------- Index of Articles

NUCLEAR
Thwartnuke 1.0
SA researcher awarded radiation exposure study grant
Radioactive leaks in Lake Ontario raise concerns
WHO Studies Depleted Uranium in Iraq
India and the Bomb
Studies Sought Before Missile Testing
Environmental Groups to File Suit Over Missile Defenses
Give Delawareans some say before emergency
INDIAN POINT NUCLEAR PLANT LICENSES TRANSFERRED
Preserving a Hair-Raising Relic of the Cold War
Nuclear waste recyclers target consumer products

MILITARY
Somalia Is Making Progress Toward Peace, Leader Says
Bulgaria cancels plans to buy U.S. F-16 warplanes
Villagers flee racial purge by Albanian guerrillas
China increases missile threat
Colombian peace talks to resume amid intensification of war
Air Force spy plane downed over Iraq
China Faults Palestinian's Death
Israel Troops Enter Palestinian Town
U.S. Says Israeli Killings Are Inflaming Mideast Conflict
Space, the final frontier

OTHER
Texas in big push to develop wind power
List of Stem Cell Researchers Shows Hands Had Been Tied
Stem Cell Colonies' Viability Unproven
Key lawmakers are rethinking stem-cell plan
Powell Will Not Attend Racism Conference in South Africa
Algerian Indicted in Bomb Plot

ACTIVISTS
Protesters Make Appeals to World Bank, IMF



-------- NUCLEAR

"Thwartnuke 1.0 : Einstein Saves the World from the Stockpile Stewardship Program."

Date: Tue, 28 Aug 2001 21:21:30 -0700
From: marylia@earthlink.net (marylia)

Ladies and Gentlemen,

We are happy to introduce a working version of our anti-nuclear video game "Thwartnuke 1.0 : Einstein Saves the World from the Stockpile Stewardship Program."

Fatal technical difficulties, appearing in the previously announced version of this game, have been resolved according to our test players. You will find the game on Tri-Valley CAREs' web site at http://www.igc.org/tvc.

The game is downloadable and playable on PCs (not Macs, unless you have a compiler). Please let us know what you think of it -- and whether you saved the earth.

Let the games begin...

Peace,

Marylia Kelley and Issac Trotts (game designer and producer)

Tri-Valley CAREs (Communities Against a Radioactive Environment) 2582 Old First Street Livermore, CA USA 94550

http://www.igc.org/tvc/ - is our web site, please visit us there!
(925) 443-7148 - is our phone (925) 443-0177 - is our fax

-------- australia

SA researcher awarded radiation exposure study grant

Tue, 28 Aug 2001
ABC (Australia)
http://www.abc.net.au/news/state/sa/archive/metsa-28aug2001-5.htm

An Adelaide researcher has been awarded an $850,000 grant from the United States Government to study the effects of low level radiation exposure on humans.

Principal medical scientist at the Flinders Medical Centre, Dr Pam Sykes, says her research will also explore the role of low radiation levels in the development of cancer.

"We don't know exactly what, if any, genetic damage is occurring at very low doses X-rays and gamma rays that [are] in the environment," she said.

"So if you get a slight increase, meaning you get a little bit of extra...X-rays... could that actually contribute to cancer."

-------- canada

Radioactive leaks in Lake Ontario raise concerns

CANADA: August 28, 2001
Story by Julie Remy
REUTERS NEWS SERVICE
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/12174/story.htm

TORONTO - A nuclear waste facility managed by Cameco Corp., the world's biggest supplier of uranium, has been leaking continuously over the past two decades, environmental groups said in a report published yesterday.

The report said Cameco has been releasing toxic substances such as arsenic and uranium in the Lake Ontario. A company spokesman, however, said it was meeting all regulatory requirements.

"For the responsibilities that we have, Cameco has met all of the regulatory requirements for the affective and safe operation of the site," said Jamie McIntyre, spokesman for Cameco.

But Mark Mattson, author of the report from Lake Keepers Ontario, an independent environmental watchdog, said the storage site at Port Granby, located about 100 km (62 miles) east of Toronto, is not in compliance with environmental laws although it is licensed by the federal government.

"Liquid radioactive wastes are constantly entering the lake (...) in the form of intentionally discharged treated effluent and as fugitive seeps," he wrote.

According to the report, two series of tests conducted last year showed that 63 percent and 97 percent of the water fleas placed in the treated discharge died. Water fleas are commonly used by Environment Canada to determine toxicity, and if over 50 percent of the organisms die, the sample is considered "acutely toxic," Mattson said.

In a letter sent to Environment Canada, he urged the authorities to conduct a full investigation into potential breaches of the federal Fisheries Act and Migratory Birds Act, which prohibit the massive release of pollutants, because no other legislation is available to protect humans.

"Unfortunately in Canada my experience has been that the laws that protect wildlife and fish are stronger in some cases than the ones that protect people," he told Reuters.

The plant was closed in 1988 after 33 years of operation by the Crown Corporation Eldorado Nuclear Ltd. and has been managed by Saskatoon-based Cameco since then.

Cameco's McIntyre said the company was aware of problems at the site but that it was not aware of any leaks reported by Lake Ontario Keepers. He said Cameco has committed C$25 million in a C$230 million cleanup plan agreed this spring by the federal government and three Ontario municipalities.


-------- depleted uranium

WHO Studies Depleted Uranium in Iraq

August 28, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Iraq-UN.html?searchpv=aponline

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) -- World Health Organization experts on Tuesday began investigating claims that cancer rates and birth defects in Iraq have increased due to depleted uranium in ammunition used during the 1991 Gulf War.

The six-member WHO team arrived in Baghdad late Monday on a mission agreed to in Geneva in April to study levels of cancer and other diseases in Iraq.

Iraq says economic sanctions imposed after its 1990 invasion of Kuwait have hit its health sector hard.

Baghdad also says it has evidence that a recent increase in cancers and birth defects among Iraqis is linked to depleted uranium used in NATO ammunition during the Gulf War.

On arrival in Baghdad, the WHO team met Iraqi health ministry officials and viewed documents.

Team leader Abdel Aziz Saleh told reporters it was too early to say whether depleted uranium used in shells against Iraq contributed to disease rates.

``We haven't yet reached the evidence or the data that can answer this kind of question,'' Saleh said. ``Actually, the project proposals are meant to develop the information, the data, that is reliable to answer these kinds of questions.''

Saleh said Iraq needed to improve its cancer registry programs, raise awareness about the disease and encourage prevention education.

Last month, Iraq accused the United Nations of trying to postpone the WHO visit for security reasons, accusing the organization of having ``bad intentions.''

U.N. Undersecretary-General Benon Sevan, who is in charge of the world body's Iraq program, rejected the Iraqi allegation as casting ``aspersions against United Nations personnel.''

The WHO team is expected to stay five days in Iraq.

-------- india / pakistan

India and the Bomb

New York Times
August 28, 2001
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/08/28/opinion/28TUE1.html?searchpv=nytToday

The Bush administration will reportedly soon ask Congress to lift the ineffectual American military and economic sanctions imposed on India after it tested a nuclear weapon three years ago. While this step may be warranted to encourage already improving relations between the United States and India, it should not be done in a fashion that suggests that Washington has lost interest in trying to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons to nations that have not had them. That must remain a bedrock American policy goal.

It is clear that New Delhi cannot be pressured by sanctions into giving up its new status as a declared nuclear weapons power. The sanctions bar American military exports to India and exports to companies involved in nuclear weapons development. Washington should, however, find new, more effective ways to urge India to limit its nuclear ambitions.

India is the world's largest democracy and second most populous country. During the cold war, New Delhi looked to Moscow as a strategic counterweight to China and to an American-supported Pakistan. More recently, it has shifted its diplomacy toward Washington, while instituting economic reforms that have made it more receptive to American trade and investment. In this improved climate, India may be more willing to consider American appeals to restrain its weapons program.

India's 1998 weapons test directly led to Pakistan testing its own nuclear bomb just two weeks later. Indian nuclear developments also affect China. New Delhi and Beijing fought a brief war in 1962 and have eyed each other warily ever since. By encouraging India to behave responsibly, Washington can diminish the risk of a nuclear clash between India and Pakistan over Kashmir and can discourage a nuclear arms race between India and China.

To this end, the Bush administration should urge India not to mount nuclear warheads on its missiles and to keep all of its nuclear weapons under civilian rather than military control. To slow the further spread of nuclear weapons, Washington should urge India to maintain its current restraints on exporting nuclear materials and technologies.

At this point, Congress ought not to ease nuclear sanctions against Pakistan. The military government there led by Gen. Pervez Musharraf has followed less responsible weapons export policies, has refused to sever its links with international terrorist groups and has not yet taken adequate steps to restore electoral democracy. But while it is appropriate for Washington to develop more cordial relations with New Delhi than with Islamabad, it must be careful not to be so punitive that it drives Pakistan's military leaders into even more destructive policies.

The Bush administration has given less attention than it should to limiting the further spread of nuclear weapons. It has unwisely abandoned the nuclear test ban treaty and wrongly seems to view missile defense as an adequate alternative to arms control. In the case of India, the administration is right in concluding that sanctions have not been effective. But Congress should insist that America's new engagement with India be accompanied by forceful lobbying for nuclear restraint.

-------- missile defense

Studies Sought Before Missile Testing

August 28, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Missile-Defense-Lawsuit.html?searchpv=aponline

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Worried about the potential hazards of missile defense testing on the West Coast, a coalition of environmental and public interest groups sued the Defense Department in federal court Tuesday to require a fresh round of environmental studies.

The groups contend in a lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court here that the 1969 National Environmental Policy Act requires the Pentagon to conduct new studies of the effects that the proposed Star Wars test range would have on the Pacific Ocean region between Alaska, Hawaii, California and the Marshall Islands.

A new supplemental environmental impact study on the Pentagon's missile defense program and a second, more specific study on how the program would affect localities are required, the groups say. That is because the testing would have a significant environmental impact and the previous studies in 1994 and 2000 were for old programs that the Bush administration replaced with a new proposal and testing schedule, they say.

The administration proposal includes plans for an emergency anti-missile system with five missile silos operating from Fort Greely near Fairbanks, Alaska, by 2004.

``By its own admission, the Bush administration has radically revised the missile defense program,'' said David Adelman, a senior attorney for Natural Resources Defense Council. ``It can't do that without reassessing the potential environmental damage and providing for public comment. Otherwise, it's breaking the law.''

The Pentagon has been planning to start construction early next year. If the Defense Department does not agree to a new study, the NRDC plans to ask the federal judge for an injunction to require the study in advance of any construction, said NRDC senior researcher Christopher Paine.

The new study could take from six to 18 months and could affect the administration's plans to withdraw from the 1972 Antiballistic Missile Treaty, he said.

Along with the NRDC, groups filing suit were Physicians for Social Responsibility, Greenpeace USA, Alaska Action Center, Alaska Community Action on Toxics, Alaska Public Interest Research Group, Kodiak Rocket Launch Information Group, and No Nukes North: Alaskan and Circumpolar Coalition Against Missile Defense.

