------- Index of Articles
NUCLEAR
"Mobile Chernobyl" to Circle Beltway Today
Ala. Nuke Workers Face Exposure
Work to improve nuclear safety progresses, U.N. group says
Bono's Wife Takes Nuke Plant Protest to Blair's Door
Nuclear strike on UK "beyond imagination" - files
India Planning Nuclear Weapons Command Structure
Bear H intercept
Greenpeace Stunt Questions Spain's Nuclear Safety
Greenpeace Stunt Questions Spain's Nuclear Safety
Today in History - April 26
Chernobyl Victims Tell World: Do Not Forget Us
Chernobyl Survivors Mark Anniversary
Ukrainians Haunted by Chernobyl Past
Ukraine fears a new generation of Chernobyl victims
Ghost towns, geiger counters-Chernobyl welcomes you
Nuclear reactor malfunctions in Ukraine
Chernobyl residents remember disaster, but worry about jobs
Nevada Offers Nuclear License Plates
House Panel Backs Nevada as Site to Bury Atomic Waste
Nevada Offers Nuclear License Plates
House Committee Votes to Override Yucca Veto
Bush Says U.S. Won't Let Israel Be Crushed
PLUTONIUM IN UNSAFE CONTAINERS
MILITARY
Size of force on ground key in plan for Iraq war
Ill-Prepared For a Battle Unexpected
Israel investigates reports of looting
Saudi Tells Bush U.S. Must Temper Backing of Israel
Senate Confirms Helgerson as CIA General Inspector
Plane-Spotters Were Spying, Judge Rules, but They Go Free
Budget Concerns Are Raised on Continued Use of Guard
POLICE / PRISONERS
Judge ready to rule death penalty unconstitutional
Rumsfeld in Central Asia, Warns of Al Qaeda Offensive
ENERGY AND OTHER
Senate Approves Energy Measure
Spanish mine spill site may be unsafe - green lobby
US cites hazards of metalworking fluids
ACTIVISTS
Yemen Protesters Want U.S. Ties Cut
Probe Urged After Vieques Tear-Gassing
Moscow Police Beat Anti-Nuclear Protesters on Chernobyl Day
-------- NUCLEAR
"Mobile Chernobyl" to Circle Beltway Today
Associated Press
Friday, April 26, 2002; 7:07 AM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A52908-2002Apr26?language=printer
No, it's not your imagination - a replica of a radioactive waste container is making its way around the beltway this morning. It's being called the "Mobile Chernobyl" and it's on the road to protest the 16th anniversary of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster in Russia and the dumping of radioactive waste at Yucca Mountain.
The full-size radioactive replica is emblazoned with radioactivity and danger symbols such as "Danger-High-Level Radioactive Waste, Mobile X-Ray Machine that Cannot Be Turned Off and Nuclear Rust-ulatory Commission."
The Mobile Chernobyl will circle interstates 95 and 495 around the District from 7 to 10 a.m. and will hit the road again this afternoon from 3:30 to 6:30 p.m. It will also make a trip to Calvert Cliffs in Calvert County and downtown Baltimore.
-------- accidents and safety
Ala. Nuke Workers Face Exposure
April 26, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Nuclear-Plant-Accident.html
ATHENS, Ala. (AP) -- Fifty-four workers were exposed to gas with low levels of radioactive contamination during an incident this week at the Browns Ferry Nuclear Plant, officials said.
The gas escaped late Wednesday as workers were taking apart the Unit 2 reactor, plant spokesman Craig Beasley said. They returned to work the next day.
Nuclear Regulatory Commission spokesman Ken Clark said the accident appeared minor. ``We do not expect any of the workers who were exposed to have any adverse health effects,'' he said.
Beasley said none of the radioactive gas left the building surrounding the reactor. With the top of the reactor already removed, the gas escaped as the workers took off another part, he said.
Beasley said the workers received less than 50 millirems of radiation exposure. By comparison, he said, a dental X-ray exposes patients to about 9 millirems.
The Tennessee Valley Authority, which runs the plant, did not publicly disclose the mishap until contacted by the TimesDaily, a Florence, Ala., newspaper. Beasley said TVA notified federal regulators even though the level of radiation was so low no report was required.
A few weeks ago, four Browns Ferry workers were burned by a high-voltage electrical arc during a refueling outage of the Unit 3 reactor.
--------
Work to improve nuclear safety progresses, U.N. group says
Fri Apr 26, 2002 http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20020426/ap_wo_en_ge/nuclear_safety_2
VIENNA, Austria - Work to improve nuclear safety is progressing, the U.N. nuclear watchdog group said Friday.
"The commitment of states to all aspects of nuclear safety is higher than ever," said Miroslav Gregoric, president of a meeting hosted by the International Atomic Energy Agency.
The meeting in Vienna was the second review meeting for the Convention on Nuclear Safety, which requires signatories to follow U.N. rules in areas such as design, construction and operation of nuclear plants.
The convention, signed by 65 countries and ratified by 54 national legislatures, went into force in 1996.
"There is a real dedication to international information sharing, learning from the lessons of others and to constant vigilance and improvement, focusing more on human and organizational aspects and safety management - the key ingredients of nuclear safety culture," Gregoric said in a statement issued at the end of the meeting.
In the statement, Gregoric said participants had noted that signatories now are more open and file better reports.
"We also identified certain trends which require our special attention, particularly with regard to safety management and safety culture, plant aging, and upgrading and effectiveness of regulatory practices, as well as maintaining competence and knowledge in the industry, regulatory bodies and research institutions," he said.
-------- britain
Bono's Wife Takes Nuke Plant Protest to Blair's Door
April 26, 2002
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/arts/entertainment-ireland-sellafield.html
LONDON - Irish protesters chose the 16th anniversary of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster Friday to bombard Prime Minister Tony Blair and Prince Charles with postcards demanding the closure of Britain's Sellafield nuclear plant.
``Sellafield has the potential to be 80 times the size of the Chernobyl accident,'' leading protester Ali Hewson, wife of Irish rock star Bono, told reporters after personally handing in a postcard at Blair's Downing Street office in London.
In the world's worst civil nuclear disaster, Chernobyl exploded on April 26, 1986, and its radioactive contamination was blamed for thousands of deaths in Ukraine, Belarus and Russia, and for a huge increase in thyroid cancer.
The Sellafield reprocessing plant, on England's northwest coast across the Irish Sea, has long caused friction between the two governments due to Irish fears of accidents or pollution.
``Tony, look me in the eye and tell me I'm safe,'' said Hewson's postcard to Blair under a picture of a staring green eye. It was one of more than 1.2 million such postcards sent by Irish households for delivery to Britain Friday.
Long a focus of protests for environmentalists in Britain and Ireland, the anti-Sellafield lobby said the issue has taken on new urgency since the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States.
``That's the reason that people are rethinking exactly the problems of Sellafield,'' said Hewson, whose husband Bono, of the U2 rock band, is a leading campaigner against Third World debt. ``It has 75 tons of plutonium sitting on its site. It can't but be at the top of any terrorist's list.''
Energy Minister Brian Wilson issued a statement decrying the ``emotive and misleading arguments'' of anti-Sellafield campaigners and citing ``facts and evidence produced from reputable scientific sources about the negligible impacts of activities at Sellafield.''
``The U.K. government would not pursue any course of action which is damaging either to our own people or to our neighbors in Ireland,'' he said.
--------
Nuclear strike on UK "beyond imagination" - files
Story by Mike Collett-White
REUTERS UK:
April 26, 2002
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/15672/story.htm
LONDON - British officials warned at the height of the Cold War that the consequences of a nuclear attack would be "beyond imagination", causing huge loss of life and material devastation, secret papers released yesterday showed.
The Strath report, marked "Top Secret" and named after William Strath of the Central War Plans Secretariat who drew up contingency plans for war, used cool official language to describe the Apocalyptic fallout of a Soviet strike on Britain.
"The effect of this (nuclear assault) on dense populations would remain beyond the imagination until it happened," it said. "The entire nation would be in the front line. Life and property would be obliterated by blast and fire on a vast scale."
It said the explosive force of an attack using 10 large hydrogen bombs would be 45 times greater than the total tonnage of bombs dropped by Allies on occupied Europe in World War Two.
One hydrogen bomb alone falling on a built up area would cause 100,000 fires.
The report said the Soviet Union's aims would be simple:
"In the event of general war, the Soviet aim would be to put the United Kingdom completely out of it," it stated.
Papers from the Home Defence Committee on which Strath sat estimated that 12 million Britons would die if 10 hydrogen bombs were dropped on major city centres with no prior warning.
It went on to describe how the blast and heat generated from the bombs would account for nine of the 12 million deaths, nearly one third of the population of Britain at the time. The remaining three million losses would be from radiation.
MILITARY RULE?
A map showed areas deemed most at risk of a nuclear attack - London, Birmingham, Liverpool, Manchester and Glasgow.
Provisional evacuation plans envisaged trying to move around 16 million people to more secure locations.
The once sensitive report, released early by the Public Record Office because it is no longer seen a threat to national security, described how the military would take over the running of much of the country in the aftermath of a nuclear strike.
Where civil control collapsed, "the local military commander would have to be prepared to take over from the civil authority responsibility for the maintenance of law and order."
