup suit

Seattle Post-Intelligencer
Saturday, March 24, 2001
By LINDA ASHTON THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://seattlep-i.nwsource.com/local/hanford24.shtml

YAKIMA -- The state is threatening to sue the U.S. Department of Energy if it fails to start construction on a radioactive waste treatment plant at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation this summer, a deadline the DOE has said it cannot meet.

State Attorney General Christine Gregoire yesterday instructed her staff to prepare a legal case against the federal government, which is obligated under a 1989 agreement to start construction on the glassification plant by July 31.

Construction is not expected to begin until July 31, 2002, in part because the project was delayed by the firing of the original contractor last year.

"If we are going to clean up this waste in our lifetime, we must move forward now," Gregoire said. "We cannot and we will not allow the legacy of untreated nuclear waste to be left for yet another generation to cope with."

Energy Department spokesman Guy Schein in Richland said he had no comment.

The plant is considered essential for dealing with Hanford's most critical cleanup problem -- 54 million gallons of highly radioactive waste left over from Cold War-era plutonium production.

Sixty-seven of the 177 underground tanks have leaked more than 1 million gallons of waste, contaminating groundwater and threatening the Columbia River. The Energy Department and its contractors have been pumping liquid waste from the older, leak-prone, single-shell tanks into newer, double-wall tanks.

Under the 1989 Tri-Party Agreement among the DOE, the state and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the glassification plant will be used to prepare about 10 percent of the waste for permanent storage as glass logs. Under the agreement, the state can sue the federal government to enforce compliance with cleanup deadlines.

-------- us nuc politics

US told to make China its No 1 enemy
US told to target China

Martin Kettle in Washington
Saturday March 24, 2001
The Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/bush/story/0,7369,462322,00.html

A historic shift of emphasis in United States military deployment from Europe to Asia, with China supplanting Russia as America's principal foe, is at the heart of the Bush administration's long awaited defence strategy review, according to reports in Washington.

Outlines of the potentially epochal rethink of the US's global strategic priorities were given to President George Bush by his defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld at a private meeting at the White House on Wednesday, the Washington Post reported yesterday.

"The president was complimentary, he appreciated the policy discussion, and gave the indication that the topics were indeed what he had in mind," a Pentagon official told the paper.

More than 50 years after the struggle to deter the Soviet Union in Europe became the centrepiece of US military strategy in the aftermath of the second world war, the Rumsfeld review has concluded that the Pacific Ocean should now become the most important focus of US military deployments, with China now perceived as the principal threat to American global dominance.

The review says, in effect, that Washington should abandon the long-standing doctrine that the US military must always be prepared to fight two major world conflicts simultaneously, the reports quote officials as saying.

By elevating China to the status of global enemy number one, the review clearly foreshadows an American turn away from Europe, or at least from the levels of US engagement and attention which have existed for the lifetime of most Europeans.

Mr Bush ordered the strategy review immediately on taking office. It is the most important of three complementary reviews intended to shape US military priorities in the 21st century. The other two are on nuclear weapons and missile defence options, and on service pay and conditions.

The huge distances involved in the Pacific mean that the Pentagon must give additional priority to "long-range power projection", the report says.

This means putting fresh resources into airlift capacity to enable the US to move troops, vehicles and weapons many thousands of miles from bases in America to the frontline in Asia at short notice.

The report says the threat from hostile missiles is likely to become so serious that the US can no longer afford to risk its largest and most expensive ships, the Nimitz class aircraft carriers, in forward positions. As a result, the navy will be told to stop building big ships and to concentrate on speed and manoeuvrability, including a new generation of smaller carriers, to avoid them becoming targets.

The threat from weapons of mass destruction, such as nuclear, chemical and biological weapons, against American military targets means that US allies may begin to question the advisability of allowing Washington to have bases in their countries, the Pentagon suggests. The report says this is another reason why long-range supply capacity needs to be increased.

The review does not make recommendations about particular weapons systems, but there is no doubt in Washington that missile defence shields will form a central part of the new strategy.

Other key elements of what would be, in effect, a rearming of the US military are likely to include a greater role for long-range bombers and for unmanned aircraft. The F-22 fighter programme is likely to face cutbacks, though there is speculation that it will not be scrapped.

The sweep of the review is so comprehensive and its conclusions so radical that the publication of the final report later this year is likely to set off a whole series of turf wars within the US military, as the armed services scrabble for influence and funding in the new era.

Washington's decision to turn more of its guns and missiles towards China came as it was confirmed that a senior colonel in the Chinese people's liberation army has defected to the US while visiting as part of a military delegation. The defection, which apparently took place at the end of last year or in January, involved an unnamed officer in the foreign affairs department of the army general staff.

-------- MILITARY

--------- india/pakistan

Military might is on display in Pakistan

Philadelphia Inquirer
Saturday, March 24, 2001
News in Brief In the Nation
http://inq.philly.com/content/inquirer/2001/03/24/national/BITS24.htm

Pakistan's military government paraded tanks, missiles and troops through the streets of Islamabad yesterday to mark the country's national day, a show of power that comes amid a crackdown on the opposition. Police blocked the opposition from holding a rally in Lahore calling for the restoration of democracy.

------- iraq

Debate over Iraq center stage before Arab summit

USA Today
03/24/2001 - Updated 05:43 PM ET
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2001-03-24-arabsummit.htm

AMMAN, Jordan (AP) - Arab foreign ministers worked to patch up differences between Iraq and its Gulf foes over U.N. sanctions on Baghdad on Saturday as they hammered out an agenda for a leaders summit later this week.

The ministers from the 22-member Arab League are holding two days of talks this weekend ahead of a meeting of Arab heads of state on Tuesday that host Jordan calls the summit of "Accord and Agreement."

Despite its title, the summit has become divisive, with some countries choosing sides over the Iraq sanctions while others are sending only lower-level delegates.

Arab diplomats said the ministers had forged a "goodwill committee" to try to narrow differences between Iraq and Kuwait after delegates from the two countries objected to the wording of a draft communique prepared by the Arab League.

The diplomats, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Iraq insisted that the summit's statement endorse its demand to lift the U.N. embargo imposed to punish the country for its 1990 invasion of Kuwait.

Kuwait, however, wants any decision on Iraq to be linked to its compliance with U.N. resolutions. It is backed by heavyweight Saudi Arabia.

"There is no way that both will get what they want; each will get a bit of what he wants," said one senior Arab diplomat.

The goodwill committee is expected to offer a vaguely worded compromise that expresses sympathy for the plight of Iraqis but remains noncommittal on support for lifting the sanctions.

The ministers did not return to evening meetings as planned, instead holding bilateral discussions in their hotel rooms. Arab diplomatic sources said the divisions over the Iraq issue still persisted, with many ministers opposed to Iraq's demands.

Earlier in the day, Jordanian Prime Minister Ali Abu-Ragheb was blunt on Iraq, telling the official Petra news agency that Arabs must pressure the international community to lift the sanctions.

Saudi Arabia announced earlier this week that its defense minister would attend Tuesday's summit instead of Crown Prince Abdullah, who has been filling in for his ailing brother King Fahd in international gatherings.

Arab diplomats said the decision was a clear message that it does not want to see the summit turned into a platform for Iraqi leaders to air anti-Saudi and anti-Kuwait sentiments. Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal denied the reports, saying that his country was committed to "everything that will strengthen Arab solidarity."

Oman and Kuwait are also expected to be represented by lower-level government officials.

Outside the meeting hall, Kuwaiti State Minister for Foreign Affairs Mohammed Al Salem Al Sabah walked into a reception area and shook hands with delegates on one side of the room but ignored the other side, where the Iraqi foreign minister stood.

The debate over what stand to take on Iraq has stolen attention from the Middle East peace process and the uprising in Israel and the Palestinian territories.

Yet a draft copy of the final communique obtained by The Associated Press shows that the leaders will give their full backing to the Palestinians and condemn what they call the continuous Israeli aggression, coercion and siege of the Palestinian territories.

The statement will also warn the Israeli government against "circumventing the bases and principles of the peace process" by offering new proposals.

Farouk Kaddoumi, head of the political department of the Palestine Liberation Organization, warned Arab leaders on Saturday that an Israeli invasion of the territories in order to weaken the Palestinians "is not far-fetched" under the new government of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.

The foreign ministers are also expected to discuss how to reactivate the role of the Arab League, Arab-African cooperation and a proposal to hold an economic conference in Egypt. They will also nominate a new leader for the Arab League, expected to be Egyptian Foreign Minister Amr Moussa.

-------- space

Mir hurtles into Pacific From

Irish Times
Saturday, March 24, 2001
Conor Lally, in Sydney
http://www.ireland.com/newspaper/world/2001/0324/wor1.htm

PACIFIC: After all the hype of recent weeks the life of the Russian space station, Mir, ended with a spectacular orange glow in the South Pacific above the islands of Fiji just before 6 a.m. Irish time yesterday.

The splashdown marked the end of 15 years of Soviet space history with the craft having been blasted into orbit just a few short weeks before former Soviet president, Mr Mikhail Gorbachev, began perestroika and two months before the Chernobyl nuclear reactor exploded.

But in a unforeseen twist, the former beacon of communist space exploration proved something of a publicity coup for US corporate giants Taco Bell.

Earlier this week the fast food outlet used a barge to tow a 100 square metre target out to sea off the east coast of Australia with the message "Free Taco Here" in huge purple lettering. The company said if any section of the space station hit the target, it would give one free Taco to each of America's 280 million citizens. The debris, travelling at 1 km per second, missed and the company was saved the massive payout.

The emergency services in Australia, New Zealand, Japan and the islands of the South Pacific had been briefed and were on high alert in case any of the 135 tonne hulk strayed off path and hit land.

In the event, they need not have bothered - 15 years of Soviet space history ended exactly as planned with the remains of the world's most celebrated and, at times, hapless space station coming to rest in its watery grave without incident.

A handful of stargazers in Fiji saw the remains of the station as it hurtled into the ocean, as did the crew of a Sunflower Air flight which was 2,500 metres above Fiji's capital, Suva, at the time of splashdown.

"It was at very high altitude and very high speed," the pilot, Mr Neli Vuatalevu, said.

"It was very bright, had a long tail of smoke, which remained in the atmosphere for several minutes. We were in bright sun, but it was very much brighter than that," he said.

The only others believed to have seen the light show were crew members on board a fleet of American Samoan fishing boats and other opportunistic sailors who had gone to the area in hope of salvaging any wreckage they could.

Space experts said it would fetch huge prices from enthusiasts.

On board were over 100 books left over the years by crew members, a Bible, a Koran, running shoes and an old photograph of the first man in space, Yuri Gagarin.

Some mutant fungi that had thrived in the weightless conditions high above the world were also part of the cargo on board the obsolete station.

In the last 48 hours, the authorities in New Zealand had tried unsuccessfully to contact the sailors to insist they leave the area for fear they would be hit by flying debris. Up to 1,500 fragments were expected to survive re-entry, a handful of which were expected to be the size of a small car.

Perhaps most concerned were the Australians, and with some justification given their somewhat worrying history of being hit from the skies.

