------- Index of Articles
NUCLEAR
Nasrallah coy on allegations of new missile
China beefs up missile stocks
Use of uranium criticized
EU nuclear power production up two pct in 2000
FRANCE: NUCLEAR WASTE
Nuclear shipment arrives in Germany
UN may monitor Iraqi smuggling
Iraq protests over air strikes
N. Korea: U.S. increasing tensions
Keep North Korea on Life Support
Experts Urge Bush to Resume North Korea Talks
Powell: Defense Plan Will Aid Allies
Sidney Siegel Nuclear Pioneer
U.S. lawmakers see resurgence in nuclear power
Chao gains powerful ally
Ill Uranium Miners Left Waiting
Grand Coulee plays big role
Bush Team's Counsel Is Divided on Foreign Policy
MILITARY
Myanamar junta rules out democracy for now
Asian nations support Annan
Asians at U.N. Support Annan's Re-election
Former VA nurse gets life in prison
Military aviation suffers 2 blows
Body found near site of missing F-15
Searchers find body near F-15 wreckage
House votes to improve military, veterans benefits
SPRINGFIELD, MASS: LIFE SENTENCE FOR EX-NURSE
OTHER
Congressional Announcement of New Tax Legislation
A Reversal on Public Access to Chemical Data
Foot-and-mouth affects tourism
Seal blocks S. Africa office entry
Britain begins mass sheep burial
Forest chief leaves over Bush policy
Trying to Stem Foot-and-Mouth, Britain Buries Carcasses
Foot-and-Mouth Disease Traced to Pig Swill
PORT JEFFERSON: SPILL HURTS MARINE LIFE
Global Warming Pariah
Energy Policy Obstacle
Whitman Lobbied for U.S. Global Warming
Whitman urged Bush not to break pollution pledge
British consider vaccinating livestock
British government to ban pig swill
Watt's up?
Beached elephant seal blocks office entrance
Consumers unaware of biotech
Latin America comes calling
Whitman: Verniero not 'wrong'
Officers Shoot 2 Teenagers
Five Police Unions to Fight Complaint
Police Union Head Named in Conspiracy Case
Verniero Has 79-Page Defense
PHILADELPHIA: POLICE INVESTIGATED
Russia wants 4 U.S. diplomats out
American Studying in Russia May Be Swept Up in Spy Case
China Says U.S.-Based Scholar Is Spy
China says scholar confessed to spying
CIA Controls Mainstream Media
Berenson answers to Peruvian court
Administration calls for crackdown on militants
Millennium bombing suspect arrested in Algeria
ACTIVISTS
Protests Delay German Nuclear Waste Transport
Protesters try to obstruct shipment
Demonstrators go to extremes in Germany
PLEASE HELP PROF. BANDAZHEVSKY, CHERNOBYL SCIENTIST
Hard-hitting activist with a gentle touch
Mexican army dismantles bases
Guyanan cops quell demonstrations
Singapore cops warn 2 activists
Student activists: still a strong force
Campuses struggle to define free speech
Tolerance on Campus
Gunmen attack doctors' compound in Somalia
Intolerance on campus
Mexico closes military bases
Anti-WTO protesters already gearing up for Qatar summit
-------- NUCLEAR
Nasrallah coy on allegations of new missile
The Daily Star
27/03/01
Lebanese news
http://www.dailystar.com.lb/27_03_01/art7.htm
Hizbullah's secretary-general, Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, refused on Monday to either confirm or deny reports that the party has acquired new longer-range missiles from Iran.
In an interview with Israel's Maariv newspaper Friday, Israeli Premier Ariel Sharon accused Syria of helping Iran arm Hizbullah in a massive airlift of rockets, arms and ammunition.
"We are not concerned to either confirm or deny such reports. Sharon assumes that we in Lebanon will be worried when he says that we have rockets. Instead, we would be happy if the rockets he talked about were in our possession," Nasrallah told a rally in a suburb south of Beirut late Sunday.
Up until Israel's withdrawal last May, Hizbullah had occasionally fired into Israel 122mm Katyusha rockets with a range of around 20 kilometers. The weapon in question, the 240mm version of the Katyusha, reportedly has a range of 70 kilometers.
Dismissing Sharon's claim as an "old boring tune," Nasrallah said: "I want to tell Sharon and all (members) of the enemy government that we will do what is our right and certainly, what is our duty. It is our right to defend our country and defend every drop of blood and every drop of water and every iota of soil. "It is our right to be strong to repulse the enemy," he said. "Can you imagine that Israel, which possesses nuclear weapons and arms of mass destruction, is protesting against the resistance on charges that the resistance possesses a rocket with a 70-kilometer range?"
Reports that Hizbullah has acquired longer-range rockets have been routinely aired since June 1996. In February last year, Israeli security sources were quoted as saying that Hizbullah had been given 240mm Fajr rockets with a 70-kilometer range, which were being guarded in the Bekaa by a unit of Iranian Revolutionary Guards.
Hizbullah is not thought to have fired any such rockets into Israel during the years of occupation and the reports that it possesses Fajr rockets have remained unconfirmed.
Hizbullah leaders have repeatedly denied receiving military aid from Iran, insisting that Tehran's support is political and moral and that they buy their weapons on the global market. The guerrillas have not fired into Israel since last May. "Sharon is not worried about Kiryat Shmona or Nahariya," Nasrallah said in reference to Israeli towns near the border, "but he is worried about Haifa and Tiberias and about the whole of occupied northern Palestine."
-------- china
China beefs up missile stocks
Washington Times
March 27, 2001
By Bill Gertz THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/default-2001327231140.htm
China is sending additional shipments of short-range missiles to Fujian province opposite Taiwan, a sign Beijing is stepping up deployments as the Bush administration contemplates new arms sales to the island.
U.S. intelligence officials told The Washington Times that the latest shipment of CSS-7 missiles was photographed by a spy satellite in the past two weeks as being aboard a train from a factory in central China to a CSS-7 base at Yongan.
The shipment followed two earlier trainloads of CSS-7s sent from a production facility at Yuanan, about 175 miles west of the provincial capital of Wuhan, to a second base opposite Taiwan at Xianyou.
A fourth missile shipment is expected to leave the Yuanan factory in the next few days for Yongan, said officials familiar with intelligence reports.
The officials also said the satellite photographs show the Chinese are expanding the Yuanan missile factory. The factory is part of a complex of production facilities known as the Sanjiang Missile Group.
"The construction indicates they're getting ready to increase production," said one official.
The intelligence reports come amid a Chinese government propaganda effort aimed at influencing the Bush administration to curb weapons sales to Taiwan. A decision on new arms deliveries is expected sometime next month.
Secretary of State Colin Powell told visiting Chinese Vice Prime Minister Qian Qichen last week that the buildup of missiles opposite Taiwan is destabilizing, the Associated Press reported.
A CIA spokesman declined to comment on intelligence reports of the latest missile shipments to Fujian.
Pentagon spokesman Navy Rear Adm. Craig Quigley also would not comment, citing rules against commenting on intelligence matters.
Adm. Quigley said, however, that China's military modernization includes adding missiles to areas near Taiwan.
The modernization program is being closely monitored, he said.
The buildup of forces opposite Taiwan also will weigh in the administration's decision on arms sales to Taiwan, he said.
"This is something we watch very carefully and it is an element that goes into the decision-making process of meeting the legitimate defense needs of Taiwan," Adm. Quigley said in an interview.
Adm. Quigley said "it is no secret" China is improving its military "capabilities for reaching out to Taiwan."
The Bush administration is considering a request from Taiwan for about 30 different weapons systems, including four Aegis-equipped guided-missile destroyers, advanced Patriot missile-defense systems and air-launched missiles that home in on radar.
A Senate Foreign Relations Committee staff report on the Taiwan Strait said that the Chinese military threat to Taiwan is growing and includes hundreds of short-range missiles deployed close to the coast. China also has purchased guided-missile destroyers, missiles and planes from Russia.
The report says that the Taiwanese military believes China's forces are working on developing a "quick-strike solution" by deploying missiles that would defeat the island before U.S. forces could arrive to defend it.
Under the 1979 Taiwan Relations Act, the United States is obligated to prevent the forcible reunification of the island with the mainland, a formulation that is at odds with agreements with China that limit sales of advanced arms.
Al Santoli, a national security aide to Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, California Republican, said the ongoing missile deployments appear to be part of a Chinese government attempt to "test the mettle of the Bush administration."
"The Chinese are trying to see how far they can go in terms of their unprecedented military buildup, especially the ongoing deployments of missiles," Mr. Santoli said.
"If the administration should blink at this point, it will set a precedent for the possibility of conflict occurring in the Taiwan Strait sooner," he said.
Richard Fisher, a specialist on the Chinese military with the Jamestown Foundation, said the latest shipments may indicate the Chinese are adding missiles to two existing brigades of CSS-7s or are forming a third brigade.
"The Chinese missile threat is very quickly making the U.S. policy response obsolete," Mr. Fisher said. "Even the consideration of four Aegis ships have to be viewed as woefully insufficient to deter Beijing."
The Aegis is viewed by defense analysts as a base for a future missile defense system against short-range missiles. The system can track hundreds of targets at the same time and when fully developed will be able to guide missile interceptors to knock out enemy missiles.
-------- depleted uranium
Use of uranium criticized
Proper handling of munitions cuts risk, military says
03/27/2001, By Ed Timms / The Dallas Morning News
http://www.dallasnews.com/national/322292_greenside_27na.html
Besides lead, depleted uranium is another heavy metal used by the military that has many environmentalists worried.
The highly dense substance is used in armor-piercing cannon shells and as armor that protects U.S. service members from projectiles. The M-1 Abrams tank, the Bradley Fighting Vehicle and the Air Force's A-10 Warthog are among the weapons that fire munitions made from depleted uranium. DU armor also is found in some models of the M-1 Abrams.
Pentagon officials say DU is about 40 percent less radioactive than natural uranium and does not does not pose a risk if it is handled properly. Dust particles formed when a DU round explodes can cause health problems if inhaled, according to military officials, but they say the particles are typically washed away when it rains.
But many critics, including veterans of the Persian Gulf War, suggest that DU poses more of a threat than the Pentagon acknowledges and have called for more research. Some European allies also have raised concerns.
A report by the United Nations Environment Program made public this month concluded that there was no widespread ground contamination in areas where depleted uranium ammunition rounds were fired during the 1999 Kosovo conflict, but the report also recommended several precautionary measures to protect local residents. U.N. officials said DU rounds that remain buried several meters into the soil could contaminate groundwater and drinking water.
Army officials said research is under way into possible alternatives to larger munitions, such as 120 mm armor-piercing rounds used by the Abrams tank that propel a depleted uranium "penetrator" at hyper-velocity.
Air Force officials, however, say they are not exploring alternatives to the DU round fired by the A-10 Warthog's 30 mm â€" another bane of Iraqi armor during the Persian Gulf War.
Navy ships still carry some depleted uranium ammunition for the "PHALANX Close-In Weapons-System," a Gatling gun that spews 20 mm cannon shells and is designed to knock out missiles and low-flying aircraft. The Navy is slowly phasing out its DU ammunition in favor of tungsten rounds.
Although tungsten is lighter, tests demonstrated that it was as effective as the DU munitions against the likely targets of the PHALANX system. And unlike DU munitions, tungsten rounds do not require special handling aboard ships.
Some military experts suggest that there is some reluctance to discard DU munitions, which have proved to be highly effective on the battlefield â€" even with potential health risks and environmental concerns.
"As was demonstrated so clearly in the Persian Gulf War, the combination of the extra range and the penetrating power just blew the lids off of every type of tank the Iraqis had," said retired Army Col. Dan Smith, chief of research at the Center for Defense Information.
-------- europe
EU nuclear power production up two pct in 2000 - VDEW
REUTERS
GERMANY: March 27, 2001
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=10263
FRANKFURT - Electricity suppliers in the European Union increased their nuclear power production by two percent last year to around 828 billion kilowatt hours (kWh), the Association of German Electricity Suppliers VDEW said yesterday.
Nuclear power accounts for a third of electricity production in the EU, VDEW said in a statement based on information from electricity industry association Eurelectric.
At 395 billion kWh, France again produced the most nuclear power, which accounts for 79 percent of its total electricity production. Belgium, Sweden and Finland followed with 54, 39 and 31 percent respectively.
Germany was in the middle of the table with 30 percent, while Spain, the UK and the Netherlands had 28, 25 and four percent shares respectively of electricity production from nuclear energy.
Outside the EU, Switzerland produced 25 billion kWh of nuclear power, 25 percent of its total electricity mix.
EU accession countries Lithuania, Slovakia, Slovenia, the Czech Republic and Hungary generated between a 20-70 percent share.
-------- france
FRANCE: NUCLEAR WASTE
New York Times
March 27, 2001
World Briefing
Suzanne Daley (NYT)
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/27/world/27BRIE.html
A train returning nuclear waste to Germany left France with thousands of police officers lining the route to guard against antinuclear activists who wanted to disrupt the shipment. The waste came from German reactors and had been sent years ago to a reprocessing center in La Hague where remnants of usable fuel were extracted and the rest packed for disposal. But shipments were suspended for three years because radioactivity was discovered on the outside of containers.
-------- germany
Nuclear shipment arrives in Germany
InfoBeat News
Morning Coffee Edition - 3/27/2001
By SEBASTIAN HEISE Associated Press Writer
http://www.infobeat.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/IBFrontEnd.woa/wa/fullStory?article=406530952
WOERTH, Germany (AP) - A train loaded with some 60 tons of nuclear waste in six sealed containers crossed into Germany from France late Monday, angrily awaited by protesters along its route to a waste dump.
The train crossed the frontier just south of Woerth in southwestern Germany shortly after 11 p.m. It faced a 375-mile journey northeast to the waste dump at Gorleben.
The shipment is carrying radioactive waste left over after spent nuclear fuel from German power plants was reprocessed at a French plant.
Hoping to avert violence, Germany put 15,000 police on alert along the route as the train headed toward its border. About 2,000 officers awaited the train in the border area, and the station at Woerth _ where a German locomotive was to be attached _ was heavily guarded.
Protesters were camped out awaiting the train's arrival, and police removed a group of people who earlier blocked the track south of Woerth.
In northern Germany, hundreds of people took part Monday in sit-down protests on rail tracks near the waste dump. Some 400 were removed by police, and at least 35 more were detained after loosening ties under a 50-yard section of track. Officials said the damage would not affect the shipment.
The political impact was already being felt in Berlin as the train trundled through France earlier in the day. The Greens party faced cries of betrayal from anti-nuclear activists that are among its core supporters.
Rooted in the anti-nuclear movement, the party now is in the government that approved the first cross-border waste shipment since 1997.
Anti-nuclear activists said authorities prepared at least nine alternate routes for the transport across Germany to be able to skirt protests.
Police braced for a repeat of clashes with protesters that accompanied the last shipment four years ago. They promised tough action against any blockades by demonstrators.
Especially vulnerable was the final 12-mile stretch from a rail terminal to the waste dump, where trucks will transport the containers _ each with about 10 tons of radioactive waste sealed in 28 glass casks.
In Valognes, France, a few Greenpeace activists stood watch early Monday as the transport left, firing flares and waving banners against the nearby La Hague reprocessing plant before being removed by police.
Anti-nuclear groups say their aim is to drive up the cost of waste shipments and persuade utilities that nuclear plants are not economical.
``Every transport from La Hague makes another transport to La Hague possible, securing the continued operation of the nuclear power plants,'' said Rasmus Grobe, a spokesman for a protest group whose symbol, a large yellow X, has appeared on walls and roads across the country.
German and French leaders agreed on a resumption of nuclear waste traffic last January, with the German government saying it has tightened safety rules for the transports since the previous administration suspended shipments in 1998 because of radioactive leaks on some containers.
Spent nuclear fuel from German power plants is sent abroad for reprocessing, but the contracts oblige Germany to take back the resulting waste _ a fact noted Monday by Environment Minister Juergen Trittin.
``We've long known the waste would have to be taken back,'' Trittin told ARD television.
-------- iraq
UN may monitor Iraqi smuggling
InfoBeat News
By BARRY SCHWEID AP Diplomatic Writer
Morning Coffee Edition - 3/27/2001
http://www.infobeat.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/IBFrontEnd.woa/wa/fullStory?article=406530899
WASHINGTON (AP) - U.N. monitors may be stationed near Iraq's borders and oil revenue placed under direct U.N. control to prevent President Saddam Hussein from smuggling in weapons of mass destruction.
The monitors would oversee customs inspectors in neighboring countries and might even supervise their checks on trucks moving across the border into Iraq, a senior U.S. official said Monday. The move is part of a Bush administration plan to revamp leaky 11-year-old sanctions against Iraq.
To control loose money, the revenue received in Iraqi oil sales, permitted by the United Nations if the proceeds are used for food and medicine, could be put in a controlled fund, said the official, speaking on condition of anonymity.
Lists of oil companies allowed by the United Nations to purchase Iraqi crude would be compiled as a means of guarding against kickbacks to Saddam's government. Also, barter trade with Iraq would be more closely monitored to make sure Iraq does not get its hands on funds to buy weapons.
As the administration pursues changes in sanctions, it is consulting with U.S. allies and officials at the United Nations, which imposed the sanctions after Iraq's invasion of Kuwait in 1990.
Under pressure from allies and Arab governments, the administration has agreed to drop virtually all curbs on exports of consumer goods to Iraq. But the administration _ determined to make life difficult for Saddam while easing up on the Iraqi people _ has committed itself to tightening control on exports of weapons and technology.
Among the approaches being considered is permitting Iraq's neighbors to buy Iraqi oil at discounted prices to discourage smuggling and kickbacks to Iraq.
French Foreign Minister Hubert Vedrine, whose government long has favored easing sanctions on Iraq, discussed the potential changes in a meeting here Monday with Secretary of State Colin Powell.
Vedrine last Friday told the French radio station RTL, ``we no longer need a sanctions policy, we need a policy of control and vigilance.''
Vedrine said the Bush administration was ``very close to this.''
Powell, at a joint news conference Monday with the French foreign minister, said, ``we agree that Iraq must honor its U.N. obligations'' and that they had discussed ``how we can ensure that the U.N. sanctions are targeted at the Iraqi regime's attempts to develop weapons of mass destruction, while sparing the people of Iraq from any suffering.''
---
Iraq protests over air strikes
InfoBeat News
Morning Coffee Edition - 3/27/2001
http://www.infobeat.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/IBFrontEnd.woa/wa/fullStory?article=406530881
GENEVA (AP) - Iraq has protested to the top United Nations human rights panel over British and U.S. air strikes that it said have killed or wounded more than 1,000 people in the past decade, officials said Monday.
The Iraqi government ``regards the suffering to which the Iraqi people are being subjected as a form of genocide,'' said a note submitted to the 53-nation U.N. Human Rights Commission, which began its annual six-week session in Geneva last week.
U.N. officials released the text of the note Monday.
It demanded that the world ``establish a special international tribunal before which United States and British officials would be tried for the war crimes, crimes of genocide and crimes against humanity that are being committed against the Iraqi people.''
U.S. and British warplanes regularly strike Iraqi targets while patrolling ``no fly'' zones over southern and northern Iraq, set up after the 1991 Gulf War. The allies say they strike military positions when their planes are targeted by air defenses _ but Iraq says missiles often hit civilians.
The Iraq note said the strikes have ``killed 315 citizens and wounded 965, all of whom were civilians.'' It called the allied flights a violation of international law.
The government note said the U.N. sanctions imposed on Iraq at U.S. and British urging since the Gulf War had caused ``tremendous humanitarian suffering,'' including food and medical shortages that have had an especially heavy impact on children.
-------- korea
N. Korea: U.S. increasing tensions
InfoBeat News
Afternoon Edition - 3/27/2001
By SANG-HUN CHOE Associated Press Writer
http://www.infobeat.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/IBFrontEnd.woa/wa/fullStory?article=406533233
SEOUL, South Korea (AP) - North Korea accused the United States Tuesday of planting ``a time bomb'' in their fragile relations and escalating tensions on the divided Korean peninsula as a prelude to war.
Rodong Sinmun, the newspaper of North Korea's ruling Workers Party, criticized the Bush administration for falsely accusing the North of posing a threat to the region.
Using characteristically strong rhetoric, the newspaper said the United States was trying to derail rapprochement between South and North Korea.
``They are getting seriously on (the North's) nerves in a bid to plant a time bomb in the bilateral relations,'' Rodong said in a commentary carried by the North's official foreign news outlet, KCNA, which was monitored in Seoul.
U.S.-North Korean ties thawed during the last months of former President Clinton's administration, culminating in October with a visit to Pyongyang by then-Secretary of State Madeleine Albright.
But Bush has taken a tougher stance toward North Korea. During South Korean President Kim Dae-jung's visit to Washington this month, Bush said he would not go ahead with negotiations with North Korea any time soon and was reviewing U.S. policy. He said the reclusive country must prove it is serious about improving ties with the rest of the world.
The North's official media have since churned out a near-daily outpouring of anti-U.S. rhetoric.
``It is the invariable strategy of the U.S. imperialists to stifle (North Korea) by means of war and invade and dominate Asia, taking the whole of Korea as a springboard,'' Rodong said on Tuesday.
North Korea has threatened to lift its 1999 moratorium on long-range missile tests and pull out of the 1994 agreement with Washington that freezes its nuclear weapons program in return for two Western-built reactors.
On a visit to Beijing earlier this month, Adm. Dennis C. Blair, the commander of U.S. Pacific forces, said he believed the North Koreans were continuing to develop missiles.
Relations between the Koreas have improved significantly since a summit between leaders of the two Koreas last June.
The neighbors have allowed temporary reunions of families separated by the 1950-53 Korean War, opened government dialogue and agreed to reconnect an across-border rail line.
Earlier this month, however, North Korea canceled a round of Cabinet-level talks with South Korea and did not reschedule.
----
Keep North Korea on Life Support
Los Angeles Times
Tuesday, March 27, 2001
By MICHAEL PARKS AND, GREGORY F. TREVERTON
http://www.latimes.com/news/comment/20010327/t000026256.html
SEOUL--The summit meeting between President Bush and xSouth Korea's President Kim Dae Jung this month was a diplomatic train wreck; it should never have happened. Almost none of the administration's Asia team was in place and it showed. The meeting injected dangerous confusion into a relationship that both countries regard as crucial.
But Bush made one thing very clear: He does not trust North Korea and he wants a policy that starts with that and not with assumptions that Pyongyang has been won over by Kim's "sunshine" policy and is abandoning its totalitarian ways. Republicans in Congress have said the same thing even more emphatically.
While that view is understandable, the Bush administration in the end will come out about where the Clinton administration was because there is not much alternative. The Clinton policy was based on the agreed framework of 1994, in which the United States offered food, fuel and, ultimately, nuclear power reactors in exchange for the North's shutting down its nuclear weapons and missile programs.
The Clinton administration's creativity was born of desperation. Having tried everything but war to stop North Korea's nuclear weapons and missile program--and it seriously contemplated war in 1994--it opted, in the agreed framework, for carrots instead of sticks. It made a deal with the devil.
The policy drew immediate opposition, but seven years ago, the near-term collapse of the North Korean regime looked distinctly possible. Today, the policy amounts to keeping the North on life support while hoping that it will gradually reform under the pressure of its own economic disaster.
