------- Index of Articles

NUCLEAR
The need for a 'rogue state'
BOMSPOTTING III: Action Report
Bibliography on China & U.S.-Chinese Relations
Russian Duma moves to OK import of nuclear fuel
Ten Years of the Chernobyl Era
Program to pay sick nuclear workers will be delayed
Holmes zeros in on big-caps
Idaho
Nuke fuel meeting draws ire, concern
Uranium levels in some Fallon wells unhealthy
Tribe, Nuclear Utilities Sue Utah
Not in your back yard

MILITARY
Iraq warns Iran over missile strike
Bush advised to withhold top destroyers from Taiwan
Taiwan Sees Aegis Disappointment
Andes leaders meet ahead of trade talks
Police Test Legal Weapon on Drug Gang
Skakel Witness Gave Testimony While on Drugs
Washington
Bush enforces ban on college funds for drug offenders
Endeavour lifts off with robot arm for space station
China applauds failure of human rights resolution
Beijing blocks effort to censure abuses
Agent Orange may increase risk of child leukemia
Panel Calls for Overhaul of Osprey Program

OTHER
Enbridge, Suncor plan Canadian wind power project
Calif. investigates alternative power providers
Bush to Sign Chemical Ban
E.P.A. Delays Its Decision on Arsenic
KEEPING OUT FOOT-AND-MOUTH
MINEOLA: PESTICIDE NOTIFICATION RULING
Humpback whale crosses Strait of Gibraltar
Bush to sign treaty to ban 'dirty dozen' chemicals
Consumers' fears carry over to food decisions
States
Bush seen needing clear defense on environment
DuPont bags fungicide linked to ruined crops
Arsenic fouls review of new rules
SECRET GENETIC TESTING
Battle brewing before summit
Justices Clarify Rule on Using Race in Districting
Alabama
Driving while black
Expert Says Sting Operations Would End Racial Profiling
Cuts may mean no new officers on the beat
After Rancorous Start, U.S. and China Resume Talks
Plane's return discussed with China
No, just turn it off
Curb that candid camera
U.S., China wrap up talks over spy plane
U.S. threatens to quit talks with Chinese
Despite protests, China too spies over Asia

ACTIVISTS
In the Shadow of a Star
Protesters barricade entrance to British farm
States


-------- NUCLEAR


The need for a 'rogue state'

Excite News
April 19, 2001
By Dag Mossige
Rocky Mountain Collegian Colorado State U.
http://news.excite.com/news/uw/010419/university-21

(U-WIRE) FORT COLLINS, Colo. -- The cynicism of President George Bush's administration and the motivations behind its policies are best illustrated by its recent conduct toward North Korea.

The past few weeks, Secretary of State Colin Powell, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Bush himself have all gone out of their way to denounce this tiny, impoverished Asian country of 20 million people, deeming it a threat to U.S. national security and "regional stability."

While demonizing North Korea is certainly not an invention of Bush's administration -- the label "rogue state" has been applied to North Korea ever since the end of the Cold War -- the chauvinistic vitriol of the Republican regime is particularly stunning because of its contrast with the mood in Washington just a few months ago.

In October, then-Secretary of State Madeleine Albright visited North Korea's capital Pyongyang, downing champagne with its leader, Kim Jong Il, and even President Clinton was pondering the possibilities of visiting the country.

The tune has now changed. Criticizing Clinton's "romantic" attitudes, Bush has said the United States will now take a more "realistic" approach toward North Korea.

The main point of contention lies with North Korea's alleged missile development and nuclear programs. Washington has often accused it of seeking nuclear weapons and missiles to carry them. This would pose a massive threat not only to South Korea, a major U.S. ally, but also to the United States itself.

Yet for a government that proclaims it will emphasize U.S. "security needs," the Bush administration's behavior at first may appear contradictory. In February, Clinton was close to finishing a deal with North Korea in which it would abandon its entire missile program.

It would seem logical that the Bush administration would be eager to conclude these negotiations. On the contrary, it has cut off all negotiations, while stepping up its criticism of North Korea and its leaders.

Washington's agenda is not only cynical, but criminally reckless. Rather than trying to defuse the tense situation on the Korean peninsula, which would be in the interest of both the American and the Korean people, the administration is catering to the powerful military-industrial complex.

An agreement with North Korea would take away the rationale of spending at least $60 billion on "Star Wars II," the proposed National Missile Defense (NMD) shield to defend the United States against missiles fired from "rogue states" such as North Korea.

No man illustrates the arms industry's clout better than Donald Rumsfeld. As secretary of defense, he is the fox guarding the hen house. The administration's most ardent defender of NMD, Rumsfeld has close ties to arms companies such as Boeing, Lockheed Martin and Raytheon, all of which crave lucrative NMD contracts in return for generous contributions to Republican coffers.

On March 7, President Bush elaborated on his "skepticism" toward North Korea. "There's not very much transparency," he said. "We're not certain as to whether or not they're keeping all terms of all agreements."

Bush failed to mention that the United States only has one agreement with North Korea -- a 1994 deal to replace existing nuclear power stations with light-water reactors incapable of producing nuclear weapons material, as well as to permit inspection of its nuclear factories.

According to a January 1 article in The Nation, International Atomic Energy Agency observers report that North Korea is properly observing its part of the agreement.

Also on March 7, in a telling tale of the administration's new course, Colin Powell, who is considered more moderate than right-wing zealots such as Rumsfeld and Vice President Dick Cheney, was forced to backtrack on statements he had made the previous day.

Originally stating the United States should "engage with North Korea to pick up where President Clinton and his administration left off," as well as examining elements "left on the table," Powell was pushed to declare that no negotiations would be held with North Korea in the near future.

The Clinton administration, infamous for maintaining an economic blockade that resulted in the starvation deaths of up two million North Koreans in the mid-1990s, promoted the ludicrous concept of North Korea as a "rogue state."

In order to justify its continued military presence on the strategic Korean peninsula and in Japan after the Cold War, the "rogue state" term implies North Korea has a suicidal tendency, and is on the brink of launching a strike against either the United States or South Korea.

Months prior to Bush taking power, the North and South Koreans were finding their way to the negotiating table. With its incestuous relationship with the arms industry, the Pentagon and its goons in the White House have every interest to thwart this development.

So far, their reckless actions have greatly succeeded in worsening the situation on the Korean peninsula.

-------- belgium

BOMSPOTTING III: Action Report
850 peace activists occupy runway of NATO nuclear base in Belgium

From: "Pol D'Huyvetter" <geowcpuk@gn.apc.org>
Thu, 19 Apr 2001

On Easter Monday, 16th April a mass nonviolent direct action was organised by Forum for Peace Action (Flemish branch of War Resisters International) and For Mother Earth. 850 activists non-violently trespassed on the NATO nuclear weapons base of Kleine Brogel, Belgium, where 10 US nuclear weapons are stored. Around 800 activists occupied the runway, in order to prevent the functioning of the base. Within some weeks a resolution calling for nuclear disarmament will be tabled in the Belgian Parliament by Peter Vanhoutte <peter.vanhoutte@agalev.be>, a Green MP who was amongst the 15 MP's present at the non-violent protest. Following the high-profile and positive media-coverage on the anti-nuclear protest, the resolution seems to reveive the hoped but unexpected support from liberals and social-democrats.

The action began shortly after 1pm with a colourful procession from the village of Kleine Brogel to the "spotters corner", at the end of the runway. Although the base authorities had been preparing for the action for some time, they only had 30 soldiers waiting in this area. A large section of the fence was quickly removed, and several hundreds of activists streamed onto the base. Approximately 150 were arrested by police and military before reaching the runway, although many of those detained were able to release themselves from their handcuffs, and join in with the rest of the action.

Within a few minutes, activists had taken control of the runway, and a series of short speeches were given by activists from the growing anti-nuclear movements in Belgium, Nederlands, Britain and Finland. There were also speakers from campaigns against Depleted Uranium, Trident Ploughshares and NATO intervention in the Balkans.

There was a defiant mood, with activists chanting "We are in, the bombs must go out!" It took soldiers over two hours to clear the runway, and while some activists walked to the waiting arrest buses, many non-violently resisted by sitting down and linking arms. As on previous actions, arrests of these activists were made using unnecessary amounts of force. There were also several injuries from police horses and dogs. Formal complaints are also being made about the conditions in which people were detained after arrest, with several activists forced to stand outside for up to four hours in temporary razor-wire "pens", and in dangerously overcrowded buildings.

A spokesperson from For Mother Earth said "This is probably the largest direct action on a nuclear base that has ever taken place. It has been an amazing experience, with people from all over Europe coming together to give a clear message- we want a nuclear free Belgium, and a nuclear free world. The only sour point has been the violence from the police and the military, but that serves as a really clear reminder of the sorts of lengths that a nuclear state will go to, in order to defend itself." In total, there were around 850 activists detained under an "administrative arrest", and the last activists were released shortly before 11pm.

The action gave considerable public and political support to the upcoming nuclear disarmament resolution being prepared for approval by the Greens, Social-Democrats and Liberals, all member parties of the Belgian Government. Only the francophone liberals seem to oppose this historic resolution to this date. Will Belgium soon follow its NATO partner Greece, which disarmed its 'secret' stockpile of B-61 US nuclear weapons last January. And will this on its turn open opportunities for the Dutch, German, Italian and British peace movements opposing US nuclear weapons illegally deployed in their region?

For more photographs and stories from the action, (mostly in French and Dutch) visit http://belgium.indymedia.org For more information on the base, and the Belgian anti-nuclear campaign, visit the For Mother Earth Website: http://www.motherearth.org or contact international@motherearth.org

-------- missile defense

Bibliography on China & U.S.-Chinese Relations

From: Joseph Gerson <JGerson@afsc.org>
Date: Thu, 19 Apr 2001

The immediate crisis with China has passed, but it's clear that there will be more. And we all have a lot to be learning and teaching.

The so-called "Missile Defense" program is target primarily against China. And, while the Bush Administration takes a hard line in naming China as a "strategic competitor", even the Clinton Penrtagon's Joint Vision 2020 Doctrine was focused on "containing" China - a country with a per capita income of $700 per person. Since the days of the Yankee traders, and earlier, it's potential market has been seen as the holy grail of capitalism.

Last week I wrote that I would post a bibliography on Chinese political history and U.S.-Chinese relations on my program's web site. The bibliography can be found at http://www.afsc.org/nero/pesp/chinabib.htm If you have feedback, suggestions, etc., don't hesistate to send them to me.

A more complete overview of AFSC's Asia-Pacific work can be found at www.afsc.org and the resources of the Peace and Economic Security Program can be found at www.afsc.org/pes.htm.

-------- russia

Russian Duma moves to OK import of nuclear fuel

RUSSIA: April 19, 2001
REUTERS
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=10549

MOSCOW - Russia nudged a step closer to lifting limits on importing spent nuclear fuel from abroad after the lower parliament voted through a second reading of bills yesterday.

The controversial bills will still need a third reading to become law and open Russia up to receiving nuclear waste from other countries for storage and reprocessing.

The 450-seat Duma approved the bills, which have been the subject of heated public debate in the past few months, by between 230 and 250 votes.

It took the State Duma four months from the first reading to decide between the arguments of environmentalists, who say the bills would turn Russia into an international nuclear dump, and the government, who say they would earn Russia billions of dollars.

Liberal deputy Yuli Rybakov, who voted against the bills, called for the names of members who voted for the bills to be made public.

"Let us make public the names of those who voted in favour, so our children will know who they should curse," he said.

Russia is one of the world's leading producers of nuclear fuel. So far, it has only accepted back its own fuel sold abroad, but the new bills would allow the import of foreign-produced fuel.

Environmental groups say that Russia's existing nuclear dumps are already nearly full, and warn that a lack of cash to maintain them means they pose a serious threat even before any waste from abroad is imported.

The government says the import of the foreign waste should be encouraged to boost the lucrative business of converting the waste into useable fuel and create thousands of jobs in Russia's atomic energy industry, which was virtually halted after the 1986 explosion at the Chernobyl nuclear station in the Ukraine.

According to the Atomic Energy Ministry contracts to store foreign nuclear waste could bring $20 billion in the next 10 years, a figure which Russia could not hope to raise itself.

"Russia has good reprocessing technology and, frankly, it's a shame to lose the 80 percent of fuel which could still be extracted from the waste," the new Atomic Energy Minister Alexander Rumyantsev told the Duma.

"Our atomic energy sector is perhaps one of the few where we maintain a high technological level," Rumyantsev said. "The bills should help it survive."

Last month Russia opened its first nuclear power station since Chernobyl near the central Russian town of Rostov.

-------- ukraine

Ten Years of the Chernobyl Era
The environmental and health effects of nuclear power's greatest calamity will last for generations.

Scientific American
04/96
by Yuri M.Shcherbak
http://www.sciam.com/0496issue/0496shcherbak.html

Awaiting an examination

"It seemed as if the world was coming to an end... I could not believe my eyes; I saw the reactor ruined by the explosion. I was the first man in the world to see this. As a nuclear engineer I realized all the consequences of what had happened. It was a nuclear hell. I was gripped by fear."

These words were written to me in 1986 by the head of the shift operating the reactor that exploded at the Chornobyl nuclear power plant in northern Ukraine. The explosion and a resulting fire showered radioactive debris over much of eastern Europe. The author of the words above, along with several others, was later jailed for his role in the disaster, although he never admitted guilt.

http://polyn.net.kiae.su/polyn/manifest.html

Subsequent official investigations have shown, however, that responsibility for this extraordinary tragedy reaches far beyond just those on duty at the plant on the night of April 25 and early morning of April 26, 1986. The consequences, likewise, have spread far beyond the nuclear energy industry and raise fundamental questions for a technological civilization. Before the explosion, Chornobyl was a small city hardly known to the outside world. Since then, the name-often known by its Russian spelling, Chernobyl has entered the chronicle of the 20th century as the worst technogenic environmental disaster in history. It is an internationally known metaphor for catastrophe as potent as "Stalingrad" or "Bhopal." Indeed, it is now clear that the political repercussions from Chornobyl accelerated the collapse of the Soviet empire.

Because of the importance of this calamity for all of humanity, it is vital that the world understands both the reasons it happened and the consequences. The events that led up to the explosion are well known. Reactor number four, a 1,000-megawatt RBMK-1000 design, produced steam that drove generators to make electricity. On the night of the accident, operators were conducting a test to see how long the generators would run without power. For this purpose, they greatly reduced the power being produced in the reactor and blocked the flow of steam to the generators.

Unfortunately, the RBMK-1000 has a design flaw that makes its operation at low power unstable. In this mode of operation, any spurious increase in the production of steam can boost the rate of energy production in the reactor. If that extra energy generates still more steam, the result can be a runaway power surge. In addition, the operators had disabled safety systems that could have averted the reactor's destruction, because the systems might have interfered with the results of the test.

At 1:23 and 40 seconds on the morning of April 26, realizing belatedly that the situation had become hazardous, an operator pressed a button to activate the automatic protection system. The action was intended to shut the reactor down, but by this time it was too late. What actually happened can be likened to a driver who presses the brake pedal to slow down a car but finds instead that it accelerates tremendously.

Within three seconds, power production in the reactor's core surged to 100 times the normal maximum level, and there was a drastic increase in temperature. The result was two explosions that blew off the 2,000-metric-ton metal plate that sealed the top of the reactor, destroying the building housing it. The nuclear genie had been liberated.

Despite heroic attempts to quell the ensuing fire, hundreds of tons of graphite that had served as a moderator in the reactor burned for 10 days. Rising hot gases carried into the environment aerosolized fuel as well as fission products, isotopes that are created when uranium atoms split apart. The fuel consisted principally of uranium; mixed in with it was some plutonium created as a by-product of normal operation. Plutonium is the most toxic element known, and some of the fission products were far more radioactive than uranium or plutonium. Among the most dangerous were iodine 131, strontium 90 and cesium 13.

A plume containing these radioisotopes moved with prevailing winds to the north and west, raining radioactive particles on areas thousands of miles away. Regions affected included not only Ukraine itself but also Belarus, Russia, Georgia, Poland, Sweden, Germany, Turkey and others. Even such distant lands as the U.S. and Japan received measurable amounts of radiation. In Poland, Germany, Austria and Hungary as well as Ukraine, crops and milk were so contaminated they had to be destroyed. In Finland, Sweden and Norway, carcasses of reindeer that had grazed on contaminated vegetation had to be dumped.

Widespread Effects

The total amount of radioactivity released will never be known, but the official Soviet figure of 90 million curies represents a minimum. Other estimates suggest that the total might have been several times higher. It is fair to say that in terms of the amount of radioactive fallout-though not, of course, the heat and blast effects-the accident was comparable to a medium-size nuclear strike. In the immediate aftermath of the explosion and fire, 187 people fell ill from acute radiation sickness; 31 of these died. Most of these early casualties were firefighters who combated the blaze.

The destroyed reactor liberated hundreds of times more radiation than was produced by the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The intensity of gamma radiation on the site of the power plant reached more than 100 roentgens an hour. This level produces in an hour doses hundreds of times the maximum dose the International Commission on Radiological Protection recommends for members of the public a year. On the roof of the destroyed reactor building, radiation levels reached a frightening 100,000 roentgens an hour.

The human dimensions of the tragedy are vast and heartbreaking. At the time of the accident, I was working as a medical researcher at the Institute of Epidemiology and Infectious Diseases in Kiev, some 60 miles from the Chornobyl plant. Sometime on April 26 a friend told me that people had been arriving at hospitals for treatment of burns sustained in an accident at the plant, but we had no idea of its seriousness. There was little official news during the next few days, and what there was suggested the danger was not great. The authorities jammed most foreign broadcasts, although we could listen as Swedish radio reported the detection of high levels of radioactivity in that country (click here for information on Swedish effects) and elsewhere. I and some other physicians decided to drive toward the accident site to investigate and help as we could.

http://www.slu.se/eng/thisisslu/find/index.html

We set off cheerfully enough, but as we got closer we started to see signs of mass panic. People with connections to officialdom had used their influence to send children away by air and rail. Others without special connections were waiting in long lines for tickets or occasionally storming trains to try to escape. Families had become split up. The only comparable social upheaval I had seen was during a cholera epidemic. Already many workers from the plant had been hospitalized.

The distribution of the fallout was extremely patchy. One corner of a field might be highly dangerous, while just a few yards away levels seemed low. Nevertheless, huge areas were affected. Although iodine 131 has a half-life of only eight days, it caused large radiation exposures during the weeks immediately following the accident. Strontium 90 and cesium 137, on the other hand, are more persistent. Scientists believe it is the cesium that will account for the largest radiation doses in the long run.

All told, well over 260,000 square kilometers of territory in Ukraine, Russia and Belarus (see radar map) of this region) still have more than one curie per square kilometer of contamination with cesium 137. At this level, annual health checks for radiation effects are advised for residents. In my own country of Ukraine, the total area with this level of contamination exceeds 35,000 square kilometers-more than 5 percent of the nation's total area. Most of this, 26,000 square kilometers, is arable land. In the worst affected areas there are restrictions on the use of crops, but less contaminated districts are still under cultivation.

http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/sircxsar/chernobyl.html

The heavily contaminated parts of Ukraine (see maps) constitute 13 administrative regions (oblasts). In these oblasts are 1,300 towns and villages with a total population of 2.6 million, including 700,000 children. Within about 10 days of the accident, 135,000 people living in the worst-affected areas had left their homes; by now the total has reached 167,000. Yet it is clear that the authorities' attempts to keep the scale of the disaster quiet actually made things worse than they need have been. If more inhabitants in the region had been evacuated promptly during those crucial first few days, radiation doses for many people might have been lower.

The region within 30 kilometers of the Chornobyl plant is now largely uninhabited; 60 settlements outside this zone have also been moved. Formerly busy communities are ghost towns. The government has responded to this unprecedented disruption by enacting laws giving special legal status to contaminated areas and granting protections to those who suffered the most. Yet the repercussions will last for generations.

Multiple Illnesses

The medical consequences (described by the World Health Organization) are, of course, the most serious. Some 30,000 people have fallen ill among the 400,000 workers who toiled as "liquidators," burying the most dangerous wastes and constructing a special building around the ruined reactor that is universally referred to as "the sarcophagus." Of these sick people, about 5,000 are now too ill to work.

http://www.who.int/ It is hard to know, even approximately, how many people have already died as a result of the accident. Populations have been greatly disrupted, and children have been sent away from some areas. By comparing mortality rates before and after the accident, the environmental organization Greenpeace Ukraine has estimated a total of 32,000 deaths. There are other estimates that are higher, and some that are lower, but I believe a figure in this range is defensible. Some, perhaps many, of these deaths may be the result of the immense psychological stress experienced by those living in the contaminated region.

