------- Index of Articles

NUCLEAR
Low-Yield Nuke Bombs Endorsed
Navy Panel Urges No Court-Martial for Sub's Skipper
Navy panel won't recommend court-martial
Aldermaston woman tells secrets of our super-bomb secrets
Global spread of DU reaches food chain
Forces study 'an insult,' MP charges
Pentagon Studies Developing New Nuclear Bomb
Saving Landmarks Hazardous to Your Health
Radon warnings fail to stir residents

MILITARY
China and the United States
Selling Small Arms
Thirty reported killed by paramilitaries in Colombia
Amtrak 'Sharing' Information With D.E.A.
Ecstasy invading the ranks
Possible Clue to What Sank Civil War Sub
No Top Guns Need Apply
Florida

OTHER
South Dakota
Bush Isn't All Wrong About the Endangered Species Act
Ship sinks in Persian Gulf, spilling smuggled Iraqi oil
States
Mayor and Black Firefighters Split Over Diallo-Case Officer
Funeral for Slain Youth Is Held as Symbol of Ohio Strife Quits
Strong measure to halt violence
Georgia
The State Has Its Own Priorities
Police Attack Funeral In Cincinatti
Navy Pilot Thought His Plane Was Doomed
Crash Course: A New President Bumps Up Against Asia
Hainan Noon, Starring Gary W. Cooper
Taiwanese Leader Urges U.S. Arms Sale
Beijing Angry at U.S. Position That China's Jet Caused Crash
When a Little Production in Hollywood Freed Six Americans
Crew Is Back at Its Base to Cheers of Welcome
Spy Plane Episode Sharpens Debate Over Taiwan Arms
U.S., China assign blame
Debate on China complicated by standoff

activists
press coverage and report backs from April 11th day of action
States
HELP SHUT DOWN THE NUCLEAR INDUSTRY NOW


-------- NUCLEAR

Low-Yield Nuke Bombs Endorsed

Tuesday, August 15, 2000
By Ian Hoffman Journal Staff Writer
http://www.abqjournal.com/scitech/101181scitech08-15-00.htm

New and precise, low-yield nuclear weapons - perhaps built on designs so simple and rugged they don't require testing - could aid the United States in attacking a range of modern targets, a U.S. weapons executive says.

Los Alamos' chief weaponeer, Stephen M. Younger, envisions a flexible U.S. strategic arsenal of conventional and nuclear weapons of low and high yields. He suggests in a recent paper that accurate, low-yield nuclear weapons could be better suited to attacking buried, concrete bunkers and mobile missiles than today's U.S. arsenal of silo-busting weapons.

A rogue nation threatening biological or chemical attack against the United States or its allies might view a massive, ballistic missile attack "as overkill and hence not a realistic threat."

"Such a reliance on high-yield strategic weapons could lead to 'self-deterrence,' a limitation on strategic options and consequently a lessening of the stabilizing effect of nuclear weapons," Younger writes in "Nuclear Weapons in the 21st Century," a paper invited by the Pentagon's ranking defense scientist.

Critics say Younger's proposals are the latest in a persistent lobbying campaign by some nuclear weaponeers for work on new bombs and warheads, theoretically made usable by limited damage and radioactive fallout.

"This is all premised on the notion that you can cross the nuclear threshold if you don't make too much of a mess," said physicist Frank von Hippel, a Princeton University professor of public and international affairs.

"This isn't deterrence," von Hippel said. "This is trying to use these things."

That alarms disarmament advocates.

"Right now there is a global norm against use of nuclear weapons," said Greg Mello, head of the Los Alamos Study Group in Santa Fe. "To use a nuclear weapon would martyr the enemy, give cover to (nuclear) proliferants and open us to attack by weapons of mass destruction."

Younger declined interview requests but said through a spokesman that he intended his paper to provoke a discussion of the role of nuclear weapons.

The Persian Gulf War and fear of Saddam Hussein's biological and chemical arsenals fueled a round of low-yield weapons research in the early 1990s, but the effort collided with a moratorium on nuclear testing and lackluster political support. Congress added an extra barrier in 1994 by forbidding engineering work on nuclear weapons detonating at less than the equivalent of 5,000 tons of TNT. Younger's paper coincides with a recent push by conservative lawmakers to bend and perhaps break that six-year prohibition.

A proposed Senate defense bill would overrule legal objections at the U.S. Department of Energy, based on the 1994 law, to research into nuclear weapons to attack hardened command or weapons bunkers buried under hundreds of feet of rock. Colorado Republican Wayne Allard sponsored a provision calling on the Energy and Defense departments to report those targets and ways to destroy them by July.

Thick-walled concrete bunkers and weapons factories buried under mountains, as suspected in Russia and Libya, could be immune even to high-yield nuclear weapons, says Younger, Los Alamos' associate lab director for nuclear weapons.

An array of other targets could be vulnerable to simple but high-precision nuclear weapons exploding at five kilotons - roughly a third the power of the Hiroshima bomb - or less, he says.

Current weapons could be modified to reduce their yield or tailor their radiation effects, for example, to destroy electronics or biological agents, Younger says, but those changes could be expensive and require nuclear testing.

Younger suggests that fielding precision low-yield weapons could be less expensive and easier than trying to maintain the full, current arsenal of sophisticated, high-yield weapons at a time when weapons designers are leaving the nation's weapons labs.

"We could use gun-assembled or other simple, rugged designs that might be maintained with high confidence without nuclear testing," Younger wrote. "Such designs would require a significantly smaller industrial plant for their maintenance than our current forces. ... Finally, simpler weapons might be maintained with higher confidence for longer periods by a weapons staff that has little or no direct experience with nuclear testing."

Los Alamos' Hiroshima bomb, Little Boy, was a gun-assembled design. A charge of high explosive blasts two chunks of enriched uranium together to create a runaway chain reaction. Scientists were so sure of its operation that the Little Boy model was never tested before it became the first nuclear weapon used in war.

Most weapons designers who exploded their handiwork before a 1992 end to U.S. nuclear testing are expected to retire in the next 20 years.

Younger's ideas "express the ongoing crisis of legitimacy that the laboratory suffers," Mello said. "There is a fairly desperate attempt to stay in nuclear-weapons work, to be legitimate and attractive to new hires."

Younger argues that the time to open the debate on the future of U.S. strategic forces is now, given the typical 10-year or greater delay in fielding new weapons technologies.

"The time is right for a fundamental rethinking of the role of nuclear weapons in national security," he writes. "Prudent thought given to the role of nuclear weapons in the 21st century will reap handsome dividends for the national security of the United States and the stability of the whole world."

Arms-control advocates wince at Younger's ideas but say the debate is overdue.

"It would be great if this was a first word in a discussion of what nuclear weapons are really for," von Hippel said.

----

Navy Panel Urges No Court-Martial for Sub's Skipper

New York Times
April 15, 2001
By ELAINE SCIOLINO
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/15/national/15HAWA.html

WASHINGTON, April 14 - The three admirals on the Navy's court of inquiry into the collision between an American submarine and a Japanese vessel near Honolulu have unanimously recommended that the submarine's skipper not be tried by a court-martial, senior Pentagon officials said today.

Instead, the skipper, Cmdr. Scott D. Waddle, is likely to face some lesser form of punishment, such as a punitive letter or reprimand that would effectively end his career and could reduce his retirement benefits but would not threaten him with a jail sentence, the officials said. Commander Waddle was in command of the submarine Greeneville on Feb. 9, when the attack submarine surfaced rapidly in a demonstration of emergency procedures, crashing into and sinking the Ehime Maru, a 174-foot Japanese fishery training trawler.

Nine people, including four teenage fishery students and two instructors, were killed in the accident, which set off an uproar in Japan and complicated the delicate military relations between the two countries.

The recommendation not to proceed with a court-martial is likely to trigger anger and resentment in Japan, a crucial American military ally in the Far East. Reports on Friday speculating about the panel's likely recommendation led to denunciations from family members of those killed in the accident.

Deciding what punishment to seek is a delicate piece of diplomacy for Adm. Thomas B. Fargo, the commander in chief of the Pacific Fleet, who has to balance concerns about offending Japan, where many of his forces are based and where the American military presence is a constant irritant, against considerations of morale in the fleet, where prosecuting the skipper would be seen as an exercise in scapegoating.

The Navy panel presented its findings on Friday to Admiral Fargo, who under Navy rules will make the final decision on how to proceed. Technically, he has 30 days to decide what to do, but he is expected to act quickly and is unlikely to order a court-martial of Commander Waddle against the recommendations of the panel, the Pentagon officials said.

Other military officials described the report as being extremely comprehensive and well presented. But Admiral Fargo is free to reach his own conclusions.

The court of inquiry, a highly unusual forum that is an investigation rather than a trial, met for more than two weeks last month to take evidence about the accident.

The submarine was carrying 16 civilians, who had been invited aboard for a look at submarine maneuvers. Among the maneuvers was the emergency drill in which a submarine rapidly shoots to the surface and breaches the water.

Vice Adm. John Nathman and Rear Adms. Paul Sullivan and David Stone heard from 33 witnesses in the formal, public inquiry, which ended March 20. Rear Adm. Isamu Ozawa of the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force was included in deliberations with the three American admirals but did not have a vote on their recommendations.

Among other issues, the panel considered what charges might be brought against Commander Waddle and the two other officers who were responsible for the ship's operations.

The possible charges ranged from dereliction of duty or subjecting a vessel to a hazard, both relatively minor charges, to negligent homicide, a felony that could have resulted in 10 years in prison.

But Navy officials and civilian experts in military law have said since the hearings into the accident that the panel was unlikely to seek such a harsh treatment of Commander Waddle, who until the accident was seen as a model submariner.

In an evaluation last August recommending Commander Waddle's immediate promotion to captain, Capt. David McCall, his squadron commander, called Commander Waddle "an outstanding mentor" and "inspirational leader" who was "performing flawlessly," according to personnel records.

The panel also considered whether to bring charges against the executive officer, Lt. Cmdr. Gerald Pfeifer, and the officer of the deck, Lt. j.g. Michael Coen. But neither of them is expected to face court-martial if the captain is not charged.

Commander Waddle's lawyer, Charles W. Gittins, told the Navy that Commander Waddle would accept nonjudicial punishment and intended to retire from the Navy "as soon as the disciplinary issues have been resolved," The Associated Press reported on Friday. But he added that Commander Waddle did not deserve to be court-martialed.

The sense among top Navy officers and specialists in military justice who followed the trial closely was that the evidence presented in the hearings last month did not justify criminal charges, for all the embarrassment over what the trial revealed to be a slipshod operation.

According to testimony presented during the inquiry, the Greeneville's operations the day of the collision were riddled with errors and violations of safety rules.

The testimony indicated that the submarine went to sea that day only for the sake of the 16 civilians on board, three of whom were seated at some of the controls at the time of the collision.

The Greeneville's regularly scheduled training mission had been canceled as unnecessary, so a third of the crew stayed in port during the exercise, and the commander did not take measures to reassign other members of the crew to cover the absentees. He was also unaware that 9 of 13 sailors manning watch stations had switched positions.

Some equipment was not functioning properly, but the commander did not discuss that with his senior officers, according to the testimony. After a long lunch with the visitors, the commander was running behind schedule, and was rushing to make up time. Four safety procedures, ranging from the way the Greeneville tracked nearby ships to the way it surfaced and used its periscope, were skipped or abbreviated.

After the accident, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld ordered a halt to the practice of letting civilians take the controls of military equipment.

One of the Navy's investigators testified that Commander Waddle had not spent enough time at the periscope before surfacing and had not raised it high enough to see over seas that were swelling six to eight feet that day, and so failed to see the Japanese vessel.

That error was compounded, according to testimony, by a petty officer who did not notify Commander Waddle just before the Greeneville surfaced that sonar readings placed the Japanese vessel dangerously nearby. Instead, the crewman manually plotted the Japanese ship's position farther away in order to correspond to Commander Waddle's periscope search.

But Rear Adm. Charles H. Griffiths Jr., who led a preliminary investigation into the collision, testified that he did not believe that Commander Waddle had acted with criminal negligence.

Commander Waddle is about two months away from having 20 years' service in the Navy, when he will be eligible for retirement with full benefits. One possible punishment would be to force him to retire at a lesser rank, which would deprive him of some benefits, an official said.