Melanie Duchin, an Anchorage activist with Greenpeace, said the proposed testing is immoral as well as illegal.

``Alaskans or anybody else who cares about the planet and the threat of a new nuclear arms race are not going to sit by while this administration threatens Alaska's environment with a program that endangers the entire world.''

A spokesman for the Pentagon's Ballistic Missile Defense Organization could not immediately be reached for comment Tuesday.

--------

Environmental Groups to File Suit Over Missile Defenses

New York Times
August 28, 2001
By JAMES DAO
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/08/28/politics/28MISS.html?searchpv=nytToday

WASHINGTON, Aug. 27 - Hoping to slow the Bush administration's missile defense program, several environmental groups plan to file a lawsuit on Tuesday asserting that the Pentagon's plans for a missile defense test range in the Pacific would violate federal environmental rules.

The suit, to be filed in United States District Court here, contends that the Pentagon must conduct a detailed analysis of the environmental impact of missile testing on Alaska, California, Hawaii and other places in the proposed test range.

Such environmental impact statements require public hearings and can take well over a year to complete. The Pentagon had planned to start construction on portions of the sprawling test range in Alaska and elsewhere early next year.

If a federal judge orders the military to produce the impact statement, it would be a potentially serious setback to the administration's efforts to have an "emergency" antimissile system operating from Alaska by as early as 2004.

It might also complicate the administration's assertion that it must withdraw within months from the Antiballistic Missile Treaty, the 1972 pact with the Soviet Union that prohibits development of missile defense systems. Pentagon officials have argued that an aggressive new test schedule in the Pacific range would conflict with the treaty starting early next year.

"Obviously, the hope is that delay will lead to cancellation," said Melanie Duchin, an Anchorage activist with Greenpeace, a plaintiff in the lawsuit. "That's what we always hope for in these suits."

Lt. Col. Rick Lehner, a spokesman for the Pentagon's Ballistic Missile Defense Organization, said the program had already produced a detailed environmental impact statement that analyzed the effects of missile defenses on parts of North Dakota and Alaska, including Fort Greely near Fairbanks. The Clinton administration had considered basing 100 missile interceptors at Fort Greely.

By contrast, the Bush administration has proposed building five missile silos at Fort Greely - initially for testing purposes, but eventually to be part of an operating missile defense system by as early as 2004, if a missile attack seems imminent.

"We did a complete E.I.S. for Greely for 100 interceptors," Colonel Lehner said. "So if we have just 5 interceptors, that would seem to be not an issue and covered by the past E.I.S."

Colonel Lehner said the Pentagon also intended to conduct an environmental assessment of plans to use a commercial launch site on Kodiak Island as part of the test range. That assessment would determine whether a more detailed environmental impact statement was needed.

But officials with the Natural Resources Defense Council, which is spearheading the lawsuit, contend that previous environmental impact statements are no longer valid because the Bush administration has replaced the old program with a far more aggressive testing schedule.

"By its own admission, the administration has radically revised the nation's ballistic missile defense program, including expanding missile defense testing activities into ecologically sensitive areas in Alaska," said David E. Adelman, a lawyer for the council.

In addition to the council and Greenpeace, other plaintiffs in the suit include Physicians for Social Responsibility, Alaska Public Interest Research Group and an array of Alaskan environmental and arms control groups.

In court papers, the plaintiffs contend that the new test range could create environmental problems in several ways: by laying new fiber- optic lines across salmon-breeding streams, by leaving space debris from interception tests in low orbit, by emitting electromagnetic radiation from tracking radars and by using solvents and other explosive chemical compounds.

If the Pentagon fires test missiles from Fort Greely, missile debris could fall on populated areas in central Alaska. However, the Pentagon has said it intends to fire most of its test missiles from Kodiak, where the debris would fall into the ocean.

Christopher Paine, a senior researcher with the resources Defense Council, said the group planned to ask a federal judge to issue an injunction blocking construction on the new test range until an environmental impact statement is finished.

The Pentagon has awarded a $9 million contract for site preparation work at Fort Greely. That work, which could begin this week, will involve clearing trees and grading dirt. Construction of missile silos is not expected to begin until spring.

The Bush administration has said the new Pacific range will allow it to conduct tests in which target missiles fired from California and traveling at realistic speeds and trajectories are shot down with interceptors launched from Alaska or Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands. Current tests involve a more constricted range between California and Kwajalein.

Critics of the plan contend that the current testing range is adequate and that the administration wants to expand the range to Alaska solely to lay the foundations for an operating missile shield.

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

Give Delawareans some say before emergency

Delaware News Journal
08/28/2000
http://www.delawareonline.com/newsjournal/opinion/devoice/08282000.html

I recently spoke before the New Jersey Emergency Management Agency concerning an evacuation plan in case of a nuclear power plant accident at Salem. I had that privilege because the New Jersey legislature has made provisions for an annual hearing to allow the public to voice concerns and make suggestions.

Even though more people live in the shadow of these plants on the Delaware side of the river, no such opportunity is granted by this state.

The Delaware Emergency Management Agency is responsible for a 10-mile radius, called the Emergency Planning Zone.

DEMA has plans for three options, depending on the severity of the accident: access control, sheltering, evacuation.

- All access to the emergency zone would be closed. With enough police, that could be accomplished.

- People would be ordered to stay in their homes with doors and windows closed. How that is to be accomplished is not clear, particularly since most people I have talked to are not familiar with the possibility of such an order and its grave importance. Whether this order even could be enforced and how many police it would take are open questions.

- Evacuation. Here is where the plan seems to fall apart. A recent study reveals serious flaws.

Mass exodus

Spontaneous evacuation is not taken into account. Should DEMA order the evacuation of the emergency zone, mass exodus also will have taken place outside the zone by the time emergency personnel arrives. That will prevent those who have been exposed to nuclear effects from getting to designated shelters.

That occurred during the Three Mile Island accident in 1979 in Pennsylvania. A recent study shows that the evacuation of pregnant women and preschool children in a five-mile zone would have involved 3,400 evacuees. But 200,000 people evacuated, about 39 percent of the population within 15 miles of the reactor.

Also not taken into consideration is role conflict. For example, emergency personnel assigned to evacuate students, the elderly, hospitals and prisons might give priority to their families.

Researchers studying the now closed Shoreham nuclear power station questioned bus drivers and volunteer firefighters as to what they would do if evacuation of a 10-mile zone was ordered; 68 percent of 291 firefighters and 73 percent of 264 bus drivers indicated family obligations would take precedence over emergency duties.

During the Three Mile Island accident, conflict extended to nurses, physicians and technicians. At one local hospital, only six of the 70 doctors scheduled for weekend emergency duty reported for work.

A nuclear power plant accident is considerably different from a natural disaster, such as a hurricane. People often have to be prodded to leave scenes of natural disasters. The stakes are much higher after a nuclear accident, and the passage of time does not make the estimates of danger more palatable.

A study recently completed by the Sandia National Laboratory concluded that a worst-case accident at Salem I and II in New Jersey might kill more than 100,000 people.

The officials for the New Jersey Radiological Response Plan were courteous, attentive and met with us privately before the official hearing. There is no provision in Delaware for public participation when those in charge have their meetings. I would hope that someone in the legislature would come forward to introduce a bill that would give us the same opportunity.

Frieda Berryhill, of Heritage Park, was chairwoman of the Coalition for Nuclear Power Postponement for 20 years.

-------- new york

INDIAN POINT NUCLEAR PLANT LICENSES TRANSFERRED

August 28, 2001
ENS
http://ens-news.com/ens/aug2001/2001L-08-28-09.html

BUCHANAN, New York, The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has approved the transfer of the operating licenses for Indian Point Nuclear Generating Units 1 and 2 from Consolidated Edison Company of New York, Inc., to subsidiaries of Entergy Corporation.

The agency's approval of the license transfers becomes effective immediately, even though the Commission has granted hearing requests from the Citizens Awareness Network, the town of Cortlandt Manor, New York, and the Hendrick Hudson School District. The groups sought hearings regarding Entergy's financial ability to operate and maintain the Indian Point plant safely.

The NRC's August 22 order lays out a schedule for the hearings which could result in the agency reversing its decision next year.

On December 12, 2000, Consolidated Edison and Entergy submitted a joint application to the NRC requesting approval for the license transfers. The key issues considered by the NRC included the prospective licensees' technical and financial qualifications to maintain Indian Point 1, which shut down permanently in 1974, and safely operate Indian Point 2, as well as decommissioning funding assurance.

A copy of the NRC's approval letter and accompanying safety evaluation report is available at: http://www.nrc.gov/NRC/REACTOR/IP/index.html under the heading "News & Correspondence."

----

Preserving a Hair-Raising Relic of the Cold War

August 28, 2001
By THE NEW YORK TIMES
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/08/28/nyregion/28BUNK.html?searchpv=nytToday

NEW WINDSOR, N.Y. - They called it the blockhouse, and from the outside at least, it lived up to its name. It was a windowless square with no distinguishing features except for a single beige stripe around its middle.

The four-story building was constructed of lead-reinforced concrete and was tucked behind a hill on a United States Air Force base in this small town 60 miles north of New York City. Since the building was hard to camouflage, the designers did the next best thing, making it so nondescript that few but those with a security clearance to get inside knew what went on there.

Now, the structure and its mysterious past have captured the imagination of two residents of the nearby town of New Paltz.

The two residents - Susan Zimet, 47, co-director of the Hudson Valley Media Arts Center, and Karl Rodman, 65, the president of River Valley Tours, an educational travel organization - hope to turn it into a museum to commemorate what they see as the next era ripe for nostalgia: the cold war. They will call it the Cold War/Peace Museum.

"People need to see this and know what was going on right in their own backyard during that time," Ms. Zimet said.

Beginning in 1958, the building, once known as the Semi-Automatic Ground Environment Direction Center and called SAGE, played a crucial role in America's defense against a possible Soviet air attack. It housed part of the military's first major computer-based command and control system.

Data from far-flung radar sites were transmitted over phone lines to computer consoles at this and 21 similar centers nationwide, where Air Force personnel scanned the skies, prepared at the touch of a button to intercept enemy planes with remote-controlled surface-to- air missiles.

After serving as the hub of Northeast air defense for more than a decade, the SAGE Center on the Stewart Air Force Base closed in the late 1960's, its technology made obsolete by the proliferation of intercontinental ballistic missiles. Tracking ICBM's required more sensitive radar and faster computers. It has sat ever since, largely empty and deteriorating, on the grounds of what is now Stewart International Airport.

Ms. Zimet and Mr. Rodman envision a museum that would not only explain the building and its technology, but also examine the impact of the cold war on all aspects of life in both the United States and the Soviet Union. It might also have a full-size theater that would show continuous screenings of cold war movies like "Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb" and "Seven Days in May."

Other potential exhibits include a life-size reconstruction of a family's backyard bomb shelter and a collection of oral histories from military personnel and civilians.

Ms. Zimet and Mr. Rodman are trying to raise $200,000 by Dec. 1 to finance feasibility and concept studies. They have been discussing their plans with Ralph Appelbaum Associates, a Manhattan museum design firm best known for the Holocaust Museum in Washington, and Economics Research Associates, an entertainment consulting firm.