One medical survey of a large group of liquidators, carried out by researchers in Kiev led by Sergei Komissarenko, has found that most of the sample were suffering from a constellation of symptoms that together seem to define a new medical syndrome. The symptoms include fatigue, apathy and a decreased number of "natural killer" cells in the blood.

Natural killer cells, a type of white blood cell, can kill the cells of tumors and virus-infected cells. A reduction in their number, therefore, suppresses the immune system. Some have dubbed this syndrome "Chornobyl AIDS." Besides having increased rates of leukemia and malignant tumors, people with this syndrome are susceptible to more severe forms of cardiac conditions as well as common infections such as bronchitis, tonsillitis and pneumonia.

As a consequence of inhaling aerosols containing iodine 131 immediately after the accident, 13,000 children in the region experienced radiation doses to the thyroid of more than 200 roentgen equivalents. (This means they received at least twice the maximum recommended dose for nuclear industry workers for an entire year.) Up to 4,000 of these children had doses as high as 2,000 roentgen equivalents. Because iodine collects in the thyroid gland, these children have developed chronic inflammation of the thyroid. Although the inflammation itself produces no symptoms, it has started to give rise to a wave of cases of thyroid cancer.

The numbers speak for themselves. Data gathered by the Kiev researcher Mykola D. Tronko and his colleagues indicate that between 1981 and 1985-before the accident-the number of thyroid cancer cases in Ukraine was about five a year. Within five years of the disaster the number had grown to 22 cases a year, and from 1992 to 1995 it reached an average of 43 cases a year. From 1986 to the end of 1995, 589 cases of thyroid cancer were recorded in children and adolescents. (In Belarus the number is even higher.) Ukraine's overall rate of thyroid cancer among children has increased about 10-fold from preaccident levels and is now more than four cases per million. Cancer of the thyroid metastasizes readily, although if caught early enough it can be treated by removing the thyroid gland. Patients must then receive lifelong treatment with supplemental thyroid hormones.

Other research by Ukrainian and Israeli scientists has found that one in every three liquidators-primarily men in their thirties-has been plagued by sexual or reproductive disorders. The problems include impotence and sperm abnormalities. Reductions in the fertilizing capacity of the sperm have also been noted. The number of pregnancies with complications has been growing among women living in the affected areas, and many youngsters fall prey to a debilitating fear of radiation.

The optimists who predicted no long-term medical consequences from the explosion have thus been proved egregiously wrong. These authorities were principally medical officials of the former Soviet Union who were following a script written by the political bureau of the Communist Party's Central Committee. They also include some Western nuclear energy specialists and military experts.

It is also true that the forecasts of "catastrophists"-some of whom predicted well over 100,000 cancer cases-have not come to pass. Still, previous experience with the long-term effects of radiation much of it derived from studies at Hiroshima and Nagasaki-suggests that the toll will continue to rise. Cancers caused by radiation can take many years before they become detectable, so the prospects for the long-term health of children in the high-radiation regions are, sadly, poor.

http://www.rerf.or.jp/

The hushing up of the danger from radiation in Soviet propaganda has produced quite the opposite effects from those intended. People live under constant stress, fearful about their health and, especially, that of their children. This mental trauma has given rise to a psychological syndrome comparable to that suffered by veterans of wars in Vietnam and Afghanistan. Among children evacuated from the reactor zone, there has been a 10- to 15-fold increase in the incidence of neuropsychiatric disorders.

The catastrophe and the resulting resettlement of large populations have also caused irreparable harm to the rich ethnic diversity of the contaminated areas, particularly to the so-called drevlyany, woodland people, and polishchuks, inhabitants of the Polissya region. Unique architectural features and other artifacts of their spiritual and material culture have been effectively lost as abandoned towns and villages have fallen into disrepair. Much of the beautiful landscape is now unsafe for humans.

The Ukrainian government, which is in a severe economic crisis, is today obliged to spend more than 5 percent of its budget dealing with the aftermath of Chornobyl. The money provides benefits such as free housing to about three million people who have been officially recognized as having suffered from the catastrophe, including 356,000 liquidators and 870,000 children. Ukraine has introduced a special income tax corresponding to 12 percent of earnings to raise the necessary revenue, but it is unclear how long the government can maintain benefits at current levels.

Today the Chornobyl zone is one of the most dangerously radioactive places in the world. In the debris of the ruined reactor are tens of thousands of metric tons of nuclear fuel with a total radioactivity level of some 20 million curies. The radiation level in the reactor itself, at several thousand roentgens per hour, is lethal for any form of life. But the danger is spread far and wide. In the 30-kilometer zone surrounding the reactor are about 800 hastily created burial sites where highly radioactive waste, including trees that absorbed radioisotopes from the atmosphere, has been simply dumped into clay-lined pits.

These dumps may account for the substantial contamination of the sediments of the Dnieper River and its tributary the Pripyat, which supply water for 30 million people. Sediments of the Pripyat adjacent to Chornobyl contain an estimated 10,000 curies of strontium 90, 12,000 curies of cesium 137 and 2,000 curies of plutonium. In order to prevent soluble compounds from further contaminating water sources, the wastes must be removed to properly designed and equipped storage facilities-facilities that do not yet exist.

Cost of Cleanup

The two reactors that are still in operation at the Chornobyl plant also pose a major problem (a fire put a third out of action in 1992). These generate up to 5 percent of Ukraine's power; the nuclear energy sector (a map of Ukrainian reactors can be seen here altogether produces 40 percent of the country's electricity. Even so, Ukraine and the Group of Seven industrial nations last December signed a formal agreement on a cooperative plan to shut down the whole Chornobyl plant by the year 2000. The agreement establishes that the European Union and the U.S. will help Ukraine devise plans to mitigate the effects of the shutdown on local populations. It also sets up mechanisms to allow donor countries to expedite safety improvements at one of the reactors still in use. In addition, the agreement provides for international cooperation on decommissioning the plant, as well as on the biggest problem of all: an ecologically sound, long-term replacement for the sarcophagus that was built around the ruin of reactor number four.

The 10-story sarcophagus, which is built largely of concrete and large slabs of metal and has walls over six meters thick, was designed for a lifetime of 30 years. But it was constructed in a great hurry under conditions of high radiation. As a result, the quality of the work was poor, and today the structure is in need of immediate repair. Metal used in the edifice has rusted, and more than 1,000 square meters of concrete have become seriously cracked. Rain and snow can get inside. If the sarcophagus were to collapse-which could happen if there were an earthquake-the rubble would very likely release large amounts of radioactive dust.

In 1993 an international competition was held to find the best long-term solution. Six prospective projects were chosen for further evaluation (out of 94 proposals), and the next year a winner was selected-Alliance, a consortium led by Campenon Bernard of France. The consortium's proposal, which entails the construction of a "supersarcophagus" around the existing one, unites firms from France, Germany, Britain, Russia and Ukraine. The group has already conducted feasibility studies. If the project goes forward, design work will cost $20 million to $30 million, and construction-which would take five years-upwards of $300 million. Final disposal of the waste from the accident will take 30 years. One possibility being explored is that the waste might be encased in a special glass.

Chornobyl was not simply another disaster of the sort that humankind has experienced throughout history, like a fire or an earthquake or a flood. It is a global environmental event of a new kind. It is characterized by the presence of thousands of environmental refugees; long-term contamination of land, water and air; and possibly irreparable damage to ecosystems. Chornobyl demonstrates the ever growing threat of technology run amok.

The designers of the plant, which did not conform to international safety requirements, are surely culpable at least as much as the operators. The RBMK-1000 is an adaptation of a military reactor originally designed to produce material for nuclear weapons. There was no reinforced containment structure around the reactor to limit the effects of an accident. That RBMK reactors are still in operation in Ukraine, Lithuania and Russia should be cause for alarm.

The disaster illustrates the great responsibility that falls on the shoulders of scientific and other experts who give advice to politicians on technical matters. Moreover, I would argue that the former Soviet Union's communist leadership must share the blame. Despite then President Mikhail S. Gorbachev's professed support for glasnost, or openness, the regime hypocritically closed ranks in the aftermath of the tragedy in a futile and ultimately harmful attempt to gloss over the enormity of what had occurred.

The event offers a vivid demonstration of the failures of the monopolistic Soviet political and scientific system. The emphasis under that regime was on secrecy and on simplifying safety features in order to make construction as cheap as possible. International experience with reactor safety was simply disregarded. The calamity underscores, further, the danger that nuclear power plants could pose in regions where wars are being fought. Of course, all such plants are potentially vulnerable to terrorist attack.

Chornobyl has taught the nations of the world a dreadful lesson about the necessity for preparedness if we are to rely on nuclear technology. Humankind lost a sort of innocence on April 26, 1986. We have embarked on a new, post-Chornobyl era, and we have yet to comprehend all the consequences.

Further Reading

Chernobyl: A Documentary Story. Yuri Shcherbak. Translated by Ian Press. St. Martin's Press, 1989.

Chornobyl: Living with the Monster. Mike Edwards in National Geographic, Vol. 186, No. 2, pages 100-115; August 1994.

Radiation and Human Immunity [in Russian]. Sergei Komissarenko. Naukova Dumka, Kiev, 1994.

Caring for Survivors of the Chernobyl Disaster: What the Clinician Should Know. Armin D. Weinberg et al. in Journal of the American Medical Association, Vol. 274, No. 5, pages 408-412; August 2, 1995.

Map of Area
http://www.ida.net/users/pbmck/xsovnuc/images/ukraine.jpg

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


Program to pay sick nuclear workers will be delayed

Seattle Times
Local News : Thursday, April 19, 2001
By Katherine Rizzo The Associated Press
http://archives.seattletimes.nwsource.com/cgi-bin/texis/web/vortex/display?slug=sickworkers19m&date=20010419

WASHINGTON - Labor Secretary Elaine Chao confirmed her agency will oversee a new compensation program for sick Cold War-era nuclear-weapons workers but said it will not meet a congressional deadline.

Chao had wanted to shift control of the program to the Justice Department, which she said was better suited to oversee it. She changed her mind amid criticism from lawmakers upset by the job Justice has done running a compensation program for former uranium miners and people who lived downwind of nuclear-test blasts.

"I think this is a win for workers," Chao said. "This is a priority. We want to take care of the workers. We want to make sure justice is done."

Chao also said her staff cannot meet a July 31 deadline to begin accepting applications, and she wants Congress to grant an extension. She said she did not know how much more time her agency would need to get ready, but medical benefits would be made retroactive to July 31.

The program approved last year by Congress offers lifetime medical care and $150,000 to ailing workers who were employed in the nuclear-weapons complex, at factories that worked for the Atomic Energy Commission, its successor, the Energy Department, or at nuclear-test sites in Alaska and Nevada.

The program is limited to those with cancer associated with radiation, silicosis or chronic beryllium disease. Eligibility rules for some workers have been set, and the Labor Department must work out qualification guidelines for the rest.

Other workers may have contracted cancer because of exposure to PCBs or other dangerous chemicals, but they will not be eligible to apply for the federal benefits. State worker-compensation programs are the only recourse for those workers.

Who is eligible

A look at who in the Northwest is covered under the compensation program for job-sickened nuclear workers. Successful applicants eventually will receive $150,000 and payment of future medical bills.

Amchitka Island, Alaska

Those who spent at least 250 workdays digging tunnels for Amchitka's nuclear-weapons tests can be among the first to qualify for benefits if they either died from or were disabled by chronic silicosis. However, the law allows President Bush to delete the tunnel diggers from the eligibility list if the administration can certify by April 28 an "insufficient basis" to include them.

Workers employed on Amchitka before Jan. 1, 1974, who were exposed to radiation during the Long Shot, Milrow or Cannikin underground nuclear tests can qualify if they died from or are disabled by one of several kinds of cancer. This group will not have to wait for the Labor Department to write additional eligibility standards; those from most other radiation-exposure sites will have to wait while dosages and other factors are considered.

Beryllium

Workers at factories that handled beryllium for Energy Department projects can qualify if they died from or were disabled by chronic beryllium disease. The government will pay to regularly screen workers if they have been found to have beryllium sensitivity but will not provide the full compensation package to that group.

All Energy Department sites

No matter how long they worked at an atomic-weapons plant or for an Energy Department contractor, employees who died from or were disabled by a radiation-related cancer can qualify if they were not sick before beginning their work if the government rules that their cancer was sustained "in the performance of duty" and if the cancer "was at least as likely as not" related to their work.

Cancer-stricken researchers also can qualify if they were in residence at a Department of Energy facility for at least two years.

Uranium miners

Uranium miners who have qualified for $100,000 payments under a 10-year-old Justice Department program can get an extra $50,000 plus coverage of future treatment.

-----

Holmes zeros in on big-caps

Excite News
Updated 1:00 AM ET April 19, 2001
CBS.MarketWatch.com - Market Snapshot :
http://news.excite.com/news/cbsmw/010419/01/stockpicks

NEW YORK (CBS.MW) -- Frank Holmes is looking to take full advantage of the 20 percent upside he expects the U.S. stock market to yield by year end.

As U.S. Global Investors' chief executive, he oversees $1.3 billion in assets in 13 funds focused on disparate areas, such as large-cap U.S. stocks, gold and global resources, and international funds buying Chinese and Eastern European stocks. The biggest fund -- the $800 million U.S. Government Securities Savings Fund -- has been rated No. 1 in its category by Lipper for 10 consecutive years.

Holmes remains bearish on the U.S. economy, though he said domestic stocks can return 20 percent return between now and Jan. 1. With interest rates falling and huge amounts of cash parked in money market funds, there's plenty to get the market going, he said.

His top stock pick right now is Cameco Corp. (CCJ) , the world's largest uranium producer. The Canadian company's stock rose 32 percent in 2000, and Holmes sees it moving higher as the California energy crisis fuels the need for alternative energy. Nuclear plants operate at a fraction of the cost of natural gas plants and Holmes expects uranium rise as a result. Cameco's shares fell 23 cents to $23.80 on Wednesday.

Holmes also likes United Technologies (UTX) because earnings per share are expected to grow 15 percent in each of the next two years and margins "have improved by 100 basis points, he said. With a price-to-earnings ratio of 18, Holmes sees the stock as undervalued. It rose $2.50 to $78.10.

Lastly, Holmes is slowly adding to positions in Microsoft (MSFT) , which he began buying at the start of the year and now plans to make a top 10 holding. "Political risks and the slowing economy are already priced into shares," he said. It rose $3.95 to $65.43.

Julie Rannazzisi is markets editor for CBS.MarketWatch.com in New York.

-------- idaho

Idaho

USA Today
04/19/01
States
http://www.usatoday.com/news/states/all50.htm

Idaho Falls - The Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory has completed demolition of the last remaining buildings used to design a nuclear-powered airplane that never flew. In the late 1950s, the military wanted an airplane that could stay aloft almost indefinitely without refueling. President Kennedy scrapped the project in 1961.

-------- georgia

Nuke fuel meeting draws ire, concern

Savannah Morning News
Thursday, April 19, 2001
By Gail Krueger
mailto:gkrueger@savannahnow.com
mailto:mswendra@savannahnow.com?subject=Mark
http://www.savannahmorningnews.com/smn/stories/041901/LOCnukes.shtml

Frustration with an almost unfathomable process dominated a Wednesday meeting about transforming the stuff of the Cold War into a peace-time fuel.

The federal Department of Energy already has decided that its Savannah River Nuclear Site - about 70 miles upstream from Savannah - is the place where weapons-grade plutonium from old bombs will be turned into fuel for nuclear reactors that supply electricity to keep the lights on in Charlotte. It's now up to the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission to decide whether to authorize a facility proposed by an international consortium at SRS.

Pounding the nuclear sword into a plowshare is part of a U.S. and Russian effort to make the world safer by getting rid of Cold War weapons. But the abstract concept gets pretty personal when the facility is just up the river.

"The proposed plutonium fuel factory will add to the fact that the Southeast, especially SRS, is exploited as the nation's radioactive pay toilet," said Sara Barczak, safe energy director for Georgians for Clean Energy's Savannah office.

Barczak was one of about 35 people who turned out to hear what the NRC had to say Wednesday.

The NRC meeting was held to collect public input before an Environmental Impact Statement is done on the production and use of experimental mixed oxide-MOX-plutonium fuel.

The fuel would be made from weapons-grade plutonium that would be purified at SRS and transported regionally for use in four nuclear power reactors operated by Duke Power in the Charlotte area.

Weapons-grade plutonium never has been used a commercial reactor fuel.

State Sen. Regina Thomas, D-Savannah, has come out in opposition to starting the plutonium fuel process at SRS. She said to do so would, "plunge us into a new era of nuclear dangers."

A number of environmental groups have written former Secretary of Energy Bill Richardson asking him to stop design, construction and licensing work on the proposed MOX fuel fabrication facility at SRS. They cite the creation of liquid radioactive wastes-a byproduct of the plutonium purification process-as a matter of extreme concern.

The proposed plant could add more than 4 million gallons of liquid waste over its 20-year life span to the SRS site, according to the Nuclear Information and Resource Service and the Blue Ridge Environmental Defense League, two anti-nuclear groups.

Some 35 million gallons of highly radioactive liquid waste is still on hand at SRS despite years of clean up activities.

Having that waste find its way into the Savannah River would be disastrous, activists say.

Harry Jue, director of the city's water department, has a particular interest in what goes into the Savannah River. The city draws millions of gallons of water for industrial and home use from Abercorn Creek, a tributary of the Savannah.

In December, 1991, the city was forced to warn its industrial customers away from using treated Savannah River water due to a radioactive tritium release from the Savannah River Site.

For almost a week, plants like Savannah Sugar, which used the water for processing food, had to find another source; plants like the then Union Camp paper mill continued to used it for processing but brought in bottled water for employees to drink.

Now, more of the water from the city's water plant goes for domestic drinking water than ever before. SRS now pays for daily samples to be taken at the bridge where U.S. 301 crosses the Savannah. Finding tritium there would give the city three to four days lead time before it would get into drinking water, Jue said.

Jue said he understands that clean up weapons-grade plutonium is good for the world at large but is concerned about the local implication of processing it upstream from his city's water plant.

"Whose back yard are you putting it in? We just need to know a lot more," he said.

Environmental issues reporter Gail Krueger can be reached at 652-0331 or at gkrueger@savannahnow.com.

-------- nevada

Uranium levels in some Fallon wells unhealthy

Thu, 19 Apr 2001
By MICHAEL WEISSENSTEIN REVIEW-JOURNAL
Las Vegas Review-Journal
http://www.lvrj.com/cgi-bin/printable.cgi?/lvrj_home/2001/Apr-19-Thu-2001/news/15908054.html

As state and federal investigators probed the possible causes of the Fallon leukemia cluster, speculation turned Wednesday to a previously unpublicized report that found potentially harmful levels of uranium in some local wells.

Federal geologists tested 73 wells for radioactivity and in 31 they detected naturally occurring uranium at levels higher than considered healthy, according to a 1994 study described Wednesday by the Reno Gazette-Journal.

Investigators do not know whether uranium-tainted water was consumed by the 12 children who were diagnosed with acute lymphocytic leukemia after living in Fallon, about 60 miles east of Reno, in recent years, state health officials said Wednesday.

Six of the children's families lived in homes served by wells rather than the municipal water system, which meets the federal standard for uranium in drinking water. Like all federal drinking water limits, the Environmental Protection Agency's 30 parts per billion uranium standard does not apply to private household wells.

The U.S. Geological Survey detected a median uranium level of 40 parts per billion in the 73 wells, with the level in one reaching 320 parts per billion.

The leukemia patients' families' wells generally were drilled no deeper than 100 feet below the ground, meaning they probably tapped into the same shallow and intermediate aquifers serving the wells analyzed by the geological survey in 1994, state and federal officials said Wednesday.

The state health division has sampled the families' wells as part of the ongoing investigation into the disease cluster. Officials are awaiting the results of tests for contaminants including uranium and other radioactive elements, state epidemiologist Dr. Randall Todd said Wednesday.

Geological survey officials this week shared their 1994 findings with officials from the state health division and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention who were meeting in Fallon and Carson City.

Todd was guarded about the possibility that uranium might have played a role in the illnesses in Fallon, where children have been diagnosed with leukemia at nearly 42 times the expected rate.