In 1979, NASA's 77.5 tonne Skylab, after six years in space crashed into the Indian Ocean spraying debris across Western Australia. Nobody was killed but the sonic boom from the pieces woke sheep farmers from their sleep. In 1989, a Soviet Cosmos satellite fell in Central Australia. Again, nobody was injured. More recently, in 1996, the failed Russian Mars-96 space probe carrying radioactive plutonium crashed towards the country but luckily missed.

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

Belgrade Sends Suspect to U.N. Tribunal

New York Times
March 24, 2001
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/24/world/24TRIB.html

THE HAGUE, March 23 - Belgrade authorities handed over today a Bosnian Serb wanted on genocide charges at the Yugoslavia war crimes tribunal, a breaking move welcomed by the United Nations.

The defendant, Milomir Stakic, accused of helping plan and set up Bosnian detention camps in 1992 and 1993, was indicted with two other figures, both now dead, a spokesman for the tribunal, Jim Landale, said.

"He has been transferred by the authorities in Belgrade," Mr. Landale said. Mr. Stakic, charged on one count of genocide, arrived here late today.

Yugoslavia has been under severe pressure to cooperate with the tribunal. Washington had threatened economic sanctions unless Belgrade started cooperating by March 31. The most wanted suspects indicted by the tribunal are former President Slobodan Milosevic; Radovan Karadzic, the Bosnian Serb leader in the Bosnian war from 1992 to 1995; and his commander, Ratko Mladic.

The Serbian news media said Mr. Stakic, 39, was arrested on Thursday. The chief United Nations prosecutor, Carla del Ponte, said, "This is the first concrete sign of cooperation."

-------- OTHER

-------- environment

A Flawed Timber Market

New York Times
March 24, 2001
By JIMMY CARTER
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/24/opinion/24CART.html

ATLANTA -- Along with all the other former presidents, I was a strong supporter of the North America Free Trade Agreement when it was initiated in 1994. Free trade among the United States, Mexico and Canada has, in general, been good for the people and the economies of all three nations.

However, we are now facing a crisis in the marketing of lumber that could be devastating to 10 million American landowners, 20,000 sawmill owners and more than 700,000 workers, and also to the environment. This problem has aroused the concern of labor, industry and environmentalists. There are many facets to this complicated issue, but they can be summarized in relatively simple terms.

In Canada, the national and provincial governments own 95 percent of the timberland. In the United States, private investors own the overwhelming portion of woodlands. In Georgia, for instance, 70 percent of all forest land belongs to about 600,000 private nonindustrial owners, most of whom are also involved in farming. Timber companies like Weyerhaeuser, Georgia-Pacific and International Paper own another 20 percent, while the remaining 10 percent is in public ownership, as in parks and military bases.

Rosalynn and I are typical family landowners. On our relatively small woodland tracts, some of which our family has owned for seven generations, we maintain a proper mix of hardwood and softwood trees for optimum wildlife habitat, and we market our timber selectively when it reaches full maturity. We cut relatively small areas at a time and replant as quickly as possible after harvesting. Within 10 years, we begin periodic thinning, always providing the best conditions for optimum growth of the next generation of full-grown trees.

When we sell some mature trees, we obtain bids from sawmill owners, who are under contract to cut under strict conditions that protect the permanent value and productivity of the farm. It is an almost universal practice of families like ours to protect the land from erosion and to replant another crop immediately after harvest. Our sawmills must pay full market price for standing timber, saw and dress the lumber as efficiently as possible, and sell it on the retail market.

Canada has no equivalent free market for the overwhelming portion of its timber. Provincial governments grant an annual allowable cut to sawmill owners at whatever low price is necessary to maintain full employment in the timber industry. These sawmills usually pay a fraction of the price that American sawmill owners pay, creating a great disparity that is beginning to wreak havoc with the timber industry in the United States, from the farm family that owns some woodland to the small or large sawmill owners who cannot compete on the retail market with the heavily subsidized lumber being imported from Canada.

These disparities between the American and Canadian timber industries have existed for more than 25 years. In 1996, the United States and Canada signed a five-year pact, which expires this month, that tried to limit the problem by restricting Canadian exports of lumber into the United States. But quotas are not the answer. What we need is a permanent agreement that ensures free trade but ends the artificial price restrictions that the Canadian government has put on timber. This will allow both Canadian and American lumber interests to compete on equal footing.

Without a dependable timber market in the United States, many landowners cannot afford to invest in reforestation and forest maintenance, and the consequence will be land that is barren or converted to other uses. The cost to society is great - less carbon dioxide sequestered in the trees, a loss of air and water filtration, less green space and wildlife, and more soil erosion and urbanization.

Our family has other personal income and can survive even if our nation's timber industry is crippled, but hundreds of thousands of American families depend on a fair and stable market for their livelihood. Their interests must be protected.

Jimmy Carter, the 39th president of the Carter Center in Atlanta.

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Livestock Epidemic Widens Its Menace for British Farms

New York Times
March 24, 2001
By WARREN HOGE
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/24/world/24BRIT.html

LONDON, March 23 -- Forecasts about Britain's foot-and-mouth epidemic worsened alarmingly today, prompting the government to redouble eradication efforts and casting doubt on Prime Minister Tony Blair's carefully nurtured plan to seek re-election this spring.

"This will be a large epidemic, it will grow fast and it will continue for many months," Dr. Debby Reynolds, veterinary director of the Food Standards Agency, said at an Agriculture Ministry briefing.

She cited a ministry report projecting that the number of affected farms and other sites, instead of tailing off, would soon rise by 70 each day, almost twice the rate of current increases, and would top 4,000 by June. Today's count rose by 34 cases, to a total of 514 since the outbreak was detected Feb. 20.

Only 1 percent of British farms have been affected so far, but that understates the impact the disease has had on British society, which is deeply rooted in rural traditions.

David King, the government's chief scientist, said officials had lost control of the spread of the highly contagious disease because of the delay between finding the virus and slaughtering the animals. "Based on that," he said, "we can say that looking at Great Britain as a whole, the situation is not under control at the moment using the current report-to-cull times which are being used in the field."

Mr. Blair, who learned on Thursday of the crisis' true dimensions and the inadequacies in the government's steps to rein it in, was reported to have reacted with a mixture of dismay and fury. He felt he had been given incomplete information about the transfer of infected animals, the number of veterinarians and shortages of essential items like insecticide and bullets for culling animals.

He vowed to take personal charge of the emergency on his return from a two-day trip to Stockholm for a European summit meeting.

Before Mr. Blair departed Thursday, he ordered the creation of two-square-mile "firebreak cull" killing zones around every infected farm, and said the time between diagnosis and slaughter had to be reduced to a maximum of 24 hours.

Mark Woolhouse, a government adviser from the veterinary epidemiology department at the University of Edinburgh, said, "We are all agreed that it is going to get a lot worse before it gets better."

He warned that the disease could become "fully established" as an ineradicable condition in Britain unless new measures were adopted.

"It is clear that this epidemic is indeed out of control, and therefore we have to consider other options," like those Mr. Blair ordered.

Chief Veterinary Officer Jim Scudamore said the crisis was now officially worse than the outbreak that crippled British agriculture for eight months in 1967. In just over four weeks, more than 480,000 animals have been slaughtered or marked for culling, 50,000 more than were condemned in the earlier episode.

Mr. Blair's interest in asserting his leadership was heightened by the political sensitivity of the moment. He must call for the scheduling of the election by Monday, April 2, in order to allow for the dissolution of Parliament and the mandatory minimum campaign period to meet his intended election date of May 3.

He has been resisting calls to postpone the balloting, saying it would signal to the world that Britain was an inhospitable place just as tourism was reeling from canceled trips.

A $96 billion industry, tourism is more important to the economy than the $21 billion farming industry.

Potential visitors have been put off by reports of farmers' committing suicide and cattlemen unable to leave their property, as well as scenes of empty villages, roads washed down with disinfectant, and incinerated livestock upended on smoking pyres.

"The prime minister is not talking and thinking about general elections," a spokesman said in London today. "The prime minister is spending every spare minute he has working flat out to tackle the problem of foot and mouth." In Stockholm, however, a comment was captured on a microphone Mr. Blair had not spotted as he spoke with Romano Prodi, the European Commission president. "How long before you must decide? A month?" the Italian asked.

"No, about 10 days," Mr. Blair answered.

Before this calamity, the Labor Party was up to 26 points ahead of the Conservatives in polls, a margin that pointed to a victory as overwhelming as the one on May 1, 1997, and promised an end to a notorious distinction that Mr. Blair has called Labor's shame -- its failure to win two consecutive full terms in office.

It has long been Mr. Blair's goal that Labor become the natural party of government in the British mind, like the Conservatives during the last century. In that connection, the party disclosed today that it would join with the third-party Liberal Democrats in so-called tactical voting arrangements in individual districts. These will further marginalize the Tories.

The only occasion in the past four years that helped Conservatives trim Labor's double-digit lead was much like the current one: a truckers' and farmers' fuel tax protest last fall that shut down 90 percent of gas stations. Mr. Blair was seen as arrogant and out of touch with voters, and his ratings tumbled.

A delay now could harm his government's boast of sustained prosperity if the downturn in world markets hits the buoyant British economy. If he delays the vote, the earliest expectation will be for the fall.

The situation and his reaction to it pose another challenge to one of Mr. Blair's proudest claims: that Labor is a competent manager of the country. Though the Conservatives adopted a bipartisan approach at the start of the outbreak, this week they decided Mr. Blair was vulnerable and went on the attack, accusing the government of mishandling the crisis.

Former Prime Minister John Major pressed today for a postponed vote, saying that Mr. Blair would bear the responsibility "if during the election there is a spread of foot-and-mouth as a result of the movement and traffic of electioneering." Poll results that favored proceeding are now showing majorities against it and exposing signs of a voter backlash if Mr. Blair insists.

He has been eager to act while his lead is so secure, but he may not be risking it by waiting. In the past year he has confronted calamities like the biggest floods in Britain in 400 years, breakdowns in the railroads and the National Health Service and repeated cases of misconduct by government ministers. The Conservatives, under William Hague, have failed to capitalize on any of them, and evidence indicates that the more the public sees of the Tories, the more determined it is to keep them out.

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The Agenda: Oil, Gas, Water, Trees

New York Times
March 24, 2001
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/24/opinion/L24ENER.html

To the Editor:

As blackouts roll through California, and New York considers widening the circumstances under which backup diesel generators may be used (news articles, March 21), I am concerned that the discourse from elected officials focuses on increasing energy output.

Rather, corporations and people must be cajoled to use less energy. Government should set voluntary conservation goals for all users. If these measures do not relieve demand, then perhaps surcharges should be imposed to curb use.

WALTER LUERS Hoboken, N.J., March 21, 2001

•To the Editor:

While President Bush has focused on directing the projected surplus toward a tax cut, your March 21 news article "California Orders Blackouts for a Second Straight Day" highlights a far greater need.

California suffers from a serious power-supply deficit, a condition that threatens to spread across the country. For California to meet its own demand, the state must build new power plants.

