------- Index of Articles

NUCLEAR
Rivals Compete to Buy Newport News Shipbuilding
General Dynamics Offers Newport Bid
Nordic Environment Ministers Protest Radioactive Emissions
S.Korea Discusses North as U.S. Launches War Games
Russia Official: No Missile Progress
U.S. Air Force Commander to Fly in Russian Bomber
ARGONNE NATIONAL LABORATORY CITED FOR NUCLEAR SAFETY VIOLATIONS
Close-up High stakes in Nevada

MILITARY
U.S. Donates Military Aid to Senegal
Global Arms Sales Rise Again, and the U.S. Leads the Pack
Developing Nations Buy $25B in Arms
Government forces agree to pull back
U.S. Drug Charges Doubled Since 1984
DEA Head Says No to Medical Marijuana
Scholars dispute Justice report on drug prison terms
Iranian Police Play Down Campaign Against 'Immorality'
Israel seeks deterrents to suicide bombers
Making Way for Pentagon Reform

OTHER
Inmate's Chosen Means of Execution Starts New Debate
Possible Federal Pullout Clouds Northeast States' Pollution Suits
Viability Of Stem Cell Plan Doubted
Doctors' Dirty Needles Spread Hepatitis in China
Bush Promises Help to Veterans Who Face Health-Care Backlog
AIDS Group to Sue South Africa
EU Expects U.S. to Comply with Tax Ruling
EU's secret network to spy on anti-capitalist protesters

ACTIVISTS
IMF Protesters File Suit Over 'Exclusion Zones'
Gulf War Veterans' Conference, October 5-7, Atlanta
Thousands to protest cutoff of federal water
Secret files chill foes of government


-------- NUCLEAR

-------- business

Rivals Compete to Buy Newport News Shipbuilding

By Greg Schneider
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, August 20, 2001; Page E14
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A33843-2001Aug19?language=printer

Northrop Grumman Corp. Chairman Kent Kresa was making the rounds at the Pentagon last week, and an oh-by-the-way topic kept coming up: his company's hostile bid to acquire Newport News Shipbuilding Inc.

The summer-long saga of the California-based builder of the B-2 bomber trying to take away the venerable shipyard from another suitor, General Dynamics Corp., getting closer to resolution, with government antitrust reviewers expected to deliver a decision around Labor Day.

Newport News Shipbuilding shareholders overwhelmingly favor the April 25 offer of $2.1 billion in cash and $500 million in assumed debt from Falls Church's General Dynamics. Even the Navy is said to have encouraged that deal as a means for cutting costs among its only two builders of nuclear-powered vessels.

Newport News Shipbuilding makes nuclear-fueled aircraft carriers, and it splits construction of Virginia-class nuclear submarines with the Electric Boat shipyard that General Dynamics owns in Connecticut.

Northrop Grumman is sparing no effort in trying to stop that deal and promote its own offer, which is for the same amount but mostly in stock. After buying Litton Industries Inc. earlier this year, Northrop is the Navy's primary builder of non-nuclear surface ships. Its Avondale Boat Yard Inc. in Louisiana builds amphibious assault ships, and Ingalls Shipbuilding in Mississippi makes destroyers.

Kresa argues that allowing Newport News Shipbuilding and General Dynamics to merge would not only end competition for nuclear-ship contracts; it would also put almost all Navy research dollars into a single company, making it hard for Northrop to compete even for non-nuclear ships.

He delivers his message in person, making visits to the Pentagon and Capitol Hill, and he has hired as consultants former defense officials with antitrust experience. The company even took the extraordinary step of releasing its antitrust briefing package to the media.

It is impossible to tell how effective the campaign has been, as officials at the departments of defense and justice are mum about their deliberations. But the review process has dragged on far longer than anticipated, leading some to speculate that the government is struggling to reconcile its own interests during a time when the military wants far more resources than the federal budget can provide.

"On the one hand, if you're worried about [industrial base] competition issues, that argues for Northrop Grumman. But if you're looking for efficiencies, that argues for General Dynamics," said Stuart McCutchan, who publishes the industry newsletter Defense Mergers & Acquisitions. "I wouldn't want to handicap it. It's really too close to call."

Last week, the Bush administration's weapons czar, E.C. Aldridge, the Undersecretary of Defense for Acquisitions, Technology and Logistics, told reporters that a resolution "could be weeks away; it could be months away."

Both companies recently signed an agreement with the government setting Sept. 4 as the earliest date that a purchase could close, and insiders say an announcement is likely by that date.

The Justice Department has final say and could approve one or both companies' offers, or neither. The Pentagon will make a recommendation to the Justice Department, and its wishes usually carry enormous weight on defense antitrust matters.

Aldridge said last week that he is leaving it to his staff to delve into the details of each company's proposal and that his own focus is on the big picture: "National security, and, of course . . . the health of the industrial base," he said. Aldridge also implied that costs are an inextricable part of the equation, saying he must ensure that whoever wins the competition has enough work to be able to "provide a quality product at a fair price."

In the end, Aldridge said, the outcome "will be aimed toward what is in the best interest of the Defense Department from a competitiveness point of view and industrial-health point of view."

Industry observers are keen to see how the Bush administration comes down on this. The Clinton administration torpedoed similar deals only two years ago, when both General Dynamics and the then-independent Litton tried to buy Newport News Shipbuilding, but they were rebuffed by the Pentagon.

Observers say several factors besides the White House occupant have changed since then.

Tops on the list is that the Navy is said to have been frustrated in its attempts to get Newport News Shipbuilding to hold down costs on aircraft carriers. In the current budgetary climate, with the military services competing for funding against tax cuts and a new emphasis on missile defense, cost-cutting is more important than ever.

"Surely an important part of the Navy's motivation in considering, if not inviting, General Dynamics' proposal is to discipline Newport News' performance on the cost of aircraft carriers," said a former high-ranking official in the Clinton Pentagon who asked not to be identified.

Known for his unflinching eye on the bottom line, General Dynamics Chairman Nicholas Chabraja has promised that he can carve out at least $2 billion in savings over 10 years by absorbing Newport News Shipbuilding. He also has won the support of Virginia Sen. John W. Warner (R), the powerful former Armed Services chairman, in part by promising no major job cuts at Newport News Shipbuilding during the next four years.

Otherwise, Chabraja has kept a low profile during the merger deliberations, declining to talk about the deal during Pentagon visits. He already has the approval of the Newport News Shipbuilding board of directors, and enough Newport News shareholders have cast their votes with General Dynamics to seal the transaction as soon as government approval comes through.

But Northrop Grumman advocates argue that shareholders always endorse a monopoly when they stand to gain from it and that the Navy will suffer in the long run because General Dynamics will have no incentive to hold down costs as the only builder of nuclear vessels. As an example, they cite the Navy's frustration with Newport News Shipbuilding over carrier costs -- a monopoly, they say, with no incentive to economize.

"This issue of a merger to monopoly is sort of anti-American," Kresa said. If the Bush administration decides "that near-term savings are more important than competition . . . this would be a substantial change in policy . . . that has an implication for all American industry."

He said Northrop Grumman could get the same amount of savings out of Newport News Shipbuilding as General Dynamics says it can get, but Kresa's claim is based on projections. Northrop Grumman hasn't been allowed to perform due diligence, because Newport News is cooperating with General Dynamics.

Officials at General Dynamics are, for the most part, exasperated by Kresa's arguments. A merger with Newport News Shipbuilding would not create a monopoly because "there is no competition today on nuclear submarines," company spokesman Kendell Pease said. With only one or two of the $2 billion Virginia-class submarines being built each year, he said, there simply isn't enough work to sustain competing shipyards.

"Basically, the government approved this combination in 1997 when it told [Newport News Shipbuilding and General Dynamics] to team together," Pease said.

And, in fact, ordinary market concern about monopolies has not always applied to U.S. shipyards, which are guarded by the Navy.

"The Pentagon has tended to play pretty rough with its shipbuilding base and shareholders," analyst McCutchan said. "It has tended to be not particularly considerate of the fact that these are publicly held companies."

----

General Dynamics Offers Newport Bid

August 20, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/business/AP-General-Dynamics-Newport-News.html?searchpv=aponline

FALLS CHURCH, Va. (AP) -- General Dynamics on Monday extended its $2.1 billion tender offer for all outstanding shares of common stock of Newport News Shipbuilding Inc. to Aug. 31.

General Dynamics, based in Falls Church, said it made the extension because it is still waiting for government regulators to say whether they will approve the merger.

As of Aug. 17, the previous deadline, more than a majority of Newport News shares had been tendered. Newport News is based in Newport News, Va.

The proposed merger, announced in April, has drawn scrutiny from the Defense and Justice departments, which have expressed antitrust concerns.

The deal would make General Dynamics the sole manufacturer of nuclear Navy aircraft carriers and submarines. Two years ago, the Pentagon scuttled a merger between the two companies.

Los Angeles-based Northrop Grumman, General Dynamic's primary competitor for Navy shipbuilding contracts, also has offered $2.1 billion for Newport News.

Newport News executives have said they prefer General Dynamics' offer because it is a cash deal. The Northrop offer is 75 percent stock and 25 percent cash.

In morning trading on the New York Stock Exchange, Newport News shares were off 6 cents at $64.64, General Dynamics was off 45 cents at $81.26 and Northrop Grumman was down 9 cents at $80.90.

On the Net:
Newport News Shipbuilding: http://www.nns.com
General Dynamics: http://www.generaldynamics.com

-------- europe

Nordic Environment Ministers Protest Radioactive Emissions

August 20, 2001
ENS
http://ens-news.com/ens/aug2001/2001L-08-20-01.html

IVALO, Finland, Environment ministers from the five Nordic countries today wrote a joint formal protest to British Prime Minister Tony Blair over continuing radioactive emissions from the nuclear reprocessing plant at Sellafield. The ministers expressed grave concern at prospective increases in permitted emissions levels from Sellafield.

The protest, formulated and agreed during a meeting of the Nordic Council in Ivalo, Finland, follows reports in the Norwegian media yesterday that increases in levels of radioactive technetium-99 have now been detected off the far northern coast of Norway, in the Arctic reaches of the Barents Sea and off Svalbard (Spitsbergen).

Norwegian Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg (Photo courtesy government of Norway)

Norway has raised the issue of Sellafield with the British government several times, most recently on August 12, when Norwegian Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg wrote to Prime Minister Blair urging the UK to reduce radioactive emissions.

In March, Norway's environment minister repeated calls for Britain to close its nuclear reprocessing plant at Sellafield after a report that levels of Sellafield derived radioactivity along the Norwegian coast have increased six-fold since 1996.

The Nordic ministers last filed a joint protest in 1998, in a letter to UK Environment Minister Michael Meacher.

The issue is expected to be taken up again tomorrow at a meeting of Barents Region ministers in northern Norway.

At the ministerial meeting of the OSPAR Convention for the Protection of the Marine Environment of the North East Atlantic, held in Sintra, Portugal in July 1998, 15 governments and the European Commission signed an agreement to end the discharge of radioactive substances into the sea and air.

Nuclear reprocessing involves the extraction of plutonium from spent nuclear fuel. Reprocessing is the major source of radioactive discharges to both sea and air in the OSPAR region.

The Sintra agreement says that concentrations in the environment should reach "close to zero" by 2020.

Sunset over the Barents Sea north of Scandinavia (Photo courtesy University of Rhode Island Natural Resources and Environmental Management)

Because many radioactive substances, such as plutonium or technetium-99, last far longer than 20 years, most reprocessing discharges must be stopped now if they are to result in lower environmental concentrations by 2020.

At their meeting in Ivalo, the Nordic environment ministers also considered environmental co-operation with Russia, including the financing perspective and the promotion of environmental projects amongst the northern European countries.

The ministers discussed climate policy and, linked to this, Nordic support for energy projects in the developing countries as part of the implementation of the Kyoto climate protocol.

The participating environment ministers are Satu Hassi from Finland, Kjell Larsson from Sweden, Svend Auken from Denmark, Siri Bjerke from Norway, Siv Fridleifsdottir from Iceland, Rókur Tummasarson from the Faroes, Alfred Jakobsen from Greenland and Sune Eriksson from Aland.

-------- korea

S.Korea Discusses North as U.S. Launches War Games

August 20, 2001
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-korea-north.html?searchpv=reuters

SEOUL (Reuters) - Major U.S.-Korean war games opened on Monday as South Korean President Kim Dae-jung vowed to boost security and strengthen diplomatic ties with major powers to underpin his drive to revive stalled ties with North Korea.

South Korea must ``prepare a solid security system while forging a peace process through dialogue,'' Kim told a special meeting of the National Security Council of senior cabinet ministers called to ponder policy toward the Communist North.

``Internationally, although the Cold War has been over for 10 years, the structure of Cold War persists on the Korean peninsula,'' the presidential Blue House quoted him as saying.

Kim said South Korea's security could be assured with a combination of South Korean-U.S. military cooperation and stronger diplomatic ties with China, Japan, Russia and the United States -- whose interests intersect on the Korean peninsula.

The ministers also considered how to deal with more than 100 South Korean activists who flouted the Seoul government's policy and attended a rally in the North Korean capital last week. They return on Tuesday to Seoul, where they face criminal investigation for breaking laws banning pro-Communist activities.

ANNUAL WAR GAMES

The security meeting coincided with the launch of annual U.S.-South Korean ``Ulchi Focus Lens'' exercises designed to counter threats from Pyongyang. The set of war games and computer simulation held in August each year is designed to prepare against possible attack from North Korea.

The exercises run until August 31.

Drills involving South Korean troops and 10,000 U.S. soldiers from bases in South Korea, Japan, Guam and the United States were ``designed to evaluate and improve combined and joint coordination, procedures, plans and systems for the conduct of contingency operations,'' the U.S. military said in a statement.