During the inquiry, Commander Waddle expressed his remorse over the accident to the families of the victims, and the Navy dispatched Admiral William J. Fallon, the vice chief of naval operations, to Japan to make formal apologies.

But after reports by CBS News and NBC News on Friday night that a court-martial appeared unlikely, relatives of the Japanese victims said they were outraged.

"I'll be very angry if I learn officially that the court-martial will not take place," Kasuo Nakata, the father of an instructor lost in the accident, told the Kyodo News Agency.

---

Navy panel won't recommend court-martial

USA Today
04/15/2001
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2001-04-15-sub.htm

NEW YORK (AP) - The three admirals on the Navy's court of inquiry into the USS Greeneville's sinking of a Japanese fishing vessel have unanimously recommended that the submarine's skipper not be tried by a court-martial, The New York Times reported Sunday. Instead, the skipper, Cmdr. Scott Waddle, is likely to face a lesser form of punishment such as a punitive letter or reprimand, the Times said, citing unnamed senior Pentagon officials. A reprimand would effectively end Waddle's career and could reduce his retirement benefits. But it would not result in a jail sentence, as a court-martial could.

The Navy's chief spokesman, Rear Adm. Stephen Pietropaoli, said Sunday that he could not confirm the report.

"I don't know it to be true," Pietropaoli said. "Am I surprised? No."

Various media reports last week said that the panel was split in its recommendation, with one report saying it was unlikely Waddle would face a court-martial. Military officials did not comment on those reports.

On Feb. 9, the Greeneville surfaced beneath the Japanese fishing vessel the Ehime Maru near Honolulu while conducting a rapid-ascent drill for 16 civilian guests. Nine people on the boat were killed in the accident.

The collision strained relations between Japan and the United States, and prompted criticism of a Navy public relations program that allows civilians on submarines at sea. Sixteen civilians were on the Greeneville, two of them at key controls, during the collision.

A panel of three admirals delivered its findings and recommendations regarding the collision to Adm. Thomas Fargo, the commander in chief of the Pacific Fleet, in a meeting at Pearl Harbor on Friday. The Navy said the report would not be made public until Fargo decides what discipline, if any, Waddle and the submarine's other officers should face.

Waddle's civilian attorney, Charles Gittins, said he does not expect to see the report until Fargo reaches a decision.

He said Friday he has told the Navy that the skipper would accept nonjudicial punishment and intends to retire from the Navy "as soon as the disciplinary issues have been resolved." But he said Waddle does not deserve to be court-martialed.

"We trust that the court of inquiry's findings reflect Scott's demonstrated professionalism over a 20-year career and the nature of this accident, which was the result of a series of individually small, honest mistakes by good men trying to do their duty," Gittins told The Associated Press.

-------- britain

Aldermaston woman tells secrets of our super-bomb secrets
It was 1955 and four British scientists suddenly had the power to start, or deflect, World War III.

Guardian Unlimited
Sunday April 15, 2001
Kamal Ahmed Observer
kamal.ahmed@observer.co.uk http://www.guardian.co.uk/Archive/Article/0,4273,4170717,00.html

On a scrap of blue paper, unsigned but in the distinctive handwriting of one of Britain's leading scientists, four words reveal one of the most momentous events in the country's history. 'Looks just about OK.'

The note was written by William Penney, director of the atomic research centre at Aldermaston. He was writing about Britain's secret post-war project: the development of the hydrogen bomb, a weapon with the ability to destroy whole cities and millions of people in a flash of searing heat and light.

Penney had just worked out how to make the weapon detonate successfully. It was September 1955. The note, and the remarkable story of Britain's nuclear weapons project, is revealed in the first officially sanctioned history of the 'superbomb project'. The book, which had to be given clearance by the Cabinet Office because the details it contains are so sensitive, has taken nearly 10 years to produce and is written by Lorna Arnold, a former departmental record officer with the Atomic Energy Authority. She was given special access to the closed files at Aldermaston which will not be handed to the Public Records Office for decades to come.

The book, Britain and the H-Bomb , to be published this week, reveals that the four men behind Britain's nuclear deterrent believed they were ambassadors for world peace, despite inventing one of the most destructive weapons known to man. Penney, along with physicists Keith Roberts and Brian Taylor, and William Cook, the deputy director of Aldermaston, thought that the full horror of the H-bomb was such that it would never be used.

'William Penney and William Cook had seen the appalling effects of years of conventional war,' Arnold said yesterday from her home in Oxford, where she has now retired. 'They believed that this weapon would mean the end of world wars.'

Arnold said she hoped the book would redress the balance of earlier histories of nuclear development which put America at the forefront. Although Robert Oppenheimer, the American scientist who ran the Los Alamos nuclear development project during the Second World War, is recognised across the globe, the names of Penney, Roberts, Taylor and Cook are unknown outside the rarefied world of nuclear science.

'None of them ever publicised their role or wrote memoirs - they had a great belief that they were simply part of a larger effort,' Arnold said. 'But they were dealing with one of the most complicated and difficult scientific challenges, and they were successful.'

Arnold, who is now 85, said the book became a 'labour of love', She began work at the Atomic Energy Authority in the 1950s, an era when the future of nuclear science held out the twin possibilities of total destruction or limitless electrical energy. At that time the nuclear industry was employing 27,000 people.

The book shows how the men who researched the H-bomb were at the forefront of theoretical science and often had to rely as much on their imagination as their practical knowledge. John Dolphin, who was head of the 'project committee' at Aldermaston, admitted his 'complete ignorance' of physics, yet he 'produced elegant drawings of strange "thermonuclear" devices - perhaps his own ingenious ideas,' Arnold writes.

As they grappled with what is widely believed to be the most significant discovery of the twentieth century - the process of nuclear fusion - the scientists often lost heart. At a meeting in December 1955 the main scientists met to pull together their ideas. 'Does anyone know how it is done?' Cook said. There was an 'embarrassed silence', Arnold says, before revealing that the moral dilemmas and problems with resources faced by the scientists almost led to the breakdown of the whole project.

Such was the exasperation at the slow progress and complicated nature of the work, Cook sent out worried instructions to his staff to 'keep it simple, stupid!'.

'The plain fact is that weapons work is unpopular and nobody wants to do it,' Penney wrote in a memo in 1954 in which he admitted to being 'terribly depressed'. He continued: 'If I have to run with just the same people that I have had for the last year or two we are going to make a mess. Even the programme which is definite is above the present capacity of the establishment to bear.'

The project was shrouded in the utmost secrecy because of fears that both the US and Russia, which were developing their own H-bombs, would seek to exclude Britain from the superpower league that was rapidly developing. The Government kept as much as much as possible from the public after concerns were raised that mass marches by the nascent Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament could derail the research.

Arnold said that many of the most important and sensitive documents were destroyed by Aldermaston during a 'reorganisation' in the 1960s.

The book reveals the huge tensions being created by the Cold War. In 1954 a committee under the command of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the leading military body in Britain, said they considered that the US could 'deliberately precipitate war with the USSR in the near future'. Any conflict would lead to the 'total destruction' of the UK, which they believed was Russia's primary target - just nine years after the two countries had been allies against Nazi Germany.

In the same year Penney, who was put under intense pressure to 'get results', wrote a report for Winston Churchill, the Prime Minister, in which he revealed the destructive capacity of the weapon. 'He described the effects of a five-megaton "true" H-bomb dropped on London,' Arnold writes. 'It would produce a fireball two miles across and a crater three-quarters of a mile wide and 150 feet deep. The Admiralty Citadel (Whitehall's emergency nerve centre) would be crushed at a distance of one mile, houses would be wrecked three miles away and badly damaged at seven miles; within a radius of two miles all habitations would catch fire.'

-------- depleted uranium

Global spread of DU reaches food chain

By Torcuil Crichton and Felicity Arbuthnot
Apr 15 2001
http://www.sundayherald.com/news/newsi.hts?section=News&story_id=15480

Depleted uranium from shells fired by British and American forces during the Balkan wars has found its way into the food chain and has been detected among the civilian populations of Kosovo and Bosnia.

A study of the local population in three locations in the two Balkan regions has found samples of the highly radio active particles in the urine of all those tested.

The investigation comes amid growing concern about the possible effects of depleted uranium in the Balkans both on foreign troops and on the local population.

A survey for the Sunday Herald has found that depleted-uranium weaponry has been used or tested in 41 countries worldwide. They range from Britain - where DU shells are test-fired on the Solway Firth - to Japan, where unauthorised firing by the United States military led to a massive clean-up operation. Eleven of the countries affected by DU are in the Balkans.

Nato warplanes dropped 10,000 rounds of DU ammunition in Bosnia in 1994 and 1995. Soldiers from several troop-contributing countries - including Italy, Portugal and France - have fallen ill with what is being called Balkan syndrome but this is the first time that the civilian population has been tested for contamination.

Spain has reported at least eight cases of cancer among personnel deployed in Bosnia and Kosovo. Belgium, France, Germany, Greece, Italy and Poland are among other countries to have acknowledged a problem. There was an outcry in Portugal when Hugo Paulino, a young corporal, died of cancer three weeks after returning from duty in Kosovo.

The health of returning Italian personnel was of such concern that five different regions have appointed senior judiciary to open inquiries.

The civilian study was carried out by Professor Nick Priest of Middlesex University, for E˜rpa, BBC Scotland's European-affairs programme. It looked at people in one location in Bosnia and two locations in Kosovo.

"So far, all the results for every single one of the samples collected in Kosovo is showing some depleted uranium in the urine," he said. "That is completely abnormal because normally you would expect no DU to be in the urine samples."

Priest's conclusion was that it was likely that the metal was present in the food chain. The study did not investigate possible health problems.

Previous studies have found no evidence of a link, although a recent United Nations report acknowledged that there remain "considerable scientific uncertainties".

Despite that concern, a proposed voluntary testing programme for Kosovan civilians has been shelved following the intervention of the World Health Organisation.

Campaigners against the use of DU, which will remain radioactive for four-and-a-half billion years, argue the tiny particles of DU dust emitted from shell explosions will still be mutating genetics of fauna, flora and humanity "when the sun goes out". Teenager Vlora Marleku told the programme makers: "I am worried. I don't know what to say. This is something that touches you very deeply."

Civilian populations and refugees returning to the Balkans are also experiencing severe health problems, according to local reports.

Journalist Svetlana Stankovic Lala of Greece's Athens News said: "In Kosovska Mitrovica, [in the] north of Kosovo, the number of malignant diseases increased 200% in 2000 compared to 1998, the year before the bombing."

Doctors in the area estimate that birth deformities have increased by 250% over 1998 figures.

Dr Aleksandra Veljovic, of the Cancer Foundation in Yugoslavia, talked of "a doubling of incidence of cancer" by June 2000 - exactly a year after the war's end.

In January 2000, she said, "almost 2000 people died from a flu pandemic, corpses [remained unburied] for 10 or more days and in numbers from pneumonia".

Like Iraq, medication and facilities were unavailable due to sanctions. Like Iraq, an epidemic occurred shortly after the bombing. In Iraq, at least 5000 people died of measles within months of the end of the Gulf war. Radiation damages the immune system - a link that the Gulf veterans have made with their proven immune deficiencies.

No studies have been made in bordering countries, although there are concerns that radiation travels via the wind, water and fauna.

An A-10 Thunderbolt, which carries DU weapons, crashed in Albania. A missile thought to be carrying DU landed in Bulgaria. Another landed in Macedonia, which has hosted nearly one million refugees and has already removed 10 tonnes of DU-contaminated topsoil from its border region.

Britain's Ministry of Defence insisted that the levels of depleted uranium found in the tests for the E˜rpa programme posed no risk to public health and represent only a tiny fraction of naturally occurring background radiation. Defence minister Dr Lewis Moonie said: "It is a very interesting result and one that needs to be followed up."

-------

Forces study 'an insult,' MP charges
Risk posed by depleted uranium sugar-coated by DND: Alliance

Ottawa Citizen
04/15/01
Mike Blanchfield The Ottawa Citizen
http://www.ottawacitizen.com/national/010415/5012439.html

The military has "insulted" the intelligence of members of the Commons defence committee by unnecessarily sugar-coating the potential health risks of radioactive-depleted uranium, a Canadian Alliance MP says.