So, too, does South Korea's "sunshine" policy look dimmer than it did last summer. North Korean leader Kim Jong Il probably will make his promised return visit to Seoul by early summer, but neither the South Korean government nor its many domestic critics feel that he has seriously reciprocated Kim Dae Jung's overture. Security issues have yet to be integrated into the North-South process, with the North continuing to confine them to its dealings with the United States. Major economic initiatives by southern firms in the North, like Hyundai's Kumgang tourism project, are turning out to be costly sinkholes.
Still, the basic argument for keeping North Korea on life support is simple both for the U.S. and South Korea: Its collapse would be disaster. West Germany's absorption of East Germany after 1990 is still far from complete, and it has been hugely expensive. But West Germany was much richer and much bigger by comparison to the East than South Korea is to the North. For the South to quickly absorb the North would condemn both to poverty. And a unified Korea surely would regard the help it received from its friends, Japan and the United States in particular, as far too little. There also would be a risk that it might retain parts of North Korea's nuclear weapons and missile programs.
Turning tougher if the North does not begin to reciprocate looks attractive in Washington. But turning tougher also would open a significant gap between the Bush administration and Kim Dae Jung, who has two more years to serve. After the summit, even South Koreans who have opposed "sunshine" worried that the Bush team might be tempted to cast North Korea as the rogue enemy, in part to justify building the controversial national missile defense system. Doing so would unleash real anti-Americanism in South Korea. More to the point, it would encourage the North to replay its nuclear card, putting the Bush administration in the box where the Clinton administration found itself in 1994.
There is no real alternative to engagement and life support. But the Bush team might improve on the Clinton policy in two respects. First, patient diplomacy might succeed where it has failed in the past in convincing the North that conventional power plants would serve its interests as well as or better than nuclear ones.
Second, as Washington reengages Pyongyang, it and Seoul (and Tokyo) might establish an agreed road map for what they want from North Korea and what they will do in return. By spelling out, for instance, what North Korea needs to do to win U.S. support for joining the World Bank, it would reduce the confusion in Pyongyang, not to mention between Seoul and Washington. Such a road map had been precluded in the case of North Korea by the guerrilla war between the Clinton administration and Republicans in Congress. Bush has a chance to do better.
Michael Parks and Gregory F. Treverton Are Fellows at the Pacific Council on International Policy. Parks Is Also a Visiting Professor at the Annenberg School of Communication at Usc, and Treverton Is a Senior Consultant at Rand
---
Experts Urge Bush to Resume North Korea Talks
New York Times
March 27, 2001
By CHRISTOPHER MARQUIS
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/27/world/27PREX.html
WASHINGTON, March 26 - The Bush administration should support South Korea's efforts to reconcile with North Korea and resume talks aimed at eliminating the North's long-range ballistic missile program, a bipartisan group of prominent foreign policy experts has urged.
In a letter made public today, the independent task force of 30 experts asked President Bush to build on progress by the Clinton administration toward easing tensions on the Korean Peninsula by seeking a broad agreement on missiles and supporting peace overtures by the South Korean president, Kim Dae Jung.
"America's forward presence and alliance relationships have prevented a second war on the peninsula and may have persuaded North Korea that it has no better options than diplomacy," said the letter by the task force, which was sponsored by the Council on Foreign Relations.
"If Pyongyang is indeed ready to take further steps toward strengthening peace on the peninsula, then the United States should be fully prepared to respond," it added. "In the meantime, we must keep deterrence strong and support the patient efforts of our South Korean ally."
The position of the panel, which was led by Morton I. Abramowitz, a former ambassador to Thailand and former Pentagon official, and James T. Laney, a former ambassador to South Korea and president emeritus of Emory University, contrasts sharply with Mr. Bush's stated policy toward the reclusive Communist North.
Earlier this month, Mr. Bush told Mr. Kim of South Korea that he would not resume missile talks with North Korea in the near future. Mr. Bush said there was no reliable way to ensure that the North Korean government would comply with an accord.
In the last months of the Clinton administration, North Korea proposed a comprehensive deal to reduce its arsenal of missiles capable of striking Japan or South Korea in return for food and technical assistance from the United States and its allies. The talks broke down largely over ways to verify North Korea's compliance.
Mr. Bush's hard-line stance was widely viewed as undercutting the efforts by the South Korean leader, who received the Nobel Peace Prize last year, to advance a dialogue across one of the world's most heavily fortified borders.
A senior administration official said today that Mr. Bush agreed with all of the task force's principal recommendations, including renewing missile talks. American policy makers merely want to finish a review of their policy toward the Koreas and avoid being rushed into a bad deals that cannot be verified, the official said.
The task force included Robert L. Gallucci, the dean of the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University, who was chief American negotiator of the 1994 accord in which North Korea agreed to freeze its nuclear weapons program; Winston Lord, a former ambassador to China; and Stephen J. Solarz, the former Brooklyn congressman.
-------- missile defense
Powell: Defense Plan Will Aid Allies
InfoBeat News
Morning Coffee Edition - 3/27/2001
http://www.infobeat.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/IBFrontEnd.woa/wa/fullStory?article=406530400
WASHINGTON (AP) - Secretary of State Colin Powell assured the European allies on Monday the administration's proposed missile defense will be designed to protect not only the United States, but friends and allies as well.
He made the comment at a joint news conference with French Foreign Minister Hubert Vedrine.
France has been skeptical about the U.S. missile defense plan, a position Vedrine restated in an interview before his arrival here.
``The difficulty about this (shield), it is that one does not know at all how it works technically,'' Vedrine said Friday. ``One does not see very well what sort of menace it has to respond to.''
Powell reaffirmed that the United States will consult closely with France on the missile defense issue.
Both Powell and Vedrine were upbeat about U.S.-French relations.
Vedrine said France is eager to work with Washington ``in a spirit of friendship, of candor, of very open and intense and dynamic cooperation.
``The Franco-American friendship is not just a historical reference, it is something very concrete for today, and a great idea for the future of the world,'' Vedrine said.
Said Powell: ``The relationship between our two nations is very, very strong and has been for many, many years.''
The two countries appear closer on policy toward Iraq now that the Bush administration is de-emphasizing economic sanctions while giving higher priority to controlling Iraq's weapons development.
Powell said that in addition to missile defense, his talks with Vedrine also touched on the Middle East, including the hardship the Palestinian people are facing; European defense policy; Macedonia; Iraq and Russia.
-------- u.s. nuc weapons
Sidney Siegel Nuclear Pioneer
New York Times
Tuesday, March 27, 2001; Page B07
Deaths
http://washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A62286-2001Mar26.html
Sidney Siegel, 89, a pioneering developer of nuclear power for peaceful uses who recently said the California energy crisis was preventable, died of cancer March 16 at his home in Pacific Palisades, Calif.
A charter member of the American Nuclear Society, Mr. Siegel frequently wrote and lectured about the advantages of producing electricity with nuclear energy. Nuclear power was cleaner, cheaper and safer than coal, he said.
From 1950 to 1972, he was vice president and technical director of Los Angeles-based Atomics International, a division of the old North American Aviation Inc. Then, from 1972 to 1975, he was associate director for energy and the environment at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee.
-------- u.s. nuc facilities
U.S. lawmakers see resurgence in nuclear power
Excite News
March 27, 2001
By Patrick Connole
http://news.excite.com/news/r/010327/17/energy-nuclear
WASHINGTON, March 27 (Reuters) - Nuclear power is on its way back and the once-dying industry could play an important role in helping the nation grapple with electricity shortages, the Republican head of the House Energy and Commerce committee said Tuesday.
Although no new U.S. nuclear power plants have been built in 25 years, Republican lawmakers are taking a closer look at how the industry could fit into a broad national plan to boost domestic energy supplies and limit oil imports.
The industry has been plagued in the public's eye since the twin public relations nightmares of 1979: when the nation's worst nuclear accident hit the Three Mile Island nuclear plant in Pennsylvania and "The China Syndrome" movie was released.
Rep. Billy Tauzin, a Louisiana Republican, said the federal government needs to make it easier for nuclear power generation to remain a vital component of the national energy mix.
"There should be no question that the nation's energy problems would be much worse without the nuclear industry's impressive and safe track record of sustained output," he said in a statement at a House energy subcommittee hearing.
"Recently, I have noticed the initial stages of a resurgence of interest in nuclear power. The current energy crisis has helped us to understand that natural gas and coal should not be the only fuel sources for developing future generating capacity."
Rep. Joe Barton, Texas Republican and head of the House energy panel, told the hearing that technological advances will make it easier to permit nuclear plants.
"Future plants will be easier to permit because of their uniformity, less expensive because of their advancements, and more efficient as a power generator," Barton said.
He said as Congress looks to implement a national energy policy, it would be impossible to ignore nuclear and not "take a fresh look" at the country's second largest power source.
Environmentalists generally oppose expansion of the nuclear industry, saying the plants produce huge amounts of radioactive waste that must be safely stored for hundreds of years.
20 PCT OF U.S. ELECTRICITY FROM NUCLEAR POWER
Nuclear power from 103 commercial plants currently provides 20 percent of U.S. electricity generation.
Coal, which fuels a sizable number of U.S. power plants, dirties the air. Natural gas- and oil-fueled power plants have become more expensive and have other environmental issues.
But the future role of nuclear power is clouded because plants are aging and no new nuclear plants have been permitted in this country since 1975.
Added to that is the continuing battle over nuclear waste.
Some 40,000 tons of highly radioactive spent nuclear fuel rods are now stored at scores of plants despite a requirement that the Department of Energy build a permanent repository.
The most likely site in Yucca Mountain, Nev., has not been approved yet. The Republican-led Senate failed last year to override then-President Bill Clinton's veto of legislation to start building a repository in the Nevada desert.
Tauzin's remarks echoed the sentiments of Vice President Dick Cheney, who last week said nuclear power could help alleviate concerns about global warming.
"If you want to do something about carbon dioxide emissions, then you ought to build nuclear power plants. They don't emit any carbon dioxide. They don't emit greenhouse gases," Cheney said on MSNBC television.
Cheney leads a White House task force preparing recommendations for President George W. Bush on how the nation could boost domestic energy supplies. While the recommendations are being prepared, House and Senate Republicans are forging ahead with their own legislative proposals.
WASTE DANGEROUS-GREEN GROUPS
Environmentalists blanch at the idea of using nuclear power as an answer to global warming concerns, or even as a potential source of new generation.
Public Citizen, the consumer advocacy organization, last week said that despite what Cheney believes, nuclear power cannot be considered a zero-emissions fuel source.
"Contrary to the vice president's assertions, nuclear power is not capable of combating global warming because of the exorbitant cost of reactors and the long lead time needed to build them," the organization said.
It also said the steps needed to generate nuclear power, like mining uranium and enriching radioactive fuel, add carbon dioxide to the atmosphere.
Tauzin told the House panel that the following areas could be addressed by federal regulators or Congress to make nuclear power more viable:
+ Require the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to administer its rules "in a consistent and even-handed manner that does not discourage companies from future investment."
+ Prepare the NRC to renew as many as 30 reactor licenses that are set to expire in a few years. Thus far, the NRC has renewed licenses to extend the life of five nuclear reactors.
+ Train "rusty" NRC staff for possible future requests to gain permission to construct a nuclear reactor.
+ Work harder to solve the nuclear waste issue, since Tauzin said "it is not safe to store spent nuclear fuel in dozens of locations across the country."
+ Reauthorize the compensation and liability provisions of the Price-Anderson Act that are to expire in August 2002.
Tauzin said without the measures, the industry would likely not construct or operate new nuclear facilities.
---
Chao gains powerful ally in effort to dump entitlement program
ohio.com
Tuesday, March 27, 2001
BY KATHERINE RIZZO Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Labor Secretary Elaine Chao gained a powerful ally Tuesday in her quest to shed responsibility for setting up a program to give cash and medical care to job-sickened nuclear workers.
Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, said he wants the program to be run by the Justice Department, not the Labor Department.
Hatch is chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, so his opinion on what the Justice Department ought to do carries considerable weight.
In a letter to the White House, Hatch said the Justice Department is best qualified to handle the new compensation program.
The Justice Department handles a decade-old program giving one-time payments to uranium miners, millers and people who lived downwind of nuclear test sites.
``They already have the infrastructure and experience to handle these types of claims,'' Hatch wrote. ``It makes no sense to duplicate this effort by creating a whole new administrative function at the Labor Department.''
Chao said in a statement Tuesday that the Labor Department does not have the same infrastructure or expertise to effectively administer the program. ``That means we won't be able to get the checks out to harmed workers in time to help them,'' she said.
Last week, the White House got letters from Sens. Fred Thompson, R-Tenn., George Voinovich, R-Ohio, Mike DeWine, R-Ohio, and eight members of Congress making the opposite argument -- that the Labor Department runs several worker compensation programs and has the expertise to best assume the new duties.
Though pushing in different directions, all the letters had the same bottom line: handle things wrong, and contaminated workers with incurable illnesses will have to wait too long for the compensation they've been promised.
``Our fear is that they're going to argue about the jurisdiction and because of this, the workers this program is designed to help are going to suffer,'' said Lowell ``Pete'' Strader of the Paper, Allied-Industrial, Chemical and Energy Workers.
PACE represents workers at 11 sites in the nuclear weapons complex.
The union's president, Boyd Young, sent Chao a five-page letter on Tuesday responding point by point to comments the secretary made in a weekend television interview.
Chao ``seems confused'' about the new law that promises $150,000 and medical benefits to job-sickened nuclear workers, Boyd wrote.
She also seems ``poorly informed about the largest single workers' compensation program in the country -- a program she is charged with administering,'' his letter said.
On the program ``John McLaughlin's One on One,'' Chao did fumble a few dates.
She said there's a May 31 deadline for setting up the program.
The May 31 deadline actually is for issuing the regulations for the program; the government doesn't have to be ready to accept applications until July 31.
She got that second date wrong, too, saying: ``There's also a July 1st deadline for getting out the checks ... We cannot meet the deadline of July 1st in terms of sending all those checks.''
In fact, the July 31st deadline is to be ready to process claims.
Chao also said, ``I want these workers to be taken care of, and I have very serious concerns that the Department of Labor is unable to take care of these workers.''
Congress gave the Labor Department $60.4 million to set up the Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation Program. It's an entitlement program for workers exposed to health-robbing levels of radiation, silica or beryllium while doing work in the nuclear weapons complex.
Money could be transferred to the Justice Department if that's where the Bush administration wants to run the program.
If Chao succeeds in moving the new program out of her department, it would mean less bureaucracy for the uranium miners eligible for compensation under the smaller Justice Department program, but a curious double standard for some other sick workers.
Those who contracted chronic beryllium disease while on the government payroll would continue to ask the Labor Department for benefits. Those who contracted the same disease while employed by a contractor would have to go to the Justice Department to have their claims evaluated.
The Justice Department's compensation program has reviewed about 9,000 claims in a 10-year period. The Labor Department-runs compensation program for government employees considers about 19,000 new claims a year.
---
Ill Uranium Miners Left Waiting as Payments for Exposure Lapse
New York Times
March 27, 2001
By MICHAEL JANOFSKY
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/27/politics/27URAN.html
GRAND JUNCTION, Colo., March 20 - For all the reminders of Bob Key's cold war effort, mining uranium for American nuclear weapons programs, none stands out more than the tank of oxygen tethered to his throat. Mr. Key, 61, has pulmonary fibrosis, a scarring of the lungs that is often fatal. A recent tracheotomy helps air flow to his lungs through a tube connected to the tank.
A decade ago, Congress recognized the contributions of Mr. Key and other uranium miners and passed the Radiation Exposure and Compensation Act of 1990. Signed by President George Bush, the law established one-time payments of up to $100,000 to miners or their families and to people who lived downwind from the nuclear test sites in Nevada. Last year, Congress increased the payout to $150,000, added new medical benefits and expanded the number of workers eligible.
But after years of smooth operations, the program is broke. Scrambling last year to pass President Bill Clinton's final budget, lawmakers never debated the Justice Department's request for additional money to cover the expanded program even as new applications were pouring in, and by May, nothing was left. And Congress has been reluctant to act until it decides how to apportion the federal surplus and how much to cut taxes.
As a result, for the first time, claims from hundreds of eligible applicants like Mr. Key have been held up, with many of the applicants receiving i.o.u. letters from the Justice Department, which administers the program, saying their requests will be processed only after Congress appropriates more money.
And the demand is only increasing. Claims from another 1,600 applicants under the original law are pending, and the department estimates that as many as 1,050 new applicants are expected to file for benefits this year, a number that would raise the cost of the program to more than $80 million.
"It's been a bureaucratic travesty," said Representative Scott McInnis, a Republican from Grand Junction, a city in western Colorado, who introduced legislation this year seeking $84 million to restore the program. "These people are due their compensation. There is nothing to be adjudicated. The money is owed. The debt is due."
For now, Congress has not decided how or when to continue the program. Lawmakers are discussing the possibility of legislation as part of the current year's budget to provide money right away.
Meanwhile, almost 200 people who have been approved for the money are still holding the i.o.u.'s, including relatives of some miners who have died of their illnesses while waiting.
"Just since January, we've lost five clients, and I'm sure there are more we're not aware of," said Keith Killian, a lawyer here who represents former uranium miners and their families. Rebecca Rockwell, a private investigator in Durango, Colo., said she represented the families of at least 10 clients with i.o.u. letters who have died.
Senator Pete V. Domenici of New Mexico and Senator Orrin G. Hatch of Utah, both Republicans, have introduced legislation similar to Mr. McInnis's, asking for enough money to pay all claims through this year and to make the program a permanent entitlement so Congress does not have to authorize spending each year. They have urged President Bush to include money for the program in a supplemental budget proposal for the current fiscal year.
But miners and their families have been told that no new spending is likely until Congress resolves its fiscal issues, a process that could delay disbursement of the miners' money for months, even a year.
"I'm bitter about it," said Mr. Key, who worked in the mines from 1959 through 1963 and, like other mine workers, said he was never warned of the health consequences of exposure to uranium.
"I wonder how well those guys in Washington would do, see how they would like it, tied to a chain like I am 24 hours a day," Mr. Key said. "I know I owe taxes this year. I'm just going to tell them to take it out of my i.o.u."
Worried that he will not live long enough to receive a check because of his lung disease, Jack Beeson, 67, a former miner from Moab, Utah, said: "We worked in those mines, waiting for our golden years. Well, now it's our golden years, and it's done nothing but cost us gold. This is no way to live. I felt I was doing the government a service. Now, I feel they're doing me a disservice."
To many of the former miners who extracted uranium from hundreds of mines in Colorado, Utah, New Mexico and Arizona, the i.o.u.'s are insulting. From the 1940's through 1971, when mining for the nuclear weapons program ended, they regarded themselves as patriots, equal to servicemen. The relatively high wages paid by the mines were a lure, but so was the idea that uranium mining was crucial to national security.
Lorna Harvey's father, Loren Wilcox, was a cattle rancher. But he disliked Russia so much, Ms. Harvey said, that he took a mining job in 1954 and worked it for two and a half years. "He felt we needed to protect ourselves," she said. Mr. Wilcox died of lung cancer in 1969 at 62.
Most workers had no idea that the yellow ore they were mining could destroy their health. Wayne Hill, 69, who has lung cancer, said a tin cup hung at the entrance to one mine for miners and drivers to drink water dripping out of the rocks. "It was cool, clear water," he said. "I didn't know it was going to make me light up."
So little was known or revealed about the health consequences of uranium exposure that workers used uranium dust for fertilizer and uranium rocks for doorstops. "My mother made earrings out of it," Ms. Harvey said.
With deaths and illnesses mounting and ample scientific evidence to show that uranium exposure was a cause, Congress passed legislation to compensate the miners in 1990. And for nearly 10 years, the Justice Department's annual requests for financing the program were met. To date, $268.7 million has been paid to 3,595 people. About the same number were denied because they lacked proper medical records or copies of company logs that showed how long they had worked in the mines.
The financial crunch arose when Mr. Clinton expanded the program at a time Congress appropriated only $10.8 million to cover existing claims, an amount that was exhausted quickly. Efforts by Mr. Domenici and others to cover the shortfall, as well as the new applicants, failed.
Some of the i.o.u. holders have lost hope of seeing the money. Darlene Pagel's husband, Duane, died of pulmonary fibrosis in 1986 at 55. Since then, Ms. Pagel said, she has worked two jobs to pay off his medical bills, which still amount to $26,922.
"He didn't know uranium could kill him," she said. "If he'd have known he would have been dead at 55, he never would have taken the job."
-------- washington
Grand Coulee plays big role
USA Today
03/27/01
By Patrick McMahon
http://www.usatoday.com/usatonline/20010327/3177422s.htm
* Grand Coulee will be a major player in the West's power fortunes this summer, as it has since President Franklin D. Roosevelt ordered its construction in 1933. It took $163 million (almost $2 billion in today's dollars), nine years and the lives of 77 workers to complete.
The behemoth quickly became part of American lore. Historians credit it with helping to win World War II by supplying power for the Northwest's aluminum industry and the Hanford nuclear weapons plant, which produced plutonium for the atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki.
* Folk singer Woody Guthrie heralded the dam this way: Well, the world has seven wonders, the travelers always tell, Some gardens and some towers, I guess you know them well. But the greatest wonder is in Uncle Sam's fair land. It is that King Columbia River and that big Grand Coulee Dam.
* The dam is named for a nearby 50-mile-long canyon, or coulee, that scientists say was formed after a huge flood 15,000 years ago in a barren stretch of what is now about 250 miles east of Seattle.
-------- us nuc politics
Bush Team's Counsel Is Divided on Foreign Policy
New York Times
March 27, 2001
By JANE PERLEZ
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/27/world/27DIPL.html
WASHINGTON, March 26 - Two competing foreign policy camps are emerging in the Bush administration - an ideologically conservative Pentagon and a more moderate State Department - which have already provided President Bush conflicting advice on central issues.
At the Pentagon, Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld is collecting a hard-line group of advisers who have supported arming the Iraqi opposition to overthrow Saddam Hussein, the Iraqi leader, and who are deeply skeptical of the European effort to form a rapid deployment force alongside NATO.
On the other side of the river, at the State Department, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell stepped out in front on Iraq with ideas to modify sanctions, but found his policy belittled at the Pentagon. Although he is a product of the Pentagon, he has usually been a cautious warrior.
In a sign of the back-biting, European diplomats were told by Paul D. Wolfowitz, deputy secretary for defense and one of the most avid backers of the Iraqi opposition, not to consider the State Department's description of sanctions policy the last word and to be wary of its more accommodating stance on the European force, officials said.
On other issues, the State Department appears to be more open than the Pentagon to possible missile negotiations with North Korea. On Russia and China, too, General Powell is likely to place more emphasis on working with allies than is Mr. Rumsfeld, who has a history of supporting a unilateral approach.
"At some point the president is going to have to decide what foreign policy he wants, because he is not going to get consistent options on many issues," a senior administration official said.
In an ideal world, there is nothing wrong with the president's receiving clashing recommendations - as long as the differences are discussed in private and the president's decisions, once made, are carried out, this official said. Indeed, all administrations endure policy debates, but try to prevent them from becoming public ideological cleavages.
Although the administration is still in its relatively early days, there is evidence that the disputes are unlikely to be kept quiet, in part because of the strong ideological undercurrents.
Word has gone out to conservative writers and think tanks from administration hard-liners to "keep up the pressure," a think tank policy analyst said.
Mr. Bush, who is inexperienced in foreign affairs, has acknowledged that he will rely on his most senior policy advisers. So as the competition among them intensifies. Vice President Dick Cheney, who collected his own foreign policy specialists, more powerful than any gathered by previous vice presidents, is likely to be an important arbiter.