Seoul, which scaled down last year's Ulchi Focus Lens drills to avoid disrupting the thaw in North-South relations, has given the exercises little publicity so far this year.

The two Koreas remain technically at war under a 1953 armed truce that has kept their border sealed shut and fortified.

COURTING RUSSIA, SLAPPING AMERICA

As Seoul debated its next move on Pyongyang, North Korean state media trumpeted leader Kim Jong-il's visit to Russia.

The Korea Central News Agency (KCNA) called Kim's three-week railway tour of Pyongyang's Cold War ally which ended on Saturday ``a landmark event which brought about a new turning point in consolidating and developing the traditional friendship.''

KCNA said Kim and Russian President Vladimir Putin ``hit the United States on the face'' with a joint declaration slamming U.S. plans to build an anti-missile shield.

Pyongyang has refused to deal with Seoul since March, when President Bush put Washington's diplomatic approaches to the North on hold for a review.

The North-South stalemate has undercut Kim Dae-jung at home, where a conservative opposition has attacked him for giving too much aid and diplomatic support to North Korea for little return.

South Korean Foreign Minister Han Seung-soo was quoted as telling a luncheon with domestic journalists he remained optimistic Kim Jong-il would visit Seoul as he promised Kim Dae-jung at their historic summit in Pyongyang in June 2000.

Han told the reporters Kim Jong-il may be in discussion with China. Chinese President Jiang Zemin is expected to visit Pyongyang next month, although no formal date has been announced.

-------- missile defense

Russia Official: No Missile Progress

August 20, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Russia-US.html?searchpv=aponline

MOSCOW (AP) -- The chairman of the Russian parliament's defense committee said no progress was made in his talks Monday with U.S. Undersecretary of State John Bolton on the two countries' dispute over Washington's plans for a national anti-missile shield.

``We have not heard from the Americans a clear-cut explanation of what it is that is not to their liking in the (1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile) treaty,'' Andrei Nikolayev was quoted by the Interfax news agency as saying.

The treaty prohibits national missile defenses as a way to discourage nuclear attack.

He said Bolton asked him what Russia's response would be if the United States pulls out of the treaty, which American officials have said could happen in a matter of months. Nikolayev said Russian officials are preparing a response, but did not say what it would be.

President Vladimir Putin has said Russia would pull out of other arms controls treaties and could equip existing single-warhead missiles with multiple warheads.

Washington says it wants an anti-missile shield to defend it against attacks by small states such as North Korea and Iraq, and that the ABM treaty is a relic of the Cold War. Moscow opposes changes to the treaty, saying it is a guarantor of international stability, and that withdrawing from it would prompt a new arms race that Russia could not afford.

The key meeting in Bolton's weeklong trip to Moscow will be with Deputy Foreign Minister Georgy Mamedov on Tuesday.

Meanwhile, a senior U.S. air force delegation arrived in Moscow on Monday for talks on military cooperation.

The head of the delegation, Lt. Gen. Thomas Keck of the U.S. Air Force, will fly on a Russian nuclear bomber, the Tu-22MZ, after training on flight simulators, the ITAR-Tass and Interfax news agencies reported.

The group will also meet with the head of Russia's Air Force, Gen. Anatoly Kornukov, and visit aircraft bases in Ryazan, Engels and Saltsty, the reports said. The visit runs until Aug. 25.

-------- russia

U.S. Air Force Commander to Fly in Russian Bomber

August 20, 2001
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-russia-usa.html?searchpv=reuters

MOSCOW (Reuters) - A senior U.S. air force general will fly in a frontline Russian strategic nuclear bomber later this week during a six-day stay designed to boost military-to-military contacts, officials said.

Thomas Keck, who arrived in Moscow on Monday, will visit at least two major airbases housing Russia's strategic air forces, Russian and U.S. officials said.

Keck was to meet the head of the Russian air force, General Anatoly Kornukov, and the commander of Russia's strategic air forces, General Mikhail Oparin, the RIA news agency said.

He was also scheduled to visit the city of Engels, in the Volga region, where one of Russia's tactical bomber squadrons is based and the Ryazan air force base where pilots for Russian strategic forces are trained.

U.S. officials confirmed that Keck had been invited to take a flight in a Tu-22 ``Backfire'' strategic bomber. Keck has himself flown U.S. bombers, including the B-2 ``Stealth'' aircraft and the B-52.

A top U.S. arms official flies into Moscow this week for talks with Russian officials hungry for pledges on nuclear arms cuts that could clear the way for a deal on missile defense.

John Bolton, U.S. undersecretary of state for arms control, will meet Deputy Foreign Minister Georgy Mamedov on Tuesday -- the fifth top U.S. official to visit Moscow in a month.

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

-------- illinois

ARGONNE NATIONAL LABORATORY CITED FOR NUCLEAR SAFETY VIOLATIONS

August 20, 2001
ENS
http://ens-news.com/ens/aug2001/2001L-08-20-09.html

WASHINGTON, DC, The Department of Energy (DOE) has cited the University of Chicago, operator of the Energy Department's Argonne National Laboratory in Argonne, Illinois, for violations of rules and procedures designed to assure nuclear safety.

The laboratory is exempted from fines required under federal nuclear safety laws. If it were not exempt, the civil penalty associated with the violations would have been $165,000.

The violations took place in October 2000 when there was an uncontrolled release of radon as workers were doing decontamination and decommissioning work at a former nuclear facility. As a result, seven workers received unplanned exposures to radioactive material.

While the radiation doses were well below regulatory limits and do not portend current or future health impacts, the DOE seeks to minimize any radiological exposure to workers.

A Preliminary Notice of Violation issued by the DOE focuses on activities that could serve as precursors to more serious incidents. The laboratory was cited for:

Insufficient identification that on site, subcontractor radiation safety personnel needed an improved understanding of the hazards associated with processing radioactive waste; Insufficient planning, review and conduct work activities involving neutralizing acids in a mixed waste (radioactive and hazardous) solution to minimize exposure potential; and Inefficient employment of effective administrative controls to keep radiation exposures as low as possible.

The DOE also cited the University of Chicago's failure to resolve repeated concerns affecting nuclear work and ensuring effective management assessments of its nuclear activities.

In response, Argonne has developed a comprehensive plan which addresses the deficiencies and has implemented 63 corrective actions in areas ranging from hazards identification, training and workplace planning to enhancing the practice of maintaining radiation exposure to "as low as reasonably achievable."

The laboratory is also implementing a program of management assessments expected to be complete by October 31.

The Price-Anderson Amendments Act of 1988 requires DOE to undertake regulatory enforcement actions against contractors for violations of DOE's nuclear safety requirements. This enforcement program is designed to impose substantial penalties for minor events, in order to prevent more serious problems.

More information is available at: http://www.eh.doe.gov/enforce

-------- nevada

Close-up High stakes in Nevada:
Future of nuclear energy in U.S. hinges on waste-storage decision

The Seattle Times Company
Nation & World :
Monday, August 20, 2001
By Scott Canon Knight Ridder Newspapers
http://archives.seattletimes.nwsource.com/cgi-bin/texis/web/vortex/display?slug=yucca20&date=20010820

AMARGOSA VALLEY, Nev. - Just watching jackrabbits jerk across the bleak and baked landscape above the tunnel most likely to swallow America's nuclear leftovers is enough to parch the throat.

And though rain is uncommon here - 7 inches a year on average - it does fall and work its way ever so slowly through the few tight faults and fissures in the volcanic rock of Yucca Mountain.

The rugged few who populate the Amargosa Valley worry that the rain is enough to penetrate the work of both man and nature to create a disaster neither could undo.

"The mountain leaks like a sieve," said Kalynda Tilges, an activist joined with other Nevadans in trying to stop Yucca Mountain from being stuffed with nuclear waste.

As those locals worry about contamination in their back yard far in the future, they emphasize that getting highly radioactive waste to Yucca Mountain means shipping it by your front porch tomorrow.

Defenders of Yucca Mountain's ability to contain the country's nuclear detritus counter that it will be safe - and certainly safer than leaving the waste scattered across the United States at nuclear plants.

Environmentalists and others, they insist, simply sound false alarms about the Nevada site as a ploy to keep the nuclear industry from opening new plants - not because the science suggests real flaws in the plans for Yucca Mountain.

"Sure, there's risk with anything," said Cash Jaszczak, who works with one of the contractors studying the mountain. "But this thing will work. The geology is right, and the technology is right."

Yucca Mountain has been tagged for more than 20 years as a possible waste site. Should Congress approve the plan, a nearly constant flow of shipments would start in 2010.

Yet the issue is far from settled.

President Bush needs the site approved if his plan to recharge the nation's electricity supply with more nuclear plants is going to be realized. But the second most powerful Senate Democrat is from Nevada - positioned and determined to block the waste plan.

Environmentalists argue it is unsafe to move the waste along Interstate 70 or to store it inside Nevada rock. They multiply the annual 7 inches of rain by 10,000 years - the time federal law says the site must hold tight - factor in the fissures of the mostly solid rock, and say the mountain could become a radioactive disaster.

Yucca Mountain champions respond that almost no water passes through the mountain. What does trickle through moves at the pace of the ages. Should it penetrate the storage chambers, it would confront the sturdiest of tanks holding waste already transformed into solids of glass or ceramic.

Think, they say, of trying to dissolve your toilet in water.

The stakes in the scientific debate rank no smaller than the future of nuclear power.

Until a waste site is approved, says nearly everyone in the field, no utility is likely to plunge ahead with plans to build another nuclear plant. After all, who wants to be responsible for looking after highly toxic trash that federal law says must be kept safe for eons?

Crossroads for the industry

"Waste disposal is the biggest issue facing the industry," said Michael Mariotte, the executive director of the Nuclear Information and Resource Service, an anti-nuclear power, anti-Yucca Mountain group.

But the industry says objections to storing waste at Yucca Mountain grow from opposition to nuclear power - not from the $4.5 billion spent on studies for the site. Its view is that the mountain doesn't leak and that the engineering at the site will keep radiation locked in casks as tight as anything man has designed.

"We see it as purely a political issue," said Melanie White, spokeswoman for the Nuclear Energy Institute. Its members - in costs passed on to virtually anyone in America who uses electricity - have contributed to a fund that has spent $6 billion to study waste disposal and has set aside $16 billion to eventually operate a site.

Although the newest nuclear plant started kicking out power in 1996, the last order for such a generator came during the Carter administration.

The federal government started out studying a handful of possible repositories - places in Washington state, Texas and Kansas. But several years ago in what is described around here as the "Screw Nevada Bill," Congress told the Department of Energy to put all its effort into Yucca Mountain.

The site is remote - Las Vegas, the closest metropolitan area, sits 100 miles away - and in an area where the acreage is largely undeveloped and government-owned.

Next door sits Nellis Air Force Base - arid ground pockmarked by years of use as a bombing range - and the Nevada Test Site, where America for years tested the might of its nuclear warheads.

But water wells drawing from an underground reservoir 1,000 feet below the Amargosa Valley turn patches of the desert - virtually invisible from atop Yucca Mountain - a luminescent green. They produce fields of grain, nurture orchards and replenish dairy cattle by the thousands, with each animal slurping up to 50 gallons of water a day.

Nevadans see the site as a choice made of political convenience - believing a sparsely populated state was picked because it lacked much clout to fight back. They see it as unfair because no nuclear plants sit in the state. (During peak demand periods, Nevadans pull a small amount of their electricity from nuclear plants in other Western states. Nuclear plants churn out about one-fifth of the nation's electricity.)

"People look out on that mountaintop, and they talk about how desolate and uninhabited it is out here," said pistachio farmer Ralph McCracken, setting up a line he has become fond of. "I guess that makes me an uninhabitant."

Both sides of the issue expect the Department of Energy to tell President Bush this year that Nevada can safely hold the country's nuclear waste. Bush, in turn, is expected to agree and send the matter to Congress.

Conceivably, that could lead to a license application to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission by 2003, approval as soon as 2005 and operation by 2010.

Congressional arena

The consensus is that Bush could coax the Republican-led House his way. The Senate won't prove so easy.

When Democrats seized control there earlier this year, Sen. Harry Reid of Nevada became chairman of a key appropriations committee. Opposition to Yucca Mountain is mandatory for political success in Nevada.

Attending a recent fund-raising event for Reid, Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle vowed that the Democrats would not let Yucca Mountain consent move ahead.

Indeed, in mid-July the Senate passed a resolution slashing in half the money for continuing operations at Yucca Mountain.

The Nuclear Energy Institute's president, Joe Colvin, described the move as a blow to "scientific decision-making." The anti-nuke lobby, meanwhile, cheered.

So the outcome of the 2002 congressional elections could determine whether the nation is ready to open its first permanent nuclear-waste dump. Decades ago, fission was trumpeted as an inexhaustible font of the country's power needs - a source of electricity that would be "too cheap to meter."

But put into practice, nuclear energy proved something short of a power panacea. After a partial core meltdown at the Three Mile Island plant in Pennsylvania, far tighter regulations sent the cost of building and erecting the plants soaring.

De facto dumps

Now the dilemma of disposal nags at the industry. Consider the Callaway plant run by AmerenUE in central Missouri. As it generates enough electricity to power 750,000 homes, the nuclear generator there has new fuel-rod assemblies put in place every 18 months.

When that happens, spent fuel-rod assemblies - the nuclear waste - move through a short indoor canal into a pool about 50 feet deep turned a surreal teal by neutron-absorbing boron.

Each spent fuel assembly is made up of pencil-thick metal rods filled with eraser-sized pellets of waste. Bundled together they measure 12 feet long by 8-1/2 inches wide and stand racked together vertically in the pool.

When the plant opened in 1984, plans called for beginning to move some of the waste by 2004. But no one expects a nuclear dump open by then. So two years ago the plant rearranged the underwater racks more tightly - now the assemblies have a quarter-inch to spare for a fuel assembly instead of an inch. The resulting setup means Callaway has room for the waste it will have created through 2024, when its license is due to expire.