Only the federal government can finance such an undertaking. The project of meeting this country's energy needs with money from the surplus would help the economy far more than any tax cut.

JOHN M. HAGAN Notre Dame, Ind., March 21, 2001

•To the Editor:

Re "2 Quandaries Facing Bush" (news analysis, front page, March 21):

While I would be sorry for truckers and low-income motorists who need their cars for work, maybe OPEC is doing us a favor by lowering oil production, thus increasing the threat of higher gas prices this summer.

Maybe if we have to start paying $2 a gallon for gas, we will start driving smaller cars and taking conservation seriously.

MARTY MANGAN Brooklyn, March 21, 2001

•To the Editor:

Re "E.P.A. to Abandon New Arsenic Limits for Water Supply" (front page, March 21):

George W. Bush's "compassionate conservatism" apparently does not include compassion for the environment. In the latest of a series of actions that will harm the environment, he has withdrawn a new regulation that would have reduced the permissible standard for arsenic in drinking water.

Coming on the heels of his broken campaign promise to regulate carbon dioxide emissions and his plans to drill for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, this does not bode well for the environment.

ANDREW JONES Tucson, March 21, 2001

•To the Editor:

Re "U.S. Offers Further Delay to Forest Rules" (news article, March 17): Some people look at a 2,000- year-old Sequoia tree and say, "What a marvelous example of nature's providence!" Others look at it and say, "Firewood - wonder how much I can get a cord for that?"

Which camp do you fall into?

HAL FULLER San Diego, March 21, 2001

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Officials Link Leaking Barge to Oily Globs on L.I. Shore

New York Times
March 24, 2001
By AL BAKER
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/24/nyregion/24OIL.html

GARDEN CITY, N.Y., March 23 - Globs of oil believed to have leaked from a 350-foot-long tank barge being towed across Long Island Sound washed up along a 20-mile stretch of Long Island's North Shore today, the authorities said. The company that owns the barge said it would immediately begin a cleanup.

The substance, thought to be the heavy No. 6 fuel oil that is burned by utilities, came ashore in black clumps between Smithtown's Crane Neck Point and the beaches in Shoreham, said Lt. Kevin Carroll of the Coast Guard's marine safety field office in Coram, on Long Island.

Officials tonight said that no wildlife appeared to have been harmed. But Lieutenant Carroll said Saturday morning's high tide might wash new globs ashore.

Lieutenant Carroll said the substance was believed to have leaked from the tank barge Rhode Island as it was being towed near New Haven on March 20 by Moran Towing Corporation, whose subsidiary owns the vessel. A six-inch hole in the barge's starboard cargo tank was discovered after crew members reported that the vessel was taking on water on its journey eastward to the Thames River in Connecticut.

Edmond J. Moran Jr., a senior vice president of Moran Towing, said his 142-year-old tug-and-barge firm, based in Greenwich, Conn., had taken responsibility for the spill and had arranged for a cleanup to begin Saturday. National Response Corporation, a firm in Calverton, on Long Island, will do the work, said Mr. Carroll and Mr. Moran.

"We have enough confidence in the Coast Guard's judgment, and we care enough about the environment that we work in, that we will worry about the costs later," said Mr. Moran.

Mr. Moran said he believed the spill to be light to moderate. Lieutenant Carroll said, "We believe that this has not been a serious release of oil product, but we are taking a prudent approach."

Mr. Carroll said samples were taken from the beaches and from the barge and would be compared. He said a computer simulation, taking into account winds, tides and currents, showed a spill from March 20 would have ended up on Long Island's North Shore.

John Jay LaValle, the supervisor of Brookhaven, ordered beaches from Stony Brook to Wading River closed to allow the Coast Guard and the State Department of Environmental Conservation to inspect any damage and oversee the cleanup.

"Our beaches are very important to us - we have significant wildlife that could be affected," said Mr. LaValle. "Ecologically, we hope the cleanup mitigates any damage."

He said he feared lobsters, clams and fish might have been fouled. Evidence of the spill was obvious late in the day, with polluted seaweed scattered on the rocky beaches.

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City Trash Follows Long and Winding Road

New York Times
March 24, 2001
By ERIC LIPTON
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/24/nyregion/24TRAS.html

Lift lid, extend wrist and drop the smelly bag. As far as millions of New Yorkers are concerned, that is the end of the line when it comes to their trash.

But now that the Fresh Kills landfill in Staten Island is closed, the daily journey for about 12,000 tons of the city's residential trash has become immensely more complex and expensive.

What had been a quick and modestly priced trip to Fresh Kills is now an up to 400- mile trek, a six-day-a-week undertaking that involves an armada of tractor trailers and rail cars running up and down the East Coast, an extra 900 city workers and about $200 million a year in new costs to taxpayers.

"It's like a military-style operation on a daily basis," said Deputy Mayor Joseph J. Lhota, who supervised the landfill shutdown.

Diverting the city's trash is a financial windfall for some distant communities, like small towns in Pennsylvania, as well as for the money-losing Essex County incinerator in Newark that now is filled to capacity burning much of Manhattan's trash.

But the never ending flow of trash has raised the ire of environmentalists and some local officials in Virginia and Pennsylvania, who resent the city's smelly exports, so much so that Virginia passed a package of laws and went to court to try to stop it.

"I understand the problem New York City faces," Gov. James S. Gilmore of Virginia wrote in a 1999 letter to Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, shortly after the city started sending a lot more trash there. But, he went on, "The home state of Washington, Jefferson and Madison has no intention of becoming New York's dumping grounds."

So far, though, the giant trash companies the city has hired to move the waste have prevailed in federal court. And with the addition in the last month of waste from Queens, the final borough to rely on Fresh Kills, the deliveries have only increased.

Probably few residents of Brooklyn Heights, for example, realize that their trash typically ends up in Charles City County, Va. And a trash bag dropped in nearby Prospect Heights typically comes to rest on a mountainside landfill near Scranton, Pa.

The most direct impact on the New York City region - besides the higher price tag - is the long-distance journey hundreds of city trash trucks make each day. The city's fleet of white Department of Sanitation trash trucks used to drop off their 10-ton loads at neighborhood depots, where they would be loaded onto barges for the short trip to Fresh Kills. (Staten Island waste went directly by trash truck to the landfill.)

Now, 6 of the 13 trash transfer stations are outside the five boroughs, meaning the sanitation trucks must drive as far as 37 miles before they can unload.

These trips - about 550 city trash trucks a day go to New Jersey to the transfer stations and the Newark incinerator - obviously come at a cost, in the extra hours it takes drivers to shuttle the trash, the tolls the city must pay the Port Authority and the New Jersey Turnpike, the fuel and spare parts for the trucks that break down more often, and the traffic and air pollution they cause. The tolls alone are $3.5 million a year.

The trucks take various routes: about 300 carrying Manhattan and Queens waste cross the George Washington Bridge each day, another 130 or so take the Lincoln Tunnel, while 50 cross through the Holland Tunnel, according to the Department of Sanitation. And Staten Island's loads are carried by 70 city trucks across the Goethals Bridge.

These deliveries set off another slew of truck trips - about 450 each day - this time tractor trailers that carry about 20 tons apiece, heading mostly south and west toward landfills in Pennsylvania and Virginia.

All of these trucks leaving the city - 256,000 a year - have increased traffic across the main bridges and tunnels to New Jersey by about 2 percent since the first exports started, in 1997. And air pollution along Canal Street near the Holland Tunnel has increased by as much as 17 percent in one pollutant category as a result of city trash traffic, according to a city consultant.

The trips across the Hudson are timed to avoid morning and evening rush hours, something several civic leaders have noticed. "If you measure it from the perspective of complaints and court battles and furies, it has not been as bad as people may have thought it was going to be," said Robert A. LoPinto, chairman of the Queens Solid Waste Advisory Board.

But Mr. LoPinto and others added that the extra air pollution and truck traffic was still taking a toll. "John Q. Public may not see it, but that does not mean the environmental problems are not there," he said.

Much of the traffic and pollution could have been avoided, said Lisa A. Schreibman, a coordinator for Tri- State Transportation Campaign, a coalition of environmental and planning groups, if the city had moved more quickly to use barges or rail deliveries, methods the city hopes to switch to by 2005. No garbage goes by barge now, and about 950 tons a day travels by rail, from the Bronx, to Albany and then to Waverly, Va.

"The agency was too worried about closing the dump on time and thinking about the fastest ways to get export up and running instead of thinking about the ways to export that are the least environmentally harmful," Ms. Schreibman said.

The bills for the trash export total about $300 million a year, or about $37.50 for each city resident, excluding the cost of picking up the trash from the curbside. (The net cost will be about $200 million, given that the operation of Fresh Kills has cost about $100 million a year.) Of the total, $238 million is being paid to the companies that have been hired to get rid of the trash, outfits like Waste Management, of Houston; IESI of Haltom City, Tex.; and Solid Waste Transfer and Recycling, of Newark.

The remaining $60 million pays for trash truck fuel bills and the 900 extra city workers needed because of the additional time a typical collection route now takes. The city has added a team of "relay drivers," whose exclusive job is to drive packed trucks back and forth to transfer stations or the incinerators. The prices the city is paying to get rid of its trash range from $54.86 a ton in the Bronx to $81 a ton in Queens.

Benjamin Miller, an environmental consultant and former director of policy planning at the Department of Sanitation, said that the city was beholden to these companies now that it has closed the landfill and agreed not to build any incinerators.

"We don't have any leverage to negotiate with the people who will ultimately dispose of it," said Mr. Miller, author of "Fat of the Land: Garbage in New York, the Last 200 Years" (Four Walls Eight Windows, 2000). "That means the price is going to go up."

The course trash goes after it is delivered by the city to the contractors varies neighborhood by neighborhood, largely at the whim of the contractors. A total of 1,850 tons a day of Manhattan and Queens trash is incinerated at plants in Newark and Hempstead, N.Y.

The final destination of other waste is decided by people like Billy Aduleit, a supervisor with IESI who works out of Brooklyn. On any given day, he and his colleagues review a list of six city-approved landfills in Pennsylvania and determine, among other factors, whether they can get a truck to one of the sites before it closes. So Brooklyn garbage could end up headed to anywhere from Bethlehem, in northeastern Pennsylvania, to Chambersburg, in south central Pennsylvania.

For the residents of those towns, the impact of receiving so much trash has advantages and disadvantages. Charles City County, Va., which on a typical day takes trash from a large swathe of Brooklyn, made $3.4 million last year from the Waste Management landfill, enough to pay for about 40 percent of the county's portion of its government and school system budget.

"Our elementary, middle and high schools are all new and they were built from landfill dollars," said Michael L. Holmes, chairman of the county's Board of Supervisors. "That is a very concrete benefit."

Not all of the 6,920 residents in the rural county are pleased with the deal, however. Bonnie Ware, who lives about two miles from the dump, sees the tractor trailers coming in from New York City on roads near her home. Sometimes, she said, from her front porch she is hit by the putrid odor that rises from the dump. "I'm disgusted with it all," she said.