The uranium detected by the geological survey has been present as long as people have lived in the Fallon area, Todd and federal geologists said. Health officials have only in recent years detected elevated cancer levels there, leading them to look most closely at recently introduced environmental contaminants.

"If it's natural and it's always been there, then why a cluster now and not 10 years ago?" Todd said.

Geological survey officials were not invited to testify at recent state and U.S. Senate hearings into the clusters that have been conducted in Carson City and Fallon. They were invited about a month ago to share information at this week's state and federal meetings. To not exacerbate the already rampant and often baseless speculation about the cluster's possible causes, the geological survey did not try to publicize its report, which had been public for seven years, Nevada district chief Terry Rees said Wednesday.

"We were dealing with the folks in the agencies that we thought were the appropriate people to be dealing with it," Rees said.

Radiation has been linked to leukemia, although Todd said he does not yet know whether the blood cancer has been tied to uranium at the levels found in Fallon.

This story is located at: http://www.lvrj.com/lvrj_home/2001/Apr-19-Thu-2001/news/15908054.html

-------- utah

Tribe, Nuclear Utilities Sue Utah

April 19, 2001
By RICH VOSEPKA, Associated Press Writer
http://news.excite.com/news/ap/010419/21/goshutes-nuclear

SALT LAKE CITY (AP) - The Goshute Indians and a group of nuclear power utilities sued the state Thursday to challenge new laws aimed at preventing the storage of spent nuclear fuel on the tribe's reservation.

The lawsuit, filed Thursday in U.S. District Court, argues the state laws are pre-empted by existing federal laws that regulate nuclear waste storage.

A law signed by Gov. Mike Leavitt last month bans the storage of high-level nuclear waste in Utah. A companion measure requires the nuclear utilities to make up to $2 billion in financial guarantees in case of an accident, should waste reach Utah anyway.

The laws were written in response to the Skull Valley Band of Goshutes' plan to make a deal with Private Fuel Storage, a consortium of waste-producing utilities, to keep spent reactor fuel on the reservation about 45 miles southwest of Salt Lake City.

Attorneys argue that companies have a right to do business without being subjected to punitive fees that are clearly designed to put them out of business.

"Several laws in the last three years have gone well beyond the powers granted to the states," said John Parkyn, chairman of Private Fuel Storage. Federal nuclear regulators already do a thorough job of making sure waste storage sites are safe, he said.

Few other businesses are interested in doing business on the reservation, said Leon Bear, chairman of the 112-member tribe. The reservation is surrounded by a hazardous waste site and the Dugway Proving Grounds, which handles chemical and biological weapons.

"It blocks commerce with the tribe," Bear said.

The deal with Private Fuel Storage could bring the tribe millions of dollars in fees and provide jobs.

-------- us nuc waste

Not in your back yard

The Washington Times www.washtimes.com
4/19/01
Greg Pierce
Inside Politics
http://www.washtimes.com/national/inpolitics.htm

"Democratic Rep. Shelley Berkley of Nevada is trying out a new weapon in her fight to keep her state from becoming the nation´s nuclear-waste dumping ground," National Journal reports.

"Hoping to whip up national fretting about the dangers of shipping radioactive waste, Berkley is circulating a list of 353 congressional districts that the material (depending on its source) could travel through on its way to Nevada," the magazine said.

"Berkley says she´s just trying to warn everyone 'that this toxic waste could be coming right through their back yards.´ Currently, the nuclear power industry is storing 40,000 tons of radioactive waste at 65 generating plants across the country, pending completion of a permanent storage facility at Nevada´s Yucca Mountain."

-------- MILITARY


Iraq warns Iran over missile strike

USA Today
04/19/2001
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2001-04-20-iraq.htm

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) - Iraq has warned Iran that its missile attack on eastern Iraq risked a revival of the 1980-88 war when the two countries bombarded each other with rockets.

Iran has acknowledged its armed forces attacked Iraqi bases of the rebel Mujahedeen Khalq on Wednesday morning. The acknowledgment came in a letter delivered to the U.N. Security Council in New York late Wednesday.

The attack killed three people and wounded 23 others, Iraqi official media and the Mujahedeen Khalq said Thursday. All but one of the casualties were Iraqis.

The attacks were followed Thursday by Iraqi reports of two pilotless Iranian reconnaissance planes being shot down on the Iraqi side of the border.

Iranian state television reported the attack Thursday, but gave no word of casualties.

The attack was a "limited and proportionate defensive measure" against cross-border attacks by the Mujahedeen, Iranian Ambassador Hadi Nejad-Hosseinian said in a letter to the president of the security council, British Ambassador Sir Jeremy Greenstock.

Iran expects the Iraqi government "to put an end to the use of its territory for cross-border attacks and terrorist operations," the letter said.

The Baghdad spokesman for the Mujahedeen Khalq, Farid Soleimani, says Iran fired 66 Scud missiles at seven of the group's camps, killing one guerrilla.

The Mujahedeen says it has carried out a number of attacks on Iranian military posts during the past few days. The Iranian government has confirmed at least one of the attacks, in which six rebels were killed.

The state-run Iraqi newspaper, Al-Thawra, reported the attack killed 2 women and wounded 23 other Iraqis. The heaviest casualties were sustained in Jalawla, 113 miles northeast of Baghdad, where the women were killed and 19 people wounded. More than 10 houses - most in Jalawla - a school, a technical institute and a mosque were damaged, the paper added.

An Iraqi government spokesman said in a statement issued late Wednesday that the Iranian authorities "should understand that such acts have led to the 8-year war."

The war between Iraq and Iran in 1980-88 claimed more than a million lives in battles along the border and missiles exploding in towns and cities.

Iran and Iraq host rebels opposed to each other's government. Iraq has previously accused Iran of firing missiles at its territory, sometimes exploding in Baghdad, to retaliate for attacks of the Mujahedeen. Iran has often urged Baghdad not to allow cross-border attacks by guerrillas.

-------- arms sales

Bush advised to withhold top destroyers from Taiwan

The Washington Times www.washtimes.com
Published 4/19/01
Rowan Scarborough
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20010419-28393504.htm

President Bush´s national security aides are tentatively recommending that the United States not sell advanced destroyers to Taiwan at this time, but provide less-capable warships and other conventional arms, administration and congressional officials said yesterday.

One option under discussion is to build more Aegis destroyers for the U.S. Navy and then transfer them to Taiwan if China continues its buildup of coastal forces capable of quickly attacking the island.

The administration may conduct a new study of its own to determine whether Taiwan requires the powerful Aegis seaborne radar system. U.S. Navy planners did an extensive review of Taiwan defense requirements last year and concluded it needed Aegis destroyers.

No final decision has been made, the officials said. But they expect Mr. Bush on Tuesday to announce a list of arms for Taiwan that excludes the country´s request for four Aegis-equipped destroyers. Its powerful radars can track both supersonic aircraft and missiles.

Taiwan wants to deploy the destroyers before decade´s end to deter a long-threatened invasion by communist China. Beijing is modernizing its air force and navy, and has stationed more than 250 short-range ballistic missiles at bases within striking range of Taiwan.

President Bush met Tuesday with his national security team: Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice and Secretary of State Colin Powell. Sources said yesterday they have not yet made their final recommendation to the president.

An arms package was still being worked out yesterday, and could include air-to-ground munitions such as the HARM anti-radar missile, P-3 anti-submarine patrol planes, diesel-powered submarines and mothballed Kidd-class destroyers deployed in the 1970s.

The old destroyers could provide a training platform for the more-advanced Aegis system delivered later, Navy officials have said. One official said that, contrary to press reports, Taiwan did not request the new Patriot PAC-3 anti-missile interceptor being developed for the U.S. Army.

Administration officials say the Taiwan arms package was not a point of negotiation in either China´s freeing of 24 EP-3E crew members last week, or the talks in Beijing over the crew´s 12-day detention by the Chinese military on Hainan island.

U.S. presidents are bound by the Taiwan Relations Act, which requires the United States to provide for the country´s defense.

Under a protocol executed each year, Taiwan submits its wish list in November or December, and the White House agrees to make a decision by the following April. This year's deadline is Tuesday. Congressional approval is not required.

White House press secretary Ari Fleischer told reporters yesterday, "The president has not received any recommendations at all from his staff. The staff is continuing to talk about their recommendations."

Taiwan officials and scholars yesterday seemed resigned to the possibility their armed forces will not win Aegis approval this year.

"If Bush decides against selling Aegis, it won´t be a crushing blow," said Yung Wei, a political science professor at National Chiao-Tung University. "As long as other systems are provided that meet Taiwan´s needs and demonstrate America´s commitment to Taiwan, people can´t be disappointed."

A Bush decision to withhold Aegis would come just two weeks after China enraged Americans by detaining 24 U.S. crew members whose surveillance aircraft was forced to land in China.

The New York Times reported yesterday that aides are recommending to the Bush national security team that Aegis not be sold to Taiwan for now.

Al Santoli, a House aide and supporter of arms for Taiwan, said if Mr. Bush denies its Aegis request, then the president must approve a package robust enough to improve the country´s air and sea defenses.

"I think there will be dissatisfaction among conservatives," Mr. Santoli said. "But on the other hand, the level of dissatisfaction will depend on what that package looks like the rest of the way."

Mr. Santoli said that without the Aegis, Taiwan needs radars capable of detecting ballistic missiles in the early stages of flight to give its armed forces more time to shoot them down.

Mr. Santoli said Taiwan needs submarines to counter China´s fleet of 50 to 90 submarines. "A blockade would in its own way be as devastating as a missile attack," he said. "They have four subs, two of which are old enough to have been in the movie 'Up Periscope.´"

Bill Triplett, an author and proponent of a tougher U.S. policy toward China, said Mr. Bush will keep so-called "blue team" members like himself satisfied if the package includes Kidd-class destroyers and submarines.

He said another key would be if the president announced a new study on the need for Aegis radars in Taiwan and described the older destroyers as possible training platforms.

"The Kidd gives you plenty of time for training and the same number of ships," Mr. Triplett said. "If the Kidds and subs are in the package, I can´t imagine anyone who is technically qualified who would complain too vigorously over a decision to study the Aegis for another year."

He added, "From a military standpoint, if I were in Beijing, I would be a lot more worried about eight submarines in Taiwan. That kicks any idea of a blockade in the head."

Beijing, which wants Taiwan incorporated into the People´s Republic by force if necessary, has missed few opportunities to warn Washington against any additional arms sales.

Qian Qichen, China´s vice prime minister, said in Washington last month, "There´s already a spark there. If you pour oil and fuel over the spark, the spark will turn into a great flame. We don´t want to see flame of war there."

-------

Taiwan Sees Aegis Disappointment

Excite News
April 19, 2001
By WILLIAM FOREMAN, Associated Press Writer
http://news.excite.com/news/ap/010419/06/int-taiwan-us-arms

TAIPEI, Taiwan (AP) - Taiwan's chances of buying U.S. destroyers equipped with the advanced Aegis radar system appear slim, but the sale of other weapons and a stern U.S. warning to China would help cushion the disappointment, analysts and lawmakers said Thursday.

The annual U.S.-Taiwan arms talks, expected to conclude next week, are a major source of tension in fragile relations between America and China, two of the world's top nuclear powers. The issue is even more touchy this year because of the ongoing spy plane dispute and intense competition between the two Asian rivals for the new Bush administration's favor.

Taiwan has long wanted to buy four destroyers equipped with the Aegis combat system, the U.S. Navy's most sophisticated radar, able to track 100 or more targets simultaneously.

This small island, about 100 miles off China's southern coast, says it needs Aegis to defend itself from China's naval and air force buildup and the communist giant's growing arsenal of short-range ballistic missiles - many of which are pointed at Taiwan.

Bush administration aides weighing Taiwan's weapons wish list favor deferring the decision on Aegis and instead selling the island decommissioned Kidd-class destroyers, which have a much less potent ship-borne radar system, said U.S. officials, speaking on condition of anonymity. Taiwanese and U.S. officials are expected to discuss the issue Tuesday at a closed meeting in Washington.

Taiwan's Ministry of Defense declined to discuss the arms talks.

But Parris Chang, a senior lawmaker with the ruling Democratic Progressive Party, said that all along the Taiwanese knew that getting Aegis was a long shot. Taiwan requested it last year, and the Clinton administration deferred the decision.

"We won't be totally disappointed because there will be other goodies in the package," said Chang, who was optimistic that Washington would approve the sale of diesel-powered submarines to Taiwan. The island has been requesting the subs since 1982.

Taiwan also hopes to buy M1 tanks, P-3 submarine-hunting planes and JDAMS satellite-guided bombs.

Chang expects that a decision to possibly defer the Aegis sale will be tied to a warning to China that Taiwan will eventually get the radar system if China does not withdraw missiles from across the Taiwan Strait.

"The rejection of Aegis won't look like it's a 'no' forever," said Chang, chairman of the legislature's Committee on Foreign Relations.

Political scientist June Teufel Dreyer also thought that Bush would issue such a warning to China.

"The Bush administration is trying to create a paper trail," said Dreyer, a professor at the University of Miami, who doubted that China would be willing to remove the missiles.

U.S. officials have repeatedly said that any decision about Taiwan arms sales would be solely based on the island's defense needs and would not be influenced by possible fallout from prickly China.

Chinese leaders oppose U.S. weapons sales to Taiwan because they believe the arms embolden Taiwanese leaders and postpone reunification of the two sides that split amid civil war in 1949.

Beijing's opposition to Aegis has been especially fierce because the communist leadership fears it could be used to tap into a future missile shield with U.S. and Japanese ships. The highly advanced nature of the radar system could also require closer U.S.-Taiwan military cooperation.

But critics of Aegis in Taiwan and America say that the system would be too complicated for the island's small navy, and Taiwan - already struggling with recruiting problems - would not be able to find the more than 300 highly trained sailors needed to run each ship.

Lawmaker Michael Tsai of the Democratic Progressive Party thinks Taiwan would have enough time to learn the Aegis technology and find enough sailors - noting it would take eight to 10 years for the ships to be delivered.

"I think the Aegis system would be the best system to defend Taiwan from China's missile threat," said Tsai, also the publisher of the quarterly Taiwan Defense Affairs journal. "The United States just has to stand up and make the decision."

-------- colombia

Andes leaders meet ahead of trade talks

The Washington Times www.washtimes.com
4/19/01
World Scene
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20010419-236652.htm

CARTAGENA, Colombia -- Andean presidents and ministers looked to bolster their leverage at this weekend´s Summit of the Americas, meeting yesterday to coordinate free-trade proposals and seek U.S. trade benefits for stemming the region´s drug trade.

Presidents Andres Pastrana of Colombia, Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, Hugo Banzer of Bolivia, Gustavo Noboa of Ecuador, and Peru´s foreign minister, Javier Perez de Cuellar, were hoping to join forces ahead of the hemispherewide summit beginning tomorrow in Quebec.

During the three-day summit to be attended by President Bush in Quebec City, 34 nations from South America to Canada will debate a proposed hemispherewide free-trade zone.

-------- drug war

Police Test Legal Weapon on Drug Gang

New York Times
April 19, 2001
By WILLIAM K. RASHBAUM
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/19/nyregion/19CONS.html

Using a new strategy and a new unit formed to break up drug organizations entrenched in poor neighborhoods, the authorities yesterday brought conspiracy charges against 13 men who they said were members of a violent crack gang that had blighted a central Harlem block for nearly 15 years.

The experimental police unit was set up to focus on drug-dealing organizations that have been resistant to traditional police methods like wiretaps, "buy and bust" undercover operations and crackdowns on quality-of-life crimes.

The narcotics unit takes advantage of recent court rulings that officials say have expanded the scope of state conspiracy law. A 1998 Court of Appeals ruling and a subsequent decision by the state Appellate Division allow prosecutors to link a suspect's past crimes with other evidence to charge that they were acts committed as part of a larger conspiracy, officials said.

For example, a conviction for selling drugs from a building used by a gang could be one of the "overt acts" that make up a narcotics conspiracy charge, prosecutors said, along with evidence that links the old case to the gang's operations. The rulings by the two appeals courts found that using a previous conviction in such a way would not constitute double jeopardy.

Prosecutors said the new tool was in some ways similar to the federal Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations statute, commonly known as RICO, which allows prosecutors to use various past crimes to prove racketeering.

Prosecutors said the new interpretation of state conspiracy law was a powerful tactic to root out enduring drug organizations because the maximum sentence for first-degree conspiracy is 25 years to life in prison, more severe than those for many other drug charges.

The charges filed yesterday against the 13 men identified by the police as gang members and 11 others who were arrested on drug or weapons possession charges during the sweeps were announced at a news conference by Bridget G. Brennan, the city's special narcotics prosecutor, and police officials.

"The method that we used in order to prosecute this group was something we developed very recently and was really an extraordinarily successful joint effort between the Police Department and special narcotics," Ms. Brennan said. "And what was so unique about it was that we were able to piece together the history of an extremely violent group, which had in the past managed to intimidate those who might otherwise have been witnesses."

The gang, which has been linked to four killings and several shootings, used neighborhood children as young as 12 as bicycle-mounted lookouts and runners, officials said. It enforced ruthless discipline on a cadre of drug sellers, drawn largely from the ranks of homeless prostitutes and drug addicts, who were paid in crack, the officials said.

Based in two buildings, 2 West 129th Street and 2094 Fifth Avenue around the corner, the gang sold drugs 24 hours a day, a business plan that Ms. Brennan said drew a steady stream of customers. At its peak during the last decade, it sold as much as $18,000 worth of crack in a four-hour period, and in recent months sold about $6,000 worth of the drug during each 12-hour shift.

The police said charges of first- degree conspiracy were filed against the gang's leader, Barry Watson, 30, of 1064 Woodycrest Avenue in the Bronx, and his two chief lieutenants, Michael Hiett, 30, who is in state prison, and Guy C. Britt, 32, of 195 Nagle Avenue in upper Manhattan. The 10 other men said to be gang members were charged with second- degree conspiracy, the police said; the maximum penalty for that charge is 8 1/3 to 25 years in prison.

The gang's thriving and persistent operations were centered on West 129th Street and Fifth Avenue, a block that was the subject of a series of articles in The New York Times in February. The series chronicled how the block had been greatly transformed by welfare changes, a drop in violent crime, the arrival of middle- class residents and the restoration of more than a dozen buildings. But drug dealing continued to plague 129th Street and many of the surrounding blocks, residents said.

Investigators from the new unit, the Conspiracy Investigation Unit, and prosecutors from Ms. Brennan's office began focusing on the Harlem gang in January, Ms. Brennan said.

The unit was formed in December after Erin J. O'Reilly, a sergeant heading an antinarcotics team in the Manhattan North narcotics zone, joined forces last year with Susan Lanzatella, an assistant district attorney from Ms. Brennan's office, in an effort to shut down the operations of another deeply entrenched narcotics ring in Harlem, officials said.

In that case, Sergeant O'Reilly worked unsuccessfully for two years to dislodge a gang, the Black Top Crew, from two buildings where it sold drugs on Old Broadway, the sergeant said. After she was referred to Ms. Lanzatella, the prosecutor showed her how she and her team of six detectives could use the new interpretation of the conspiracy statute, and they brought a case that led to the indictments of more than a dozen members of that gang.

Their success led to the pilot program, which Sergeant O'Reilly said allows the Police Department to devote resources to cases like the one announced yesterday. The cases are labor intensive, she said, because the detectives must painstakingly review all the tedious details of past crimes at the locations associated with the gang, reinterviewing witnesses and debriefing detectives and officers involved in the arrests.

"It's about connecting the dots," Sergeant O'Reilly said, explaining that defendants can be linked to the organization in many ways, including addresses or phone numbers.

Prosecutors acknowledged that their new use of the law might face legal challenges, but Ms. Brennan said she thought the new tactic was on firm legal ground.

Some defense lawyers agreed. Gerald L. Shargel, a prominent defense lawyer, cited the analogous RICO law, pointing out that it has withstood constitutional challenges based on double jeopardy for more than 20 years. "There is little reason to find that the state courts will find this method of prosecution constitutionally objectionable," he said.

---

Skakel Witness Gave Testimony While on Drugs

New York Times
April 19, 2001
By DAVID M. HERSZENHORN
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/19/nyregion/19SKAK.html

STAMFORD, Conn., April 18 - A prosecution witness who has said repeatedly that he heard Michael C. Skakel confess to the 1975 slaying of Martha Moxley testified today about having used heroin just an hour before appearing in front of the grand jury that eventually charged Mr. Skakel with the crime.