The museum project is among a growing number of efforts to preserve sites related to the time when fear of nuclear annihilation gripped America.

Francis Gary Powers Jr., son of the U-2 pilot whose reconnaissance plane was shot down over Russia in 1960, plans to open a museum on a former Nike missile base in Lorton, Va. On Long Island, a group wants to save the nation's last remaining intact Air Force radar tower and antenna, situated on state-owned land at Montauk Point. In New Jersey, the federal government is restoring another former Nike missile site at Fort Hancock on Sandy Hook peninsula in hopes of turning it into a national park.

America is increasingly fascinated by the cold war, partly because enough time has passed for most people to truly consider it history, said Robert Sharlet, the Chauncey H. Winters professor of political science at Union College in Schenectady. Yet the cold war is still a vivid memory for nostalgia-prone baby boomers who participated in duck-and-cover drills at school and monitored the space race, he said.

"In a sense, everyone who lived through the cold war is a cold war veteran," Professor Sharlet said. "Now that all the unpleasantness is history and the memories are sanitized, I foresee cold war toys, T- shirts and bus tours of old" Strategic Air Command bomber sites. "Nostalgia is a terrific marketing tool, and pop culture is a great earner."

Nevertheless, those interested in saving cold-war-related sites are not finding their task easy. Built to be functional, not beautiful, old radar towers, hulking concrete computer centers and outdated missile bases can be a hard sell for those who favor preserving them.

Also, many of the properties have been stripped of the electronics that were arguably their most interesting feature. At the New Windsor site, one floor is now home to a company that makes chocolate lollipops by hand.

Upstairs, all that remains of the storied technology are the hulking air-conditioning units that once cooled two identical computer systems, each with approximately 50,000 vacuum tubes. In the command center, where air defense strategy was plotted, are two painted Plexiglas maps indicating the status of potential targets of enemy bombs.

In its heyday, the system featured the largest and most expensive real- time computer program every built. Designed by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Lincoln Laboratories and constructed by I.B.M., it pioneered technology that modern computer users now consider standard, including dial-up telephone modems and the mouse. Its advancements helped create today's airline reservation systems.

"The SAGE computer was a marvel not seen in civilian circles," said Chris McWilliams, a retired Air Force major who worked as a radar operator at the New Windsor site from 1957 to 1960. "Compared to the older manual radar consoles, the SAGE consoles looked like something out of Buck Rogers."

Ms. Zimet and Mr. Rodman hope that the New Windsor building's role in history and its contributions to modern computing will help draw a crowd. They believe that a cold war museum in New Windsor will tie in with existing local historic military sites, particularly the United States Military Academy at West Point, which attracts 2.5 million visitors a year.

"I took one look at this and knew that its history and significance were too great to do anything but make it into a museum," Ms. Zimet said. "The goal is to have them walk out with their hair standing up on the back of their necks and realizing that at any given moment, we could find ourselves back in that situation again."

-------- us nuc waste

Nuclear waste recyclers target consumer products

USA: August 28, 2001
Story by Allyce Bess
REUTERS NEWS SERVICE
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/12173/story.htm

NEW YORK - Orthodontists could soon be giving their patients more than they bargained for with their brand new braces: a mouthful of radioactive waste.

Under a Department of Energy plan, braces aren't the only product which could contain radioactive waste. Zippers, lawn chairs, hip replacements and countless other consumer products could include trace amounts of waste taken from nuclear reactors or weapons complexes and recycled into scrap metal.

The Department of Energy (DOE) sees the recycling as a way to clean up waste at decommissioned nuclear plants and weapons facilities, but environmental groups call the idea ridiculous.

"It's hard to imagine a nuclear enterprise more tone deaf to public concerns or a more cockamamie scheme than taking radioactive waste and disposing of it in consumer products," said Dan Hirsch, president of nuclear watchdog group Committee to Bridge the Gap.

The energy department will spend the next 12 months to 18 months studying the environmental and health risks of the plan, having held 12 public hearings in six cities this summer, said DOE spokesman Joe Davis,

Critics say recycling radioactive waste, even at low levels, is reckless. But energy officials say that the government needs to look at all options for getting rid of the growing pile of hazardous wastes. Proponents of the plan say that by spreading small, non-lethal amounts into recycled scrap, the need for large waste dumps could be avoided.

CONCERN IS HEALTHY

A moratorium was placed on radioactive recycling last year by former Secretary of Energy Bill Richardson after environmental groups protested the possible sale of 6,000 metric tons of contaminated nickel from the energy department's Oakridge nuclear facility in Tennessee to scrap metal dealers.

But under the Bush administration, the program is being revisited and the energy department is considering lifting the moratorium. But before that, it is required by law to conduct a thorough study on the safety risks of recycling radioactive waste.

The proposal does not specify any uses for scrap metal containing the radioactive waste, but metal industry executives say the material would go into the supply of scrap metal and could be used to make anything.

Even the study has proven problematic. The DOE recently dropped Science Applications International Corp. (SAIC) - which it initially chose to conduct the study and prepared a report - because of its business partnership with British Nuclear Fuels Limited, the company that last year was going to contract with the government to help sell the waste from the Oakridge facility.

Hirsch of the Committee to Bridge the Gap said it was an enormous potential conflict of interest. SAIC's report "is quite dangerous in terms of arguing how much radioactivity would be acceptable for use in consumer products."

The energy department has not said who was hired to complete the study, but some are arguing that the level of radiation in any recycled materials would be too low to actually pose a health risk.

The Nuclear Energy Institute, a trade association representing some 260 companies in the nuclear power industry, has lobbied in favor of radioactive recycling and says the public may be overly concerned.

"Concern is healthy," said Felix Killar, director of material licenses for the institute. "But people need to understand the facts. This isn't truly radioactive waste. It's no more radioactive than any other material recycled in to consumer products."

Killar continues: "There isn't a place on Earth that is totally free of radioactivity."

A LITTLE RADIATION IS OK

John Wittenborn, attorney for the Metal Industries Recycling Coalition (MIRC), comprised of a variety of metal industry trade groups, says their polls indicate the public doesn't buy the idea that nuclear waste can be safely recycled into everyday products.

"We've spent a lot of time and effort to build the perception that products made from recycled materials are safe and good and that recycling itself is something that society should be in favor of," said Wittenborn, whose group strongly opposes recycling of radioactive waste into scrap metal.

Beyond the public image problem the industry would face in using the recycled waste, companies are concerned about the potential contamination of their mills and workers.

Wittenborn says it can cost from $5 million to $15 million to shut down, inspect by hand and then clean a steel mill that has registered radioactivity above a background level.

Recently, Wittenborn attended an energy department public hearing on the issue in Crystal City, Virginia where he presented his polling data and the metal industry's case.

In fact, those who have attended the hearings say most of the comments have opposed lifting the moratorium on radioactive recycling.

"The observer might ask 'Why does the DOE continue to propose to do this if no one is willing to come forward and testify on behalf of it?'" said Dan Guttman, executive director of President Clinton's Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments,

"This is being cast as a question of convincing the hysterical public that a little radiation is OK."


-------- MILITARY

-------- africa

Somalia Is Making Progress Toward Peace, Leader Says

August 28, 2001
New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/08/28/international/africa/28SOMA.html

MOGADISHU, Somalia, Aug. 27 (AP) - A year after taking office, President Abdikassim Salad Hassan acknowledged today that some of the problems that pitched Somalia into chaos and lawlessness remain, but he insisted that his government had made progress.

"It is true we could not do as much as everyone wanted us to do," Mr. Abdikassim said in an interview, "but our slow pace has been effective, and no major clan fighting has erupted in Mogadishu since we returned."

The president's election last summer at a conference in neighboring Djibouti was largely the work of business executives in the war-ravaged capital who had managed to restore many essential services. The city had been destroyed in two years of fighting after 1991, when the dictator Muhammad Siad Barre was ousted and replaced by faction leaders who turned on each other, reducing the nation of seven million into fiefs. That was the last time Somalia had a head of state.

The business executives built private water, electricity and telephone networks, but they were fed up with rampant lawlessness that made it impossible to reopen the city's airport and seaport.

After being chosen last summer, Mr. Abdikassim and 245 legislators returned to Mogadishu in the fall, defying the many skeptics who believed that the armed factions would keep them away. They are to serve during a three-year transitional period, after which nationwide elections are supposed to be held.

But the government was penniless, and Somalia as a nation had all but dissolved. The government has survived on handouts from the business community and donations from Saudi Arabia and Yemen, but it has little influence outside the capital.

Even within Mogadishu, Mr. Abdikassim admitted, his administration has had difficulty restoring peace, and the city is still disputed among rival faction leaders and their heavily armed gunmen.

Its successes, however, include recruiting thousands of gunmen into a security force of some 10,000 and bringing two of Mogadishu's faction leaders into the administration.

-------- arms sales

Bulgaria cancels plans to buy U.S. F-16 warplanes

USA TODAY
08/28/2001
The Associated Press
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2001/08/28/bulgaria-f16s.htm

SOFIA, Bulgaria (AP) - Bulgaria has scrapped plans to replace some of its Russian-made military aircraft with U.S. F-16 jet fighters, a senior army officer said Tuesday.

The government will instead repair and refurbish its 21 Russian MiG-29 jet fighters in an effort to upgrade its force meet NATO military standards. Bulgaria hopes to receive an invitation to join NATO during the alliance's summit next year.

Only three of the fighters are in working condition due to lack of spare parts, said Gen. Dimitar Georgiev, air defense commander. The country's 235-plane air force also includes older Soviet-made MiG-23, MiG-21 and Su-25 fighters.

The previous government of former prime minister Ivan Kostov considered replacing the MiG-29s with American F-16 fighters so that the fleet would fulifill NATO requirements.

But because the country could only afford used planes - which could require extensive and costly repairs - officials decided to forego the purchase.

"There is no point in buying recycled U.S. planes," Georgiev said. "They will require different navigation and auxiliary equipment."

-------- balkans

Villagers flee racial purge by Albanian guerrillas
Ethnic cleansing haunts Macedonia

28/08/2001
Julius Strauss in Tearce
Telegraph (UK)
http://portal.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news//2001/08/28/wmac228.xml

THE Matex clothing factory in the rebel-held village of Tearce was the main employer of local Macedonians. A little more than a week ago it was razed to the ground.

Only the blackened, metal frames of sewing machines and chairs show where the seamstresses worked.

Glass skylights were shattered by the heat of the flames. In the guardhouse, drawers were ripped out, and official papers and clothes scattered on the floor.

Macedonian houses in the village fared little better. Several had been torched, others peppered with automatic fire. Two cafes and a general store had been looted and wrecked.

Outside one an ice cream freezer stood, the cones and ice lollies giving off a sickly-sweet odour in the summer heat.

Of the 1,200 Macedonians who lived in this village until a month ago, only a few dozen are left.

"Their houses burned down because the electrical wires became too hot and they caught fire," smirked Samir Hyseni, the 29-year-old proprietor of the Sport cafe, who was wearing a Manchester United football shirt. His friends sniggered.