Peter Goldring, the Alliance's veterans affairs critic, says a recent presentation by Canadian Forces Col. Ken Scott before the committee did not provide a balanced view of the possible health risks associated with depleted uranium, the radioactive substance that was used in anti-tank missiles used in the Persian Gulf and the Balkans.

Mr. Goldring said when he attended a committee meeting last month he hoped Col. Scott, the Forces director of health policy, could offer convincing testimony that the substance poses no risk.

"His entire presentation was on the safety of depleted uranium, how it was no more radioactive than natural uranium around us," Mr. Goldring said in an interview.

"In my mind, it was rather insulting. It was treating us like school children, when obviously depleted uranium is not the same as the earth and the sky around us."

The unexplained cancer deaths of about two dozen NATO peacekeepers sparked controversy in Europe earlier this year when it was suggested that radiation from exploded missiles, tipped with depleted uranium, might be a serious health hazard to peacekeepers who have served in the Balkans. Some Gulf War veterans have also raised questions about whether the substance is responsible for some of the mysterious symptoms known as Gulf War Syndrome.

About 40,000 depleted uranium rounds were fired during bombing campaigns in Bosnia and Kosovo in the 1990s. No scientific link has been established between cancer and depleted uranium, a position to which NATO and the Canadian government strictly adhere. However, NATO has said further study of the issue is appropriate given the level of concern.

Some physicians and researchers maintain that despite the absence of a firm scientific link, a connection between the substance and cancer can't definitively be ruled out.

Mr. Goldring said the Forces are bending over backward not to publicly acknowledge that other opinion.

Mr. Goldring added that it was inappropriate for Col. Scott to seek changes to a report by Royal Military College scientists who were asked to review the massive body of literature surrounding depleted uranium.

In memos recently obtained by the Citizen, Col. Scott tells the scientists to tone down "unnecessarily inflammatory" language to keep from inciting "special interest" groups, "naive" readers or the media.

"Any conscientious scientist would not be trying to be an alarmist. They would be trying to reflect what their real concerns are," said Mr. Goldring.

One of the lead scientists who contributed to the paper said he didn't feel Col. Scott's suggestions were inappropriate and that some of his suggested changes in wording were incorporated into the report's final draft. None of Col. Scott's suggestions affected the content of the paper, said William Andrews, a nuclear engineer at RMC.

Mr. Andrews said he did not feel "gagged" or that his academic freedom was threatened in any way. He said Col. Scott was probably concerned how the general public would interpret the report.

"I guess in one sense he was right that people would read it, and unless the diction was very careful people would read into it what they wanted.

"This stuff can be acquired through Access to Information, and read by people who don't have the same background ... Col. Scott has a very sensitive and important job to do, and I'm not in a hurry to trade with him. I think he was concerned we might be causing him some grief further down the road."

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

Pentagon Studies Developing New Nuclear Bomb

By Walter Pincus
Washington Post
Sunday, April 15, 2001
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A19282-2001Apr14?language=printer

The Defense Department is studying whether to develop a new, low-yield nuclear weapon with an earth-penetrating nose cone that could knock out hardened or deeply buried targets such as leadership bunkers and command centers, according to administration and congressional sources.

Such a weapon has long been sought by nuclear weapons scientists and some military strategists, including key members of the Bush administration, as a way of reaching targets that are hidden deep underground without incurring huge collateral damage. Advocates also say that by developing such smaller nuclear weapons, the United States could safely reduce its current stockpile of 6,000 much more powerful warheads.

Interest in low-yield weapons has been rising with concern that Iraq's Saddam Hussein could hide his biological and chemical arsenals in underground bunkers. Another hardened target that has drawn attention is Russia's long-term construction of a nuclear war command center under Yamental mountain.

One senior adviser to Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said that the Iraqi leader would not be deterred by current U.S. nuclear weapons "because he knows a U.S. president would not drop a 100-kiloton bomb on Baghdad" and destroy the entire city and its population to reach his weapons of mass destruction.

The prospect that the Pentagon would recommend that the Bush administration develop a new, low-yield nuclear weapon has become the focus of attention for groups committed to traditional arms control. The Federation of American Scientists (FAS) plans to release a report this week that argues "that adding low-yield warheads to the world's nuclear inventory simply makes their eventual use more likely."

A report on the Pentagon study is to be sent to Congress in July. Seven years ago, Congress barred research and development of a low-yield precision-guided nuclear weapon, out of concern that it would blur the line between conventional and nuclear weapons.

But an amendment last year to the defense authorization bill by Sens. John W. Warner (R-Va.) and Wayne Allard (R-Colo.) required the Pentagon to study how to defeat hardened and deeply buried targets. The Defense Department was specifically asked to determine what weapons might be needed, including low-yield nuclear devices. The Energy Department, which controls the nuclear labs, is assisting the Pentagon.

The July report is due at the same time a review of U.S. strategic nuclear deterrence policy, ordered by Rumsfeld, could be completed. That study deals with offensive and defensive systems, nuclear as well as conventional, administration sources said.

In a paper presented last month, Paul Robinson, head of Sandia Nuclear Laboratories, said he believed "low-yield weapons with highly accurate delivery systems" would be desirable "for deterrence in the non-Russian world." Robinson, however, said the devices could help decision-makers "contemplate the destruction of some buried or hidden targets while being mindful of the need to minimize collateral damage."

Stephen M. Younger, chief of nuclear weapons research at Los Alamos National Laboratory, suggested in a paper last summer that accurate, low-yield nuclear weapons could be better suited to attacking buried, concrete bunkers and mobile missiles than today's U.S. arsenal of silo-busting weapons that each have the explosive power of 30 Hiroshima bombs.

To destroy moderately hard targets, such as missile silos, Younger urged the development of low-yield weapons to be placed on highly accurate missiles. A new, five-kiloton warhead - with less than half the destructive power of the Hiroshima bomb - would vaporize a 30-foot-thick silo door if it were delivered by a precise missile, he wrote.

A new nuclear bomb has not been developed in the United States since the 1980s, and nuclear testing was halted in 1992. Each year the Energy Department spends about $4.5 billion in its stockpile stewardship program that keeps warheads safe and secure. Tiny elements of nuclear materials are exploded in "sub-critical" tests, which are allowed under the testing moratorium because they do not create a nuclear chain reaction.

Because many tested U.S. weapon designs exist from the period before the moratorium, one senior U.S. weapons scientist said recently that a low-yield weapon could be developed without testing. He added that with information developed on earth penetration for the Pershing II intermediate-range missile in the 1980s and the B-61 more recently, "we could build [a low-yield earth penetrator] tomorrow; it is not hard to do."

Critics say such a weapon would not be able to penetrate deep enough to keep radioactive debris from getting into the atmosphere. The FAS study, by Princeton University theoretical physicist Robert W. Nelson, argues that "in order to be fully contained, nuclear explosions at the Nevada Test Site must be buried at a depth of 650 feet for a five-kiloton explosive."

Based on that analysis, Nelson concludes: "This mission does not appear possible, without causing massive radioactive contamination. No American president would elect to use nuclear weapons in this situation - unless another country had already used nuclear weapons against us."

The government nuclear weapons scientist said a one-kiloton warhead would have to dig down only 175 feet for its radioactive material to remain contained.

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

Saving Landmarks Hazardous to Your Health
Historians want to preserve atomic sites

Patricia Leigh Brown,
New York Times
Sunday, April 15, 2001
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2001/04/15/MN82224.DTL

Richland, Wash. -- B Reactor rises above the desolate plain here, a windowless, dilapidated and ominous landmark of the nuclear age.

The Hanford Nuclear Reservation, which surrounds the reactor, has the country's greatest concentration of radioactive wastes, in underground tanks that have been leaking for decades. Because of the contamination, the byproduct of 50 years of nuclear-weapons production, the government allows only occasional visitors here and nobody younger than 18.

Yet this unlikely structure, a crucible of the Manhattan Project, is now being promoted as a potential national landmark. The Energy Department, at the behest of Congress, is studying the feasibility of decontaminating and preserving B Reactor and perhaps one day opening it to the public.

The effort reflects the growing realization among government officials and preservationists that the remnants of the earliest days of the atomic age and the Cold War are in danger of disappearing. The concern has intensified in recent years as the Energy Department has dismantled deteriorating buildings at Hanford, in southeastern Washington state; Los Alamos, N.M.; Oak Ridge, Tenn., and other sites around the country where scientists and engineers once raced to plan, build and detonate the atomic bomb. Many of the buildings are contaminated, and most have been off-limits for decades.

"The department realized that if no one stepped in, we would essentially eliminate the physical property of the Manhattan Project," said Dr. F.G. Gosling, the Energy Department's chief historian.

UNPLEASANT MONUMENTS

Nations traditionally make monuments of their grandest and most glorious places. The campaign for B Reactor, which opened in 1944 under the supervision of the physicist Enrico Fermi, reflects a growing willingness to also protect historic sites that evoke unpleasant and painful memories, and, in some cases, are actually hazardous.

"The atomic bomb was one of the most significant events of the 20th century,

and these are the historic sites associated with it," said John M. Fowler, executive director of the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation, a federal agency that monitors government properties.

"People don't think about these places in the kind of historical terms they think about Gettysburg. But we have to make decisions now that will determine whether these buildings continue to exist."

In a report for the Energy Department, the council recently recommended designating eight Manhattan Project sites, including B Reactor, as national landmarks. They also include the site in Los Alamos where components for the first atomic bombs were assembled; a fragment of the building in Oak Ridge that provided uranium isotopes for the Hiroshima bomb, and the Trinity site, south of Albuquerque, where on July 16, 1945, the Atomic Age began in a blast so bright it was said to have reflected off the moon.

Of these sites, only the B reactor, which made plutonium for the Nagasaki bomb, is being proposed for eventual year-round tourism. A few sites have already been preserved and made public, including the X-10 Graphite Reactor at Oak Ridge, which was built as a smaller pilot plant for Hanford, and the Trinity site in Alamogordo, N.M., which allows visitors twice a year, on the first Saturday in April and October.

But not until now has the Energy Department taken a coordinated approach to preserving atomic sites.

FUNDS FROM CONGRESS

"I don't want the country to forget what it took to win a war and what this community gave up to win it," said Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., who secured $950,000 from Congress last year for the department to make B Reactor safe enough for cleanup workers and to study the feasibility of converting it into a museum.

She envisions a place "kind of like the Holocaust Museum," she said. "It's not a place to enjoy a day but where you learn what can happen."

Keith A. Klein, manager of the Energy Department's Richland office, which oversees Hanford, said he thought it would be possible to make B Reactor safe for limited access by tourists by eliminating all traces of airborne contamination.

Doug Sherwood, Hanford project manager for the Environmental Protection Agency, agreed but pointed out that some might find the expense prohibitive. "There's quite an interest in preserving this facility," he said, but added, "It's a big job and possibly one we should not undertake."

MUSEUM STARTUP COSTS

He estimated that it could cost $10 million to make B Reactor museum-ready, beyond the costs of the current cleanup of the Hanford reservation, which are expected to total many billions of dollars in the next few decades.

Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., cautioned that talk about a B Reactor museum was premature until the cleanup was finished.

"I don't see how you can justify spending federal funds to preserve a facility at Hanford and elsewhere, where close communities are still at risk," he said. Hanford is about 25 miles from the Oregon border, upstream on the Columbia River.

Joe Davis, a spokesman for the Energy Department, said, "We know that sites and workers played an important part of history that should endure" but that no decision had been made on which sites to save.

Richard Rhodes, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of "The Making of the Atomic Bomb," supports maintaining at least some of what he calls "the physical reality of that time."

"Many people think that the Manhattan Project was 30 people building a bomb at Los Alamos," he said, "but it was 150,000 -- an effort comparable at the time to the race to the moon. It's our past. Not to preserve it is to censor it."

ATOMIC LANDMARK TOURS

Behind the push for preservation is a growing interest in atomic tourism. On the Web, atomictourist.com directs atom-age buffs to places like the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico and EBR1, an experimental breeder reactor outside Arco, Idaho.