"We don't have any crisis," said John Blosser, the utility's manager of regulatory affairs at the plant. "But it's a long-term issue that's pretty important. We'll need to get rid of it eventually."

Plants across the country have moved their older waste into dry casks outdoors, and some waste has been shipped from older plants with little storage space to newer plants with room.

So, contrary to the plans of the industry in its infancy, the plants have become de facto dumps for storing their own waste.

Critics of the Yucca Mountain idea say that for now, the safest thing is to leave the waste where it is, wait for the scientific understanding of nuclear waste to mature and move the stuff with more confidence later.

"The plants are already dumps. Keep it there," said Wenonah Hauter, director of energy and environment programs for the anti-nuclear Public Citizen. "Making thousands of shipments only makes things worse."

Two plans - at best, preliminary - call for moving the waste to Yucca Mountain either over highways or mostly by rail.

In transit

"We'll be prepared and safe here for anything that comes near," said Stephen Cloobeck, who is leading the ad hoc Save Nevada group of businesses and casino interests lobbying against waste storage at Yucca Mountain. "But is every town along these routes ready for a nuclear disaster? Are their fire departments prepared? Anything we do here, you better have ready in your town."

The nuclear industry and the Department of Energy have great faith in the durability of the shipping casks. They've doused prototypes in burning fuel and rammed them with locomotives running full tilt. Each test, they say, has proved them practically indestructible.

High-level nuclear waste is already shipped in the country. Most of it comes from military submarine reactors, and some shipments involve moving waste from one plant to another. Of about 2,000 shipments - typically taking shorter routes than to Nevada - eight have been involved in accidents that released small amounts of radioactivity.

That accident number serves as fodder for both sides. Nuclear critics cite the number as evidence that sooner or later something will go more seriously wrong. Boosters counter that accidents were expected and that there has been no leak of truly dangerous radiation, and no leak at all since 1981.

If waste ever arrives at Yucca Mountain, it will be placed in chambers 25 feet tall carved from the side of a five-mile underground tunnel. Plans call for the chambers to be filled with 70,000 metric tons of waste over 24 years before being plugged up with concrete.

Now there is only the tunnel, chewed out of the mountain to test the rock.

Train tracks run down its center, a conveyor belt along its side. Barrel-size ventilation tubes hang from overhead. Near the tunnel's deepest probe into Yucca Mountain - the rock is really more of a ridge in a desert mountain range - a sealed room roasts with electric heaters around the clock.

The heaters are standing in for nuclear waste. Once casts are packed in and the site sealed off, scientists predict the heat from their radioactivity will cook the rock so much that the tiny drops of water trapped in the rock will boil for an estimated 1,565 years.

Department of Energy scientists expect that heat will push the water away from the chambers and dry out the rock while the waste gradually loses its radioactivity.

If water does drip into the chambers, it will first hit thick plates of titanium - drip shields draped over the casks like high-tech carports as part of a heavily engineered series of deliberately redundant structures aimed at protecting the waste.

Critics seize on the faith put in those systems as a chief flaw in making a nuclear dump out of Yucca Mountain. The idea, they point out, was to use the existing rock for safety. Man-made reinforcements were added to make up for the faults and fissures that earthquakes have created over time.

"We believe that (the Department of Energy) has virtually conceded all of the site suitability concerns that we've raised," said Bob Loux, the executive director of the Nevada Agency for Nuclear Projects. "So now they're trying to beef up the container."

Loux said faith should not be put into something required by law to last 10,000 years - and to hold materials such as plutonium 239, which has a half-life of 24,000 years - when nothing man-made has been tested beyond a fraction of that.

Government nuclear engineers such as Richard Spence - who like to call Yucca Mountain the world's most-studied real estate - concede that for the first 10 millenniums the chief protection from pollution will be human engineering rather than the natural rock barrier.

"But this isn't something that's just thrown together," Spence said. There are intense tests of materials. Those combine with myriad computer models, hundreds of test wells and the massive hillside tunnel that plumbs Yucca Mountain. "This will be safe."

The natives are restless

Yet with every draft environmental-impact statement, transportation preview or public hearing that Yucca Mountain's scientists crank out, nearby residents find cause for worry and skepticism.

Ed Goedhart manages Ponderosa Dairies, which consumes a third of the water used in the valley to keep roughly 8,000 Holsteins fit and productive. Much of the milk is marketed as organic, so Goedhart grows anxious that the dairy's milk would take on even the perception of contamination.

"We're worried that the decision was made long ago to put (the waste) here," Goedhart said. "It's the needs of the many put before the needs of a few."

-------- MILITARY

-------- africa

U.S. Donates Military Aid to Senegal

August 20, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Senegal-US-Arms.html

DAKAR, Senegal (AP) -- The U.S. government donated military equipment worth nearly $5 million to Senegal Monday to help it prepare to send peacekeepers to the troubled West African nation of Sierra Leone.

Military vehicles, machine-guns, mortars, tents, helmets and other equipment were delivered to the Senegalese army during a ceremony at Thies air base, about 43 miles from the capital, Dakar.

The equipment, worth about $4.8 million, was donated under a U.S. program called Operation Focus Relief. Earlier this month, 650 Senegalese soldiers completed a 10-week training course given by 70 U.S. Army Special Forces troops as part of the program.

The Senegalese troops will soon depart for Sierra Leone, where they will bolster a 12,000-strong U.N. mission that has begun deploying cautiously across the country to secure a fragile peace deal.

Sierra Leone's rebels have gained a reputation for brutality, killing and maiming tens of thousands of civilians since launching an insurgency a decade ago.

The United States spends about $20 million a year on a separate program that provides peacekeeping instruction and non-lethal equipment to a handful of African nations committed to democracy on the continent.

The goal is to train national battalions that could be quickly melded into a pan-African force to handle humanitarian disasters and prevent violence like the 1994 massacre of a half-million people in Rwanda.

So far, close to 8,000 troops have received at least initial training in eight countries -- Kenya, Senegal, Malawi, Ivory Coast, Uganda, Ghana, Benin and Mali.

Senegal participated in the first multinational exercises held in Dakar in July.

-------- arms sales

Global Arms Sales Rise Again, and the U.S. Leads the Pack

New York Times
August 20, 2001
By THOM SHANKER
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/08/20/international/20ARMS.html?searchpv=nytToday

WASHINGTON, Aug. 18 - International arms sales grew 8 percent last year, to nearly $36.9 billion, with the United States further consolidating its stature as the supplier of choice, especially in developing countries, according to a new Congressional report.

American manufacturers signed contracts for just under $18.6 billion, or about half of all weapons sold on the world market during 2000, with 68 percent of the American weapons bought by developing countries.

Russia followed, with $7.7 billion in sales, then France with $4.1 billion, Germany with $1.1 billion, Britain with $600 million, China with $400 million and Italy with $100 million.

The statistics are contained in a study, "Conventional Arms Transfers to Developing Nations, 1993- 2000," published by the Congressional Research Service, an arm of the Library of Congress. The report, updated each year, is one of the most authoritative resources on weapons sales available to the public.

The author, Richard F. Grimmett, notes in an introduction that developing nations remain the largest market for weapons, and a growing one.

"Despite global changes since the cold war's end, the developing world continues to be the primary focus of foreign arms sales activity by conventional weapons suppliers," wrote Mr. Grimmett, a specialist in national defense at the research service.

Worldwide arms sales rose in 2000 for the third year in a row. The previous year, international weapons sales were nearly $34 billion, when measured in constant year 2000 dollars. The value of sales agreements with developing nations was $25.4 billion in 2000, the highest in constant dollars since 1994.

The two leaders in arms sales, the United States and Russia, both increased their new contracts in 2000.

The report is studiously nonpartisan. But its findings will doubtless offer more material for human rights and arms control organizations that criticize the American government - Democratic and Republican administrations - for preaching peaceful relations abroad while allowing American contractors to continue arming the world.

Certain details also underscore national security challenges for the new Bush administration.

The study documents a small but tangible supplier-buyer relationship between Russia and Iran during a time when President Bush is pressing Moscow to end the Antiballistic Missile Treaty. One inducement that administration officials said they might put on the table is to buy Russian interceptors for a missile shield; another would be to offer joint development for high-technology sensors, communications systems or "kill vehicles" of an eventual missile system.

At the same time, however, administration officials express concerns that a Russia-Iran arms relationship could compromise American technological secrets shared with Russia, in addition to destabilizing the region.

There are two ways to track the flow of arms: by sales contracts and by deliveries.

The study found that between 1997 and 2000, Russia agreed to sell Iran $300 million in weapons, measured in constant 2000 dollars. During that same period, Russia delivered to Iran $800 million in arms.

"In late 2000, Russia served public notice that it again intended to pursue major arms sales with Iran, despite objections from the United States," the report states.

The administration's arguments for a missile shield beyond the limits of the ABM Treaty cite Iraq and North Korea as the major threats, and as the report notes, "Iraq was once a major purchaser of advanced weaponry from Russia," but not since the Persian Gulf war in 1991.

"Russia would clearly pursue new major weapons deals with Iraq, if current U.N. sanctions on Iraq that ban Iraqi arms purchases are lifted," the report states.

Russia's principal clients for weapons are India and China. But Moscow enters into joint production deals with those nations, which raises the possibility that eventually they will make the arms domestically, curtailing purchases despite Russia's desire to earn hard currency.

The report also cautions on China's role in the arms market, stating, "With a need for hard currency, and some military products (especially missiles) that some developing countries would like to acquire, China can present an important obstacle to efforts to stem proliferation of advanced missile systems to some areas of the developing world where political and military tensions are significant."

After reaching a peak of $2.7 billion in weapons sales in 1999, China dropped to $400 million last year. Pakistan remained a major buyer.

The increase in sales by the United States, from $12.9 billion in 1999 to nearly $18.6 billion, was powered by a $6.4 billion sale of 80 F-16 fighter jets to the United Arab Emirates.

The Emirates, by virtue of its blockbuster purchase of jets from the United States, led the developing world in signing weapons contracts in 2000, with $7.4 billion. India, which signed $4.8 billion in sales deals, ranked second, followed by South Korea, which signed $2.3 billion in contracts.

--------

Developing Nations Buy $25B in Arms

August 20, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Arms-Sales.html

WASHINGTON (AP) -- International weapons sales rose again last year, with the United States by far the leading supplier to the developing world, a new report says.

Developing countries in Asia, Latin America and Africa agreed to buy about $25.4 billion in weapons last year, says the Congressional Research Service report, ``Conventional Arms Transfers to Developing Nations, 1993-2000.''

That figure, the highest since 1994, accounts for two-thirds of the $36.9 billion in international military arms purchases.

The United States accounted for almost half, or $12.6 billion, of all the new sales agreements to developing countries, followed by Russia and France.

``The United States, Russia and France have dominated the arms market in the developing world,'' says the report, written by Richard F. Grimmett, a specialist in national defense at the research service.

The leading new buyers last year were the United Arab Emirates, which bought 80 U.S. F-16 fighters for $6.4 billion, followed by India, which bought T-90 tanks and SU-30 fighter-bombers from Russia. South Korea was third.

In addition to new arms sales agreements, the report also tracks weapons deliveries -- the value of weapons, sold in previous agreements, that have actually reached the purchasers.

Again, the United States led in 2000, with $8.7 billion worth of weapons provided to developing countries. The United Kingdom and Russia placed second and third.

The leading recipients of completed weapons from the older contracts were Saudi Arabia, China and Egypt.

Over the last eight years, countries in the tense, relatively wealthy Middle East -- including Israel, Iraq, Iran and Saudi Arabia -- have led the world in weapons purchases, receiving more than $106 billion in weapons during that time.

Asian countries -- including China, India, Pakistan and South Korea -- have received more than $61 billion worth of weapons. Latin American countries have received $8.5 billion, and African nations have received $6.5 billion. The United States has been the leading supplier to every region except Africa.

The report focuses on big-ticket sales, such as combat aircraft, warships, tanks and missiles. Fighter and fighter-bomber sales play a significant role in the figures, Grimmett said.

``Aerospace sales have obviously dominated the overall totals recently,'' he said. ``Those are very expensive systems.''

The report also notes that cash-strapped Russia plans to again sell advanced weaponry to Iran, something it has not done since 1995. It predicts that Russia will also pursue major weapons deals with Iraq should sanctions be lifted.

China, meanwhile, is a heavy buyer and moderate seller of weaponry, the report says, averaging less than $1 billion in sales a year. Most of its purchases are from Russia; many of its sales are to Pakistan.

However, China may be transferring long-range ballistic missile technology to Pakistan, Iran and North Korea, bringing in some hard currency but presenting ``an important obstacle to stem proliferation of advanced missile systems,'' the report says.

-------- balkans

Government forces agree to pull back

USA TODAY
08/20/2001
The Associated Press
http://usatoday.com/news/world/2001/08/20/macedonia.htm

SKOPJE, Macedonia (AP) - Army troops will pull back from front-line areas where NATO forces are to collect weapons from ethnic Albanian rebels, Macedonia's government said Monday, a sign of its commitment to ending six months of fighting.

The announcement of a "redistribution" of government forces came during a visit by Gen. Joseph Ralston, NATO's supreme allied commander in Europe. He is in Macedonia to assess whether it is safe to send thousands of NATO troops here.

Ralston was expected to discuss cooperation between the country's security forces and a British-led NATO mission, dubbed Operation Essential Harvest. The NATO forces are to gather weapons to be voluntarily handed in by the rebels, known as the National Liberation Army.

An advance party of about 400 NATO troops will determine whether the shaky cease-fire is durable enough to allow the deployment of the full 3,500-strong force. The alliance is expected to make a decision on the force this week.