From the State Department, at least, Mr. Cheney is seen as leaning more toward the Pentagon, where he served as secretary of defense under President Bush's father.
The national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, who has projected herself as a policy coordinator rather than a policy maker, also prides herself on having Mr. Bush's ear. So far, Ms. Rice's predilections in the interdepartmental rivalry are not clear.
As Mr. Rumsfeld selects a markedly conservative group of officials to serve under him and as General Powell chooses a more moderate lineup heavily dominated by career Foreign Service officers, the battle lines seem sharply drawn.
Mr. Rumsfeld, for example, has selected Douglas J. Feith for the chief policy job at the Pentagon, officials said. Mr. Feith, who served in the Reagan Pentagon, is close to Richard Perle, a neoconservative who served the Reagan administration and is on the board of the Center for Security Policy, a conservative defense analysis group. The position of assistant secretary for international security affairs has gone to Peter W. Rodman, a staff member at the Nixon Center who is viewed as a conservative on Russian and European issues.
In contrast, General Powell chose Richard Haass, an advocate of sanctions reform and an opponent of arming the Iraqi opposition, as the head of policy planning at the State Department. Mr. Haass is another veteran of the previous Bush White House and served as director of foreign policy studies at the Brookings Institution.
For the most part, General Powell has turned aside suggestions of hiring ideologically driven Republican loyalists for the State Department.
"It is very clear that Rumsfeld wants a Pentagon populated with a conservative team who see themselves in a policy clash with Powell - and they are gearing up for it," said Robert Kagan, a fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and columnist at the conservative Weekly Standard.
"It's fair to say that this is shaping up into a Shultz-Weinberger battle royal of the Reagan administration," he said, referring to the policy and personal frictions between Secretary of State George P. Shultz and Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger.
In the current situation, though, the principal players - General Powell, Mr. Rumsfeld and Ms. Rice - have by all accounts maintained cordial personal relationships going back a long time. There is none of the personal animosity that permeated the Shultz-Weinberger relationship, colleagues say. The three players have been meeting once a week for lunch and check in with each other on the phone every morning at 7:15.
But on policy issues, in contrast to what was expected, the new group re-creates the ideological divisions within the Reagan foreign policy team rather than the more cohesive approach of those who served President Bush's father.
Tests of how the competing spheres are reconciled will come in several areas: Iraq, where a new sanctions policy is being formed; Taiwan, where the battle will be over selling advanced weapons; Russia, where the fight will be over how to deal with Moscow on missile defense; the Balkans, over how far to assist the Europeans in peacekeeping; and North Korea, where the question is whether to pursue missile talks begun under President Clinton.
Mr. Rumsfeld has said that the European deployment force makes him nervous because he sees it as possibly weakening NATO. General Powell said last month that the United States went into the Balkans with its NATO allies and would leave with them. So far Mr. Rumsfeld has not addressed this issue.
Administration officials say they have now started the policy review on Iraq even though many of the senior posts at the Pentagon and the State Department are yet to be filled.
Mr. Cheney's shop is also playing a role. His national security adviser, I. Lewis Libby, has shown sympathy toward arming the opposition against Saddam Hussein, while at the National Security Council itself, one assistant on the Middle East, Kenneth Pollack, who openly opposed arming the opposition, has left.
At the State Department, much of the sanctions policy is based on assessments drawn up by Mr. Haass, who has said economic sanctions should be eased to stop punishing the Iraqi people, while financial and military sanctions should be tightened.
To this end, the State Department has proposed to states neighboring Iraq that United Nations monitors be posted on their borders as well as at key foreign airports to prevent Mr. Hussein from importing materials that would help him manufacture weapons of mass destruction.
At the Pentagon, however, Mr. Wolfowitz has made it fairly clear that he believes sharpening sanctions is probably not possible, and that trying to topple Mr. Hussein is more desirable.
-------- MILITARY
-------- burma/myanmar
Myanamar junta rules out democracy for now
InfoBeat News
Afternoon Edition - 3/27/2001
By AYE AYE WIN Associated Press Writer
http://www.infobeat.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/IBFrontEnd.woa/wa/fullStory?article=406533598
YANGON, Myanmar (AP) - The military junta on Tuesday ruled out a speedy transition to democracy, but indicated it was willing to work with opposition groups to bring stability to Myanmar.
In a speech to mark Armed Forces Day, junta leader Gen. Than Shwe said Myanmar experienced ``chaos and instability'' when it adopted multiparty democracy after gaining independence from Britain in 1948.
``Lessons from history teach us to act with caution forever,'' he said.
The military has ruled Myanmar since a coup in 1962. The current group of generals took power in 1988 after crushing a pro-democracy movement. The junta refuses to surrender power to the opposition National League for Democracy party of Aung San Suu Kyi, which won 1990 elections.
However, Than Shwe's 20-minute speech carried a conciliatory tone by not castigating the National League for Democracy or Suu Kyi.
The junta is reportedly engaged in closed-door talks with Suu Kyi despite detaining her to her home since Sept. 22 for her pro-democracy work.
Than Shwe did not mention the talks, but indirectly referred to a need for reconciliation.
``When solving problems among us, conflict and confrontation will only worsen matters rather than bring about solutions,'' he said. ``We need to collectively work in building our country with amity.''
The Armed Forces Day speech is considered the most important indicator of the government's position. It was delivered at the Resistance Park near the capital's Shwedagon temple. All leading members of the ruling State Peace and Development Council, as the junta calls itself, attended.
Armed Forces Day celebrates the founding of the army under the leadership of Gen. Aung San, Myanmar's independence hero and Suu Kyi's father.
Aung San led an uprising against the Japanese occupation during World War II in 1945. After the war, Britain granted independence to Myanmar, then known as Burma.
The National League for Democracy held a modest ceremony to commemorate the occasion at party headquarters in Yangon, the capital.
-------- u.n.
Asian nations support Annan
InfoBeat News
Morning Coffee Edition - 3/27/2001
By EDITH M. LEDERER Associated Press Writer
http://www.infobeat.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/IBFrontEnd.woa/wa/fullStory?article=406531253
UNITED NATIONS (AP) - Asian nations have all but cleared the way for U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan's election to a second term, praising his ``exemplary leadership'' and virtually ruling out fielding a candidate to challenge him, a diplomat said.
At a meeting of the 50-nation Asian Group Monday, ``there was unanimous appreciation, acknowledgment of his qualities of leadership, and there was no doubt in the minds of anybody that he will be re-elected,'' said Pakistan's U.N. Ambassador Shamshad Ahmad, chairman of the U.N. regional group.
The group, however, stopped short of endorsing Annan for a second five-year term because some members said they needed instructions from their governments first, Ahmad said.
Diplomatic sources said Malaysia was among the countries that wanted to consult their governments.
By tradition, the secretary-general's job rotates every 10 years by region, and it's now Asia's turn to propose a candidate. But Africa's 10-year term was split after Boutros Boutros-Ghali of Egypt was denied a second term by the United States, which has veto power in the Security Council.
Annan, who is from Ghana, has won high marks for his leadership and reform efforts at the United Nations, and there has been a quiet campaign for months to re-elect him. With Asia reportedly divided over a candidate _ and no front-runner emerging _ the 53-nation African Group earlier this month endorsed the secretary-general for a second term.
Last week, Annan threw his hat in the ring and immediately won a critical endorsement from U.S. President Bush.
Annan on Monday picked up another endorsement from the five Nordic nations. He must also receive support from the other four veto-wielding Security Council members _ Russia, France, China and Britain _ and ultimately the 189-member General Assembly.
A decision is expected sometime this fall, before Annan's current term expires on Dec. 31.
---
Asians at U.N. Support Annan's Re-election
New York Times
March 27, 2001
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/27/world/27NATI.html
UNITED NATIONS, March 26 - Acting in what a diplomat described as the spirit of "Afro-Asian solidarity," Asian nations decided tonight to give their blessing to a second term for Secretary General Kofi Annan, removing the one potentially serious hurdle to his re-election. His first term ends on Dec. 31.
Although several Asian diplomats attending a meeting of the Asian- Middle Eastern regional group at the United Nations could not formally join a consensus without consulting their governments, an overwhelming majority agreed that Mr. Annan had shown "exemplary leadership," said Ambassador Shamshad Ahmad of Pakistan, who presided over the meeting and introduced the motion to back the secretary general.
In return, Asian nations said they expected that, in five years, the next secretary general would come from the Asian region, which has not held the job for three decades, since the term of U Thant of Burma.
On a visit to Washington on Friday, Mr. Annan received the warm endorsement of President Bush.
-------- u.s.
Former VA nurse gets life in prison
InfoBeat News
Morning Coffee Edition - 3/27/2001
By ADAM GORLICK Associated Press Writer
http://www.infobeat.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/IBFrontEnd.woa/wa/fullStory?article=406530599
SPRINGFIELD, Mass. (AP) - A federal jury on Monday decided on life imprisonment for a former veterans hospital nurse who killed four patients by injecting them with a heart stimulant.
Kristen Gilbert, 33, was spared a sentence of death by injection. She would have become the only woman on federal death row.
U.S. District Judge Michael Ponsor formalized the jury's recommendation, sentencing Gilbert to four consecutive life terms without the possibility of parole. He also sentenced her to two 20-year terms for trying to kill two other veterans, and to several lesser charges.
Ponsor could not have overruled the jury to impose the death penalty. Before the formal sentencing, he allowed some relatives of the victims a last chance to speak.
Claire Jagadowski told the judge of the loss of her husband, 66-year-old Stanley Jagadowski: ``I still listen for his key in the door. Now I have to face old age alone.''
Gilbert declined an opportunity to address the judge. She wept softly when the jury's decision was read.
Her father and grandmothers had pleaded with jurors to let her live, saying a death sentence would be devastating to them and Gilbert's two sons.
``It's a very bittersweet day when you think your daughter is going to get life imprisonment instead of the death penalty,'' said Gilbert's father, Richard Strickland.
Assistant U.S. Attorney William Welch had called Gilbert a ``shell of a human being'' who deserved to die for the cold and calculating way she murdered her victims: injecting them with overdoses of the heart stimulant epinephrine, also called adrenaline, causing their hearts to race out of control.
Prosecutors had argued that she wanted to attract attention, especially from her lover, a hospital security guard, for the way she handled herself during emergencies.
Gilbert was convicted March 14 of the first-degree murder in the deaths of three veterans. She also was convicted of second-degree murder, which is not subject to the death penalty, in the death of a fourth veteran, and of trying to kill two other veterans.
Defense attorneys said a life term in prison was a punishment harsh enough for a young woman convicted on evidence they said was only circumstantial. They had argued that the deaths were due to natural causes.
``It is easier to incite good and decent people to kill when their target is not human but a demon,'' defense attorney Paul Weinberg said. ``Kristen Gilbert is not a monster, she is a human being.''
Jurors deliberated for less than six hours Friday and Monday on whether to impose the death penalty. Since they were not unanimous, the sentence defaulted to life in prison.
In the past century, only two women have been executed by the federal government. There is no state death penalty in Massachusetts, but Gilbert was eligible for it under federal laws because her crimes took place on federal property, the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Northampton.
Prosecutors said Gilbert confessed to the murders to the security guard and her estranged husband. Gilbert's lawyers attacked those confessions.
---
Military aviation suffers 2 blows
InfoBeat News
Morning Coffee Edition - 3/27/2001
By ROBERT BURNS AP Military Writer
http://www.infobeat.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/IBFrontEnd.woa/wa/fullStory?article=406530354
WASHINGTON (AP) - U.S. military aviation suffered two blows Monday with the fatal crash of an Army plane in Germany and the disappearance _ and apparent loss _ of two Air Force fighter jets in Scotland.
In Billings, Mont., President Bush asked a crowd of about 10,000 at a local arena for a moment of prayer ``for the two soldiers ... who lost their lives in Germany and two of our pilots who are missing over Great Britain.''
British authorities were investigating a report from a caller of an explosion at the exact moment the fighter jets vanished from radar.
An Army RC-12, a twin-engine propeller aircraft used to detect, identify and locate enemy radar and electronic communications, crashed in a forest about eight miles from Nuremberg, killing the two pilots on board, Army spokeswoman Hilde Patton said from 5th Corps headquarters at Heidelberg.
German and American authorities at the scene were attempting to recover the pilots' remains from the crash scene, Patton said. There was no initial indication of what caused the crash.
At roughly the same time, the Air Force disclosed that two F-15C fighters were overdue on a return flight to their home base at Lakenheath in southern England after conducting low-level flight training in Scotland.
Several hours later the Air Force said there had been no word from the two F-15 pilots nor any confirmation of their fate. The lack of communication suggested a strong possibility that they had crashed, officials said.
A caller phoned a mountain rescue station at Glenmore, which is in the Cairngorm Mountains in the Scottish Highlands, at around 2 p.m. local time and reported hearing an explosion about 45 minutes earlier, said Royal Air Force spokesman Michael Mulford.
``It coincides exactly with the planes going missing from radar screens,'' Mulford said. ``It was made after the planes disappeared, but not long after _ maybe it took the caller that long to get down the mountain and get to the phone.''
A search effort was suspended late Monday night due to a snowstorm that was creating a safety problem for the searchers, said Maj. Stacee Bako, a U.S. Air Force spokeswoman at Lakenheath. She said the search would be resumed at first light Tuesday. There was no indication Monday of what happened to the planes, she said.
The two single-seat F-15s left Lakenheath around 12:30 p.m. (6:30 a.m. EST) for a three-hour sortie over the Scottish Highlands. The jets were over the Cairngorm Mountains when they lost contact with ground controllers at Lakenheath, 75 miles northeast of London, Bako said.
Air Force spokeswoman Capt. Almarah Belk at the Pentagon said a search and rescue mission was launched from RAF Kinloss in Scotland. An RAF spokeswoman said two RAF Nimrod reconnaissance planes and three Sea King helicopters were searching, helped by two RAF mountain rescue teams on the ground.
Police in Aberdeen said they had no reports of any planes coming down.
With four peaks over 4,000 feet, including the 4,296-foot Ben Macdhui, the Cairngorms are Britain's loftiest mountain range. Weather in the Cairngorms for most of Monday afternoon was cold and bright with good visibility and light southerly winds, the Meteorological Office said. Snow and sleet were beginning to develop in the mountains.
It is unusual for more than one U.S. military plane to crash on the same day, but fatal training accidents are by no means rare.
On March 3 an Army C-23 Sherpa crashed in Georgia, killing all 21 people on board, and on March 12 five American servicemen and one New Zealand army officer were killed when a U.S. Navy F/A-18 mistakenly hit them with bombs during training in Kuwait.
Statistics show that, overall, U.S. military aviation has become safer in recent years. For the fiscal year ended last Sept. 30, the military aviation accident rate was 1.23 per 100,000 flight hours _ the lowest ever recorded. Fifty-eight service members were killed in aviation accidents that year, including one of the worst in years _ a Marine Corps V-22 Osprey crash last April that killed all 19 Marines aboard.
---
Body found near site of missing F-15
InfoBeat News
Afternoon Edition - 3/27/2001
By ROBERT BARR Associated Press Writer
http://www.infobeat.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/IBFrontEnd.woa/wa/fullStory?article=406535253
LONDON (AP) - Search teams have spotted wreckage and a body in the Scottish Highlands where two U.S. F-15 jets were reported missing, the Royal Air Force said Tuesday.
The wreckage, identified as an F-15, was found amid blinding snow near the summit of the 4,296-foot Ben Macdhui, the tallest peak in the Cairngorm mountains.
``Rescuers searching for two missing American aircraft in the Cairngorms have discovered a body, believed to be one of the missing pilots,'' the Royal Air Force said.
``The body was found in the vicinity of an aircraft wreck on the eastern side of Ben Macdhui which has been confirmed as the remains of an F-15,'' the statement said.
The U.S. Air Force at Lakenheath identified the missing men as Lt. Col. Kenneth Hyvonen and Capt. Kirk Jones. There was no immediate indication of their ages or home states.
The search was being conducted by up to 250 RAF members, police and civilian personnel, including three RAF mountain rescue teams. The RAF said earlier the search was being hampered by ``whiteout'' snows and 46 mph winds.
The aircraft _ each with one pilot on board _ disappeared 45 minutes after taking off for a training mission Monday from Lakenheath, 75 miles northeast of London.
The F-15s disappearance and a crash Monday of a U.S. Army reconnaissance plane in Germany that killed two pilots are the latest in a string of tragic military mishaps in recent weeks.
In Germany, a team of experts from the U.S. Army Safety Center at Fort Rucker, Ala. launched an investigation Tuesday into the crash of the RC-12, a twin-engine propeller aircraft used to detect, identify and locate enemy radar and electronic communications.
The plane crashed in a forest about eight miles from Nuremberg, killing the two pilots on board, as it was returning to base in Wiesbaden, Army spokeswoman Hilde Patton said from 5th Corps headquarters at Heidelberg.
German and American authorities at the scene were attempting to recover the pilots' remains from the crash scene, Patton said.
There was no initial indication of what caused the crash, Patton said. The pilots _ assigned to the 205th Military Intelligence Brigade _ were identified as George A. Graves, 44, and Lance Hill, 43, both chief warrant officers. Hill was a native of Paradise, Calif., while Graves' hometown was not immediately known.
It is unusual for more than one U.S. military plane to crash on the same day, but fatal training accidents are by no means rare. On March 3 an Army C-23 Sherpa crashed in Georgia, killing all 21 people on board. On March 12, five American servicemen and one New Zealand army officer were killed when a U.S. Navy F/A-18 mistakenly hit them with bombs during training in Kuwait.
On Feb. 12, two Army Black Hawk helicopters collided during a nighttime training session in Hawaii on Feb. 12, killing six soldiers.
Statistics show that, overall, U.S. military aviation has become safer in recent years. For the fiscal year ended last Sept. 30, the military aviation accident rate was 1.23 per 100,000 flight hours _ the lowest ever recorded. Fifty-eight service members were killed in aviation accidents that year, including one of the worst in years _ a Marine Corps V-22 Osprey crash last April that killed all 19 Marines aboard.
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Searchers find body near F-15 wreckage
USA Today
03/27/2001
http://usatoday.com/news/world/2001-03-27-f15.htm
LONDON (AP) - Search teams have spotted wreckage and a body in the Scottish Highlands where two U.S. F-15 jets were reported missing, the Royal Air Force said Tuesday. The wreckage, identified as an F-15, was found amid blinding snow near the summit of the 4,296-foot Ben Macdhui, the tallest peak in the Cairngorm mountains. "Rescuers searching for two missing American aircraft in the Cairngorms have discovered a body, believed to be one of the missing pilots," the Royal Air Force said. "The body was found in the vicinity of an aircraft wreck on the eastern side of Ben Macdhui which has been confirmed as the remains of an F-15," the statement said.
The U.S. Air Force at Lakenheath identified the missing men as Lt. Col. Kenneth Hyvonen and Capt. Kirk Jones. There was no immediate indication of their ages or home states.
The search was being conducted by up to 250 RAF members, police and civilian personnel, including three RAF mountain rescue teams. The RAF said earlier the search was being hampered by "whiteout" snows and 46 mph winds.
The aircraft - each with one pilot on board - disappeared 45 minutes after taking off for a training mission Monday from Lakenheath, 75 miles northeast of London.
The F-15s disappearance and a crash Monday of a U.S. Army reconnaissance plane in Germany that killed two pilots are the latest in a string of tragic military mishaps in recent weeks.
In Germany, a team of experts from the U.S. Army Safety Center at Fort Rucker, Ala. launched an investigation Tuesday into the crash of the RC-12, a twin-engine propeller aircraft used to detect, identify and locate enemy radar and electronic communications.
The plane crashed in a forest about eight miles from Nuremberg, killing the two pilots on board, as it was returning to base in Wiesbaden, Army spokeswoman Hilde Patton said from 5th Corps headquarters at Heidelberg.
German and American authorities at the scene were attempting to recover the pilots' remains from the crash scene, Patton said.
There was no initial indication of what caused the crash, Patton said. The pilots - assigned to the 205th Military Intelligence Brigade - were identified as George A. Graves, 44, and Lance Hill, 43, both chief warrant officers. Hill was a native of Paradise, Calif., while Graves' hometown was not immediately known.
It is unusual for more than one U.S. military plane to crash on the same day, but fatal training accidents are by no means rare. On March 3 an Army C-23 Sherpa crashed in Georgia, killing all 21 people on board. On March 12, five American servicemen and one New Zealand army officer were killed when a U.S. Navy F/A-18 mistakenly hit them with bombs during training in Kuwait.
On Feb. 12, two Army Black Hawk helicopters collided during a nighttime training session in Hawaii, killing six soldiers.
Statistics show that, overall, U.S. military aviation has become safer in recent years. For the fiscal year ended last Sept. 30, the military aviation accident rate was 1.23 per 100,000 flight hours - the lowest ever recorded. Fifty-eight service members were killed in aviation accidents that year, including one of the worst in years - a Marine Corps V-22 Osprey crash last April that killed all 19 Marines aboard.
---
House votes to improve military, veterans benefits
USA Today
03/27/2001 - Updated 08:46 PM ET
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washdc/2001-03-27-militaryvote.htm
WASHINGTON (AP) - Death benefits would be increased for survivors of service members killed in a string of recent disasters under a bill approved Tuesday by the House.
The provision, part of a broad veterans' benefits package, passed on a 417-0 vote. It makes retroactive to Oct. 1 an increase that had been scheduled to take effect April 1. Under the measure, which still must be taken up in the Senate, maximum death benefits rise by $50,000, to $250,000.
The aim of the retroactive provision is to cover families such as relatives of the USS Cole victims, who were killed during an Oct. 12 terrorist bombing in Yemen.
Also eligible would be the families of the victims of the March 3 crash of a cargo plane in Georgia in which 18 members of the Virginia Air National Guard and three Army crewmen were killed.
"Our military has recently suffered numerous tragedies," said Rep. Jo Ann Davis, R-Va., and author of the survivor benefit provision.
Passing the measure shows "the families and beneficiaries of these servicemen that we do indeed care," Davis said.
Added Rep. Silvestre Reyes, D-Texas, "Recent events have shown that even military training exercises and routine duty can result in the loss of life to our service members."
Just Monday, two U.S. fighter jets disappeared in the Scottish Highlands. Searchers Tuesday recovered the wreckage of one jet and one body. Also Monday, a U.S. Army reconnaissance plane crashed in Germany, killing two pilots.
The Bush administration already has come out in support of the survivor benefit provision.
The remainder of the benefits package expands education assistance to cover independent study and certificate programs. The bill also makes job and other transition assistance available to veterans earlier in their service.
A second measure passed in the House would authorize $550 million over two years for construction projects at veterans' medical facilities. That measure passed 417-0 and also still needs Senate approval.
"Deferring these obligations is the same thing as not keeping these obligations," said Rep. Chris Smith, R-N.J., and chairman of the Veterans' Affairs Committee. "We want world class health care for our veterans."
Earlier in the day, a bipartisan group of House and Senate lawmakers introduced legislation that would increase education benefit for veterans. Under the bill, the education benefit would increase over three years from its current rate of $650 a month to $1,100 a month. Veterans groups have long complained that the education benefit has not kept pace with college costs.