Generals and officials expected to have up to six months' warning of an increased risk of global war, as the "international situation" started to deteriorate, and seven days' warning that an attack was about to take place.
If it did come, the economic and social devastation would be such that Britain could not be expected to play any further significant part in an ensuing world war.
One paper stated: "...if in fact the scale of devastation in the United Kingdom was that we now visualised, such recovery as the country might make would be insufficient to enable us to resume a major role in the war."
But amid the grim catalogue of annihilation was a glimmer of hope.
A nuclear war was seen as unlikely in the four to five years after the report was written.
-------- india / pakistan
India Planning Nuclear Weapons Command Structure
April 26, 2002
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-arms-india.html
NEW DELHI - India, which has been in a tense military standoff with Pakistan for months, plans to set up a nuclear command structure, a move seen as a demonstration of its resolve to build a ``minimum credible nuclear deterrent.''
A Defense Ministry official told Reuters the government had given ``in principle'' clearance for such a command, but it was not linked with the dangerous stand-off with Pakistan.
``The government is working at it,'' he said. ``It can take several months. But we have reached a general agreement that the command will be headed by the air force for the time being.''
Close to a million troops have been assembled on both sides of the India-Pakistan border for nearly four months now in a crisis provoked by an attack on the Indian parliament, blamed on Pakistan-based rebel groups operating in disputed Kashmir.
The plans for the command structure come four years after India conducted nuclear tests and follow comments by Pakistan's President Pervez Musharraf that his country could use nuclear weapons against India if its security was threatened.
MISCALCULATION OR ACCIDENT
The military confrontation at the border shows no signs of abating, deepening concerns of a miscalculation or an accident that could escalate into the world's first nuclear exchange.
``Setting up of the strategic command is a step in the direction of greater transparency,'' nuclear affairs expert P.R. Chari said Friday.
It demonstrated the Indian government's resolve in pressing ahead with plans to build a ``minimum credible nuclear deterrent,'' he said
The composition, size and chain of command of Indian and Pakistani nuclear weaponry is so far unclear, though India has said its command will be headed by an air force officer.
The only other thing known about India's highly secretive nuclear weapons program is that the button lies in the hands of the prime minister.
A cabinet committee on security, which includes the defense and foreign ministers, would also presumably be consulted before a doomsday weapon is fired.
``There has to be somebody to implement the decision, the strategic command will fill that gap,'' Chari said.
TURF WARS
Analysts say that turf wars among the army, air force and the civilian bureaucracy that runs the defense ministry, and overall ignorance of nuclear issues, had prevented the establishment of a fail-safe nuclear chain of command.
Military-ruled Pakistan has been a shade quicker off the block, by announcing a Nuclear Command and Control Authority consisting of military, political and scientific officials.
But the Indian defense official said Pakistan had been faster in setting up its nuclear structure because its program has always been controlled by the military, giving it greater cohesion.
The decision to head up the Indian nuclear force with an air force officer suggests the nuclear deterrent will be based on fighter planes, rather than at sea, defense experts said.
The Indian air force has Russian and French-made warplanes capable of delivering nuclear bombs.
A draft nuclear doctrine released by the government-appointed National Security Advisory Board in August 1999 had recommended an ambitious nuclear arsenal based on a triad of aircrafts, ships and missiles.
Since the nuclear test explosions, India has carried out tests of its nuclear-capable ballistic missile Agni in different versions, including a shorter range one, which analysts said was aimed at countering Pakistan's missile development program.
-------- russia
Bear H intercept
April 26, 2002
Inside the Ring Notes from the Pentagon.
Bill Gertz and Rowan Scarborough
Washington Times
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20020426-3530826.htm
Two Russian strategic nuclear bombers flew within 37 miles of Alaska recently in a rare probe of U.S. air defenses, according to U.S. intelligence officials.
The Tu-95 Bear H bombers were part of a group of four bombers that deployed recently to the military air base near Anadyr, a port in the northern Far East of Russia. The bombers can carry up to 16 Kh-55 strategic cruise missiles, which are equipped with 200-kiloton nuclear warheads.
The bombers flew north along the coast of Alaska. The Air Force scrambled two F-15 jet fighters to intercept the propeller-driven bombers. The F-15s shadowed the bombers for a short distance and then broke off.
It was the first time since September 11 that the Russian military made a run at U.S. air defenses. Russian military forces in the Far East were involved in strategic nuclear forces exercises when the terrorist attacks occurred. They halted the maneuvers, which U.S. military intelligence expected would have included air defense probes like the one that occurred recently.
The Russian bomber probe took place as U.S. and Russian officials in Moscow failed to reach the terms of a new accord on strategic arms reduction. It also took place amid recent criticism by officials in Moscow of U.S. intelligence-sharing on terrorism.
Viktor Komogorov, deputy director of Russia's Federal Security Service, formerly the domestic branch of the Soviet KGB, said Russia provided the CIA with 100 reports in February but received only 50 from the agency, the Interfax news agency reported. He criticized the CIA report as "bare facts" and said Russia's reports included terrorist plans and intentions. "This is not the kind of cooperation in resisting international terrorism that we had counted on," he said, noting that Russian requests for more U.S. intelligence were denied.
-------- spain
Greenpeace Stunt Questions Spain's Nuclear Safety
April 26, 2002
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-spain-nuclear-safety.html
MADRID - The storming of a 34-year-old nuclear power plant in Spain by Greenpeace activists has opened debate about the safety of Spain's aging reactors and security measures supposedly tightened after September 11.
Six Greenpeace environmentalists scaled the dome of the Jose Cabrera nuclear plant at Zorita, 30 miles northeast of Madrid Thursday, and hung a banner demanding ``Close now!.''
Spain's Nuclear Safety Council has begun a preliminary investigation. It intends asking for a formal probe that could lead to a possible fine for Union Fenosa, the power firm that runs the plant.
``Results from the first emergency inspection show no damage to any of the sensitive parts of the plant. Nuclear security was never at risk,'' a spokeswoman for the council told Reuters on Friday.
``Now we have to conduct further analysis and see what extra physical security measures should be taken and who is to blame for this, especially after security measures had been increased after the attacks of September 11,'' she said.
El Mundo newspaper said Greenpeace had exposed poor security at the plant. ``What if Greenpeace were al Qaeda?'' it asked.
Greenpeace, which said only one security guard chased the intruders and fired a shot into the air in an unsuccessful bid to stop them, said the oldest of Spain's nine nuclear plants suffered from rust and cracks in some of its key containers.
Greenpeace said its team needed just 10 minutes to get from the main gate to the top of the nuclear plant, which the ecologists claim has released radioactive material into the air and toward the nearby Tajo River.
``PROPORTIONATE RESPONSE''
A spokesman for the nuclear plant said the ecologists were able to get to the top of the dome because the response from the security guard was ``proportionate'' to the threat.
``All the security measures were working ... We would rather wait for the inquiry from the authorities before we talk about responsibilities,'' he said.
It was unclear whether any investigation could affect the renewal of Union Fenosa's permit for the plant, due in October.
``Once the technical and legal analysis of the situation is over, we will ask for a formal probe,'' the CSN said in a statement.
The Greenpeace protest was timed to roughly coincide with the 16th anniversary of Ukraine's Chernobyl nuclear disaster and the fourth anniversary of Spain's worst ecological disaster, the Aznalcollar spill when a mining reservoir burst and dumped almost seven million cubic meters of toxic sludge near a wildlife reserve.
``We were able to see with our eyes the decrepit state of this old plant. They have to close down Zorita before we have a serious accident,'' said Carlos Bravo of Greenpeace.
The nuclear council disputed that, saying, ``If the nuclear plant was unsafe, we would have taken appropriate measures.''
-------- spain
Greenpeace Stunt Questions Spain's Nuclear Safety
Fri Apr 26, 2002
By Begona Quesada
Reuters
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/nm/20020426/wl_nm/spain_nuclear_safety_dc_1
MADRID - The storming of a 34-year-old nuclear power plant in Spain by Greenpeace activists has opened debate about the safety of Spain's aging reactors and security measures supposedly tightened after September 11. Six Greenpeace environmentalists scaled the dome of the Jose Cabrera nuclear plant at Zorita, 30 miles northeast of Madrid Thursday, and hung a banner demanding "Close now!."
Spain's Nuclear Safety Council has begun a preliminary investigation. It intends asking for a formal probe that could lead to a possible fine for Union Fenosa, the power firm that runs the plant.
"Results from the first emergency inspection show no damage to any of the sensitive parts of the plant. Nuclear security was never at risk," a spokeswoman for the council told Reuters on Friday.
"Now we have to conduct further analysis and see what extra physical security measures should be taken and who is to blame for this, especially after security measures had been increased after the attacks of September 11," she said.
El Mundo newspaper said Greenpeace had exposed poor security at the plant. "What if Greenpeace were al Qaeda?" it asked.
Greenpeace, which said only one security guard chased the intruders and fired a shot into the air in an unsuccessful bid to stop them, said the oldest of Spain's nine nuclear plants suffered from rust and cracks in some of its key containers.
Greenpeace said its team needed just 10 minutes to get from the main gate to the top of the nuclear plant, which the ecologists claim has released radioactive material into the air and toward the nearby Tajo River.