The surprise testimony by the witness, Gregory Coleman, came on the first day of a hearing at State Superior Court here in which Judge John F. Kavanewsky Jr. will decide whether there is enough evidence for the case against Mr. Skakel to proceed to a jury trial.

Mr. Coleman, a classmate of Mr. Skakel's at a school for troubled youths in Maine in the late 1970's, testified before the grand jury in 1999 and at a hearing last year before a Juvenile Court judge. His testimony was some of the most compelling in the case so far, quoting Mr. Skakel as having boasted: "I am going to get away with murder. I'm a Kennedy."

Mr. Skakel, a nephew of Ethel Kennedy's, is charged with murder in the bludgeoning death of Miss Moxley, who was his friend and neighbor in the exclusive Belle Haven section of Greenwich. Although he was 15 at the time, a Juvenile Court judge ordered earlier this year that Mr. Skakel, now 40, be tried as an adult. If convicted, he could be sentenced to life in prison.

During questioning today by the lead prosecutor, Jonathan C. Benedict, Mr. Coleman repeated his previous testimony, that Mr. Skakel told him about the killing in the late 1970's at the school for troubled youths in Poland Spring, Me. "She spurned his advances, and he drove her skull in with a golf club," Mr. Coleman testified.

Under cross-examination by Mr. Skakel's lawyer, Michael Sherman, Mr. Coleman acknowledged inconsistencies between his testimony today and his testimony before the single-judge grand jury two years ago and at a Juvenile Court hearing last year to determine if Mr. Skakel would be tried as an adult.

Asked to explain the inconsistencies, Mr. Coleman calmly replied: "I was on drugs when I came up here before the grand jury." Mr. Coleman said he had injected heroin just an hour before the grand jury proceeding while he was in his hotel room across the street from the courthouse. "But I didn't have enough," he said. "I went into the hearing sick from withdrawal."

Mr. Coleman, who recently completed an eight-month prison term stemming from a domestic dispute, also said he had taken both crack cocaine and heroin before being interviewed on television about the Skakel case two weeks ago in his hometown, Rochester.

Relatives of Mr. Skakel's, including his sister, Julie, shuffled excitedly in their seats as Mr. Coleman admitted his drug use. Julie Skakel muttered an expletive and called the testimony "outrageous."

The prosecution team appeared disappointed though not suprised by the turn in the testimony, but Mr. Coleman's inconsistencies and his drug use, by themselves, are not likely to derail the prosecution's efforts to have Mr. Skakel tried for murder before a jury.

The current hearing, in seeking probable cause to continue to trial, must meet a much lower legal threshold with far less evidence than is needed to show guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.

Still, today's developments suggest that prosecutors face steep obstacles relating to Mr. Coleman's credibility if he testifies before a jury.

Mr. Sherman, the defense lawyer, began his attack by focusing on Mr. Coleman's previous testimony that Mr. Skakel told him that he had killed Miss Moxley with "a driver." Under prosecution questioning today from Mr. Benedict, Mr. Coleman said it was only his impression that Mr. Skakel had used a driver.

The weapon, parts of which were found near Miss Moxley's body, was a golf club from a set that had belonged to Mr. Skakel's mother. But the club was a 6-iron, not a driver. Mr. Coleman admitted that the inconsistency in the two types of clubs had been raised by Mr. Benedict during a telephone conversation on Tuesday to prepare for today's hearing.

As the hearing continues, prosecutors are expected to call other witnesses, including other former classmates, to testify that they heard Mr. Skakel admit the killing. Another witness is expected to testify that Mr. Skakel denied killing Miss Moxley but admitted masturbating that night in a tree above the spot where her body was found.

Before Mr. Coleman took the stand today, two former Greenwich police officials testified that they had found no physical evidence directly linking Mr. Skakel to the Moxley killing.

---

Washington

USA Today
04/19/01
States
http://www.usatoday.com/news/states/all50.htm

Seattle - Sheriffs from 15 counties met with federal Drug Enforcement Administration agents to plan a super summit on methamphetamine to be held in July. King County Sheriff Dave Reichert says the number of illegal methamphetamine labs in the state has been doubling every year since 1998. There were 1,449 last year.

---

Bush enforces ban on college funds for drug offenders

The Washington Times www.washtimes.com
Published 4/19/01
Andrea Billups THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20010419-67190986.htm

The Bush administration will enforce a federal law, largely ignored by the Clinton administration, that makes students who have been convicted of drug offenses ineligible for college financial aid.

Congress passed a law in 1998 denying federal money to college students who answer "yes" to a question on financial aid applications asking whether they have been convicted of drug charges. But hundreds of thousands who did not respond to the question were given federal college funds during part of the Clinton years.

Those who fail to respond to the question this year will have their applications rejected.

"Congress passed legislation, and we are trying to responsibly carry out the legislative direction that we have received," said Education Department spokeswoman Lindsey Kozberg.

Education Secretary Rod Paige and financial aid officials decided late last month they would enforce the law beginning with the 2001-02 application cycle, Miss Kozberg said. The cycle began in January.

The law denies federal loans, grants and work-assistance funds for college to those who have been convicted at the federal and state levels of possession or sale of controlled substances, excluding alcohol and tobacco.

Aid applicants who have been convicted of a first offense lose federal financial aid eligibility for one year. A second conviction means loss of eligibility for two years, and a third offense makes applicants ineligible permanently.

Those who have been convicted of selling drugs face even stiffer penalties, but students who demonstrate that they have successfully completed rehabilitation programs can regain their eligibility.

Clinton administration officials say they did not enforce the law because of the backlog it caused in processing federal aid applications when close to a million students failed to answer the question. Response to the question on application forms has since been deemed mandatory, Miss Kozberg said.

Rep. Barney Frank, Massachusetts Democrat, is leading a coalition of House lawmakers who are calling for a repeal of the law. His bill, which has 23 co-sponsors, was filed Feb. 28.

"Someone who commits murder or armed robbery is not automatically barred from financial aid eligibility, but if you have even one nonviolent drug conviction, you can´t get any aid for a year," said Mr. Frank, who is calling for more discretion in determining the severity of the offenses and whether students with convictions have taken steps to improve their lives.

"This will help ensure that people in low- to moderate-income families who really need the aid are not treated unfairly," he said.

Terry Hartle, senior vice president of the American Council on Education in Washington, said the drug question is just one of many on a "very long and complicated form." His organization, which represents most major colleges and universities, thinks the law is "trivial and unnecessary."

"I don´t believe there was any organized effort to undermine the question, but the complexity of the question itself put the Department of Education in a very bad position," Mr. Hartle said. "They either had to ignore the question or throw out 2 million student loan applications. They opted to keep the student financial assistance system running, assuming correctly that there would be very few people ineligible because of a drug conviction that would be caught."

In 2000, 9.9 million applications for aid were processed and 279,000 students left the drug question blank. Of those students who declined to answer, 7,400 received money for part of the year and 1,745 were deemed ineligible for federal money, Education Department officials said.

Through April 8 this year, 3.9 million aid applications were processed and 11,079 students left the drug offense question blank, even though a new line in the application specifies that a response is mandatory. About 27,000 applicants confirmed drug convictions this year, although determinations on eligibility for many are still being processed and no final decisions have been rendered.

Miss Kozberg said the Education Department notifies those who leave the drug question blank that their aid could be in jeopardy.

Students who are truthful and confirm their drug convictions are not immediately denied aid, she said. They can complete a worksheet to explain themselves. She said students should carefully study the guidelines, including the time frame of the offense, when they apply for financial aid, she said.

"If a student can demonstrate that they participated in a quality treatment program, they are still eligible," Miss Kozberg said. "It doesn´t necessarily disqualify them."

-------- space

Endeavour lifts off with robot arm for space station

USA Today
04/19/2001 - Updated 03:17 PM ET
By Peter Cosgrove, AP)
http://usatoday.com/news/nphoto.htm

CAPE CANAVERAL (AP) - Space shuttle Endeavour thundered away Thursday, carrying seven astronauts on a mission to install a massive billion-dollar robot arm on the international space station.

Endeavour lifted off at 2:40 p.m., right on time.

"Good luck and have fun on the international space station," launch director Mike Leinbach told the astronauts just before liftoff.

It was a fine day for flying, and not just because of the good weather. Thursday marked the 30th anniversary of the launch of the world's first space station, the Soviet Union's Salyut 1.

The difference, between then and now, was especially striking given the composition of Endeavour's crew. The astronauts come from four countries, making this the most internationally diverse space crew ever.

"Ciao, Italia!" Italian astronaut Umberto Guidoni shouted to well-wishers on his way to the shuttle. Also represented on the crew: Canada, Russia and the United States.

About 20,000 guests from around the world jammed into Kennedy Space Center for the launch, drawn by not only the international shuttle crew but the convenient liftoff time and the Easter holiday break.

The space station was soaring over the Indian Ocean, near the Maldives, when Endeavour bolted off its launch pad. The shuttle will catch up with the station on Saturday.

This will be the most complicated robotics mission ever attempted in space. The shuttle's own 50-foot robot arm will be used to hook up the even bigger and fancier space station arm. The work will require two crews - one in the shuttle and one in the station - and at least two spacewalks next week.

The grand finale will come when the two jointed arms exchange a packing crate.

With a hand on each end, the 58-foot robot arm is capable of moving across the space station, like an inchworm.

"It's a monstrous self-propelled vehicle of its own," said Chris Hadfield, a Canadian astronaut who will unfold his country's space station contribution once it's attached.

The robot arm is so long and so massive - more than 3,600 pounds - that it had to be double-folded and held in place aboard Endeavour with 4-foot bolts.

Four of the astronauts are trained to operate Endeavour's robot arm, which will be used not only for installing the station arm but for attaching an Italian-built cargo carrier named Raffaello during the 11-day mission.

The space station arm is crucial for the assembly of the 240-mile-high outpost, named Alpha. Without it, a pressure chamber for spacewalking astronauts cannot be installed in June and solar panels cannot be attached in 2002 and beyond.

Just as crucial - although not for a while - is the space station habitation module. It was announced Thursday that Italy has agreed to supply the module, bailing out NASA, which cannot afford to build it because of steep budget overruns.

The space station is limited to three residents until the habitation module is added in 2006. The crew's size will then expand to as many as seven.

"It's a major milestone for Italy," said Andrea Lorenzoni, head of the Italian Space Agency's station division. In exchange for building the habitation module, Italy will be allowed to fly more of its astronauts to the space station, he said.

Endeavour's astronauts will be the first visitors for the three latest space station residents, who moved in last month.

Soon after Endeavour leaves, a Russian Soyuz spacecraft will pull up with more guests. On board will be two Russian cosmonauts and, presumably, Dennis Tito, a California millionaire who is paying Russia up to $20 million for six days aboard Alpha as the world's first space tourist.

NASA does not want Tito there, saying he could interfere with space station work and endanger himself and the crew.

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

China applauds failure of human rights resolution

USA Today
04/19/2001 - Updated 11:48 AM ET
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2001-04-19-china.htm

BEIJING (AP) - China's government on Thursday applauded the defeat of a U.N. motion condemning its human rights record, and accused the United States of hypocrisy and a "Cold War mentality."

The U.S. attempt to win censure of Chinese human rights policies at the U.N. Human Rights Commission was "foiled once again," the state-run Xinhua News Agency said.

The resolution failed Wednesday when the commission passed a Chinese motion, 23-17, that blocked consideration of the American proposal. It was the 10th time that China successfully lobbied against the censure motion.

But the commission in Geneva did criticize Cuba for its human rights record and voted 50-1 to censure Israel for allowing Jewish settlements in the Palestinian territories. Only the United States took Israel's side.

A council vote on a resolution condemning Russia's conduct in Chechnya was postponed until Friday.

In the Israel resolution, the commission expressed "grave concern" at "the expropriation of land, the demolition of houses, the confiscation of property (and) the expulsion of Palestinians."

The measure was bitterly opposed by Israel, which is a nonvoting observer. Israeli Ambassador Yaakov Levy said settlements were a difficult issue that could be resolved only in Palestinian-Israeli negotiations and that the "one-sided" resolution prejudged the outcome of the talks.

A resolution condemning Cuba's human rights record passed by a slimmer margin - 22-20 with 10 abstentions.

Czech Republic Deputy Foreign Minister Martin Palous, whose country proposed the resolution, said Cuba was exploiting fears of alleged foreign "aggression" - an apparent reference to the United States - to "keep the status quo at any cost."

"We had to undergo a very similar experience with our own totalitarian regime," he said.

Shirin Tahir-Kheli, head of the U.S. delegation, called the vote "a victory for the Cuban people."

"It demonstrates to them that the world is aware of their plight", she said.

The Chinese government expressed "admiration and thanks to all the countries which upheld justice and supported China in foiling an anti-China motion," Xinhua quoted Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Zhang Qiyue as saying.

Zhang said China had made "great achievements" in human rights. She was quoted as saying the U.S. motion was an "attempt to interfere in China's internal affairs under the pretext of the human rights issue and to tarnish China's image in the world."

In Geneva, Chinese Ambassador Qiao Zonghuai said the U.S. proposal contained "slanderous accusations."

China won support from India and Pakistan as well as several African countries for its motion to prevent debate on the censure resolution. The United States was supported mainly by European nations and Japan.

The U.S.-sponsored resolution cited Beijing's repression of the Falun Gong spiritual movement, its "increased restrictions" on Tibetans and "harsh sentencing" of government opponents.

It cited "continuing reports of failure to protect internationally recognized human rights and fundamental freedoms in China."

Organizations working on behalf of Chinese dissidents expressed disappointment at the repeated defeat.

"Once again, China abuses the human rights of its own citizens with complete impunity and in full view of the world community," Timothy Cooper, a representative of the China Democracy Party, said in a statement faxed to news organizations in Beijing.

As evidence of what they call Beijing's failure to protect basic civil liberties, human rights groups point to recent detentions of foreign-based Chinese-born scholars, tighter regulation of online activity and official attempts to eliminate Falun Gong.

On Thursday, the Hong Kong-based Information Center for Human Rights and Democracy said police detained veteran Chinese activist Chi Shouzhu for printing out pro-democracy material from a Web site and engineer Yang Zili whose own site carried a vehement denunciation of communism.

China argues that its citizens enjoy greater freedoms than ever before, but that the need for stability and economic development outweighs civil liberties such as freedom of speech and assembly.

The annual tussle over the censure motion in Geneva is an added irritant in China-U.S. relations, already strained by a recent collision of a U.S. spy plane and a Chinese fighter jet and by U.S. arms sales to Taiwan, which Beijing views as a breakaway province.

---

Beijing blocks effort to censure abuses

The Washington Times www.washtimes.com
Published 4/19/01
Betsy Pisik THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20010419-72425627.htm

NEW YORK -- China yesterday succeeded in blocking a U.S.-sponsored censure in the U.N. Human Rights Commission, playing up the surveillance plane episode to its own advantage.

As in past years, Beijing derailed efforts in the Geneva-based commission to condemn its human rights record 10 times since the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre by using a procedural maneuver.

This year, 23 of the 53 nations on the commission voted in favor of a pre-emptive "no action" motion introduced by China. Seventeen nations opposed the motion and the remaining 12 nations abstained. Congo did not register a vote.

The Bush administration faced several difficulties in this year´s effort.

Many of the administration´s top human rights and foreign affairs posts remain vacant three months after the new president was inaugurated.

Moreover, the composition of the commission this year, which was selected in a vote by all U.N. member states, is unusually heavy with human rights offenders. Members include Algeria, Burundi, Cuba, Congo, Indonesia, Liberia, Syria and Vietnam.

In addition, the two-week standoff over the surveillance plane and its 24 detained crew members threw an overtly political cast over the discussions.

The Americans were reluctant to press the case against China while Washington and Beijing were negotiating the release of the air crew, observers said.

"They did very little lobbying for the resolution during the period when the crew was held in China," said one longtime observer. "There has been extremely little activity here on the resolution."

The Chinese delegation and their allies in Libya, Cuba, Syria and Russia, among others -- all voting members of the commission this year -- invoked the mid-air collision in debate prior to yesterday´s vote.

Chinese Ambassador Qiao Zonghuai delivered an angry speech in which he criticized the United States for its selectivity in punishing human rights violations. He said America practices "rampant racial discrimination."

He then said: "In the name of exercising the so-called right of surveillance, has sent military planes to violate the sovereignty and people´s right to life of another country."

The Pakistani delegate, Munir Akram, provided the day´s only comic relief when he supported China´s no-action vote, saying to the Americans: "I´m sorry, but this is not an apology."

The Libyan representative said that the Cold War was not yet over.

U.S. Ambassador Shirin Tahir-Kheli denounced the no-action motion.

"No country should consider itself beyond review," she said. "China should follow the same international standards that every other country does."

For the first time this year, the United States stood alone in sponsoring the resolution to censure China, without a customary European co-sponsor.

The resolution criticized China´s treatment of Falun Gong adherents, as well as Tibetans, Christians, Buddhists, and others.

But it also recognized Beijing´s lessened interference in the daily lives of its citizens.

Observers said the lack of a co-sponsor doomed the resolution by allowing China to portray the resolution as part of a bilateral conflict.

"That was the main reason this thing was so hopeless," said Joanna Weschler, the U.N. liaison for Human Rights Watch International.

"When a resolution has only one sponsor, it sends a very powerful signal. The discussion in this room was, 'China versus the U.S.,´ not about China´s human rights record," she said.

The United States is among China´s harshest critics on human rights issues.

The State Department´s 2000 report on human rights says China´s "poor human rights record worsened and it continued to commit numerous serious abuses.

"The government intensified crackdowns on religion and in Tibet, intensified its harsh treatment of political dissent, and suppressed any person or group perceived to threaten the government."

China has made an art of lobbying swing votes on the commission, say experts, who cite the success of President Jiang Zemin´s recent tour of the seven Latin and Central American nations on the commission.

Mr. Jiang left China in the middle of the surveillance plane crisis for a whirlwind tour of six Latin American countries, five of which were on the commission and voted with China yesterday.

"I´m very disappointed in the Latins," said Ms. Weschler. "It´s all money and business."

The Europeans on the commission, along with Canada and Poland, voted against China´s motion, but had declined to co-sponsor the human rights resolution with the United States.

Members of the European Union signed onto the resolution until 1996.

Poland has co-signed with the United States for the last two years, but refused this year.

Polish officials could not be reached for comment last night.

In Washington, State Department spokesman Richard Boucher claimed a degree of victory.

"We had two goals in sponsoring this resolution: to encourage China to adhere to international standards of human rights and to focus international attention on the worsening human rights situation in China in the past year," he said.

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

Agent Orange may increase risk of child leukemia

USA Today
04/19/2001 - Updated 04:09 PM ET
http://usatoday.com/news/nlead.htm

WASHINGTON (AP) - The children of veterans exposed to herbicides such as Agent Orange during the Vietnam War may have a greater chance of being afflicted with a certain type of leukemia, a study suggests.

The analysis released Thursday by the Institute of Medicine makes the first connection between the childhood disease and the pesticide. It stops short of saying the link is conclusive.

Anthony J. Principi, secretary of veterans affairs, called the report "very serious."

"I'm deeply concerned about the implications for the children of veterans exposed to Agent Orange," Principi said in a telephone interview.

He said President Bush has directed him to prepare legislation to provide assistance for children with the disease.

"No firm evidence links exposure to the herbicides with most childhood cancers, but new research does suggest that some kind of connection exists between (acute myelogenous leukemia) in children and their fathers' military service in Vietnam or Cambodia," said Irva Hertz-Picciotto, a professor of epidemiology at the University of North Carolina.

Acute myelogenous leukemia is a fast-spreading form of leukemia that originates in bone-marrow cells. It accounts for about 8% of all childhood cancers, the report said.

Hertz-Picciotto was chair of the institute committee that prepared the new report: "Veterans and Agent Orange, Update 2000."

The report is the most recent in a series by the institute, a division of the National Academy of Sciences, looking at the effects of the herbicides used in Vietnam.

During Vietnam, thousands of veterans were exposed to Agent Orange, a defoliant used to clear areas of jungle so the Viet Cong could be seen and attacked from the air.

The new study also reaffirms earlier findings linking herbicide exposure with the development of soft tissue cancer, Hodgkin's disease, non-Hodgkin's lymphoma and chloracne in veterans.

The committee said it based its finding on two studies published last year.

While the studies lacked a direct measure of exposure to the herbicides, both were conducted with Vietnam veterans and an association was indicated with childhood AML, though not other forms of childhood leukemia.