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SPRINGFIELD, MASS: LIFE SENTENCE FOR EX-NURSE
New York Times
March 27, 2001
National Briefing
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/27/national/27BRFS.html
Saved from execution by a jury that pitied her family, a former nurse convicted of murdering four patients in a veterans' hospital was sentenced to life in prison without parole. The jury could not reach unanimity about the death penalty and so imposed the life sentence by default for the nurse, Kristen Gilbert, 33. The jury said it had considered the effect Ms. Gilbert's execution would have on her sons, her parents and her sister. Carey Goldberg (NYT)
-------- OTHER
-------- alternative energy
Congressional Announcement of New Tax Legislation Giving Major Boost to Nation's Fuel Cell Alternative Energy Sector
Yahoo News
Tuesday March 27, 5:42 pm Eastern Time
Press Release
http://biz.yahoo.com/bw/010327/2620.html
(BUSINESS WIRE)-- Residential Market For Off-The-Grid Systems Seen As A Key Beneficiary
WHERE: 2360 Rayburn House Office Building
WHEN: Wednesday, March 28, 2:30 P.M.
WHO: Senator JOSEPH LIEBERMAN (D-CT), Representative Nancy L. Johnson (R-CT), and Representative Maurice D. Hinchey (D-NY) plus Fuel Cell Industry Leaders.
NOTE: H Power Corp. (NASDAQ:HPOW - news), a leading hydrogen-based fuel cell company targeting the consumer market for environmentally-friendly, off-the-grid, efficient electric power, produces 4.5 K residential co-generation fuel cell systems that provide all the electricity and hot water needs of a typical household. H Power currently has a contract for 12,300 of these residential units from Washington-based ECO, Inc., an organization serving nearly 1,000 rural electric utilities with 35 million consumers across the country.
For industry comment, please see MICHAEL O'CONNOR, H Power's representative at the Press Conference, or BOB GIBSON, representing ECO, Inc. Frank GIBBARD, H Power CEO, also available for comment at 973-249-5444, Ext. 519.
NOTE: A hydrogen and fuel cell informational briefing, co-sponsored by Rep. JOHNSON and GLOBE USA, will follow the Press Conference in the same room with Senator JIM JEFFORDS (R-VT), Rep. JOHNSON, Rep. MARK UDALL (D-CO) and WILLIAM PARKS, Associate Deputy Assistant Secretary, U.S. Dept. of Energy, Office of Power Technologies, Energy Efficiency, and Renewable Energy.
Contact:
The Dilenschneider Group, New York Joel Pomerantz, 212/922-0900
-------- chemicals
A Reversal on Public Access to Chemical Data
New York Times
March 27, 2001
By CARL HULSE
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/27/politics/27ACCI.html
WASHINGTON, March 26 - Citing national security, the Environmental Protection Agency earlier this month rescinded a Clinton administration proposal to increase public access to information about the potential consequences of chemical plant accidents.
Advocates of disseminating the so- called worst-case scenarios submitted by chemical plant operators say the data could help communities prepare for disasters like industrial explosions. But members of Congress, industry officials and law enforcement authorities have argued that the information is too sensitive and could be used by terrorists to plot attacks.
Environmental Protection Agency officials said they wanted to discuss the "national security concerns" of the Clinton proposal with the Justice Department, an agency spokeswoman said.
The proposal would have allowed people to visit reading rooms and review risk management plans on computer systems that let them read the material but not copy or print it.
Originally, the agency was to post all the information on the Internet, but Congress blocked that plan in 1999.
Freedom-of-information groups eventually placed summaries of some reports on the Web.
Advocates of disclosing the full reports are concerned by the latest E.P.A. action, noting that the agency's new administrator, Christie Whitman, removed more than 1,000 hazardous industrial chemicals from New Jersey's so-called right-to-know list of those subject to state inspection while she was governor.
"It is quite ominous coming from an E.P.A. head who slashed two- thirds of the chemicals that New Jersey right-to-know regulates," said Rick Hind, legislative director of the Greenpeace toxics campaign.
The E.P.A's decision is one of several steps the new administration has taken to block actions initiated in the final days of the Clinton administration.
Those pushing for more disclosure said that even the Clinton plan fell far short of their goal of making more information available.
"It is still difficult for citizens to understand what threats face their communities," said Rick Blum, a spokesman for the public interest group OMB Watch.
At present, members of the public can arrange to visit federal document reading rooms and review risk management plans for plants in their immediate area. They are prohibited from removing or mechanically copying the information. Those who want to examine the plans of plants outside their communities are limited to 10 per month. The Clinton proposal, in addition to allowing people to view plans of factories outside their area, would have enhanced access for those deemed to be qualified researchers.
Environmental groups say intense lobbying by the chemical industry led Congress in 1999 to block release of the accident scenarios and impose tight restrictions on the information.
"It is just a smoke screen to shut down public information that is embarrassing to an industry that continues to use obsolete chemicals and processes that are inherently dangerous," Mr. Hind said about the national security issue.
But industry officials say Congress acted in response to the F.B.I. and others who said that allowing easy access to the information was tantamount to providing a road map to terrorists.
"We agreed with the experts," said Michael Walls, senior counsel for the American Chemistry Council. "The Department of Justice came in and said it was a risk."
-------- environment
Foot-and-mouth affects tourism
InfoBeat News
Morning Coffee Edition - 3/27/2001
By SUE LEEMAN Associated Press Writer
http://www.infobeat.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/IBFrontEnd.woa/wa/fullStory?article=406531125
CHIPPING NORTON, England (AP) - When foot-and-mouth disease struck, the government told people to stay out of rural areas. They did, and the tourist industry dried up.
Now, government advertisements are urging people to go back to the countryside, but this weekend there was little evidence that anyone listened.
``The ads have made absolutely no difference, we are still about 40 percent down on guests, particularly at the weekend,'' said Virginia Blackwell, who manages the 15th century Crown and Cushion inn at the heart of Cotswold country. ``Financially, it's devastating.''
Foot-and-mouth disease is harmless to humans, but the fast-spreading virus is dreaded by the livestock industry because of the potential economic damage; the government already is destroying hundreds of thousands of sheep and cattle.
Britons are finding that the fallout goes far beyond the livestock industry.
The Cotswolds, an area of gentle hills and mellow stone houses west of London, is one of Britain's premier tourist areas. At the Market House Restaurant, proprietor Aimee Wong has lost up to a third of her clientele.
``The ads came too late,'' said Mrs. Wong, whose business is her sole source of income. ``People remember that the government told them not to visit rural areas, and they're staying away.''
With more cases confirmed every day _ the total now tops 600 _ this scenario is being duplicated in many areas that normally would be playing host to their first spring visitors.
Tourist executives say despite the advertising campaign _ and new tax breaks for rural businesses _ the industry is hemorrhaging $150 million a week.
``Although the effect is more acute in rural areas, there is clear evidence that towns and cities across the United Kingdom are suffering from canceled bookings and the cost is running into billions of pounds,'' Conservative lawmaker Peter Ainsworth said Monday.
Since it was first detected on Feb. 20, the disease has crisscrossed Britain and cases have been reported in France, the Netherlands and Ireland.
Desperate to halt the contagion, British officials have closed walking paths and historic sites and canceled sports fixtures, devastating a tourist industry worth around $96 billion a year, by the government's reckoning.
More than 26 million foreign visitors come to Britain each year; last year, 4 million of those were from the United States and they spent a total of $4 billion.
The government is now stressing that many facilities remain open, including pubs, restaurants and some theme parks.
Between them, English Heritage and the National Trust plan to open 350 historic buildings as usual in the next few weeks and some footpaths and canals in unaffected areas may reopen soon.
In the Lake District, which reported its first case of the disease at the weekend, officials fear for thousands of thoroughbred Herdwick sheep, a rare, indigenous breed that roams the hills.
Chris Collier, chief executive of the Cumbria Tourist Board, said plans to reopen some hill areas to hikers have been delayed.
But in Rochester, an ancient port city south of London that boasts a 12th century cathedral and Norman castle _ and links with the writer Charles Dickens, who lived nearby _ those who cater to tourists say business remains brisk.
The nearest foot-and-mouth case is 10 miles northeast of Rochester in rural Kent, and the county has had relatively few outbreaks.
``In fact, we have been busier than usual,'' said Matthew Luethi, proprietor of Mr. Tope's Bistro on the main street. ``We have had a lot of Americans in the past few days _ perhaps we are benefiting from problems in the rest of the country.''
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Seal blocks S. Africa office entry
InfoBeat News
Morning Coffee Edition - 3/27/2001
http://www.infobeat.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/IBFrontEnd.woa/wa/fullStory?article=406531279
CAPE TOWN, South Africa (AP) - Office workers on Monday found the entrance to their waterfront building blocked by a 2,000-pound elephant seal.
With the 15-foot-long seal stretched out in front of the main entrance, workers had to use side entrances.
The seal, part of a colony near Gough Island, some 1,500 miles southwest of Cape Town, somehow got off its normal course, perhaps to avoid sharks or killer whales or pushed by strong currents, said Ralston Lewis, a member of the Wildlife Society.
When it came across the warmer water near Cape Town's coast, the seal _ which at about age 8 is still two years from maturity _ started shedding hair. The shedding weakens the seals, which beach themselves to avoid predators and rest.
The seal has taken a few short swims since coming ashore in Cape Town. It is expected to return to the sea within a day or two and to leave Cape Town altogether within four days, Lewis said.
---
Britain begins mass sheep burial
InfoBeat News
Morning Coffee Edition - 3/27/2001
By ROBERT BARR Associated Press Writer
http://www.infobeat.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/IBFrontEnd.woa/wa/fullStory?article=406531077
LONDON (AP) - The army buried sheep carcasses in a huge pit Monday, starting a mass burial to dispose of up to a half million animals slaughtered in Britain's expanding campaign to control foot and mouth disease.
The highly contagious livestock disease has been confirmed at more than 600 sites in Britain since mid-February, and the outbreak has since arisen in France and the Netherlands.
The European Union was expected to extend its ban on French livestock exports _ a restriction it had been planning to ease until France confirmed its second case of the disease on Friday. EU veterinary experts meet Tuesday to discuss the ban.
French authorities imposed their own tighter restrictions Friday, banning all exports of fresh meat, unpasteurized milk products and untreated hides and skins in addition to the EU's livestock ban.
In the British town of Cumbria, contractors supervised by the army worked through the night at a former air base, digging a trench some 100 yards long, five yards wide and four yards deep. Some 1,200 sheep carcasses were at the site awaiting burial.
Workmen dumped the first truckload of several hundred carcasses into the pit Monday afternoon. Brigadier Alex Birtwhistle, who is heading the operation, said the army was licensed to bury up to a half million animals in the mass grave.
Britain's agriculture secretary, Nick Brown, said more veterinarians were needed to help identify cases and quickly get infected animals to slaughter, as Britain expands its cull to farms neighboring danger areas.
``We believe that more veterinary resources are needed, indeed by making an appeal worldwide,'' he said. Finland said Monday it would send two vets to Britain, and might send more later.
Russia on Monday announced a ban on imports of meat and diary products from the European Union and the Baltics to prevent the spread of the virus. China also barred imports of animals and animal products from the Netherlands and Ireland, where the disease has also been found.
Meanwhile, Northern Ireland's agriculture minister, Brid Rodgers, said Monday that a number of suspect sheep purchased at a market in Cumbria had been tracked down in the neighboring Republic of Ireland.
Sheep from Cumbria are suspected of causing Northern Ireland's sole infection discovered so far, and a case found last week across the border in Ireland's County Louth.
Rodgers complained that the EU had halted all livestock shipments from Northern Ireland, while only County Louth was restricted in the Republic.
``It is clearly indefensible that we are still caught up in EU-imposed export restrictions when every outbreak in other member states has been treated as a regional phenomenon,'' Rodgers told the Northern Ireland Assembly in Belfast.
---
Forest chief leaves over Bush policy
InfoBeat News
Afternoon Edition - 3/27/2001
By KATHERINE PFLEGER Associated Press Writer
http://www.infobeat.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/IBFrontEnd.woa/wa/fullStory?article=406534998
WASHINGTON (AP) - Forest Service chief Mike Dombeck, who tangled repeatedly with timber and mining interests during his four-year tenure, is stepping down because of differences with the Bush administration over the agency's future, a former senior aide says.
Dombeck could have stayed until the end of April, longer if asked. Instead, he told his boss, Agriculture Secretary Ann Veneman, he was resigning effective Saturday and planned to tell the agency's leadership Tuesday.
``It was made clear in no uncertain terms that the administration wants to take the Forest Service in another direction,'' said Chris Wood, who served as Dombeck's top aide until Friday. But ``it is very cordial.''
A fisheries biologist by training, Dombeck, 52, took over the service in January 1997 and reshaped it from a government agency considered to be a friend of the timber industry to a cautious guardian of about 192 million acres of national forests.
As chief he worked to conserve old-growth forests, expand protections for wilderness areas and increase funding to fight wildfires and protect communities.
Perhaps one of Dombeck's most notable initiatives, but one facing multiple legal challenges, will be the roadless plan, a ban on road-building and logging in 58.5 million acres of national forest lands, except in the rarest of circumstances.
The ban originally was to have gone into effect March 13, but President Bush postponed it until May 12 so he could review it. Timber interests had sought a court injunction to stop the ban.
During his tenure Dombeck made enemies of some Western Republicans and the timber and mining industries. ``His objective is to terminate harvesting in the national forests,'' Sen. Frank Murkowski, R-Alaska, chairman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, has said.
Last week the Interior Department, bowing to mining groups, decided to suspend new hard-rock regulations for public lands that would have strengthened environmental standards. The new rules were imposed on former President Clinton's last day in office.
In departing, Dombeck wrote Veneman a six-page letter outlining 10 recommendations for the agency.
Among them:
-The Bush administration should not negotiate a settlement with those opposed to the road-building ban.
-The agency should complete an inventory of old-growth forests and ensure their conservation.
-The federal government should increase funding for employees who protect wilderness areas, an effort Dombeck expanded and raised in importance within the agency when he made it a separate program.
---
Trying to Stem Foot-and-Mouth, Britain Buries Carcasses
New York Times
March 27, 2001
By ALAN COWELL
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/27/world/27FOOT.html
CARLISLE, England, March 26 - In a sharp escalation of its battle to contain an epidemic of foot-and- mouth disease, Britain deployed its army today to bury the first of up to half a million carcasses of both infected and healthy sheep in a mass grave the size of a football field on a disused airfield near this northwestern city. A senior military officer called the scale of the interment "apocalyptic."
The move to bury the sheep, and to slaughter uninfected animals, represented a shift away from the authorities' previous practice of slaughtering and burning or rendering only infected animals as the government sought to "ring fence" hard-hit areas like this county, Cumbria, where more than one-third of the 633 reported sites of infection have occurred. Since the outbreak began on Feb. 19, around 390,000 animals have been slaughtered, around 230,000 more are awaiting slaughter and more than 290,000 carcasses have been destroyed, according to the Ministry of Agriculture.
Under the new policy, healthy animals on farms up to two miles from infected cattle, pigs and sheep are to be slaughtered pre-emptively to prevent a spread of the disease beyond areas where it has already taken root. By burying the animals, officials are hoping to reduce the time it takes to dispose of dead animals that cannot, at present, be burned fast enough.
At a news conference here, the agriculture minister, Nick Brown, signaled that a further escalation of measures to combat the spread of the disease might be in the offing, saying the previously taboo idea of vaccinating animals was "under active consideration." The government had resisted that idea, saying vaccination could mask the disease in infected animals and could disqualify Britain from exporting livestock and meat for at least one year.
Prime Minister Tony Blair told Parliament, "Up until now, vaccination has been strongly opposed by those in the farming community, but I understand that as the situation moves, what looked as if it was completely unpalatable a short time ago has to be put on the agenda."
Sue Williams, a spokeswoman for the Ministry of Agriculture in London, said the government was now considering wider options both to control the outbreak in badly hit areas like Cumbria and Devon, and to prevent its spread to areas that have escaped the scourge, mainly in northern Scotland, western Wales and East Anglia. A decision on vaccination could be reached this week, she said. Mr. Brown said vaccination could be used only "in two sets of circumstances" - either to contain the disease in a specific area, or to curb the outbreak itself within infected areas.
Mr. Blair said he still favored "containment by culling," however.
"Vaccination is not an easy solution in this problem," he said.
The remarkable surge in measures to control the disease, which strikes cloven-footed animals, but does not usually kill them, and only very rarely infects humans, followed revised forecasts last Friday by government veterinarians. They reported that the number of farms or other sites of infection could rise to a staggering 4,000 by June, with the outbreak raging on for months.
The epidemic has already led to the slaughter of more animals than were killed in the last major outbreak in 1967, Mr. Brown said.
While agriculture accounts for less than 2 per cent of Britain's national output, and the livestock business for less than half of that, the outbreak of the disease has crippled countryside tourism and businesses, dented Britain's self-esteem yet again after the mad cow disease outbreak of the 1990's and spilled into the political arena, where Mr. Blair is weighing whether to call a general election, which had been expected on May 3, while the country remains in the grips of crisis.
The transformation wrought by the outbreak was abundantly clear over the weekend as military officers in camouflage fatigues supervised the excavation of a huge muddy tract along the runway of the airfield at Great Orton near here. Bulldozers gouged a stretch of land some 150 yards long and 50 yards wide, and within that, dug a long pit some 90 yards long and 12 feet deep where the first 7,500 of tens of thousands of slaughtered animals were buried today. Four sealed trucks carrying hundreds of dead sheep reversed to the side of the pit and tipped the carcasses into its depths. The bodies were doused in liquid lime to prevent the spread of infection leeching through the soil, the Agriculture Ministry said.
The army's job, Mr. Brown said, is to supervise the logistics both of transporting live sheep to the slaughter site and of disposing of the carcasses. But the army, too, faces limitations because under regulations relating to mad cow disease, or bovine spongiform encephalopathy, cattle are not permitted to be buried, according to Brig. Alex Birtwistle, the commander of the army deployment in Cumbria.
Government officials said up to 200,000 animals could be buried at the airfield in coming weeks, but the military commander said the scale would be much greater once live animals were transported to the area for slaughter.
"In the first part of the cull we have about 500,000 sheep to take out of farms live and bring to be slaughtered in the most humane way," said Brigadier Birtwistle. "It is an apocalyptic task. This is a mass problem."
It was not clear when the cull would begin in Cumbria. The slaughter of some 40,000 healthy sheep on the Welsh island of Anglesey is set to begin tomorrow to help prevent the spread of the disease.
Mr. Brown acknowledged today that the disposal of infected animals had been bedeviled by delays in both diagnosing the disease and removing carcasses for incineration at the many pyres that now dot parts of rural Britain. The minister said the country did not have enough veterinarians.
"We have been discussing how we can get the time from reportage to slaughter on the farm improved," he said. "That is a question of resources, especially veterinary resources."
There have also been suggestions that the pyres themselves help spread the highly contagious disease, which can be transmitted on the wind or on the shoes, clothes or car tires of people in contact with the virus that causes it. Government inspectors are also investigating whether the disease can be traced back to the use of pig swill made up of discarded leftovers from meals served in schools and hospitals.
The political consequences of the outbreak have fueled a passionate debate among politicians and voters about whether Mr. Blair should postpone the general election.
Mr. Blair is caught between assertions that politicking during a national crisis could seem self-serving, and a counterargument that postponement would send a message that Britain had "closed down," in the words of Clive Soley, a senior Labor politician who called today for the election to be held. Cranking up pressure on Mr. Blair to go ahead with an election, he said at least 70 per cent of government legislators wanted the vote to take place.
With new outbreaks reported daily, the spread of the disease took a new and ominous turn in the Cumbria region when the first case in Britain's scenic Lake District was confirmed on Sunday near the village of Coniston. Most of the infections in northwestern England have been in relatively low-lying areas, but farmers have been fearful that the disease would spread to hill farms where animals graze high on craggy mountainsides and are difficult to assemble or control.
"The fear is that the disease will spread like wildfire across the entire area," said Tim Collins, a local legislator who argued that the survival of the particularly hardy Lake District breed of hill sheep, known as Herdwicks, was now in question. "The look and the feel of the Lake District could be changed utterly for generations to come," he said.
---
Foot-and-Mouth Disease Traced to Pig Swill
Associated Press
March 27, 2001
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Foot-and-Mouth.html
LONDON - Britain's devastating outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease has been traced to swill fed to pigs on a northern farm and may have come from meat imported illegally or food smuggled in by a passenger, the agriculture minister said Tuesday.
The government announced a ban on swill and said it would seek the European Union's permission to vaccinate livestock, though Agriculture Minister Nick Brown emphasized there was no decision yet on whether to begin a vaccination campaign.
``This is an unprecedented outbreak which has not yet reached its peak,'' Brown told the House of Commons as the number of confirmed cases rose to 682.
Britain has sought to avoid vaccination because it would keep other nations' doors shut to livestock exports. Nations that vaccinate lose their ``foot-and-mouth free'' status on world markets because inoculated animals are difficult to distinguish from those carrying the virus.
``Vaccination is no easy option. It would be expected to delay full return to international trade, at least for the region affected, and would be likely to require tight additional controls, at least in the area concerned,'' Brown said.
Zoos around Europe, fearing the disease could lead to the slaughter of endangered species, also petitioned the European Union for permission to vaccinate if necessary. EU veterinary experts were to consider the requests from zookeepers and the British government on Wednesday.
Authorities have traced the outbreak in Britain to a farm at Heddon-on-the-Wall in northern England, where pigs were fed swill, a feed made from food discarded by humans.
Brown said it was unclear how the disease, an Asian strain first identified in India in 1990, entered Britain. It might have been brought in an illegal shipment of imported meat, he said, or it may have come on food carried by an arriving passenger.
By the time the first case was identified near London on Feb. 20, Brown said, the disease had spread far across the country.
``By Feb. 23, when infection was confirmed at Heddon-on-the-Wall, infected animals had already spread through markets and dealers to Cumbria, Dumfries and Galloway, Devon, Cheshire, Herefordshire and Northamptonshire,'' Brown said.
Cumbria in northwestern England, Dumfries and Galloway across the border in Scotland, and Devon in southwest England have been especially hard-hit by the disease.
Brown said it was difficult to nail down the spread of infection because some sheep apparently were bought and sold outside markets, and there was no record of the transactions.
Bobby Waugh, the farmer at Heddon-on-the-Wall, told reporters Tuesday that he was confident his farm was not the source of the infection.
``I have been treating swill and feeding pigs for more than 25 years since new regulations were introduced in 1974 and have never had a problem,'' Waugh said. ``I honestly don't think I am at the heart of this.''
Swill was once a common food for pigs, but its use has declined in Britain. Currently fewer than 2 percent of pigs get it.
Ben Gill, president of the National Farmers Union, said a ban on swill was ``taking a hammer to hit the wrong point.'' The feed is safe if it is cooked according to regulations, he said.
``The real issue is how did this illegal importation take place?'' Gill said on Channel 4 television news.
``Was it a personal import, as we have seen examples in ports around the country, or was it an illegal commercial import, which we know takes place with false manifests? We don't have at the ports the sort of rigid controls that other countries have.''
Opposition Conservative lawmakers renewed criticism of the government for what they said was foot-dragging in controlling the disease.
``If the government decides that some form of vaccination is necessary it will, in effect, be admitting that its other policies have failed,'' Conservative lawmaker Tim Yeo said, drawing a sharp response from the normally placid Brown.