"PROPORTIONATE RESPONSE"
A spokesman for the nuclear plant said the ecologists were able to get to the top of the dome because the response from the security guard was "proportionate" to the threat.
"All the security measures were working ... We would rather wait for the inquiry from the authorities before we talk about responsibilities," he said.
It was unclear whether any investigation could affect the renewal of Union Fenosa's permit for the plant, due in October.
"Once the technical and legal analysis of the situation is over, we will ask for a formal probe," the CSN said in a statement.
The Greenpeace protest was timed to roughly coincide with the 16th anniversary of Ukraine's Chernobyl nuclear disaster and the fourth anniversary of Spain's worst ecological disaster, the Aznalcollar spill when a mining reservoir burst and dumped almost seven million cubic meters of toxic sludge near a wildlife reserve.
"We were able to see with our eyes the decrepit state of this old plant. They have to close down Zorita before we have a serious accident," said Carlos Bravo of Greenpeace.
The nuclear council disputed that, saying, "If the nuclear plant was unsafe, we would have taken appropriate measures."
-------- ukraine
Today in History - April 26
The Associated Press
Thursday, April 25, 2002; 8:42 PM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A50648-2002Apr25?language=printer
Today is Friday, April 26, the 116th day of 2002. There are 249 days left in the year.
Today's Highlight in History:
On April 26, 1986, the world's worst nuclear accident occurred at the Chernobyl plant in the Soviet Union. An explosion and fire killed at least 31 people and sent radioactivity into the atmosphere.
----
Chernobyl Victims Tell World: Do Not Forget Us
April 26, 2002
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/news/news-ukraine-chernobyl.html
KIEV, Ukraine - Ukraine and Belarus appealed to the world Friday not to forget Chernobyl and its victims who still need help 16 years after the world's worst nuclear disaster spewed clouds of radioactivity across much of Europe.
Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma, Prime Minister Anatoly Kinakh and other officials laid flowers at a symbolic burial mound in the capital Kiev, paying tribute to those who died after Chernobyl's reactor four exploded on April 26, 1986.
Carrying flowers, officials lit candles for the dead at a church built to commemorate the accident. Hours earlier hundreds of Ukrainians gathered there with their heads bowed as bells tolled just after one in the morning -- the time of the blast.
``The Chernobyl catastrophe should never be wiped from human memory,'' the government said in a state newspaper. It urged human and financial support for the people involved in the clean-up -- so-called liquidators -- and other victims.
``We call upon voluntary organizations, funds, every concerned citizen to show understanding and help heal the painful problems of the liquidators...those who were evacuated from their birthplaces, invalids and families who lost breadwinners as a result of the accident at Chernobyl.''
The Chernobyl explosion, which killed just over 30 firefighters at the time, has been blamed for thousands of deaths due to radiation-linked illness and for a huge increase in thyroid cancer.
Dozens of women laid red carnations at the burial mound, silent and thoughtful as yet another year passes with Ukraine, neighboring Belarus and Russia unable to overcome the consequences of the accident.
CONTAMINATED FOOD
In Belarus, thousands gathered near the center of the capital Minsk to call for government and international help to heal the scars of the fall-out, demanding an end to food output from miles of land contaminated with radioactive debris.
Struck by poverty, many in Ukraine and Belarus pick mushrooms and berries with high levels of radioactivity.
Health specialists have advised that genetic mutations and contaminated food could lead to a new generation of Chernobyl victims and prolong the tragedy for years to come.
One academic, Dmitry Hrodzinsky, also said he believed the concrete tomb now encasing the ruined reactor was unsafe, allowing radioactive dust to seep into the environment -- a statement officials denied.
Officials at the plant agree the reactor needs another covering, dubbed a second shelter, but say radiation levels are decreasing and the ruined reactor poses little threat.
``Today the situation at the station is stable,'' Volodymyr Kholoshcha, head of the Chernobyl zone's administration, said.
Ukraine's government said it would strive to make the reactor safe, improve the lives of the accident's victims and revive contaminated lands but that it needed funds promised by the West when Chernobyl was shut down in 2000.
``We hope that the 16th anniversary of this dreadful event...will attract the attention of the world community to the global problem of...protecting the world from future (industrial and ecological) disasters,'' the government said.
``We believe our appeal will reach the hearts of those who understand others' sorrow.''
----
Chernobyl Survivors Mark Anniversary
April 26, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Chernobyl-Anniversary.html
SLAVUTYCH, Ukraine (AP) -- Hundreds of people, many of them still working at the Chernobyl power plant, braved the biting cold on Friday to lay flowers and light candles at a memorial service to loved ones who died in the world's worst nuclear accident 16 years ago.
``I come every year,'' said Lyubov Rasovova, who was fortunate to have the day off from her job at Chernobyl on the day of the accident, April 26, 1986. Every year survivors mark the anniversary in the nearby town of Slavutych at 1:23 a.m., the moment when the explosion occurred, spewing radiation across Europe.
Rasovova manages a storage facility at Chernobyl and knew many of the 26 men and two women whose portraits are etched into the low, gray granite wall in the square commemorating workers who were killed within days of the explosion. Thousands more people in Ukraine, Belarus and Russia have since died from radiation-related illnesses.
Chernobyl closed in December 2000, but the work of dismantling the plant continues. While remorse for the past was foremost in people's minds Friday, there were also fears about the impending job losses when the work is finally finished.
About 1,500 people have left Slavutych since 2000 and more flight is expected. The city was built in the aftermath of the accident to house Chernobyl workers forcibly evacuated from homes in the plant's shadow.
``The main priority of the city today is survival,'' said Slavutych Mayor Vladimir Odovichenko. With efforts now focused on taking apart the nuclear plant, Odovichenko is reliant on international assistance for a large portion of his budget.
For the next two years, Odovichenko expects closure operations to provide many jobs for Slavutych residents, but he dreads future losses of skilled workers who seek jobs elsewhere.
Thousands of Slavutych's 25,000 residents still work in ``the zone'' -- an 18-mile swath of land that was evacuated soon after the accident and closed off to outsiders for years.
However, the mayor is confident that his town -- which is just outside the zone -- is safe.
Despite a lack of work and questionable ecological safety, the decision to move is not an easy one for Slavutych residents as economic conditions have deteriorated throughout Ukraine in recent years.
``Before, the Soviet Union helped us, now we don't know what will happen,'' said Oleksandr Korolov, 50, who has worked at Chernobyl since 1978.
Emotional ties also contribute to Slavutych residents' decision to stay put.
``What's one to do?'' said Rasovova. ``I feel comfortable here-- it's my city, my job, my life. I'm used to it not being safe.''
Officials at the Chernobyl plant told The Associated Press that the cracks and gaps in the concrete-and-steel shell that covers the damaged reactor amount to thousands of square feet.
High radiation levels after the accident meant that the shelter had to be built at a separate location and fitted over the reactor. ``That's why the job could not be perfect,'' said Alexander Usayev, a Ministry of Emergency Situations official.
Western nations helped pay for work that was done in the late 1990s to shore up the shaky structure, and Usayev said state-of-the-art systems continually monitor reactor activity and automatically suppress potential accidents.
However, he did not rule out the possibility that because nuclear fuel remains in the reactor, rain entering through the cracks could trigger a reaction.
----
Ukrainians Haunted by Chernobyl Past
April 26, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Ukraine-Chernobyl.html
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A55934-2002Apr26?language=printer
SLAVUTYCH, Ukraine (AP) -- Clutching flickering candles and bunches of spring flowers, survivors of the world's worst nuclear disaster held a solemn memorial in the pre-dawn darkness Friday in the town built to house Chernobyl workers displaced by the accident 16 years ago.
Crowds also gathered at churches, cemeteries and public squares across the former Soviet Union for ceremonies that began at 1:23 a.m. -- the time on the clocks at the Chernobyl plant when its No. 4 reactor exploded on April 26, 1986, spewing radiation across Europe and contaminating swaths of then-Soviet Ukraine, Russia and Belarus.
While painful memories of the past were foremost in people's minds Friday, many Ukrainians who live in the contaminated areas around the now-shuttered Chernobyl plant are focusing more on their poverty than on their fragile health.
``People talk about Chernobyl less and less every year. Economic problems are much more pressing,'' said Igor Pashinsky, chief psychologist at the Center for Social and Psychological Rehabilitation in Korosten, a city 60 miles west of Chernobyl whose 65,000 residents were all affected by the accident.
The Ukrainian government says more than 4,000 people involved in the hastily and poorly organized Soviet cleanup effort after the accident have died and that more than 70,000 Ukrainians were disabled by the disaster.
Officials acknowledge that survival often takes priority over health concerns for the estimated 3.3 million Ukrainians, including 1.5 million children, affected by the accident.
``Parents try however they can to make money to survive,'' said Valeriy Bekh, head sociologist at the Korosten center. ``Often kids with two parents live like orphans because their parents are gone all the time'' trying to eke out a living.
The birth rate in Ukraine has dropped by 50 percent since 1986, while the death rate has doubled.
Aleksandr Tiplitsky, chief doctor at the Norodychi hospital, 35 miles west of Chernobyl, said that of the illnesses he treats, ``It's very hard to say how many cases are directly related to Chernobyl because inadequate nutrition weakens the immune system.
``I might see a sick child and say, 'It's radiation,' but then I go to his house and see it's starvation.''