Dave DiPipi, a former borough councilman in Old Forge, Pa., home to the Alliance Landfill in Lackawanna County, which receives trash from Queens and Brooklyn, said he understood that every city needed a place to dispose of its waste. But he regrets the monument New York City is helping to build in his community. "It may be out of sight, out of mind" for New Yorkers, Mr. DiPipi said. "But in our neck of the woods, we are the ones feeling the impact, we have the hundreds of tractor trailers every day with the New York license plates and a landfill that is tearing apart the side of a mountain."

Ultimately, community activists in both New York City and the towns that host the landfills are looking forward to the switch to a rail and barge system. But some people are worried that the truck system will become deeply entrenched, like the Fresh Kills landfill that opened in 1948 as a temporary solution.

"The last thing we want is for this to become a 50-year interim plan like the Staten Island landfill itself," said Nancy Walby, vice chairwoman of the Brooklyn Solid Waste Advisory Board. "That would be terrible."

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Ford plant shut to disinfect for legionella bacteria

USA Today
03/24/2001 - Updated 10:41 PM ET
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2001-03-24-ford-legionnaires.htm

CLEVELAND (AP) - Ford Motor Co. shut down two sections of an engine plant Saturday because tests found high concentrations of the bacteria that cause Legionnaires' disease.

Tests were conducted at four Ford plants after two workers at a casting plant in the complex died from the disease.

No one has become ill from the legionella bacteria at the Cleveland Engine Plant No. 2, Ford spokeswoman Della DiPietro said.

Production of V-6 engines at the 1,400-employee plant wasn't affected, and only a handful of workers had to be reassigned while two water sources were disinfected, DiPietro said.

The sources weren't identified, but the water-borne bacteria are found in such places as cooling towers or showers.

Legionnaires' disease sickened four workers total at the casting plant, although the plant has not been confirmed as the source.

Ford closed the 2,500-employee casting plant on March 14 for five days to test for the bacteria and disinfect the plant.

Legionnaires' disease is a form of pneumonia spread through inhalation of mist from contaminated water. It does not spread from person to person. It was identified at a 1976 American Legion convention in Philadelphia.

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Britain to slaughter near foot-and-mouth sites

USA Today
03/24/2001 - Updated 10:36 PM ET
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/footandmouth/2001-03-24-footandmouth.htm

LONDON (AP) - Britain will slaughter nearly all livestock on farms adjacent to foot-and-mouth infection sites, agriculture officials announced Saturday, as farmers and politicians struggled to absorb dire predictions about the scope of the outbreak. The agriculture ministry said there had already been some slaughtering of pigs, sheep and cows on farms neighboring those where the virus has been found. The new move now makes that policy official, said Agriculture Minister Nick Brown and Jim Scudamore, the country's chief veterinarian.

The latest step to try to cap the spread of the highly contagious livestock disease came a day after scientists predicted that the number of cases - now more than 520 - could spiral to 4,000 by June.

Meanwhile, hopes of quickly containing the disease's spread in continental Europe waned as the Netherlands confirmed a fourth case in the northeastern province of Gelderland. France - the other nation on the continent hit by the outbreak - banned most exports of meat, milk and other products a day after its second case was found.

It was not immediately clear how many more animals would be slated for destruction under Britain's new "contiguous culling" policy. So far, 525,000 livestock have been culled or are awaiting slaughter.

An Agriculture Ministry spokesman said veterinarians would make sure animals in neighboring farms were at risk before slaughtering them.

The cull is more limited than a larger extension of the slaughter under consideration Friday. The proposal called for all livestock within two miles of infection sites to be destroyed.

That policy is already in place for pigs and sheep in hard-hit areas of northern England and southern Scotland.

The government on Friday sent a muddled message on extending the so-called "firewall" cull.

At first, David King, the government's chief scientist, said Prime Minister Tony Blair had ordered such a move. Later, Brown said it was under consideration, but no decision had been made.

Farmers found the back-and-forth agonizing.

"I have got members living on the edge," said David Hill, National Farmers' Union chairman for Devon, in southwestern England. "They are ringing me in tears."

Blair left a European Union summit in Stockholm on Saturday to meet with farmers in Devon, a foot-and-mouth hotspot. He promised the government would spare no expense in wiping it out.

"This has been a hellish situation," he told reporters. "We will do whatever is necessary to get on top of the disease."

Blair said the government's priority was to decrease to 24 hours the time between diagnosis of infected animals and their slaughter. Brown said that time now averaged 14 hours, though it was longer in hard-hit districts.

A shortage of veterinarians had slowed the pace of killing, but the problem was being resolved, Brown added. Scudamore said about 1,100 vets are at work on foot-and-mouth, including 90 who have come from overseas to help.

Conservative Party leader William Hague accused the Labor government of responding too slowly to the epidemic and failing to take it seriously enough.

"We've watched with increasing exasperation and anger as the government has continually underestimated the scale," Hague told a local Conservative party conference in Coventry, central England, "and has failed to act with anything like the necessary speed or vigor."

Meanwhile, in the Netherlands, some 2,000 calves were slated for destruction on the farm where the country's fourth case of foot-and-mouth was discovered - just a few miles from the other cases.

Authorities suspect animals may be infected at four other sites, and have said the Dutch outbreak, first confirmed Wednesday, may have more than one source.

German inspectors slaughtered some 2,500 pigs on farms near the Dutch border, including some animals imported earlier this month from the afflicted region in the Netherlands. Another 1,500 animals were to be slaughtered in the same area over the weekend. Germany has so far avoided any cases of the disease.

France reported its second case of foot and mouth Friday, and the following day it halted the export of meat, milk and other products that have not undergone a heat treatment to deactivate the virus.

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Farmers Joining State Efforts Against Bioengineered Crops

New York Times
March 24, 2001
By ANDREW POLLACK
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/24/health/24DAKO.html

North Dakota is weighing a bill that would make it the first state to ban planting of a genetically modified crop, reflecting a surge of concern about such crops in legislatures around the country.

The North Dakota bill, which would impose a two-year moratorium on growing genetically modified wheat, is one of more than 40 state bills introduced this year that would regulate biotech crops or the labeling of foods made using genetic engineering.

"You have people at the state level trying to get these things passed because the federal government won't do it," said Andy Zimmerman, who works with the Green Party in New York, where a bill has been introduced to ban the planting of genetically modified crops for five years.

But the North Dakota bill, which has already passed the state's House of Representatives, signals another trend as well - that concern about genetically engineered crops is now coming not only from environmental and consumer groups but from farmers, who have generally supported such crops.

Although virtually all the state bills proposed in past years failed, the North Dakota bill has made headway precisely because its main backers are some of the state's own farmers, not the usual biotechnology opponents. While many of these farmers say they are not in principle opposed to bioengineered foods, they fear losing the ability to export their crops to Europe, Japan and other places where consumers are shunning such food and where governments strictly regulate it.

"We don't want to lose the ability to sell our wheat abroad," said Todd Leake, a farmer from near Grand Forks and one of the strongest champions of the North Dakota measure. "Most of the economy in North Dakota is agriculture," Mr. Leake noted, "and wheat is the mainstay of that."

To some extent, the North Dakota bill is merely symbolic; the moratorium would expire on July 31, 2003, probably before any genetically modified seed would even come to market. And the bill does not mention enforcement.

Still, that has not prevented Monsanto, which is developing genetically modified wheat, and some farm groups opposed to the bill from putting up a stiff fight. So while the bill breezed through the state's House last month by a vote of 68 to 29, its passage in the Senate is far from assured.

In other states as well, biotechnology and food companies, not eager to deal with a patchwork of laws, have lobbied heavily against some bills, say legislators who proposed them. Many other bills, however, fail simply for lack of support.

Many farmers like genetically engineered crops because they contain useful traits, like pest resistance. But critics say that they have not been studied thoroughly enough to rule out health problems like allergies or unanticipated ecological effects, including the killing of monarch butterflies.

The first genetically altered crops - herbicide-resistant soybeans and pest-resistant corn and cotton - were snapped up by farmers. About half of the soybeans and a quarter of the corn grown in the United States last year were genetically modified. And many farmers, including some in North Dakota, are continuing to grow these crops, despite a rise in consumer resistance.

But genetically modified crops like wheat that are not already established are having a harder time catching on because farmers and food companies fear they will not be able to sell them.

Genetically altered potatoes never gained much of a foothold after major potato processors and fast-food companies indicated they would not buy them. Monsanto is discontinuing its potato product. And farmers in the main tobacco-growing states are refusing to grow crops that are genetically modified to reduce nicotine. The farmers and some cigarette companies worry that smokers, particularly in Europe and Japan, might shun modified cigarettes, even as they accept the risk of cancer.

Genetically modified wheat probably will not reach the market before 2003, Monsanto says. The company is developing wheat resistant to its Roundup herbicide, which would allow the herbicide to kill weeds while leaving the wheat unscathed.

Still, wheat millers in Europe and Japan have already warned American industry trade organizations that they would not accept any wheat that has been genetically modified.

Concerns among wheat farmers have increased in the wake of the StarLink corn fiasco, in which genetically modified corn not approved for human consumption found its way into taco shells and other foods, causing recalls and numerous other disruptions to farmers, grain elevators and food companies and leading to a decline in corn exports to Japan.

That is why backers of the North Dakota measure say a moratorium is needed. If even a few farmers were to plant genetically modified wheat, they say, the state's whole crop could become contaminated and exports jeopardized, particularly if competitors like Canada were to grow only nonmodified wheat.

Neal Fisher, administrator of the North Dakota Wheat Commission, a marketing group financed by farmers, said that North Dakota's wheat crop was valued at about $1 billion annually, about half of it exported. The state is the leading producer of hard red spring wheat, a premium crop used in breads and rolls.

There have been 77 bills related to agricultural biotechnology introduced this year in 27 states, said Chip Kunde, vice president for state affairs at the Grocery Manufacturers of America, which represents food companies. The list overstates the amount of legislative activity somewhat because in about 10 cases, the same piece of legislation introduced into two legislative chambers is counted as two separate bills. Nonetheless, the number of bills is up from 50 bills in 16 states last year and only 12 bills in 1999.

Much of the increase, Mr. Kunde said, is from what might be characterized as pro-biotech bills, in that 19 bills in 15 states are intended to penalize protesters who tear up genetically modified crops.

But there are eight bills in six states that would ban or put a moratorium on the planting of genetically engineered crops, compared with seven bills in four states last year, Mr. Kunde said. There are nine bills in seven states that would require foods made from bioengineered crops to be labeled, up from six bills in five states last year.

Other bills deal with seed sales. Still, virtually all the crop moratorium and labeling bills have made little headway. The one bill that did pass last year was in Mississippi, which required more extensive labels on bags of genetically modified seeds. That bill, like the North Dakota one, was backed by farmers.

Douglas Farquhar, a program director at the National Conference of State Legislatures, said the bills have not progressed because the federal government "keeps on saying we've got this covered." He said a state law might be subject to challenge on the grounds that it interfered with interstate commerce.