Macedonia's military and police commanders have expressed concern over how the weapons handover would work. Security forces would be expected to pull back from areas around the collection points to create a "friendly environment for the rebels' disarmament," said a Macedonian defense source, speaking on condition of anonymity.

The Macedonians fear the rebels might "use the opportunity to sweep in and take control over the area cleared by the military and police," the source said.

Still the Defense Ministry announcement signaled willingness on the government side to create an atmosphere permitting NATO deployment.

The "redistribution" would permit NATO to "carry on unhindered its action of disarming the terrorists," the defense ministry statement said, alluding to the rebels. As part of the move, military helicopters and airplanes would cease flying over areas where rebel weapons handovers were scheduled to take place, it said.

Fighting that lasted into early Monday aggravated tensions. A police official speaking on condition of anonymity said ethnic Albanian rebels opened small arms and mortar fire on Macedonian government positions near the village of Poroj, on the outskirts of the city of Tetovo.

An ethnic Albanian rebel commander, also demanding anonymity, said fighting was "very intensive" but declined to offer details. There was no immediate information on any casualties.

Hours before the cease-fire violation, Ali Ahmeti, the National Liberation Army political leader, insisted his rebel group will surrender all its weapons and disband, saying the time had come to work for peace.

"We will give up all our arms because we will no longer have any need for them," he said Sunday.

The rebels say their struggle, which began six months ago, is meant to give more rights for minority ethnic Albanians in Macedonia. The government says the insurgents are fighting for territory.

Ahmeti's news conference, which signaled the rebel leader's first foray into public life, outraged Interior Minister Ljube Boskovski.

"He is nothing but a criminal responsible for crimes against humanity, committed against his people," Boskovski said in a statement on Macedonian state television. "Ali Ahmeti must be brought to the Macedonian independent courts and judged for crimes against humanity."

-------- drug war

U.S. Drug Charges Doubled Since 1984

August 20, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/08/20/national/20DRUG.html

WASHINGTON, Aug. 19 - More than 30,000 people were charged with federal drug offenses in 1999, more than double the number 15 years earlier, and most of those convicted were drug traffickers, said a Justice Department study released today.

Attorney General John Ashcroft said the report showed that drug laws were succeeding in catching serious criminals and keeping them in prison longer. One crime expert disputed that, saying only a fraction of traffickers were being arrested.

The study by the department's Bureau of Justice Statistics found that only 4 percent of drug criminals had been convicted of simple possession. Ninety-one percent were convicted of trafficking.

It also found that drug offenders were serving longer sentences. The average prison stay rose to five and a half years in 1999 from two and a half years in 1986.

--------

DEA Head Says No to Medical Marijuana

AUGUST 20, 15:12 EDT
By KAREN GULLO
Associated Press Writer
http://wire.ap.org/APnews/center_package.html?FRONTID=NATIONAL&PACKAGEID=drugwar&STORYID=APIS7E0M22O0&SLUG=DEA%2dHUTCHINSON

ARLINGTON, Va. (AP) - The new chief of the Drug Enforcement Administration said Monday he would strive to enforce the federal ban on medical marijuana.

Speaking to reporters on his first official day on the job, Asa Hutchinson - an Arkansas Republican who gave up a House seat to take the DEA job - said he would try to ``send the right signal.''

Federal law prohibits the sale of marijuana for medical uses. Some states, however, let patients use marijuana for such purposes.

``The question is how do you address that from an enforcement standpoint,'' he said. ``You're not going to tolerate a violation of law, but at the same time there are a lot of different relationships, a lot of different aspects that we have to consider as we develop that enforcement policy.''

Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Hawaii, Maine, Oregon and Washington allow sick people to receive, possess, grow or smoke marijuana for medical purposes without fear of state prosecution. Those states have done little to change their statutes since the Supreme Court ruled federal law prohibits people from dispensing marijuana to the ill, saying it's up to federal authorities to enforce the court's decision.

Hutchinson, a former federal prosecutor who served as a House prosecutor in former President Clinton's impeachment trial, said the scientific and medical communities have thus far determined there is no legitimate medical use for marijuana.

``If they continue to study it, we will listen to them,'' he said.

Speaking moments before his swearing-in ceremony at DEA headquarters, Hutchinson said his priorities would be to continue working with state and local law enforcement organizations to fight drug crime, to strengthen ties with international law enforcement agencies to combat drug smuggling and to step up use of technology to ``stay ahead of drug traffickers.''

Acknowledging the tough road ahead, Hutchinson said he was encouraged that in the last 15 years, cocaine use has fallen by 75 percent. But he said acknowledged there was a ``sense that our efforts are not as fruitful as they could be.''

On other issues, Hutchinson said:

-The U.S. government should continue supporting Colombia's fight against drug smugglers.

-Education and demand reduction would be as important as law enforcement at the DEA under his leadership.

-Mandatory minimum sentencing laws have proved effective in combatting drug crime, but judges should have some discretion in sentencing decisions.

-He would consider improvements to DEA's supervision of paid informants, including creation of a central registry to keep track of how they are used.

--------

Scholars dispute Justice report on drug prison terms

August 20, 2001
By Jerry Seper
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20010820-72433714.htm

The Justice Department yesterday said changes in federal laws over the past two decades have led to longer prison sentences for those convicted on drug charges, but two university professors say average prison terms have decreased "steadily and dramatically" since 1991.

The Justice Department reported that changes in federal statutes during the 1980s and 1990s had a "substantial effect on the processing of defendants convicted in federal courts -- especially drug law offenders."

The department said that between 1986 and 1999, average prison terms imposed on drug offenders had increased from 62 months to 74 months and that the average term drug offenders could expect to serve rose from 30 months to 66 months.

In its report, the Justice Department also said more than 38,000 people were referred to federal prosecutors for suspected drug offenses during 1999 -- the latest figures available and that 84 percent of them subsequently were charged in a federal court.

However, law professors Frank O. Bowman III at Indiana University and Michael Heise at Case Western Reserve University said the Justice Department report released yesterday "creates an entirely misleading impression about the current state of federal drug sentencing."

Mr. Bowman and Mr. Heise, whose study of drug sentencing is outlined in a 93-page report, said federal drug sentences have steadily been declining for nearly a decade.

"The data is quite uniform and I don't think it really is disputable," Mr. Bowman, a former prosecutor, said during a telephone interview from his office at Indiana University School of Law. "I am not suspicious that the department is trying to mislead anyone, but there is no question the length of drug sentences has declined steadily since 1991."

In their report, Mr. Bowman and Mr. Heise said that according to figures maintained by the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts, the average federal drug sentence decreased from 95.7 months to 75.2 months in the eight years between 1991 and 1999 a drop of 21 percent, or nearly two years, per defendant.

They also said that U.S. Sentencing Commission statistics reported "a less precipitous but still unmistakable decline in average drug sentences" from 88.2 months in 1992 to 75.2 months in 1999 -- a decline of 14.7 percent.

The professors' report said the downward trend in drug sentencings had until recently gone "unobserved," and "remains generally unknown even among federal criminal justice professionals."

Mr. Bowman noted that some of the decreases in drug sentences was attributable to non-discretionary factors, such as the passage in 1994 of so-called "safety valve" measures that allowed a reduced sentence for certain first-time drug offenders.

He said the continuing downward movement over nearly a decade in sentencing was, to a significant degree, the product of "an array of discretionary choices by judges, prosecutors, defense counsel and probation officers" involved in the sentencing of individual defendants.

Mr. Bowman said that at "virtually every point in the sentencing process" where prosecutors and judges could exercise discretionary authority to reduce drug sentences, "they have done so."

He also said that since 1992, the trend has "always" -- in fact with increasing frequency -- been toward exercising discretion in favor of leniency.

"We are not suggesting that the majority of federal judges and prosecutors are in favor of legalizing drugs or are wringing their hands over the prescribed sentences, but what we do see is that the sentences are so high that the judges do not have to enforce the letter of the law to still get huge prison terms.

"They can take big shortcuts and go home at night and still feel confident they put a drug dealer in prison for a substantial period," he said.

Mr. Bowman said discretionary choices made at sentencing are the product of a widespread perception among judges, lawyers and probation officers of the federal criminal justice system that "drug sentences are often too high or are at the very least often higher than necessary to achieve the personal or institutional objective of these front-line actors of the federal criminal system."

-------- iran

Iranian Police Play Down Campaign Against 'Immorality'

August 20, 2001
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-iran-police.html

TEHRAN (Reuters) - Iranian police have backtracked on threats to crack down on ``social corruption'' in the face of opposition from President Mohammad Khatami and his reformist allies, newspapers said Monday.

Police public relations official, Hassan Zakeri, told newspapers the campaign was concerned only with illegal business practices and ``has nothing to do with social corruption.''

The official said police did not believe in using ``wanton and extra-legal behavior.''

``Such behavior could make an adverse impact on our standing in the world and efforts to draw foreign investment,'' he added.

Police issued a statement last week threatening to arrest shopkeepers playing loud music, selling dogs or monkeys or displaying women's underwear or naked mannequins in windows.

Dogs and monkeys are considered impure in Islam, but more affluent Iranians are keeping them as pets.

In the central holy city of Qom, the authorities went further threatening to arrest shop owners wearing or selling ties, which are seen as a symbol of ``decadent Western culture.''

Government workers are not allowed to wear ties, but a growing number of private employees wear are adopting them. Police have now backed down on the ban.

The announcement of the crackdown came amid a wave of public floggings of mostly young men charged with consuming alcohol or harassing women.

But judiciary chief Ayatollah Mahmoud Hashemi-Shahroudi ordered judges Monday to stick to the law in making their rulings.

He said public floggings were limited to ``murderers, bandits and corrupt elements who make society unsafe.''

RESTRICTIONS

The lashings along with police threats of a crackdown on ''social vice'' have fed widespread fears of a resurgence of tight social restrictions which have been eased under Khatami's moderate policies.

Some reformers say the floggings and restrictions may mar Iran's image abroad at a time the country needs Western assistance to improve its stagnant economy. Others say they are a political move to embarrass Khatami.

Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi said Sunday his ministry was measuring international reaction to the public floggings, which are ordered by the hardline judiciary and backed by conservative clerics.

-------- israel

Israel seeks deterrents to suicide bombers

August 20, 2001
By Abraham Rabinovich
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20010820-88195168.htm

JERUSALEM -- With security officials warning of dozens of Palestinian suicide bombers being prepared for strikes against Israel, an Israeli official has suggested burying the remains of Islamic terrorists in pigskins as a deterrent.

Deputy Minister for Internal Security Gideon Ezra made the suggestion in a radio interview over the weekend, noting that such a burial would, according to Islamic belief, prevent the bomber from achieving the paradise promised those who die as martyrs. The practice was reportedly used by the British in battling terrorism in Malaysia in the last century.

In a second interview yesterday, Mr. Ezra said security forces should "liquidate" the fathers of Palestinian suicide bombers to discourage further such attacks.

"The would-be suicide bomber should know that his close relatives risk paying for his crime or even being liquidated," the Likud party member said on national television.

"Yes, the fathers should be liquidated to prevent the sons perpetrating suicide operations," Mr. Ezra continued. "The fathers know perfectly well what their sons are up to, and they could stop them."

The remarks reflect the frustration and search for fresh ideas among Israeli leaders as the Palestinian intifada stretches into its 11th month. In the latest violence yesterday, Israeli troops shot dead two Palestinians, including a 13-year-old boy, while Jewish settlements came under mortar fire, the Associated Press reported.

In the southern Gaza Strip, Palestinian militants threw grenades and fired rifles at Israeli soldiers patrolling the Israel-Egypt border, prompting the soldiers to fire back, the military said.

Thirteen-year-old Muhammed Arrar was shot in the chest and killed, according to Palestinian security officials and doctors at the Rafah hospital.

Also in southern Gaza, Palestinian militants fired six mortars at the Jewish settlements of Gush Katif, slightly injuring one settler, the Israeli military reported. The army responded with Apache helicopters that fired missiles, flattening a Palestinian security base.

In the West Bank, Israeli troops blocking a road near the city of Nablus fired on Palestinians trying to skirt the checkpoint on foot, killing one and wounding three, Palestinians said. The dead man had ventured into Nablus to buy books for his shop and was returning to his village, his brother Jamal Abu Lawi told the AP.

Israel has been particularly sensitive to Palestinian movements in and out of Israel because of a wave of suicide attacks. Security sources said yesterday that dozens of new attacks were being prepared by fundamentalist organizations like Islamic Jihad and Hamas.

Nevertheless there was little visible enthusiasm in Israel for the pigskin idea put forward by Mr. Ezra, a former deputy head of the Shin Bet, or general security services, which are primarily responsible for dealing with Arab terror.

An unidentified "senior military source" told Israel Radio that it was unlikely that the security forces would adopt such a practice in the 21st century "unless so directed by the political level."

An academic expert on terror, Boaz Ganor, told a radio interviewer that Islamic fundamentalist religious leaders behind suicide bombings would, if such pigskin burials were implemented, simply come up with a religious ruling that martyrs would reach paradise even wrapped in pigskin.

"For someone in an official position to come up with such a suggestion gives the impression that there is nothing that can be done against suicide bombings," said Mr. Ganor. "In fact, there's lots that can be done. For one thing, every bomber is sent by people who don't want to die, and they can be gotten at."

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

Making Way for Pentagon Reform

August 20, 2001
New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/08/20/opinion/20MON1.html?searchpv=nytToday

Trying to reform the Pentagon can break the spirit of the strongest defense secretary. The resistance of hidebound military commanders and pork-addicted Congressional leaders is difficult to overcome, as Donald Rumsfeld is finding. Unfortunately, he has made the job even harder by mishandling some of his first initiatives and has sounded as if he may be losing his nerve about cutting unneeded weapons programs.