As Nato began the task of collecting weapons from ethnic Albanian guerrillas, evidence was emerging of a widespread terror campaign by the rebels.

They have kidnapped dozens of Macedonian men, put to the torch scores of Macedonian houses and looted many more.

In the past five days alone they have also blown up an Orthodox church in the village of Lesok and they are the prime suspects behind a dawn explosion at the weekend which almost levelled a motel, killing two men who worked there.

The targeting of civilians has been less overt and systematic than in neighbouring Kosovo, where tens of thousands of Serbs and gipsies have been forced out. But local Macedonians say the fear created by the guerrillas' terror tactics is tantamount to ethnic cleansing.

"It's an unseen terror," said Jovan Milovanovski, whose 19-year-old son Robert was kidnapped near the village of Lesok on July 23.

Today Jovan, who has not heard from his son since, lives in a sparsely furnished room at a refugee centre in Skopje which he shares with his wife Ljubica, two remaining children and a stranger.

He said: "Two hours after the kidnapping we packed up and left. We had only the clothes we were standing in."

The five share three beds, have an hour of hot water a day and wash their clothes in an old, red bucket. Each day Jovan travels to a road blockade set up by angry Macedonian refugees on the main road to Kosovo while Ljubica visits various relief organisations seeking news of her son.

She said: "Robert was such a quiet boy. He didn't drink or socialise. Even the Albanians loved him. They said he was a child like no other."

Budimir Apostolski, an official who lives in the front-line town of Tetovo, says he has another 52 such cases on his books.

On Sunday evening the guerrillas released about 12 hostages, including an American Macedonian, but many more missing people remain unaccounted for.

Yesterday, the Red Cross said another seven Macedonian civilians had been released. Mr Apostolski said: "And all we ask is to get them back. If they dead we want their bodies returned."

One local man was kidnapped only days after his wedding. His distraught bride walks the streets of Tetovo each day visiting the local branches of the Red Cross, the United Nations refugee agency and any other organisations that might help.

What the relatives fear most is that their men have been tortured. Three road workers kidnapped by the rebels a month ago were cut with knives. They said they were also forced to perform sexual acts on each other.

Another man was reported to have been severely beaten and then hung from a tree with wire tied around his wrists. Mr Apostolski said: "It is a repeat of the Kosovo script. Their aim is ethnic cleansing and genocide."

In Block 77, one of two huge, shabby Communist-era housing estates in Tetovo now controlled by the rebels, 70 percent of the Macedonians living there have already left.

In the purely Macedonian village of Lesok, where Robert was kidnapped, the guerrilla's tactics have paid off.

Of 380 villagers, only about 40 remain. A month ago armed rebels went door-to-door ordering people out. Then they made off with television sets, video players and other valuables before setting fire to several houses.

"They took everything," said Ratko Gligorovski, who sat in his garden yesterday surrounded by carefully pruned pink and red roses. "Then they began to burn the houses."

-------- china

China increases missile threat

August 28, 2001
By Bill Gertz
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20010828-25165936.htm

China has stepped up deployments of short-range missiles opposite Taiwan and now has more than 350 rockets within range of the island, The Washington Times has learned.

New missile deployments were discovered by U.S. intelligence agencies at Yongan, in Fujian province, and at Jiangshan an existing base disclosed for the first time as a missile site, said U.S. intelligence and military officials.

China added more than 30 new CSS-6 and CSS-7 missiles within range of Taiwan in a buildup that U.S. officials say is increasing tensions and destabilizing the region.

"They are on track with adding 50 new missiles a year," said a senior Pentagon official.

Asked about the missile buildup, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz said in an interview yesterday that the missile buildup is destabilizing.

"They have been doing that steadily for a number of years now," Mr. Wolfowitz said.

The missile deployments contradict China's commitment to a 1982 communique with the United States that said Beijing's fundamental policy is a "peaceful resolution" of its differences with Taiwan.

"And I don't see that building up your missiles is part of a fundamental policy of peaceful resolution," Mr. Wolfowitz said. Any attempt by China to intimidate Taiwan will not work because the United States is firmly resolved to prevent the forcible reunification of the island with the mainland, Mr. Wolfowitz said.

The latest deployments put the total number of short-range missiles within range of Taiwan at around 350, an increase of 50 missiles since the spring.

A senior White House official who briefed reporters on the administration's proposed arms sales to Taiwan said in April that there were 300 short-range missiles opposite Taiwan. China's military will deploy a total of around 600 missiles by 2005, the senior official said.

According to the intelligence officials, some of the new missiles were identified as CSS-6 Mod 2s a longer-range version of a missile also known as the M-9. The other new missiles were identified as CSS-7s, also known as M-11s.

Both missiles have a maximum range of around 372 miles, according to the officials.

"All the new deployments are within range of Taiwan," said one official.

The new missiles were identified by launch pads that were recently constructed and identified by U.S. spy satellites last month near the towns of Jiangshan and Yongan.

Yongan was the base used by Chinese military forces to fire test missiles north and south of Taiwan during what became known as the 1996 Taiwan Strait crisis. The United States responded by dispatching two aircraft carrier battle groups to the region.

Jiangshan was identified for the first time as a short-range missile base although officials said it was not a new base.

U.S. intelligence agencies provided different counts of the numbers of new missiles.

One military intelligence agency stated in a classified report that 30 new missiles were identified at Jiangshan, located about 240 miles southwest of Shanghai, and the rest at Yongan, in Fujian province about 220 miles from Taiwan.

A second military intelligence agency stated that most of the new missiles were deployed at Yongan, with only a small number fielded at Jiangshan.

The Chinese have three other short-range missile bases within range of Taiwan in addition to Yongan and Jiangshan. They include the missile brigade headquarters at Leping, and two bases at Xianyou, about 125 miles from Taiwan, and Nanping, about 230 miles from Taiwan.

U.S. intelligence spotted the missile units as they were sent by railroad from Leping to Fujian province during China's large-scale war games in the region, which concluded last week.

China's military forces did not fire any CSS-6s or CSS-7s during the exercises. However, a medium-range CSS-2 missile was test-fired Aug. 21.

Pentagon officials said the Chinese missiles are deployed in "brigades" that typically have 16 transporter-erector launchers and a stockpile of up to 97 missiles. Most of the missiles and launchers are stored in hardened underground bunkers designed to withstand strikes by precision-guided weapons, the officials said.

Richard Fisher, a specialist on the Chinese military, said the latest deployments show Beijing is continuing to threaten Taiwan.

"China is increasing the missile threat against Taiwan and now with this northern deployment it has the option of threatening U.S. forces that may come to Taiwan's defense," said Mr. Fisher, a military analyst with the private Jamestown Foundation.

"I think that's significant."

Mr. Fisher noted that the missile buildup is continuing while both the United States and Taiwan lack effective regional anti-missile defenses.

Assistant Defense Secretary Peter Rodman recently said China's buildup is one argument pushing the United States toward missile defenses.

"I ... have not seen restraint in China's missile deployments, and it is certainly something we raised with them," Mr. Rodman said. "They raised the question of missile defense, and I think a reasonable answer to make to them is, 'Well, the missile defense is prompted by the fact that there are missiles.'"

Chen Shui-bian, president of the Republic of China (Taiwan), said in an interview in July that the United States, Japan and Taiwan should cooperate in building regional missile defenses to counter China's missile buildup.

-------- colombia

Colombian peace talks to resume amid intensification of war

Agence France-Presse
Tuesday August 28, 2001
http://sg.news.yahoo.com/010827/1/1df3u.html

BOGOTA, As Colombian government forces pressed on with a major offensive against leftist rebels, the two sides also prepared for a resumption of on-again-off-again peace talks on Wednesday.

The negotiations will be held in the heart of a huge swath of jungle and savannah that was effectively ceded to the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) 34 months ago in a bid to ease the way toward peace talks.

But the US-backed armed forces, who launched a major offensive earlier this month, made it clear they had no intention of turning down the heat.

"The conflict will be intense; there will be a period of two to three years in which the situation will intensify, before we can find a path to peace," Armed Forces Commander General Fernando Tapias told the Semana newsweekly.

President Andres Pastrana's new show of force got a strong message of support from Washington Monday, with the announcement that US State Department Secretary of State Colin Powell will visit Colombia September 11-12.

The Colombian military has scored some important victories in recent days, claiming they killed about 100 rebels, including two prominent commanders.

The government also said troops overran rebel camps, seized arms and ammunition, and dismantled a mini oil refinery, used by the FARC to produce fuel for cocaine-manufacturing.

US and Colombian government officials say the 16,500-strong FARC relies largely on the illegal cocaine trade for its funding, notably using the territory ceded to the rebels almost three years ago in a bid to pave the way toward peace talks.

Pastrana has drawn fierce criticism from some senior member of the armed forces for creating the FARC safe haven, which is about the size of Switzerland.

"That is where the guerrilla fighters are being organized, are being trained and are being sent to other parts of the country," said Tapias.

The oft-extended lease of life of the enclave expires on October, and the FARC is certain to face increasing pressure to make concessions if it is to be renewed again.

The government's peace commissioner Camilo Gomez has stopped short of demanding a full cease-fire, but has said his top priority would be to get FARC commander Manuel "Tirofijo" Marulanda to agree to "freeze hostilities."

Authorities say this entails a commitment to end kidnappings and other attacks against civilians, while the FARC says it means the government must end "the drastic neoliberal economic plan that is ruining Colombians."

The peace talks were last suspended after the FARC kidnapped three German nationals on July 18. The FARC insists the German government, and not Colombian authorities, should negotiate their fate.

The issue was further complicated when Colombian authorities arrested three suspected Irish Republican Army members earlier this month, claiming they had been training FARC members inside the safe haven.

While US authorities insist military aid to Colombia aims strictly at eradicating cocaine production, they sharply condemn the FARC.

The rebels, the US embassy said in a statement last week, rather than responding to the government's peace efforts, "continue to kidnap, abuse its victims and be involved in narcotics trafficking."

The State Department's third-ranking official, Marc Grossman and other US officials are expected to take up the issue during an August 29 to 31 visit that will include talks with Pastrana.

They are also likely to discuss the extradition to the United States of alleged drug baron Fabio Ochoa, which Pastrana authorized on Monday.

-------- iraq

Air Force spy plane downed over Iraq

August 28, 2001
By Rowan Scarborough
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20010828-18972688.htm

An unmanned U.S. spy plane failed to return to base yesterday from a mission over Iraq, and Baghdad claimed it had shot down its first American aircraft since the allies began patrolling two no-fly zones after the 1991 Gulf war.

U.S. Central Command, which oversees American military options in the Gulf, said from MacDill Air Force Base, Fla., it was not clear whether the RQ-1 Predator had crashed or been shot down.

"It went out quick," said a military official. He said the sudden loss of contact with the remote-control vehicle lends some credence to Iraq's claim.

A senior defense official said no Air Force Airborne Warning and Control System (AWACS) early-warning aircraft was on patrol at the time. If it had been, the AWACS' powerful radar could have tracked the drone's flight path and determined if hostile fire had brought it down.