But that is not clear. States can enact regulations that are stricter than federal ones, unless federal law specifically prohibits them, Mr. Kunde said. He said he was not aware of any pre-emptive federal rule related to bioengineered crops.

The North Dakota bill, introduced by Representative Phillip Mueller, a wheat farmer himself, allows a committee of state officials and farm representatives to lift the ban earlier if Canada approves genetically engineered wheat. Research would be exempt from the ban.

In lobbying against the bill, Monsanto has told legislators that a moratorium by a major wheat-growing state would discourage the company from doing research on improved wheat, particularly for varieties grown in North Dakota.

Mark Buckingham, a Monsanto spokesman, said a moratorium was not needed because the company was willing to work with farmers to resolve their concerns. "It is absolutely not in our intentions to press forward with a product until it's wanted," he said.

A similar bill proposing a two-year moratorium on genetically modified wheat appears to have died in Montana. The North Dakota bill is now before the Senate Agriculture Committee. Terry Wanzek, a Republican and the chairman of the committee, said he had sensed some momentum to defeat the bill and instead require a study of the issues.

"A lot of farmers are for the bill and a lot of farmers are against it," said Mr. Wanzek, another farmer. "It's not an easy position to be in the middle of right now."

---

AMOCO RESISTS RESOLUTION

New York Times
March 24, 2001
World Business Briefing
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/24/business/24FOBR.html

BP Amoco has excluded from its April 19 annual meeting a resolution asking the company to reconsider drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge of Alaska. The resolution was sponsored by a group of American and British investors, some of whom hold their shares in the form of depository receipts. BP Amoco rebuffed a similar move a few weeks ago, arguing that foreign investors who hold their stock in the form of depository receipts could not initiate shareholder resolutions. The shareholders resubmitted the resolution March 8, believing they had recruited the required amount of registered holders of common stock. But a BP Amoco spokeswoman said the group did not meet its guidelines. Suzanne Kapner (NYT)

-------- police

Compensating Abner Louima

New York Times
March 24, 2001
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/24/opinion/24SAT2.html

New York City and its police union have reached a tentative agreement to pay $8.6 million to Abner Louima, the Haitian immigrant who was tortured by a white police officer in a Brooklyn precinct bathroom in 1997. Mr. Louima clearly deserves financial compensation for an unspeakable act of brutality. But his agony also requires another response: a firm commitment by the city to pursue recent reforms designed to improve the way the police treats the city's minorities. These reforms are the most important civic legacy of Mr. Louima's suffering.

Mr. Louima was brutalized by Justin Volpe, the policeman sentenced to 30 years in prison for ramming a stick into Mr. Louima's rectum. One other officer was convicted of holding Mr. Louima down, and four others were convicted for covering up the illegal and inhuman act.

The case became more than another instance of a rogue cop on the loose. It became a dramatic example of how the city's protectors protect one another. But it took other scandals to persuade the city to conduct a thorough examination of the police force and its procedures. In particular, it required the Diallo case. A year and a half after the Louima incident, Amadou Diallo, an unarmed West African, was gunned down by 41 bullets fired by plainclothes policemen. With that killing, investigators from the city, state and federal government realized that the department's stop-and-frisk procedures had been disproportionately aimed at black and Hispanic minorities, and that in some cases they had spun out of control.

Useful reforms followed, including more authority and independence for the Civilian Complaint Review Board to investigate charges against the police. Sensitivity training was expanded across the force.

Perhaps most important, Police Commissioner Bernard Kerik has begun a Comstat-style process of dealing with complaints. Under Comstat, borough and precinct commanders are forced to explain crime rates and provide detailed strategies for reducing them. They will now have to confront complaints about officers in the same rigorous way. Ideally, that will allow officers to detect and stop patterns of abuse.

Some critics of the police force have suggested that these reforms are temporary responses, arising less from public pressure than from fear that unless changes are made, the federal government will be asked to intervene and take an oversight role in the department. But so far Mr. Kerik has shown every indication that he is a strong and committed leader determined to make a better name for himself and his department. Maintaining a low crime rate will, of course, help him achieve those goals. But it will be no less important to assure minority New Yorkers that they will be treated with respect by his officers. Nurturing that sensitivity in a tough police culture should be counted as a large part of Mr. Louima's compensation.

-------- spying

Moscow plans spy revenge

Australin News Network
Damon Johnston, in Washington
24mar01
http://news.com.au/common/story_page/0,4057,1828494^401,00.html

RUSSIA is set to expel up to 50 US diplomats in retaliation to Washington's expulsion of Russian diplomats from the US as relations between the nations deteriorate over charges and counter-charges of spying.

In another development yesterday, China said an officer in the People's Liberation Army had not returned from a foreign trip, amid reports a top colonel had defected to the US.

A Washington Post report from Beijing quoted Chinese sources as saying the colonel had been a member of a PLA department which managed relations with the US military.

He is believed to have defected in December or January while he was visiting Canada and the US as part of a Chinese delegation.

Russian intelligence officials are vowing to match the expulsion of 50 diplomatic staff ordered by US Secretary of State Colin Powell on Wednesday.

"We will easily find US diplomats to be expelled in a more painful form to the US than it was in our case," security council chief Sergei Ivanov said.

"We have time to think, to carefully pick from among more than 1000 US diplomats in Russia, to choose those 46 who are most precious to the Americans."

Russia's Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov, who held tense telephone talks with Mr Powell yesterday, denied US claims the diplomats were spies.

"Naturally, as it has before, Russia will firmly and steadfastly defend its national interests and will adequately respond to this unfriendly step by the US," Mr Ivanov said.

"I think that you won't have to wait long for our response.

"At the same time, the Russian leadership assumes that in Washington, the policy and logic of those who try to push mankind and the US (back) into the epoch of the Cold War and confrontation won't prevail."

Mr Powell informed Russia's ambassador on Wednesday that four diplomats would have to leave America within 10 days and the other 46 by July 1.

US intelligence chiefs said the four prime targets of the expulsion order were directly linked to accused FBI spy Robert Hanssen, who traded secrets for cash and diamonds.

Mr Powell said the four Russians were "directly implicated" in the Hanssen spy case.

"I made it clear to the ambassador the actions the Russian Government needs to take to address our longstanding concerns about the level of their intelligence presence in the US," he said.

But in a move to head off any revenge expulsion, Mr Powell said the US was still interested in retaining relations with Russia.

President George W. Bush said he would raise the matter with Russian President Vladimir Putin when the two leaders meet in July.

"I was presented with the facts, I made the decision," he said. "It was the right thing to do. Having said that, I believe that we will have a good working relationship with Russians."

Additional reporting by AFP

---

Chinese military official defects to U.S.

Philadelphia Inquirer
Saturday, March 24, 2001
News in Brief In the Nation
http://inq.philly.com/content/inquirer/2001/03/24/national/BITS24.htm

A senior colonel in China's People's Liberation Army defected to the United States at the end of last year while visiting as part of a delegation of Chinese officers, U.S. sources said yesterday in Washington. The defection would constitute one of the most serious intelligence setbacks for China in years.

---

C.I.A. Had Ability to Plant Bay of Pigs News, Document Shows

New York Times
March 24, 2001
By TIM WEINER
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/24/world/24CUBA.html

HAVANA, March 23 - The Central Intelligence Agency had a secret weapon at the Bay of Pigs, the ability to plant propaganda directly on international news wire services, according to a newly declassified C.I.A. document.

The document, a "propaganda plan" issued shortly before the invasion in April 1961, said the agency's headquarters had "the capability of placing items directly on the wire service tickers" as part of its "regular propaganda apparatus."

It has been known since the 1970's that in the cold war the C.I.A. had a handful of "assets," or agents, in place at some news organizations like The Associated Press and United Press International, particularly in foreign bureaus. The newly declassified document says flatly that the intelligence agency could essentially dictate articles and have them sent around the world.

The document, which was made public at an international conference on the 40th anniversary of the Bay of Pigs here, said the "propaganda apparatus" was not limited to the power to plant articles "throughout the hemisphere through C.I.A. assets" and "through Miami exile contacts with Florida papers." It also said the agency could "place specific messages and propaganda lines" on the wire services during and after the invasion.

"This will be enormously important in influencing the actions of Cuban government leaders and stimulating sympathetic support of the patriotic rebellion from other countries," the document said.

It added, "One report on United Press International, for example, will be repeated on nearly every radio station and most of the newspapers in the Caribbean area."

Soon after the disclosures, from 1977, U.P.I. said it was satisfied that none of its current employees were involved in any way with the C.I.A., but that it was unable to say what might have occurred in the past. An A.P. executive said then that internal investigations had found that none of its staffers had been involved with the C.I.A.

The intelligence agency said after the disclosures that it would not manipulate the American news media, except in the most dire national emergencies, and it reaffirmed that policy several times in the 90's.

The document was declassified under the Freedom of Information Act after repeated efforts by Jon Elliston, a journalist and the author of "Psywar on Cuba: The Declassified History of U.S. Anti-Castro Propaganda," published by the Ocean Press in 1999. Mr. Elliston made it available at the meeting today, where thousands of documents from the military, intelligence and foreign policy files of the United States, Cuba and other nations were being analyzed and discussed by conferees, including President Fidel Castro, ex- C.I.A. officers and Bay of Pigs veterans.

Many, if not most, of the C.I.A. radio and print propaganda operations against Cuba petered out in the 1960's, according to Mr. Elliston's book, which is largely based on declassified documents.

At least one operation was revived by the Reagan administration in 1985, Radio Caiman, a clandestine station aimed at young Cubans.

In late 1994, the Clinton administration turned off Radio Caiman and several other C.I.A. operations aimed at Cuba, administration officials said at that time.

---

Russia Expels 4 Americans and Vows 'Other Measures'

New York Times
March 24, 2001
By PATRICK E. TYLER
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/24/world/24RUSS.html

MOSCOW, March 23 - Russia said today that it was expelling four United States diplomats for "activities incompatible with their status," the diplomatic phrase for espionage, and added that it would take "other measures to halt the unlawful activities" of official American representatives, but did not elaborate.

In a formal statement read to John Ordway, the second-ranking American diplomat in Moscow, a Foreign Ministry official did not identify the diplomats to be expelled in the next few days and did not state that Russia would fully retaliate for the Bush administration's decision to expel a total of 50 Russian diplomats between now and July.

But State Department officials in Washington said that based on the public remarks of senior Russian officials, they expected Moscow to make a fully proportional response by expelling 46 more Americans.

Both President Bush and Secretary of State Colin L. Powell publicly defended the decision to confront Moscow over what officials consider its robust level of espionage a decade after the end of the cold war. In a speech to the National Newspaper Association, General Powell seemed at pains to say the Bush administration was not motivated by a desire to poke the Russians in the eye.

Mr. Bush, speaking with reporters in Portland, Me., indicated that he still believed that the United States could have good relations with Russia. He said that even though he would take a firm position with Russia's president, Vladimir V. Putin, "that doesn't preclude the ability for Mr. Putin and me to meet at some point in time and have good, honest discussion about common interests, areas where we can work together, and be able to discuss our disagreements in an open and honest way."