Mr. Rumsfeld took office in January as a convinced reformer who had learned about the Pentagon's inefficiencies during his first tour as defense secretary, in the mid-1970's. He understood that the spending required to ready America's armed services for 21st-century needs and technologies would have to be financed by doing away with obsolete cold-war doctrines and weapons programs. But he has stumbled in the early innings by misplaying relations with Congress. He needs to mend his ties with Capitol Hill in the months ahead when military reform is likely to face its most crucial budget tests.

Mr. Rumsfeld's conception of a reshaped American military is becoming clearer as the Pentagon reviews he commissioned earlier this year near completion. He rightly wants to do away with the notion that the Pentagon must be ready to fight two major regional wars at once. Mr. Rumsfeld prefers a more flexible approach that should allow for reductions in overall troop strength.

To carry out this new strategy, the review panels are expected to recommend a variety of smart steps, including lighter tanks and artillery for the Army, unmanned flying drones for the Air Force and smaller combat ships for the Navy. The details will become clearer late next month, when the Pentagon is due to present the comprehensive review of military programs and strategy required by Congress every four years. Those findings will become the basis for the 2003 military budget, the first to be fully shaped by the Bush administration.

Creating a more effective, flexible and cost- efficient military will require substantial spending shifts. Mr. Bush's extravagant tax cut has left the Pentagon with little money for expensive new weapons systems. What little there is will likely be used to pay for the administration's ill-conceived and hasty effort to build a missile shield. Just sustaining present defense spending into 2003 would cost nearly $350 billion a year. Significant increases above that level are simply not affordable.

Mr. Rumsfeld will have to unsparingly eliminate programs. The Navy and Air Force do not need to develop three different new tactical fighters. The Army should not be spending precious dollars on the expensive new Crusader artillery system, which is too heavy to serve a more mobile ground force. The Pentagon needs to carry out a new round of base closings, eliminating up to 25 percent of existing installations.

To win Congressional backing for these steps, Mr. Rumsfeld will have to consult more closely with lawmakers. Congress recently rebuffed Mr. Rumsfeld's bid to retire a third of the B-1 bomber fleet and has reacted coolly to his request to establish a new base-closing commission. Better advance work would have assured a warmer welcome for both worthy proposals.

Despite Congress's inherent affection for military programs that generate economic activity in home districts, many senators and representatives from both parties recognize that military reform is necessary to assure American security in the 21st century. Mr. Rumsfeld and Vice President Dick Cheney, a former secretary of defense, must do a better job of working with them.

-------- OTHER

-------- death penalty

Inmate's Chosen Means of Execution Starts New Debate

New York Times
August 20, 2001
By FRANCIS X. CLINES
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/08/20/national/20CHAI.html

COLUMBUS, Ohio - As he waits on death row, John W. Byrd Jr. is attracting attention by demanding what he deems the grislier of his life's two remaining options. He is insisting on the electric chair rather than lethal injection as the more graphic way to demonstrate the cruelty of capital punishment in the face of his self-proclaimed innocence.

"John feels this shouldn't be like taking the family pet to the vet's to have him quietly put to sleep," said Jane Perry of the Ohio Public Defender Commission, which is making court arguments that Mr. Byrd is innocent of a 1983 murder and that he should not be put to death, by electricity or drugs. Mr. Byrd is scheduled for execution on Sept. 12.

"He wants taxpayers to understand they play a role in executions and the killing can't be sanitized," Ms. Perry said.

The choice is his under Ohio law, but his spirited protest to die by electrocution, the first in 38 years, has galvanized a movement among capital punishment advocates to repeal that choice in the Ohio General Assembly and leave lethal injection as the state's sole means of killing capital criminals.

"It can be very traumatic on personnel to witness an electrocution," said Reginald A. Wilkinson, the state's director of rehabilitation and correction who is among those who want to stop using the chair.

"We would do electrocution as professionally as possible but we know the chance of something going wrong is much greater with the electric chair," Mr. Wilkinson said. He cited recent incidents in other states where inmates had flames and blood erupting from their heads as they died in the chair in struggles that disquieted witnesses.

"That's always in the back of your mind," Mr. Wilkinson said after consulting retired prison workers who last operated Ohio's electric chair decades ago. They told him of continuing nightmares, a consideration that capital punishment opponents find ludicrously beside the point to the final agonies of the condemned.

State legislative leaders, surprised that anyone would not prefer lethal injection, are talking of enacting a ban on the 104-year-old electric chair. While they do not return to session until Sept. 11, the eve of Mr. Byrd's scheduled execution, some proponents in the General Assembly insist a fast-track ban is possible.

Thus is the capital punishment debate gaining energy in Ohio, as elsewhere in the nation, but with a twist about how, more than whether, the justice system should dispatch Mr. Byrd.

"I find this ghoulish and ironic - proponents trying to clean up the form of execution so they can keep their death penalty," said Michael Manley, an English professor at the Columbus College of Art and Design and an Amnesty International volunteer who in recent years has organized anti-capital punishment protests in Ohio that usually were sparsely attended.

"A lot of elected officials are worried that if it's botched, the gruesome aspects of execution will cause the public to waver in its support," Mr. Manley said.

A backlog of death row cases has been growing in Ohio since 1981, when capital punishment was reinstated here. Final appeals are being exhausted for many of these cases, and "we're about to be the next Texas," Mr. Manley said. With 202 inmates on death row, prison officials had to resort to double bunking in some cells and are adding 39 additional beds for the condemned.

With his death stratagem, Mr. Byrd is attracting support through such organizations as Ohioans to Stop Executions. This is a volunteer group sympathetic to the public defender's insistence that Mr. Byrd did not wield the knife in the killing of a convenience store clerk, Monte Tewksbury, during a holdup in 1983 in suburban Cincinnati.

Mr. Byrd, now 37, and two companions were convicted. But only he was sentenced to death as the actual murderer, on the basis of testimony from an inmate, Ronald Armstead, who said Mr. Byrd confessed in a conversation while awaiting trial. After saying there was no quid pro quo for his testimony, Mr. Armstead was soon paroled.

The public defender's office is denouncing Mr. Armstead as a classic jail house "snitch" who committed perjury. The courts have rejected that claim as well as the defense lawyers' submission of a 12-year-old affidavit from John Brewer, a participant in the robbery, who said after his conviction that he, not Mr. Byrd, committed the stabbing. Defense lawyers concede they may have made a tactical error in withholding the affidavit so long while pursuing other paths of appeal.

"This case is an anomaly," said Richard J. Vickers of the public defender's office, noting that it hinges on the issue of a fair sentence for someone convicted not so much on physical evidence as on the word of a self-interested informant.

But the state treasurer, Joseph T. Deters, who has followed the case closely for 18 years, said, "I have no doubt the right man is on death row." A Republican running for attorney general, Mr. Deters has been telling voters, "Executions aren't pretty; I don't care how it's done so long as it's done." He was at the side of Sharon Tewksbury, the victim's widow, when her candlelight vigil for the execution of Mr. Byrd was interrupted one recent night by a few Byrd supporters. "We are so tired," Mrs. Tewksbury said. "It is time for this to be over."

If that time arrives, Mr. Byrd "does not want to go quietly into the night," said David A. Bodiker, the state's public defender. He said Mr. Byrd wanted to go without a face mask as he took his seat in the electric chair so he could "look them in the eye."

But departing unmasked is not among the final options of Mr. Byrd, said Mr. Wilkinson, the prison chief. "There'll be no grandstanding," he said.

As the execution date approaches and the General Assembly returns, Mr. Manley of Amnesty International doggedly plans more protests. He notes that the last appeal for mercy will be made to Gov. Bob Taft, who supports capital punishment but wants to eliminate the electric chair.

"There's the particularly macabre possibility that the governor might grant a reprieve not to save Mr. Byrd's life," Mr. Manley said, "but to allow the legislature to determine the manner of his death."

-------- environment

Possible Federal Pullout Clouds Northeast States' Pollution Suits

New York Times
August 20, 2001
By RICHARD PÉREZ-PEÑA
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/08/20/nyregion/20POLL.html

As the Bush administration considers withdrawing from air pollution lawsuits against power plants in the Midwest and South, people on both sides of the dispute say the Northeast states that have also sued will be hard-pressed to pursue the cases on their own.

The suits were filed under a Clean Air Act provision that the administration is reviewing and plans to overhaul. The review was originally scheduled for completion last week, but the Environmental Protection Agency announced on Tuesday that the deadline had been postponed to next month, a delay that officials said was partly due to a split within the administration.

Spencer Abraham, the energy secretary, and Christie Whitman, the E.P.A. administrator, both advocate broad changes to the enforcement program, known as new source review, to give power companies more flexibility in meeting pollution limits. But administration officials say there is substantial disagreement on the details, with Mr. Abraham's approach including withdrawal from at least some of the suits while Mrs. Whitman favors preserving them.

Without Washington's participation, most of the cases would be dropped because the states do not have legal standing to pursue them, according to state and federal officials, environmentalists and power companies. They add that the remaining actions would be made far more difficult without the vast resources of the E.P.A. and the Justice Department. And a federal government reversal could dissolve landmark agreements with two power companies that have accepted great reductions in the pollution from their plants.

Environmentalists are also concerned that even if the new source review program survives, it will be in greatly scaled-back form. They point, among other factors, to President Bush's recent nomination of Donald Schregardus as chief enforcement officer of the E.P.A., a post from which he would play a crucial role in determining whether power plants had violated the law and, if so, how to deal with them.

Mr. Schregardus, as chief environmental officer for the State of Ohio, was part of an administration that strenuously opposed the filing of new source review lawsuits. The Senate has not acted on his nomination.

"We will pursue these cases no matter what happens in Washington," said Eliot L. Spitzer, the New York State attorney general, "but losing out on the participation and resources of E.P.A. and the Justice Department would be a substantial loss and would make our job much harder, no question."

In the Northeast, so much of the pollution arrives on the prevailing winds from the West and South that if New York City and some other areas were to stop all local emissions, they would still violate federal clean air standards. After two decades of steady improvement, the region's air quality leveled off and has even worsened a bit, abetted by hot summers two of the last three years. So far this year, monitoring stations around New York State have recorded 168 ozone readings that violate federal standards, the second- highest figure for any year in the last decade, and a sharp increase from 60 in all of last year.

In pursuing new source review cases without federal help, the greatest obstacle that the Northeast states would face is geographic. To win a new source review case against a power plant, a state must establish that it has legal standing by proving that its air is measurably affected by the emissions from that plant. While lawyers for the Northeast states have built cases against plants up to 400 miles away, they believe they would be unable to act against more distant plants.

The states sued 17 plants in Virginia, West Virginia, Indiana and Ohio. (Mr. Spitzer also notified the owners of seven plants in New York that he intended to sue if they did not agree to install pollution controls, and his office is in negotiations with those companies.) Northeast officials have talked with their Southern and Midwestern counterparts about filing their own suits, to broaden their reach, but so far they have found no takers.

"The states haven't targeted us, and we don't think they could," said John Sell, a spokesman for Southern Company, a major power producer in the South that is the subject of a federal suit.

The E.P.A. has sued 34 plants and taken other enforcement actions under new source review against 20 others. The agency signaled last year that it intended to go after many more plants - in talks with two power companies, it insisted on changes at 12 plants that were not named in its enforcement actions - and officials said the number could top 100.

The E.P.A.'s actions have included old coal-fired plants in North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Tennessee, Kentucky, Alabama and Illinois - plants that are beyond the grasp of the Northeastern states.

"E.P.A. simply has much greater reach than we do, so there's much more they can do," said Richard Blumenthal, the Connecticut attorney general. "And they have vastly superior resources, which are critical against these big corporations that have indicated they will fight and delay."

Among other things, the states would have to produce sophisticated computer models showing the movement of air pollution over long distances - the sort of work E.P.A. does already, but the states do not.

Mr. Spitzer said his office has eight lawyers working on the cases, compared with the dozens the federal government has assigned to the litigation. "Resources are an enormous issue," he said. "If Washington pulls out, I would say we would have to double the number of people dedicated to these cases."

Courts also give a certain deference to federal agencies' interpretation of relevant federal laws - for instance, to the E.P.A.'s view of the Clean Air Act - and lawyers on both sides say the states would not receive the same deference.

A lawyer representing a company that has been sued by both the federal government and the states said, "There's no question: if the feds go away, my job gets a lot easier."

John L. Kirkwood, chief executive of the American Lung Association, said: "There's much less the states can do than what the feds can do, and it's harder for them to do it. This really needs the Bush administration's participation."

Over the last three decades, federal law has imposed increasingly strict air pollution standards on new power plants. But plants built before those rules were created are exempt from federal controls.

The federal and state suits charge that power companies have done such extensive work upgrading older plants, under the guise of routine maintenance, that those plants should come under new source review and meet the same standards as new plants. Power companies call that a misinterpretation of the law and say it will prevent them from doing maintenance needed at older plants, leading to more frequent breakdowns.

At issue in the suits are pre-1970 coal plants that, in some cases, produce up to 10 times as much nitrogen oxides and sulfur dioxide - the major contributors to smog and acid rain - as are permitted from new plants. Power plants produce two-thirds of the nation's sulfur dioxide emissions, and about 30 percent of the nitrogen oxides.

New York and the E.P.A. filed their first suits in 1999, and six other states - Connecticut, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New Hampshire and Vermont - later joined in some of the suits. In New Jersey, it was the administration of Mrs. Whitman, then the governor, that sued.

Last year, three power companies settled E.P.A. actions against them by agreeing to drastic emissions reductions at their plants. One of those settlements, with Tampa Electric in Florida, is final.

But the two larger deals, reached late in the year with Cinergy, an Ohio utility, and Virginia Electric Power, were tentative, and neither the companies nor the Bush administration has moved to make them final. Both sides have indicated that they might seek to modify the agreements. The two settlements, covering 18 plants, would be by far the largest ever under the Clean Air Act, with each company agreeing to spend more than $1 billion.