At the Greenbrier Resort in Warm Springs, W.Va., nearly 200,000 visitors have paid up to $25 to tour the ultimate Strangelovian relic: the cavernous Cold War bunker built to shelter members of Congress from a nuclear attack. This summer, the Smithsonian Institution is offering a tour of Manhattan Project landmarks in New Mexico, including the High Bay building, a ramshackle structure where key components for the Trinity device and the Nagasaki bomb were assembled. Ellen Bradbury, who is leading the Smithsonian tour, calls High Bay "the Manhattan Project equivalent of the Silicon Valley garage."

The most compelling landmarks may be the Manhattan Project towns themselves.

Like Richland and Los Alamos, Oak Ridge was a once top-secret creation of the government, omitted from maps until 1949. Today, visitors can take "atomic train" trips that start at the old guard station and offer scenic views of the K-25 Gaseous Diffusion Building, an engineering marvel that sprawls over 44 acres. The Advisory Council suggests saving a fragment of K-25, the Roosevelt Cell, intended as a viewing platform for President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

But Ralph Hutchison, coordinator of the Oak Ridge Environmental Peace Alliance, a watchdog group, noted that K-25 still contains hazardous waste and 23 miles of contaminated pipeline. A wiser commemoration, he said, would be "a green field and a marker."

Obstacles to preservation are even more formidable at Hanford. Sixty-eight of its 177 underground tanks are assumed to have leaked. Experts say that much of the Hanford Reservation's 560 square miles can never be made clean enough for unrestricted access, but some say parts of it could be. FORMER WORKERS INVOLVED

The move to save B Reactor, which has been idle since 1968, has been spearheaded by the local B Reactor Museum Association, many of whose members worked at Hanford. They are hoping for regular tours of the reactor's face, a looming panel of antique nozzles and tubes, as well as the brass-knobbed control room, whose "you are there" quality is intact, as if Fermi had just gotten up from his chair.

For now, Hanford is something of a nuclear ghost town. The Army Corps of Engineers was drawn to this high desert land because of its remoteness and its proximity to the Columbia River, with water for cooling reactors, and sand and gravel banks for making concrete. In February 1943, the government gave residents of the towns of White Bluff and Hanford 28 days to move out. The towns' remnants, including the shell of the old Hanford High School, are reachable only with security clearance down crumbling four-lane roads -- some now leading nowhere -- built for the Manhattan Project.

Members of the B Reactor Museum Association who worked at Hanford in the 1940s recall its shroud of secrecy.

"We didn't talk about reactors, we talked about 'the unit,' " said Roger Rohrbacher, 80, who was an engineer at B Reactor. "We didn't talk about plutonium, we talked about 'the product.' "

Many of them want to honor the technological achievements of Hanford as well as the suffering it brought. "When you're standing in front of the reactor, you realize this is what humans can do if pushed to the limit," said Gene Weisskopf, president of the association. "It's a great place to contemplate war."

------- wisconsin

Radon warnings fail to stir residents
Health officials push tests for cancer-causing gas

By DON BEHM
Journal Sentinel
April 15, 2001
http://www.jsonline.com/news/state/apr01/radon16041501a.asp

An increasing number of county health departments say they are not reaching enough of the public with the message that they should be testing their homes for radon.

After more than 11 years of distributing information about the risk of lung cancer posed by exposure to radon where people live, only 15% to 20% of homes in Wisconsin have been tested for the odorless gas.

But nearly one-tenth of tested homes - about 100,000 - have main-floor radon levels that exceed federal exposure guidelines, according to researchers at the state Division of Public Health.

In recent years, excessive levels were found in more than 20% of homes tested in large areas of Waukesha, Washington, Racine, Walworth and Dodge counties. A summary of tests also shows high levels in 10% to 20% of homes tested in portions of Milwaukee and Kenosha counties.

High levels also were found in 1% to 10% of tests in the southern two-thirds of Ozaukee County.

Radon is emitted in the natural decay of radioactive materials in rock and soil. The gas can flow into homes through cracks or other openings in foundations.

Excessive radon levels are found in homes in each county of the state, but the prevalence varies widely, even in areas with similar bedrock and soil, said Conrad Weiffenbach, a nuclear engineer with the state Division of Public Health in Madison. Consequently, state and local health officials recommend universal testing as the only way to check the presence of radon in a home.

"The level of radon can vary from house to house on the same street," said Margaret Anderson, an environmental health specialist with the Washington County Health Department. "Everybody should test because there is no way to predict what the levels of radon would be in a home."

After making her pitch over the years at county fairs, public health fairs and other community events in Ozaukee and Washington counties, Anderson decided last month to spend a few hundred dollars of a federal radon education grant on advertisements in four small circulation newspapers in the two counties. It was a first for her.

"I have had a hard time reaching people with this radon message," Anderson said.

"So, I thought I'd put in this ad with a coupon because coupons catch people's eyes," she said.

It did just that. More than 50 families responded within 10 days of the first notice.

Even a casual reader could not miss the coupon-style ad's bold headline: "Radon is the second leading cause of lung cancer in the United States."

Then Anderson offered readers a deal - half-price off the regular $6 cost of a radon test kit if they brought in or mailed the coupon to her office.

"We need to get more of these kits out to people," she said.

In Waukesha County, the health department has started placing monthly ads in a local free-distribution real estate guide, Homes & Land.

The new initiative was based on the success of such promotional advertisements in real estate publications serving the Wausau area.

"We're really just trying to get the word out, to let the general public become aware that it is a wise idea to test their homes for radon," said Paul Tellier, a public health sanitarian with the Waukesha County Environmental Health Division.

Tellier's message in the ad: "You can't see radon, smell it or taste it, but it may be a problem in your home. Aren't you curious?"

His recommendation to test for the radioactive gas has not changed over the years.

"It continues to be a problem," Tellier said. "It is the second leading cause of lung cancer, and it hasn't gone away."

The U.S. surgeon general has said that radon is second only to smoking as a cause of lung cancer.

The health risks

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the surgeon general have recommended taking steps to reduce radon accumulation in a home if there are 4 or more picocuries of the gas per liter of air in the lowest living area, usually the first floor of a home. A picocurie is a measure of radioactivity - the pace at which radioactive elements, such as uranium and radium, disintegrate.

The odds of someone developing lung cancer after breathing household air containing that much radon for several decades is about 0.2%, or 2 in 1,000, for people who never smoke, according to the EPA.

The National Academy of Sciences reviewed medical studies and determined that the odds might be even greater, up to 0.7%, or 7 in 1,000, for people who spend 75% of their time in the home.

An academy study released in 1999 estimated that 15,000 U.S. residents die each year from lung cancer due to radon exposure. About 2,000 to 3,000 of them never smoked.

Radon harms only the lungs and not other tissues. Radon atoms in the air spontaneously decay to other radioactive elements that attach to dust. If inhaled into the lung, those elements continue to decay by emitting a type of radiation capable of damaging cells in the lung.

Though tobacco smoke is the predominant cause of lung cancer, radon control is a way for former smokers and never-smokers to reduce their lung cancer risks, according to Conrad Weiffenbach, a nuclear engineer with the state Division of Public Health in Madison.

How to test

Only a test reveals how much radon is present in living areas, Weiffenbach said.

Special test kits generally cost about $10 at local hardware stores, home improvement centers or county health departments.

A homeowner simply places the detector in a recommended location, waits four to seven days, then seals the detector in a package provided with the kit and mails it to a laboratory for analysis.

This initial test should be done when windows are closed.

If this short-term test finds less than 4 picocuries of radon per liter of air, then no other steps are necessary.

If the test results are between 4 and 10 picocuries, then a longer test of between 90 days and a full year is recommended with a different type of detector, according to Tellier. Cost of this test kit is about $15.

"Most homes where a short-term test finds elevated levels, they are slightly elevated, so the homeowner would benefit from the long-term test," Tellier said. "And the annual test likely would show that radon is not a problem."

"Then you get a definite answer, an average of all seasons and all kinds of weather," he said. "And if you're not involved in the sale of a home, then you have time to do a second, long-term test."

Short-term results of more than 10 picocuries should be checked with a second, short-term test. If the results are similar, then corrective steps should be taken as soon as possible, Tellier said.

"Because the levels are so high, a homeowner shouldn't test for a full year," he said. "If the second short-term test verifies the result, you should be fixing the home to reduce exposure."

Appeared in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel on April 16, 2001.

-------- MILITARY

China and the United States

New York Times
April 15, 2001
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/15/opinion/15SUN1.html

As George W. Bush has discovered early in his presidency, relations with China can be exquisitely intricate and challenging. The two nations are nascent military rivals with incompatible political systems. They are also trading partners that can imagine an era of expanding and mutually beneficial economic cooperation in the decades ahead.

Before the next series of important decisions about China tumble onto Mr. Bush's desk, he and his aides should settle on a long-term strategy that protects American interests while encouraging China to play a constructive role as it assumes its natural place as a great power. Mr. Bush outlined a reasonable approach after the release of the American crew members when he said the United States and China "have different values, yet common interests" and that both nations "must make a determined choice to have productive relations."

The United States and China need not become enemies, though historical and political forces could push them in that direction. The governing principles of American democracy and Chinese Communism guarantee a degree of friction. The demise of the Soviet Union has removed a powerful strategic incentive for Washington and Beijing to work together in some areas as a means of isolating Moscow - the motivation for the triangular diplomacy introduced by Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger three decades ago.

Geography and national pride are also driving the two nations apart, as China looks to assert its influence in the Far East, a region where American military and political power has been predominant since World War II. China is acutely sensitive about real or even perceived infringements of its sovereignty, not a surprising instinct for a nation that long suffered abuse at the hands of foreign powers. As the spy plane incident demonstrated, the Chinese military is especially wary of the United States.

But there are powerful unifying forces that can overcome these factors, none greater than mutual economic interests. This is not just a matter of the growing trade between the two countries, though America is the biggest market for Chinese exports with over $80 billion in annual sales and China, with its 1.3 billion people, could someday be a large market for American goods.

What makes trade so critical is its role in modernizing China. Many Chinese, for now, seem willing to accept Communist rule on the condition that it provide a steady improvement in living standards. That improvement has been fueled in part by foreign investment and revenues from exports, with the United States being a chief source of both. Though economic reform has brought dislocation and the migration of millions of people into already overcrowded cities, two potential sources of instability, it has lifted hundreds of millions of Chinese out of poverty and turned their country into a consumer society. Beijing can ill afford a rupture in relations with Washington and can benefit greatly from expanded commercial cooperation.

For the moment, Washington holds the advantage in the overall relationship. The American economy far exceeds China's in size and relative prosperity, and American military firepower and technology are unmatched. The appeal of democracy is rising around the world while the attraction of Communism is contracting. International tolerance for the suppression of human rights is diminishing. But America will make a fateful mistake if it tries to overpower or isolate China.

President Bush and his aides seemed to understand that in their handling of the spy plane incident, a troubling affair that Mr. Bush correctly said had not helped relations. The administration's measured response showed respect for Chinese sensitivities and the conflicting internal pressures that President Jiang Zemin had to weigh in deciding when to free the 24 American crew members. Though Chinese rhetoric was often belligerent, Beijing ultimately yielded without the apology for the collision that it had demanded. In the end, Mr. Jiang acted as a statesman, not an ideological combatant.

A new generation of leaders will assume power in China next year. But short of the installation of an aggressively anti-American regime intent on confronting the United States, which seems unlikely, American policy should seek to build a stable, productive relationship with China that does not paper over the serious differences that will continue to divide the countries.

Bill Clinton, in his eagerness to develop a "strategic partnership" with China, too readily overlooked China's suppression of democracy. That error should not be repeated. The price of increased trade with China must not be American silence about China's brutal treatment of its own citizens and intolerance for dissent.

Nor does a stable relationship require Washington to subordinate its strategic interests in the Far East and Western Pacific by reducing the presence of American military forces or curtailing intelligence-gathering operations. The American role has brought a measure of security to the region that has benefited many countries, including China.