One study, for example, looked at 50,000 Australian veterans of the Vietnam War. It found 13 cases of AML in their children, while in a normal population that size the number of cases expected would be between zero and six.

The strongest link was seen in children who developed the disease at the youngest ages, which suggests that the cause may stem from a parent, the report added.

In addition, a third study found that childhood development of AML was more likely in the offspring of men who use pesticides or herbicides in their work.

The committee listed the connection as suggestive rather than conclusive, saying that the evidence wasn't strong enough to be sure that chance or other factors didn't influence the results.

Previous studies evaluated by the institute have found suggestive but not conclusive evidence of a link between herbicide exposure and respiratory cancers, prostate cancer, type two diabetes, spina bifida in children and other conditions.

The National Academy of Sciences is an independent research organization chartered by Congress to provide advice to the government on scientific and medical topics.

--------

Panel Calls for Overhaul of Osprey Program, Not Cancellation

New York Times
April 19, 2001
By JAMES DAO
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/19/national/19OSPR.html

WASHINGTON, April 18 - A Pentagon panel recommended an overhaul of the Marine Corps' troubled V- 22 Osprey program today, calling for an array of new tests and design changes certain to create significant production delays for the aircraft and sharply raise costs.

But to the great relief of Osprey supporters, the four-man panel of aviation experts - whose report is viewed in the Pentagon and on Capitol Hill as an important predictor of the V-22's fate - said that it found no aerodynamic flaws in the crash- plagued aircraft that would justify canceling the $40 billion program.

The panel concluded that the Osprey, which can take off and hover like a helicopter but cruise like an airplane, remained the best option to replace the Marines' fleet of Vietnam-era copters.

But the panel urged the Marines and the manufacturers - the Boeing Company and Bell Helicopter Textron - to correct a long list of problems before starting full production, a process that some experts said could add two years or more and billions of dollars.

"The V-22 probably is the best answer available," said Norman R. Augustine, a panel member who was a retired chairman of the Lockheed Martin Corporation. "It's not ready today, though, for operational use. It's not close to it."

With the program more than a decade old, the Marines had wanted to begin full production on the aircraft this year, with the goal of buying 360 in the coming decade. The Navy and Air Force are scheduled to buy another 98 Ospreys. The Marine Corps puts the price of the Ospreys at $67 million each, though critics say they run much higher.

Appointed by the former secretary of defense, William S. Cohen, in January, the panel is to present its final report to the new secretary, Donald H. Rumsfeld, next week.

The other panel members were the chairman, Gen. John R. Dailey of the Marine Corps, retired; Gen. James B. Davis of the Air Force, retired; and Eugene E. Covert, a retired Massachusetts Institute of Technology aeronautics professor.

The panel was just one hurdle the Osprey faces. On May 1, the Senate and House armed service committees will hold separate hearings about the program.

The Pentagon's inspector general is also conducting a criminal investigation into whether marines at the Osprey base in North Carolina falsified maintenance records.

Supporters of the Osprey were cheered by the panel's conclusions. "I am encouraged by the panel's recommendation to pursue further development and fielding of the V- 22," said Gen. James L. Jones, the Marine Corps commandant. "This is a capability our nation needs to meet the operational requirements of the 21st century."

Panel members expressed dismay today that testing had not uncovered the problems that caused two crashes last year, killing 23 marines.

Last April, an Osprey experienced vortex ring state, which occurs when a slow-moving copter descends at too steep an angle. The Osprey lost lift and crashed, killing 19 marines.

Investigators determined that the pilots had violated correct flying procedures, an assertion the pilots' widows dispute. But they also concluded that little had been known about vortex ring state's effect on the Osprey because of a dearth of testing.

Panel members chastised Osprey managers for not producing manuals with clear descriptions of vortex ring state. They also called for a review of the aircraft's flight control software, which contributed to a December crash that killed four marines.


-------- OTHER

-------- alternative energy

Enbridge, Suncor plan Canadian wind power project

Planet Ark
CANADA: April 19, 2001
REUTERS
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=10548

CALGARY, Alberta - Two companies best known for major fossil fuel producing and transporting operations said yesterday they planned to spend C$20 million ($13 million) developing a wind power project in breezy southwestern Saskatchewan.

Enbridge Inc. , which runs the main export pipeline for Canadian crude oil, and Suncor Energy Inc. , operator of the country's second-biggest oil sands business, said the planned 17 turbines would increase Canada's generation of wind power by 10 percent.

The 11-megawatt SunBridge project, to be located near the town of Gull Lake, about 300 km (186 miles) west of the Saskatchewan capital of Regina, is expected to be in operation by June 2002, pending regulatory approvals, the firms said.

It will produce enough electricity to power 6,000 homes.

Both companies have in recent years committed millions of dollars aimed at developing renewable energy projects.

Under the plan, SaskEnergy, the government-owned power utility, will buy the electricity for public buildings and other customers, the firms said.

"We expect SunBridge to be profitable in its first full year of operations, and we are interested in the potential this project has for expansion, in particular, to potentially provide power for our pipeline operations in Saskatchewan," Enbridge chief executive Pat Daniel said.

---

Calif. investigates alternative power providers

USA Today
04/19/2001 - Updated 05:41 PM ET
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2001-04-19-power.htm

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) - State regulators Thursday launched an investigation into why alternative energy providers aren't producing more electricity.

The California Public Utilities Commission wants to learn if the reduced output by an independent group of small generators - that account for about one-fourth of the state's power capacity - is a result of business factors or market manipulation, the PUC said.

The alternative generators - known in the industry as "qualifying facilities," or QFs - have been scaling back or shutting down as debts owed by California's two largest utilities pile up. The QFs are owed an estimated $700 million by bankrupt Pacific Gas and Electric and financially troubled Southern California Edison.

Some QFs say the unpaid bills have forced them to defer much-needed maintenance, leading to equipment breakdowns and reduced electricity output. Other QFs say they simply can't afford to keep operating.

The PUC said it is worried some QFs are trying to take advantage of the California crisis to get out of long-term contracts that require them to sell electricity at prices well below the current market rate. Several QFs are suing to cancel those contracts to cash in on the open market, said PUC Commissioner Carl Wood.

The QFs want to be paid for bills that date back as far as November, said Jack Raudy, a spokesman for the Renewable Energy Creditors Committee, which consists of 10 alternative power producers owed a combined $410 million. Those 10 generators produce about 3,000 megawatts - power sufficient for 3 million homes.

"We are outraged (by the PUC's investigation)," Raudy said. "We have heard so much rhetoric over the past five months and still haven't been paid a dime. That is what we are worried about."

Raudy estimated his group is operating at about 95% of capacity.

After the temporary closure of several QFs contributed to rolling blackouts around the state last month, the PUC ordered PG&E and SoCal Edison to begin paying the generators for the energy purchased since March 27.

But the order has done nothing to help the QFs recover the past debts. The QFs are now in line in bankruptcy court with 30,000 creditors owed money by PG&E, which expects its unpaid bills to rise to $5.5 billion by the end of this month.

PUC Commissioner Geoffrey Brown defended the alternative energy providers during Thursday's hearing.

"Any QFs that are not operating right now are doing so for financial reasons, not to game the system," he said.

California will need all the power that it can get from the QFs this summer when rolling blackouts threaten to become a daily occurrence.

The QF output will become even more essential this summer because California won't be able to import as much electricity from the Pacific Northwest as it has in the past.

-------- environment

Bush to Sign Chemical Ban

New York Times
April 19, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/politics/AP-Bush-Dirty-Dozen2.html

WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Bush announced Thursday that he will sign and ask the Senate to ratify a Clinton-era treaty calling for the worldwide phaseout of a dozen highly toxic chemicals known as POPs.

The chemicals, widely dubbed ``the dirty dozen,'' include PCBs, dioxins and furans, plus DDT and other pesticides shown to contribute to developmental defects, cancer and other problems in human and animals.

``The risks are great and the need for action is clear,'' Bush said in a Rose Garden ceremony staged before flowering crabapple trees. Secretary of State Colin Powell and Christie Whitman, administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, were at the president's side.

``We must work to eliminate or at least severely restrict the release of these toxins without delay,'' added Bush.

Whitman will represent the United States at a formal treaty-signing ceremony planned next month in Stockholm, Sweden.

Most of the ``persistent organic pollutants'' no longer are used in industrial countries such as the United States. But they remain popular in developing countries even though they break down slowly, travel long distances in the environment, and have been linked to cancer and birth defects.

``These chemicals respect no boundaries and can harm Americans even when released abroad,'' Bush said.

Traces of many of the chemicals have been found in pristine areas of the Arctic after having been transported by air currents from hundreds of miles away.

Aides said the president aimed to burnish his ``green'' record on the occasion of this weekend's Earth Day celebrations. Environmentalists have harshly criticized Bush for pulling back new arsenic standards for drinking water, abandoning a campaign pledge to reduce carbon dioxide emissions from power plants and rejecting a treaty on global warming.

The pact was crafted in December under the auspices of the U.N. Environment Program during negotiations in Johannesburg, South Africa.

Bush's endorsement won rare praise from Democrats who had pushed the treaty under President Clinton.

``This is a victory for public health,'' said Rep. Sherrod Brown of Ohio, ranking Democrat on the Energy and Commerce health subcommittee.

Said Bush: ``This treaty shows the possibilities for cooperation among all parties to our environmental debates. Developed nations cooperated with less developed nations, businesses cooperated with environmental groups and now, a Republican administration will continue and complete the work of a Democratic administration,'' Bush said.

Under the treaty, production and use of nine of the 12 chemicals would be banned as soon as the treaty takes effect, probably in four to five years.

About 25 countries would be allowed to continue to use DDT to combat malaria in accordance with World Health Organization guidelines, pending development of safer solutions.

Releases of dioxins and furans -- toxic byproducts of waste burning and industrial production -- would be reduced and eventually eliminated where feasible, according to the treaty.

Other chemicals on the list are polychlorinated biphenyls, (PCBs) and the pesticides aldrin, chlordane, dieldrin, endrin, heptachlor, mirex, toxaphene and hexachlorobenzene.

The treaty also establishes an international fund, possibly as much as $150 million, to help countries develop and use substitutes to the ``dirty dozen'' chemicals. And it allows for an expansion of the number of chemicals to be covered, although adding to the list would require rigorous scientific review.

The treaty must be ratified by 50 countries to take effect.

---

E.P.A. Delays Its Decision on Arsenic

New York Times
April 19, 2001
By DOUGLAS JEHL
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/19/politics/19ARSE.html

WASHINGTON, April 18 - The Environmental Protection Agency said today that it would postpone until February a decision on how much arsenic should be permitted in drinking water. But agency officials said a new rule would definitely call for a reduction of at least 60 percent from current allowable levels.

The move bears on one of the most politically delicate decisions of the Bush administration: a decision to set aside, at least for now, a Clinton- era rule that would have reduced the arsenic standard by 80 percent. An initial plan had called for a new standard to be proposed this summer, but the agency said today that it wanted more time to allow the National Academy of Sciences to review new studies on arsenic's health effects. A spokesman for the academy said the review would take about four months.

Aides to Christie Whitman, the E.P.A. administrator, said they intended for a new rule to be completed by Feb. 22, 2002, and they said its provisions would become effective in 2006, the same year in which the Clinton standards were to have taken effect.

Still, the decision leaves in place at least until early next year a standard of 50 parts per billion, which has been in effect since 1942 and which the national science panel recommended in 1999 be lowered as soon as possible, on the ground that it "could easily" result in a 1-in-100 cancer risk.

The standard approved by the Clinton administration would have lowered the permissible arsenic level to 10 parts per billion. Mrs. Whitman initially suggested that the new administration's recommendation would be between the two figures, but after news of that decision generated widespread criticism she said more recently that a proposed new rule might even require a standard stricter than the one proposed by the Clinton administration.

Today, the agency said it had asked the National Academy of Sciences "to perform an expedited review of a range of 3 to 20 parts per billion for the establishment of a new drinking water standard." A senior E.P.A. official who spoke on condition of anonymity said the administration's final rule would certainly fall within that lower range.

In a statement, Mrs. Whitman said today's action would "ensure that a standard will be put in place in a timely manner that provides clean, safe and affordable drinking water for the nation and is based on the best science."

The decision to seek a new scientific review was welcomed by representatives of the mining and wood- finishing industries, which have filed a lawsuit seeking to block the Clinton standard from taking effect on the ground that it was not based on adequate science.

But many environmentalists said they regarded the delay as an indication that the new administration was not serious about addressing the problem of arsenic. At least 13 million Americans live in communities where the drinking water contains more arsenic than would have been allowed under the Clinton standard.

The largest of those communities is Albuquerque.

The critics also questioned whether any new standard could really take effect in 2006, as the Clinton rule would have, noting that the agency had acknowledged in its previous rule that it would take water utilities at least five years to meet the lower threshold. They said that an immediate effect of the decision would be to postpone until next year the effective date of a provision that would have required that written health notifications be provided to water customers whose water contained arsenic at a level greater than five parts per billion.

"This is a very clear indication that the Bush administration is intending to delay public health protection and that a weakening of the standard is likely," said Erik D. Olson, a senior lawyer with the Natural Resources Defense Council, a research and advocacy group. "It's absolutely clear from a mountain of scientific evidence that the new standard of 10 parts per billion is critically needed by tens of millions of Americans."

A deadline set by Congress requires the E.P.A. to come up with a new rule by this June, so the agency's plan for a postponement will require Congressional approval. But agency officials and environmentalists said they did not expect that requirement to pose any serious obstacle, noting that Congress had extended its deadline on arsenic several times.

---

KEEPING OUT FOOT-AND-MOUTH

New York Times
April 19, 2001
Metro Business Briefing
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/19/nyregion/19BBRF.html

To reduce the risk of an outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease, dairy farmers and others in New York State's agriculture industry are taking stringent measures. The Northeast Dairy Producers Association is advising its members to take extra precautions to reduce the chance of an infection of foot-and-mouth, a highly contagious and economically devastating disease. The warnings come a day after the United States Department of Agriculture said the chance of a foot-and-mouth outbreak on American soil was "quite great." Peter Gregg, spokesman for the association, said members were closing their farms to anyone who had visited Europe in the last several months, stepping up monitoring of farm visitors, discontinuing tours and keeping out nonessential visitors. At Cornell University, officials responded to the disease with a ban on guest visits to two of its animal research facilities. (AP)

---

MINEOLA: PESTICIDE NOTIFICATION RULING

New York Times
April 19, 2001
Metro Briefing
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/19/nyregion/19MBRF.html

NEW YORK A state law requiring pesticide companies to notify nearby residents at least 48 hours before pesticides can be used has encountered a legal setback. Justice Stephen Bucaria of State Supreme Court determined in a ruling dated April 11 and released Tuesday that the Nassau County Legislature had failed to conduct a required environmental impact study before adopting the law. Pesticide companies, which challenged the law, argue that the notification provision is burdensome. Hope Reeves (NYT)

---

Humpback whale crosses Strait of Gibraltar

USA Today
04/19/2001
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2001-04-19-whale.htm

ATHENS, Greece (AP) - The rare sight of a young humpback whale frolicking in the sea off southern Greece has experts scrambling to document the visit of the wayward wanderer.

The endangered humpbacks are normally found in the open ocean. There have been only a few reports of them passing through the Strait of Gibraltar to enter the Mediterranean Sea.

The humpback, measuring about 35 feet, is estimated to be about 4 or 5 years old and appeared to be in good health, said marine biologist Emilia Drouga, who heads Delphis, the Greek Society for the Study and Protection of Dolphins and Whales.

The society has placed observers in the area to ensure the whale is not in danger from vessels. Scientists will attempt to record the humpback's sounds - often described as its "song."

The whale probably entered the Mediterranean while following fish it was feeding on during its annual migration, Drouga said Thursday. It has been in the area about two weeks.

The whale was seen breaching in the Argolic Gulf near Tolos, about 55 miles southwest of Athens. Experts expect it will eventually head west toward the Atlantic - about 1,700 miles away.

The whale appeared to be alone, but experts did not rule out the possibility of other humpbacks being in the area farther from shore.

---

Bush to sign treaty to ban 'dirty dozen' chemicals

USA Today
04/19/2001 - Updated 12:33 PM ET
http://usatoday.com/news/washdc/2001-04-19-dirty.htm

WASHINGTON (AP) - President Bush announced Thursday that he will sign and ask the Senate to ratify a Clinton-era treaty calling for the worldwide phaseout of a dozen highly toxic chemicals known as POPs. The chemicals, widely dubbed "the dirty dozen," include PCBs, dioxins and furans, plus DDT and other pesticides shown to contribute to developmental defects, cancer and other problems in human and animals.

"The risks are great and the need for action is clear," Bush said in a Rose Garden ceremony with Secretary of State Colin Powell and Christie Whitman, administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency.

"We must work to eliminate or at least severely restrict the release of these toxins without delay," added Bush.

Whitman will represent the United States at a formal treaty-signing ceremony planned next month in Stockholm, Sweden.

Most of the "persistent organic pollutants" no longer are used in industrial countries such as the United States. But they remain popular in developing countries even though they break down slowly, travel long distances in the environment, and have been linked to cancer and birth defects.

"These chemicals respect no boundaries and can harm Americans even when released abroad," Bush said.

Traces of many of the chemicals have been found in pristine areas of the Arctic after having been transported by air currents from hundreds of miles away.

Aides said the president aimed to burnish his "green" record on the occasion of this weekend's Earth Day celebrations. Environmentalists have harshly criticized Bush for pulling back new arsenic standards for drinking water, abandoning a campaign pledge to reduce carbon dioxide emissions from power plants and rejecting a treaty on global warming.

The pact was crafted in December under the auspices of the U.N. Environment Program during negotiations in Johannesburg, South Africa.

On this issue, Bush said his administration shares the goals of his predecessor, President Clinton.

"This treaty shows the possibilities for cooperation among all parties to our environmental debates. Developed nations cooperated with less developed nations, businesses cooperated with environmental groups and now, a Republican administration will continue and complete the work of a Democratic administration," Bush said.

Under the treaty, production and use of nine of the 12 chemicals would be banned as soon as the treaty takes effect, probably in four to five years.

About 25 countries would be allowed to continue to use DDT to combat malaria in accordance with World Health Organization guidelines, pending development of safer solutions.

Releases of dioxins and furans - toxic byproducts of waste burning and industrial production - would be reduced and eventually eliminated where feasible, according to the treaty.

Other chemicals on the list are polychlorinated biphenyls, (PCBs) and the pesticides aldrin, chlordane, dieldrin, endrin, heptachlor, mirex, toxaphene and hexachlorobenzene.

The treaty also establishes an international fund, possibly as much as $150 million, to help countries develop and use substitutes to the "dirty dozen" chemicals. And it allows for an expansion of the number of chemicals to be covered, although adding to the list would require rigorous scientific review.

The treaty must be ratified by 50 countries to take effect.

---

Consumers' fears carry over to food decisions

USA Today
04/19/2001 - Updated 12:07 PM ET
By Anita Manning, USA TODAY
http://usatoday.com/news/npaintbox.htm

American consumers, bombarded with news about livestock diseases in Europe, are confused and making food-buying decisions based on wrong information, a new poll finds.

In a random telephone survey of 815 people who are the primary food shoppers in their households, 14% said they had changed their food purchasing or family dining habits based on news about mad cow disease and foot-and-mouth disease.

Most said they had reduced or eliminated ground beef from their diets, according to the poll by public relations firm Porter Novelli, which represents clients in the food industry.

Mad cow disease has infected about 100 humans, most of them in England. The brain-wasting disease is fatal. Most scientists believe the humans caught the disease by consuming infected meat.

Foot-and-mouth disease affects cows, pigs, goats and other cloven-hoofed animals, but rarely affects humans.

"The public is understandably confused, not because they're ignorant, but because these are arcane diseases and both are happening in England," says Lester Crawford, director of Georgetown University's Center for Food and Nutrition Policy, who was not involved in the poll. Mad cow disease, which scientists call bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), has never been found in the USA, and there has not been an outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease in the USA since 1929.

The foot-and-mouth outbreak that began in England in February has caused the destruction of more than 1 million animals as British officials try to contain the disease. Mad cow disease emerged in England in the mid-1980s and has resulted in the slaughter of more than 77,000 cattle.

Photos of burning pyres of dead cattle "are a recapitulation of what (American consumers) saw just a short time ago with BSE," Crawford says, and many of the officials addressing concerns about foot-and-mouth disease are the same ones quoted about mad cow disease.