At the White House, Mr. Bush's spokesman, Ari Fleischer said, "The president considers the matter closed," though it appeared this was hardly the case as both governments prepared for an exodus of diplomats and their families. At the same time, European governments were trying to glean how this cold war-style flare-up was going to affect a complex agenda of security issues festering from the Balkans to Baghdad.

Though Mr. Bush and General Powell said they had acted prudently, the contrast in approaches to Russia was apparent today as European leaders, meeting in Stockholm, invited Mr. Putin to join them in discussions aimed at deepening Russia's integration in Europe.

Still, in this forum, Mr. Putin also played down the seriousness of the espionage dispute, saying he did not think that it would create serious tensions between the two nations. "I do not believe this will have major consequences," he said.

But back in Moscow, senior officials of his government continued to warn that Russia would respond in kind to the expulsion of its diplomats.

Sergei Yastrzhembsky, Mr. Putin's communications director, told reporters here that "however many" diplomats were expelled from the United States, the same number "will be expelled from Russia." And at the Foreign Ministry, a spokesman, Aleksandr Yakovenko, told the Interfax news agency that Russia's response to the expulsions would be "proportional and equivalent."

Sergei B. Ivanov, secretary of Russia's national security council, indicated on Thursday that Moscow would match Washington, spy for spy, in the expulsions, saying during a visit to Warsaw, "We have time to think, to carefully pick from among more than 1,000 U.S. diplomats in Russia, to chose those 46 who are most precious to the Americans."

Today, Mr. Ivanov said intelligence cooperation between the Central Intelligence Agency and Russia's security services to combat terrorism would be adversely affected by the dispute. Speaking at a news conference in Washington, he also objected to the tendency in Washington to portray Russia as a focus of evil, trading in missiles and nuclear weapons right and left.

The Bush administration's action also prompted a blustery reaction from prominent political figures here whose views Mr. Putin must take into account.

Former Prime Minister Yevgeny M. Primakov, who in 1999 was considered a more likely successor to President Boris N. Yeltsin than the unknown Mr. Putin, said today in Parliament that Mr. Putin was facing an attempt by the Bush administration to downgrade Russia's position in international affairs.

"They cannot do without Russia," Mr. Primakov said. "This is why it is impermissible to talk to us as if we were a Latin American country, and not even a Latin American country will tolerate such a tone, as if we were a banana republic. We can stand for our national interests."

One complication for the United States in the spy dispute was that the C.I.A. does not have 46 intelligence officers stationed in Russia, as a result of reductions and the spreading out of C.I.A. resources among the embassies that have been opened in the newly independent states of the former Soviet Union, officials said.

This raised the question of whether Moscow, if it decided to retaliate fully, would expel American military attachés, F.B.I. and Justice Department employees and others with diplomatic credentials. A total of 27 agencies are represented in the American Embassy here to work on aid projects, cooperative law enforcement ventures, antiterrorism projects and scientific and cultural exchanges.

The spy confrontation began this week when the Bush administration said it was compelled to respond to the arrest last month of a senior F.B.I. counterintelligence officer, Robert Philip Hanssen, accused of passing a wealth of top-secret information to Moscow over 15 years. The first four Russian diplomats expelled were involved in handling Mr. Hanssen's espionage activities.

In addition, however, American officials said they were addressing a longstanding grievance that Russia's foreign intelligence service had steadily increased its presence in the United States despite private post- cold-war agreements to reduce the numbers of spies working under diplomatic cover.


Skirmishing Over Spies

International Herald Tribune
Saturday, March 24, 2001
THE NEW YORK TIMES
http://www.iht.com/articles/14505.htm

As the United States and Russia embark on a series of retaliatory diplomatic expulsions initiated by the Robert Hanssen spy affair, the two countries should not let the skirmishing escalate into a diplomatic donnybrook. American and Russian leaders face a host of important security, political and economic issues. An espionage case, however serious, ought not to shape relations between Washington and Moscow.

Expelling foreign diplomats in retaliation for espionage cases is a well-established international ritual. So it was no surprise that the Bush administration responded to last month's arrest of Mr. Hanssen, an FBI spy hunter charged with selling American secrets to Moscow, by ejecting a number of Russian diplomats. What was unusual was the scope of the American retaliation. In all, 50 Russians have been told to leave, the largest number since former President Ronald Reagan expelled 80 Soviet diplomats in 1986. Moscow has already signaled that it will respond with expulsions of American diplomats from Russia.

Expulsions on this scale could put an early chill into relations with Moscow. Mr. Reagan's 1986 expulsions temporarily complicated diplomacy with the Soviet Union. But that episode was overtaken by the arms control initiatives of the Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, and Mr. Reagan's positive responses. It was encouraging to hear President George W. Bush declare that he still sought "good relations" with Russia.

There is a clear rationale for narrowly targeted diplomatic expulsions. Americans suspected of spying, like Mr. Hanssen, can be arrested. But their foreign controllers are usually intelligence agents working under diplomatic cover. The standard recourse is to declare these individuals persona non grata and demand their departure.

These 50 expulsions send a strong message. Given the damage alleged to have been done by Mr. Hanssen, including the betrayal of Russians who were spying for the United States, a vigorous response was justified. He is accused of compromising some of Washington's most sensitive spy operations. But after Moscow inevitably responds with its own expulsions, it will be time to move on.

Before Mr. Bush meets President Vladimir Putin of Russia in July, the two need to turn their attention to other pressing issues. These include America's missile defense plans, the need for both sides to make additional cuts in their nuclear arsenals and the cooperative programs the two countries have developed to dismantle decommissioned Russian nuclear weapons left over from the Cold War. New measures should be taken to help Moscow safeguard its nuclear materials from theft. Russia's plans to sell conventional arms to Iran must also be addressed, as must be its cooperation with Tehran in the construction of nuclear reactors in ways that could speed the Iranian development of nuclear weapons.

With Mr. Putin giving Russian foreign policy a more nationalist edge, there is already a growing possibility that relations between Moscow and Washington will become more quarrelsome. But it would be unfortunate if the Hanssen case set the tone for Mr. Bush's dealings with Mr. Putin.

---

News Analysis: U.S. Policy on Russia - A Tougher Stance

New York Times
March 24, 2001
By JANE PERLEZ
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/24/world/24DIPL.html

WASHINGTON, March 23 - The Bush administration has not articulated a broad policy toward Russia, but in thoughts and deeds it has taken a sharp departure from the engagement policies of its predecessor, moving toward isolating Russia and its president, Vladimir V. Putin.

In its first two months, despite a lack of crises before this week's tit- for-tat spy expulsions, the administration has shown apparent disdain for Russia by insisting that it will move ahead on missile defense regardless of Moscow's objections, by rebuffing the suggestion of a summit meeting and showing an inclination to downgrade the status of Russia as a world power.

Gone are the Clinton administration's attempts to transform Russia into a modern state and its "win- win" view of the Washington-Moscow relationship.

Instead, as relations appear to reach their lowest ebb since the end of the cold war, the Bush foreign policy team has designated Russia as a damaging proliferator of weapons, accusing it of selling arms for profit to countries like Iran while squandering billions of dollars of Western aid.

The administration opposes more aid to Russia through the international financial institutions and has asked for a 12 percent cut in American funds used to help Russia dismantle its rusting nuclear weapons.

"The president has not yet articulated a policy toward Russia - and their grace period is running out - but they clearly want to be less ambitious with Russia," said Lee Hamilton, the president of the Woodrow Wilson Center. "The rhetoric level has clearly been ratcheted up. It looks as though the policy will change substantively."

Russia is not alone in facing this tougher stance from President Bush.

The Bush White House has made clear that it will move ahead with arms sales to Taiwan, which the Clinton administration deferred last year and which China has stressed could harm relations between Beijing and Washington.

Rarely, if ever, during the Clinton era were there such combative statements toward Russia as those expressed by Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, and his deputy, Paul D. Wolfowitz, in an interview last week with the London newspaper The Sunday Telegraph.

Of the Russians, Mr. Wolfowitz said: "These people seem to be willing to sell anything to anyone for money. It recalls Lenin's phrase that the capitalists will sell the very rope from which we will hang them."

Today, in a speech to the National Newspaper Association Government Affairs Conference, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell described the expulsions as a "stand-alone problem," and said he looked forward to dealing with Russia on a range of issues.

The Bush administration is choosing to take a more bellicose approach as the gap between Russia and the United States in power and wealth widens. "American and Russian elites live in radically different worlds, and they are intent on building radically different ones over the next decade and beyond," said Thomas E. Graham Jr., a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, who formerly served as a diplomat in the embassy in Moscow.

Russia, he said, is a state in decline. "It is mired in self-doubt and an identity crisis," he said. "It fears it is being marginalized, and yet it aspires to be a world leader. This asymmetry precludes a wide-ranging, substantive relationship of equals, corrupts communications, and fuels suspicions."

But in what the Russians viewed as provocative, the Bush administration is pressing ahead with a meeting between a ranking official in the State Department on Russia policy, John Beyrle, and Ilyas Akhmadov, the foreign minister of the separatist Chechen leadership against which Moscow has waged a 17-month-old military campaign.

The Russian government has protested strongly in advance about the meeting. Apparently in some deference to those objections, the two officials are scheduled to meet outside the State Department building on Tuesday. But Mr. Beyrle is of considerably higher rank than the Russia desk officer whom the Clinton administration sent to meet with Mr. Akhmadov last year.

In a stylistic touch that said much about Russia's position in the universe of the Bush administration, Mr. Rumsfeld delivered a speech on missile defense in Germany last month to defense specialists but failed to mention Russia and left before the Russian delegate, Sergei B. Ivanov, spoke.

Like the Clinton administration, but more clearly and aggressively, the Bush foreign policy advisers have said they plan to expand NATO, a move that Russia believes is intended to belittle and contain it.

Many of the senior Bush appointees - from Mr. Wolfowitz to Stephen J. Hadley, the deputy national security adviser - were board members of the United States Committee on NATO, a group dedicated to the expansion of the alliance perhaps as far as the Baltics.

"The administration has made clear that the Baltics will be considered in the same way as the other new democracies and that Russia will have to get used to the idea that the inclusion of these democracies in NATO is desirable and inevitable," said Bruce Jackson, a Republican, and the president of the Committee on NATO.

---

Ex-Wife of Cuban Spy Is Awarded $20 Million

New York Times
March 24, 2001
National News Briefs
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/24/national/24NATI.html

MIAMI, March 23 (AP) - A woman who sued Cuba after she unwittingly married a Cuban spy was awarded $20 million in punitive damages today.

Invoking a federal antiterrorism law, Judge Alan Postman of Circuit Court ordered the amount paid to the woman, Ana Margarita Martinez, in addition to the $7.1 million in compensatory damages awarded to her earlier this month. The Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 allows courts to compensate victims of terrorism.

Ms. Martinez, 40, will try to collect the money from Cuban assets frozen in the United States.

Ms. Martinez sued in 1999, claiming that she had been used as a political pawn by Juan Pablo Roque, her husband, and by his employer, the Cuban government. She also had the marriage annulled.