But the assertion of these American interests need not threaten China's sovereignty, and can leave ample room for cooperation in other areas and a healthy respect for China's independence. Even the volatile issue of Taiwan can be managed in a constructive way if Washington and China do not see each other as antagonists. Taiwan's young democracy and robust economy deserve American support, including a reasonable level of military assistance. But Washington must be mindful of maintaining the political and military equilibrium that has sustained the uneasy peace between Taiwan and the mainland. If China would drop its threats to use force to absorb Taiwan, and instead rely on the long-term political dialogue that some Chinese leaders outlined recently, the issue might cease to be a potential flashpoint between China and the United States.

In its complexity and overlapping political, economic and military aspects, the relationship with Beijing is unlike almost any other the United States faces. Mr. Bush has a chance to make it work in the interest of both nations. His management of the spy plane affair suggests he and his foreign policy team have the right instincts to achieve that difficult but vital goal.

-------- arms sales

Selling Small Arms

New York Times
April 15, 2001
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/15/opinion/L15WEAP.html

To the Editor:

With half of licitly traded weapons ending up supplying illicit traffic, you are right that a standardized international system for vetting and documenting exports of small arms is urgently needed (editorial, April 10).

Unfortunately, political intransigence and bureaucratic inertia impede small arms control. At issue is whether the United Nations conference in July should consider treaty mandates in order to control the licit trade. Toward that end, small arms must be marked and traceable.

Transparency is especially important for transfer of those weapons of war that cause the most harm, notably fully automatic assault rifles, grenade launchers and so on. While a blanket prohibition of transfer to "non-state actors" may prove unrealistic, prohibiting civilian possession of certain weapons categories should be considered.

MICHEL ROCARD Paris, April 10, 2001 The writer, a former prime minister of France, is co-chairman of the Eminent Persons Group, an international commission of world leaders.

-------- colombia

Thirty reported killed by paramilitaries in Colombia

USA Today
04/15/2001
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2001-04-15-village.htm

BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) - As authorities tried to reach the mountain hamlets where rightist paramilitary fighters reportedly massacred 30 people, rival guerrillas on Sunday raided a separate village and killed at least one resident, the army said.

Arriving in southwestern Cauca province, the region where the reported paramilitary massacre took place, federal human rights ombudsman Eduardo Cifuentes said he believed "about 30" villagers had been killed in attacks.

Reports of the killings by the rightist United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia, or AUC, first surfaced Friday, but authorities were still trying Sunday to reach the remote, mountainous villages.

Hundreds have fled the region on the backs of mules and horses seeking refuge in the town of Timba, where they have told their stories to officials.

Servio Tulio Diaz, spokesman for the Cauca State governor's office, said many of the victims were reportedly shot after the paramilitaries accused them of being leftist rebel sympathizers.

"There is no doubt that there was a large massacre committed by the paramilitaries," said Diaz. "What we don't know is how many people were killed."

So far, authorities have confirmed that at least six villagers were executed in the attacks.

Meanwhile Sunday, fighters from the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, attacked the Antioquia State village of Caucana early Sunday morning following skirmishes with a right-wing paramilitary group, army Col. Jairo Ovalle told the Associated Press. He said the rebels accused the residents of supporting the paramilitaries.

Ovalle said earlier reports from the local mayor that as many as 50 people had been killed in the assault were unfounded. Although the death toll was unknown because of ongoing battles between soldiers and guerrillas, only one villager was confirmed dead.

The violence in the region in Antioquia state, 223 miles from the capital, Bogota, began early Sunday when the rebels clashed with paramilitary gunmen.

Following the skirmishes, the rebels attacked the village of 5,000 people and torched homes. Soldiers arrived by helicopter several hours later and had regained control by late afternoon, Ovalle said.

Paramilitaries and the nation's two main guerrilla groups, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, and the National Liberation Army, or ELN, are all active in the violent province.

The upsurge in violence comes as peace efforts between President Andres Pastrana's government and both guerrilla groups appear to be foundering. However, the ELN announced on Saturday that it will stop erecting roadblocks along three main highways as a peace gesture.

-------- drug war

Amtrak 'Sharing' Information With D.E.A.

New York Times
April 15, 2001
ROSS E. MILLOY
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/15/weekinreview/15BOXA.html

Something to think about next time you decide to ride the rails: Amtrak has acknowledged that one of its ticketing offices has been "sharing information" about passengers with the Drug Enforcement Administration, and then taking a 10 percent cut of any assets seized from drug couriers.

"We provide a limited amount of information about our passengers to the D.E.A. and other agencies as a part of their law enforcement activities," said Debbie Hare, an Amtrak spokeswoman. "I can't tell you how long it has been going on, but this program exists all across the country."

A computer link from Amtrak's ticketing terminal in Albuquerque to the local D.E.A. office allows agents to peruse passengers' names and itineraries and to see whether they paid in cash or credit. The information determines which passengers will be questioned or have their luggage searched by drug-sniffing dogs.

Amtrak and D.E.A. officials defended the practice, which was first reported in The Albuquerque Journal, saying the joint effort has resulted in "substantial" seizures of drugs and cash. Ms. Hare said that any assets received by Amtrak through the program were used for additional law enforcement activities. She also said, "We don't believe there is a privacy issue here."

But the sharing has raised some civil libertarian eyebrows - if not made their jaws drop.

"What they are doing raises serious issues about invasions of privacy, about Fourth Amendment protections against unwarranted search and seizures, and about equal protection rights related to profiling by racial or income types," said Peter Simonson, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of New Mexico. "It is extremely troubling, and we're investigating it now."

---

Ecstasy invading the ranks

USA Today
04/15/2001
By Dave Moniz, USA TODAY
http://usatoday.com/news/washdc/2001-04-15-militaryecstasy.htm

WASHINGTON - The military is worried about a skyrocketing use of ecstasy among its troops, and is looking at more stringent drug testing to prevent the popular youth drug from invading the ranks.

Drug testing by the Air Force, Army and Navy indicates that usage is as much as 12 times what it was just two years ago.

"The availability of club drugs is absolutely a major source of concern," says Col. Peter Durand, a drug and alcohol abuse program manager for the Air Force.

Steps the services are taking to counter ecstasy use:

The Air Force, which tests 70% of its personnel each year, is increasing random tests and weekend screenings. The Navy has formed a task force to examine sailors' use of "club drugs." Next year, the military expects to unveil a test that can better detect ecstasy.

Less than 1% of military personnel have tested positive for illegal drug use in recent years, but screening through random urine testing might be failing to detect the extent of ecstasy usage. Ecstasy, unlike other substances, can pass from the body within 48 hours. Tests are conducted at least once a year by most of the services.

Last year, nearly 500 of the service's 370,000 members either tested positive or admitted to investigators that they used the drug. That compares to 50 who were found to have used ecstasy in 1998.

Last fall, five Air Force Academy cadets were charged with possession or use of ecstasy. Two of them were sent to federal prison.

Army statistics show the number of positive tests increased from 36 in 1998 to 440 last year. The Navy had 238 positive tests in 2000, up from 34 in 1998. In most cases, those testing positive are discharged from the military.

Ecstasy is the nickname for the synthetic amphetamine MDMA. The drug, the size of an aspirin tablet, has hallucinogenic properties.

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

Possible Clue to What Sank Civil War Sub

New York Times
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
April 15, 2001

CHARLESTON, S.C., April 14 - A skull has been found inside the Confederate submarine H. L. Hunley, along with what appears to be a bellows that could help researchers reconstruct the craft's final minutes.

The skull was uncovered amid artifacts and other crew remains in the sediment-filled submarine, Bob Neyland, a project manager, said on Friday.

The Hunley and its nine-man crew went down off Charleston on Feb. 17, 1864, after ramming an explosive charge into the Union blockade ship Housatonic. It was raised last year and brought to a conservation laboratory at the old Charleston Navy base.

Scientists have uncovered remains from six of the crewmen aboard the hand-cranked submarine, the first in history to sink an enemy warship.

The bellows was probably used to draw fresh air through snorkel tubes.

"It appears to be two wooden pieces with leather between," Mr. Neyland said.

The device and the position of a crewman near it could help scientists determine what happened as the Hunley sank, said Glenn McConnell, a state senator and chairman of the South Carolina Hunley Commission.

"It might provide some clue as to whether the submarine was struggling to get oxygen or was in the process of sinking," Mr. McConnell said. "Whatever occurred seems to have occurred very quickly."

So far, the remains of crewmen have been found at their stations by the propeller crank, leading researchers to think there was no scramble to get out of the submarine.

Mr. McConnell said excavation of sediment near the forward tower, which was missing a viewport, would provide more clues. Some historians speculate that the window was blown out or shot out and the submarine started taking on water.

Mr. Neyland said he hoped the excavation could be completed in a month.

---

No Top Guns Need Apply
Air Force Readies Tests For Futuristic Drone Jets

Washington Post
Sunday, April 15, 2001; Page A01
By Greg Schneider Washington Post Staff Writer
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A17224-2001Apr14?language=printer

In the next few weeks, an unmanned airplane the size of a small Cessna will shoot a missile at a tank on a Nevada test range, blasting the Air Force toward a future in which some of its most dangerous missions could be carried out by robots.

While the Pentagon has been experimenting with pilotless planes for half a century, advances in technology have only recently made it feasible to use them to attack opponents. And with a Bush administration looking to redirect military spending into more futuristic weapons systems, unmanned combat aircraft are expected to be one of the big winners.

"I think you'd be hard-pressed to find a new military technology that has a broader following than unmanned combat vehicles. The idea is easy to grasp and the benefits are easy to see," said Loren Thompson, a defense consultant with the Lexington Institute in Arlington.

Known as uninhabited combat air vehicles, or UCAVs, such lethal drones could knock out enemy air defenses without endangering U.S. pilots -- not to mention prevent situations such as the recent standoff over a U.S. aircrew downed in China.

UCAVs would cost significantly less than traditional fighter jets, yet would be similar in size and capability. And they could be shipped quickly and in great numbers wherever needed.

President Bush cited them in a recent speech on military priorities, and Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John W. Warner (R-Va.) added $146 million to this year's Pentagon budget to speed up development.

"We're moving along as fast as technology will permit," Warner said in a recent interview, adding that he hopes Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld is serious about pursuing such innovative new weapons. "Hopefully, he'll pick up on this concept."

Defense contractors are lining up to get a piece of what many believe will be the future of military aviation. Both Boeing Co. and Northrop Grumman Corp. recently unveiled designs for sophisticated robot attack planes and are investing millions of their own dollars in the projects. Northrop's diamond-shaped flying wing made the cover of Aviation Week, while Boeing has already built full-sized demonstrators that should fly this summer.

Lockheed Martin Corp., meanwhile, is concentrating less on the drones themselves and more on the electronics that allow them to operate, with research programs that include secret government contracts.

But like National Missile Defense, another futuristic program that promises more than technology can yet deliver, the push for UCAVs strikes some experts as overblown.

"The problem with UCAVs now is they're in a very early stage of the technology," said Steven J. Zaloga, a weapons expert with consulting firm Teal Group Corp. in Fairfax. "It's really premature to be talking about what percentage of the future force is going to be taken up by UCAVs."

What's more, there will be resistance among some in the Pentagon against moving humans another step back from the trigger. "One Air Force pilot told me, 'Look, no guy is ever gonna pick up a girl in a bar by telling her that he commands a UCAV wing,' " one source said. "These guys want to be out there flying . . . not sitting at consoles trying to joystick this thing to where it ought to be."

But even critics concede that certain combat roles will inevitably shift over to unmanned vehicles as the technology matures. The reason is simple: They could save American lives.

"Rather than having piloted aircraft go in on day one to break the back of the bad guys," said John Pike of GlobalSecurity.org, a nonprofit, nonpartisan think tank in Alexandria, "you send in these robots who are infinitely brave. They are unafraid."

Armed but Limited

The current effort is really the second coming of weapons on unmanned planes. In the waning years of the Vietnam War, the Air Force and contractor Ryan Aeronautical Co. experimented with firing missiles from a derivative of a drone called the Firebee, which had been the first unmanned craft to be used extensively for reconnaissance during combat.

While those bombing-range tests showed promise, they were limited by the state of communications technology. All commands had to be transmitted by an operator in the line of sight of the drone, which spoiled the idea of keeping the human out of harm's way.

Interest in drones of all types surged again in the 1980s, when satellite technology made it possible to relay commands from great distances and when advances in computer processing gave the vehicles more capabilities. Unmanned reconnaissance planes were the first to benefit; remote-controlled spy planes proved useful during the Persian Gulf War, and today there is a burgeoning industry for spy drones of every description.