"All we know is, we lost contact with it at a certain point fairly early into its flight," this official said. "It's supposed to have an automatic return and it didn't come back, and the Iraqis obviously have found it. Whether they shot it down or not, we still don't know.

"We didn't have much up in the air at the time," said the official, referring to other coalition aircraft. He said the principal mission of the 950-pound Predator has been to look for anti-aircraft sites in thickly defended areas.

"The whole idea is to use them in high-risk areas," added the military official. "If you lose it, you don't lose a pilot. It's designed as an attrition-type aircraft. You expect to lose some."

Officials said no attempt will be made to recover the Predator. The $1.5 million Air Force plane does not contain cutting-edge technology and will be of little benefit to Iraq, the officials said.

The Predator's satellite links enable its cameras and radars to relay live images of potential targets and enemy operations.

The Predator is an easier target for Iraq's anti-aircraft artillery or missiles than is a higher-flying supersonic fighter. The drone flies at subsonic speeds of up to 140 mph, at altitudes below 25,000 feet.

The reconnaissance plane was discovered missing at 2 a.m. EDT yesterday as it conducted a daylight mission. U.S. officials seemed to shrug off losing a relatively inexpensive drone, saying the important fact to remember was that Iraq had failed for a decade to down a manned plane.

Baghdad's propaganda machine exploited the mishap nonetheless. Its state-run news agency told citizens that the Predator had been shot down near Basra, Iraq's industrial port city where thousands of Iraqi troops fled when the allies liberated Kuwait in March 1991.

"Iraqi air defenses have shot an American reconnaissance plane coming from Kuwait territory," the Iraqi news agency said.

Iraqi television showed pictures of what it said was a downed U.S. plane. Pentagon officials said they could not determine positively from those images if the depicted wreckage was the missing Predator.

Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein has put a bounty on the head of any allied pilot shot down over his territory. Earlier this summer, Iraq fired at a high-flying U-2 surveillance plane. The surface-to-air missile flew so close that its explosion rattled the U-2's crew.

The Predator, which played a significant intelligence role during NATO's 1999 bombing of Serbia, has become a more active player for U.S. forces enforcing northern and southern no-fly zones over Iraq. The spy craft can loiter for hours over Iraqi military operations and pick out anti-aircraft sites as potential targets.

For years, the Iraqis and Americans have been playing a dangerous cat-and-mouse game. Officials say Iraq typically fires a missile at allied planes, then quickly tries to hide the mobile launch system. U.S. and British jets respond almost immediately by bombing an air-defense target.

Just yesterday, the game played out again as U.S. planes attacked an SA-3 surface-to-air missile system in the northern exclusion zone. The attack was in retaliation for Iraqis firing anti-aircraft artillery from sites north of Mosul.

Gen. Tommy Franks, who heads U.S. Central Command, told the Senate Armed Services Committee in March that coalition pilots had entered the southern zone 153,000 times since 1992. Not one pilot has been lost, including during major operations against air-defense networks near Baghdad.

The Pentagon's "after-action" report on the bombing of Serbia said commanders used unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) such as the Predator in unprecedented numbers. More than 10 Predators and other UAVS were shot down or crashed during the air campaign.

An entire RQ-1A/B Predator system costs $25 million. It consists of four aircraft, a ground-control station, and a satellite link and communication suite -- all manned by 55 persons. Each aircraft comes with a color nose camera, an infrared camera and a radar system for looking through smoke, clouds and haze. When the complete system travels, the crew packs it into a container nicknamed "the coffin."

-------- israel

China Faults Palestinian's Death

August 28, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-China-Israel.html?searchpv=aponline

BEIJING (AP) -- China, using unusually critical language, condemned Israel on Tuesday for killing a Palestinian militant in a missile attack.

``China always opposes any form of terrorism, Israel's policy of tracking and killing militants and its continual assassinations of Palestinian leaders,'' Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhu Bangzao said, according to the official Xinhua News Agency.

Zhu called on Israel and the Palestinians to ``avoid unilateral actions'' and cooperate with international mediation efforts so peace talks can resume.

He said China -- a permanent member of the U.N. Security Council -- ``strongly condemns'' the killing Monday of Mustafa Zibri, a longtime associate of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat.

The 63-year-old leader of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine was the highest-ranking Palestinian militant slain in a months-long Israeli campaign of targeted killings.

--------

Israel Troops Enter Palestinian Town

August 28, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Israel-Palestinian.html?searchpv=aponline

BEIT JALLA, West Bank (AP) -- In response to massive Palestinian fire on a Jewish neighborhood, Israeli forces entered this Palestinian town before dawn Tuesday, took up positions in several buildings and imposed a curfew. One Palestinian was killed and 10 wounded in accompanying gunbattles.

In the past, Israel troops quickly withdraw after nighttime raids of Palestinian towns. But in a shift of policy, troops remained in Beit Jalla after daybreak Tuesday, and the Israeli government said they would stay as long as necessary.

The incursion capped four days of bloody attacks and reprisals in which eight Israelis and six Palestinians were killed. On Monday, Israel killed a senior PLO official, Mustafa Zibri, in a targeted missile attack. Zibri, 63, who headed the second-largest PLO faction, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, was the highest-ranking Palestinian official killed in years.

Angry Palestinians took to the streets in protest and Palestinian gunmen in Beit Jalla, south of Jerusalem, opened heavy fire on nearby Gilo, a Jewish neighborhood built on land Israel captured in the 1967 Mideast war and annexed to Jerusalem.

Gilo has repeatedly come under fire in recent months, but the overnight shooting was the most massive since fighting erupted in September. Israel radio said 31 apartments were damaged. Israeli troops responded with heavy machine gun fire and tanks shells.

At about 1:30 a.m., five Israeli tanks, seven armored personnel carriers and several bulldozers drove about 200 yards into Beit Jalla. Troops came under heavy fire from dozens of Palestinian policemen and gunmen who shot from behind buildings, as flares lit up the night sky.

A Palestinian policeman was killed in the fighting and 10 Palestinians were wounded, including one who was in critical condition.

Israeli troops seized at least two buildings, one inhabited, the other under construction, Palestinian witnesses said. The army said troops took control of several strategic points, but would give no details.

Gunbattles raged into the morning. Palestinian security officials said Israeli troops entered the Aida refugee camp near Beit Jalla after daybreak Tuesday, and came under fire from Palestinian gunmen.

The army imposed a curfew on parts of Beit Jalla and Aida, Palestinian security officials said. Witnesses also said tanks were parked outside the Anglican Church in Beit Jalla. The army confirmed the curfew on Beit Jalla.

Gilo last came under fire two weeks ago, and Israeli troops were poised to enter Beit Jalla at that time. The incursion was called off at the last minute, after Israeli Defense Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer said he won assurances from Palestinian officials that there would be no more shooting. Ben-Eliezer said at the time that Israel would retaliate harshly for renewed attacks on Gilo.

Israel's decision to set up military positions in a Palestinian-run town marked yet another watershed in 11 months of fighting. Israel withdrew from Palestinian population centers in the mid-1990s. In the current conflict, it has frequently entered Palestinian territory for brief periods, but then withdrawn.

``Beit Jalla has become a sniper's nest,'' said Avi Pazner, an Israeli government spokesman. ``Our forces have entered Beit Jalla tonight in order to clean it up, in order to stop the fire. ... They will stay there as long as it is needed to get the security back.''

Israeli Transport Minister Ephraim Sneh said Israel did not plan to reoccupy Beit Jalla, and that a decision on the length of the operation would be taken later in the day.

Palestinian Cabinet minister Saeb Erekat accused Israel of escalating violence. ``It signifies that the worst has not come yet,'' he said, adding that the Palestinian Authority was appealing to the international community for help.

``We are urging these nations to wake up and see the realities of needing to stop this government that has gone out of control,'' he said.

In Ramallah, meanwhile, preparations were under way for the funeral of Zibri, the senior PLO official killed Monday when Israeli helicopters fired two missiles into his office while he was sitting at his desk.

In Washington, U.S. State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said the killing could only inflame an already volatile situation. ``The escalation and violence in recent days in the Middle East threatens to overwhelm any chance of restoring calm and of implementing the Mitchell committee recommendations,'' Boucher said.

Israel has said Zibri, widely known as Abu Ali Mustafa, was involved in seven bombings in the past six months, and had planned more attacks. The army said no one was killed in those bombings.

In Gaza City, Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat received mourners Monday evening, including the leaders of two Islamic militant groups. Arafat did not plan to attend Zibri's funeral in Ramallah, his aides said.

In the southern Gaza Strip refugee camp of Rafah, meanwhile, Israeli tanks and bulldozers demolished 14 houses near the border with Egypt, making about 100 people homeless, said the mayor, Said Zoarab.

Said Abu Jazar, 62, said he was sleeping when bulldozers approached his home. ``I did not even have time to change my sleeping clothes or take my heart medicine,'' he said.

The army said the homes were empty and had been used to fire at Israeli troops in nearby outposts.

--------

U.S. Says Israeli Killings Are Inflaming Mideast Conflict

New York Times
August 28, 2001
By JANE PERLEZ
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/08/28/international/28CAPI.html

WASHINGTON, Aug. 27 - The Bush administration said today that Israel's policy of pinpoint killings of Palestinians was inflaming the Middle East conflict and urged the Israelis to alleviate what it called the humiliations of the Palestinian people.

In sterner terms than those used by President Bush just three days ago, the State Department spokesman, Richard L. Boucher, said that "Israel needs to understand that targeted killings of Palestinians don't end the violence but are only inflaming an already volatile situation and making it much harder to restore calm."

Mr. Boucher was referring to Israel's policy of seeking out and killing Palestinian leaders it says have plotted or supervised terrorist acts. Hours before he spoke, Israeli helicopters fired missiles on the offices of the leader of a radical Palestinian faction, Mustafa Zubari, also known by the name Abu Ali Mustafa. The attack killed him and set off protests by thousands of Palestinians; later, Israeli tanks pushed into the Palestinian-ruled town of Beit Jala.

In declaring that such slayings of Palestinians were "only inflaming an already volatile situation and making it harder to restore calm," Mr. Boucher went beyond remarks made Friday by President Bush, who merely called on the Israelis to show restraint.

Mr. Boucher repeated the administration's frequent appeal to the Palestinian Authority to take "sustained and credible steps" to arrest those responsible for terrorism.

But what was perhaps most striking was his strongly worded appeal to Israel to soften its policy toward the Palestinians. "If the situation on the ground is to improve," he said, "then Israel must also take the economic and security steps that are necessary to alleviate the pressure, the hardship and the humiliations of the Palestinian population."

Mr. Boucher did not spell out what action the United States expected to see. During the 11 months of this Palestinian uprising, Palestinian towns and villages have frequently been virtually shut off from one another by Israeli soldiers. The Israelis say those actions help to prevent terrorist attacks.

The State Department spokesman also made an unusual and explicit reference today to 20 American citizens who he said were living in the building where Mr. Zubari was killed, but who were not injured.