However, doctors and public health officials are unequivocal in linking the sharp rise in thyroid cancer -- especially among children -- to Chernobyl. More than 2,100 Ukrainians who were under 18 at the time of the accident have undergone thyroid treatment since 1986, and doctors say that number could spike to 10,000 in the next two years.
Tens of thousands of people disabled by Chernobyl-related illnesses receive inadequate health care and 25,000 evacuated families are still waiting for housing, said Emergency Situations Minister Vasyl Durdynets.
Of the 160,000 people who were resettled from the area around Chernobyl, many have returned to evacuated lands because economic conditions were as bad or worse in their new homes.
Hana Yavchenko, 67, was evacuated from Parishchiv, a village near the plant, but later returned. She and her husband grow their own vegetables and fruits because semiweekly government deliveries of radiation-free food are not enough.
``Is the food clean? Who knows?,'' she said. ``What else do we have?''
U.N. officials say some 450 to 600 people live in the ``exclusion zone'' -- the area within 18 miles of the plant that was evacuated and closed off after the accident -- and as many as 200,000 live in ``severely contaminated areas'' further away.
--------
Ukraine fears a new generation of Chernobyl victims
Story by Elizabeth Piper
REUTERS UKRAINE:
April 26, 2002
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/15671/story.htm
KIEV - Ukrainian children born with genetic mutations or harmed by radioactive food form a new generation of Chernobyl victims who could pass the accident's tragic legacy on to the next, specialists said yesterday.
On the eve of Chernobyl's 16th anniversary, specialists who have worked in the region since reactor number four exploded and spewed clouds of radioactivity over much of Europe said the fight against radiation-related illness was far from won.
"Today, 16 years after the accident, there remain some huge problems in several regions... especially in terms of children's health and in terms of food," Olga Bobylova, deputy secretary of Ukraine's health service, told a news conference.
"(In areas surrounding Chernobyl) meat and milk in the private sector have high levels of radioactivity...there are also problems with the mushrooms and berries in the forests...such food can have a profound effect on health."
Struck by poverty, many thousands of Ukrainians are forced to live in areas affected badly by radioactive contamination from the plant, which exploded on April 26, 1986 in the world's worst civil nuclear disaster.
To boost their meagre daily meals they gather berries and mushrooms from fields and forests still contaminated by radioactive debris. Many are unaware or reluctant to think that the food remains a health risk so long after the original accident.
FORGOTTEN CRISIS
"The state tries to give children good, clean food, but it cannot because of a lack of funds," Bobylova said.
"We need this in the future."
The specialists urged Ukraine and the rest of the world not to allow Chernobyl to become a forgotten crisis - a term used first by the United Nations which hinted that funds could run out as interest in the disaster waned.
Evgeniya Stepanova, a specialist in radiation-linked illnesses, said children were becoming sufferers years after the explosion, which killed few people at the time.
The true casualty toll in the years since is a matter of intense controversy. Chernobyl has been blamed for thousands of deaths in Ukraine, Belarus and Russia and for a huge increase in thyroid cancer.
"(Research) has shown genetic mutations in sufferers of Chernobyl, both adults and children...Those children and adults are more likely to get cancer and pass on mutations to their children."
Radiation is known to cause genetic mutation, and the rate of certain cancers goes up in areas exposed to nuclear fallout, scientists say.
Stepanova said it was time to turn the world's attention to those who had no choice but to suffer the consequences and those who could unwittingly become the next victims of Chernobyl.
"We have not paid enough attention to those people who are suffering," she said, almost shouting.
"Among all the problems caused by Chernobyl, the genetic (mutation) problem should come first...It is a huge problem."
--------
Ghost towns, geiger counters-Chernobyl welcomes you
Story by Elizabeth Piper
REUTERS UKRAINE:
April 26, 2002
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/15673/story.htm
CHERNOBYL, Ukraine - Ghost towns, geiger counters, white masks and rubber boots - Welcome to Ukraine's much-touted new tourist hotspot, Chernobyl.
Equipped with a 13-room hotel, Soviet-style buses and a winding pot-holed road, some tourist agencies in Ukraine hope to make a buck or two out of the world's worst civil nuclear disaster by offering tours around the contaminated area.
But those adventurous tourists who have fought their fears of radiation sickness and want to see the highly-patrolled area all but deserted after reactor number four exploded on April 26, 1986, might find the staff less than welcoming.
"There cannot be family tourism here, we cannot allow walking holidays. There can only be bus tours for about four to six hours," said Mykola Dmytruk, deputy director of the agency which coordinates visits by specialists.
"As for extreme tourism, I am not sure this place is extreme enough. There is not much need for adrenaline on a bus ride...This is a place of tragedy."
Sixteen years on, the tragedy of Chernobyl's exploded reactor which spewed deadly clouds of radioactive dust over Russia, neighbouring Belarus and much of Europe is still being lived out by thousands.
Many areas still have dangerously high levels of radiation. Stories of death, illness and poverty pepper conversations. Old women and men have returned to contaminated ghost towns after becoming unhappy with government efforts to resettle them.
The staff, who battle with the stigma of contamination for living in the region and face months of unpaid wages, say the site is best left in the hands of caring scientists who monitor ever-changing levels of radioactivity and still strive to make the area finally safe.
Beer-drinking, smoking tourists, hoping for an adrenaline-boosted thrill by meandering around pinewoods and fields which bloom once again around the encased reactor are not the order of the day, they say.
"There are more interesting places in Ukraine where you can get a trip on a boat, or get drunk," Dmytruk said.
TACKY CHERNOBYL T-SHIRTS
Agencies have been offering day-trips to Chernobyl for $250 a couple, including lunch - but make sure you are over 18, are not a hippie and do not want to make a tour of the souvenir shops before you leave.
Six people have signed up so far - teachers hoping photographs and first-hand stories would educate their children.
For Dmytruk and colleague Rimma, long-standing workers for Ukraine's Emergencies Ministry in Chernobyl, the idea of tourists having a good time where people perished makes them shudder. They advise a visit to a adventure park instead.
And T-shirts and caps with the Chernobyl name emblazoned on the front seem a little tacky.
"The agencies say we should make T-shirts and caps with Chernobyl written on them, but surely they would be bad luck," said Rimma, a bubbly Russian woman dressed in a U.S. camouflage jacket.
"It's like buying a T-shirt with the name of the Buchenwald concentration camp on it."
She is equally dismissive of an idea by the United Nations to promote eco-tourism. The world body described much of the so-called restricted area as an "extraordinary environmental opportunity" in a report earlier this year.
"The natural environment has returned there," Kalman Mizsei, an official of the U.N. Development Program (UNDP) told a news conference in February.
"It is a huge area that is very natural, with lots of wildlife and unique types of animals."
Rimma calls the idea "stupid" and launches into a joke with her colleague, Dmytruk.
"Hippies are not going to be allowed in. They'll want to lie on the grass and then smoke it," Dmytruk laughed, adding seriously that walking in the grounds without permission could be dangerous for those with a more adventurous spirit.
"The law does not stop adult people from visiting - people who are older than 18 years and who have some kind of interest in this region...The most important thing for this region, is making it safe."
VILLAGE VISITS
But there are those, in tiny hamlets, who would not mind seeing a few new faces banging at their doors.
Seventy-eight-year-old Anastasiya Chikalovets, who was forced to leave her khatta - a small peasant house - in 1986 returned to the village a year later. Now 26 people live in the village, once home to more than 1,000.
"This is the place where I was born," says Anastasiya, who is known fondly by those patrolling the controlled area as Baba Nastya or grandma Nastya.
"But it is sad no one comes here and people just leave, mainly for their graves," she laughs heartily, scraping a pig's guts on a wooden bench to make into sausages later.
"Tourists would be fun. Just come."
She says life is better in the village - a ramshackle collection of tiny cottages empty and often falling down - than in the flat her and her husband were re-settled to.
"Radiation? What radiation? It was a ploy to get money," says Nastya, wearing a colourful scarf around her head, as she walks off to bring some home-made moonshine.
"I took some meat to market and our pork registered a lower radiation level than that meat which came from Kiev."
Baba Nastya would not be on the tour, Rimma says. Tourists would have to stay on the bus at all times, although they would get the chance to see the deserted town of Pripyat, where thousands will never be allowed home.
Yellow water drips on to the broken tiles of what was the main grocery shop in Pripyat, a town which stands almost in the shadow of rector four. The toilets have been ripped out, the refrigerators stripped bare. A small sign dangles over one of the shelves, saying "Children's Food".
The town, now surrounded by barbed wire and watched by checkpoints, was evacuated after the explosion. Many took what they could, but later others have come and trashed rooms in the search for something valuable.
Tower blocks stand empty. Apartment doors hang on hinges, the odd boot or children's toy lie underneath shards of glass. Mattresses with their springs showing sag in hallways and the wind screams eerily through broken windows and bare lift shafts.
"Now tourists could come here and see the real Chernobyl...Every person who has a child should come here and understand the tragedy. I doubt they will," Rimma sighs.
"Here you can feel the real pain, can't you?"
--------
Nuclear reactor malfunctions in Ukraine
Fri Apr 26, 2002
AP
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20020426/ap_wo_en_ge/ukraine_nuclear_5
KIEV, Ukraine - A reactor at Ukraine's Zaporizhia nuclear power plant was shut down after a malfunction in the safety system, officials said Friday.