Athena Technologies Inc. in Manassas, for instance, is developing tiny robot surveillance planes that can be controlled by Palm Pilot hand-held computers -- still line of sight for now, although one day they may be programmed to execute distant missions on their own. Just outside Baltimore, AAI Corp. is building rugged, lawn-tractor-sized drones that the Army plans to use to survey battlefields.

The Teal Group projects an annual market of between $200 million and $300 million for drones over the next decade, including simple versions used as decoys to fool enemy radar and others used as targets for weapons testing. The Army, Navy and Air Force all have basic reconnaissance drones that have been used in conflicts since Desert Storm.

The most sophisticated unmanned aircraft flying today is Northrop Grumman's Global Hawk, an Air Force reconnaissance plane that's as big as a U-2 but has the bulbous white nose of a blind cave creature in place of a crew cabin. A Global Hawk flew last year from Florida to Portugal and back, monitored by a technician sitting in a trailer in southwestern Virginia. Soon another Global Hawk will fly to Australia.

Able to reach altitudes higher than 65,000 feet, a 44-foot-long Global Hawk can stay aloft for 36 hours at a time, and the plane is expected to take over some of the military's most demanding long-range reconnaissance missions over the next few years. The Global Hawk cannot carry as big a payload as the specialized EP-3 that went down in China, but experts say clusters of Global Hawks might one day be able to do the same type of communications snooping.

The Air Force has spent roughly $500 million developing the Global Hawk so far, and it plans to spend a similar amount through 2003, according to figures from the Teal Group. Each plane now costs about $51 million, the Congressional Research Service said, though the Air Force projects that cost to drop below $20 million once it begins buying Global Hawks in greater numbers -- ultimately 40 to 60 planes or more.

"This happens to be a fairly exciting growth area in the industry," said Bob Mitchell, head of unmanned systems for Northrop Grumman. Mitchell led development of the Global Hawk at Ryan Aeronautical, which Northrop Grumman acquired in 1999 in a bid to be a bigger player in unmanned vehicles.

There are no plans as yet to put weapons on a Global Hawk, Mitchell said. Instead, Northrop Grumman is in the midst of a Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) program to design a pilotless fighter jet for the Navy. DARPA plans to spend about $14 million on the program, and Northrop Grumman has kicked in another $1.3 million of its own.

The company also spent an undisclosed amount of its own money to build a demonstrator plane, called Pegasus, that could fly later this year. Far faster and more sophisticated than today's drones, the kite-shaped jet -- 28 feet on a side -- ultimately could carry as much as 4,000 pounds of bombs and missiles.

But it isn't just ordinary weapons being envisioned for drones of the future. Boeing, which added $20 million of its own money to a $131 million DARPA contract to design and test an unmanned fighter for the Air Force, is also studying directed energy weapons: bursts of microwave or laser energy that could knock out enemy radars or launchers.

10-Year Shelf Life

Boeing's design, which looks like a 27-foot-long TV remote with wings, also uses stealth technology. The plane can be packed in a crate and stored for up to 10 years, then be ready to fly in about 30 minutes, said George Muellner, a retired Air Force general who now heads Boeing's advanced research facility, the Phantom Works.

The company hopes to begin test-flying the planes this summer.

"We've gotten certainly a lot of feedback that there's growing interest in this," said Muellner, who has briefed a Pentagon panel appointed by Rumsfeld to evaluate future weapons priorities.

One of Rumsfeld's advisers said UCAVs could solve several problems now confronting the military. "The services talk about UCAVs doing some of the dull, the dangerous and the dirty kinds of missions where you wouldn't want to risk pilots," said Andrew Krepinevich, who heads the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments and is participating in the Pentagon's weapons review.

Those missions include monotonous long-range flights, high-risk raids on enemy air defenses and forays into areas contaminated by biological or chemical weapons. In addition, UCAVs could help get around a problem that Krepinevich has long warned about and that has recently become a watchword at the Pentagon: anti-access.

The term refers to an enemy's ability to use cruise missiles to target U.S. air bases or sea lanes near a battle ground, blowing up planes or missiles before they even take off. That would nearly cripple short-range U.S. fighter planes, which need access to forward bases to be effective.

"UCAVs might be part of the answer for how you deal with that," he said. "To the extent that you take the person out of the aircraft, you should be able to build these things to go much greater distances."

To those involved in developing such weapons, those ideas just begin to suggest the possibilities. "We're about with UCAVs where we were a century ago with manned aircraft," said Mike Francis, who was involved in drone development at DARPA and now works on technology strategy at Lockheed Martin. "We've looked over the horizon and just begun to put weapons on them . . . but there's a lot that's got to happen."

Aside from refining the technology, engineers have to do a better job of envisioning UCAVs as something more than simply aircraft with pilots on the ground. "You have a broader set of opportunities when the human doesn't have to be a physical part of the system," Francis said.

The human role becomes more cerebral, he said, making high-level decisions about strategy and tactics without worrying about physical limitations. And human involvement can never be factored out, he added; there is a "moral imperative" about deciding when to shoot that only a human conscience can address.

Capable of Self-Defense

As engineers struggle with those topics -- not to mention practical matters such as accounting for unmanned planes in air traffic control systems -- the Air Force is blazing ahead with an effort to make a basic combat drone out of existing systems.

During the bombing of Kosovo, the Air Force used a 27-foot-long unmanned plane called the Predator to snoop out Serb missile launchers and report coordinates back to commanders. But by the time fighter jets got to the scene with bombs, the targets had often moved.

So Air Force officials decided to cut out the middleman: Why not stick missiles on the drones, the argument went, so they can shoot what they find?

Last month, an unmanned Predator drone fired a Hellfire missile and destroyed a tank on an Air Force test range in Nevada. It marked the first such test since those conducted at the close of the Vietnam War.

The Predator, built by General Atomics of San Diego, will try later this month to blow up another tank, this time from a higher altitude and under more realistic conditions. The State Department reviewed the program last fall and concluded that it does not violate arms control treaties. So the Air Force could soon have an off-the-shelf robot strike plane, with more sophisticated versions in the works. There is another hurdle: In Kosovo, Serb helicopters sometimes simply pulled up alongside slow-moving Predator drones and shot them out of the sky. But the Air Force has an answer to that too: It plans to try equipping a Predator with Stinger air-to-air missiles. Then it could shoot back.

--

Florida

USA Today
04/15/01
States
http://www.usatoday.com/news/states/all50.htm

Tampa - Master Sgt. Henry Mart and his wife, Donna, are suing the U.S. government and MacDill Air Force Base physician Lawrence Hsu for $5 million in connection with the death of their son, Aaron, 2. The suit claims that in September 1999, Hsu diagnosed the boy's illness as a virus, prescribed over-the-counter medicine and sent him home. An autopsy determined the cause of death was meningoccal meningitis, the lawsuit says.

-------- OTHER

-------- alternative energy

South Dakota

USA Today
04/15/01
States
http://www.usatoday.com/news/states/all50.htm

Platte - The lack of an energy source has doomed an ethanol plant proposed for southeastern South Dakota. Area electric cooperatives decided not to build a 113-mile natural gas pipeline after some towns along the route balked at paying their share of the line's cost. We're out of gas, said Dave Meyerink, a backer of the effort.

-------- environment

Bush Isn't All Wrong About the Endangered Species Act

New York Times
April 15, 2001
By BRUCE BABBITT
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/15/opinion/15BABB.html

WASHINGTON - The Bush administration has again outraged environmentalists, this time by proposing that Congress modify the budget for the Endangered Species Act. The administration wants to place financial restrictions on a process called "designation of critical habitat," which maps areas occupied by endangered species.

Environmentalists resist any change, fearful of giving opponents of the Endangered Species Act any openings. But on this matter, they are overreacting. Critical habitat is a problem that ought to be fixed, if not in the manner proposed by the administration.

When a species is listed as endangered, the underlying cause is usually destruction of its habitat by activities like road building, land development or clear cutting. To ensure the survival of the species, the Fish and Wildlife Service must at some point in the process designate, with detailed maps, those areas of habitat that require special protection.

The controversy now flaring up turns on a seemingly simple question - when to prepare the maps. Should it be at the beginning of the process, when there is often not much information available, or at the end, when the biologists have had an opportunity to prepare a comprehensive plan for the protection of the species? Since mapping and the scientific surveys are time-consuming and expensive, biologists have generally preferred to prepare habitat maps later, as part of the comprehensive plan.

Then in the 1990's, environmentalists brought lawsuits arguing that the Endangered Species Act requires mapping immediately upon listing of a species, whether or not the biologists have enough information.

Because the statute is ambiguous, courts have by and large agreed with environmentalists, and are now ordering the Fish and Wildlife Service to undertake these mapping projects all over the country on strict deadlines. Struggling to keep up with these court orders, the Fish and Wildlife Service has diverted its best scientists and much of its budget for the Endangered Species Act away from more important tasks like evaluating candidates for listing and providing other protections for species on the brink of extinction.

In one recent case in California, the Fish and Wildlife Service was ordered by a federal court to produce, on a short deadline, a habitat map for the endangered red-legged frog. The frog has been identified in streams and wetlands scattered throughout southern California, but the Fish and Wildlife Service had limited biological surveys to identify its critical habitats. So the service quite understandably painted with a broad brush - in this case four million acres, an area the size of Connecticut. Unsurprisingly, this map enraged landowners and developers, who feared the regulatory consequences of such a designation.

These uncertainties undermine public confidence in one of our most important and successful environmental laws. That is why during my tenure as interior secretary I repeatedly asked Congressional leaders to write budget restrictions that would prevent money for important endangered-species programs from being siphoned off into premature "critical habitat" map- making. This request was denied every year. The Bush administration now proposes something similar.

That said, putting restrictive language in the budget is not the best way to fix the problem. The better alternative is to amend the Endangered Species Act, giving biologists the unequivocal discretion to prepare maps when the scientific surveys are complete. Only then can we make meaningful judgments about what habitat should receive special protection.

Back in 1997 we tried to do just that through a comprehensive overhaul of the Endangered Species Act. At that time, John Chafee, the late Republican senator from Rhode Island, called all the usual antagonists into his office and expressed his desire to update the act. He wanted to address the mapping of critical habitats, to codify the voluntary participation of landowners in conservation planning, to require scientific peer review of listing decisions and to encourage state participation. Senator Chafee then patiently worked out a consensus. This legislation sailed through the normally gridlocked Senate Environment and Public Works Committee before it was killed by the Senate leadership.

If the Bush administration is sincere about improving the Endangered Species Act, rather than stirring controversy, it should revive the Chafee reform measures.

Bruce Babbitt served as secretary of the interior in the Clinton administration.

--

Ship sinks in Persian Gulf, spilling smuggled Iraqi oil

USA Today
04/15/2001
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2001-04-15-oiltanker.htm

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) - A ship smuggling thousands of tons of Iraqi oil sank in the Persian Gulf, a U.S. Navy official said Sunday, and authorities here said some of the fuel spilled into the water.

The Georgian-flagged vessel went down Saturday near Dubai's Jebel Ali port with 3,850 tons of fuel oil on board, said Cmdr. Jeff Gradeck, spokesman for the Navy's Bahrain-based 5th Fleet.

However, the Emirate's Federal Environmental Agency put the fuel figure at only 1,430 tons, saying some of it had spilled. Crews were working to contain the spill, 16.5 nautical miles off the coast, the agency said Sunday.

The aging ship was headed from Iraq to Pakistan at the time, an Emirates official said on condition of anonymity.

Gradeck said the ship had been intercepted several days earlier for violating U.N. sanctions against Iraq. "The ship was en route to a holding area in international waters for sanction-busting ships when it sank," he said.

After the ship was damaged by rough waves, two U.S. ships in the area helped the 11-member Iraqi crew stabilize the vessel, he said. But by Saturday afternoon, the ship began sinking, Gradeck said. The crew of the Zainab was rescued by the Emirates' coast guard, he said.

Under sanctions imposed by the United Nations following Iraq's invasion of Kuwait in 1990, Iraq can only sell oil on condition that most of the proceeds are used to meet Iraqis' basic needs.