Crawford says consumer concern has alarmed the industry.

"Just in the last week, there has been an enormous number of meetings on BSE in the U.S. on the corporate level. Every food organization is cranking up its BSE machinery. The reason they're all doing that is because foot-and-mouth disease has now convinced them that it (a livestock epidemic) can happen."

Even though neither disease is currently in the USA, he says, "it seems to be the same agencies in both countries - the United States and England - that are in charge of keeping it out. Somebody made a mistake (in England), so all of sudden it becomes clear" that it could occur here.

That may be true, Crawford says, "but it's least likely here than in any country in the world."

---

USA Today
04/19/01
States
http://www.usatoday.com/news/states/all50.htm

Alaska

Fairbanks - Environmental groups are launching what they call Phase 2 of a national TV advertising campaign to criticize the Bush administration. However, this time the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska is missing from the environmentalists' list of places to be protected. Neither the House nor Senate budget resolutions contain language that call for drilling in the refuge, as environmentalists had feared.

Oregon

Portland - Waste News rated Portland as the top recycler among the 30 largest cities in the USA with a rate of 53.6%. That's just below the 54% rate Portland set as its 2000 recycling goal.

Rhode Island

Barrington - Federal money is available to restore endangered fisheries around Narragansett Bay, but state lawmakers have been unable to devise a formula for matching funds. Private groups have had to take up the cause of habitat restoration. Many salt marshes around the bay are gone and fish-runs have been decimated, officials said.

South Carolina

Columbia - Residents of two towns in northeast South Carolina are upset by proposals by a food processor to build hog farms. Smithfield Foods, of Virginia and its North Carolina subsidiary, Carroll's Foods, have applied for permits to build two farms housing 32,000 hogs. Residents are worried about water quality and odor, Mayor Philip Thomas said.

South Dakota

Pierre - Two decades after its use was outlawed, a coyote-killing device is legal again. The spring-loaded contraption called M-44 shoots a lethal dose of cyanide into a coyote's mouth. Farmers and ranchers, who use it to protect their livestock, must take training and be certified.

---

Bush seen needing clear defense on environment

The Washington Times www.washtimes.com
Published 4/19/01
Audrey Hudson THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20010419-98607232.htm

President Bush is getting high marks for tackling tough environmental issues that he inherited from the previous administration, but supporters fear the absence of an organized effort to explain his decisions leaves him vulnerable to attacks from Democrats.

In signs that the offensive against the White House was working, the Bush administration yesterday announced plans to tighten standards for arsenic in drinking water within nine months.

Christie Whitman, head of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), said she was asking the National Academy of Sciences to examine the effects of reductions.

Supporters say the Bush administration has made sound decisions regarding energy-saving standards for home appliances, arsenic levels in drinking water and carbon dioxide emissions.

But a clear lack of communications strategy gives Democrats and environmental supporters center stage to denounce the new rules as decisions that will severely damage the environment, giving the public the impression that the administration is insensitive to the issue.

"They have made some ghastly public relations blunders and opened themselves to unnecessary attack by the environmental community," said Myron Ebell, an environmental policy analyst for the Competitive Enterprise Institute.

"They are making the right decisions, but they haven´t explained why they are making them," Mr. Ebell said. "The manner in which they are proceeding is mystifying."

The Clinton administration spent the last days in office planting environmental "land mines and booby traps" for the new administration, Mr. Ebell said.

"Those midnight regulations were irrational and very imprudent, and at the same time they knew it would cause an outcry among certain special-interest groups," he said.

A Sept. 14 report by the Congressional Research Service concluded additional research was needed to address the "scientific uncertainty concerning the health effects and risk associated with arsenic exposures."

The Clinton regulation, issued three days before the end of his presidency, would allow arsenic levels in drinking water of 10 parts per billion (ppb), a substantial reduction from the current standard of 50 ppb. The Bush administration appeared yesterday to retreat from its decision to stay the the rule and asked the National Academy of Sciences to study levels of three to 20 ppb.

"The Bush administration is committed to protecting the environment and the health of all Americans," Mrs. Whitman said in a written statement, promising a final regulation within nine months.

The Bush administration´s decision on March 20 to stop the regulation created an uproar among environmentalists, congressional Democrats and members of the public.

Mrs. Whitman argued that scientific evidence was insufficient to justify the $200 million annual cost to municipalities, states and industry of meeting the Clinton standards by 2006.

"I have said consistently that we will obtain the necessary scientific review and that we will establish that standard in a timely manner," she said yesterday.

Environmentalists, who for years have argued for stricter arsenic standards, criticized the EPA yesterday for putting off a final decision.

"We´re outraged that this is going to assure a year of delays for protection of public health for millions of Americans," said Erik D. Olson, senior attorney for the Natural Resources Defense Council.

He said the parameters set by Mrs. Whitman are "a pretty clear signal" that the EPA is headed toward settling at arsenic levels of 20 parts per billion twice the concentration of the Clinton standards.

Arsenic occurs naturally in water and is a necessary part of the human diet, say supporters of the Bush administration review.

Critics of the president´s first 100 days point to the arsenic rule review and suggest the administration favors poisoned water.

Independent pollster John Zogby compared the arsenic review to a Reagan administration decision to ease costly federal mandates on school lunch programs by allowing schools to define ketchup as a vegetable.

"The broad scope may have been justified, but it sounded heartless and still does," Mr. Zogby said.

The Bush administration´s decision to review the arsenic rule "could be his ketchup," he said.

Communication missteps in the beginning of an administration are expected and not as damaging as pitfalls just months before the 2002 midterm elections, said John Czwartacki communication strategist for Greener and Hook.

"I think they´ve handled it as well as can be expected; even they need some time to program their speed dial," Mr. Czwartacki said.

-------

DuPont bags fungicide linked to ruined crops

USA Today
04/19/2001 - Updated 04:32 PM ET
http://www.usatoday.com/money/general/2001-04-20-dupont-fungicide.htm

WILMINGTON, Del. (AP) - Citing the high costs of defending itself from lawsuits blaming Benlate for the destruction of crops, DuPont executives said Thursday the chemical company would no longer make the fungicide.

DuPont has paid more than $1 billion in settlements and legal fees related to Benlate. Last year, the company took a 6 cents-a-share charge to establish a litigation fund to fight the lawsuits.

That fund is valued at $100 million, said Mike Ricciuto, a DuPont spokesman.

Although DuPont has steadily maintained that the fungicide was not responsible for damage to growers, juries have decided otherwise.

On Feb. 27, a Miami jury decided that DuPont must pay an Ecuadorean shrimp farm $12.3 million because Benlate flowing off banana plantations poisoned shrimp, making them susceptible to disease.

And in June, DuPont was ordered to pay $100.3 million to a pair of Texas fruit companies that said their crops were killed by a powdered form of Benlate.

James Borel, vice president and general manager of DuPont's division of Crop Protection Products, said in a statement that the high legal costs were a "significant element" behind the decision to stop making Benlate.

DuPont will stop selling Benlate in any form on Dec. 31, Borel said. He expected that inventories of Benlate already held by distributors will be cleared by the end of 2002.

The company sold about $90 million worth of Benlate annually, Ricciuto said.

DuPont, headquartered in Wilmington, is the world's largest chemical maker.

---

Arsenic fouls review of new rules

USA Today
04/19/2001 - Updated 10:56 PM ET
By Jonathan Weisman and Mimi Hall, USA TODAY
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washdc/2001-04-19-enviroregulations.htm

WASHINGTON - As the curtain rose on the Bush administration, White House officials boldly began dismantling parts of former president Bill Clinton's legacy. They dropped efforts to regulate carbon dioxide, dumped an international global warming treaty, scuttled repetitive-stress-injury regulations and repealed a host of executive orders protecting organized labor.

Then came March 20.

The political firestorm that erupted after that date's decision on arsenic levels in drinking water marked a turning point for President Bush, when regulatory rollbacks turned dramatically to pass-throughs.

"Call it 'Before Arsenic' and 'After Arsenic,' " quips Gary Bass, executive director of the White House watchdog group OMB Watch. "After arsenic, we've gotten a much more moderate tone."

Upon taking office Jan. 20, Bush slapped a freeze on 175 regulations issued by the Clinton administration, including 70 that had been finalized but had not taken effect. Up to 35 were considered major new rules; many had been completed in the Clinton White House's final weeks.

But 90 days later, Bush has decided to repeal or significantly change only four of those major regulations so far. He has changed other Clinton administration initiatives through executive orders, policy pronouncements and legislation. About two dozen major regulations have been allowed to stand.

Through the months of February and March, the White House appeared to pay little heed to traditionally Democratic interest groups such as labor unions and environmentalists. In rapid succession, the administration:

Overturned five Clinton-era executive orders favoring organized labor. Signed congressional legislation that scuttled regulations to combat repetitive-stress injuries, such as carpal tunnel syndrome and tendinitis. Dropped a campaign pledge to regulate carbon dioxide emissions from power plants and announced that the United States would withdraw from the Kyoto treaty on global warming. Moved toward repealing stringent environmental regulations on hard-rock mining on federal land. Suspended requirements that government contracting officers review whether a potential contractor violated environmental, labor, consumer or employment laws or regulations. Signaled it would consider rewriting a Clinton regulation that banned building roads in national forests.

Then came arsenic. On March 20, the Environmental Protection Agency signaled it would significantly rewrite a Clinton-era regulation that would have lowered the acceptable level of arsenic in drinking water from 50 parts per billion to 10 parts per billion.

The Clinton standard would have brought the U.S. drinking water supply into line with World Health Organization and European Union arsenic levels. Even so, the need for Clinton's level of protection was hotly contested in scientific circles.

"The question is never posed: Do you want your water bill to go up several hundreds of dollars a year to go from a one-in-500,000 to one-in-a-million chance of cancer?" says Peitro Nivola, a regulatory expert at the Brookings Institution.

But arsenic became a rallying cry for environmentalists, who had little difficulty raising alarm bells about a substance universally recognized as a deadly poison.

"You just hear the word 'arsenic,' and you think poison," says Susan Dudley, a senior research fellow at George Mason University's Mercatus Center, which is critical of most regulations.

In the decision's wake, the shift has been dramatic. This month, the Bush White House has announced it will let stand Clinton regulations on energy-efficient washing machines and water heaters, medical privacy, wetlands protection, lead reporting, and nutrition labeling on meat and poultry.

Bush is not finished.

On Monday, the White House will announce its decision on a Clinton-issued regulation banishing snowmobiles from national parks.

The administration is also grappling with a far-reaching regulation promoting patients' rights for Medicaid recipients.

White House aides say the review has been methodical. The individual agencies make the initial call before sending the regulations to the White House budget office. If no dissent emerges, the budget office can make the decision on whether a regulation stands or falls. If significant disagreements emerge, the White House - perhaps Bush himself - makes the final decision. That was the case with the medical privacy rule.

The shift has been both substantive and symbolic. White House aides have sought to focus public attention on their decisions. In February and March, the administration let stand major regulations on food safety and diesel engines but got scant attention.

This month, they have stepped up their public-relations efforts: They brought EPA administrator Christie Whitman to the White House briefing room and sent the president to the Rose Garden for a formal announcement.

Bush spokesman Dan Bartlett freely admits such events are meant to "shine a light" on decisions that could counter the negative image created by arsenic.

Though Bush appears to have become more favorable to his predecessor's decisions, his aides are still quick to criticize Clinton's last-minute regulatory rush.

"If the environmental actions that President Clinton took that President Bush is studying were so important, why did President Clinton wait until the last week to do these things?" White House spokesman Ari Fleischer asks.

White House aides still appear to be licking the wounds inflicted by the media in the wake of the arsenic decision.

The press, Bartlett says, "starts with the presumption that what was done by the Clinton administration was correct."

-------- genetics

SECRET GENETIC TESTING

New York Times
April 19, 2001
Tamar Lewin
National Briefing
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/19/national/19BRFS.html

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has settled its first lawsuit challenging genetic testing in the workplace. The commission charged in February that the Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway had violated federal laws by seeking genetic testing of employees who filed claims for carpal tunnel syndrome, without warning them about how their blood would be used, or getting their consent. The railway has agreed not to do further testing or to analyze the blood samples. (NYT)

-------- imf / world bank / ftaa

Battle brewing before summit

USA Today
04/19/2001 - Updated 01:27 PM ET
By Mark Memmott, USA TODAY
http://usatoday.com/money/economy/2001-04-19-summit.htm

QUEBEC - The fortified stone walls here are reminders of a battle fought outside this city by the British and the French in 1759.

The 3-mile ring of brand-new chain-link fences is a symbol of a modern struggle still being waged over global trade.

President Bush and the leaders of 33 other Western Hemisphere nations gather here Friday for the third Summit of the Americas. They'll spend three days discussing how to knock down trade barriers between their nations, all the while meeting behind the temporary barriers erected to protect them from an estimated 10,000 to 20,000 demonstrators, most from labor unions and environmental groups.

A few protesters have vowed to disrupt the summit, much as violence marred the World Trade Organization meeting in 1999 in Seattle. More than 6,000 Canadian police officers are on hand to prevent that from happening.

In a harbinger of possible trouble to come, six protesters were arrested Wednesday for allegedly possessing smoke-bomb materials.

"I don't think screaming in the streets is necessarily constructive," says Susan Aaronson, a senior fellow at the National Policy Association, a Washington, D.C., think tank. But the protesters "force more people to consider and try to understand the effects of trade," adds Aaronson, who has just published a book, Taking Trade to the Streets: The Lost History of Public Efforts to Shape Globalization.

President Clinton hosted the first Summit of the Americas in Miami in 1994. It was followed by a summit in 1998 in Santiago, Chile.

All democratically elected leaders from North and South America are invited. That leaves out only Cuba's Communist leader, Fidel Castro.

At the top of the leaders' agenda is an expansion of the North American Free Trade Agreement to the entire hemisphere. A free-trade zone for the Americas would cover more than 800 million people and economies that together produce more than $13 trillion annually in goods and services.

The argument for the trade pact is that U.S. companies will be able to trade and invest more easily in South America, and their increased profits will create jobs in the USA. At the same time, if Brazilian shoe manufacturers, Argentine beef producers or Chilean winemakers face lower U.S. tariffs, their workers will have more money to buy U.S. products.

"Open trade fuels the engines of economic growth that create new jobs and new income," Bush said this week. "It applies the power of markets to the needs of the poor."

The leaders agreed in 1994 to conclude negotiations on a hemisphere-wide free-trade zone by 2005. Since then, talks have narrowed some differences, but obstacles remain. Argentina and Brazil, major food producers, doubt that the United States will drop agricultural barriers. Other nations worry that their industries won't be ready to compete with U.S. producers.

During the intense debate over NAFTA in 1993, the pact's champions promised that a boom in exports would help produce a boom in U.S. jobs. Critics warned that U.S. companies would export jobs and pollution to Mexico.

Eight years later, the two sides are still arguing over the gains and losses from NAFTA. Union leaders cite studies claiming that up to 750,000 U.S. jobs have been relocated in Mexico since 1993. "NAFTA has been a disaster for working people," says Fred Azcarate, executive director of Jobs with Justice, a coalition of labor, student and community activists.

NAFTA's proponents concede that some jobs were lost, but they point to the net increase of 20 million U.S. jobs since 1993 as evidence that a more open economy is good for workers.

On Capitol Hill, the battle will soon center on whether to give U.S. Trade Representative Robert Zoellick authority to negotiate trade agreements that Congress must either accept or reject without amendment. Bush said this week he will push hard for that "fast-track" or "trade-promotion" authority, which makes it easier to negotiate pacts. Many Democrats say they'll oppose giving Bush fast-track authority because they want Congress to be able to make changes that address labor standards and environmental concerns. Some lawmakers say it is unlikely Bush will get fast-track this year, if ever.

No matter what the leaders decide before they leave Sunday, the trade debate is sure to continue. But that's a long American tradition. After all, Aaronson notes, the Boston Tea Party was largely a trade dispute.

-------- police

Justices Clarify Rule on Using Race in Districting

New York Times
April 19, 2001
By LINDA GREENHOUSE
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/19/national/19SCOT.html

WASHINGTON, April 18 - In a crucial ruling on the role of race in legislative districting, the Supreme Court today upheld a long-disputed North Carolina Congressional district against the accusation that the 47-percent-black district was the product of an unconstitutional racial gerrymander.

The 5-to-4 decision, which overturned a lower court's finding that the state's 12th Congressional District was unconstitutional, provided much-needed guidance to state legislatures and lower federal courts that will soon be dealing with a nationwide round of redistricting as a result of the 2000 census.

The message of Justice Stephen G. Breyer's majority opinion was that race is not an illegitimate consideration in redistricting as long as it is not the "dominant and controlling" one.

The effect of the decision was to give breathing room to state legislatures and a warning to judges not to be too quick to label as racial a legislative judgment mostly based on politics.

Republicans and Democrats alike claimed victory after the ruling. [Page A16.]

Justice Sandra Day O'Connor joined the Breyer majority, leaving her four longtime allies in this line of cases - Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist and Justices Clarence Thomas, Antonin Scalia and Anthony M. Kennedy - in the unaccustomed role of dissenters.

Significantly, Justice O'Connor, a former majority leader of the Arizona Senate, is the only member of the court to have held elective office. She did not write a separate opinion today, but her comments from the bench when the case was argued on Nov. 27 indicated an acute awareness that the real motive for drawing district lines was often political.

Justice O'Connor is also likely to cast the controlling vote if the court, as expected, takes up one of several pending cases on the role of affirmative action in higher education. Her position on affirmative action has been nuanced and attentive to the particular facts of each case, and her vote with the court's more liberal wing today does not necessarily foreshadow the same voting lineup on affirmative action.

Justice Breyer emphasized that people seeking to challenge heavily black districts as racial gerrymanders face a high hurdle in regions where "racial identification is highly correlated with political affiliation," as in North Carolina, where more than 95 percent of black voters support Democratic candidates.

A central goal of the North Carolina Legislature in drawing the disputed district lines in 1997 was to preserve a six-to-six balance between Democrats and Republicans in the state's Congressional delegation. Since there was evidence that among registered Democrats in North Carolina, black voters were more likely to vote Democratic than were white voters, Justice Breyer said, precincts with black majorities were more reliable as building blocks for a Democratic district.

While race was not the controlling reason, Justice Breyer said the district was drawn to protect a black Democratic incumbent, Melvin Watt, while at the same time not making too great an incursion into the adjoining Ninth Congressional District, represented by a white Republican.

The decision, Easley v. Cromartie, No. 99-1864, made little, if any, new law. In fact, the analytical heart of Justice Breyer's opinion consisted, to a striking degree, of quotations from the court's redistricting cases of the past eight years, a number of them by Justice O'Connor.

Rather, what made the decision important was how the court actually applied the principles derived from those precedents. Despite some language to the contrary, the principles had given many people the strong impression that race-consciousness was tantamount to unconstitutionality.

When the case was argued, it was known as Hunt v. Cromartie, and the opinion the court issued today was identified as such. But because James B. Hunt Jr., the governor who brought the Supreme Court appeal, has left office, the court indicated today that it would retitle the case to reflect the name of the new governor, Michael F. Easley, when the ruling is officially published. Martin Cromartie was a plaintiff who challenged the district.

Justice Breyer's opinion was a methodical dissection of the evidence considered by a special three-judge Federal District Court in Raleigh, which conducted a three-day trial in late 1999.

"The issue in this case is evidentiary," Justice Breyer said.

In reviewing factual determinations of a trial court, a federal appellate court applies a deferential standard of review, under which the trial court's findings will be set aside only for "clear error."

Justice Breyer said the majority applied this standard and reached a "definite and firm conviction" that the district court had been clearly erroneous in concluding that race was the dominant motive in constructing the district.

In the dissenting opinion, Justice Thomas said the majority had failed to give the deference to the lower court's findings that the "clearly erroneous" standard of review requires.

"In several ways, the court ignores its role as a reviewing court and engages in its own fact-finding enterprise," he said.

The other three dissenters signed Justice Thomas's opinion.

Because "racial gerrymandering offends the Constitution whether the motivation is malicious or benign," Justice Thomas said, "it is not a defense that the Legislature merely may have drawn the district based on the stereotype that blacks are reliable Democratic voters."

In response, Justice Breyer said the case was not about stereotypes but about "whether the Legislature drew District 12's boundaries because of race rather than because of political behavior." He said the group of white plaintiffs who challenged the validity of the district "has not successfully shown that race, rather than politics, predominantly accounts for the result."