The plant's No. 3 reactor was shut down late Thursday after a major electricity cable of the safety system was damaged, the state nuclear company Energoatom said in a statement.
No radiation leaks were reported and the reactor was expected to restart its work Saturday.
The Zaporizhia plant, which operates six reactors, is Europe's largest atomic power facility. Currently, three of its reactors are undergoing repairs.
The news of the latest malfunction came as Ukraine marked the 16th anniversary of the world's worst nuclear catastrophe, the April 26, 1986 explosion and fire at the Chernobyl power plant. The accident spewed radiation over then-Soviet Ukraine, Belarus, Russia and parts of Europe. Ukraine shut Chernobyl down for good in 2000.
----
Chernobyl residents remember disaster, but worry about jobs
Fri Apr 26, 2002
By TIM VICKERY,
Associated Press Writer
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20020426/ap_wo_en_ge/chernobyl_anniversary_2
SLAVUTYCH, Ukraine - many of whom still work at the Chernobyl power station - braved a biting cold to light candles, lay flowers and offer prayers in a memorial service to colleagues, friends and loved ones who died in the world's worst nuclear accident 16 years ago Friday.
"We're proud people, I come every year," said Lyubov Rasovova, who was fortunate to have the day off from her job at Chernobyl on April 26, 1986. Every year survivors mark the anniversary in the nearby town of Slavutych at 1:23 a.m., the moment when the explosion hit, spewing radiation across Europe.
Rasovova manages a storage facility at Chernobyl and knew many of the 26 men and two women whose portraits are etched into the low, gray granite wall in the square commemorating workers who were killed within days of the explosion. Thousands more people in Ukraine, Belarus and Russia have died from radiation-related illnesses since.
While remorse for the past was foremost in people's minds Friday, the insecurity of job losses and the prospect of having to move because of Chernobyl's closure in December 2000 come up quickly in conversations here.
About 1,500 people have left Slavutych since 2000 and more flight is expected. The city was built in the aftermath of the accident to house Chernobyl workers forcibly evacuated from homes in the plant's shadow.
"The main priority of the city today is survival," said Slavutych Mayor Vladimir Odovichenko. With efforts now focused on disassembling the nuclear plant, Odovichenko is reliant on international assistance for a large portion of his budget. "We are a donor city," he says.
For the next two years, Odovichenko expects closure operations to provide many jobs for Slavutych residents, but he dreads future losses of skilled workers who seek jobs elsewhere.
Thousands of Slavutych's 25,000 residents still work in "the zone" - a 30-kilometer-radius (18-mile) swath of land that was evacuated soon after the accident and closed off to outsiders for years.
However, the mayor is confident that his town - which is just outside the zone - is safe.
Despite a lack of work and questionable ecological safety, the decision to move is not an easy one for Slavutych residents as economic conditions have deteriorated throughout Ukraine in recent years.
"Before, the Soviet Union helped us, now we don't know what will happen," said Oleksandr Korolov, 50, who has worked at Chernobyl since 1978.
Emotional ties also contribute to Slavutych residents' decision to stay put.
"What's one to do?" said Rasovova. "I feel comfortable here_ it's my city, my job, my life. I'm used to it not being safe."
-------- u.s. nuc facilities
-------- nevada
Nevada Offers Nuclear License Plates
By Ken Ritter
Associated Press Writer
Friday, April 26, 2002
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A52642-2002Apr26?language=printer
LAS VEGAS -- Even as Nevada officials fight against their state becoming the nation's nuclear waste dump, authorities are offering license plates depicting a nuclear blast.
The fund-raising plate, which honors Nevada's atomic past, has been criticized as ill-timed and inappropriate. Others don't mind the idea of cars with mushroom-cloud license plates sharing roads with tractor-trailers hauling radioactive waste.
"Nevada being Nevada, this is a unique subject," said Rick Bibbero, 55, a real estate agent who won $500 with his design for the license tag.
Besides the mushroom cloud, the brown and purple plates show the nucleus-and-atom logo for atomic energy and Albert Einstein's formula for the theory of relativity.
Nuclear testing was conducted above and below ground from 1952 to 1992 at the Nevada Test Site, the federal reservation north of Las Vegas that, at 1,375 square miles, is larger than Rhode Island. More than 100,000 workers helped develop the nation's nuclear arsenal in Nevada, and more than 800 fell ill for their efforts.
"You wouldn't find California trying to memorialize something like this, but this is our past," said Bibbero, who said he is neutral on the Yucca Mountain project.
Under the Yucca Mountain plan, the federal government will entomb 77,000 tons of highly radioactive waste beneath a volcanic ridge 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas.
Kalynda Tilges, of Citizen Alert, an outspoken opponent of nuclear testing and the Yucca Mountain repository, had a word for the license plates: "Abomination."
"If they're talking about the legacy of the Test Site, I don't think they should use a mushroom cloud unless they show what it did to the people who live here and worked out there," Tilges said. "It's not a pretty thing."
State lawmakers approved the plates last year, and the bill's sponsor, Senate Minority Leader Dina Titus, said she recalled little opposition.
"This is an important part of Nevada history, and national and international history," said Titus. "I think Nevadans think testing was patriotic. It was done for the good of the country during the Cold War."
----
House Panel Backs Nevada as Site to Bury Atomic Waste
New York Times
April 26, 2002
By MATTHEW L. WALD
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/04/26/politics/26YUCC.html
WASHINGTON - A House committee approved today a resolution to move ahead with the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository. Another House panel took up the issue that opponents of the Yucca site contend is the weak spot and the issue that most interests people outside Nevada: transportation risks.
The House Energy and Commerce Committee voted 41 to 6 in favor of a resolution that endorses President Bush's plan to bury nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain, which is about 90 miles northwest of the outskirts of Las Vegas. The resolution, which would overrule Nevada's objection to the plan, now goes to the full House, where approval is expected.
But the Senate would also have to agree for the site to become a reality, and the fate of the resolution there is uncertain.
At the same time, two subcommittees of the House Transportation Committee held a joint hearing at which they took contradictory testimony on whether it would be riskier to ship waste to Nevada or leave it at 131 power reactors, research reactors, laboratories and weapons sites around the country.
Edward R. Hamberger, president and chief executive of the Association of American Railroads, the industry's main trade group, said that his industry's safety record for hazardous materials shipments in 2000 was very good, with material accidentally released just once for every 48,000 carloads shipped.
In contrast, filling Yucca Mountain to its legal limit would take only about 9,600 car loads, over 24 years, Mr. Hamberger said, and the waste could be moved on special trains with advanced braking and suspension systems that would further reduce the risk. Advocates of the repository said that casks in which the waste would be shipped would very strong and were supposed to withstand temperatures of up to 1,475 degrees fahrenheit for 30 minutes.
But Representative Shelley Berkley, Democrat of Nevada, a member of the Transportation Committee, noted that in July 2000 a train carrying hazardous waste caught fire in a tunnel beneath downtown Baltimore. The fire burned for four days at temperatures up to 1,500 degrees. The tunnel is a possible route for wastes coming from the Calvert Cliffs nuclear plant in southern Maryland, Ms. Berkley, said.
Another member of the committee, Jerrold Nadler, Democrat of Manhattan, said: "It can be characterized as a class of accidents that occur very rarely, but when they occur, have a potential to be of incredibly catastrophic nature. We shouldn't be tempting them."
Sue W. Kelly, a Westchester Democrat whose district includes the Indian Point reactors, was skeptical of the Yucca waste plan. "I'm uncomfortable with the idea of putting the rods on a railroad, shipping them across the United States, and putting them in a mountain," she said, adding that she was interested in storing wastes on the site, in casks that would last for decades or longer.
While hundreds of shipments of nuclear waste have been made safely in this country, opponents of the Yucca site said, terrorism is a new risk. "How hard is it to imagine a nuclear U.S.S. Cole incident?" asked Ms. Berkley.
James D. Ballard, a consultant for the State of Nevada, submitted testimony that said the shipments would provide terrorists with "a target-rich environment."
Opponents and supporters said that to some extent, the transportation argument was only a stalking horse for the question of whether the repository itself would be safe.
Mr. Nadler went further, saying that even that issue was simply a debating point in a larger argument about whether nuclear power itself was a good idea.
The deputy director of the Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management, Lake Barrett, agreed with Mr. Nadler, in a way. Mr. Barrett said that the issue facing Congress was whether to let his agency, part of the Energy Department, proceed as recommended by Mr. Bush to try to win a license for the waste site from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
Opponents, he said, had failed to make the case that the Department of Energy should not be allowed to apply for a license. "Instead of addressing the merits of the recommendation," Mr. Barrett said, "these critics have sought to create fear about transportation of spent fuel as a substitute for any real argument."
Like the repository plan itself, the transportation concept is difficult for opponents to fight because the Energy Department has not decided on crucial details yet, including whether to ship by trains or trucks. The department has not specified routes, and it is not clear whether rail transport is feasible because it would require a new line, either 99 or 340 miles, depending on the route taken, according to Nevada. Nevada might oppose the tracks.