Oil smuggled out outside the so-called oil-for-food deal - and the vessels carrying the illegal shipments - are auctioned off.

Ships loaded with smuggled Iraqi oil routinely pass through the waters off the Emirates.

But after an oil barge believed to be carrying Iraqi fuel spilled fuel off the Emirates in 1998 and contaminated some nine miles of coastline, the Emirates launched a crackdown on sanctions-busting tankers.

In January last year, a tanker carrying 1,080 tons of crude oil from Abu Dhabi to Somalia sank in bad weather four miles off the Emirates' coast, spilling about 330 short tons of crude.

---

USA Today
04/15/01
States
http://www.usatoday.com/news/states/all50.htm

Conneticut

New London - Scientists and government officials are considering a mix of technology and off-limit areas to save endangered northern right whales. Participants at a two-day conference discussed using sonar to warn whales away from shipping routes and establishing exclusion zones near whale migration routes. The whales often fall victim to ships and fishing nets.

Hawaii

Honolulu - Three boys found a rare yellow-bellied sea snake on the beach near Swanzy Beach Park and turned it over to authorities. The 2-foot venomous snake was taken to Waikiki Aquarium, pending a decision on whether it will be displayed or returned to the ocean, officials said.

Michigan

Lansing - State health authorities are trying to determine if utility workers spilled harmful levels of mercury in older homes when removing gas meters from basements. Michigan Consolidated Gas cleaned up 13 Detroit-area homes where residue of the toxin was detected. Expanding the search into outlying communities is being discussed.

-------- police

Mayor and Black Firefighters Split Over Diallo-Case Officer

New York Times
April 15, 2001
By JAYSON BLAIR
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/15/nyregion/15FIRE.html

Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani and black firefighters clashed yesterday over the Fire Department's tentative decision to hire Edward McMellon, one of the four police officers involved in the 1999 shooting death of Amadou Diallo, an unarmed black man.

The mayor said that anyone who met the requirements should be allowed to join the Fire Department, and he left that determination to fire officials. But the black firefighters said the hiring would increase racial tensions in the department, which they say lacks diversity.

During the criminal trial of the four police officers, prosecutors argued that if Mr. Diallo had not been black, he probably would not have been shot. The officers said they had made a tragic mistake, and were all acquitted in February 2000. Early this year, federal prosecutors said they would not file charges. Officer McMellon still faces police administrative charges, but that process would end if he left the Police Department.

Officer McMellon fired 16 of the 41 shots aimed at Mr. Diallo, a 21-year- old man from West Africa who was standing in the vestibule of his Bronx apartment building.

On Friday, fire officials said Officer McMellon had one of the highest scores on the firefighter test and was expected to be part of a new class at the Fire Academy this summer.

Mayor Giuliani, who had urged New Yorkers not to judge the officers before their trial ended, said yesterday that Officer McMellon should be treated like any other candidate for the Fire Department.

"There are criteria, you have to take a test, you have to pass the exam," Mr. Giuliani said in response to a question from a reporter. "And if he fits the criteria, then that would be the right decision. The same criteria should be applied to him that would be applied to anyone else."

Mr. Giuliani added, "The Fire Department has to take all the things into consideration, but the decision is up to them and they, they'll make that decision based on neutral objective criteria and I'll support the decision they make."

But members of the Vulcan Society, which represents black firefighters, yesterday criticized the department's tentative decision, saying that it would inflame tensions in the Fire Department. Three percent of the department's approximately 11,500 members are black.

Several weeks ago, the society wrote a letter to Fire Commissioner Thomas Von Essen that opposed the hiring. "We are outraged by the fact that the commissioner has decided to accept this guy," Lt. Paul Washington, the group's president, said in an interview yesterday before the group met in Crown Heights, Brooklyn.

"If you look at the way blacks are treated in trying to get into this department, it makes you sick."

Lieutenant Washington added that he did not think a black citizen in Officer McMellon's situation would get the same consideration. "If you were black and had been tried for murder, there was no way you were going to get into the department," he said.

After the meeting, he said, "This insults not only the family of Amadou Diallo, but all firefighters and New Yorkers of conscience."

The possible hiring also provoked angry responses yesterday from Public Advocate Mark Green and the Rev. Al Sharpton. Mr. Diallo's father, Saikou, was at the news conference with the black firefighters.

Last year, three black firefighters filed a suit claiming that the city discriminated against them when it rejected their requests to transfer to elite battalions. They argued that less senior and less qualified white men had been given the jobs.

Mr. Von Essen has the legal right to reject certain applicants. But on Friday, fire officials said that was unlikely in Officer McMellon's case.

If Officer McMellon moves to the Fire Department, it will eliminate a difficult personnel issue for police officials, who would no longer have to deal with the tension surrounding the administrative charges against him.

While some, including black police officers, continue to contend that Mr. Diallo would not have been shot had he been white, there are many within the Police Department who sympathize with Officer McMellon and the three other officers, arguing that while the Diallo incident was unfortunate, it could have happened to any officer.

---

Funeral for Slain Youth Is Held as Symbol of Ohio Strife Quits

New York Times
April 15, 2001
By FRANCIS X. CLINES
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/15/national/15OHIO.html

CINCINNATI, April 14 - Inside a packed church today, the black community's grief reached a crescendo with the singing of a hymn about suffering and resolve addressed to Jesus: "I've been up and I've been down, but I'm not going to turn around because I'm fighting."

Minutes later, the shiny metallic coffin containing the body of 19-year- old Timothy Thomas was carried out and down the steps, where a phalanx of Black Panthers raised clenched fists in bidding an angry farewell.

The mixed mood of grief and fury suffused the funeral at New Prospect Baptist Church today as this racially tense city rounded out a chaotic week that began when Mr. Thomas was fatally shot last Saturday by a white police officer pursuing him with a sheaf of misdemeanor traffic warrants.

Mr. Thomas was the 15th person killed by the police in the last six years, and the fact that all of them were black has stirred black residents' long-running complaints about police abuse to the boiling point. After three nights of street protests and vandalism by young blacks, it took the city's declaring an emergency nightly curfew, from 8 p.m. to 6 a.m., to restore the tremulous civil order that prevailed today as Mr. Thomas was buried.

"Black power!" yelled some older bystanders, echoing a cry from the 60's, at the sight of the clenched fists above the coffin. The gesture stirred a range of emotion, including the open skepticism of Jermaine Rutherford, a 29-year black man in the crowd watching the funeral scene on Elm Street.

"Black Panthers?" Mr. Rutherford said with a grin. "Come on, where they been all these years the police were hassling us? In a week they won't care, they'll be gone with the TV cameras and we'll be left with the same old problem."

He noticed a Japanese television crew and emphatically shouted at them: "America's problem."

In contrast to the curfew in which the police have patrolled the streets and surveyed a shadowy empty city, the funeral had no police presence. They remained blocks away, and when a pregnant woman fainted in the street, the authorities took care to send in state police officers, not city officers, to discreetly answer the emergency call.

But after the funeral, clusters of youths began a loose protest march toward downtown, with the police following at a distance, two hours before the curfew was to resume.

"Don't leave here posturing; leave here being humble," pleaded the Rev. Damon Lynch III, the church pastor, as the funeral wound down. Mr. Lynch is one of the people who brought a federal lawsuit in which members of the black community and the American Civil Liberties Union have accused the city of 30 years of abuse in a deliberate policy of racial profiling.

Outside the church, Louanne Anderson handed out a poem she wrote for the occasion, declaring, "All Timothy's mother wanted was to know what happened." Ms. Anderson said the authorities' refusal to fully address that question pending a grand jury inquiry stoked doubts and street protests that turned violent. The police officer, Steven Roach, said he thought Mr. Thomas was reaching for a weapon, but no gun was found.

"I have a 19-year-old son I worry about every night," Ms. Anderson said. "He's the one child I have and he's a statistic in this city: young black male."

Next to her, Andrea Harrell, a 19- year-old black woman, admitted she too worried about her young boyfriend's anger. "The cops come at us real mean, very aggressive," Ms. Harrell said as another teenager agreed.

"It's like we're an endangered species in our own city," said Clyde Brohan, 19, describing police raids in which officers make teenagers lie on the ground to be searched and intimidated. "They mess with us every night, when we're just hanging, having fun. I absolutely know all this will end and the police will be back at us telling us to lie down in the street."

The second night of curfew, Friday, kept this city free of street clashes with the police who earlier had been firing volleys of beanbags, rubber bullets and tear gas at protesters and vandals. The arrest tally from Friday night and this morning was more than 200 adults, most of them individual violators. Police authorities were encouraged but still wary as the curfew was extended through the weekend.

The funeral crowd buzzed with the news that the city's public safety director, Kent Ryan, had announced his resignation for health reasons. Mr. Ryan had been criticized by black politicians and church leaders who had demanded he be replaced.

No successor was announced. But Mayor Charlie Luken said the resignation presented "an opportunity for us to respond to citizens' concerns about police-community relations."

The police deny they harass and brutalize blacks. "We are not some band of rogue Nazis hunting down and killing black men," Keith Fangman, the president of the city Fraternal Order of Police, said Friday in angrily complaining that the police were being victimized by racist charges.

After the funeral, the coffin was secured in the hearse and the cortege left for the cemetery. The remaining crowd sought cheer from Kweisi Mfume, national president of the N.A.A.C.P., who has worked the community tirelessly, pleading with young blacks to be be creative, not destructive. Calling on "the good police of this city" to root out racially abusive officers and their "blue wall of silence," Mr. Mfume did indeed draw cheers and applause as he announced to the crowd that the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People was joining the racial profiling lawsuit against the city.

As they cheered inside the church, clusters of young blacks already were moving downtown toward police headquarters.

---

Strong measure to halt violence

USA Today
04/15/2001 - Updated 01:10 PM ET
http://usatoday.com/news/nation/2001-04-15-cincy.htm

CINCINNATI (AP) - The mayor rolled back the city's dusk-to-dawn curfew on Sunday in response to a calm night following the funeral of a young black man whose shooting triggered a week of unrest. Mayor Charles Luken said the curfew will start at 11 p.m. instead of 8 p.m. to allow families more time to celebrate Easter together. ''Hopefully today can be a day of prayer. A day of peace. A day of coming together,'' Luken said.

The April 7 death of Timothy Thomas, 19, led to three days of rioting in predominantly black neighborhoods that stopped when the mayor instituted the curfew on Thursday.

Thomas, who was wanted on 14 warrants for misdemeanors and traffic violations, was unarmed when he was shot while running from police. He is the fourth black man killed by police since November in this city of 331,000 - 43% of which is black.

Stephen Roach, the officer who shot Thomas, is on paid administrative leave.

Overnight Saturday, police arrested 187 people for curfew violations and got calls about shots being fired, and sporadic instances of rocks and bottles being thrown at police cruisers.

"It was almost a boring night for us," police Chief Thomas Streicher said.

Since Thomas' death, more than 700 people have been arrested for looting, arson, vandalism and curfew violations.

The Rev. Al Sharpton, who cut short a trip to Africa to fly to Cincinnati, said Sunday that the federal government must take a leadership role in improving relationships between city police departments and blacks, and that President Bush must get involved.

"He has a crisis in his country," said the Baptist minister, a leading critic of New York City police's violent confrontations with blacks. "It's time for a national response and real change, not just telling us to quiet down."

On Saturday, hundreds of protesters marched through the riot-scarred Over-the-Rhine neighborhood after the funeral.

Four people were injured by crowd-control bean bags shot by police and State Highway Patrol officers, but the march was otherwise peaceful. Police and the FBI were investigating why officers also shot bean bags at a group milling on streets shortly after the funeral ended.

"We don't feel completely like this is over. We recognize that in certain parts of the city tensions still are a little high," Luken said.

NAACP President Kweisi Mfume and Keith Fangman, president of the local police union, appeared on "Fox News Sunday" and ABC's "This Week With Sam Donaldson and Cokie Roberts" to debate the deaths of 15 blacks by police since 1995.

Fangman said 12 deaths involved suspects who confronted police with deadly weapons. He questioned Mfume on whether police officers should have the right to use deadly force in a life-threatening situation.

"Do you believe that when an unarmed suspect is running from police, has no weapon, makes no deadly moves, should be shot down in a dark alley like a dog, like a pig, like an animal?" Mfume said.