---

Defection of Senior Chinese Officer Is Confirmed

New York Times
March 24, 2001
By JAMES RISEN
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/24/world/24DEFE.html

WASHINGTON, March 23 - A senior Chinese Army officer defected while visiting the United States in December, American officials said today. The officer reportedly specializes in American issues and is an expert on disarmament for the Chinese general staff.

The officer, Xu Junping, a senior colonel in the Chinese People's Liberation Army, defected while in New York, officials said.

The defection, first reported in the Taiwanese press, occurs as the Bush administration is broadly reassessing its policy toward China, especially on strategic issues like how Mr. Bush's commitment to a missile-defense program would affect relations. Colonel Xu's background would appear to make him a valuable source on how China is responding to American strategic policies.

The news of the defection arrives in the midst of an increasingly visible espionage battle between Washington and Moscow, after the arrest last month of Robert Philip Hanssen, a Federal Bureau of Investigation agent who has been charged with spying for Russia.

The Chinese Foreign Ministry acknowledged today Colonel Xu's defection, saying Beijing was investigating his disappearance. A Reuters dispatch from Beijing quoted the Foreign Ministry as saying, "An investigation is being conducted on a People's Liberation Army officer who left China and did not return."

Secretary of State Colin L. Powell acknowledged the case today. General Powell said the Chinese asked the United States in December to locate the officer. "We located that individual, made sure that the person was in good health, made the Chinese aware of his presence, and that's as far as I'd like to go on it," he said.

General Powell said the defection did not arise in his meeting this week with Deputy Prime Minister Qian Qichen, who is visiting Washington.

Separately in a speech here today, Mr. Qian warned the United States that selling Aegis radar systems to Taiwan could prompt a crisis. Republicans have been seeking the sale.

The Chinese defection follows the news of the defections of at least two Russian intelligence officers to the West and suggests that business is booming for the C.I.A.'s defector resettlement operation.

One defector was Sergei Tretyakov, a diplomat in New York and a senior aide to the ambassador at the United Nations, Sergey Lavrov. United States officials said Mr. Tretyakov was an officer in the Russian intelligence service, the S.V.R. Another intelligence officer defected last year in Canada, officials said.

American officials said a Russian agent, who has since resettled in the United States, provided evidence that pointed to Mr. Hanssen. The officials said that late last year an agent handed over a plastic bag that was in the K.G.B. file on the espionage case that reportedly involves Mr. Hanssen. The bag had supposedly been used to package documents that he handed over to the Russians, American officials said.

After the Russian handed over the bag, the F.B.I. found fingerprints that they say identified Mr. Hanssen.

--------

FBI to give polygraphs to 500 employees

USA Today
03/24/2001 - Updated 10:36 AM ET
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washdc/2001-03-24-fbi.htm

WASHINGTON (AP) - Nearly 500 FBI employees will be ordered to take lie detector tests next week, as a result of the arrest of alleged spy Robert Hanssen, The Washington Post reported Saturday.

FBI Director Louis Freeh also wrote a memo ordering reviews of all sensitive investigations to determine if agents have accessed information outside their normal duties, the report said.

The FBI has been criticized in the wake of the spy scandal, with some politicians suggesting Hanssen would have been caught sooner if he had been forced to take a lie detector test.

Among those to be tested next week are 150 top managers at FBI headquarters in Washington and special agents in charge of their departments.

The tests will be "counterintelligence focused," the memo said.

Refusing to take the test could mean a job transfer, loss of security clearance or disciplinary action, the Post reported.

"Everybody understands that we have no choice," FBI spokesman John Collingwood told the Post. "No one wants to do anything that indicates mistrust in employees, but everybody recognizes that we had a serious breach here. We have to make sure it doesn't happen again."

People applying for jobs at the FBI have been required to take lie detector tests since 1994.

--------

Skirmishing Over Spies

International Herald Tribune
Saturday, March 24, 2001
THE NEW YORK TIMES
http://www.iht.com/articles/14505.htm

As the United States and Russia embark on a series of retaliatory diplomatic expulsions initiated by the Robert Hanssen spy affair, the two countries should not let the skirmishing escalate into a diplomatic donnybrook. American and Russian leaders face a host of important security, political and economic issues. An espionage case, however serious, ought not to shape relations between Washington and Moscow.

Expelling foreign diplomats in retaliation for espionage cases is a well-established international ritual. So it was no surprise that the Bush administration responded to last month's arrest of Mr. Hanssen, an FBI spy hunter charged with selling American secrets to Moscow, by ejecting a number of Russian diplomats. What was unusual was the scope of the American retaliation. In all, 50 Russians have been told to leave, the largest number since former President Ronald Reagan expelled 80 Soviet diplomats in 1986. Moscow has already signaled that it will respond with expulsions of American diplomats from Russia.

Expulsions on this scale could put an early chill into relations with Moscow. Mr. Reagan's 1986 expulsions temporarily complicated diplomacy with the Soviet Union. But that episode was overtaken by the arms control initiatives of the Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, and Mr. Reagan's positive responses. It was encouraging to hear President George W. Bush declare that he still sought "good relations" with Russia.

There is a clear rationale for narrowly targeted diplomatic expulsions. Americans suspected of spying, like Mr. Hanssen, can be arrested. But their foreign controllers are usually intelligence agents working under diplomatic cover. The standard recourse is to declare these individuals persona non grata and demand their departure.

These 50 expulsions send a strong message. Given the damage alleged to have been done by Mr. Hanssen, including the betrayal of Russians who were spying for the United States, a vigorous response was justified. He is accused of compromising some of Washington's most sensitive spy operations. But after Moscow inevitably responds with its own expulsions, it will be time to move on.

Before Mr. Bush meets President Vladimir Putin of Russia in July, the two need to turn their attention to other pressing issues. These include America's missile defense plans, the need for both sides to make additional cuts in their nuclear arsenals and the cooperative programs the two countries have developed to dismantle decommissioned Russian nuclear weapons left over from the Cold War. New measures should be taken to help Moscow safeguard its nuclear materials from theft. Russia's plans to sell conventional arms to Iran must also be addressed, as must be its cooperation with Tehran in the construction of nuclear reactors in ways that could speed the Iranian development of nuclear weapons.

With Mr. Putin giving Russian foreign policy a more nationalist edge, there is already a growing possibility that relations between Moscow and Washington will become more quarrelsome. But it would be unfortunate if the Hanssen case set the tone for Mr. Bush's dealings with Mr. Putin.

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SIGNATURES NEEDED FOR NO NUKE POWER AS SUSTAINABLE ENERGY SOURCE

From: "Bill Smirnow" <smirnowb@ix.netcom.com>
Sun, 24 Mar 2001

Please sign your GROUP on at the URL below and e-mail to: wiseamster@antenna.nl NOT TO ME! Thanks.

Nukes Sustainable? No Way!

From 16-27 April 2001 the United Nations Commission on Sustainable Development (CSD) will hold its Ninth Session (CSD 9) in New York. The Commission was established in 1992 to ensure effective follow-up of the Rio Earth Summit held that year. One of CSD's tasks is to elaborate policy guidance and options for future activities to follow up the Rio Earth Summit and achieve sustainable development.

Energy is one of the issues on the agenda for CSD 9. As the Commission puts it: 'The challenge is how to meet the growing demand for energy while mitigating the impact of energy supply and use on the environment and thus guarantee the long term quality of our habitat'

However, it seems that the Commission is of the opinion that nuclear energy could be part of a sustainable future. As we all know, nuclear energy involves enormous pollution, throughout its production cycle from uranium mining and enrichment, through the operation of nuclear power plants to the disposal of radioactive waste. Nuclear energy is definitely not sustainable, and the UN Commission on Sustainable Development should be the last to pretend that it is. Any indications of support for nuclear technologies by the Commission on Sustainable Development will be used by the nuclear industry to create an image of itself being clean, safe, and a legitimate tool to combat climate change.

Wise Amsterdam therefore urges all organisations active in development, environmental, disarmament and human rights issues to sign the petition addressing CSD. The petition demands that Commission ensures that any indications of support for nuclear energy are excluded from CSD debates, exhibitions and other activities.

PLEASE SIGN OUR PETITION AT: www.antenna.nl/wise/csd

NB. In order to have the biggest possible impact the petition is open for endorsement by organisation, not individuals. Get your organsitation to sign on as well!

Petition Against the Support of Nuclear Technologies

TO THE CHAIR AND MEMBER STATES OF THE U.N. COMMISSION ON SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT

Dear Sirs and Madams,

We, the undersigned NGOs, active in environment, development, disarmament and human rights issues, express our deepest regret and extreme concern that nuclear energy has been included in the draft agenda of the ninth session of the U.N. Commission on Sustainable Development, and that this dangerous and unsustainable technology might, in effect, be given a fresh start by the actions of the CSD.

We consider any focus which seems to validate nuclear energy to be against both the spirit of Agenda 21 and the mandate of the CSD. Moreover, it is contrary to the interests of developing countries which require sustainable, mostly decentralized, low-cost energy systems, adapted both to their needs and the availability of their capital, labor, and natural resources. Nuclear power will not fulfill those requirements.

Nuclear power is not a clean, safe or sustainable energy source. Worldwide, nuclear power has been plagued by high cost, erratic performance, endemic technical problems, the risk of catastrophic accidents, and environmental problems such as routine radiation releases, radioactive waste management and the high cost of decommissioning.

However, financially-pressed nuclear vendors are eyeing the developing world as a 'last gasp' market for their products, and are stepping up their lobbying efforts at U.N. conferences, including the Climate Change negotiations and the CSD. Over the past decade in most countries the overwhelming momentum of energy policy has moved towards phasing out, or not developing nuclear energy in the first place. Virtually all countries agreed in November at The Hague, during the discussions on the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (FCCC), not to include nuclear energy in projects of the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) that will be established under the Kyoto Protocol.

At their last meeting, the governments of the G8 stated their commitment to "encourage and facilitate investment in the development and use of sustainable energy, underpinned by enabling domestic environments, (which) will assist in mitigating the problems of climate change and air pollution. To this end, the increased use of renewable energy sources in particular will improve the quality of life, especially in developing countries."

Non-G8 countries are taking similar positions. Turkey cancelled plans for a nuclear plant at Akkuyu, with its Prime Minister stating that, "the world is abandoning nuclear power." The countries of AOSIS (the Alliance of Small Island States) have "reaffirmed (their) position that nuclear energy should not be included in the CDM". (Apia, August 2000). And, a group of twelve Latin American nations made clear, in discussions on the Convention, that they "do not accept the use of nuclear power as an energy source alternative in project-based activities." (FCCC/SB/2000/4, 1 August, 2000)

Therefore, we urge you to preserve the integrity of the CSD process by ensuring that any indications of support for non-sustainable energy technologies, particularly nuclear energy, are excluded from CSD 9 debates, exhibitions and other activities. The CSD should focus on promoting clean, secure and sustainable forms of energy for the welfare of present and future generations, as per the aim of Agenda 21.

To sign on, go to http:// www.antenna.nl/wise/csd/ http://www.antenna.nl/wise/csd

Here you will also find the spanish, french, english, german, italian and dutch translations of the petition.