"We are deeply troubled by the fact that civilians, including more than 20 American citizens, some of whom were children, were living in the building which was attacked," Mr. Boucher said.

The building housed three Palestinian families whose members have lived extended periods in the United States and also hold American citizenship, residents said.

The Daas family, which lives on the floor under the office that was attacked, moved to Ramallah three years ago from Springfield, Va., near Washington. The windows of the Daas apartment were blown out.

Leila Daas, 10, standing on shards of glass that littered her bedroom, said she had been at the bedroom door with her two-year old sister when "I saw fire from my window and I heard big explosions and a lot of breaking glass.

"I started running and screaming," she said. "I was very frightened."

Leila's father, Abdul Daas, 40, the owner of two restaurant chains in the Washington area and another in the West Bank, said he had returned to Ramallah so his children, born in the United States, would learn Arabic and absorb Palestinian culture. He said he also owned a diner in Anandale, near Washington, whose customers included senators and congressmen.

A senior State Department official said the language about Israel today was not intended to balance the words of Mr. Bush, who said on Friday: "The Israelis will not negotiate under terrorist threat. It's as simple as that."

The official insisted that it was the White House, not the State Department, that came up with the word "humiliation" this morning as a way of describing the effects of Israeli actions on the Palestinians.

The official said the term was intended to refer to the Israeli military's roadblocks as well as to the economic pressure that Israel has applied by making it difficult for Palestinians to travel to jobs, and by buying far less Palestinian goods.

No matter the origins of today's statement on the Middle East, it left the impression that the State Department was trying to walk a fine line, balancing Mr. Bush's remarks, which were more supportive of Israel, and some of the wider concerns of American diplomacy in the region.

The administration toughened its tone toward Israel on the same day that senior administration officials met for more than four hours with a senior Israeli military officers and diplomats for a scheduled session on shared security needs.

The State Department went out of its way to say that the session - which included Deputy Secretary of State Richard L. Armitage; Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, and the deputy national security adviser, Stephen Hadley - was not timed to coincide with the violence of the last few days.

The discussion centered on Israel's overall security situation in the region and how the United States can cooperate with Israel to "make sure they can face that properly," an official said. Topics at meeting ranged from the threat to Israel from Iran, Israel's relations with Russia and questions about the defunct peace process, the official said. Such sessions were held in the Clinton administration but are now being handled by more senior officials, Israeli and administration officials said.

Whether the administration officials involved today in the "dialogue" raised the question of Israel using American aircraft and helicopters in their attacks against Palestinians remained unclear. Israel used American-made fighter jets on Sunday in bombing raids on Palestinian security headquarters in three locations in the West Bank and Gaza.

Arab governments have consistently protested to the administration that the Israeli use of American- supplied weapons against the Palestinians is a breach of American law.

But a senior State Department official said no legal determination had been made on whether the Israelis were breaking the terms of the act under which Israel receives American weaponry. The act says Israel may use F-16 aircraft and Apache helicopters for "legitimate defensive purposes," the official said.

The administration has declined to say in the last few months whether it has complained to Israel about the use of American weapons in the attacks on Palestinians. "We don't do that in public," one official said, making clear that the administration does not want a public debate on the issue but declining to say whether such concerns were aired in private.

Some Middle East experts have raised the question of how the administration can publicly oppose Israel's policy of "targeted killings" and not oppose the use of American weapons in carrying out those killings.

If the administration decided to make an issue of the use of American jet fighters in the raids against Palestinians, it was not clear that Congress would support the stand, several experts said.

-------- space

Space, the final frontier

EDITORIAL • August 28, 2001
Washington Times
http://www.washtimes.com/op-ed/20010828-16875564.htm

In selecting Air Force Gen. Richard Myers as the next chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, President Bush has once again demonstrated his wise determination to pursue a national missile defense (NMD) system and to transform the nation's military services. Integral to both important objectives will be an increased reliance on space, an area in which Gen. Myers has had crucial experience.

The selection of Gen. Myers also confirms the primary role in space that will be played by the Air Force, which Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld selected in May to be the paramount service overseeing space programs. Upon his Senate confirmation, which, given the general's superb record, should proceed without difficulty, Gen. Myers will become the first Air Force general to serve as chairman of the Joint Chiefs in nearly two decades; and he will become the first chairman since the end of the Cold War who was not selected from the ranks of the Army. Perhaps most significantly, Gen. Myers will be the first of the nation's 15 chairmen of the Joint Chiefs who has served as the head of the U.S. Space Command, a position he occupied for 19 months before becoming vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs in February 2000. Gen. Myers has also directed the North American Aerospace Defense Command.

Mr. Rumsfeld, with whom Gen. Myers has closely worked in preparing the soon-to-be-released Quadrennial Defense Review, has identified Asia as the likely source of increased threats in the future. Fortuitously, Gen. Myers, a former fighter pilot in Vietnam, has had considerable experience in the Pacific region, where he served in Hawaii as commander of Pacific Air Forces and in Japan as commander of all U.S. forces there.

But it is Gen. Myers' experience in space that cannot be overemphasized. Beyond its indispensable role in the deployment of NMD, space will also become the essential frontier without which the military's necessary transformation process cannot be accomplished. As envisioned by the Bush administration, transforming the military would involve the application of new technologies to the military's capacity to wage war, including the linkage through space of real-time information to the conduct of battlefield operations. Through the development of a new generation of weapons, transformation would also address the likely threats in the not-too-distant future, including cyber-warfare, accidental rocket launches and intentional ballistic missile attacks from rogue nations (North Korea, Iran, Iraq et al.) involving weapons of mass destruction (nuclear, biological and chemical).

Indeed, Gen. Myers has the foresight that is required of anyone who would serve as the nation's senior military officer and the president's chief military adviser. In an April 1999 speech, as the Financial Times has reported, Gen. Myers, who was then the head of the U.S. Space Command, declared that the United States must develop a "space control mission" that would "ensure use of space on our terms." Last year, the Air Force's own Strategic Master Plan for space outlined the goals, in addition to the development and deployment of NMD, the United States must pursue. "To maintain space superiority, we must have the ability to control the 'high ground' of space," the plan said. "To do so, we must be able to operate freely in space, deny the use of space to our adversaries protect ourselves from attack in and through space." Not surprisingly, this strategy echoes the urgent priorities of Gen. Myers, who has persuasively argued that "The United States has space superiority, but tomorrow and tomorrow, I think, is essentially right now space superiority also must be planned for, executed and won."

Mr. Bush has found a good man ideally suited to the nation's military needs. The Senate must confirm him without delay.


-------- OTHER

-------- alternative energy

Texas in big push to develop wind power

USA: August 28, 2001
Story by Andrew Kelly
REUTERS NEWS SERVICE
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/12169/story.htm

HOUSTON - Texas, whose fortunes have long been tied up with its fossil fuel wealth, is defying its popular image as a state dominated by cigar-chomping oil barons and pushing hard to develop wind power.

Wind turbines are sprouting up on hilltops and mesas in the remote western expanses of the state, helping to offset the economic effects of declining production from aging oil fields.

Texas wind farms are still generating relatively modest amounts of energy compared with the state's oil and gas production, which remain the largest in the nation.

But after a late entry into the wind business, Texas will soon overtake Minnesota and Iowa and rank second to California, an early mover that has shown little growth in recent years.

"It's beyond our wildest expectations and we're delighted," said Tom Smith of consumer and environmental group Public Citizen, which has been pushing for green power in Texas since the 1970s.

State legislation to promote renewable energy, plus improved technology that has reduced costs and a surge in natural gas prices last winter have all contributed to the Texas wind boom.

As of July 2001, Texas had just under 200 megawatts of wind power capacity up and running and had an additional 900 megawatts planned, much of it slated to come on line by the end of the year, according to the American Wind Energy Association (AWEA).

One of those projects, the 278 megawatt King Mountain wind farm in Upton County, near President George W. Bush's boyhood home of Midland, will be among the largest in the world and is backed by some big players from the traditional electric power industry.

Owned by Florida-based energy firm FPL Group Inc. , the facility will have 214 wind turbines and provide enough power for almost 140,000 homes. Most of its output will be sold under a 15-year contract to Houston-based Reliant Resources Inc. .

STATE RULES PROMOTE RENEWABLES

Wind power has been boosted in Texas by legislation adopted in 1999 as part of the state's electricity deregulation effort.

In the new competitive market that is scheduled to open up in 2002, retail electricity providers will be required to show that 1.5 percent of their power is derived from renewables by 2003, rising to 3 percent, or some 2,000 megawatts statewide, by 2009.

Penalties will be imposed on companies that fail to meet these requirements.

Any type of renewable energy may be used, but in practice wind has proved to be the most economic solution because Texas has plenty of it, more than any other state except North Dakota, which has done relatively little yet to develop wind power.

Dallas-based TXU Corp. says it is well on the way to meeting the requirements after agreeing to buy electricity produced at the 150 megawatt Trent Mesa wind farm that American Electric Power Co. plans to complete soon near Abilene.

In all TXU has contracted to buy more than 1.4 billion kilowatt hours of electricity per year from four Texas wind farms, enough to meet the needs of about 80,000 homes.

TXU Energy Vice President Charles Jenkins said the move into wind power reflects a clear desire by customers for greater use of renewables and the company's own desire to spread its risks.

"We've always had a good understanding that you need to diversify your energy sources," he said.

In particular, soaring natural gas prices last winter caused many electricity companies to reconsider the predominance of that fuel in most of the industry's plans for new power plants.

COST OF WIND POWER FALLS

Improving economics have also made wind power more competitive. Costs have fallen from 38 cents per kilowatt-hour in the early 1980s to 3 to 6 cents today, which compares favorably with other sources of power, according to the AWEA.

Smith of Public Citizen says Texas could easily draw 10 percent of its power from wind turbines within 20 years while Christine Real de Azua of the AWEA says a six percent target for the United States as a whole should be attainable by 2020.

TXU's Jenkins declined to predict whether Texas could eventually exceed the 3 percent target set for 2009, saying the world of energy was too uncertain to make such predictions.

Wind power has long been used in remote areas of Texas, where simple windmills were used to pump water and generate power until the rural electrification programs of the 1930s and 1940s.

West Texas, with its wide open spaces, is a major beneficiary of the renewed interest in wind.

Doug May, responsible for economic development in Fort Stockton, which lies about 310 miles (500 km) west of San Antonio, said the surrounding county boasts five wind farms.

"Right now we have about 500 megawatts under development in Pecos County and that's about as much as we can handle with our current transmission capacity," he said.

Wind power is playing a modest but welcome role in reducing the area's dependence on the traditional mainstay of oil and gas as production from mature fields declines.

Construction of the wind farms provides work for local people and wind energy developers have donated $1.5 million, enabling the community to double the size of its technical training center and set up a program to train wind turbine technicians.

Lease payments to land owners and future property tax payments will also pump money into the local economy.

CUSTOMERS SOUGHT IN BIG CITIES

Hundreds of miles to the East, residents of the big cities of Dallas and Houston will be able to get as much wind power as they want, when retail electricity markets in Texas open up to full competition in January 2002.