Lt. Col. Ron Twitty, the police department's highest ranking black official, said the racial problems that have been stirred up should be solved at the local - not national - level.

"The decisions about quality of life in Cincinnati should be made by our leadership in Cincinnati, our city government," he said.

---

USA Today
04/15/01
States
http://www.usatoday.com/news/states/all50.htm

Georgia

Moultrie - Ronnie Williamson, a former police officer accused of shooting himself and then claiming he was shot by a suspect, faces one to five years in prison after pleading guilty to making a false statement. Williamson worked for the Berlin police last July when he claimed he was attacked. Investigators determined that Williamson had shot himself.

Louisiana

Monroe - A trial was scheduled for June 12 for Sterlington Police Chief Vern Breland on charges of simple battery, false imprisonment and criminal damage to property. Deputies arrested Breland on March 10 after he allegedly threatened to fire two police officers who had come to his home to investigate a domestic violence complaint.

------

The State Has Its Own Priorities

Sun, 15 Apr 2001
by Michael Peirce
Commentary
http://www.lewrockwell.com

"The mayor said he intends to do everything he can to protect the police and citizens of Cincinnati."

What is wrong with that statement? Perhaps a better question is what is wrong with government in America, at all levels?

The answer is contained in the mayor's press release. The citizens are the lowest priority. We, the people, do not matter any more.

We have here a situation where a cop shot a kid during an altercation over an arrest. Since I'm unaware of the details I'll make no comment on that shooting. Apparently, the police in Cincinnati have shot rather a lot of black males lately, fifteen since 1995. One wonders how many of these shootings were a result of the cops playing at cowboys and drug dealers?

It's well past time to apply some logic here. First off, we have blacks rioting in the streets, destroying property and pulling white people out of their cars and beating them. Not one of the people engaging in this conduct has been shot, either by citizens nor by the police. This raises another set of questions doesn't it?

Why are the citizens of Cincinnati unable to defend themselves? The answer is simple - gun control, unconstitutional, despotic gun control. Instituted by the same politicians who themselves have armed bodyguards and a police force to protect them.

The police shoot people when they, the police, reckon there is a good reason, usually because an officer's life is presumably in danger. This happens most often during altercations with drug suspects - it happened here in Atlanta last week. It never occurs to them that sometimes we, the citizens, might need a little deadly force, like when savage rioters are beating us and looting our stores. Since that would cause political difficulty for the police, they are always encouraged to show "restraint." The message here is that law abiding white civilians are expendable!

This "drug war" is itself unconstitutional and is a national disgrace. It has been used as a cover by government at several levels to incorporate a whole new set of depraved and disgusting laws, which include theconfiscation of personal property and land from supposed malefactors. It has lso resulted in the incarceration of literally millions, a disproportionately high number of them black male youths.

Thus we now have a situation where young blacks are angry and uneducated, and the drug war has already criminalized many if not most of them, at least in the inner city. They have the contacts and the will to obtain illegal weapons and form themselves into gangs. They have no job skills and consider themselves victims. They are major TV viewers and believe that racism is rampant everywhere - after all, they've heard that said many times on television, and heard it in the state run schools as well. The music they listen to is violent and sexually suggestive at a brutal and dehumanizing level.

We have a police force that is highly militarized and highly politicized, and who no longer consider themselves as accountable to the citizens who pay their salaries, and who refer to us as "subjects." There has been to my knowledge, no incidents of police shooting rioters anywhere, in the last fifteen years and including the Los Angeles Riots, in defense of citizens or property. They shoot in defense of other policemen and that ladies and gentlemen, is that.

The same politicians who have turned the police departments into paramilitary drug enforcement units and revenue collectors, have restricted the carrying of firearms by private citizens. We are now defenseless in many states and cities, and soon will be in many more if the politicians have their way with us. Unarmed as we are, we are prey to the criminals and the police, with no recourse other than to stay indoors and hope for the best.

If you think I'm exaggerating, remember those uniformed SWAT heroes at Columbine whose top priority was "minimizing" police casualties. One would have thought that minimizing casualties among the children would have been a priority but it was not.

We now have the example of Cincinnati to add to that of Seattle last year and it is not too difficult to spot a trend here. Rioters and looters will be treated with kid gloves. Politicians will be protected at whatever the cost. Citizens don't count, period. Remember when the sale of gas masks was made illegal in Seattle? Who ended up getting gassed? The citizens and merchants of that city.

We are in a very dangerous situation. The national government is, by its actions, creating an uncontrollable criminal underclass. Ironically, they, in concert with their allies in the state controlled media, constantly proclaim racism as the major problem in America. They have determined for us that morality is nonexistent or relative and that religion, particularly Christian religion, is considered a joke. The constraints that formerly restrained our conduct are gone.

The result is this: they have created a class of criminal with no precedent in history. These criminals are amoral, violent, and out of control. Yet to shoot one is considered an act of racism? The police may shoot you or me, and well, it's just no big thing. Accidents after all, do happen. If you cannot see the paradox here you're not looking very hard.

I am, as you might have guessed, no big fan of William Buckley. He has however, made an intelligent observation from time to time, and this is one of them, pertaining to how we should deal with rioters, "When the looting starts, the shooting starts!"

My suggestion is even more radical. Disarm the police. Now! Today! Arm the citizens. We are the ones who pay the taxes, build the cars, sell the products and program the computers. We matter damn it! Why on earth should rioters be allowed to pull us out of our cars while we are coming home from a hard day's work and beat us? Should we tolerate this? I think not.

When people start beating us and destroying or burning our property, we should shoot them. That this sounds radical is itself a symptom of the madness that has descended upon our nation like a dark shroud. For the America of old is long gone. We hold no "truths to be self evident," we just stumble down the road to oblivion, wondering what went wrong.

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Police Attack Funeral In Cincinatti
Dozen Injured As Black Racists Gain In Black Community

From: Fitzhugh MacCrae <alaidh@yahoo.com>
Sun, 15 Apr 2001
LSN Staff

Cincinatti, Ohio -- At least one white woman and two black girls were among the injured when police opened fire on the funeral procession for police murder victim Timothy Thomas in racial "hate riot" torn Cincinatti.

Dozens of members of the racist New Black Panther Party and its less radical parent organization, the Nation of Islam, joined approximately three hundred mourners in the funeral procession who were attacked by white police officers firing "non-lethal" shotgun ammunition.

The FBI today announced it was planning to investigate the apparently unprovoked attack.

More than two hundred persons have been arrested on riot-related charges, and more than 500 on curfew violations, in three days of rioting that started with the police shooting of an unarmed black man and turned into an orgy of racial violence, in which isolated groups of blacks and whites attacked others on the basis of race.

Several white communists who attempted to join black rioters were badly beaten by the blacks, and isolated groups of white vigilantes attacked blacks after rioting black mobs stalked lone white citizens, dragging them from their cars, robbing, beating, and sexually assaulting them.

Radical black groups joined in the fray, urging black residents to kill and rape white people. White people responded by taking up arms in self-defense.

Many of the rioters were motivated by pure greed, looting stores and businesses owned by people of both races.

Major corporate news media have deliberately down-played the racial aspects of the riot in their national news coverage, and have played up the police shooting angle.

Leftist groups are claiming that the perception of the violence as a "race riot" was created by "corporate media", but this claim is a deliberate lie. The corporate media has been consistently reporting the incident as being one of "black and white rioters", though whites have, from review of photographs, composed less than 5% of any given rioting crowd, and those whites which have attempted to "riot" have generally been communist agents, sent deliberately by communist groups (such as the Revolutionary Communist Party_ who are advertising their involvement on the internet, and have often been attacked by the mobs they have tried to join. White middle class leftists who believed that the riot was a "class riot" found themselves disappointed after being attacked by black mobs just like all other white people.

At least one police officer has been shot during the past few nights, and last night Cincinatti police report at least six incidents where the police were fired on.

Libertarian Socialist News
Post Office Box 12244
Silver Spring, MD 20908
lsn@libertariansocialist.com http://www.libertariansocialist.com

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Navy Pilot Thought His Plane Was Doomed

New York Times
April 15, 2001
By JOHN KIFNER
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/15/world/15CREW.html

HONOLULU, April 14 - "This guy just killed us."

That was Lt. Shane Osborn's thought as the tail of the Chinese F-8 jet fighter sliced into the far left engine of his lumbering Navy surveillance plane two weekends ago, he said today.

"The plane just snap-rolled," Lieutenant Osborn said, describing how his plane heeled left more than 130 degrees, virtually turning over, and plunged 7,500 feet. "I remember looking up and seeing water."

He and two other members of the Navy crew spoke at a dawn news conference here at Hickam Air Force Base, giving crew members' first public account of the collision.

The flight engineer, Senior Chief Petty Officer Nicholas Mellos, used a single word - mayhem - to describe the scene in the cockpit as Lieutenant Osborn and his co-pilots tried to get their plane under control with nearly all their instruments and controls gone, and as other crew members tried to smash the secret equipment. All the while, there was a howling noise as air rushed in from holes in the hull, Chief Mellos said.

The EP-3 plane, with its crew of 24 and a trove of electronic surveillance equipment, was traveling "straight and steady" on autopilot, Lieutenant Osborn said. It was a routine patrol, he said, adding that the crew members had no reason to reproach themselves before the Chinese. "No apologies necessary on our part," he said.

The Navy plane was heading away from Hainan island when the Chinese jet began making harassing passes, coming as close as 3 to 5 feet, he said. "I was definitely concerned at this point," he recalled.

The Chinese plane, flown by Wang Wei, became unstable, Lieutenant Osborne said, as it tried to slow down to the speed of the American plane, which was traveling at 185 knots. Jet fighters are designed to fly at much higher speeds, and he lost control.

"His vertical stabilizer impacted my No. 1 propeller," Lieutenant Osborn said, describing how the Chinese jet's tail cut into the leftmost of his plane's four engines and then fell into pieces. "His nose hit my nose."

The bullet-shaped nose cone of the EP-3, which houses much of the plane's instrumentation - including the vital speed and altitude indicators - sheared off, and pieces of the wreckage hit the No. 3 engine, the inside right, and pierced the plane's pressurized cabin, causing air to rush in with a roar, he said.

Below, the lieutenant said, he could see the pieces of the Chinese jet in flames and a parachute descending. At about 10,000 feet, he said, he was able to hold altitude and began to stabilize the plane.

"I called for bailout," the lieutenant recalled. Then, as the crew struggled into parachutes, he thought: "We may be able to ditch. I activated the emergency destruct plan."

But by then, he said, the plane had hardly any working controls. He said he pulled full rudder, full flaps - the hinged surfaces on the tail and wings that determine direction and altitude - and got no response.

An experienced EP-3 pilot, in an earlier interview, described the landing of the crippled plane as an astounding feat and described the technical difficulties involved.

The plane had lost power in two of its four engines. More important, the propeller of the far-left engine had been knocked clear of its gears, leaving its blade in a flat, rather than "feathered," position. That meant, this pilot said, that the blades spun independently because of air resistance, becoming a kind of brake on one side, opposing the thrust of the two working engines.

The loss of the nose cone meant more wind resistance and caused the loss of vital instruments that tell how fast and high the plane is flying and so are crucial to landing. The flaps on the wings, also crucial to landing, were gone, too, he said.

"He must have just muscled it down," the other pilot interviewed earlier said, with some amazement.

Chief Mellos, the flight engineer, recalled a chaotic scene as Lieutenant Osborn and his two co-pilots - identified by Navy officials as Lt. Patrick Honeck and Lt. j.g. Jeffery Vignery - shouted at each other, struggling with the controls.

Lieutenant Osborn was shouting out Mayday messages over radio band 243. In the back, crew members were wielding axes and sledgehammers to smash surveillance gear. "It was like we've trained and trained and trained for," Chief Mellos said. "Thank God for the training."

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Crash Course: A New President Bumps Up Against Asia

New York Times
April 15, 2001
By DAVID E. SANGER
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/15/weekinreview/15SANG.html

WASHINGTON - FOR a man who has occupied the White House for just 12 weeks, George W. Bush has already had more than his share of bad luck in Asia.

So far there has been a mid-air collision with China, a maritim