``Frankly I don't need telling to get on with it and nor do the officials on the ground,'' Brown said. ``There are some very hard choices to be made and there is not a single recommendation that anyone could make that doesn't have a good argument against it.''
In France, Agriculture Minister Jean Glavany said Tuesday that vaccination ``has not been excluded'' but the government hoped to avoid it, fearing ``catastrophic'' economic consequences for farmers. France has two confirmed cases.
Danish authorities suspended livestock exports as veterinarians investigated three suspected cases of foot-and-mouth disease in the west of the country.
The EU allowed farmers in most of Northern Ireland to resume exports of fresh meat, unpasteurized dairy products and untreated hides, but continued restrictions in a border district where one case of disease was found on March 1.
The Czech Republic said it would drop restrictions at the border with Poland but foot-and-mouth precautions would continue along the borders with Germany and Austria, at least until April 5.
---
PORT JEFFERSON: SPILL HURTS MARINE LIFE
New York Times
March 27, 2001
Metro Briefing
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/27/nyregion/27MBRF.html
A small oil spill in Long Island Sound on March 20 has begun hurting marine life along a 25-mile stretch of Suffolk County's north shore, officials said yesterday. The United States Coast Guard said the heavy fuel oil leaked from a barge owned by the Moran Towing Corporation. The company has taken responsibility and has joined the cleanup effort, said Petty Officer Tom Sperduto, a spokesman for the Coast Guard. So far, 7 birds have been killed by the oil and about 30 others have been observed with oil on their feathers. Al Baker (NYT)
---
Global Warming Pariah
New York Times
March 27, 2001
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/27/opinion/L27KYOT.html
To the Editor:
As David G. Victor concedes ("Piety at Kyoto Didn't Cool the Planet," Op-Ed, March 23), the "world is ready to pin the blame" for the demise of the Kyoto climate accord on the United States. Unfortunately, his proposed solution would end up with the same result.
Since we, citizens and businesses of the United States, produce the lion's share of greenhouse gas emissions, we can, if we so choose, refuse to accept the Kyoto accord and try to force our preferred "solution" on the rest of the world. Unless the United States can advance a solution that enjoys broad international support, it risks becoming an environmental pariah state.
BEN LIEBERMAN Maynard, Mass., March 23, 2001
---
Energy Policy Obstacle
New York Times
March 27, 2001
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/27/opinion/L27ENER.html
To the Editor:
Re "Energy Chief Sketches Plans to Curb Rules Limiting Supply" (news article, March 20):
Every president since Richard M. Nixon has tried to initiate a national energy policy. Each has failed because each proposal is evaluated by members of Congress against the yardstick of its potential economic impact on his or her individual district or state, not on the potential benefits to the nation. The reward system for those who represent us at the national level resides at the local level.
JAMES C. COOMER Norcross, Ga., March 21, 2001 The writer is professor emeritus of political science, Mercer University.
---
Whitman Lobbied for U.S. Global Warming Action-Post
Yahoo News
Tuesday March 27 1:40 AM ET
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20010327/ts/environment_whitman_dc_1.html
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A week before President George W. Bush broke his campaign pledge to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, his top environmental official lobbied hard for tough action on global warming, the Washington Post reported Tuesday.
The Post said it had obtained a March 6 memo in which Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Christine Todd Whitman warned Bush to demonstrate his commitment to cutting greenhouse gases or risk undermining the United States' standing among allies around the world.
The memo, written after Whitman met with European environmental ministers in Italy, told the president that global warming was an important ``credibility issue'' for the United States, and that ``we need to appear engaged ... and build some bona fides first.''
``I would strongly recommend that you continue to recognize that global warming is a real and serious issue,'' Whitman said in the memo, according to the Post account.
It was sent one week before Bush announced that he would not seek a reduction in the carbon dioxide emissions from the nation's power plants, despite a campaign promise to the contrary.
Denies Bush Betrayal
The memo reveals the extent to which the former New Jersey governor lobbied the president before he made his decision.
Whitman has denied Bush had ``pulled the rug out'' from under her with his decision. ``No, we were part of that decision,'' she said on CNN's ``Late Edition.'' ``We were working with the White House for the week leading up to it.''
But Bush's decision, so much at odds with Whitman's earlier efforts to lobby for reductions in carbon dioxide emissions, have undercut Whitman's ability to negotiate for the administration, the Post said.
``I think the administration undermined her,'' the paper quoted Sen. John Kerry (news - bio - voting record), a Massachusetts Democrat, as saying. ``The question is being asked: Does she speak for the administration, and will she be able to enforce environmental laws and seek others where necessary?''
Remains Influential
But the White House, congressional Republicans and an aide to Whitman said the EPA chief remains an influential member of the administration despite her differences with the president over carbon dioxide emissions.
The Post quoted Whitman's spokesman as saying the memo was a confidential correspondence and she would not be willing to discuss it.
Bush's decision to reverse his campaign promise followed intense lobbying by coal and oil companies and congressional conservatives who opposed the proposal. Bush said he based his decision on concerns about energy shortages and an Energy Department report which concluded that restrictions on carbon dioxide emissions would drive up electricity costs.
In her memo, Whitman told Bush, ``Mr. President, this is a credibility issue (global warming) for the U.S. in international community. It is also an issue that is resonating here, at home. We need to appear engaged.''
Whitman first learned of the president's reversal on carbon dioxide emissions at a midmorning meeting with Bush at the White House, hours before he revealed his decision in a letter to four conservative senators.
---
Whitman urged Bush not to break pollution pledge
USA Today
03/27/2001 - Updated 09:16 AM ET
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washdc/2001-03-27-whitman.htm
WASHINGTON (AP) - Environmental Protection Agency chief Christie Whitman told President Bush a week before he broke a campaign promise to reduce carbon dioxide emissions that such a move would undermine this country's world reputation, The Washington Post said.
The warning came in a March 6 memo in which Whitman wrote, "I would strongly recommend that you continue to recognize global warming is a real and serious issue," the newspaper said in Tuesday's editions.
"Mr. President, this is a credibility issue for the U.S. in the international community," the memo added. "It is also an issue that is resonating here at home. We need to appear engaged."
One week after the memo, Bush announced he would not seek the carbon dioxide reductions. Carbon dioxide is a gas that scientists say is a major factor in the earth's rising temperatures.
Those who have worked with Whitman on the issue of global warming said she was undermined by the decision.
"I respect Christie enormously, but I think the administration undermined her," said Sen. John F. Kerry, D-Mass., a leading advocate of the need to address global warming. "The question is being asked: Does she speak for the administration, and will she be able to enforce environmental laws and seek others where necessary?"
Whitman refused to comment Monday to the Post. Her spokesman said the memo was a confidential correspondence between Whitman and the president, and that she would not be willing to discuss it.
However, interviewed Tuesday on ABC's Good Morning America, Whitman said she does not believe her credibility has been undermined.
"He said global climate change is an issue in which we need to be engaged internationally," Whitman said of Bush. "He is very committed to that decision.... The international community understands that."
She also defended Bush's decision to roll back a Clinton administration regulation that would have reduced from 50 parts per billion to 10 parts per billion the amount of arsenic allowed in drinking water. "The previous administration didn't take the time to fully understand the impact of this decision in those areas of the country where you have a great deal of naturally occurring arsenic," Whitman said.
The reduction would not have taken effect until 2006, she said. "We will have a new standard by 2006 (and) it will certainly be well below 50" parts per billion.
------
British consider vaccinating livestock
USA Today
03/27/2001 - Updated 01:58 PM ET
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/footandmouth/2001-03-27-vaccinate.htm
LONDON (AP) - Determined to stem the tide of foot-and-mouth, the British government said Tuesday it may reverse a long-held policy and vaccinate livestock against the disease. Meanwhile, the government suggested an illegal act may have brought the fast-spreading livestock disease into Britain.
News reports said the infection had been traced to a shipment of imported meat to a Chinese restaurant in Northern England. Some of the uneaten meat was fed to pigs in swill, the British news agency Press Association said.
The British government has sought to avoid vaccination because it would keep other nations' doors shut to livestock exports. Nations that vaccinate lose their "foot-and-mouth free" status on world markets, because inoculated animals are different to distinguish from those carrying the virus.
But the government, under fire from the opposition, is increasingly desperate to halt the spread of the disease.
"A few days ago even, this was generally regarded as anathema to very large parts of the farming community," Prime Minister Tony Blair told the British Broadcasting Corp. "As you track the disease and see how it spreads, things that may have seemed utterly unpalatable a short time ago have to be on the agenda."
A Blair spokesman said, "There must have been some sort of illegal activity for the disease to have entered this country." The spokesman, who spoke on condition of anonymity, did not elaborate.
Agriculture Minister Nick Brown was due to report to Parliament on Tuesday about government findings on the outbreak's origin.
Since the first reported case in mid-February, 634 sites have been confirmed infected with foot and mouth, a virus that is harmless to humans but is dreaded by farmers for its potential to wreak economic havoc. The disease, transmittable by air, is fatal to young livestock and harms the development of older ones. The United States has been free of the disease since 1929.
In Brussels, Belgium, European Union veterinary experts agreed Tuesday to maintain a ban on livestock exports from Britain and Ireland until at least April 19. But they eased restrictions on Northern Ireland, allowing exports of some animal products unless they originate from two districts with confirmed infections.
The experts were expected to also maintain the livestock export ban on France - which they had considered lifting until a second case in France was found Friday. But they may relax restrictions on sales of French meat, dairy products and skins. The Netherlands is the only other country in continental Europe to confirm a case of infection.
On Monday, Britain began burying thousands of slaughtered sheep in a pit on a disused airfield in Cumbria, the northwestern English county worst hit by the outbreak. Thousands of apparently healthy animals are to be slaughtered in a bid to create a "firebreak" around heavily infected sites.
Up to a half million animals could eventually be buried at the airfield, and the army was considering up to five further sites in England should the crisis intensify.
Across the border in Scotland, authorities said Monday they had chosen a burial site for more than 200,000 sheep carcasses. Another mass grave for up to 40,000 sheep was being dug on the island of Anglesey in Wales.
Conservative politicians have become increasingly critical of the government's performance in dealing with the livestock disease, and have urged Blair to postpone the national election widely expected on May 3. Postponement would suit the Conservatives, who are far behind in opinion polls.
"The message from across the country about the use of the army, the speed of slaughter and carrying out the cull is to the government: Stop dithering and get on with it," said Conservative Party leader William Hague. He called for a "crisis Cabinet" of department ministers, an idea rejected by Blair.
Belgium, which has so far escaped the virus, was investigating a suspected case on a cattle farm. The agriculture ministry said the sick animals had bovine virus diarrhea, not foot-and-mouth, although tests were still being conducted.
---
British government to ban pig swill
USA Today
03/27/2001 - Updated 01:58 PM ET
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/footandmouth/2001-03-27-pig.htm
LONDON (AP) - The government said Tuesday it will ban pig swill, which has been identified as a key link in the chain which led to Britain's devastating outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease. Agriculture Minister Nick Brown told the House of Commons that it wasn't clear how the disease was introduced into the swill, which was fed to pigs at a farm at Heddon-on-the-Wall in northern England.
Brown said the infected food may have been meat illegally imported into the country, or it could have come from food brought in by an arriving passenger.
Heddon-on-the-Wall has previously been identified as the likely starting point for the disease, which has now been detected at 668 sites around the country.
Only about a hundred farms in Britain are reported to feed swill to pigs. Brown said the practice could be safe, if the swill is properly cooked.
He said the government would now seek permission from the European Union to vaccinate livestock, should be government choose to add vaccination to its control measures.
Earlier news reports said the infection had been traced to a shipment of imported meat to a Chinese restaurant, and the British news agency Press Association said that some of that meat was fed to pigs in swill.
---
Watt's up?
Washington Times
March 27, 2001
Inside the Beltway
John McCaslin Political tidbits and other shenanigans from around the nation's capital.
"We're beginning to wonder if James Watt is whispering in his ear." - Wilderness Society President William Meadows, after President Bush made it clear that he wants to drill for oil and natural gas in a portion of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and certain areas of the Rockies. Mr. Watt, as interior secretary from 1981 to 1983, urged drilling in wilderness areas.
John McCaslin, a nationally syndicated columnist, can be reached at 202/636-3284 or by e-mail: mccasl@twtmail.com.
---
Beached elephant seal blocks office entrance
Washington Times
March 27, 2001
World Scene Combined dispatches and staff reports
http://www.washtimes.com/world/worldscene-2001327223214.htm
CAPE TOWN, South Africa -Office workers yesterday found the entrance to their waterfront building blocked by a 2,000-pound elephant seal.
With the 15-foot-long seal stretched out in front of the main entrance, workers had to use side entrances.
The seal, part of a colony near Gough Island, about 1,500 miles southwest of Cape Town, somehow got off its normal course, perhaps to avoid sharks or killer whales or pushed by strong currents, said Ralston Lewis, a member of the Wildlife Society.
-------- genetics
Poll: Consumers unaware of biotech
InfoBeat News
Morning Coffee Edition - 3/27/2001
By PHILIP BRASHER AP Farm Writer
http://www.infobeat.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/IBFrontEnd.woa/wa/fullStory?article=406528580
WASHINGTON (AP) - Nearly 60 percent of people in a new poll said they didn't want genetically engineered crops introduced into the food supply. But when informed the ingredients were already in at least half the products on store shelves, almost half said they must be safe.
Sixty-two percent of those polled said that they had never eaten biotech foods, as far as they knew.
Before being told how prevalent biotech food is, 46 percent of the respondents didn't have an opinion on the products' safety and 25 percent thought they were unsafe. Some 29 percent thought they were safe. Fifty-eight percent said they didn't want them allowed into the U.S. food supply.
After being told how widespread such food is, 48 percent of the respondents said they thought biotech products were OK, while 21 percent thought they were unsafe. The remaining 31 percent didn't have an opinion.
``Despite the heated national debate about agricultural biotechnology, most Americans do not have strong or well-informed opinions about this new technology,'' said Mike Rodemeyer, executive director of the Pew Initiative for Agricultural Biotechnology, a private organization that commissioned the poll.
``Essentially, public opinion is up for grabs because this new technology has moved faster than the public's ability to fully understand it and its implications.''
Three-quarters of respondents wanted to know when foods contain genetically engineered ingredients. The government doesn't require food makers to label biotech products, so long as the biotech crops are essentially the same as conventionally bred varieties.
More than half the soybeans now grown by U.S. farmers have been engineered to make them immune to a common herbicide, and about 20 percent of the corn is of various biotech varieties that make the crop toxic to an insect pest.
The Grocery Manufacturers of America estimate that 60 percent to 70 percent of all processed foods may contain biotech soy or corn. Infant formula, corn chips, veggie burgers and muffin mixes are among the many products known to contain biotech ingredients.
Anti-biotech groups say there isn't enough known about the potential health effects of genetically engineered plants and animals. But federal officials say there are no health risks from biotech products now approved for food use and no reason to require them to be labeled.
The industry was rocked last fall when a variety of biotech corn not approved for human consumption was found in taco shells, prompting a series of nationwide recalls.
According to the poll, 57 percent of consumers were at least somewhat concerned about that situation, but 77 percent said it had not affected their shopping practices. Some 1,001 adults were questioned for the poll, which was conducted by telephone Jan. 22-26 by The Mellman Group and Public Opinion Strategies. The margin of error was plus or minus 3 percentage points.
The Pew organization was recently formed by the Pew Charitable Trusts to help the public deal with the conflicting claims about biotechnology, Rodemeyer said. The group plans to issue papers and hold conferences and workshops on the issue.
Former Agriculture Secretary Dan Glickman, a Democrat, and former Republican congressman Vin Weber are chairing the initiative's advisory committee.
-------- imf / world bank
Latin America comes calling
Washington Times
EDITORIAL • March 27, 2001
http://www.washtimes.com/op-ed/ed-house-2001327201212.htm
President George W. Bush will be meeting with some very nervous Latin American presidents next month, shortly before the 34 elected leaders of the Americas gather for an April 20 summit in Canada. An economic and political crisis in Argentina is becoming so severe that some economists fear that a 1997-style financial crisis could revisit the emerging world market. Next month, Argentina's financial troubles will cast a pall on the Americas summit in Canada, and will test the new administration's strategy for dealing with financial turmoil abroad. Argentine President Fernando de la Rua meets with Mr. Bush on April 19. Some economists see an International Monetary Fund (IMF) bailout as a quick way to contain Argentina's problems, but Argentina has been unable to meet IMF's fiscal guidelines so far.
Fortunately, Economy Minister Domingo Cavallo, who masterminded the country's recovery from hyperinflation under the previous government, has the prominence to restore some investor confidence and to convince the Argentine people of the need to cut back public spending. Mr. Cavallo won't work an overnight miracle, but he is Argentina's best hope, and Mr. de la Rua showed considerable wisdom in recruiting his expertise.
Brazil, in turn, has demonstrated some ability to weather the storm. The troubles in Argentina recently sent Brazil's currency, the real, to its lowest level in two years, but intervention by the country's central bank has helped to buoy the currency. As during the 1999 Latin American crisis, Brazil is seen as a crucial domino for economic stability in emerging markets.
Mr. Bush should help to restore confidence by pledging his commitment to expanded trade with America's Latin American neighbors after he meets with the Argentine, Brazilian and Chilean presidents in April. Calling for an IMF rescue may seem tempting, but Mr. Bush should instead emphasize the benefits of trade and should outline, as specifically as possible, his timetable goals for establishing a free trade zone in the hemisphere.
Washington, meanwhile, should provide a good model for the rest of the world by implementing effective economic policy. Low taxes and wise public spending is the best-known recipe for long-term economic growth and stability.
-------- police
Whitman: Verniero not 'wrong'
InfoBeat News
Afternoon Edition - 3/27/2001
http://www.infobeat.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/IBFrontEnd.woa/wa/fullStory?article=406534819
NEWARK, N.J. (AP) - Former Gov. Christie Whitman said former state Attorney General Peter Verniero did ``nothing wrong'' in his handling of racial profiling allegations, although she admitted that she and Verniero were slow to realize that profiling was a problem.
Verniero is scheduled to testify Wednesday at a state Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on claims of racial profiling by state police.
Verniero, now a state Supreme Court justice, has been criticized for not reacting early enough to reports that state troopers were targeting minority motorists.
Whitman, who now heads the Environmental Protection Agency, defended Verniero's handling of the information that was available to him.
``Things come in bit by bit,'' Whitman told The Star-Ledger of Newark for Tuesday's editions. ``You don't have time to step back and look at the whole picture.''
Whitman said that when allegations of profiling arose, State Police officials offered ``plausible reasons'' for troopers' actions.
``You were conditioned to believe the top law enforcement body in the state,'' she said. ``They're held in such high regard, and have so much power, no one wanted to second-guess them.''
Whitman criticized the proceedings, which she said seemed to be feeding off ``political agendas'' and personal animosity toward Verniero.
---
After Chasing a Stolen Car, Officers Shoot 2 Teenagers
New York Times
March 27, 2001
By ROBERT HANLEY
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/27/nyregion/27SHOO.html
EAST ORANGE, N.J., March 26 - Two police officers shot and wounded two unarmed teenagers in a stolen car here Saturday night in a 38-bullet fusillade that started after a third officer accidentally shot himself in the leg, the authorities said.
As the Essex County prosecutor's office continued to investigate today, relatives of one of the wounded youths complained that the police had overreacted, and his mother said officers punched him in the face after the shooting.
According to the authorities, the gunfire began at 8 p.m. Saturday with a shout from the policeman who had wounded himself.
"I'm hit," the officer, Herron Barclay, yelled from outside his patrol car after a shot from his weapon grazed his thigh and shattered his front passenger-side window.
Officer Barclay's partner, John Thomas, apparently believed that the shot had come from the stolen car, which he and Officer Barclay had just cut off at Steuben Street and New Main Street. Officer Thomas got out of the patrol car, crouched behind it and began shooting at the other car.
Two other officers on patrol nearby saw Officer Thomas shooting, sped to the scene and pulled up behind the stolen car. One of these officers, Timothy Bradley, began shooting at it. In all, Officer Bradley fired 25 shots at the stolen car from his .40-caliber automatic, and Officer Thomas fired 13 more, the Essex County prosecutor, Donald C. Campolo, said in a statement.
The two teenagers trapped inside the car tried to duck and appealed for the officers to stop shooting, according to the grandfather of one. But both were shot.
One, Gregory Welfare, 14, of East Orange, was hospitalized with two wounds to his right arm, two to his right chest and two to his left buttocks, said Rogers Ramsey, a spokesman at University Hospital in Newark. The other, Pedro Torres, 18, also of East Orange, was wounded in the left shoulder and arm and suffered a broken left collarbone, Mr. Ramsey said. He said both youths were in stable condition today.
Mr. Campolo said today that no shots were fired from the stolen car, a Dodge Diplomat, and no weapons were found in or near it. He said the incident would be investigated by detectives in his office's civilian complaint unit and would then be presented to a county grand jury.
It was not clear tonight whether the East Orange Police Department had taken any administrative actions against Officers Thomas and Bradley. The police chief, Charles Grimes, referred all questions about the incident to Mr. Campolo. Mr. Campolo's executive assistant, Charlotte L. Smith, said the prosecutor's office did not know of any local administrative actions.
A desk lieutenant at the East Orange Police Headquarters who refused to identify himself said he had no information about Officers Thomas, Bradley and Barclay or a fourth officer involved, Officer Bradley's partner, Phyllis Bindy.
Pedro Torres's mother, Julie Torres, 36, said tonight that the two teenagers had appealed to the officers to stop shooting.
"They were telling them they didn't have a gun or anything, and they said, `Please don't shoot,' " she said. "He was scared, and he thought he was going to die."
After the shooting, she said, officers took her son out of the car, punched him in the face and held him down with his face to the pavement.
Ms. Smith said none of the witnesses so far had said anything about anyone being struck, but other witnesses remained to be interviewed.
Ms. Torres said she would pursue legal action against the officers "until I get their badges."
Mr. Torres's grandfather Rafael Rivera of Newark denounced the shootings. "They lost control," Mr. Rivera said of the officers who fired at the stolen car. "They shouldn't have lost control."
The Dodge Diplomat was stolen about 6 p.m. Saturday in East Orange, Mr. Campolo's statement said. Ms. Smith said today that detectives were still trying to learn who had stolen it and how the two youths wound up with it. Both have been charged with receiving stolen property. Mr. Torres was also charged with endangering the welfare of a child, the 14-year-old.
The teenagers live in an apartment complex on Sussex Street here, about a block south of Interstate 280.
Officer Barclay was wounded as he transferred his gun from his right hand to his left; the bullet hit him in the right thigh, the authorities said. He was treated at University Hospital and released.
---
Five Police Unions to Fight Complaint Agency's Powers
New York Times
March 27, 2001
By WILLIAM K. RASHBAUM
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/27/nyregion/27POLI.html
The city's police unions have joined forces to fight the Giuliani administration's new plan to give expanded powers to the independent agency that evaluates civilian complaints of police abuse, union officials said yesterday.
Leaders from the five unions, which represent police officers, detectives, front-line supervisors and senior officials, complained that they had not been consulted about the plan. They say that the changes are subject to collective bargaining. Indeed, several were surprised to learn yesterday that the city intended to begin the new system on May 7.
Several of the union officials, who met two weeks ago and agreed to present a united front, said yesterday that they would go to court to block the plan if the city sought to go forward without their involvement.