Robert J. Halstead, a transportation specialist at the Nevada Agency for Nuclear Projects, said it would take 108,500 truck trips without a rail line to move the waste to Yucca. With such a rail line, it would take nearly 19,000 rail shipments and 3,100 truck shipments, he said, plus 3,000 barge shipments.
--------
Nevada Offers Nuclear License Plates
April 26, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Atomic-License-Plates.html
LAS VEGAS (AP) -- Even as Nevada officials fight against their state becoming the nation's nuclear waste dump, authorities are offering license plates depicting a nuclear blast.
The fund-raising plate, which honors Nevada's atomic past, has been criticized as ill-timed and inappropriate. Others don't mind the idea of cars with mushroom-cloud license plates sharing roads with tractor-trailers hauling radioactive waste.
``Nevada being Nevada, this is a unique subject,'' said Rick Bibbero, 55, a real estate agent who won $500 with his design for the license tag.
Besides the mushroom cloud, the brown and purple plates show the nucleus-and-atom logo for atomic energy and Albert Einstein's formula for the theory of relativity.
Nuclear testing was conducted above and below ground from 1952 to 1992 at the Nevada Test Site, the federal reservation north of Las Vegas that, at 1,375 square miles, is larger than Rhode Island. More than 100,000 workers helped develop the nation's nuclear arsenal in Nevada, and more than 800 fell ill for their efforts.
``You wouldn't find California trying to memorialize something like this, but this is our past,'' said Bibbero, who said he is neutral on the Yucca Mountain project.
Under the Yucca Mountain plan, the federal government will entomb 77,000 tons of highly radioactive waste beneath a volcanic ridge 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas.
Kalynda Tilges, of Citizen Alert, an outspoken opponent of nuclear testing and the Yucca Mountain repository, had a word for the license plates: ``Abomination.''
``If they're talking about the legacy of the Test Site, I don't think they should use a mushroom cloud unless they show what it did to the people who live here and worked out there,'' Tilges said. ``It's not a pretty thing.''
State lawmakers approved the plates last year, and the bill's sponsor, Senate Minority Leader Dina Titus, said she recalled little opposition.
``This is an important part of Nevada history, and national and international history,'' said Titus. ``I think Nevadans think testing was patriotic. It was done for the good of the country during the Cold War.''
--------
House Committee Votes to Override Yucca Veto
April 26, 2002
ENS
http://ens-news.com/ens/apr2002/2002L-04-26-09.html#anchor2
WASHINGTON, DC, The House Energy and Commerce Committee has voted to override Nevada Governor Kenny Guinn's veto of the Yucca Mountain nuclear dump.
In a 41 to six vote, the committee backed a congressional resolution overruling the governor's veto. The vote sends the resolution to the full House, which is expected to approve the measure.
Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham testifies before the House Energy and Commerce Committee regarding the proposed nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain. (Photo courtesy House Energy and Commerce Committee)
"By rejecting Nevada's disapproval, the Committee agrees that sound science has guided this decision," said Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham. "Nothing that the opponents of Yucca Mountain have presented rises to the burden of proof that would not allow the licensing and full review of the science by the NRC to move forward."
In February, President George W. Bush selected the Yucca Mountain site as the nation's only permanent repository for high level nuclear wastes, the most dangerous of radioactive wastes. The Department of Energy plans use the site to store 77,000 tons of radioactive wastes and spent fuel from nuclear power plants throughout the United States and 42 countries.
Earlier this month, Guinn, a Republican, used his authority under a special federal law to veto the Bush administration's approval of Yucca Mountain.
If both the House and the Senate override Guinn's veto, the final decision would be left up to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the agency responsible for licensing of the Yucca Mountain repository.
Opponents of the Yucca Mountain site hope that the Democratically controlled Senate will opt to let Guinn's veto stand.
The Energy Department argues that a single permanent dump for nuclear waste will be easier to safeguard than the dozens of temporary respositories now scattered around the nation.
"America's national, energy and homeland security, as well as environmental protection is well served by siting a single repository at Yucca Mountain, rather than having nuclear waste stranded in temporary storage containers located at 131 sites in 39 states," Abraham said.
-------- us politics
Bush Says U.S. Won't Let Israel Be Crushed
April 26, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-US-Saudi-Arabia.html
CRAWFORD, Texas (AP) -- Pressured by Arab critics and defied by Israel, President Bush voiced exasperation Friday with fresh Israeli offensives but said U.S. support for the Jewish state is unequivocal. ``We will not allow Israel to be crushed,'' he said.
The White House disclosed that Bush and Crown Prince Abdullah of Saudi Arabia were unable, in their five hours of talks on Thursday, to reach agreement on a new eight-point plan that Abdullah presented. Its call for an armed peacekeeping force and other points conflict with U.S. policy, but press secretary Ari Fleischer said the Saudi paper was constructive and talks continue.
The president, speaking to reporters near his Texas ranch, addressed the broader message that Abdullah left with Bush: that U.S. tolerance of Israeli military action in Palestinian areas was threatening U.S. ties to the Arab world.
``I told the crown prince that we've got a unique relationship with Israel, and that one thing that the world can count on is that we will not allow Israel to be crushed,'' Bush said.
Still, he appealed to Congress to hold off on any official resolution supporting Israel because of Arab sensitivities.
And he bristled at the latest troop movements in defiance of his April 4 demand that Israel halt incursions into Palestinian areas. The president's apparent tolerance of Israeli action in the three weeks since -- as forces withdrew from some areas but pressed forward into others -- has angered the Arab world.
Abdullah, according to a Saudi spokesman, told Bush in their Thursday talks that he must rein in Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.
``The Israelis understand my position,'' Bush said Friday.
``I've been very clear on that. And there has been some progress, but it's now time to quit it altogether. It's time to end this.''
Adel al-Jubeir, foreign policy adviser to the crown prince, welcomed Bush's new call for withdrawal. ``It speaks to the commitment of the president and the United States to see a peaceful solution and an end of the violence so work can be begun to implement the vision the president and the crown prince share,'' said al-Jubeir.
Bush was responding to news that Israeli soldiers re-entered the West Bank town of Qalqiliya on Friday and, separately, fired on Palestinian protesters near Yasser Arafat's headquarters in Ramallah, where the Palestinian leader has been kept under virtual house arrest.
Ending the Israeli siege at Ramallah was one item on Abdullah's eight-point blueprint, offered as practical ideas for lifting both sides out of a quagmire, al-Jubeir said.
Abdullah's message in presenting the ideas to Bush was, ``Yes we're frustrated with the situation, yes, we're upset with the violence, but we're not just complaining, we're offering pragmatic solutions,'' al-Jubeir said.
The Saudi paper, which might have formed the basis of a joint statement by Bush and Abdullah, also called for immediate political talks between Israel and the Palestinians; an armed multinational peacekeeping force; and an end to Israeli settlements in Palestinian areas.
Bush believes political talks would be most effective with a cease-fire in place; only unarmed monitors should enforce any peace agreement; and the settlement issue should be resolved through negotiation. Israel shares those positions.
In the end, Bush's talks with Abdullah produced no joint statement. ``We'll continue to talk to the Saudis and continue to make progress around those eight'' points, Fleischer said.
Bush, citing U.S. interests in the Arab world, sounded a note of caution to House conservatives proposing a resolution in support of Israel's fight against terrorism. He said he hoped ``that Congress realizes we've got interests in the area, as well, beyond Israel -- that we have good relationships with the Saudis and the Jordanians and the Egyptians.'' He was also dismissive of a congressional drive to give Israel extra aid, saying he's already asked for all the spending that's necessary.
Rep. Tom DeLay, R-Texas, the House majority whip, delayed a vote on the resolution.
Bush insisted his first face-to-face meeting with Abdullah created a strong personal bond between the two men and reaffirmed common ground in Mideast peace efforts. And Friday brought yet more attempts to smooth relations with the Arab world.
With Abdullah remaining in Texas for several more days, White House officials left open the possibility of additional high-level discussions.
In what was billed as a personal visit between two old friends, Abdullah and Bush's father, the first President Bush, took a 90-minute train ride together from Houston to College Station, Texas, where Bush treated the crown prince to a private tour of his presidential library.
Later Friday, the former president, who successfully built an Arab coalition against Iraq in the Persian Gulf War, was giving the same VIP tour -- plus dinner -- to King Mohammed VI of Morocco.
In Washington, the State Department announced that Secretary of State Colin Powell will hold a new round of diplomatic talks next week with U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov and top officials of the European Union. The leaders will meet in Washington to discuss how to get Mideast peacemaking back on track, said State Department spokesman Richard Boucher.
-------- us nuc waste
DOCUMENTS REVEAL ENERGY DEPT. PLAN TO TRUCK ROCKY FLATS PLUTONIUM TO SAVANNAH RIVER, LAWRENCE LIVERMORE IN UNSAFE CONTAINERS;
DT-22 CANISTERS CANNOT PASS NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMM. CRUSH TEST
Date: Fri, 26 Apr 2002
To: marylia@earthlink.net From: marylia@earthlink.net (marylia)
The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) intends to truck plutonium parts from its Rocky Flats, Colorado plant to Savannah River, South Carolina and the Lawrence Livermore (California) laboratory in uncertified containers that cannot pass a government-mandated "crush test," according to documents obtained in a lawsuit against DOE's shipping plans.