---

nuclear links

From: "mitzi" <upthesun@cshore.com>
Date: Sat, 24 Mar 2001

Dear friends; This is to announce that Dr. Chris Busby, author of Wings of Death; Nuclear Pollution and Human Health and the recent paper on DU presented to the Royal Academy of the UK (and at CADU) will testify at the Connecticut Superior Court Hearing,( 10AM Tues. March 27 95 Washington St. Hartford, Ct.). The case is CAM (Coalition Against Millstone) vs the DEP (Ct. Dept. of Environmental Protection - sic!). Our suit is to prevent the transfer to Dominion Nuclear Ct., the prospective new owner of Northeast Utilities nuclear plants, of an illegally-continued (over years) EMERGENCY permit allowing the Millstone Nuclear Station to violate the Clean Water Act by continuing the chemical, heavy metal and radioactive contamination of Long Island Sound. Our goal is to halt the sale of these aging, leaking nukes to the limited liability company and to shut them down instead. By its own admission, the DEP has said these plants could not operate without violating the Clean Water Act. We are hoping to have as many citizens present at the hearing as can fit into the courtroom to learn the issues and to hear the expert testimony of prominent scientists , especially Dr. Busby. Mitzi Bowman, Don't Waste Ct. - member of Ct. Coalition Against Millstone and MTP

In a message dated 3/24/01 12:53:48 AM Eastern Standard Time, donmoniak@earthlink.net writes:

1. Nuclear Weapon Accident Response Procedures (NARP) Manual December 1999. http://www.dtra.mil/cs/cs_narp.html

Very interesting factsheets on Pu and Uranium toxicity on about page 300.

2. Armed Forces Radiobiology Research Institute (AFRRI) http://www.afrri.usuhs.mil/

Medical Management of Radiological Casualties Handbook, 1st Edition. 1999. http://www.afrri.usuhs.mil/www/outreach/pdf/radiologicalhandbooksp99-2.pdf

A chilling, methodical, and clinical review of the effects of large doses of radiation. In all the debate over low level doses, sometimes we forget that high level doses are still possible.

Doctors can't rely upon propaganda to treat irradiated victims. Find out how military intends to treat irradiated servicemen and women; and what the defense department is worried about: nuclear reactors as military targets, cesium137 sources as radiological dispersion devices. Also, some very interesting insights on depleted uranium.

Be sure to check out "products" for more DU info.

3. Russian American Nuclear Security Advisory Council. http://www.ransac.org

Many good reports, news listserve, etc. with Bill Hoehn as one of main honchos.

I'm sure that "ransac" was an unintentional acronym.

---

Fighting for Their Smoking Rights
Rally in New York to Protest Proposed Ban

ABC News
01/03/24
By Rose Palazzolo ABCNews.com
http://www.abcnews.go.com/sections/living/DailyNews/smokerrally010323.html

March 24 - Holding a cigarette, taking slow, languorous drags and exhaling puffs of smoke above a just-devoured plate of food in a favored restaurant is comforting and downright essential to a lot of people and, some say, especially to New Yorkers.

That is why a group of smokers, bar and restaurant owners are descended on New York's City Hall Saturday to protest a proposal by City Council Speaker and rumored mayoral candidate Peter Vallone that would further limit smoking in restaurants throughout the city.

Scott LoBaido, an artist from Staten Island, who gained notoriety for hurling fists full of manure at the Brooklyn Museum to protest an exhibition by cutting-edge British artists that includes a dung-spattered Virgin Mary, is leading the protest.

LoBaido first told the media 10,000 would show up for the rally that starts at the South Ferry Terminal and heads a few blocks to Whitehall Street and City Hall in downtown Manhattan.

But the number dwindled to "somewhere between 2,000 and 10,000," according to LoBaido, who did procure a permit from the City Parks Department and the First Precinct for the rally. But according to police, only 25 people showed up.

"Speakeasies are going to come back to New York again," professed LoBaido, referring to places operating illegally where patrons can enter with a secret password. "If no one can smoke anywhere in New York, it will be time for the speakeasy."

What Will Become of New York's Tourism Industry?

One Soho restaurant owner, who did not want to reveal his name, said he ignores the Smoke-Free Air Act and does not have a restricted smoking area in his establishment.

"A lot of my customers are French or sophisticated and they want to smoke after a good meal and if I don't let them they won't come here," he said. "I have only paid the fine a few times."

He said he was planning to stop by the rally Saturday.

As for his part, Vallone said that the new law is "critical to protecting employees of establishments where smoking is permissible and that the protestors are misguided in their fury over the proposal."

"More people are visiting New York, eating out more often and paying higher checks than in the city's history," Vallone said. "Make no mistake: the Smoke-Free Air Act has made New York City an even better place to visit and live."

The proposal has already had one public hearing and Vallone said he expects to have at least two more. The expansion of the smoking ban would not allow smoking in all restaurants where food is 40 percent of the revenue of the business, regardless of seat number. It would also tighten restrictions on smoking in private offices and outdoor dining areas.

"No one wants to breathe someone else's smoke at a restaurant," Vallone said.

Currently, if a restaurant in New York seats less than 30 people smoking is allowed, or if there is an area, usually near the bar, that is separated from the rest of the restaurant smoking is allowed.

"The smoking situation is one in which restaurants should be able to make the decision on their own," said Chuck Hunt, executive vice president of the Greater New York Chapter of the New York State Restaurant Association. "It's an issue of choice and not one the City Council should be mandating."

As more and more states start legislating where and when someone can smoke, advocates like LoBaido say smokers' ire will only hurt the economy.

"Who will go to a bar in which you can't smoke, or a restaurant where you can't smoke," he said. "No one wants to sit around and hang out in a restaurant if you can't smoke. They will just leave after their meal and that business that would have stayed, ordered more drinks and hung out would be gone."

---

David McTaggart, a Builder of Greenpeace, Dies at 69

New York Times
March 24, 2001
By PAUL LEWIS
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/24/world/24MCTA.html

David McTaggart, credited with building Greenpeace into a worldwide environmental movement, died yesterday in a car crash in Italy. He was 69.

Mr. McTaggart, a native of Canada, was killed near Perugia, where he lived since his retirement from Greenpeace in 1991. He spent his retirement years running a farm that produced olive oil.

In 1972, while sailing his yacht in the southern Pacific, Mr. McTaggart answered an advertisement by an organization originally called "Don't Make a Wave Committee" but renamed "Greenpeace." It was asking for volunteers to sail to Mururoa, an isolated atoll, to protest the atmospheric atomic tests France had been conducting there since 1966.

After renaming his boat Greenpeace III, Mr. McTaggart sailed into the test zone and interrupted the testing program by anchoring there. Eventually his boat was rammed and towed to Mururoa by a French minesweeper. The French later claimed they has rescued him after an accident on the high seas.

When Mr. McTaggart returned to Mururoa the following year, French commandos boarded his boat and beat him up, severely injuring his right eye. The French asserted that he had hurt himself in a fall but a crew member smuggled out photos of the incident, setting off further criticism of France's atmospheric testing program.

Mr. McTaggart then began a lengthy action against the French government in the French courts. After his partial victory in 1974, France announced it was ending its atmospheric testing program but said tests would continue underground.

From then on Mr. McTaggart's life was tied to Greenpeace and to the environmental movement, transforming what had been a fairly obscure organization opposing American nuclear tests in the Amchitka Islands off the Western coast of Alaska into a world wide environmental watchdog.

He was the driving force behind the opening of Greenpeace offices around the world, and led a series of campaigns to save whales, stop the dumping of nuclear waste in the oceans, end nuclear testing and protect Antarctica from oil-drilling and mining.

Between 1976 and 1980, Greenpeace opened offices in Britain, France, Holland, Denmark, Germany, New Zealand and Australia as well as in several American cities. In 1979 the organization's operations were consolidated into Greenpeace International and Mr. McTaggart become chairman.

In 1985 Greenpeace scored an even greater propaganda victory against France's nuclear testing program when two French secret agents, arrested in New Zealand, admitted blowing up a Greenpeace boat, the Rainbow Warrior, killing a photographer on board, just as it was about to lead a flotilla to the continuing Mururoa tests.

The incident gave Greenpeace worldwide publicity and brought it a deluge of new money and members. Lloyd Cutler, former White House counsel to President Jimmy Carter, negotiated an $8 million settlement from the French Government.

In his later campaigns, Mr. McTaggart favored the kind of confrontational tactics he first used at Mururoa.

Greenpeace supporters, acting as "environmental commandos," chained themselves to cargoes of nuclear waste, sailed between Japanese and Soviet whaling ships and their prey, parachuted off smoky factory chimneys and dove into oceans, lakes and rivers to block underwater chemical discharge pipes.

Some environmental organizations were critical of this publicity- seeking approach, arguing that more could be achieved by careful research and quiet lobbying.

But Mr. McTaggart was successful at attracting popular support, creating an organization with truly global reach, equipped with its own fleet, a worldwide income of $112 million last year and some 2.7 million subscribing members.

Born in Vancouver, British Columbia, on June 23, 1932, Mr. McTaggart devoted much of his youth to skiing, tennis, squash and golf. He won the Canadian national badminton championship three years running.

An intensely private man, Mr. McTaggart is believed to have been married several times and to have left a number of children. But Greenpeace said it had no record of his relatives.

The first 20 years of his working life were spent in the construction business, first in Canada then in the United States. But when an explosion destroyed a California resort lodge his company had built, seriously injuring an employee, Mr. McTaggart was found liable for heavy financial costs. He gave up the construction business and went for the long sail around the South Pacific that led him to Mururoa.

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Animal rights protesters to defy police over demonstration

Sat, 24 Mar 2001
<http://www.ananova.com/news/story/sm_253541.htm>

Animal rights protesters are planning to travel from all parts of England for a demonstration, despite fears over the spreading of foot-and-mouth.

Police have urged campaigners against pharmaceutical testing firm Huntingdon Life Sciences to abandon plans to gather at Dunmow, Essex.

Three weeks ago demonstrators gathered in Diss, Norfolk, then travelled to HLS headquarters in Huntingdon, Cambridgeshire.

Police say their concerns about tomorrow's demonstration are greater because the protesters are set to gather in the county where foot-and-mouth was first spotted, and where thousands of infected animals have had to be slaughtered.

Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty, the group which organises demonstrations against HLS, was unavailable for comment. But the demonstration is listed on its internet website.

Three weeks ago SHAC officials said they would not cancel demonstrations because they did not think protesters were likely to spread the virus.

They also said foot-and-mouth was an economic disease which affected farmers' profits, not a virus which posed a great threat to animals.

"It is believed that the demonstrators will meet in Dunmow but previous experience suggests they may move on to any number of locations within the county or even the region," said a police spokeswoman.

"This could spell disaster for counties such as Suffolk, Norfolk and Cambridgeshire that have so far been relatively untouched by the foot-and-mouth situation, having had no confirmed cases."

Police have criticised the organisers of the demonstration for refusing to talk to officers to discuss their plans.

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