Austin-based Green Mountain Energy plans to offer a 100-percent wind power product to customers in those cities where it has been sponsoring ozone pollution reports on local radio and television to get its green-energy message across.

Green Mountain, in which oil giant BP Plc holds a 22.9 percent stake, expects its power to be about 5 to 10 percent more expensive than conventional offerings from its competitors.

General Manager for Texas Gillan Taddune said the extra cost reflects higher generation costs, but also the expense of acquiring customers from established and well-known utilities.

"We've got to go and peel customers away one by one and that is an expensive endeavor," she said.

So far Green Mountain has gathered over half a million customers in six states.

-------- genetics

List of Stem Cell Researchers Shows Hands Had Been Tied

New York Times
August 28, 2001
By NICHOLAS WADE
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/08/28/health/genetics/28STEM.html

In unexpected new order of world powers has emerged, at least in the field of human embryonic stem cell research. The roster, say scientists who back the research, is evidence of the inventiveness of the newcomers but also shows how much the usual powerhouses of biomedical research in the United States and Europe have been held back by political and ethical debate.

The National Institutes of Health yesterday announced the organizations that had developed colonies of human embryonic stem cells before Aug. 9, the cutoff date set by President Bush in allowing federal money to be used for research. Sweden led the pack with colonies derived from 24 different embryos, followed by the United States with 20, India with 10, Australia with 6 and Israel with 4.

"With any other biotech material you'd find a dramatically different list," a senior American biologist said on condition of anonymity. "That's a telling comment on how much we have been held back."

Dr. James D. Watson, president of the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, said, "We've been held back, there is no doubt."

But Dr. Watson noted that even if research had begun earlier, several critical tools for analyzing human embryonic stem cells, like the human genome sequence and DNA chips, had only just become available.

In an interview from London, the secretary of health and human services, Tommy G. Thompson, said that the president had set "a definable policy" that would allow research to go forward and that "now is not the time to be looking for excuses but to be moving full speed ahead."

The human genome, for instance, was decoded by an international coalition whose leading members were the United States and Britain, with contributions from Germany, France, Japan and China. None of the last five countries are yet known to have derived human embryonic stem cells.

The absence of Britain from the list is notable because British biologists developed the technique for growing embryonic stem cells from mouse embryos, the underpinning of the methods that others have used with human cells. The British agency that regulates research with embryos only allowed them to be used for exploring tissue regeneration a few months ago, too late for British researchers to translate their lead with mouse embryonic cells to humans.

Unlike the costlier forms of biological research, like the DNA sequencing machines required in genomics, cell culture has fewer barriers to entry. This, and the absence of political dissent, may be why two organizations in India, Reliance Life Sciences of Bombay and the National Center for Biological Sciences in Bangalore, have been able to develop N.I.H.-approved human embryonic stem cells.

Reliance Life Sciences is part of Reliance, a large oil and textile conglomerate. Dr. Firuza Parikh, the founder and director of the company, said in an interview that its goal was to make the cells mature into tissues and organs like the heart, pancreas and central nervous system.

"There are no religious, cultural, political or social barriers to this research in India," she said.

Dr. Parikh, who is a fertility expert and visiting professor at Yale University Medical School, said that with a group of 60 researchers, Reliance's goal was "to put India in the forefront of global biotech work."

The cells owned by Reliance and the other nine organizations on the National Institutes of Health list are probably enough for government- supported biologists in the United States to get started, many scientists believe, even though questions about the availability, quality and terms of use of the cells remain open.

"Give me the cells, and I'll give you the answer," said Dr. Ronald D. McKay of the health institutes.

At least two of the cell owners on the N.I.H. list, CyThera of San Diego and Reliance Life Sciences, have made clear that they intend to do more work on characterizing their cells before making them generally available.

Scientists are also waiting for the outcome of negotiations between the health institutes and the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation as to the terms under which N.I.H. researchers may use the cells derived at the University of Wisconsin.

But even if research now starts in earnest and its promise is fulfilled, many scientists believe it will be necessary to derive cells from new embryos before clinical applications can begin.

"With time, people will want more than those 60 cells," Dr. Watson said.

Tony Mazzaschi, associate vice president of the Association of American Medical Colleges, said that limiting the number of embryonic stem cell lines - colonies of self-perpetuating cells - available to federally financed scientists was unwise public policy.

"This may allow some limited basic research to get started," Mr. Mazzaschi said, "but I don't think anybody thinks this list will be sufficient when we start going into clinical research."

Mr. Thompson, the secretary of health and human services, said that he was not open to the idea of deriving new cells for government researchers to work on, but that there were no restrictions on the private sector.

"The administration has set a policy," he said, "but this does not impede anything the private sector wants to do.

"It's normal for basic research to get to a certain point, then therapy and human trials are usually done by the private sector."

But Dr. Irving Weissman, a leading stem cell researcher at Stanford University, said that because of the fundamental nature of embryonic stem cells and their ability to construct the entire human body, "most of the important research is going to go on at academic centers for some time."

Dr. Weissman said that lack of new cell lines would probably have a restraining effect on research, and he suggested that the president's new council on bioethics might provide a mechanism for reviewing the policy.

"All of us are sensitive to how far Bush came to make these decisions, and the real issue would be whether his bioethics panel will consider reasonable arguments for new cell lines to be created," Dr. Weissman said.

--------

Stem Cell Colonies' Viability Unproven
Some in NIH List of 64 Termed Young, Fragile

By Ceci Connolly and Rick Weiss
Washington Post Staff Writers
Tuesday, August 28, 2001; Page A01
http://washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A5290-2001Aug27?language=printer

At least one-third of the 64 embryonic stem cell colonies approved for funding under a new Bush administration policy are so young and fragile it remains unclear whether they will ever prove useful to scientists, several researchers working on the cells said yesterday.

In fact, at least 16 of those colonies have been subject to so little research that the Swedish scientists working on them are unwilling to claim they are embryonic stem cells capable of becoming any kind of human tissue.

When President Bush announced Aug. 9 that he was willing to fund research only on existing stem cell colonies, or "lines," he and his top health adviser said more than 60 lines existed worldwide -- more than enough, they said, to launch a new and vibrant era of medical research. The existing lines, Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy G. Thompson said at the time, "are diverse, they're robust and they're viable for research."

But interviews with several scientists whose cell lines were identified yesterday by the National Institutes of Health as meeting the Bush criteria raised questions about whether many will live up to that advance billing.

At Goteborg University in Sweden, which the NIH identified as home to the world's largest collection of embryonic stem cell lines -- about 19 in all -- a key scientist called into question the NIH's numbers.

"I was a little surprised to see the NIH calling them 19 lines," said neurobiologist Peter Eriksson, part of a six-member team developing stem cell lines there. "Maybe they misinterpreted a little bit."

At most, he said, three of the 19 batches of cells could be called stem cell lines.

The largest cache of embryonic stem cells in the United States belongs to CyThera Inc., a 12-person biotechnology firm in San Diego that is at least several months from providing a colony to researchers, officials said.

"The last thing the NIH wants and the last thing we want is to give somebody a half-baked research tool that they can't use," said Michael Ross, CyThera's president and chief executive.

At Reliance Life Sciences in India, four of the seven cell lines included in the NIH tally have barely cleared the first hurdles in the long process of proving their identity and usefulness as stem cells. The three remaining lines are even younger and could easily "peter out," said Firuza Parikh, founder and director of the Bombay-based research firm.

"We are in the very initial stages," Parikh said. "We still need to characterize these lines."

William Pierce, a spokesman for the Department of Health and Human Services, said it may be too early to judge the quality of the existing cell lines and emphasized that scientists are eager to begin work on them. Even if some of the 64 lines do not last long, he said, they could still provide worthwhile information for scientists and further Bush's goal of pursuing "basic research."

"No one should be under the illusion that cures for diseases are just around the corner, for there is much fundamental work to be done," Thompson said in a written statement.

Human embryonic stem cells are primordial cells retrieved from five-day-old human embryos. The cells have the potential to turn into all kinds of tissues in the body. Since their discovery three years ago, they have attracted intense interest from biomedical researchers, who hope to fashion the cells into replacement tissues to treat diabetes, Parkinson's disease, spinal injuries and other degenerative syndromes.

Bush said he pinned his decision on assurances that at least 60 colonies of eligible cells existed -- a number far greater than anyone in the field was aware of and well beyond the handful documented in scientific journals. The president said he was unwilling to permit federal funding of research on other stem cells because that would involve the destruction of new embryos.

Yesterday, at the request of lawmakers, scientists and the media, the NIH released the first details about where the cell lines are and what criteria were used to include them. All told, the 64 lines are mostly young, temperamental colonies that may well thrive and lead to new medical discoveries, but which remain largely untested and fragile.

Administration officials acknowledged it will take some time to gather a clearer picture of the available cells but encouraged scientists to begin applying for grants. "Now it's time to go to work," Thompson said.

Reaction to yesterday's revelations was guarded as those in the pro-research camp continue to view the Bush approach as an opening -- albeit a narrow one -- to pursue lifesaving therapies. Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) described the NIH list as a "first step in understanding" the new policy. But he vowed to press for more information in a hearing next week.

Tony Mazzaschi, associate vice president for research for the Association of American Medical Colleges, said, "We are very pleased NIH has provided us with the list. . . . If NIH tells us 60 lines exist, 60 lines exist."

But he said the list does not resolve "critical questions." The remaining ambiguities include whether the cell lines "are usable, whether they are available, whether they are robust," Mazzaschi said.

The Coalition for the Advancement of Medical Research, representing several patient advocacy groups, said yesterday that it "is concerned about possible restrictions placed on the use of the lines by their owners as well as about the scientific viability and status of existing lines."

Most of the 64 lines are controlled by private, for-profit companies or foreign labs. The administration has been trying to negotiate a standard agreement that would permit researchers to experiment on a cell line owned by someone else.

"At this time, we have only begun conversations with the patent holders," Ruth Kirschstein, acting director of the NIH, wrote yesterday to Kennedy.

In some cases, the embryonic stem cells were acquired from donors through methods previously prohibited by the NIH. Some lines held by the University of Wisconsin and several at Life Sciences in India were extracted from fresh embryos, a technique the NIH previously rejected as unethical because donor couples are targeted at a particularly vulnerable moment in their fertility treatment.

Eriksson, the Swedish scientist, said his group has three lines that have been alive for about six months but have yet to prove that they can turn into all the major cell types of the body -- a key test that cells must pass before they can be regarded as stem cells. The group has 12 colonies that have been alive for less than three months and which he calls "potential cell lines." Four other colonies of cells are in the freezer, he said, waiting to be analyzed.

All told, Eriksson said, "it's a little bit exaggerated to say we have 19 lines. I think [the NIH] probably kept a relatively low bar."

Many of the cell lines covered under the Bush policy are controlled by small companies that had no idea until recently that they would be expected to supply stem cells to the entire U.S. research establishment.

In general, they say they are willing to fulfill the role but caution that they are months, at least, from being able to do so. The companies are willing to make few claims about the value of their cells for long-term research, much less their usefulness in curing disease. Generally, the most they would say is that their cells can serve as a starting point.