In the dissenting opinion, Justice Thomas said he did not think the district court's findings were necessarily "compelled," and indicated that he did not necessarily agree with all of them. But applying the deferential standard of review, he said, "I certainly cannot say that the court's inference from the facts was impermissible."

Justice Thomas put great weight on an e-mail message, introduced as evidence by the plaintiffs at trial, sent to two state senators by the legislative staff member who was drafting the district lines.

"I have moved Greensboro black community into the 12th, and now need to take about 60,000 out of the 12th," the message said.

While Justice Breyer said this evidence "offers some support for the district court's conclusion," Justice Thomas said it was strong evidence.

Nonetheless, the tone of the dissenting opinion was mild, even surprisingly so, given the sharp language Justice Thomas and others in the dissenting group had used in the past on questions of race. Given that the case was argued more than four months ago, in the same week in which the court heard the first of the two presidential vote cases from Florida, it is quite likely that both the majority and the dissenting opinions went through numerous drafts in an effort to attract or hold Justice O'Connor's vote.

That would account for both the mild tone of the dissent and for the majority's many uncritical references to Justice O'Connor's earlier redistricting opinions from which the other four had, in fact, dissented.

Justice Breyer's opinion, one of his most important since he joined the court in 1994, was also signed by Justices John Paul Stevens, David H. Souter and Ruth Bader Ginsburg, in addition to Justice O'Connor.

In was an O'Connor opinion in 1993, regarding the same 12th District, that started the court on its examination of racial considerations in legislative districting. That case was brought by a group of white voters to challenge an earlier version of the 12th District, which had a black majority and which followed a highly unusual snake-like course along Interstate 85 in the North Carolina Piedmont, in some places barely wider than the highway.

Calling the district "bizarre" and the process that produced it reminiscent of apartheid, Justice O'Connor said in her 5-to-4 majority opinion, Shaw v. Reno, that the court would find the 12th District unconstitutional unless it could be justified on nonracial grounds. Three years later, in Shaw v. Hunt, the court dropped the other shoe and invalidated the district by the same 5-to-4 vote.

The North Carolina Legislature then reconfigured the district to produce the one at issue in the case today. It was challenged once again and invalidated by the three-judge district court on summary judgment. In a decision called Hunt v. Cromartie in 1999, all nine justices agreed that there were enough factual uncertainties to warrant a full trial, which the district court held later that year. In the meantime, an interim district was used for the election last November. Although that district was just over one-third black, Mr. Watt was re-elected.

The Supreme Court appeal in this round of the long-running case was brought both by Governor Hunt and by a group of voters represented by the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund Inc., who intervened to defend the district.

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USA Today
04/19/01
States
http://www.usatoday.com/news/states/all50.htm

Alabama

Alabaster - Alabama's shortage of state troopers became a nightmare for a woman stranded on Interstate 65 in a van for six hours. Nancy Hanck said she was alone and frantic and never saw a trooper after her van broke down. Statewide, no more than six troopers patrol Alabama roads from midnight until 6 a.m. Last month, troopers around the USA joined the Alabama State Trooper Association to protest low pay, working conditions and the lack of manpower. A class for 60 new troopers begins Monday.

Nebraska

Omaha - Police say they plan to publish photographs of repeat domestic violence offenders. Monthly advertisements in the Omaha World-Herald will have 10 photographs of people convicted of domestic violence at least once and charged with the same crime again while on probation.

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Driving while black

The Washington Times www.washtimes.com
Published 4/19/01
Darren McKinney
http://www.washtimes.com/op-ed/20010419-23076996.htm

While appearing on the Sunday talk shows to discuss the police shooting of an unarmed black suspect and the race rioting it precipitated in Cincinnati last week, NAACP President Kweisi Mfume adduced evidence of what he contends is a law enforcement bias against blacks. Among other things, he noted that blacks comprise a significantly higher percentage of drivers stopped by police for traffic violations than their representation in the general population might otherwise predict. Since their only offense is "driving while black," Mr. Mfume and others sarcastically argue, it is clear that racism is alive and well in Cincinnati and other jurisdictions across America.

Reflecting our society as a whole, surely there are examples of police officers of all races scattered throughout many police departments who harbor and act on racial prejudice. Much can and should be done to enlighten or terminate these officers and to facilitate better, more polite and mutually respectful cooperation between law enforcement and poor, minority communities where, sadly, too many of our problems with crime and violence reside. The concept of community policing has begun to make inroads, and violent crime rates generally continue to fall in most cities with considerable minority concentrations.

But as Georgetown University Law Center professor David Cole points out in his 1999 book, "No Equal Justice: Race and Class in the American Criminal Justice System," a young black man is roughly seven times more likely to commit and be convicted of a crime than is a young white man. Even if we presume, for the sake of discussion, that some or much of that alarming disparity can be attributed to racism either by cops at the street level or institutional biases within our courts we must nonetheless concede that black America is having trouble raising many of its young men.

In fact, when Mr. Mfume and others argue for increased funding for inner city public schools, Head Start and after school programs, and job training, they eagerly point to related disparities in black test scores and employment rates. They rightly rail against an achievement gap that threatens to doom a generation of young black poor people to subservient, second-class citizenship in the Information Age of the 21st century. And experts who study the achievement gap share Mr. Mfume´s concerns. They worry, too, that, because roughly 70 percent of black kids are born to and raised by single mothers, they are several times more likely to be poor, read below grade level, drop out of school, and commit serious crimes than are kids of any race raised by two parents.

Though I´ve taken an admittedly circuitous route in laying the groundwork for my principal point about driving while black, I ask this question: If we´re willing to accept the empirical fact that fatherlessness can so negatively impact one´s capacity to learn at school and otherwise succeed in life, is it so far-fetched to hypothesize that it can also hamper one´s capacity to learn to drive properly? After all, one of the most time-honored American traditions (at least since Henry Ford began to make automobiles ubiquitous) is Dad, with great trepidation, teaching Junior to drive.

If Dad´s not in the picture, and if high schools continue to cut driver education classes as they have during the past 15 years, is it any wonder that black kids are not getting the instruction they need to safely navigate our streets and highways in a manner that won´t draw the attention of police?

The issue of warrantless consent searches that police sometimes conduct following routine traffic stops (and that sometimes lead to arrests for serious crimes) is different altogether from the traffic stops themselves and, according to recent studies by the U.S. Customs Service and Justice Department, may well be one where actual racial bias is at play.

But to anyone insisting they have proved racism on the part of cops who struggle to keep our thoroughfares as safe as reasonably possible in the face of unprecedented traffic congestion and road rage merely by demonstrating that black drivers get a disproportionately high percentage of traffic tickets, I respectfully suggest they´ll have to come up with more evidence than that. And I´d invite anyone willing to confront this issue honestly to spend a Saturday morning or early afternoon observing traffic flow on H Street east of Union Station in the District of Columbia. It is a major, though struggling commercial corridor running through largely poor, black neighborhoods bustling with activity.

The double and triple parking without hazard lights, illegal U-turns, sudden lane changes without signals, speeding and general recklessness in vehicles that are often uninspected and in dangerous disrepair are standard operating procedure on H Street and enough to terrify even veteran cab drivers who have seen it all. (And we also should carefully differentiate here between "poverty" and "race." If poverty keeps one from getting a broken tail light fixed, that may in turn lead to one getting pulled over for said broken tail light. Do poor black folks with broken tail lights on their 1988 Chevy get pulled over more often than rich white folks whose 2-year-old Mercedes is regularly maintained by the finest mechanics money can buy? Sure they do.

But so do poor white folks, poor Hispanics, poor Asians and poor American Indians. That isn´t necessarily fair, but it´s not racism either.

Of course observations on H Street are anecdotal. And no university or bonafide research entity could hope to find funding for empirical studies of driving skills and habits as they relate to driving while black in our politically correct and racially charged environment. But if we´re going to conduct serious discussions about lingering inequalities in America that, presumably, we´d like to have lead someday to racial harmony and true equality for all, then it seems to me that black critics of the police and other majority white institutions should be equally willing to acknowledge the unfortunate and wholly correctable shortcomings of their own.

Darren McKinney lives in Northeast Washington and writes frequently about race relations.

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Expert Says Sting Operations Would End Racial Profiling

New York Times
April 19, 2001
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/19/nyregion/19TROO.html

NEWARK, April 18 - A nationally recognized expert on police brutality and racial profiling has recommended an independent monitor and sting operations to catch rogue New Jersey state troopers. The expert, James J. Fyfe, testified today during the Senate Judiciary Committee's final day of hearings on the subject.

Mr. Fyfe, a retired New York City police officer who is now a professor of criminal justice at Temple University, testified before the committee at Seton Hall Law School. In 1996, Mr. Fyfe testified in the Soto case, in which a state judge in Gloucester County ruled that evidence in drug arrests of minority motorists was tainted by racial profiling.

At today's hearing, Mr. Fyfe told the committee that putting undercover minority officers in used, unmarked cars as decoys, and then moving quickly to dismiss troopers who engaged in racial profiling, would be one of the surest ways to curtail the practice.

"If they make a few examples of people who are misbehaving, that's going to go away fast," Mr. Fyfe, who is white, told the committee.

He also recommended legislation granting the state police commander authority to hire and fire his top supervisors, who are now protected by civil service rules from arbitrary removal. Clearing the upper ranks is the only way to create wholesale institutional change, he said. He also recommended the creation of some type of independent monitor to oversee the state police and suggested that the state attorney general be an elected position.

He proposed a ban on so-called consensual searches, a process in which troopers are supposed to ask drivers for permission to search their vehicles. Mr. Fyfe said drivers could be easily manipulated through intimidation and lack of knowledge about the rules. He said he was unaware of any state bans on such searches by the police.

The committee's Republican chairman, Senator William L. Gormley, said that he had been eager to hear Mr. Fyfe's recommendations after a deputy state attorney general, Martin Cronin, testified earlier in the day that the state had made little progress so far in enacting measures to curtail racial profiling.

Mr. Cronin's boss, Attorney General John J. Farmer Jr., told the committee on April 3 that, according to recent statistics, minorities made up 73 percent of motorists stopped on the New Jersey Turnpike, and that it appeared that racial profiling was persisting despite years of attention.

Mr. Gormley and other committee members said they would seriously consider Mr. Fyfe's recommendations, particularly for an independent monitor of the state police. But Mr. Gormley rejected Mr. Fyfe's recommendation for an elected attorney general, for fear of politicizing the position.

"That's all we need," Mr. Gormley told his fellow senators and Mr. Fyfe. "The attorney general fund-raising besides us."

In other testimony today, two Hispanic members of the 2,900-member state police, Detective Andre Lopez and Lt. Carmelo V. Huertas, said that while there were individual racists within the force, it was not a racist institution.

Mr. Gormley said that the committee would issue a report, with recommendations for legislative or administrative reforms, within a few weeks. He and the committee's special counsel, Michael Chertoff, a former United States attorney for New Jersey, will attend a state police training session sometime soon, he said, but otherwise the committee's information gathering, including nine days of testimony, was essentially done.

The committee has also heard from Mr. Farmer's predecessor, Justice Peter Verniero of the State Supreme Court. The committee has recommended that Justice Verniero be impeached by the State Assembly for what has been characterized as misleading statements regarding what he knew about racial profiling and when.

Monday is the third anniversary of an incident in which two state troopers wounded three minority men in a van on the New Jersey Turnpike, focusing national attention on the racial profiling issue.

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Cuts may mean no new officers on the beat
Bush administration wants to trim Clinton-era program by 17 percent, but insists safety won't be jeopardized.

Christian Science Monitor
THURSDAY, APRIL 19, 2001
By Alexandra Marks (marksa@csps.com)
Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
http://www.csmonitor.com/durable/2001/04/19/fp2s2-csm.shtml

GUILFORD, CONN. - Rich Roberts is readying for a fight.

As the director of special operations of the International Union of Police Associations, the former Maryland officer is mobilizing the union's 80,000 police to target lawmakers and urge them not to support the Bush administration's proposed cuts in the Clinton-era Office of Community Oriented Policing.

Known as COPs, it has provided partial funding for 115,000 new police on America's streets from Lenox Avenue in Harlem to untamed dirt roads in Utah. And police would rather see it expanded than cut.

"If this budget proceeds as is, it would be devastating for law enforcement," says Mr. Roberts.

In choosing to trim the COPs program to drive home a point about Washington's profligate spending ways, the Bush administration risks alienating a key constituency - law enforcement and its supporters on both sides of the aisle in Congress.

At the same time, with indications the crime rate may be ready to inch back up, some analysts contend the move could also jeopardize the GOP's efforts to win back the mantle as the nation's crime-fighting party.

From the 1960s to the early 1990s, the Republicans had a lock on the "tough on crime" image. Then came Bill Clinton and eight straight years of steadily dropping crime rates.

"Proposing these cuts could give the Democrats the opportunity to call them soft on crime," says Larry Sabato, a political analyst at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville. "But I bet virtually all of the cuts will be restored by both parties."

The Bush administration insists safety would not be jeopardized by its proposal to trim the $1.3 billion program by 17 percent. It says it will keep intact other key elements, like funds for better technology and school-safety programs.

But the grant that helped communities pay for new officers is being dropped, according to White House spokesman Ari Fleisher, because it has accomplished its stated goal - to put more police are on the streets. The 1994 program was originally designed to last only three years. It's now in its sixth year.

"Programs never go away in Washington, and that's one of the reasons Washington is so big," says Mr. Fleisher.

The COPs program is popular with local officials and tied to the perception that neighborhoods are safer. While a buzzing economy, aging of the baby boomers and shifting drug markets all have contributed to dramatic drops in violent crime, many criminologists believe the COPs program has also played a role.

"It's hard to say with any certainty [the cuts] will be disaster, but it is a step in the wrong direction," says James Fox of Northeastern University in Boston. "I know this administration wants to give taxes back to the people, but having $2,000 in your pocket when there's no cop around when you need one won't be much consolation."

The Bush administration does have some supporters in the criminology community. Joseph McNamara, a research fellow at the Hoover Institute at Stanford University in California, calls himself a "lone wolf" on the issue. He believes that local law enforcement should stay a local issue, and he objects to the increasing dependence on Washington.

"[The program's] a giant step toward a national police force, which is a far greater threat to our liberty than crime," he says.

But Mr. McNamara admits that COPs has helped transform the way law enforcement operates around the country by providing new officers, technology, and training to get more police out from behind their desks, reacting to 911 calls, and instead out into the streets proactively working to prevent trouble.

The change can be heard in the crackle of the radio at the Guilford, Conn., Police Department. An officer out on the beat in the upscale coastal town calls in just one word: "update."

Sgt. Jackie Cipollini presses a computer key, and the officer's new position, along with the whereabouts of the department's other on-duty officers, rolls down the screen. "They can do almost everything from their laptops in their cars, even file reports," says Sergeant Cipollini. "They hardly have to come into the office."

Guilford's computer system was bought in part with a $63,000 grant from the COPs program. The town also won a grant for an officer to teach antidrug messages in the schools. It is among the 12,000 of the nation's 19,000 police departments that have received COPs grants in the past six years.

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After Rancorous Start, U.S. and China Resume Talks

New York Times
April 19, 2001
By ELISABETH ROSENTHAL with DAVID E. SANGER
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/19/world/19CHIN.html

BEIJING, Thursday, April 19 - U.S. negotiators here said this morning they had decided to continue talks with the Chinese government concerning the collision of an American spy plane and a Chinese fighter jet on April 1.

On Wednesday, Bush administration officials had threatened to end the negotiations, calling them "not productive."

"Based on an understanding that we will be allowed to complete all of the items on the agenda that we agreed upon earlier to include the development of a plan for the prompt recovery and return of the EP3, we have decided to go ahead and continue the talks," Peter Verga, a deputy undersecretary of defense and chief of the American delegation, said late this morning.

The American ambassador, Adm. Joseph W. Prueher, had gone to the Chinese Foreign Ministry earlier this morning to complain to the Chinese that Wednesday's two-and-a-half-hour session had failed to address American concerns, particularly the return of the EP-3E Aries II surveillance plane which still sits disabled on a Chinese military airfield.

Wednesday's negotiations were expected to be tense and unproductive because the American and Chinese sides have publicly and vehemently disagreed about the cause of the collision, as well as about rules for future surveillance flights along China's coast. The Chinese want such flights discontinued. The United States has already announced that it plans to resume them, although it has not set a date.

After Wednesday's rancorous meeting, the chief Chinese negotiator, Lu Shumin, reiterated that the United States held full responsibility for the incident and "the so-called evidence and remarks made public by the U.S. side over the past few days are groundless," according to the official New China News Agency.

U.S. officials have accused the Chinese fighter pilot of daredevil flying, coming within 10 feet of the U.S. plane before the two aircraft collided.

The United States wasted no time returning fire.

White House officials threatened to end negotiations unless the Chinese agreed to address the subjects described in a letter that led to the release last week of the plane's crew.

Few in the administration had expected Wednesday's meeting to produce much. "There may be some utility to letting everyone vent these issues," one official said.

Even before the meeting began, American officials had few expectations of seeing the spy plane again - at least in one piece.

One of the objectives of Wednesday's meeting, American officials said, was to establish some "rules of the road" that would keep American and Chinese planes at safe distances from each other.

But Chinese officials apparently do not want to negotiate such rules, at least any time soon, in part because the negotiation itself could be seen as acknowledging the United States' right to conduct surveillance near China, even if it stays over international waters.

The meeting in Beijing took place as administration officials in Washington continued to debate how to handle a sensitive meeting with Taiwan officials here next Tuesday.

Deputies in the State and Defense departments have advised against the immediate sale to Taiwan of destroyers equipped with an advanced Aegis radar system.

But they are still considering a range of lesser systems, and holding open the possibility of making the Aegis system, or its rough equivalent, available to Taiwan in the future if China's ability to threaten the island expands.

Ari Fleischer, President Bush's spokesman, declined to discuss the matter with reporters Wednesday morning. "The president has not received any recommendations at all from his staff," he said.

Other officials said, though, that Mr. Bush had discussed the possibilities with a number of his national security aides, and was prepared to make a decision after his return from a meeting of Western Hemisphere leaders this weekend in Quebec.

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White House: Plane's return discussed with China

USA Today
04/19/2001 - Updated 03:50 PM ET
http://usatoday.com/news/washdc/2001-04-19-us-chinatalks.htm

WASHINGTON (AP) - The Bush administration's demand for the return of a Navy EP-3E spy plane was discussed in the second meeting between U.S. and Chinese diplomats, but Beijing did not commit to releasing the aircraft, the White House said Thursday. "It was a businesslike meeting," presidential spokesman Ari Fleischer told reporters. He refused to say whether the administration considered the 90-minute meeting productive but suggested that it went better than the first session, which resulted in a U.S. threat to break off talks.

"Unlike the previous meeting, we were able to complete the agenda ... which included discussions about the return of the airplane," he said. "They are talking about the return of the airplane."

However, he said Beijing had made no commitment to return the plane. That impasse will be one of "a whole host of issues" that President Bush considers in making decisions on U.S.-Chinese relations, Fleischer said.

The administration is expected to decide early next week what weapons to sell to Taiwan, which China considers its breakaway province.

A senior defense official said the U.S. negotiators, who return home Friday, submitted a written proposal for retrieving the surveillance plane. The options include sending in a team of U.S. aerospace engineers to assess whether to repair and fly it out or to disassemble it and ship it off the island where it made an emergency landing April 1.

The defense official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the Chinese are expected to respond to the proposal through diplomatic channels.

The official also said the Bush administration is considering whether to present China through diplomatic channels with written notice that it intends to resume surveillance flights in that region, or to simply resume them without written notice.

China has held the $80 million spy plane since it landed on the island in the South China Sea. The 24 crew members were released after 11 days in detention.

State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said the United States plans to provide the Chinese a letter spelling out "the topics, the agenda, the issues, the substance of what we would hope to discuss in" a U.S.-Chinese maritime commission "about avoiding these kinds of incidents in the future."

Earlier, Fleischer said in a telephone interview that the next meeting will focus on how to avoid future incidents. He said a meeting previously scheduled for Monday has been postponed to allow time for preparing an agenda for the next session.

"Discussions will continue at different diplomatic levels," he said.

As for the U.S. demand that the Navy plane be returned, Fleischer said: "The Chinese officials have said they will continue to discuss the matter."

The Americans threatened to break off talks Wednesday after the Chinese declined to talk about the plane in the first meeting. Talks resumed Thursday only after Chinese officials promised U.S. Ambassador Joseph Prueher that they would discuss the return of the plane.