-------- genetics

Viability Of Stem Cell Plan Doubted
Bush Policy Could Limit Research, Scientists Say

By Ceci Connolly, Justin Gillis and Rick Weiss
Washington Post Staff Writers
Monday, August 20, 2001; Page A01
http://washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A33338-2001Aug19?language=printer

Mounting uncertainties about the quantity and quality of embryonic stem cells available for research under a new Bush administration policy have persuaded many biologists that the president's approach poses serious constraints for the development of new medical treatments for diseases such as Parkinson's, diabetes and stroke.

Skepticism among those scientists focuses on the existing stocks of stem cells available for research. Under Bush's guidelines, federal dollars may be used to study the versatile and medically promising cells only if they came from donated fertility clinic embryos that were already destroyed by Aug. 9.

Bush said at least 60 self-replenishing colonies, or "lines," of such cells existed by that date, a number four times greater than many scientists were aware of. But the National Institutes of Health has yet to produce information about the lines or their producers, feeding speculation that many of those 60 do not exist, are of poor quality or are under such tight commercial control as to make them unattractive to researchers hoping to study and perhaps profit from them.

NIH officials have asked scientists to be patient, reassuring them that plenty of cells are available and promising that details will soon be forthcoming. But contrary to predictions made by top government officials, only a few companies or laboratories have emerged after Bush's announcement to say publicly that they, too, have eligible cell lines.

And new questions have begun to arise about the adequacy of the consent processes used to obtain the cells and the racial diversity of the available cells -- a factor that could ultimately affect the availability of stem cell-based therapies for some minorities.

The number and variety of cell lines available is important because stem cells are highly finicky and quite volatile. Cell lines can "crash" -- or die -- at any moment, or they can spontaneously turn into specialized cells, rendering them useless for later work. In addition, there are subtle genetic differences between each cell line, differences that can affect their behavior and utility in research.

To limit researchers to 60 cell lines, critics say, is like telling mathematicians they can pursue their studies but they can never use numbers bigger than 10.

"I think it's a ridiculous policy," said George Daley, a leading stem cell researcher at the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research in Cambridge, Mass. Evan Snyder, another stem cell expert at the Harvard Medical School, called Bush's approach "scientifically naive."

NIH Seeks Cooperation

The NIH has not yet produced any information on the condition of the 60 cell lines, a critical issue for scientists aiming to work with them. And the agency appears to have only sketchy information on whether the cell lines were created after receiving proper consent from the embryos' donors, a fundamental criterion laid down by the president.

NIH administrators say the Bush policy is workable, and they are scrambling to answer growing doubts. They have summoned top executives and scientists from about nine stem cell laboratories around the world to attend meetings at the NIH's Bethesda campus this week to gather information and seek pledges of cooperation.

Bush administration lawyers are negotiating an initial agreement to give government scientists access to some of the most important cell lines. They hope that agreement will become a model for universities around the world.

Lana Skirboll, director of science policy at the agency, said NIH aims to release more detailed information on the cell lines in coming weeks. "Our goal, our single goal, is to get these cells to the investigator community," she said.

Still, it is clear the Bush administration will have to work hard to reassure the scientific community of its approach. On Friday, the world's largest scientific body, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, called on the White House to give immediate access to the list of 60 cell lines as well as details of how the White House policy will work.

Research on human embryonic stem cells is one of the most promising, but controversial, fields of modern biology. The cells are usually derived from microscopic, days-old embryos that are due to be discarded at fertility clinics. The value of the cells is their flexibility -- they have the ability to become any of the more than 200 specialized cell types in the human body, offering a potentially unlimited source of new tissues for ailing patients.

But because an embryo is destroyed to extract the cells, many people oppose the research for moral reasons, arguing that the embryo is a form of human life.

Since 1996, federal law has prohibited the use of tax dollars to destroy human embryos. The Clinton administration, however, adopted rules saying federally funded scientists could conduct experiments on stem cell lines as long as they did not themselves participate in embryo destruction. Cells were to be derived from embryos destroyed with private money in private labs, then shipped to federally funded scientists for study.

The government was on the verge of issuing its first stem cell grants when Bill Clinton left office. Bush's new policy seemed to be an artful compromise between the Clinton plan and conservatives' calls to ban the research altogether. Bush's plan will permit federal funding on stem cell lines created before his speech Aug. 9, but prohibit funding for any that might be created later.

Search for Cell Lines

The policy was predicated on the existence of 60 genetically distinct lines of stem cells, which the administration said would supply enough diversity to allow scientists to undertake serious work on new treatments.

But the number 60, based on a relatively hasty NIH telephone survey, came as a shock to virtually every scientist working in the field. Fewer than a dozen cell lines have been identified in scientific literature.

Andy Cohn, spokesman for a University of Wisconsin foundation, watched the Bush speech with James Thomson, the scientist who in 1998 first isolated human embryonic stem cells. When Bush made the claim about 60 cell lines, "we both almost fell off our chairs," Cohn said.

Since then, counting by news organizations, including The Washington Post, has turned up new cell lines, mostly in laboratories already known to be working in the field. But none of those counts has produced more than 23 lines.

Requests from lawmakers and news organizations that the White House document its claim of 60 cell lines have gone unanswered. "The burden of proof is on anyone who doubts" the claim, White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said.

The debate over the number is more central than it might seem at first, for several reasons. For one, a larger number of cell lines would be insurance against the risk that some of the existing cell lines prove unusable.

Secondly, there is the issue of genetic diversity. Scientists envision using stem cells to create more specialized cells, such as those of the heart, liver or brain. Those would be implanted into ailing patients to restore organ function. Much as with a liver or heart transplant, it may prove critical to find a good immunological match between the implanted cells and the recipient to try to stave off rejection.

Such matching is easier within racial and ethnic groups that are more closely related. The NIH has not obtained information about the ethnic origin of the 60 cell lines. Many of the ones that have come to light in recent days were created in Asia, which might limit their usefulness in treating people of European or African ancestry. "Ours would come from people of Chinese-Asian background," said Robert Klupacs, chief executive of a Singapore company, ES Cell International Pte Ltd., that controls six stem cell lines -- 10 percent of the total cited by Bush.

Standards of Consent

Researchers have also grown worried about whether the stem cell laboratories obtained adequate consent from the embryos' donors. In their phone survey, NIH officials were assured some type of informed consent had been secured on each of the existing lines. They asked for copies of the forms, but did not study their adequacy.

"We didn't analyze the informed-consent forms," Skirboll said. "We received them to make sure there was informed consent. These people who provided us informed consent, they were held to whatever standard was in place for the country, the hospital or the facility they were working in."

That could leave scientists running afoul of the ethics committees at their universities or research institutions, which in this country typically demand strict standards of consent before approving research proposals.

"Too often we have learned that procedures used in other parts of the world in research with human subjects do not measure up to the ethical standards we embrace in this country," according to AAAS, the scientists' federation.

If some of the consent forms are inadequate, American researchers would be left with an even smaller pool of cell lines.

Another unresolved issue is the degree to which American academic researchers will have access to the 60 cell lines covered by the Bush policy. They are controlled by a few companies and laboratories around the world. Those labs have been filing patent applications on aspects of stem cell technology, and the pending applications are believed to number in the dozens.

Researchers may get ready access to the cells, but on the terms of the labs that created them -- namely, that those labs retain potentially lucrative commercial rights to future discoveries. This is likely to be unacceptable to many universities, which hope to profit from fresh discoveries their scientists make.

NIH lawyers are negotiating a master agreement with the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation to give government scientists access to five cell lines it controls. The agency hopes that agreement will serve as a "gold standard," a model that universities could use to cut deals of their own with the cells' owners.

But each university will be responsible for making its own deals with the labs and companies that control cell lines, and the Bush policy could make that more complicated. Because no new cell lines will be eligible for federal funds, the owners of old lines are likely to have more leverage in their dealings with scientists who want to undertake such work. Most people in the field express optimism that the patent difficulties can be worked out, but they acknowledge it will be tricky.

"These are not our cells," Skirboll said, so the NIH can only do so much to make them available. Nonetheless, she said, the owners "have told us they have an interest in making these cells available to scientists."

Antiabortion groups are divided over the Bush compromise, and although many have accepted his policy as the best they can get, others have said they will urge Congress to pass a complete ban on federal funding.

Advocates of the research regard the new policy as imperfect, but they also see it as a foot in the door, a chance to expand the work using millions of federal dollars. They have therefore made a tactical decision not to fight the administration. Many hope to increase the number of cell lines scientists can use, but incrementally, rather than by going to war again with antiabortion groups, one of Bush's most important constituencies.

"Does anybody believe that if the University of Edinburgh came up with a 61st cell line that can cure Parkinson's or Alzheimer's, that number of 60 would not expand?" asked a top biotechnology strategist who spoke on condition of anonymity. "In the long run, this number of 60 will be a forgotten relic of the political debate. The important thing is not so much the number 60. It's really that the green light went on for federal funding of this research."

This strategist said the groups with which he is allied have made a conscious decision to back off, give Bush some breathing room and let the controversy die down.

"He had a particularly difficult political situation and he came out the right way," the strategist said. "I don't think there's any instinct to punish him for that. This took a bit of political courage."

-------- health

Doctors' Dirty Needles Spread Hepatitis in China

New York Times
August 20, 2001
By ELISABETH ROSENTHAL
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/08/20/international/asia/20CHIN.html?pagewanted=all

LUOPING, China - A worried Dou Zhe rushed into Dr. Wang Yujia's storefront clinic carrying a precious bundle. "He's sick," announced Mr. Dou, unwrapping layers of colorful blankets from his 2-year-old son, a chubby, listless boy in a blue jumpsuit. "He's normally mischievous, but since tonight he's hot. He just wants to sleep - he won't eat or play."

Dr. Wang, a kindly weathered man in a long white coat, determined that the boy had a red throat and a fever of 102. He had a cold, one that would almost certainly pass on its own in a few days.

Nonetheless, Dr. Wang drew up what has become an all-too-common rural Chinese cure - a syringe filled with four different medicines - and plunged the needle filled with yellow goo into the screaming boy's behind.

"We always come to see him, because he's a good doctor," Mr. Dou, a construction worker, said with a note of satisfaction. "My boy's had lots of shots."

China's love affair with injections and infusions is becoming a medical nightmare, spreading illness rather than curing it, experts say.

In large part because syringes and needles are often inadequately sterilized in rural China, experts say the overuse of medical injections helps explain the alarming spread of blood-borne infections in China, particularly hepatitis and, to a lesser extent, AIDS.

Today, 60 percent of Chinese have had hepatitis B, compared with just 1 percent in the United States and Japan. Some 150 million Chinese have the chronic variety of the infection, which over time causes liver failure and liver cancer.

"To a large extent the very high rate of hepatitis B has to do with unsafe injections and excessive injection for common illness during childhood," the United Nations Common Country Assessment for China said in 1999.

The problem of needless shots is particularly severe in rural areas, where doctors often have little formal medical training and receive extra income for each injection they give, and where patients and doctors alike see shots as a sign of progress.

Dr. Wang, for example, is not really a physician, but a former farmer who learned his basics when he was appointed a "barefoot doctor" under China's Communist system in the 1960's. In all, he has received just two years of medical training, and that in the mid-1980's, when Western medicines were not available in the countryside.

And so when a little boy arrives with a cold, he draws up an injection composed of two antibiotics that are unnecessary and will promote resistance, an antiviral drug that has no use against the common cold and a powerful steroid that will only make his immune system less able to fight infection.

A 2000 survey of medical care in 40 rural counties conducted by Unicef and the Chinese Health Ministry found that 47 to 65 percent of children had received injections as treatment for their last cold.

While it is extremely rare for children in the United States to get shots aside from immunizations, many Chinese children get more than half a dozen a year.

But far more important than the immediate side effects of these freewheeling injections is the risk of acquiring devastating disease, since, as in much of the developing world, rural Chinese doctors try to cut costs by reusing potentially contaminated equipment.

While there is no evidence that this 2-year-old suffered lasting harm from his shot, in one 1999 study, Chinese researchers found that 88 percent of injections in a large rural county were unsafe, most often because doctors reused needles and syringes after inadequate or no cleaning.

The Health Ministry has encouraged clinics to switch to disposable needles and syringes, but even those are sometimes reused, or cleaned and repackaged in a large underground market, according to medical experts here and reports in the Chinese press.

Such practices have probably also contributed to China's emerging AIDS problem, though scientists believe that H.I.V., the virus that causes AIDS, spreads less efficiently than hepatitis by this route. Statistics on the spread of H.I.V. in rural areas have been shrouded by official secrecy and many victims do not even know that they are infected.

"We already know many people have been getting hepatitis from shots," said one health expert who has worked extensively in China. "And that worries me a lot about the spread of AIDS."

Although there is now a hepatitis B vaccine that is widely used in the United States, it is expensive and not included in the Chinese government's free vaccination programs, so a majority of poor rural children do not get it.

Government officials have acknowledged the problem of unsafe injections and have repeatedly tried to ensure proper use of sterile medical equipment and better regulation of its manufacturing and disposal. But the problem has been difficult to stop.

"Unfortunately, rural doctors often rely on medicines and shots for income, and the farmers think they need an IV to be cured," said Zhu Ling, an economist at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences who studies health care. Even rudimentary clinics in rural China now have rows of IV bottles hanging ready along the wall.

Government regulations allow rural medics to charge only pennies per visit, but they may add fees for the medicines and shots. With only minimal training, many do not understand how to use many of the medicines that line their shelves, or even the risks of injection or failure to use proper sterilization techniques.

Dr. Wang owns one of many private clinics in this small city in China's far southwest, and he is clearly more careful and conscientious than most of his competition.

He is proud, for example, that he has switched to disposable plastic syringes and needles, which he unwraps to give 2-year-old Dou Youjun his shot and then quickly deposits into a large cardboard box on the floor overflowing with others like it.