On April 15, 2002 DOE Secretary Spencer Abraham notified the U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee that plutonium would soon be shipped from Rocky Flats in safety-certified "3013 containers" on 76 Safe Secure Transport (SST) trailers. But a presentation to DOE's Rocky Flats Citizens Advisory Board by site contractor Kaiser-Hill eleven days earlier admitted that the SSTs would also carry 432 forty-five gallon DT-22 containers filled with plutonium parts. The two destinations listed are Savannah River and Lawrence Livermore. DT-22 containers are not certified for transporting plutonium parts because they cannot pass a "crush test" required by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
A July 2000 DOE memorandum analyzing the proposal to move plutonium from Rocky Flats in DT-22 containers concludes: "If an SST was hit by a train the crush environment would occur. If an SST was hit from behind by a large, heavy vehicle, the crush environment may occur."
"In plain English, DOE is admitting that the DT-22 containers holding plutonium could get crushed in any highway accident and would definitely get crushed in a collision with a train. That could disperse deadly plutonium particles across the highway and into the atmosphere." explained Marylia Kelley, Executive Director of Tri-Valley Communities Against a Radioactive Environment (Tri-Valley CAREs), a Livermore group which has sued to stop the shipments.
"In a rush to meet its own arbitrary deadline for closing Rocky Flats, DOE is pursuing a plan that flaunts common sense, public safety, and environmental protection. It is curious, at best, that DOE Secretary Abraham's required notice to Congress failed to mention that some of the plutonium shipments would be in uncertified containers," Kelley continued.
An October 1999 DOE memo warns that the containers cannot pass the mandatory crush test. The DT-22 containers "have not been tested to, and do not demonstrate compliance with, the current 10 CFR 71 performance requirements (most notably the dynamic crush test)," states the memo. It further specifies that, therefore, no DT-22s "may be purchased or fabricated after April 1, 1999, as specified in 10 CFR 71.13."
The documents were obtained by Tri-Valley CAREs through a lawsuit filed earlier this year seeking to block the shipments to California because DOE failed to prepare an Environmental Impact Statement on the plan as required by the National Environmental Policy Act. The group is represented by attorneys from the non-profit legal firm Earthjustice in its federal court suit.
for further information: Marylia Kelley, Tri-Valley CAREs, (925) 443-7148
-------- MILITARY
-------- iraq
Size of force on ground key in plan for Iraq war
April 26, 2002
By Rowan Scarborough
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20020426-41274916.htm
The commander of U.S. forces in the Persian Gulf has told senior Pentagon officers that a new war against Iraq would likely take five divisions and 200,000 troops.
Gen. Tommy Franks "wants to do a Desert Storm II," said one official, referring to the 550,000 troops deployed to the region in 1990-91 to evict Iraqi forces from Kuwait.
Two defense sources said the briefings by Gen. Franks, who heads the U.S. Central Command that oversees U.S. forces in Central Asia and the Persian Gulf, came as the Bush administration is moving closer to deciding on a general military campaign to topple Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein.
Officials say it likely will rely on fewer ground troops than suggested by Gen. Franks and call on extensive use of air power and indigenous rebel forces.
"Less ground-centric and more air-centric," is how one official described the emerging consensus.
Sources said that several weeks ago Gen. Franks provided face-to-face briefings on his ideas for combating Saddam.
The sources said Gen. Franks believes four or five divisions of ground troops are needed, with a total strength of about 200,000 land, sea and air forces.
Officials said President Bush met with some of his top national security advisers at Camp David last weekend and discussed war options.
Gen. Franks, a four-star Army officer, is partial to the use of large numbers of ground forces. In the planning for the war in Afghanistan, he initially proposed three divisions to oust the Taliban but then settled on relying greatly on special-operations troops and air power.
Officials say Pentagon civilian policy-makers are skeptical of Gen. Franks' Iraq outline.
They want him to rely less on conventional ground troops and incorporate more features of the Afghan conflict: Army Green Berets organizing anti-Saddam forces in the north and south, and extensive use of air power unleashing a new generation of precision-guided munitions.
Air advocates say the Navy and Air Force could generate up to 1,000 sorties, or air strikes, daily over Iraq. While less than 10 percent of munitions used in the 1991 Gulf war were "smart bombs," up to 90 percent would be precision-guided ordnance in a new war against Baghdad.
The officials said, however, that a full-blown debate on strategy inside the Pentagon has not yet begun. They said Central Command is drafting several war options.
"There is the beginning of a debate going on in Central Command and in the Joint Chiefs of Staff on the merits of a larger U.S. ground force versus a small U.S. ground force supporting Iraqi opposition troops, a la the Afghan model," one official said.
Mr. Bush on numerous occasions has threatened Saddam with military action. His aides talk openly of how Washington cannot allow Saddam, whose regime has ties to terrorist groups, to achieve his goal of building nuclear weapons.
Some weeks ago, the Pentagon, State Department and National Security Council agreed to seek Saddam's removal sooner rather than later. But the administration has not settled on how to do it. CIA Director George J. Tenet is said to favor covert action to undermine Saddam's regime and instigate a coup. But Pentagon civilians argue that such measures have failed in the 11 years since the Gulf war.
"All options are on the table," Mr. Bush said recently. "But one thing I will not allow is a nation such as Iraq to threaten our very future by developing weapons of mass destruction."
The administration is also undecided whether it can deploy forces and launch an attack while the Arab world is upset with Mr. Bush over his tilt toward Israel in its war against Palestinian terrorists.
The Pentagon is planning to work around Saudi Arabia's opposition to launching strike aircraft from its soil.
Air Force planners believe adequate air strips will be available in countries such as Turkey, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar and Oman.
Vice President Richard B. Cheney conducted an 11-nation tour of the region last month. Administration sources said that although Arab leaders publicly voiced opposition to going to war against Saddam, in private some delivered a completely different message.
One senior official called the trip "very successful" on the issue of gaining support for moderate Arab states for ousting Saddam.
"All the stuff you heard publicly, turn it upside down," this official said. "The Cheney trip was a very good trip. Look where Prince Abdullah is today."
This was a reference to Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah traveling yesterday to Crawford, Texas, for more than five hours of talks with Mr. Bush.
Also, the administration is mulling its policy on having U.N. arms inspectors re-enter Iraq. Mr. Bush in the past has said Iraq faces some type of action if Saddam refuses to let in inspectors.
But his advisers are split on the issue. The State Department wants to give inspections another try, arguing that it is a way to build global support for deposing Saddam. Pentagon policy-makers believe inspections are a waste of time.
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld told reporters earlier this month: "I just can't quite picture how intrusive something would have to be that it could offset the ease with which they had previously been able to deny and deceive, and which today one would think they would be vastly more skillful, having had all this time without inspectors there."
-------- israel / palestine
Ill-Prepared For a Battle Unexpected
Israeli Reservists Tell Of Jenin Camp Assault
By John Lancaster
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, April 26, 2002
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A50986-2002Apr25?language=printer
JERUSALEM -- It was the second day of the battle for the Jenin refugee camp, and things were going badly for the Israelis. Palestinian gunmen, firing from sandbags hidden behind curtained windows, had pinned down advancing Israeli troops on the camp's western edge. Two Israelis had already died.
To a young Israeli army sergeant watching from a nearby rise known as Antennae Hill, perhaps 400 yards above the camp, it was clear that his commanders had been wrong when they had confidently predicted a few days earlier that the Palestinians would surrender at the first sight of approaching tanks.
That's when he heard the orders to open fire.
"The orders were to shoot at each house," recalled the sergeant, a member of a heavy weapons company in the Yoav regiment of the army's Fifth Brigade, a reserve unit that did the bulk of the fighting in Jenin. "The words on the radio were to 'Put a bullet in each window.' "
The sergeant, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said he was troubled by the orders, which did not require soldiers to actually see the gunmen they were trying to kill. But he said the Israeli soldiers didn't hesitate. They pounded a group of cinder-block homes -- the apparent source of Palestinian sniper fire -- with .50-caliber machine guns, M-24 sniper rifles, Barrett sniper rifles and Mod3 grenade launchers.
"It's not true there was a massacre, because guys did not shoot at civilians just like this," the sergeant recalled. "However -- and this is terrible -- it is true that we shot at houses, and God knows how many innocent people got killed."
In separate interviews Wednesday, the sergeant and another Israeli reservist who fought in Jenin, Sgt. Shlomi Lanyado, offered a detailed account of the battle from the perspective of the Israeli forces. The Jenin combat was the heaviest of the recent military operation that Israel launched in the West Bank after a string of suicide bombings. Both sergeants participated in the house-to-house combat in the center of the densely built refugee camp.
The 10-day battle claimed the lives of 23 Israeli soldiers and at least 50 Palestinians -- more may be buried beneath the rubble -- and left the center of the camp in ruins. Israeli officials say most of the dead Palestinians were armed fighters who had turned the camp into a "nest of terror" used to launch suicide bombings against Israelis.
Palestinians say most of the dead were civilians and have accused the Israeli military of committing a massacre in Jenin, which Israel has denied. Israel and the U.N. Security Council are now arguing over the composition of a U.N. team charged with investigating the battle.
The sergeants' accounts add up to only a small piece of a much larger picture. Their recollections are parallel in some respects, but do not provide a comprehensive account of the battle.