The expanded powers would give the independent agency, the Civilian Complaint Review Board, the authority to prosecute officers that it found had committed abuses. Currently, such cases, which include complaints of excessive force, abuse of authority, discourtesy and offensive language, are prosecuted by Police Department lawyers.
The police commissioner, under the new plan, would still retain final say over the discipline to be meted out in those cases, which rarely involve misconduct that rises to the level of a crime.
Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani and Police Commissioner Bernard B. Kerik announced the plan in January. A City Hall spokeswoman said last night that the administration had no comment on the situation.
Thomas J. Scotto, the president of the Detectives Endowment Association, said the unions' concerns included how cases would be plea-bargained and how much access the new C.C.R.B. prosecutors would have to confidential information in police personnel files.
Mr. Scotto also said the unions' lawyers had said the new plan would require a change in the City Charter or the administrative code. But the Giuliani administration's top lawyer, Corporation Counsel Michael D. Hess, disagreed, and wrote a ruling saying that no change in the law was required.
Bernie Pound, the president of the Sergeants Benevolent Association, said that because the Police Department had told the unions little about the plan, they could not support it. "As always, the devil is in the details, and not knowing the details, we are not going to support this," he said. "When you're not asked at all and something is going to be implemented and your members are affected by it, often adversely, you have to fight it at every end."
No information has been released about how the new changes would be financed. But a March 23 letter from the mayor's top criminal justice aide, Steven M. Fishner, to the review board's chairman, Frank H. Wohl, said the Police Department was prepared to lend police attorneys to the review board until the agency could hire its own.
A new vacancy on the 13-member board could create more controversy. A board member, Lorraine Cortez-Vazquez, has been appointed to the Sate Board of Regents, and City Council members said she had announced her intention to step down from the Council-appointed Bronx seat. Ms. Cortez-Vazquez could not be reached for comment.
In an unusual and provocative move, Council members from the Bronx said yesterday that they had tentatively chosen a replacement: Iris Baez, a frequent critic of the department whose son died after he was choked by a police officer. Councilman Joel Rivera predicted easy approval from the full Council. Final approval is up to Mayor Giuliani.
Ms. Baez is the mother of Anthony Baez, who died in 1994 after being held in a choke hold by a city police officer. "She understands the issue of police brutality firsthand," Councilman Adolfo Carrion Jr. said. "I think her voice there would be taken very seriously."
Ms. Baez said she had told the Council members that she would take the post if it were offered. After her son's death, she campaigned widely against police brutality, and she said she would carry on that campaign.
Her son died in a confrontation with a police officer on Dec. 22, 1994, that began when a ball accidentally struck a police car during a late- night football game. According to prosecutors and police officials, Officer Francis X. Livoti applied a choke hold to Mr. Baez, who was 29. Officer Livoti was acquitted of state charges of criminally negligent homicide but dismissed from the force in 1997. In 1998, he was convicted in federal court of violating Mr. Baez's civil rights and was sentenced to seven and a half years in prison. In a settlement, the city agreed to pay the Baez family nearly $3 million.
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Police Union Head Named in Conspiracy Case
New York Times
March 27, 2001
By ROBERT D. McFADDEN
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/27/nyregion/27SCOT.html
The president of the New York City police detectives union has been named as an unindicted co-conspirator in what federal prosecutors say was an organized-crime scheme to use kickbacks to union leaders and mob threats and violence to tap pension funds, inflate stock values and defraud thousands of investors.
The union official, Thomas J. Scotto, who has led the Detectives Endowment Association since 1986, was named by prosecutors in papers filed in Federal District Court in Manhattan recently to supplement information in 16 indictments that brought charges against 120 people last year in a wide conspiracy.
The papers - filed to give the defendants and their lawyers details of the government's case so they can prepare their defenses for a trial scheduled to start in September - outlined a conspiracy in which stockbrokers, mobsters and others schemed to bribe union officials to invest pension funds in stocks whose values would thereby be driven up and then sold at a profit.
While Mr. Scotto and officials of several other unions were described as co-conspirators, the papers did not accuse them of taking any bribes or even of being approached with bribe offers. The papers, which were filed Feb. 5 and came to light yesterday, noted pointedly that Mr. Scotto and the others "may or may not have known they were targeted as bribe recipients."
Typically, people named as unindicted co-conspirators have become targets of an investigation that has produced some evidence against them but not enough to bring charges. They are cited in the pretrial record because their names, and descriptions of their purported roles, are likely to come out at a trial.
Mr. Scotto last night denied any wrongdoing. He said that he had never been approached with any bribe or spoken with the defendants about investments and declared that "not one dime" of the Detective Endowment Association's pension fund had been invested with them.
Philip Karasyk, Mr. Scotto's lawyer, called the government's identification of his client as an unindicted co-conspirator "baseless and unsupportable." He said the identification apparently stemmed from two taped conversations made by a government informant in which Mr. Scotto's name was mentioned. Mr. Scotto was not present, nor was his voice heard on the recording, Mr. Karasyk said.
In one, he said, Stephen E. Gardell, a retired police detective who served as treasurer of the endowment association until his indictment in the case last June, was said to have commented that Mr. Scotto liked the idea of the stock scheme. In the second tape, James S. Labate, a reputed associate of the Gambino organized crime family, was said to have made a similar remark.
Mr. Scotto said he had never spoken with either man about such a scheme. He noted that Mr. Gardell had been a fellow officer of the endowment association for years and said he had always regarded him as trustworthy. He acknowledged that he knew Mr. Labate casually as a neighbor in Staten Island, but said he had never met, dined or even had a telephone conversation with him.
"It is essential for the public to understand that the designation of unindicted co-conspirator is one that is made solely at the discretion of the prosecutor," Mr. Karasyk said. "In many instances, a person with only the most superficial connection to a defendant or his criminal conduct is so named to give the prosecution a tactical advantage at trial."
The papers naming Mr. Scotto are a small fragment of a case that federal authorities last year described as one of organized crime's most aggressive forays into the stock market, a case in which mobsters infiltrated a Manhattan investment firm, DMN Capital Investments, and used it to defraud investors of about $50 million over several years.
Mr. Gardell was accused of using his police contacts to provide confidential information to mobsters about investigations and assisting them in obtaining firearms permits. At the time of the indictment, prosecutors acknowledged that the scheme to use the detectives' union funds was never carried out and that the union never lost money. Mr. Scotto said that his union's pension fund invested only in large, established companies and that its trustees would have rejected any suggestion of investing in smaller unknown companies.
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Verniero Has 79-Page Defense on Eve of Testimony by Aides
New York Times
March 27, 2001
By IVER PETERSON
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/27/nyregion/27TROO.html
TRENTON, March 26 - Peter G. Verniero today released a voluminous, point-by-point defense of his record on racial profiling while he was state attorney general, just as his former top assistants prepared to testify on Tuesday before the State Senate Judiciary Committee.
Mr. Verniero's document, released to news organizations by his lawyer, Robert A. Mintz, was addressed to the committee, which has conducted two days of hearings into the state's handling of racial profiling allegations in the late 1990's. At 79 pages, it is a kind of road map through the long and often numbingly detailed testimony on racial profiling by 29 state police officials and lower-ranking members of the New Jersey Department of Law and Public Safety while Mr. Verniero was attorney general, from 1996 to 1999.
The document lists previous testimony supporting Mr. Verniero's contention that he had believed the state police when they said troopers were not pulling drivers over because of their race and that he had not ordered that evidence of profiling by state troopers be withheld from federal civil rights investigators.
"It's an attempt to create a brief but evenhanded summary of some of the key witnesses' testimony," Mr. Mintz said.
The release of the document is the third step in four days by Mr. Verniero, who is now a State Supreme Court justice, to put his version of events before the public. On Friday he broke months of silence to meet in his office with a reporter from The Star-Ledger of Newark, saying that he was looking forward to testifying on his own behalf before the Judiciary Committee. And on Saturday he met with a handful of reporters of his own choosing to make the first detailed defense of his actions since he testified before the same committee at his Supreme Court confirmation hearing nearly two years ago.
The new release came as his former aides, Paul Zoubek, assistant attorney general for Law and Public Safety, and Judge Alex Waugh of Superior Court, who was executive assistant attorney general under Mr. Verniero, prepare to testify in person after having already submitted depositions. Mr. Verniero is scheduled to follow them in front of the committee, whose questioning has often been critical of his handling of racial profiling, on Wednesday.
Mr. Zoubek told the committee in his sworn deposition that statistical evidence that minority drivers were being singled out disproportionately for vehicle searches reached the attorney general's office as early as May 1997, nearly two years before Mr. Verniero, his nomination to the Supreme Court pending, issued a report declaring that the problem was "real, not imagined."
But Mr. Zoubek also said that he and Mr. Verniero had not taken pains to examine that evidence.
In the defense he issued today, Mr. Verniero maintains that no specific numbers were discussed at the May 1997 meeting, and that, at most, a police statistician had said that the proportion of New Jersey minorities who had consented to have their vehicles searched was "in the same ballpark" as that reported by the Maryland state police, which by then had been forced, on the basis of those statistics, into an admission of racial profiling by the Department of Justice.
In his narrative, Mr. Verniero also politely challenges the assertion of the former state police superintendent, Carl A. Williams, that the police forwarded all material relating to racial profiling to the attorney general's office. Mr. Williams, who was fired by Gov. Christie Whitman, maintained in testimony last week that state police investigators gave Mr. Verniero's office all of the documents that the office had requested.
From the first accusations of racial profiling in 1996, Mr. Verniero resisted the idea of drawing conclusions on police motives from stop- and-search statistics. Until a court ruling that year accepted statistical evidence of racial profiling as a defense in criminal cases, the normal way to test a police officer's motivation in making a stop was to put the officer on the stand and to cross- examine the officer under oath, Mr. Verniero said in an interview with reporters on Saturday.
The reliance on statistics alone, he said, struck him at the time as more akin to sociology than to traditional law enforcement.
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PHILADELPHIA: POLICE INVESTIGATED
New York Times
March 27, 2001
National Briefing Francis X. Clines (NYT) http://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/27/national/27BRFS.html
The district attorney is investigating a 1998 incident in which, according to an internal police report, officers staged an accident to protect Capt. James J. Brady after he spent five hours at a bar and crashed his unmarked car. He was spared dismissal with the help of Lt. Joseph DiLacqua. Both stayed on the job after suspensions, and the lieutenant was promoted, but The Inquirer obtained the police's findings of a coverup.
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Russia wants 4 U.S. diplomats out
USA Today
03/27/2001
By JIM HEINTZ Associated Press Writer
http://www.infobeat.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/IBFrontEnd.woa/wa/fullStory?article=406535100
MOSCOW (AP) - Russia on Tuesday identified the four U.S. diplomats it wants expelled and ordered them to leave within 10 days, following a similar move by Washington against Russian diplomats last week.
A statement from the Foreign Ministry said the names were given to U.S. Deputy Chief of Mission John Ordway. Spokesmen for the ministry and the U.S. embassy declined to give the employees' names or other details.
The statement said the employees were ordered to leave for ``activities incompatible with their diplomatic status,'' a phrase usually used for allegations of spying.
The United States last Thursday declared four Russian diplomats persona non grata and gave them 10 days to leave. It also told 46 others to leave by July 1. The expulsions were rooted in the arrest of a veteran FBI agent on charges of spying for Russia.
The Kremlin angrily responded that the expulsions would be matched on the Russian side.
The arrest this month of FBI agent Robert Hanssen, who is alleged to have spied for Moscow for 15 years, aggravated tension between the two countries.
Russian-American relations began the 1990s with a burst of optimism after the fall of the Soviet Union and communism but have been troubled for two years, beginning with Moscow's deep resentment of the NATO-led bombing of Yugoslavia in 1999.
Russia also vehemently opposes possible membership in NATO of the former Soviet Baltic republics of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania and has argued intensely against the United States' proposed national missile-defense system, which the Kremlin says would ruin the global security balance.
The United States in turn has criticized Russia's war against separatist rebels in Chechnya and has objected to Russian plans for weapons sales to Iran.
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American Studying in Russia May Be Swept Up in Spy Case
New York Times
March 27, 2001
By PATRICK E. TYLER
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/27/world/27RUSS.html
MOSCOW, March 26 - An American student who was investigated on suspicion of espionage and charged with possession of marijuana may instead face more serious drug charges, Russian police authorities indicated today.
It was not clear whether the case of the student, John Edward Tobin, 24, was taking a more serious turn because of last week's decision by the Bush administration to expel 50 Russian diplomats for what Washington calls espionage activity.
But given that Mr. Tobin is in a Army Reserve intelligence unit, it seems likely that his case has been complicated by the spying dispute.
Foreign Minister Igor S. Ivanov, speaking on state television tonight, said relations between Washington and Moscow were in an "emergency situation." He repeated that Russia's response to the expulsion of its diplomats would be "adequate and symmetrical," and added that Russia "is not a country with which one can talk in the language of ultimatums."
At the Kremlin tonight, President Vladimir V. Putin met with parliamentary leaders and one of them, the former prime minister Yevgeny Primakov, said Mr. Putin expressed a desire "to improve Russia's relations with the United States."
Mr. Primakov said Mr. Putin speculated that the Bush administration is taking a harder line with Moscow to contrast itself with the "flabbiness of the former administration."
In a diplomatic note on Friday, the Foreign Ministry said it was expelling four Americans, though it did not initially provide their names to the United States Embassy. A Foreign Ministry spokesman said today that further information would be delivered through diplomatic channels.
In the police case against Mr. Tobin, a native of Ridgefield, Conn., a senior investigator in the prosecutor's office, Andrei Makarov, told the Reuters news agency that Mr. Tobin, already charged with simple possession of marijuana, would now face charges of being part of a drug ring. If convicted, he could face 15 years in prison. Mr. Makarov said Mr. Tobin's suspected accomplices are American citizens who are no longer in the country.
Mr. Tobin was pursuing graduate studies at Voronezh State University in southwestern Russia under the State Department's Fulbright scholars program. Though he was in Russia as a private citizen, Mr. Tobin is a trained interrogator who holds the rank of Army Reserve specialist in the 325th Military Intelligence Battalion in Waterbury, Conn. He studied Russian at the Defense Language Institute in Monterey, Calif.
Mr. Tobin was arrested on Feb. 1 after he had been questioned by the police in Voronezh on Jan. 25. The night he was arrested, the police said they had found a half ounce of marijuana in his possession. A search of his apartment yielded another ounce and a half, the police said.
At first, Russia's domestic intelligence agency took an interest in Mr. Tobin, but later said there were no grounds for espionage charges.
---
China Says U.S.-Based Scholar Is Spy for 'Overseas Agencies'
New York Times
March 27, 2001
By ERIK ECKHOLM
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/27/world/27CND-BEIJING.html
BEIJING, March 27 - The Chinese government today accused a United States-based sociologist who has been held in isolation for more than six weeks of being a paid spy for "overseas intelligence agencies."
But a foreign ministry spokesman offered no details of the allegations against the scholar, Gao Zhan, in a case that has caused puzzlement and outrage among American officials and scholars.
At a news briefing today, the spokesman, Sun Yuxi, said, "Evidence has shown that Gao Zhan accepted missions from overseas intelligence agencies and took funds for spying activities." He said the information came from the "relevant authorities."
Last week, Mr. Sun said Ms. Gao had confessed her crimes but could not specify what they were, and he insisted that the family had been treated in a humanitarian manner.
Today, American officials responded with skepticism to the charges, and her husband repeated that he was mystified.
Ms. Gao, a research fellow at the American University in Washington, had come with her husband and 5-year-old son for a three-week visit with relatives, her husband said. The three were detained at the Beijing airport on Feb. 11 as they checked in to fly home.
The son, an American citizen, was separated from both parents and kept in a government nursery for 26 days before he and the father were released and returned to their home in Virginia.
The Chinese authorities did not tell the American Embassy of the boy's detention, in violation of an agreement requiring notification within four days when a citizen is held for any reason.
The embassy protested and repeated today that China had violated the notification accord. The parents have permanent resident status in the United States but are Chinese citizens.
State security agents also ignored the parents' plea to let the boy stay with grandparents, both sets of whom live in China. In Washington last week, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell called the boy's treatment outrageous, and both Mr. Powell and President Bush urged a visiting Chinese official to secure Ms. Gao's release.
Ms. Gao's husband, Xue Donghua, a computer engineer with Electronic Data Systems, said of his wife in a telephone interview today, "I totally believe that all her activities were academically related." Ms. Gao's research is focused on women's and family issues and the only funds that she had received were research grants from American foundations, Mr. Xue said.
Mr. Xue said he had been blindfolded and taken to a house outside Beijing where he was kept in a room for 26 days and not allowed to contact relatives or a lawyer.
Mr. Xue said he was questioned about his wife's research and about two-week visits she made to Taiwan in 1995 and 1999 with delegations from the Association of Chinese Political Studies, an overseas professional group of which she is treasurer.
Mr. Xue said his wife last visited China in June for four weeks to conduct research - mainly, he thought, at Nanjing University, which she previously attended.
Mr. Xue said his son had been traumatized by the ordeal but had now returned to school. "This is a very hard time for us," he said.
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China says scholar confessed to spying
USA Today
03/27/2001
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2001-03-27-scholar.htm
BEIJING (AP) - In its first specific accusation against a detained U.S.-based scholar, China said Tuesday that she has confessed to spying for foreign intelligence agencies.
A Foreign Ministry spokesman refused to elaborate or say for whom Gao Zhan allegedly spied. But he rejected Washington's requests that the Chinese-born political scientist be released, saying the case was being investigated "according to law."
"Evidence has shown that Gao Zhan accepted missions from overseas intelligence agencies and took funds for spying activities," spokesman Sun Yuxi told a news conference.
Previously she was accused of endangering state security, a vague charge often used against dissidents and independence supporters in Tibet and the Muslim region of Xinjiang in the northwest.
Gao, her 5-year-old son Andrew and husband, Xue Donghua, were detained at Beijing's airport on Feb. 11 and whisked away in separate cars. China has said the boy, a U.S. citizen, was held at a Beijing kindergarten.
Xue and his son were reunited and released 26 days later. Gao remains held in an undisclosed location.
The detentions have created a diplomatic row that has risen all the way to the White House. Last week, President Bush said he would bring the case up with visiting Chinese Vice Premier Qian Qichen.
China had hoped Qian's visit, the first to Washington by a Chinese leader since Bush took office, would set a positive tone for its dealings with the new administration.
In Washington, State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said Tuesday there was no substance to the accusations against Gao.
---
CIA Controls Mainstream Media
Boasted About Placing Agents Into Wire Services
From: alaidh@yahoo.com
Tue, 27 Mar 2001
3/27/01
Washington, DC -- The Central Intelligence Agency boastfully placed agents and loyalists into US wire services, such as UPI, the AP, and Reuters, and used those wire services to manipulate the news.
According to an interview this morning on Pacifics Radio's Democracy Now!, journalists who's work was stolen by the State Department and used by the government in the creation of propaganda, this CIA directly placed agents and false news stories on US wire services in order to deceive the public about the status of US operations abroad and about the status of the United State's international relations.
A specific example cited was the Bay of Pigs invasion, where the CIA deliberately used UPI to run false news stories about the "success" of the invasion in the hope that the stories would be believed and the Cuban people would revolt.
Such stories were repeated internationally and in the US in what the CIA calls "Blowback".
But more sinister were accusations that the CIA actually had its agents hired as staffers and editors at mainstream media outlets and used them to manipulate news, intimidate journalists, and censor stories unfavorable to its positions.
Libertarian Socialist News Post Office Box 12244 Silver Spring, MD 20908
lsn@libertariansocialist.com http://www.libertariansocialist.com
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Berenson answers to Peruvian court
USA Today
03/27/2001
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2001-03-27-peru.htm
http://www.infobeat.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/IBFrontEnd.woa/wa/fullStory?article=406535377
LIMA, Peru (AP) - Lori Berenson, the American charged with collaborating with leftist guerrillas in Peru, was quizzed Tuesday by the presiding judge about her political activism in El Salvador.
Magistrate Marcos Ibazeta asked the former Massachusetts Institute of Technology student about her decision to drop out of school in the 1980s to devote herself to a U.S. movement that supported leftist rebels during El Salvador's civil war.
"I believed that the Salvadoran people's right to express themselves in their own organizations or in the guerrillas was legitimate in that there was no other way to change what for them was unjust," Berenson said.
A secret military court convicted Berenson, a New York native, of treason in 1996 and sentenced her to life in prison for helping Peru's Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement plan a thwarted takeover of Congress.
After years of pressure from the United States, Peru's highest military court overturned Berenson's conviction in August, leading to the civilian trial that began last week on the lesser charges of "terrorist collaboration."
Berenson, now 31, said she lived in Nicaragua and then El Salvador before coming to Peru in November 1994. In El Salvador, she served as private secretary to that country's top rebel leader during peace negotiations with the government in 1992.
Prosecutors allege she rented a house in 1995 as a hide-out for the Tupac Amaru rebels and collected information with the wife of the group's top commander for a planned attack on Congress.
Berenson denies the charges.
---
Administration calls for crackdown on militants
USA Today
03/27/2001
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washdc/2001-03-27-mideast.htm
WASHINGTON (AP) - Condemning a new round of attacks on Israelis, the Bush administration urged Yasser Arafat's Palestinian Authority to stop terrorists before they strike and to arrest those responsible for the killing.
"We look to the Palestinian Authority to do all it can to fight terrorism," State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said Tuesday. "It can do such things like pre-empting attacks, arresting people who are responsible, and bringing them to justice."
The proposal "means finding out if something is being planned by someone and stopping them from carrying it out," Boucher said.
A Palestinian pollster who directs a research center in Ramallah, a Palestinian town on the West Bank, said support for suicidal attacks on Israelis has grown from 20% in 1995-96 to 70% of the Palestinians.
Also, Khalil Shikaki said at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, distinctions between Israeli soldiers and civilians as targets are vanishing.
Arafat did not want confrontation, Shikaki said, but with the breakdown in peacemaking his ability to crack down on militants is "extremely constricted."
After a 10-month-old child was slain in Hebron, a Biblical city on the West Bank where an enclave of a few hundred Jews are surrounded by Palestinians who were ceded control by Israel, Secretary of State Colin Powell telephoned Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.
"They talked about the steps the prime minister was looking to take or had taken to try to ease some of the pressure, some of the closures, and the difficulty that he felt in doing these things with killings like this continuing," Boucher said.
At the urging of the Bush administration, Sharon has eased up on strictures imposed on the Palestinians, such as blocking their access to jobs in Israel. The curbs were designed to bring internal pressure on Palestinian officials to stop the violence.
On Tuesday, Boucher said, "It's important to us that the parties begin discussing directly with each other the kinds of steps that are necessary to ease the climate of violence and to ease the economic pressure."
The U.S. message underscored a need to end the violence. The baby's death, which Boucher called "a tragic situation," was followed Tuesday by two bombings in Jerusalem by Palestinian militants. In one instance, a suicide bomber blew himself up. Several Israelis were wounded.
Later Tuesday, Israeli soldiers killed an 11-year-old Palestinian boy near Hebron, Palestinian doctors said. The Israeli army said there was an exchange of gunfire.
Sharon blamed Palestinian leader Arafat. He charged that "most of the terror attacks are done by forces under (his) command." Sharon said he knows how to deal with the violence and "will take care of it" at the right time.
"We're certainly deeply troubled by the continuation of the violence," Boucher said. "We offer our condolences to the families. We think there's absolutely no justification for the killing of innocent people, and especially children."