In many rural clinics, used syringes and needles sit on the counter, waiting for reuse.

In a December 1999 study in The Chinese Journal of Epidemiology, 56 percent of rural doctors said they changed equipment only if they could see blood in the syringes.

But it is not at all clear that Dr. Wang's disposable syringes will be disposed of properly. In theory, and according to official government policy, used disposable needles and syringes should be destroyed, since they are made of materials that can not be fully cleaned.

But here, Dr. Wang said, his box is picked up once a week by someone who "takes care of them."

"These can't be used more than once," he said. "They need to be taken off and sterilized first."

Most rural doctors know little about what happens to their discarded equipment, but there is ample evidence that it sometimes makes its way back to the bedside.

At a huge "recycling center" just outside the Fourth Ring Road in Beijing, a migrant worker in a padded gray jacket who gives his name as Mr. He reaches into a metal bin and pulls out a massive tangle of plastic IV tubes, with needles still attached.

In this vast open yard where hundreds of small traders in paper, metal, cardboard and plastics sort through the detritus of life in Beijing, unmarked trucks from hospitals and clinics routinely deliver syringes, blood bags and IV tubes, often with fresh blood still clinging to the side.

"It's a good business, since medical plastics sell for much more than ordinary plastic," said Ren Xinyang, a skinny 30-year-old, standing in a stall littered with old needles.

Most of the plastic from this center goes by truck to Wenan in Hebei Province, about 60 miles outside Beijing, a place renowned for its wholesale plastic market.

Every yard in Wenan is littered with plastic castoffs. In one tidy compound, owned by a family named Jiang, bags of dirty medical waste are the raw material of a business that nets $5,000 a year.

Behind a white tile wall, blood- tinged syringes and needles are fed into a large manual grinder that spits out bent needles and deposits plastic fragments on the other side, which are given a cursory wash in a shallow cement pool before being packed away for sale.

The plastic is then used to make heavy-duty plastic sacks, a family member said.

But there are also bags of whole syringes. And although family members insist that they do not sell those anymore, they acknowledged that they had in the past. "Two years ago, people from Henan and Zhejiang would come to buy whole syringes, and we got a much higher price than selling scrap," Ms. Jiang said.

In the last year, Chinese newspapers have covered several police raids on small backyard factories that were illegally cleaning and repackaging disposable syringes. One such workshop in Zhejiang Province held more than 14 tons of used single- use medical equipment, including more than four tons of needles, The Legal Daily reported.

Since most Chinese get so many shots, it is nearly impossible to prove that any one injection was responsible for disease. But doctors say the cumulative effect is obvious from China's alarming problem with hepatitis B.

Hepatitis B causes pain, nausea and fatigue and can become a chronic infection, leading to liver failure or cancer of the organ. Liver cancer, rare in the West, is the leading cause of cancer deaths in China.

Hepatitis B can be transmitted three ways: during childbirth, through intercourse or through infected medical equipment or transfusions. Research suggests that a huge number of children are getting the disease after birth but before they are old enough to have intercourse, making injections the by far most likely explanation in their cases.

In one study, 9 percent of pregnant women had active hepatitis, meaning that at most 9 percent of children could get it at birth. But by age 6, the researchers found, 34 percent of children were infected.

Other research has found that the likelihood that a 2-year-old had contracted hepatitis was directly proportional to the number of injections he or she had.

Among toddlers who had one to five shots, only 12 percent were infected. Among those who had 6 to 10 shots, 25 percent were infected. And among children who had 11 to 20 shots, the figure was a whopping 62 percent.

At a recent medical conference, Dr. Liu Shijing estimated that 30 to 40 percent of hepatitis B in China resulted from medical exposures, and some foreign experts put the number even higher.

"Shots should be preventing this disease," said the medical expert who has worked in China, "but you can see from the numbers that now most are getting it from shots."

--------

Bush Promises Help to Veterans Who Face Health-Care Backlog

August 20, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Bush-Heartland-Trip.html

MILWAUKEE (AP) -- President Bush said Monday he will insist that Congress approve the additional money for the military that he has asked and he promised that the struggling health benefits system for veterans will soon be restructured.

``All I ask Congress to provide is an increased $39 billion for the military,'' Bush told cheering delegates to a convention of the Veterans of Foreign Wars. ``This is the largest increase in military spending since Ronald Reagan was the commander in chief.''

Bush also pledged that the system of benefits for veterans would be revised soon, accusing past administrations of letting veterans' claims linger for years.

``That is no way to treat America's veterans and that is going to change,'' Bush said.

Dozens of protesters whose causes ranged from abortion to the environment waited for Bush outside the Midwest Express Center. Inside, he was applauded several times by the thousands of veterans, although some were not totally satisfied with his speech.

``I wished he had talked more about Social Security,'' said Robert Wilkinson of Gulf Port, Mo., a veteran of the Korean and Vietnam wars. ``He makes promises to the veterans and they're the same promises we've heard for the last 10 years.

Bush flew to Milwaukee from his sun-baked central Texas ranch, talking here and in Missouri on Tuesday about his plans for pulling the economy out of a slump and redesigning Social Security.

``It's somewhat sly, but it looks like Bush is doing some early campaigning for 2004,'' said James Tyson-Shelding, a political analyst in Fort Worth, Texas. ``He's heading to states that he probably feels he should have won or almost lost ... places where there is a substantial Republican population but his message didn't take root.''

Bush's staff closely guarded what his specific messages will be, but the administration has been moving forward on plans for both Social Security and Medicare.

To help shore up funding for Social Security, the president has proposed letting younger workers invest some of their payroll taxes in the stock market. He recently created a commission to devise a plan, recommend how to pay for it and report to him in the fall.

The social program is expected to face shortfalls when the baby-boom generation starts retiring in the coming decade and fewer workers pay into the system.

Bush is also expected to talk about an expected budget surplus. On Wednesday, the White House Office of Budget Management is expected to release figures on how much money is left over.

Political analysts say Bush is clearly on the campaign trail.

``It's a two-birds-with-one-stone situation,'' said Patrick Delraj, a political science professor at the University of California. ``He's laying groundwork to be in a stronger position next time around.''

Last week, the president went to New Mexico, a state he lost to Democrat Al Gore only after a recount determined he was 400 votes behind.

During Bush's trips this week, Democrats will try to undercut his message with tough criticism of his plans.

``Social Security isn't about maximizing private gain,'' said Sen. Paul Wellstone, D-Minn. ``Social Security is about being part of a larger community that shares burdens and responsibilities.

``Democrats will fight against risky schemes that weaken Americans' retirement security, and hope that the president will support a bipartisan consensus to strengthen Social Security for future generations.''

--------

AIDS Group to Sue South Africa

August 20, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-SAfrica-AIDS-Children.html

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa (AP) -- South African AIDS activists said Monday they plan to sue the government to force it to give medicine to HIV-infected pregnant women to help prevent transmission of the disease to their babies.

The Treatment Action Campaign, which has been pushing the government to give the AIDS drug nevirapine to infected pregnant women, said that officials had been unwilling to agree to the group's demands.

``Our attempts to persuade government to act urgently on this matter have been rebuffed,'' the group said in a statement.

Details of the lawsuit were to be announced Tuesday at simultaneous news conferences in the cities of Johannesburg, Durban and Cape Town. Spokesmen for the Treatment Action Campaign refused to comment before then.

About 200 HIV-infected babies are born every day in South Africa. Nearly all die within a few years. An estimated 4.7 million South Africans, about 11 percent of the population, are infected with HIV.

The government recently started two pilot programs in each of the country's nine provinces to monitor the effect of the nevirapine treatment. The Treatment Action Campaign estimated the program reached only 10 percent of the women who needed the medicine.

The activist group said it had asked the government and Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang in July to explain why the nevirapine treatment was not more widely available and why the government did not have a clear program to prevent transmission of the virus from pregnant women to their babies.

``The minister's response was unsatisfactory,'' the statement said.

Jo-Anne Collinge, a spokeswoman for the health department, declined to comment Monday.

Anywhere from one-quarter to 40 percent of babies born to HIV-infected pregnant women will become infected during childbirth, according to studies.

A single dose of nevirapine to the mother during childbirth followed by a dose to the baby within three days can reduce the transmission rate to about 13 percent.

The German drug company Boehringer Ingelheim has offered nevirapine free to developing countries for the prevention of mother-to-child transmission of HIV.

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

EU Expects U.S. to Comply with Tax Ruling

August 20, 2001
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/business/business-trade-tax.html?searchpv=reuters

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - A World Trade Organizationruling means the United States will have to make ``wholesale changes'' to a multibillion-dollar program of tax breaks for exporters, the European Union said on Monday.

The EU confirmed that a WTO dispute panel had found in its favor in a potentially explosive row over the U.S. tax breaks and said it expected Washington to comply with the ruling.

The EU has threatened to impose up to $4 billion of sanctions on U.S. goods if it ultimately wins the WTO case -- a step U.S. Trade Representative Robert Zoellick has likened to using a ``nuclear weapon'' on the trade system.

The 15-nation EU has taken aim at a U.S. law that it contends grants billions of dollars a year in tax breaks to major U.S. exporters such as plane-maker Boeing Co. and software leader Microsoft Corp.

The WTO experts concluded that the U.S. program -- a replacement for an earlier scheme called the Foreign Sales Corporation (FSC) act -- was an illegal export subsidy, violated an international agriculture agreement, and discriminated in favor of U.S. goods in breach of WTO rules, the EU said.

``The EU is fully satisfied with the results of the panel and expects the U.S. to comply with the ruling,'' the EU's executive Commission said in a statement.

The findings meant the United States would have to make ''wholesale changes'' to the scheme to bring it into line with world trade rules, it added.

The WTO dispute panel's report on the case, previously sent to Brussels and Washington on a confidential basis, was scheduled to be made public later on Monday in Geneva. The panel's findings have already been widely leaked.

U.S. MAY APPEAL

EU officials say the United States has until October 19 to decide if it will appeal against the panel's ruling. They said they had no information whether it would do so.

If the United States did not appeal, WTO arbitrators would begin work after October 19 on deciding what amount of sanctions the EU was entitled to impose on U.S. exports. This amount could be much lower than the $4 billion requested.

European Commission trade official Stephen Gospage said the EU would have to let the arbitration go ahead so as not to lose the right to impose sanctions. But he made clear that the EU did not have to apply the sanctions and was open to talks with the United States on how it could comply with the WTO ruling.

``We can hold off on this (sanctions) for as long as we like if we think for instance that the U.S. is making a serious effort to change its law and bring itself into compliance, even by the start of the next tax year,'' he told reporters.

He said the Commission saw no link between the dispute and attempts to launch a new round of world trade liberalization talks in Qatar in November.

After the WTO report went to the capitals last month, Zoellick said through a spokesman that the Bush administration was reviewing its options ``with affected U.S. interests and the Congress.''

``In seeking a resolution, we are focusing on how to promote America's economic interests while meeting our WTO obligations,'' he said.

The EU won a WTO case against the FSC program in 1999, when a panel found it constituted an illegal export subsidy.

The United States, then under the Clinton administration, had changes approved in Congress, but Brussels came back to the WTO last year, arguing the changes boosted the subsidies.

EU SAYS ITS ARGUMENTS UPHELD

The European Commission said on Monday that the WTO panel in the new case had ``upheld the EU's reasoning on all points.''

The panel found the scheme was an illegal export subsidy because companies established in the United States could only obtain the promised tax reduction by exporting, it said.

``A member does not eliminate an export subsidy on apples by also granting a subsidy on oranges that is not contingent upon export performance,'' it quoted the panel as saying.

The panel also found that the United States had failed to comply with the WTO ruling in the original FSC case because transitional rules of the new program kept the FSC scheme in place for at least two years beyond the deadline granted by the WTO for the United States to withdraw it, the Commission said.

-------- police / prisoners

EU's secret network to spy on anti-capitalist protesters

Independent (UK)
By Stephen Castle in Brussels
20 August 2001
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/europe/story.jsp?story=89632

European leaders have ordered police and intelligence agencies to co-ordinate their efforts to identify and track the anti-capitalist demonstrators whose violent protests at recent international summits culminated in the shooting dead by police of a young protester at the Genoa G8 meeting last month.

The new measures clear the way for protesters travelling between European Union countries to be subjected to an unprecedented degree of surveillance.

Confidential details of decisions taken by Europe's interior ministers at talks last month show that the authorities will use a web of police and judicial links to keep tabs on the activities and whereabouts of protesters. Europol, the EU police intelligence-sharing agency based in The Hague that was set up to trap organised criminals and drug traffickers, is likely to be given a key role.

The plan has alarmed civil rights campaigners, who argue that personal information on people who have done no more than take part in a legal demonstration may be entered into a database and exchanged.

Calls for a new Europe-wide police force to tackle the threat from hardline anti-capitalists were led after the Genoa summit by Germany's Interior Minister, Otto Schily. Germany has long pushed for the creation of a Europe-wide crime-fighting agency modelled on the FBI.

Germany's EU partners rejected Mr Schily's call, judging that a new force to combat political protest movements was too controversial, but ministers agreed to extend the measures that can be taken under existing powers. Central to the new push is the secretive Article 36 committee (formerly known as the K4 committee) and the Schengen Information System, both of which allow for extensive contact and data sharing between police forces.

Under the new arrangements, European governments and police chiefs will:

- Set up permanent contact points in every EU country to collect, analyse and exchange information on protesters;

- Create a pool of liaison officers before each summit staffed by police from countries from which "risk groups" originate;

- Use "police or intelligence officers" to identify "persons or groups likely to pose a threat to public order and security";

- Set up a task force of police chiefs to organise "targeted training" on violent protests.