Few details were released by the two sides, though Deputy Undersecretary of Defense Peter Verga, leader of the eight-member U.S. team, sounded a positive note in China.

"We covered all the items that were on the agenda, and I found today's session to be productive," he said. However, Fleischer repeatedly refused to say whether the meeting was productive. "I choose my words carefully," he said.

A Chinese spokesman said the talks were frank.

"The sides have agreed to keep in touch, and future talks will be held at a time and place to be determined through diplomatic channels," Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Zhang Qiyue said.

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No, just turn it off

USA Today
04/19/2001 - Updated 04:05 AM ET
By Barry Steinhardt
http://www.usatoday.com/news/comment/2001-04-19-ncoppf.htm

The use of such biometrics as facial recognition and iris scans to check identity is about to explode on American society. But while this technology is developing at light speed, the privacy law is in the Stone Age.

Here are two hypothetical examples that newspapers may be reporting soon: A young African-American is walking down the street in a white suburban neighborhood after visiting friends. The next day, police demand to know what he was doing there and what he knew about a burglary 10 blocks away.

In the second, a woman is window-shopping. Her cellphone rings, and a telephone solicitor wants to know whether she's interested in buying the red sweater in the window.

Those aren't fantasies. Every day, people who engage in innocent activities - shopping, getting money from an ATM - are captured on surveillance cameras. Using facial-recognition technology, those images could be compared to a photographic database of driver's licenses or credit-card photos to establish identity. Other databases could be mined for a host of other information.

Mere notice that we are being subjected to surveillance and an identity check is not enough. Federal law should prohibit private industry from gathering biometrics without permission and require businesses to offer less-intrusive alternatives. The law must prohibit unrelated uses and transfers of the data without additional consent. There must be a real remedy for abuse.

Courts should read the Fourth Amendment as a bulwark of protection against these new privacy-invading realities. If the police are prohibited from stopping people on the street without reasonable suspicion and demanding a photo ID, they should be prohibited from capturing our video image and subjecting it to a database search without proper cause.

It's not too late to build privacy protections. The alternative is a life with no privacy.

Barry Steinhardt is associate director of the American Civil Liberties Union.

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Curb that candid camera

USA Today
04/19/2001 - Updated 04:05 AM ET
http://www.usatoday.com/news/comment/2001-04-19-nceditf.htm

Most people don't walk into Wal-Mart or Kroger expecting to see James Bond technology, but that's what they'll find in those and other retailers in dozens of states. Customers step through the sliding glass doors and find an innocuous-looking machine that can identify them with only a picture. Click. Welcome to Wal-Mart, Mr. Smith.

The retailers are a step ahead of such technology leaders as NASA and Microsoft in using "facial recognition technology." The device is part of a check-cashing machine, which poses little risk of a surprise privacy invasion. Customers will have to sign up to be part of the program.

But civil liberties advocates warn sternly of trouble ahead. While their demand for strict regulations overreaches, their predictions are well worth considering. Technology that's capable of invading privacy generally gets used to doing just that, no matter how innocent its original purpose.

Companies have used pre-employment drug testing as a cover for pregnancy tests and used DNA test results to discriminate. Electronic tollbooths meant to speed passage have instead produced records that end up in divorce court, among other places. In each case, a new technology led to unexpected invasions of privacy.

So far, facial-recognition technology hasn't been applied in particularly objectionable ways. The most controversial so far was at the last Super Bowl, where local police checked a digital snapshot of every fan entering the stadium against a high-tech database of fugitive criminals and suspects. Ticket holders never knew.

NASA plans to use the technology as a security check when its workers access data from their home computers. Microsoft wants in as a way to make e-commerce safer. Similar software is already in use in Illinois to catch those seeking fake driver's licenses, and in Massachusetts, New York and New Jersey to cut down on welfare fraud. Kentucky is considering another system to bolster its gun-background checks.

All good.

The problem lies in what might come next. Stores today track and sell information on their customers' buying habits by getting them to accept discount cards. The customers are willingly selling their privacy. Facial-recognition technology makes that step unnecessary. If broadly deployed, the technology would allow tracking of people's activities and whom they associate with.

Yet there are no federal rules for the use of the technology.

Two measures could mitigate the risk:

• Disclosure: When a camera is installed, its purpose should be disclosed prominently.

• Limited record keeping: When police use the device, irrelevant information must be quickly discarded. The technology is a boon if used to locate and apprehend criminals, but a problem when it creates an easily searchable record of who walked past a particular camera.

A harder question is how to curb a slowly growing private market in tracking personal habits and whereabouts. At the very least, businesses should adhere to already-adopted standards preserving the "right of individuals to limit the distribution of data beyond the stated purposes."

Those curbs on facial-recognition technology won't satisfy privacy advocates, but they could deter wholesale invasions of privacy before anyone is hurt. Stepping outside any one of them, as happened at the Super Bowl, is an invitation to more strict regulation.

---

U.S., China wrap up talks over spy plane

USA Today
04/19/2001 - Updated 05:41 PM ET
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2001-04-18-china.htm

BEIJING (AP) - U.S. and Chinese negotiators ended two days of talks with no sign of agreement Thursday on the return of an American spy plane or Beijing's demand to end surveillance flights near its coast. The chief U.S. negotiator described the second day of talks Thursday as productive but neither side would give details. The Americans had threatened to break off the meeting Wednesday, saying Chinese negotiators wouldn't seriously discuss the return of the U.S. plane.

"The sides have agreed to keep in touch, and future talks will be held at a time and place to be determined through diplomatic channels," Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Zhang Qiyue told reporters. The U.S. Embassy refused to say whether the talks were finished, or give other details.

China has held the U.S. Navy EP-3E surveillance plane, worth some $80 million, since it made an emergency landing April 1 on Hainan island in the South China Sea. The 24 crew members were released only after 11 days of protracted negotiations.

China wants the United States to take sole blame for the plane's collision with a Chinese fighter jet, whose pilot is missing and presumed dead. Beijing also wants an end to American surveillance flights near the Chinese coast.

Talks resumed Thursday only after U.S. Ambassador Joseph Prueher won a promise from Chinese officials to discuss the return of the American plane.

Deputy Undersecretary of Defense Peter F. Verga, leader of the eight-member U.S. team, sounded a positive note after the meeting ended.

"We covered all the items that were on the agenda, and I found today's session to be productive," Verga said.

The U.S. Embassy would not say what Prueher told Chinese officials. But a White House spokeswoman said Wednesday that he would convey a warning that the talks could fail without "productive discussion" about the return of the spy plane.

During the first day of talks, the top Chinese negotiator said China had "sufficient evidence" to prove the United States was to blame, the state newspaper China Daily said Thursday.

"The so-called evidence and speeches given by the U.S. side over the past few days do not hold water," Lu Shumin, head of the Foreign Ministry's North American affairs office, was quoted as saying.

On Thursday outside the U.S. Embassy in Beijing, a lone protester shouted against U.S. espionage for a few minutes before police stopped him.

The Bush administration has called the collision an accident. It insists the American pilot did not break the law because the plane was flying in international airspace.

China blames the U.S. plane, saying it suddenly rammed the Chinese jet.

China has accused the United States of duplicity in taking a harder line since winning the release of the plane's 24 crew members.

The tougher attitude will "lead to the Chinese government doubting whether the U.S. government will carry out agreements," the China Daily quoted international relations expert Yan Xuetong as saying.

The official newspaper also ran a list of "U.S. military mistakes." It included the February collision of a U.S. Navy submarine and a Japanese fishing boat off Hawaii and a 1998 accident where 20 skiers were killed in Italy after a U.S. Marine Corps fighter jet snapped the cable holding up their ski lift.

While American and Chinese negotiators met in Beijing, U.S. officials in Washington were weighing what weapons to sell Taiwan. The communist government considers the island a breakaway province, and has threatened to use force to capture it.

A senior administration official said Bush's foreign policy advisers preferred deferring sales of Aegis-equipped destroyers while providing Taiwan with other, less-advanced weapons.

The administration has tried to separate the weapons package from the dispute over U.S. spy flights. China bitterly resents the Taiwan arms sales.

The U.S. plane is believed to be at the Hainan island air base where it made its emergency landing. Satellite photos indicate China is examining the aircraft's top secret surveillance equipment.

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U.S. threatens to quit talks with Chinese

The Washington Times www.washtimes.com
4/19/01
Ben Barber
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20010419-626446.htm

The United States has threatened to walk out on further meetings in Beijing unless Chinese officials agree to discuss the return of a U.S. surveillance plane held since April 1. Early today, U.S. Ambassador to China Joseph W. Prueher visited the Chinese foreign ministry to inform officials there of the U.S. resolve.

The U.S. envoy was seen entering the ministry at 9 a.m. local time (8 p.m. EST) and leaving again after 45 minutes.

U.S. Embassy officials said the ambassador may issue a statement later, while the Chinese declined to comment on the meeting.

State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said yesterday the United Sates was resolved to pack up and go home unless the return of the U.S. plane is discussed.

"Nothing was settled today," he said of a 21/2-hour meeting at the Chinese Foreign Ministry yesterday.

The meetings are aimed at resolving the fate of the U.S. plane, U.S. surveillance flights off China´s coast and responsibility for the collision that left a Chinese jet and its pilot missing.

"There was no progress on the issue of return of the airplane," Mr. Boucher told reporters at the State Department.

" will tell them we are willing to continue this meeting but only if there is a productive discussion of this aircraft."

In a letter to China that secured the release of 24 U.S. fliers last week, Mr. Prueher said it was understood that yesterday´s meeting would "include discussion of the causes of the incident, possible recommendations whereby such collisions could be avoided in the future, development of a plan for prompt return of the EP-3 aircraft, and other related issues. We acknowledge your government´s intention to raise U.S. reconnaissance missions near China in the meeting."

The spokesman said yesterday that the United States was "willing to have another meeting, but only if the Chinese are willing to discuss in a constructive manner the issues in the letter that we sent them, including the return of our airplane.

"So we´ll have no news on further meetings until after we´ve had that meeting at the Foreign Ministry."

The U.S. team headed by Deputy Undersecretary of Defense Peter F. Verga was to return home tomorrow.

Mr. Boucher declined to describe the atmosphere of the meeting over what has become the biggest crisis in U.S.-Chinese relations since the accidental bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade in 1999. Before that, U.S. aircraft carriers were sent to protect Taiwan during intimidating Chinese missile tests in 1996.

A senior State Department official described the Chinese presentation yesterday as "polemical."

"They need to deal with the issues more seriously and not just use the meeting as a chance for more polemics," said the official, speaking on the condition of anonymity.

However, he noted that in previous discussions with the Chinese, "day two can be different from day one."

China specialists on Capitol Hill said the Bush administration -- by coming out and saying that the first day of the meetings has been a failure -- has shifted U.S. policy from that of the Clinton administration.

The Hill specialists said the Clinton team would have never characterized such a meeting with the Chinese as unproductive, even if it was.

"Our policy toward China is shifting from appeasement to deterrence," said author and China critic Bill Triplett, staff assistant to Sen. Robert F. Bennett, Utah Republican. "I see those straws in the wind."

Mr. Boucher said both sides used the meeting to present their differing views of the April 1 incident.

The United States believes its EP-3E intelligence-gathering plane was legally flying over international waters 60 miles off China´s coast when it was bumped by a tailing Chinese jet, whose pilot is now presumed lost at sea.

China had no right to detain the American crew for 11 days or to keep and inspect the American plane, which issued traditional emergency alerts before landing at Hainan island, say U.S. officials.

China, however, says the U.S. plane had no right to gather information inside its 200-mile offshore Exclusive Economic Zone.

It also says the plane made a sudden turn that caused the collision with the Chinese plane. And it says the U.S. plane landed illegally without verbal permission.

"Since there was not a productive discussion of the return of our airplane at the meeting today, we want to be reassured that they are willing to do that before we continue these discussions," Mr. Boucher said.

The Chinese did get to raise their concerns over the continuation of U.S. flights, he said.

"What we´re looking for is an attempt to address these in a more productive manner, a more straightforward manner, and to look at all the issues in the letter and not just to use it as a forum for restating views that we´ve heard before."

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Despite protests, China too spies over Asia
Beijing has widened the reach of its surveillance activity in recent years.

Christian Science Monitor
THURSDAY, APRIL 19, 2001
By Ann Scott Tyson
Special correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor
http://www.csmonitor.com/durable/2001/04/19/fpcon-natl.shtml

WASHINGTON - Like the stylized moves of a Beijing opera performer, China's protests over US Navy surveillance flights in the South China Sea contain a distinct element of theatrics.

China knows, for one, that the United States has no intention of halting the flights in the wake of the April 1 collision of a US EP-3 spy plane and a Chinese fighter jet, according to US and European intelligence experts.

Experts are skeptical of the Chinese complaints for another, more telling, reason: China uses the same eavesdropping tactics to track the US military in Asia, with older technology but growing intrusiveness.

"It's absolutely understood - we are doing things that nations do," says Ronald Montaperto, dean of the Pentagon-funded Asia Pacific Center for Security Studies in Honolulu. "There is a little bit of Kabuki in this," he says, borrowing an analogy from Japanese theater, "it's a bit of deliberate drama."

China is considered East Asia's No. 1 eavesdropper, mounting electronic intelligence-gathering equipment on everything from aircraft to rocky reefs, and from warships to fishing trawlers. It regularly uses such platforms to pick up radar signals and other communications, targeting a swath of countries from Indonesia, the Philippines, and Vietnam to Japan and South Korea, as well as US military operations in the region, experts say.

"Their primary concern is in the region, gathering intelligence against US ships and military facilities and monitoring some US naval exercises," says Jeffrey Richelson, a senior fellow at the National Security Archive in Washington.

Beijing has widened the reach of its electronic surveillance in recent years. Last year, for example, Tokyo complained of nearly three-dozen intrusions by Chinese naval ships into Japan's coastal economic zone, compared with only one or two in previous years. One goal of the missions was apparently to map the seabed for Chinese submarine operations, as China's coastal force expands to a blue-water navy.

A spike in surveillance activity

In recent years, China has also outfitted nine Y-8X planes with radars, radios, and other surveillance gear, which it operates "around US naval ships and exercises ... and US naval maneuvers," says Paul Beaver of the London-based Jane's Information Group, which publishes Jane's Defence Weekly.

The Chinese People's Liberation Army will try to use any information gained from the damaged EP-3 US Navy surveillance plane to upgrade its own air-reconnaissance capabilities, experts say. China's listening technology, although still "a generation behind the United States'," is "catching up," says Mr. Beaver.

"[They are] getting better all the time," says Mr. Montaperto.

Such technology is more advanced than Beijing's satellite data-gathering capabilities. "Their space intelligence program has been very limited," says Mr. Richelson. "With only about one satellite launch a year, and with each one carrying only so much film, they only get a few weeks of coverage."

At the same time, the eavesdropping activities are far less sophisticated than China's human intelligence gathering, which has been stepped up.

The Cox report, a congressional probe into Chinese spying and nuclear espionage released in 1999, recounts in detail how China's piece-by-piece, mosaic-style intelligence web has widened to include students, businesspeople, bureaucrats, and thousands of Chinese "front" companies in the United States.

Talks not going well

As of the time of writing, reports indicated that talks between US and Chinese officials in Beijing had not gone well and seemed unlikely to continue.

With no apparent progress made on returning the EP-3 surveillance plane to the US, the US ambassador, Joseph Prueher, was to meet with Chinese Foreign Ministry officials today to assess whether another round of talks would be worthwhile.

Experts say the American side will not entertain Beijing's demands that Washington curtail surveillance flights in international airspace around China.

"The real issue is, do we have the right to conduct these operations in international airspace, and the answer, unequivocally, is yes," says David Finkelstein, a retired military intelligence officer now at the Center for Naval Analyses Corp. in Virginia.

Still, he holds out hope that the two sides will at some point agree upon some "rules of the road" to prevent future incidents when Chinese jets intercept US surveillance planes.

"Unless we straighten out some rules of engagement and behavior, the potential for greater disasters is there," says Mr. Finkelstein.


-------- activists

In the Shadow of a Star

New York Times
Boldface Names
April 19, 2001
By JAMES BARRON
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/19/nyregion/19BOLD.html

The rock star of the month on SECRETARY OF STATE COLIN L. POWELL's calendar for April is SIR PAUL McCARTNEY. (Last month it was BONO.) Mr. McCartney and HEATHER MILLS are scheduled to meet with General Powell today to talk about minefield- clearing efforts. But Ms. Mills, who was involved in anti-mine work before she was involved with Mr. McCartney, is not happy about always getting second billing.

"It's like it's always `Paul McCartney's girlfriend, Heather Mills,'" she said. "I am my own person; I just get on with it." As for Mr. McCartney, she said, "He knows that by lending his name to anything, it's going to do nothing but help. The problem is everyone always wants him to come along to everything I do, and charity is not his work."

But her name was first on the invitation to a party tomorrow at RANDE GERBER'S bar, Cherry, at W New York-The Tuscany on East 39th Street. The hosts will be WILLIAM H. LUERS, the chairman and president of the United Nations Association of the United States, which runs the Adopt-a-Minefield program, and BARRY S. STERNLICHT, the president and chief executive of Starwood Hotels and Resorts International, which owns the W chain.

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Protesters barricade entrance to British farm

USA Today
04/19/2001 - Updated 10:57 AM ET
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/footandmouth/2001-04-19-protest.htm

LONDON (AP) - More than a hundred protesters on Thursday barricaded entrances to a farm run by learning disabled people to prevent the slaughter of their stock of healthy animals. The 100 sheep and 60 dairy cattle bred at Oaklands Park Farm in Gloucestershire were earmarked for slaughter after the highly contagious disease was found on a neighboring farm two weeks ago.

Oaklands Park Farm, run by the charity Camphill Village Trust, has so far tested negative for foot-and-mouth but is considered to have had potentially dangerous contacts with the farm next door.

Protesters say that, a week from now, the animals will have been shown to be free of the disease for two weeks, the incubation period of the disease, and should therefore be left alone.

Slaughter "is completely unnecessary and we are prepared to stay here until the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food comes," said Ken Watson, 58, from Gloucester, one of the protesters manning barricades at entrances to the farm.

With nearly 1,400 confirmed cases - and the tally rising daily - the government maintains its policy of culling all animals on farms adjacent to infected properties is the best way to beat the disease.

But managers of Oaklands Park say that would destroy a 25-year tradition of rearing animals that keeps the community in organically produced meat and vegetables.

"These animals are bred to work with people with learning disabilities who live at the farm. We have been calling the whole time to be allowed to vaccinate. This is what we believe we should be allowed to do," said farm coordinator Pat Thompson. She said there had been no signs of the disease since the farm was tested April 8.

The government held another round of talks Thursday with the National Farmers' Union about whether to begin a limited vaccination program in the worst-hit areas before animals are put out to spring pasture, a program designed to work alongside the cull.

The National Farmers' Union worries that vaccinating could shut Britain out of export markets for up to two years, as other countries will not accept meat and animals from a vaccinating country. Critics also argue that vaccination is not 100% effective, as inoculated animals can still carry the disease.

In the southwestern English county of Devon, one of the worst hit areas, vets questioned the government's policy of culling all cattle along with sheep on adjacent farms, saying sheep should be targeted because they are more difficult to diagnose.

"We feel they could divert the resources more profitably and more efficiently by concentrating on culling a two kilometer (1.2 mile) zone free of sheep around an infected premises," said Roger Cunningham, a vet from Okehampton who has written to the government expressing his concerns. He says he has the backing of around 50 other vets.

Cunningham said unlike cattle, sheep often did not show any symptoms of the disease even if they were carrying it, making it difficult to diagnose.

A total of 1.2 million animals have already been slaughtered - of which 400,000 remain to be disposed of - and another 575,000 await culling.

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USA Today
04/19/01
States
http://www.usatoday.com/news/states/all50.htm

Missouri

Kansas City - An outdoor billboard company has refused to run an advertisement by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals that criticizes the March of Dimes. The ad featured a blood-spattered dime and urged the end of cruel animal tests. The March of Dimes says it requires all funded research to meet strict ethical guidelines.

New York

Cornell - Students ended a six-day demonstration after Cornell University officials agreed to increase efforts to reduce greenhouse gases. Members of the Cornell Greens staged an around-the-clock vigil until the university promised to comply with the Kyoto Protocol, a 1997 U.N. accord that set pollution reduction levels.

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