At the same time, the State Department urged Israel and the Palestinians to resume talks on security cooperation as "a realistic step toward restoring trust and confidence between the parties."
Sharon also has sought security talks with the Palestinian Authority. A few inconclusive meetings have been held.
Elsewhere in Washington, Jordan's ambassador asked the Bush administration to resume an active U.S. role in peacemaking between Israel and the Palestinians.
The diplomat, Marwan Jamil Muasher, said the talks should pick up where negotiations broke down last winter.
He referred to Israel's now-abandoned offer to turn over about 95% of the West Bank to the Palestinians for a state.
Arafat rejected the package submitted by then-Prime Minister Ehud Barak in the closing days of the Clinton administration because it did not provide for transfer of millions of Palestinians to Israel nor give the Palestinians sovereignty over East Jerusalem for a capital.
Muasher said Sharon's proposal for interim agreements once violence stops is inadequate, as is holding the Palestinians to about 42% of the West Bank. "There are parameters in place," the ambassador said.
"You cannot talk about 95 or 97% one day, and then 42% the next," Muasher told reporters at a breakfast news conference.
Presumably, this is the approach King Abdullah of Jordan will take April 10 when he calls on President Bush at the White House. He will be preceded in Washington by President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt, who is due to meet with Bush on Monday.
The administration is in the midst of reviewing its Middle East policies - Sharon saw Bush in Washington last week - but already has agreed with Israel that negotiations cannot accomplish amid continuing violence.
Referring to former President Clinton's deep involvement in peacemaking, Muasher said, "We are not calling for similar engagement." But, he said, "We are calling for active involvement. You cannot sit back and wait for the two sides to struggle" on their own over terms of a settlement.
King Abdullah is due in Washington on April 4. During his week's stay, he will meet with Vice President Dick Cheney, Powell, Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld, national security adviser Condoleezza Rice and members of Congress before seeing Bush.
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Millennium bombing suspect arrested in Algeria
BBC News
Tuesday, 27 March, 2001
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/middle_east/newsid_1246000/1246648.stm
Reports from Algeria say the authorities have arrested an Islamist militant wanted in the United States for alleged involvement in a plot to bomb millennium celebrations.
The official Algerian news agency said the suspect, Abdelmajid Dahoumane, was arrested on his return from Afghanistan, where he is alleged to have received training in the use of explosives and weapons.
It's not clear when the arrest took place.
Dahoumane's name surfaced this month during the trial in the United States of another Algerian national, Ahmed Ressam.
He was arrested in December 1999 on the Canadian border while driving a car loaded with explosives and bomb-making equipment . Ressam's lawyer has alleged in court that Dahoumane was the key figure behind the millennium bomb plot.
<a name="activists"></a>
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Protests Delay German Nuclear Waste Transport
Yahoo News
Tuesday March 27
Reuters
By Andreas Moeser
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20010327/wl/nuclear_germany_dc_8.html
DANNENBERG, Germany (Reuters) - German riot police geared up for further clashes with environmental activists as a heavily guarded train laden with nuclear waste inched its way to its final destination Wednesday.
Carrying slag from a French plant that reprocesses fuel rods from German reactors, the first such shipment since the lifting of a ban imposed three years ago needed one of the biggest peacetime security operations Germany has ever seen to keep the line open.
After a day of cat-and-mouse with protesters Tuesday which culminated in the police using water cannon against protesters firing flares and throwing stones, police said they expected the battle of nerves to continue Wednesday.
``The police are in severe danger out there. We think between 300 and 500 of around 2,000 demonstrators here are out to cause trouble,'' a police spokesman said. The protests had been mostly peaceful until late Tuesday night. The train was stuck some nine miles short of the north German town of Dannenberg after activists damaged a section of track.
A spokesman said five policemen were slightly injured, while demonstrators reported 56 injuries during Tuesday's clashes.
Protests Expected The six wagon-sized containers were due to be unloaded on reaching Dannenberg and transferred to trucks for a 16-mile road journey to Gorleben, a nuclear storage facility on the Elbe river.
Police said unloading would take between eight and 12 hours.
Organizers said that 10,000 people would try to block the trucks Wednesday, promising a repeat of Tuesday when despite the police presence hundreds of environmental activists halted the train.
Police had some 20,000 officers on hand along the route to try to prevent the battles that marred previous shipments.
Under pressure from France to reduce a backlog of German waste at its La Hague reprocessing plant near Cherbourg, Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder lifted the transport ban imposed on safety grounds in 1998. About two cargoes a year are now planned.
The transports are part of a deal struck with the electricity industry last year to phase out Germany's 19 reactors by about 2025.
Protesters say they want not so much to block the waste altogether -- it has to go somewhere -- but to make handling it so expensive that the industry shuts down its reactors now.
Germany sends spent fuel rods to France where most of the uranium is recovered. The small amount of waste is heated into a form of glass which is then sealed in metal canisters. Each Castor -- short for Casks for Storage and Transport of Radioactive Material -- holds 28 canisters and weighs over 100 tons. The canisters will be kept in warehouses pending a decision in several years time on their final disposal.
---
Protesters try to obstruct shipment
InfoBeat News
Afternoon Edition - 3/27/2001
By STEPHEN GRAHAM Associated Press Writer
http://www.infobeat.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/IBFrontEnd.woa/wa/fullStory?article=406534420
DANNENBERG, Germany (AP) - Protesters blocked train tracks with bales of straw and dangled from a railway bridge Tuesday, trying to stop a shipment of nuclear waste rumbling by train through Germany.
Police dragged off hundreds of protesters who blocked a 1,600-foot stretch of track near the northern town of Wendisch-Evern. Eight police helicopters hovered overhead.
Among those carried off was a young child clutching a teddy bear. Some protesters linked hands to slow down the police action, chanting ``Is this democracy?'' One police officer lost patience, shouting ``Just walk!'' at a demonstrator.
Nearby, police cut down Greenpeace activists who attached themselves by ropes to a rail bridge. The protesters had dangled above a river about 15 miles from the Gorleben nuclear waste dump that is the destination of the 60-ton waste shipment, the first in four years.
The activists suspended from the bridge and about 30 others who took them there in boats were detained after the six-hour protest, Greenpeace said. Police said there were no injuries, though some activists apparently fell into the river.
The transport was due to arrive late Tuesday at a rail terminal where trucks will take on the six containers _ each with about 10 tons of radioactive waste sealed in 28 glass casks _ and carry them to Gorleben. The nuclear waste is spent fuel from German nuclear reactors and is being returned after reprocessing in France.
The train crossed into southwestern Germany from France late Monday, delayed by about an hour by small groups of demonstrators who were cleared from the tracks by police. Protesters booed, blew whistles and placed candles on the tracks.
Police said they detained more than 90 people but said no one was injured.
On Tuesday morning, the train was diverted away from the university city of Goettingen, where a few hundred protesters briefly occupied the tracks, local police said.
The protesters hope utilities will be persuaded the waste transport isn't worth the cost. They say an accord reached between the government and electric utilities last year to phase out nuclear power over decades isn't enough.
``When the vase is overflowing, you don't argue whether to get a cloth or a mop,'' said protest spokeswoman Heidi Klein. ``You simply turn off the tap.''
Up to 20,000 police were deployed as authorities braced for a repeat of clashes with militant protesters that surrounded the last shipment in 1997.
``We believe we have about 2,000 protesters across the whole region'' where the train is due to arrive, police spokesman Stefan Knolle said.
Especially vulnerable is the final 12-mile stretch by truck. Germany's supreme court on Monday allowed officials to create a 165-foot exclusion zone on both sides of the road.
German and French leaders agreed on a resumption of nuclear waste traffic last January, with the German government saying it has tightened safety rules. The previous German administration suspended shipments in 1998 because of radioactive leaks on some containers.
Spent nuclear fuel from German power plants is sent abroad for reprocessing, but the contracts oblige Germany to take back the resulting waste.
``We have to take our own trash back,'' said a 26-year-old student at the protest camp in Wendisch-Evern, who gave his name only as Bjoern. ``But we have to force the pace of the shutdown.''
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Demonstrators go to extremes in Germany
USA Today
03/27/2001
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2001-03-27-nuclear.htm
DANNENBERG, Germany (AP) - Protesters trying to obstruct a nuclear waste shipment attached themselves to a rail bridge over a river Tuesday as the transport rumbled through Germany in the first such shipment in four years.
Police in rubber boats tried to persuade the roughly half-dozen Greenpeace activists who were dangling by ropes from the underside of the bridge to come down. The bridge is about 15 miles from the Gorleben nuclear waste dump in northern Germany where the 60-ton waste shipment was headed.
About 30 more activists took to the river in boats. Four police helicopters hovered overhead.
"Our aim is clear: We want to obstruct this transport as long as possible," Greenpeace spokesman Veit Buerger said. The transport was due to arrive late Tuesday at a rail terminal from where trucks will bring the six containers - each with about 10 tons of radioactive waste sealed in 28 glass casks - to Gorleben.
The train crossed into southwestern Germany from France late Monday, delayed by about an hour by small groups of demonstrators who were cleared from the tracks by police. Protesters booed, blew whistles and placed candles on the tracks to demonstrate their opposition to the transports.
Police said they detained more than 90 people but that no one was injured.
After the delay and a change of locomotive on the border, the train continued its 375-mile trip northeast to the Gorleben dump, the focus of Germany's anti-nuclear movement. Police reported no incidents along the route overnight and Tuesday morning.
Police removed hundreds of protesters from rail tracks near Gorleben Monday night. Other demonstrators loosened ties along a 50-yard section of track, leading to at least 35 arrests.
Up to 20,000 police were out in force bracing for a repeat of clashes with militant protesters that surrounded the last shipment in 1997. Authorities have promised tough action against any blockade.
"I think it's a good thing but of little use," said Gerhard Sandman, a factory worker from the eastern state of Saxony who watched the Greenpeace action but did not take part in any blockade.
Anti-nuclear activists say authorities prepared at least nine alternative routes for the transport across Germany to skirt protests.
Especially vulnerable is the final 12-mile stretch by truck. Germany's supreme court Monday upheld a 50-yard exclusion zone on each side.
The anti-nuclear protesters are hoping their stand will drive up the cost of waste shipments and convince utilities that nuclear waste transport isn't worth the cost.
The shipment involves radioactive waste left over after spent nuclear fuel from German power plants that was reprocessed at a French plant.
German and French leaders agreed on a resumption of nuclear waste traffic last January, with the German government saying it has tightened safety rules for the transports since the previous administration suspended shipments in 1998 because of radioactive leaks on some containers.
Spent nuclear fuel from German power plants is sent abroad for reprocessing, but the contracts oblige Germany to take back the resulting waste.
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PLEASE HELP PROF. BANDAZHEVSKY, CHERNOBYL SCIENTIST & POLITICAL PRISONER IN BELARUS
From: "Bill Smirnow" <smirnowb@ix.netcom.com>
Tue, 27 Mar 2001
Solange Fernex, WILPF France
Présidente Ligue Internationale des Femmes pour la Paix et la liberté, Section Française 114, rue de Vaugirard 75006 - Paris fax: 03.89.40.78.04
------------
Objet: free Bandazhevsky email urgent action
Dear Friends,
You have been very many to write to release Prof.Y.I. Bandazhevsky from prison after 7 month and 50 days in total isolation. He was extremely thankful for this solidarity from all over the world. He asked us to tell you his great emotion and that your support was a invaluable personal help in his very painful situation. He is not in a good health.
After more than 1 year under house arrest, he is currently (since February 13) tried by the military tribunal of Belarus, because one of his 8 co-defendants is a military. His judgment is due in a few days (beginninng of April) and rumours circulate that he stilll might be condemned.
Unfortunately the court rejected the Helsinki lawyer we had been able to hire with donations from some of you to assis his own lawyer. Amnesty International and the OSCE are present as observers and were very impressed by the more than 600 messages of solidarity received from all over the world.
As the President of Belarus has the capacity to let the military tribunal know his opinion this represents our last chance to support Prof Bandazhevsky.
This is why I ask you once more to take some minutes of your precious time and to write an email to the President of the Republic of Belarus, Alexander G. Lukachenko, asking him to intervene for the liberation of Prof Bandazhevsky and his clearing of all charges brought against him (corruption) which he has persistently denied since the beginning.
Please feel free to write your own support letter
Otherwise, use or modify as you like the draft below as follows:
Method: (sometimes you have to try a few times to get through, but please, give these few minutes of your very mprecious time).
1. Complete the text (sign it, with date, your name, place, address, function, organization etc) between
2. Paste it on the "email" sign, appearing left hand down on the first webpage of President of the Republic of Belarus: http://www.president.gov.by/eng/president/index.htm
3.- Paste it on following website : http://www.chernobyl.da.ru for Bandazhevsky's lawyer: click on "English" and click on the left on "FORUM" and paste on the corresponding space.
Only if 3 is absolutely impossible, send the copy of your letter to (nester@hmti.ac.by), but Prof. Nesterenko is himself harassed by the authorities, ill and overworked.
4. Please, spread this message in all you networks and contacts in your own country (especially abolition 2000), and all over the world, it is extremely urgent. If you need the message in french, please ask me for it.
PS. On the "chernobyl.da.ru" website, when clicking on "english", you might find interesting background information on the work of Prof. Bandazhevsky and Nesterenko and their administrative difficulties with their authorities.
Yours in Peace
Solange Fernex Président WILPF France Ligue Internationale des Femmes pour la Paix et la liberté, Section Française 114, rue de Vaugirard 75006 - Paris fax: 03.89.40.78.04
To the President of the Republic of Belarus: A. G. Loukachenko
Mr. President
At the UN Millennium Summit in September 2000, in New York, you asked the international community for its help to overcome the dire consequences of the Chernobyl disaster. We share your concern and this is why we write to you today, on behalf of Professor Yuri I. Bandazhevsky, who is awaiting his judgement in Gomel.
The authorities of Belarus, like yourself, Mr. President, who rightly want to attract the attention and the financial and humanitarian aid of the international community in favour of the Chernobyl victims, should listen to those scientists, whose work pays honour to Belarus, like Professor Bandazhevsky who is currently tried in Gomel, his judgment being due in a few weeks.
As you surely know, Professor Y.I. Bandazhevsky has devoted more than 10 years of his research in Gomel to demonstrate the correlation between daily uptake of Cesium 137 and its concentration in the body, and the dramatic increase of the morbidity and mortalité among the exposed population, especially the children.
On 4 October 2000, the European Parliament has received reports on the consequence of the Chernobyl disaster for Belarus. V. B. Nesterenko and Professor Y. I. Bandazhevsky were invited, being two Belarussian scientists of international standing. As unfortunately Prof. Bandazhevsky was unable to attend, his wife, Dr Galina Bandazhevskaia, had to read his report.
These two reports exposed the extent of the contamination in Belarus and its serious effects on the health today of the Belarussian population, particularly the children. They impressed strongly the members of the European Parliament and the invited guests. The facts reported by these scientists revealed that the people of Belarus are on the verge of a national catastrophe. Without urgent measures for their protection, they are threatened with extinction in the next few generations.
In order to give the effective assistance to the people of Belarus you called for yourself, Mr. President, at the Millenium Summit, the world community needs such very precise information about the correlation between the absorption of radionuclides by the body and the level of morbidity in the population of contaminated areas, which the research of Prof Bandazehvky was able to provide.
Nobody, among those who know Professor Bandazhevsky, believes that he has accepted bribes, as his accusation says. From the beginning, he has always firmly denied those charges. The judicial procedure against him has raised shock, unbelieving, consternation and anguish among all those who are aware of the extent of the health effects of the Chernobyl catastrophe, and who appraised the scientific work of Bandazhevsky. Amnesty International has adopted him as a possible prisoner of conscience.
It is generally believed that the true reasons why Prof Bandazhevsky has been emprisoned are following:
1. Bandazhevsky warned from the danger to ingest food contaminated by radionuclides (which could lead to a reduction of the production and the consuming of foodstuff from Belarus).
2. Bandazhevsky opposed some high officials, who state that there is no more serious danger due to the Chernobyl radioactive fallout.
3. Bandazhevsky protested also the wrong use of public funds for the Chernobyl relief.
The ecological and scientific public opinion, all over the world, follows with great concern the case of Prof. Bandazhevsky. Those who harass him presently are objective allies of those, like the IAEA, the UNSCEAR (see the UNSCEAR 2000 Chernobyl report) and others, who choose to minimize the consequences of the Chernobyl catastrophe. This is why the verdict of the Court in Gomel is of such vital importance and bears such a responsibility.
Mr. President, as individuals and members of an ecological, scientific or civil/human rights organization, we write to you to ask to intervene for the full clearing of Prof. Bandazhevsky of all the charges brought against him.
He must become able to resume his work again for one of the most fundamental human rights, the right to life and to health. Basing on his very large scientific data, Professor Bandazhevsky is absolutely right in stating that Chernobyl represents a major public health problems for the victims. His data are of vital importance, as well for Belarus, Russia and Ukraine, as for all countries affected by this catastrophe and others. If the results of Bandazhevsky's research is not taken into account, the future of the Belarussian population itself will be in danger.
Thanking you in advance, Mr. President, to intervene in his favour, and to enable him to resume his ground-breaking scientific research on the health consequences of the Chernobyl catastrophe, we remain.
Yours truly
Name Organization Function full address
---
Hard-hitting activist with a gentle touch
Between speaking tours and human-rights work, Rania Masri is in demand
The Daily Star
DS 27/03/01
Lebanese news
May Farah reports
http://www.dailystar.com.lb/27_03_01/art3.htm
Rania Masri is somewhat of an anomaly. While most of her generation has been busy climbing the corporate ladder, securing their future and settling comfortably in Yuppiedom, the 28-year-old has set her sights on a different kind of success: she has been actively building a name for herself on the lecture circuit.
Although her youthful appearance may be initially misleading, make no doubt about it Masri, a Lebanese-American whose family immigrated to the United States after spending several years in Bahrain, is an expert on the injustices being carried out in the Middle East, more specifically these days against civilian populations in Iraq and Palestine.
A human-rights activist who has just completed her doctorate, Masri is a sought-after speaker in the US and Canada as a representative of a number of organizations: founder and coordinator of the Iraq Action Coalition; a national board member of Peace Action; a member of the board of directors of the Education for Peace in Iraq Center; the media co-chair and steering committee member for Al-Awda Palestine Right to Return Coalition; and the Arab Women's Solidarity Association's representative to the UN.
She has written and spoken extensively on the injustices being committed against civilian populations, particularly children in Iraq and the Occupied Territories, and against the environment in Lebanon.
Masri says she remembers always being interested in human rights. That interest eventually translated into activism, which in turn led to her role as an outspoken advocate. While she was completing her MS at Duke University, she gave lectures on the environment in Lebanon, including two at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1995 about the human impact on the Lebanese environment and the country's diminishing cedars. At the doctoral level, her focus shifted to the Palestinians and Iraq. Her talks on Palestine have been explicitly critical of the US-Israeli relationship because "we have to place responsibility where it belongs."
"Today, I'm interested in anti-sanctions work mostly, and the Palestinian situation," she says over coffee during a recent lecture-tour stop in Ottawa. "But they are all the same for me; there is no difference between us. I don't recognize the borders that weren't created by our people but by the French and English." It all began for Masri back around 1995. At that time, there were only a handful of people who could incisively respond to the media's demand for commentators on Iraq and the dangers of sanctions. Masri was one of them. She studied the laws and the issues, and armed herself with the necessary resources so that she could debate any point on behalf of the organizations she was representing.
"I've been around for a while," says Masri, who in addition to her extensive speaking tours, has been interviewed by numerous networks, including CNN, Fox National News Channel, Radio Canada International, and Voice of America. She also has written in local, national and international news magazines, and has chapters published in two books on Iraq: Iraq Under Siege and Genocide by Sanctions.
Although her doctorate, which focuses on forestry, is ostensibly different from her human-rights work, Masri believes there is a connection between them.
"We are all citizens of this Earth and it's our responsibility to protect it," she says whole-heartedly. "Protecting the earth's children is part of that."
The audiences that turn out to hear Masri speak vary, depending mostly on the organizers and the venue. And, in turn, she prepares her talk based on the directives provided by the organizers, and on the knowledge of the prospective audience members.
"I ask who the audience members are likely to be and then I direct the talk toward that group and how knowledgeable of the situation they may be," she explains, noting that many who turn out tend to belong to traditional peace communities, like the Mennonites and the Quakers. "There are others as well. I get a whole range of Americans, different Arab community members. And, if it's an open forum, then a lot of Zionists turn up as well, and often interrupt me."
For Masri, this is anything but undesirable. In fact, she welcomes their presence for the opportunity it provides.
"It's good to debate them face to face and show the audience gathered that many of these people are racist," she says calmly. She may have even more opportunity soon. Next semester, Masri is teaching a university course on Israel and Palestine at North Carolina State, her alma mater.
Masri is visibly passionate about her work and she is not one to shy away from controversy or from speaking her mind, particularly when the truth is being exploited and abused.
"I'm a US citizen and I'm not afraid of criticizing the US government when I think it has acted wrongly," she admits matter-of-factly. "And, similarly, as an Arab, I criticize the Arab regimes when it's appropriate."
For someone who is just 28, Masri is remarkably composed, articulate and confident.
On this particular lecture tour, after Ottawa, her speaking engagements take her to Toronto, Florida, and New York City, before returning home to North Carolina for a couple of days, and then heading back on the road to Ohio. It's a turbulent schedule, and one that's repeated frequently throughout the year. But Masri takes it all in stride. After all, she virtually does this for a living now, and not for the monetary rewards which are paltry in any case but because she believes in it.
"My time is donated. I just try to cover my expenses," she says, adding that even when she is paid an honorary fee, she donates it to the organization on behalf of whom she's speaking. "Fortunately, I live at home so it's easier to support myself. But I'm looking for a way to keep doing this and make a living." While she may find that a challenging enough ambition in the US, it would be close to impossible in Lebanon, where she would like to return one day.
"I would love to teach environmental science or ethics in Lebanon, which is a different kind of activism," she says. "But, for the time being, my responsibilities are here with these issues. It would be great to do this in Lebanon but there's really no support there." In the meantime, she has returned to her native land regularly during the past decade, most recently as a guest speaker last summer for the Arab American University Graduates conference at the Carleton Hotel on Raouche. The organizers held the event in Beirut to mark the 33rd anniversary of the Washington-based organization.
After the conference, Masri took a week off and made her first trip to the south of Lebanon, which had been liberated only the previous month.
"It was great. So beautiful," she says, recalling her first impressions. Unfortunately, her visit was short, as she had to return to the US for other speaking engagements. As one of the invited speakers at the AAUG, Masri presented a paper on the Assault on Iraq's Environment: Radioactive Waste and Disease The Effects of Depleted Uranium Weaponry and Blockage, a paper which was subsequently translated into Arabic and published by the Center of Arab Unity Studies in Lebanon Throughout the speech, she highlights the subsequent perils caused by the US's position and criticizes the American government along with the other implicated parties for the consequent despondent conditions the Iraqi population has had to endure. She writes: "The US administration clearly knew the potential consequences of its actions, from the use of depleted uranium to the continuing denial of essentials for Iraq. The US knew, and the US persisted in its actions. The US, and all the supporters of the sanctions-war against Iraq, also clearly know the effects of the sanctions. The consequences of such actions are well-reported, and easily anticipated. And the actions continue. Criminal intent or criminal indifference? The answer is apparent, and the responsible party (and parties) equally known."