The new measures will rely on two main ways of exchanging police information. The Schengen Information System, which provides basic information, and a supporting network called Sirene - Supplementary Information Request at the National Entry. This network (of which Britain is a member) allows pictures, fingerprints and other information to be sent to police or immigration officials once a suspect enters their territory. Each country already has a Sirene office with established links to EU and Nordic law enforcement agencies.

Civil liberties campaigners are dismayed by the plan. Tony Bunyan, editor of Statewatch magazine, said: "This will give the green light to Special Branch and MI5 to put under surveillance people whose activities are entirely democratic."

Nicholas Busch, co-ordinator of the Fortress Europe network on civil liberties issues, added: "People who have done nothing against the law ought to be able to feel sure they are not under surveillance ... By criminalising whole political and social scenes you fuel confrontation and conflict."

Thomas Mathieson, professor of sociology of law at the University of Oslo, said police could have access to "very private information" about people's religion, sex lives and politics. "It is a very dangerous situation from the civil liberties point of view," he said.

-------- activists

IMF Protesters File Suit Over 'Exclusion Zones'

By Manny Fernandez
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, August 20, 2001; 1:25 PM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A35773-2001Aug20?language=printer

Lawyers for corporate globalization protesters filed a lawsuit this morning in federal court seeking to stop D.C. police and federal authorities from cordoning off large sections of downtown Washington for the September demonstrations against the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, saying such measures infringe on organizers' First Amendment rights.

The suit is a response to recent statements by District police officials that a security plan now under discussion includes fencing-off swaths of the city in anticipation of the large number of protesters expected to flood Washington for the fall meetings of the two international financial institutions. Authorities are discussing plans to set up nine-foot-high fencing around a two-mile section of downtown Washington.

Protest organizers and their lawyers held a press conference this morning announcing the lawsuit, which seeks an injunction to bar the police from setting up what organizers have called "exclusion zones." Such areas will prohibit free speech activities from taking place on the sidewalks, streets and public parks within the security area, protesters say.

Lawyers for the Partnership for Civil Justice, a District-based public interest law firm, filed the suit on behalf of the International Action Center, the Latin American Solidarity Conference and three other activist groups and individuals. It names D.C. Police Chief Charles H. Ramsey, the District, the director of the National Park Service and the federal government as defendants.

Mara Verheyden-Hilliard, a lawyer with the Partnership for Civil Justice, said that the exclusion zones run counter to the established rights of members of social justice movements to march freely for what they believe in. "It's the way to speak to each other, to speak to the world," she said. "When the government begins to create these artificial areas . . . to deny full access to our public land, it infringes on people's First Amendment rights."

Protesters of all stripes - environmentalists, human rights activists, anti-capitalists, labor groups - are coming to Washington the last week of September to draw attention to corporate-led globalization. Demonstrators demand that the World Bank and IMF drop the debt of Third World countries and stop funding projects that they say harm the environment and benefit the rich at the expense of the poor.

Last week, Ramsey said the city is preparing for as many as 100,000 protesters.

----

Gulf War Veterans' Conference, October 5-7, Atlanta

"Charles Sheehan-Miles" <cmiles@ngwrc.org>
Date: Mon, 20 Aug 2001 21:03:53 -0400

Just a reminder that the 6th Annual Gulf War Veterans' Conference is rapidly approaching. This year's conference will be held in Atlanta, GA October 5-7, 2001, and will highlight key researchers and others working on Gulf War veterans issues, including Dr. Robert Haley and keynote speaker H. Ross Perot. Other speakers will address government and private research, current information on claims against Iraqi assets, VA claims assistance, treatment trials and the Anthrax vaccine program.

This year's excellent conference is at the Holiday Inn Airport North, 1380 Virginia Avenue, Atlanta, GA 30344 . All individuals are responsible for hotel reservations and payment. Call the hotel at (404) 762-8411 to reserve your room. Advise the hotel you are with the National Gulf War Resource Center.... The NGWRC has an agreement with the hotel to hold rooms open until September 3, 2001, after that date rooms are rented on a first-come, first-serve basis. Our first block of rooms sold out, but the hotel agreed to give us additional rooms. Call soon before they all fill up! The hotel offers 24 hour free transportation to and from Hartsfield International Airport and easy access to MARTA, Atlanta's rapid transit system.

Conference Registration
To register, visit http://www.ngwrc.org....

We are looking forward to seeing you in Atlanta!

Charles Sheehan-Miles, cmiles@ngwrc.org, President, National Gulf War Resource Center, Inc. http://www.ngwrc.org

----

Thousands to protest cutoff of federal water

August 20, 2001
By Audrey Hudson
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20010820-98877661.htm

Thousands of protesters are flocking to Klamath Falls on the Oregon-California border as federal officials once again prepare to cut off water to area farms and divert it to protect endangered salmon and sucker fish.

Interior Secretary Gale A. Norton allowed a limited water release earlier this summer, but the California and Oregon farmers have exhausted that in replenishing scorched fields and pastures.

Federal officials expect to turn off the water Thursday while more than a dozen federal law enforcement officers guard canal headgates.

Angry farmers forcibly opened the headgates several times this summer before Mrs. Norton on July 24 ordered the release of 24 billion gallons of water, or about 75,000 acres of water 1 foot deep.

Farmers and residents say the water war is far from over and aren't giving assurances the headgates won't be forcibly opened again before the growing season is over in mid-October.

"If [federal officials] think we are going away, they are sadly mistaken. This is just the beginning. This is war against the environmentalists and the Endangered Species Act," said horse rancher Jon Hall.

Environmentalists oppose giving water to farmers and instead want the government to buy up the farmland.

When Mrs. Norton allowed the water release, environmentalists filed a lawsuit against the government, insisting that the water bypass the farms and be allowed to travel downstream to a wildlife refuge containing endangered birds.

Historically, farmers have not taken all of the water and have allowed a sizable amount to pass on to the refuge. Despite one of the worst droughts on record, the farmers continued to share this limited release with the reserve.

"Not until the water was turned on by Gale Norton did [the environmentalists] start screaming we need water in the refuge," Mr. Hall said.

"They call themselves conservationists, but we are the true conservationists. They are responsible for the deaths of thousands of animals that depend on the canal," he said.

As many as 12,000 supporters attended a June protest called the Bucket Brigade, and organizers say as many as 20,000 people from across the country are expected to arrive tomorrow.

Thousands of 18-wheelers will parade through the town tomorrow morning in convoys from California, Montana and Nevada. They will be escorted by 250 men and women on horseback who are calling themselves the U.S. Freedom Cavalry, Klamath Regiment, Headgates Detachment.

The trucks will carry food and supplies for the farmers and two 12-foot-high metal water buckets to symbolize their struggle this summer.

"When they put a fish and a bird in front of human life, this is something we need to fight for, and I draw the line at Klamath Falls," Mr. Hall said, referring to four firefighters killed in Washington last month when water in a stream containing endangered species reportedly could not be used to battle a forest fire.

Organizers promise the protest will be peaceful.

Jeff McCracken, spokesman for the Bureau of Reclamation, said the demonstrators to date have "conducted themselves admirably. ... Hopefully, things will continue to be peaceful, and those folks will get the publicity they are looking for, and we can move forward to find a solution so this never happens again."

Klamath Falls resident and small-business owner Cheryl Dryer said the July water release to farmers was "too little, too late" and is beginning to have a trickle-down effect on businesses throughout the community. "We're not getting the business we normally do from our farmers," Miss Dryer said. "People just don't matter anymore."

Since July 4, as many as 300 protesters have camped by the canal headgates. The demonstrators have been ordered out of the area by city officials by the end of this month.

--------

Secret files chill foes of government

From Ottawa Citizen Online,
August 20, 2001
http://www.ottawacitizen.com/national/010820/656993.html

State dossiers list peaceful critics as security threats

The credentials on Joan Russow's resume are rather impressive.

An accomplished academic and environmentalist, she served as national leader of the Green Party of Canada.

The Victoria woman had also earned a reputation as a gadfly who routinely shamed the government over its unfulfilled commitments.

But Ms. Russow, 62, was dumbfounded when authorities tagged her with a most unflattering designation: threat to national security.

Her name and photo turned up on a threat assessment list prepared by police and intelligence officials for the 1997 gathering of APEC leaders at the University of British Columbia.

"All these questions start to come up, why would I be placed on the list?" she asks.

Mr. Russow is hardly alone. Her name was among more than 1,000 -- including those of many peaceful activists -- entered in security files for the Asia-Pacific summit.

The practice raises serious concerns about the extent to which authorities are monitoring opponents of government policies, as well as the tactics that might be employed at future summits, including the meeting of G-8 leaders next year in Alberta.

Ms. Russow had been a vocal critic of the federal position on numerous issues, expressing concerns about uranium mining, the proposed Multilateral Agreement on Investment and genetically engineered foods.

Just weeks before the Vancouver summit, she gave a presentation arguing that initiatives to be discussed at APEC would undermine international conventions on the environment.

However, Ms. Russow went to the summit not as an activist, but as a reporter for the Oak Bay News, a Victoria-area community paper. Security staff questioned whether the small newspaper was bona fide and pulled her press pass.

But the secret files on Ms. Russow suggest there may be more to the story.

She wouldn't have even known the threat list existed if not for the tabling of thousands of pages of classified material at the public inquiry into RCMP actions at APEC, which focused on the arrest and pepper spraying of students on the UBC campus.

The threat assessment of Ms. Russow, prepared prior to the summit, describes her as a "Media Person" and "UBC protest sympathizer." A second document drafted by threat assessment officials during the summit characterizes Ms. Russow and another media member as "overly sympathetic" to APEC protesters. "Both subjects have had their accreditation seized."

Ms. Russow later complained, without success, about the revocation of her pass.

Officials with the Commission for Public Complaints Against the RCMP concluded the RCMP did nothing wrong. But despite exhaustive inquiries, a frustrated Ms. Russow has yet to find out how and why she was even placed on a threat list.

The APEC summit Threat Assessment Group, known as TAG, included members of the RCMP, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, the Vancouver police, the Canadian Forces, Canada Customs and the Immigration Department.

The TAG files were compiled on a specially configured Microsoft Access database that "proved very successful in capturing and analyzing intelligence," says a police report on the operation, made public at the APEC inquiry.

Much of the information came from "existing CSIS and RCMP networks" as well as Vancouver police members. Other data were funnelled to TAG by RCMP working the UBC campus, including undercover officers and units assigned to crowds.

By the end of the summit, the TAG database had swelled to almost 1,200 people and groups, including many activists and protesters. Ms. Russow's photo appeared in a report alongside the pictures and dates of birth of several other people. One is described as a "lesbian activist/anarchist" considered "very masculine."

Several are simply labelled "Activist" -- making Ms. Russow wonder how they wound up in secret police files. "Why are citizens who engage in genuine dissent being placed on a threat assessment list?"

The practice of collecting and cataloguing photographs of demonstrators is worrisome, says Canadian historian Steve Hewitt, author of Spying 101: The Mounties' Secret Activities at Canadian Universities, 1917-1997, to be published next year.

"There's tremendous potential for abuse. One would suspect that they're compiling a database. And clearly, there's probably sharing going on between countries," said Mr. Hewitt, currently a visiting scholar at Purdue University in Indiana.

"Your picture is taken and it's held in a computer, and when it might come up again, who knows?"

The RCMP, CSIS and other Canadian agencies have long shared information with U.S. officials, a cross-border relationship that has grown closer to deal with smugglers, terrorists and, most recently, protesters who come under suspicion.

Canada Customs and Revenue Agency staff have access to a number of automated databases and intelligence reports that help screen people trying to enter the country.

Several protesters who were headed to the Summit of the Americas in Quebec City last April were either denied entry to Canada or subjected to lengthy delays, luggage searches and extensive questioning -- and the rationale was not always clear.

At a recent Commons committee meeting, New Democrat MP Bill Blaikie confronted RCMP Commissioner Giuliano Zaccardelli and Ward Elcock, the director of CSIS, about scrutiny of activists.

An incredulous Mr. Blaikie recounted the case of a U.S. scientist who was questioned by Customs officials for about an hour last spring upon coming to Canada to speak at a conference about his opposition to genetically modified food.

"Are people being trailed, watched, interviewed and harassed at borders because of their political views?" Mr. Blaikie asked, noting the "chilling effect" of such attention.

The RCMP Security Service, the forerunner of CSIS, amassed secret files on thousands of groups and individuals considered a threat to the established order, devoting its energies through much of the 20th century to the hunt for Communist agents and sympathizers.

The vast list of targets left few stones unturned, providing the Mounties with intelligence on subjects as wide-ranging and diverse as labour unions, Quebec separatists, the satirical jesters of the Rhinoceros Party, American civil rights activist Martin Luther King, the Canadian Council of Churches, high school students, women's groups, homosexuals, the black community in Nova Scotia, white supremacists and foreign-aid organizations.

CSIS inherited about 750,000 files from the RCMP upon taking over many intelligence duties from the Mounties in 1984.

As the end of the Cold War loomed in the late 1980s, the intelligence service wound down its counter-subversion branch, turning its focus to terrorism.

However, the emergence of a violent presence at anti-globalization protests has spurred CSIS to once again scrutinize mass protest movements, working closely with the RCMP and other police.

One of the threat assessment documents on Ms. Russow lists not only her date of birth, but hair and eye colour and weight -- or rather what she weighed in the 1960s, perhaps a clue as to how long officials have kept a file on her.

In 1963, a young Ms. Russow taught English to a Czechoslovakian military attache in Ottawa. She was asked by RCMP to report to them about activities at the Czech embassy, but refused. She surmises that may have prompted the Mounties to open a file on her -- a dossier that could have formed the basis of the APEC threat citation more than 30 years later.

Ms. Russow is disturbed that she learned of the official interest in her activities only by chance. And she worries about the untold ramifications such secret files might have.

"How many people have had their names put on the list and never know?"
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