Ross and another CyThera executive, Lutz Giebel, said years of work remain.

"I think the scientific community over the last year or so has raised a lot of unrealistic expectations in the general public," Giebel said.

Staff writers Justin Gillis, Amy Goldstein and Nicholas Johnston contributed to this report.

--------

Key lawmakers are rethinking stem-cell plan

08/28/2001
By Mimi Hall,
USA TODAY
http://usatoday.com/news/washdc/august01/2001-08-29-stem.htm

WASHINGTON - Members of Congress who took a wait-and-see attitude after President Bush's decision to allow limited research on embryonic stem cells earlier this month now question whether promising medical research is possible under his plan. Lawmakers are planning hearings to begin next week. Some who lauded Bush's go-slow approach are suggesting Congress might try to override his decision and provide more funding than he wants to allow.

"You're going to see a legislative free-for-all," says Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., who supports research on embryonic stem cells. Bush's plan "was an important first step, but there has to be an expansion of it."

In a speech to the nation Aug. 9, Bush announced that he will allow federal funding for 60-plus existing stem-cell lines derived from human embryos. He said he will not fund the creation of new stem-cell lines from embryos made just for research or from existing embryos stored at fertility clinics.

Supporters of such research, which may hold the promise of finding cures for such diseases as Alzheimer's and diabetes, said Bush should have allowed for broader research. Opponents, who say the process involves the destruction of potentially life-giving embryos, said Bush went too far. Others hailed Bush for finding a middle ground.

Now, scientists say at least 34 of the existing 64 cell lines are immature and not viable for research. In addition, lawmakers are concerned because some of the human cell lines were mixed with mouse cells and bovine serum in the lab, which render them useless for research into diseases affecting humans.

Because lawmakers were scattered across the country, there has been no overwhelming response to the reports. Some congressional aides say constituents aren't raising the issue in town meetings and other forums.

However, if Bush and his aides thought they had put the issue behind them, they were mistaken.

The first congressional hearing is set for next Wednesday, the day after lawmakers return to work, in the Senate health committee chaired by Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass. His staff has been examining unresolved patent issues that could delay access to the lines and complicate the development of treatments. "I am concerned by recent reports that many of the stem-cell colonies approved for use under the administration's plan appear to be untested, unproven and may be unavailable due to extensive patent restrictions," Kennedy said Tuesday in a statement.

The second and third hearings will be held later next month by the Senate committee that handles spending for the National Institutes of Health. That committee is chaired by Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa; the top Republican is Specter. Harkin's spokeswoman, Tricia Enright, says he remains "cautiously optimistic" that Bush's approach will work. But, she says, Harkin and others might try to override Bush's decision by providing funding for new stem-cell lines. Specter is vowing to push for such funding.

In the House, several Republican lawmakers support broader research than Bush does. Although they gave Bush's plan the benefit of the doubt, aides say they are now rethinking that position.

Rep. Jim Ramstad, R-Minn., spent part of his summer vacation studying the issue at the University of Minnesota's stem-cell research center. Aides say he may seek to increase funding for the research.

Administration officials say they're not concerned. Kevin Keane, spokesman for Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson, says no matter how many hearings Congress holds, lawmakers will not be able to answer questions about the validity of the cell lines. "The only way you're going to solve that is to start doing the research," he says. "And that's what we need to get about doing."

Contributing: Tim Friend

-------- human rights

Powell Will Not Attend Racism Conference in South Africa

New York Times
August 28, 2001
By JANE PERLEZ
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/08/28/international/28DIPL.html

WASHINGTON, Aug. 27 - Secretary of State Colin L. Powell will not attend a United Nations conference on racism and it is possible that the United States will boycott the gathering, which opens Friday in South Africa, his spokesman said today.

The decision on what kind, if any, of a delegation the Bush administration would send to the eight-day conference will depend on whether language in the meeting's agenda criticizing Israel is changed in the coming days, said the spokesman, Richard L. Boucher.

General Powell, the first African- American to become secretary of state, had said soon after coming to office that he would like to go to the conference. His aides made clear over many months that he discussed the conference with visiting foreign ministers and tried to work with the United Nations secretary general, Kofi Annan, to persuade governments to omit contentious issues from the agenda.

Some Jewish groups were strongly opposed to Secretary Powell's attending the conference, while others were more open to the idea, sending representatives to the preparatory sessions to try to eliminate the anti- Israel language.

Secretary Powell's presence at the conference became a matter of a charged debate within the administration during recent months. After President Bush said on Friday that the United States would "not participate" in the conference so long as delegates "pick on Israel" it became clearer that Secretary Powell would not be going.

Mr. Boucher said today that the most critical issue for the United States was "a whole series of references to one particular government, to one particular country, and to its policies as being racist."

The secretary's decision, first reported in The Los Angeles Times, drew mixed reactions. Among the critics was the Rev. Jesse Jackson.

"Mr. Bush made a fateful step for isolation by disallowing Secretary of State Powell to lead the delegation to the conference against global racism in South Africa," Mr. Jackson said in an interview. The United States was "abdicating responsibility" and was losing an opportunity to show the rest of the world what progress had been made in outlawing racism at home, he said.

Support for the administration's position came from the executive director of the American Jewish Committee, David Harris, who noted that little progress had been made in amending the offensive language being insisted on by "an intransigent Arab position."

"If the United States does not go, nobody in the Jewish community will shed a tear," he said.

Mr. Harris said he was invited by the White House last Thursday to join an official United States delegation to the conference. The invitation was issued with the proviso that either Secretary Powell or the assistant secretary for human rights, Lorne Craner, would head it, he said.

The Anti-Defamation League applauded the decision, saying, "Secretary Powell's presence in Durban would only confer legitimacy on the anti-Semitic rhetoric that threatens to derail an otherwise laudable effort to fight global racism."

As the secretary weighed the merits of attending the conference, his aides portrayed the decision as a more personal one for him than for his predecessors. That the conference was being held in South Africa, after apartheid, also had resonance.

But in recent weeks, State Department officials said, it had become unclear what the secretary could accomplish by attending. They portrayed Arab countries as being insistent on the anti-Israel language, which they noted had emerged from a meeting of the Organization of the Islamic Conference held in Iran.

The administration is considering sitting out another United Nations conference next month, also over concerns about language. State Department officials said tonight that the administration might not send a high-level delegation to a United Nations General Assembly session on children beginning Sept. 19.

A department official declined to comment on specific qualms about the document, which is to be the product of a three-day meeting involving 75 heads of state and government, and aims to address issues affecting children like education, disease and war. The Tuesday edition of The Washington Post first reported the administration's concerns.

-------- terrorism

Algerian Indicted in Bomb Plot

August 28, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Millennium-Terror.html

NEW YORK (AP) -- A federal grand jury has indicted a London-based Algerian, linking him to Osama bin Laden's terrorism network and accusing him of being a mastermind behind a plot to bomb the Los Angeles airport.

The indictment filed Monday charges Dr. Haydar Abu Doha with conspiring to use a weapon of mass destruction to blow up the airport during celebrations ushering in the year 2000.

The defendant is in custody in London, awaiting extradition to the United States.

The indictment portrays Abu Doha as a key figure in bin Laden's terrorism network, al-Qaeda. Prosecutors allege that in 1998, he met with bin Laden in Afghanistan ``to discuss cooperation and coordination between al-Qaeda and a group of Algerian terrorists whose activities Abu Doha coordinated and oversaw.''

Abu Doha's name came up during the New York trial of Montreal shopkeeper Mokhtar Haouari, convicted earlier this year of providing support to Ahmed Ressam, a member of Abu Doha's alleged Algerian terrorist cell.

Haouari, 32, was convicted of supplying Ressam with a fake driver's license and $3,000 in cash to carry out the airport attack.

The plan was foiled when Ressam was caught trying to enter Washington state from Canada in a car loaded with explosives.


-------- activists

Protesters Make Appeals to World Bank, IMF

Reuters
Tue, Aug 28 3:37 PM EDT
By Mark Wilkinson
http://webcrawler-news.excite.com/news/r/010828/15/international-economy-imf-protests-dc

WASHINGTON - Anti-globalization protesters asked the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund on Tuesday to open all their meetings to the public, cancel Third World debt and end policies that hinder access to health and education in poor countries.

The Mobilization for Global Justice, a coalition of groups that is organizing massive demonstrations during the annual meetings of the lenders on Sept. 29-30, also demanded that the organizations end their oil, mining and natural gas extraction programs, which they view as environmentally dangerous.

Washington police expect as many as 100,000 demonstrators to converge on the nation's capital to protest the two lenders' policies as well as those of President Bush.

The groups said they e-mailed their demands to IMF Managing Director Horst Koehler and World Bank President James Wolfensohn.

"We're calling for all levels of the meetings to be open to the public and the media," Liz Butler, of the coalition, said at a news conference. "We're calling for a C-SPAN of the IMF and the World Bank."

The World Bank said transcripts from meetings and many documents are made public on its Web site, but that some decisions have to be made behind closed doors.

"We want to be open and transparent within the parameters of helping poor people and not having investors abandon these economies," World Bank spokeswoman Caroline Anstey told Reuters.

While the protesters call for open lenders' meetings, the coalition has closed portions of its own gatherings to reporters and completely bans cameras from them.

"The Mobilization for Global Justice has a very open process," Butler said.

ALL TALK, NO WALK?

The IMF and the World Bank this month accepted an invitation by a number of protest groups to meet and discuss the issues that concern them, but some groups are unsatisfied.

Tim Atwater, of Jubilee USA, a member of the coalition, said the exchanges between the lending institutions and protest groups left much to be desired.

"It's always all talk and no action," Atwater said. "No walk."

The coalition's Robert Weissman, however, said he was optimistic about the discussions.

The bank's Anstey said the bank favors dialogue with nongovernmental organizations and welcomes criticism.

She said the bank consulted often with the groups on poverty reduction programs and disclosure policies and said the bank will investigate energy programs in response to their concerns.

"It's not just all talk, there is actually a lot of walk," Anstey said. "The World Bank is actually sometimes criticized for walking too fast and too close to NGOs."

The World Bank and the IMF held consultations with 400 protesters in Prague last year, and met again with many during their annual meetings in April 2000 in Washington.

NOT ATTACKING INTENT

Mobilization for Global Justice want the bank and the fund to cancel the debt held by some of the world's poorest countries, arguing that many of these nations, most of them African, spend more on servicing their debt than on health or education programs.

Atwater called it a "bitter irony" that the two lenders considered themselves to be anti-poverty institutions because the debt burden the IMF and the World Bank refuse to cancel drives poor nations deeper and deeper into poverty.

Others, however, said the protest movement did not necessarily attack poverty reduction attempts by the bank and the fund, but rather the failure and consequences of such policies.

Protesters said structural adjustment policies and user fees imposed by the lenders hindered people's access to basic services such as health care, education, housing and water.

"We are not attacking (the bank and the fund) for their intent," said Joanne Carter, of coalition member Results. "They need to be made accountable because those policies have failed to produce economic growth and have increased economic hardship."


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