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Mexican army dismantles bases
InfoBeat News
Morning Coffee Edition - 3/27/2001
http://www.infobeat.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/IBFrontEnd.woa/wa/fullStory?article=406530916
SAN CRISTOBAL DE LAS CASAS, Mexico (AP) _ Troops tore down fences, barricades and barracks on Monday and began moving out of one of the last army bases that leftist rebels had demanded closed as part of a drive to move toward peace talks.
The gradual dismantling of the base at Guadalupe Tepeyac began on Wednesday and was continuing. The army has occupied the position since a 1995 government offensive in areas of southern Chiapas state where support for the Zapatista rebels runs high.
President Vicente Fox has shuttered five bases and promised to close this and another army camp west of San Cristobal, thus meeting the rebels' demand that seven bases be dismantled. Fox has said two of the bases will be turned into community centers for local Indians.
Rebels had accused the government of announcing the base closure without complying.
Rebel supporter Hector Morales watched from a distance as soldiers carted off army equipment ranging from typewriters to clothing. Morales recalled how many of the Tojolabal Indian residents fled to the surrounding hills when the army moved in 1995.
``Those who fled want to come back here, to their village, because they're very poor,'' said Morales.
Fox has also released about 100 Zapatista supporters from jail _ another 10 walked out of Chiapas prisons Monday _ and sent an Indian rights bill to congress, all actions demanded by the rebels as a precondition to returning to peace talks stalled since 1996.
The rebel leaders are scheduled to have another demand fulfilled Wednesday, when they will be allowed to address legislators on the floor of congress.
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Guyanan cops quell demonstrations
InfoBeat News
Morning Coffee Edition - 3/27/2001
http://www.infobeat.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/IBFrontEnd.woa/wa/fullStory?article=406530921
GEORGETOWN, Guyana (AP) _ Army soldiers and riot police fired shots into the air on Monday, trying to chase away angry mobs demonstrating against the governing party's recent election victory.
The demonstrations prompted stores and schools to close early. Chief Justice Desiree Bernard also decided to end hearings for the day into an opposition action filed against the Guyana Elections Commission challenging the March 19 election results.
The elections gave incumbent Bharrat Jagdeo's People's Progressive Party a third, five-year term. Guyana's main opposition party has argued that results were wrong because many opposition supporters were kept from voting and the official tally did not match unofficial results.
The elections have aggravated tensions between descendants of indentured laborers from India _ who mostly back the ruling party _ and Afro-Guyanese who support the opposition People's National Congress.
The country's election commission canceled a swearing-in ceremony for Jagdeo that had been scheduled for Friday afternoon so that the court could deliberate on the opposition challenge. The hearings will continue Tuesday.
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Singapore cops warn 2 activists
InfoBeat News
Afternoon Edition - 3/27/2001
By STEVEN GUTKIN Associated Press Writer
http://www.infobeat.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/IBFrontEnd.woa/wa/fullStory?article=406535355
SINGAPORE (AP) - Police issued warnings Tuesday to two civil rights activists who helped organize a protest over Singapore's law allowing detention without trial.
Author and activist James Gomez said he ``reluctantly'' accepted the warning, but said it showed Singapore's Speakers' Corner is insufficient without the freedom to assemble. Authorities set up the forum in a public park last September, allowing citizens to address the public without a permit for the first time.
Several dozen human rights activists gathered at Speakers' Corner for International Human Rights Day on Dec. 10, waving banners and chanting slogans against the Internal Security Act. It was a rare act of defiance in Singapore and a test of official promises that restrictions on free expression are being eased.
Gomez was later ordered to appear before police to answer questions about whether he and his group, a civil rights organization called Think Center, engaged in illegal assembly.
Think Center provided what it said was a copy of Tuesday's police warning to Gomez.
``The police have decided to administer you a stern warning in lieu of prosecution,'' it read. ``You are hereby warned for the said offense and if you commit any similar offense in future, action may be taken to prosecute you in court.''
Police said they had no immediate comment on the warning.
Gomez and Kevin Liew, the other activist who received a warning Tuesday, held a news conference Tuesday night in Speakers' Corner to discuss the police warnings.
``The reason you don't see anyone speaking today, apart from this press conference, is because of the fear generated'' by the investigations, Liew said.
Police on Friday denied Think Center a permit to hold a rally to support an opposition politician who faces ouster from parliament because of his inability to pay fees stemming from defamation lawsuits brought by officials.
A police statement said ``potential law and order problems'' might arise at such an event.
Singapore leaders argue strict laws help maintain social stability.
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Student activists: still a strong force
While embracing global causes, young people also turn to local issues
Christian Scirnce Monitor
TUESDAY, MARCH 27, 2001
By Tricia Cowen Special to The Christian Science Monitor
http://www.csmonitor.com/durable/2001/03/27/fp17s1-csm.shtml
Write a letter to the editor (oped@csps.com) Ask somebody what happened to real student activism, and they might say it belongs on a shelf with other paraphernalia from the 1960s. Others think it peaked during the Vietnam War and has declined ever since.
Not so, say movement experts, who point out that activism has persisted through a series of waves - and right now the tide is rolling in.
Current undergraduates belie their reputation for apathy and lack of interest in politics. Today's college and high school students participate more often in some form of activism than have previous groups, and often continue to effect change in their communities after graduation. Current undergraduate activists will fuel nongovernmental organizations and community-service groups of the future, experts say. "While they're less visible than in the '60s ... we're seeing a real renaissance of student activism - a reflective, thoughtful activism very much tied into their education," says Charles Derber, a professor of sociology at Boston College in Chestnut Hill, Mass., whose graduate work focused on activism.
The level of campus activism far exceeds the days of the late 1960s, against which many students are measured. Between 1966 and 2000, the portion of incoming college freshmen who had participated in organized demonstrations during their senior year of high school tripled to 45.4 percent, according to a report by the Higher Education Research Institute (HERI) at the University of California, Los Angeles.
From the current nationwide anti-sweatshop campaign to local community-service projects, students have many options from which to choose.
The most recent flare-up of student activism revolved around an advertisement that appeared in some university student newspapers opposing the idea of paying reparations to African-Americans because of slavery (see story).
http://www.csmonitor.com/durable/2001/03/27/p16s1.htm
Earlier this month, students at 56 colleges and universities fasted in protest of corporations doing business in Burma (Myanmar). They hoped to stop US corporations from buying products made in Burma, which is currently controlled by a military regime.
"Ever since Vietnam, everything's been really segregated into single issues, but 'corporatization' has bonded everything together and helps people see that they need to work together," says Annie Sartor, a sophomore at the University of Washington in Seattle.
The World Trade Organization (WTO) protest in 1999 and the Sweat-Free Campus Campaign, a movement to ensure that university athletic wear isn't made in sweatshops, kickstarted activism on the University of Washington campus and at schools across the nation. Activists say the focus has shifted from trying to change governmental policy to alleviating social concerns.
"I always did activism because it made me feel better. But after the WTO came, I'm into activism because I think that we can win," says Ms. Sartor, who is also a staff writer for the Ruckus Collective, an independent student newspaper on her Seattle campus.
With political interest at record lows among students - fewer than one-third of college freshmen say they are inclined to follow political affairs - students are bypassing government protests in favor of calling on corporations to exhibit ethical business standards through shareholder activism.
At the WTO protest in Seattle, some 40,000 people rallied against such corporations as Nike, Starbucks, and Monsanto (a producer of genetically engineered crops). Globalization concerns also brought labor rights, human rights, and environmental protection beneath a single banner in a coalition called United Students Against Sweatshops. One outgrowth of that coalition is the Workers Rights Consortium (WRC), a corporate watchdog which recently charged that a factory in Mexico that makes Nike and Reebok university apparel employed children and subjected workers to physical abuse.
Student activism, however, doesn't only come from the left; it's also cropping up on the right, says Nick Provenzo, executive director at the Center for Moral Defense of Capitalism. He says that people often think that "all campus activism is leftist in nature. On the contrary, there is a growing body of college students who oppose the left's agenda and offer a view to the contrary."
Objectivist Clubs are one example. They are based on the philosophy of author Ayn Rand, and they counter the mainstream activist causes. They promote capitalism and globalization through lectures, discussions, and the occasional organized demonstration. Objectivist clubs protested Elian Gonzalez's return to Cuba in 1999, and defended Microsoft during its antitrust battles, saying the courts shouldn't punish successful capitalists.
"I think there's an ethos of recognition that students can effect change, so students want to be involved in activities that effect change," says Joe Eldridge, university chaplain at American University in Washington. "If there's anything new, students are thinking more strategically about effecting change."
Students are throwing their energy particularly into local issues.
"Local politics is more tangible," says Richard Fox, assistant professor of political science at Union College in Schenectady, N.Y. Professor Fox taught a class this winter titled "Parties and Interest Groups," in which students created real interest groups that aimed to change policies or practices of local, state, or national government. Overwhelmingly, students chose issues close to home, Fox says.
Even at citadels of traditional activism like the University of California, Berkeley, activism has more of a community-service flavor.
"Activism [at Berkeley] has been sort of normalized, so that it's part of what you would see on a tour," says Daniel Hernandez, a junior at Berkeley and editor in chief of the Daily Californian - an independent student newspaper.
The attitude that "it better not eat into my schedule too much" makes community service even more appealing as a viable form of activism. Students often find community service more manageable with only once-a-week commitments.
"We work from the bottom up," says Wilita Frehiwet, co-chair of the Campus "Y" Cabinet, which oversees the 26 student-run community-service programs at Washington University in St. Louis. "We're college students, so we're trying to make a difference one life at a time for each person who comes along."
Community service has significantly bolstered the student activist movement. More than 80 percent of entering college freshmen have done volunteer work in the past year, according to UCLA's HERI survey.
One group of five Union College students called SHINE (Students Helping Impact Neighborhoods and Education) decided to raise money in the community and organize a network of high school and college student volunteers to run after-school programs for a local elementary school where more than 80 percent of the students qualify for free lunches and 70 percent failed state education tests.
The superintendent and school board were so pleased, they asked SHINE to take on another school in the district, Fox says. The group has even applied for official non-profit status. Even though the class is over, three student groups will continue to do interest-group work.
"Maybe the class is the spark, but there seems to be a desire among students to really tackle injustices," Fox says. "The class provides the vehicle for students who would really like to do good things and just don't know how to participate."
While classes like these are rare, activism continues to thrive at colleges and universities.
"We have to fight in universities - this is where the philosophy spreads and reaches young minds," says Jason Rheins, a philosophy major and president of the Objectivist Club at Stanford University in Palo Alto, Calif.
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Campuses struggle to define free speech
Christian Science Monitor
TUESDAY, MARCH 27, 2001
By Kim Campbell (campbellk@csps.com) and Noel C. Paul
The issue of free speech is getting a sharp test on America's college campuses.
At universities from Berkeley to Brown, a controversial ad placed in campus newspapers has pitted student publications against their readers, and freedom of expression against perceived racism.
In response to the ad, which argues against giving reparations for slavery to African-Americans, student groups have protested - in one case taking thousands of papers to keep the message from getting out. Some editors have apologized for the ad, angering free-speech defenders.
The conundrum has highlighted the difficulties campuses face as they try to foster both racial sensitivity and free debate. And it's left educators and students wondering if the image of college as a place where all views can be heard is just a 1960s ideal.
"There is less discussion of controversial issues on college campuses than anywhere else in society, and that's a tragedy," says Harvey Silverglate, co-author of "The Shadow University: The Betrayal of Liberty on America's Campuses."
Colleges are much more diverse than they were 40 years ago. But some experts say that just as students are being asked to be more accepting of one another, they have become less tolerant of viewpoints that challenge their own, or are not considered "politically correct."
Administrators are part of the problem, say critics like Mr. Silverglate, an attorney and adviser to Brown's student chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union. He says schools are imposing more rules about speech that is considered harassing and looking the other way when students take actions that suppress views, like stealing papers.
Don't like today's issue? Steal it.
Theft of college papers has increased dramatically in the last decade, according to the Washington-based Student Press Law Center, which advises high school and college papers on their First Amendment rights. Before a high-profile case of paper theft in 1993 at the University of Pennsylvania, there were about a half-dozen incidents of theft per year. Since then, the number has ranged from a dozen to as many as 40 in an academic year.
The pattern suggests that the definition of open discussion on campuses is changing. More students respond with disbelief and anger at the utterance of unpopular opinions, educators say.
Nearly 30 campus newspapers decided not to run the anti-reparations ad offered by conservative pundit David Horowitz. But on many of the 13 campuses where the ad has appeared - including the University of California at Berkeley and at Davis, Brown University in Providence, R.I., the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and Duke University in Durham, N.C. - protesters have charged papers with being insensitive to African-American heritage and complicating efforts to help racial groups reach common ground.
"It really angered me because ... this created more of a rift between the various students on campus," says Goldie Pritchard, a student of West African descent at UC-Davis who works at the campus Cross-Cultural Center. "I think it's important to have a dialogue, but there are people who will take that [ad] at face value and not look at the whole picture."
Some student objectors have taken action to make sure their opposition to the ad is heard, storming college papers' offices and, in the case of Brown, taking virtually an entire press run of 4,000 papers. Since then, several editions carrying the ad have circulated.
The stealing of papers troubled Carl Takei, the head of Brown's chapter of the ACLU. He and other students formed an organization called Students of Color Against Censorship shortly after the papers were taken and took out their own ad in The Brown Daily Herald.
"We were horrified that a group of students acting in the name of the minority community was suppressing dialogue and censoring opposing viewpoints," Mr. Takei says. "We don't believe that viewpoints should be censored because people find them offensive."
What surprises many observers is that minority groups would squelch speech, given that historically they have been most threatened by censorship.
Not everyone points the finger at political correctness. Todd Gitlin, a professor of culture and communication at New York University, says students don't have the same affection for free speech as he witnessed in the 1960s. That sentiment, he says, has been replaced by indifference.
"There's been a devaluation of reason," Mr. Gitlin says. "Today, debate just seems like a drag. Video games are more interesting. The life of the mind and democracy have become a side show."
But Gitlin suggests this new apathy may be linked to school administrators' growing role as fundraisers - something that makes them reluctant to let tensions between students flare and draw the ire of concerned parents and donors.
"It's a tragedy of American higher education that administrators are fundraisers," he says. "In general, they are politicians who are looking to their monied constituencies and want to protect their multiethnic flank."
Tougher guidelines on speech
In the past decade, administrations have toughened guidelines for harassment and acceptable speech. The University of Wisconsin-Madison, for example, has had its current faculty speech code in place since 1999. It states that "some hurtful expressions ... play no meaningful role in the free exchange of ideas; they may, indeed, inhibit that exchange...." Robert O' Neil is a former president of the University of Wisconsin and the University of Virginia who now teaches a constitutional law class on church and state at the latter. He intentionally tries not offend anyone. "I feel I owe it to my students," he says. "All of them are more likely to be able to learn than if I ran the risk of offending anyone unwittingly."
He attributes this careful treatment by him and other colleagues in part to the increasing sensitivity among students. But he defends the approach as the best way to promote learning in the classroom.
In the case of the Horowitz ad, protecting speech and student sensitivities can be a difficult balancing act. Some officials responded with forums for discussion after the ad ran, others built websites offering opposing positions.
"Probably over time we will change [our website] to include pros and cons, but for the immediate future, we thought it was important to give the student community here the message that there is another point of view," says Jesús Trevino, director of the Intergroup Relations Center at Arizona State University in Tempe. He says the student paper, which later printed an apology, should have first offered space for opposing views.
The Daily Californian at Berkeley is one of the papers criticized by free-speech advocates for apologizing for the ad.
"Our position has been completely distorted," says editor Daniel Hernandez, explaining that the editorial board didn't change its mind about the ad. It never saw it; the business side made the decision to publish it.
Free debate is very much a part of Berkeley, Mr. Hernandez says, noting that his paper often takes conservative positions. But he is critical of Mr. Horowitz's approach, which he says aims to pick a fight rather than promote civil discourse. Hernandez also takes aim at other papers, wondering if they are getting involved with the ad to draw attention to themselves and then "preaching about the First Amendment [when] we haven't even mastered our craft yet."
Some educators suggest that nostalgia for the good old days in which everything could be freely discussed on campuses is based on a myth. "We need one institution in this world in which any question can be asked and any answer found," says Arthur Levine, president of Teachers College at Columbia University in New York. "No institution has been closer, but universities have never been able to do this."
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Tolerance on Campus
New York Times
March 27, 2001
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/27/opinion/L27CAMP.html
To the Editor:
Re "Ad Intended to Stir Up Campuses More Than Succeeds in Its Mission" (front page, March 21):
The liberal mantra of tolerance in higher education appears to embrace distinctions of color, class, gender, sexuality, ethnicity and so on. Ideas, however, seem never to make the cut.
That irony pervades life here at the University of Michigan, which is embroiled in a court challenge to its affirmative action practices. Liberal activists defend racial preference as fostering diversity, which in turn nourishes tolerance. But the movement betrays its own intolerance in chilling attacks on students who happen to believe that preferences offend the Constitution. We are branded "racists" and "segregationists."
How deliciously ironic to tolerate people of all varieties, so long as they agree with you.
ANAND GIRIDHARADAS Ann Arbor, Mich., March 22, 2001 The writer is a sophomore at the University of Michigan.
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Gunmen attack doctors' compound in Somalia
USA Today
03/27/2001
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2001-03-27-somalia.htm
MOGADISHU, Somalia (AP) - Militiamen ambushed a convoy of aid workers Tuesday and then attacked the Doctors Without Borders compound in northern Mogadishu, the French humanitarian group said.
Witnesses said at least eight people were killed. As many as 30 people, mostly militiamen, were wounded, according to hospital sources.
Interior Minister Dahir Dayah said several people were injured and the compound looted. Government troops sent to intervene were still engaged in a fierce battle with militiamen Tuesday.
Four U.N. workers who were in the office at the time are missing, U.N. officials said. Five others - three from Doctors Without Borders and two U.N. employees - apparently were unharmed and being held in Mogadishu, said Samantha Bolton, a spokeswoman for the aid group in Nairobi in neighboring Kenya.
Abdulkadir Mohamed Mohamud, an aide to faction leader Musa Sude Yalahow, claimed he had the nine foreigners.
"All I want to show the international community is that Mogadishu is not a safe place," Mohamud said. "We'll release them soon."
What began as a feud between the militia hired to protect the compound and another militia has degenerated into a full-blown confrontation between the fledgling government in Mogadishu and Yalahow, a faction leader opposed to the new government.
On Monday, Yalahow's gunmen clashed with the Suleiman sub-clan that guards the Doctors Without Borders compound.
Early Tuesday, aid workers had gathered at the compound to discuss a cholera vaccination campaign and had headed out to a vaccination site when Yalahow's gunmen attacked their convoy, Doctors Without Borders said. The convoy turned back to the compound with the gunmen in pursuit.
Some 20 Somalis working for the aid group also were in the compound at the time, Doctors Without Borders said.
The building was badly damaged by heavy machine guns, anti-aircraft weapons and anti-tank rockets. After the compound was abandoned, militiamen looted computers, office furniture and even doors and windows from the compound, witnesses said.
Despite the establishment of the new government last September after nearly a decade of anarchy in Somalia as well as the creation of a militia and police force, very few foreigners live or work Mogadishu, and armed guards are still necessary.
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Intolerance on campus
Washington Times
March 27, 2001
Inside Politics News and political dispatches from around the nation.
Greg Pierce
http://www.washtimes.com/national/inpolitics.htm
Julian Bond, chairman of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, suggests that opponents of slavery reparations are "evil," but he thinks leftists are falling into a trap by trying to muzzle those with whom they disagree.
Mr. Bond's comments come in response to attempts by campus leftists to keep other students from seeing an advertisement bought by David Horowitz in which the conservative writer pooh-poohs the whole idea of slavery reparations.
A number of student newspapers refused to print the ads, and the ones that did came under attack. At Brown University, copies of the student newspaper were stolen or trashed to keep anyone from seeing the ad.
Stealing newspapers "turns the debate away from the evil ad itself and makes it a debate about Horowitz's right to speak," Mr. Bond said. Ironically, Mr. Bond's words were published in Mr. Horowitz's Web magazine, FrontpageMagazine.com.
The NAACP is an ardent supporter of giving taxpayer cash to descendants of slaves.
"David Horowitz is a right-wing provocateur; so far he has been tremendously successful in provoking the very action he wanted - a demonstration that black people and our liberal supporters are intolerant," Mr. Bond said.
"We cannot afford to give him the very ammunition he wants; doing so gives the battle to him."
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Mexico closes military bases
Washington Times
March 27, 2001
World Scene Combined dispatches and staff reports
http://www.washtimes.com/world/worldscene-2001327223214.htm
MEXICO CITY - Mexico closed the last two military bases near the Zapatista rebel mountain hide-out yesterday in taking a new step toward ending the armed standoff in the poor southern state of Chiapas.
A huge military buildup in Chiapas began after January 1994, when Zapatista rebels, led by Subcommander Marcos, took up arms to champion Mexico's rural Indians.
The government decree announcing the closing of the Guadalupe Tepeyac and Rio Euseba bases targeted the last of seven military installations that surrounded the Zapatista mountain encampments.
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Anti-WTO protesters already gearing up for Qatar summit
March 27, 2001
GENEVA, March 27 (AFP) - With eight months still to go before the next meeting of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) in Qatar, the anti-globalisation movement is already busy at work on new protest moves.
But some of its leading figures are showing signs of a less confrontational approach.
The latest non-governmental organisation (NGO) here to make its mark is the Global Citizen Initiative (GCI), launched at the weekend with the support of militant French farmers' leader Jose Bove.
He was one of the leading figures in the huge and sometimes violent demonstrations which disrupted the 1999 WTO ministerial meeting in the US city of Seattle.
The protests shocked the authorities and helped to ignite a worldwide movement against economic globalization.
It has continued to grow, culminating in a huge operation in February by Swiss police to prevent thousands of demonstrators disrupting the World Economic Forum attended by world leaders in Davos.
But Bove now appears to be changing tack in his anti-WTO campaign, reflecting a less confrontational approach.
Instead of calling for the abolition of the WTO, Bove has now refined his demands to a call for major reform of the world trade body.
He acknowledges that many of his supporters will not understand his new position but he says he now believes it is "much more important to negotiate within a multilateral organisation like the WTO than to have a free trade zone such as in the US".
Bove added that it was not a question of having too many regulations but that there were not enough and that those that did exist were not necessarily good ones.
In a launch statement, GCI said it recognised the regulatory role of the WTO, without which trade would operate according to the law of the jungle.
The NGO, which is currently based in Lyon, says its primary objective is to bring expert advice on WTO rules to countries now in the process of joining the organisation, such as Vietnam and China, as well as French-speaking nations in Africa.
According to Bove, this is to enable them to be fully aware of the consequences of signing certain WTO agreements.
GCI also wants to be seen as a forum for debate between civil groups, governments and institutions, as well as making recommendations on, for example, the much criticised body which deals with disputes within the WTO.
But the new initiative's declaration that the launch of a fresh round of multilateral WTO negotiations, maybe at Qatar, seems inevitable marks a significant departure from other anti-globalisation NGOs.
These include Third World Network which believes a new round including talks on competition and investment would be "dangerous".
It has called instead on the WTO to concentrate its efforts on renegotiating the agreements made in the Uruguay round covering agriculture, service industries and intellectual property.
Third World Network believes these should be changed to meet the present needs of developing countries.
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