Both sergeants have returned to civilian life, and spoke without the presence of Israeli army press officers.
The soldiers described a lack of preparation by Israeli reservists. They were hastily mustered from civilian life less than two weeks before, and were told to expect a Palestinian surrender within three days, the sergeants said. They spent barely a day rehearsing the operation. They also described the trauma of losing close friends in battle.
They expressed grudging admiration for a mostly unseen enemy that had meticulously planned for the assault, stockpiling ammunition, food and medical supplies as well as crude but effective bombs made frommetal canisters filled with phosphate and acetone.
"I can't be contemptuous of them," said Lanyado, 32, a cheerful, animated stage actor and producer who lives in a high-rise near Tel Aviv with his wife and two small children. "Somebody there had thought very much what to do and how to fight and succeeded for 10 or 11 days against a very big army."
Both Lanyado and the other sergeant said they do not believe that Israeli soldiers intentionally killed Palestinian civilians. Lanyado said he and the other members of his platoon went out of their way to treat Palestinians with respect, providing them with water and once summoning a medic to treat an elderly man who collapsed in his bedroom.
The other sergeant, however, said he was troubled not only by the order to fire through open windows without specific, identifiable targets, but also by what he said were insufficient efforts by the army to allow civilians to leave their homes in safety. He also questioned the decision to use bulldozers to knock down houses at a time when he said the fighting had mostly subsided.
Neither soldier said he was aware of Israeli troops using noncombatants as human shields, to open doors, closets or packages that could be booby-trapped, as Palestinians have charged. Both sergeants acknowledged, however, that soldiers often drafted Palestinians to knock on neighbors' doors as the soldiers moved from house to house in search of gunmen and terrorist suspects.
"The thought was that if there was a gunman behind the door, he'll think twice before spraying the whole door," said the sergeant with the heavy weapons company.
Both sergeants said the practice was aimed at saving Palestinian as well as Israeli lives. Israeli military spokesmen denied that Palestinian civilians were deliberately put at risk. The spokesmen said that from the first day of the assault, Israeli forces broadcast regular warnings over loudspeakers in Arabic offering residents a chance to leave the camp in safety and fighters a chance to surrender. They said bulldozers were brought in only as a last resort following the death of 13 soldiers in an ambush.
"Most of the civilians in the camp left very early on, which the [army] facilitated," a military spokesman, Capt. Jacob Dallal, said today. Those who remained behind, he added, were "mostly terrorists." Dallal said houses were fired upon only if they were identified as "sources of fire."
The sergeants were called to active duty on March 17, about two weeks before the start of Israel's offensive in the West Bank. Israeli intelligence had identified the camp as a center of operations for two militant groups, the Islamic Resistance Movement, known as Hamas, and Islamic Jihad, as well as fighters affiliated with Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat.
On Monday, April 1, Lanyado said, he and other members of the company rehearsed their mission -- to round up terrorists and gunmen -- using empty buildings at an army base near Jenin. "We practiced knocking on the door and then waiting" to one side, he recalled.
In general, they said, the mood was relaxed. "We were told specifically that once the Palestinians see the tanks, they'll give up," the other sergeant said. "Those were the words my company commander told us."
The mood changed abruptly, however, on April 3, when the first soldiers set off down Antennae Hill, so named for two large radio towers atop the hill, which slopes toward the two- and three-story houses at the edge of the camp. The Palestinian gunfire was much heavier than the Israelis anticipated and it quickly claimed its first victim, Maj. Moshe Gerstner, felled by a bullet to the throat.
"We began to understand that the Palestinians are taking this very seriously," said Lanyado, who later that day led a squad of six men into the first row of houses. They spent the night inside one that had been abandoned. The next morning, "I got a call to bring a medic" to a house about 75 yards down the hill, Lanyado recalled. He raced toward the house, with bullets singing past his head. "This was the fastest running I've ever done," he said. "I don't know how the bullets didn't hit me. I was saying to myself, 'I'm going to fall.' "
He entered the house to find that a friend and company medic, Aynon Sharaabi, had been fatally wounded in the side by a ricochet, moments after washing in the kitchen, then binding his arm with a ritual leather strap, in preparation for morning prayers.
At that moment, "we started the war," Lanyado said.
A similar realization was dawning among the members of the Israeli heavy weapons company, which had remained up the hill in a supporting role. On the third day, said the sergeant with the company, he and his men were ordered to fire on a group of five or six houses to "soften the target" and "wake up the snipers" so they would shoot back and expose their locations.
After a few days, Lanyado and his men left the western side of the camp and moved to another area farther down the hill. It was too dangerous to travel in the open, he said, so the soldiers used sledgehammers to create a tunnel through the houses as they worked their way toward the center of the camp.
On one occasion, Lanyado recalled, he and his men burst through a wall to find 16 Palestinians -- four women, two men and 10 children -- sitting stiffly in a living room, "almost like they were waiting for us." Lanyado, the son of an Egyptian Jew, said he spoke to the family in Arabic to try to put them at ease, then passed out candy to the children after first popping a piece into his mouth to show them it wasn't poisoned.
As the Israelis penetrated deeper into the camp, the other sergeant's heavy weapons company could no longer fire from the hill without jeopardizing soldiers below. At that point, the sergeant said, he and his comrades moved into the camp as well, picking their way through streets and houses strewn with booby traps.
One such trap, he said, consisted of a loose tile that concealed two metal plates separated by a scrap of sponge. Anyone who stepped on the tile, he said, would have completed an electrical circuit and triggered a homemade bomb. Lanyado and his squad had many similar encounters.
"There were a lot of bombs in every place," Lanyado recalled. "You would see a door partly open, and there would be a wire that was connected to one of these soda canisters."
The other sergeant disputed official assertions that the army had made every effort to empty the camp of civilians. "The civilians, they never got a real chance to get out," he said.
He recalled that on the fifth day, he was inside an armored personnel carrier broadcasting appeals in Arabic for fighters to surrender. The commander of the vehicle, he said, asked a senior officer who was riding with them why they did not broadcast the appeal on more than one street. According to the sergeant, the officer replied, " 'These are my orders. Do you really think the brigade wants to give them a chance to give up?' "
The sergeant said there were still plenty of civilians inside the camp during the period of the fiercest fighting. On guard duty inside a house one night, he recalled, he heard a baby crying unattended for hours in an adjacent building. Fearing that the mother was dead, he asked an officer to investigate. But the officer said it might be a trap. "He said, 'I'm sorry. I wish I could, but I can't,' " the sergeant recalled.
Toward the end of the battle, he said, he was peering out the hatch of an armored personnel carrier when he noticed a young man in bluejeans crawling on his hands and knees through the rubble. His platoon commander, a lieutenant, who was in another vehicle ahead of him, ordered the man in Arabic to stop, then fired a warning shot. But the man kept crawling toward the vehicles.
Fearing a suicide bomber, the lieutenant shot him dead, he recalled.
Lanyado said his men often asked him why they didn't use more aggressive tactics and were greatly relieved when commanders decided to send in the bulldozers.
"All the time the soldiers asked me, 'Why aren't we using more strength?' " Lanyado recalled. " 'Why do I have to go from house to house and maybe not come back?' " Lanyado said he has been shocked, since hanging up his uniform, by the international storm of criticism over Israeli tactics in Jenin. "I'm ready to speak with anyone, to look them in the eye and tell them that I and my soldiers, we were as clean as we could be," he said.
----
Israel investigates reports of looting
April 26, 2002
By Betsy Pisik
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20020426-24485946.htm
JERUSALEM - The Israeli army yesterday acknowledged that it was investigating widespread complaints of looting and vandalism by soldiers serving in the West Bank and said anyone found guilty will be punished "to the letter of the law."
Accusations against soldiers have been surfacing since the Israeli Defense Forces began withdrawing last week from Palestinian towns and cities occupied under the three-week Operation Defensive Shield.
The complaints range from defacing property to outright theft of cash, electronics and jewelry. In the most alarming instances, soldiers are accused of ransacking government offices and destroying databases, files and equipment.
The investigation of the charges "is part of the IDF policy in dealing with exceptional incidents," said the army in a statement released yesterday.
"Actions such as these disgrace those who wear uniforms and cause great damage to the military, whose strength is within its purity."
Six soldiers already have been arrested on charges of theft or vandalism, according to an IDF spokesman, and more arrests are expected.
"We've received many, many, many complaints," Capt. Ron Edelheitz, an IDF spokesman, said yesterday afternoon.
"Military police are putting up investigations and if they find anyone guilty of such crimes they will be punished to the letter of the law."
IDF officials say that every complaint will be checked out, if not investigated. At least 24 investigations are already under way.
Three soldiers were arrested this week after they admitted stealing money from the wallet of a Palestinian in police custody. Two more were arrested on suspicion of stealing. And another has been accused of "looting computer equipment and cellular phones, among other charges."
During a tour of the Center for New Media at Al Quds University in Ramallah this week, a reporter and photographer with The Washington Times saw a ransacked library and offices and graffiti saying, "No Palestine. Ever."
Staff at the center, which produces the Palestinian version of "Sesame Street," also pointed out three empty tripods from which they said television cameras had been looted and an empty room that they said had held 12 computers.
The army declined to detail the timing and location of most of the suspected thefts already under investigation. A military police unit based in Bethlehem will take the lead in the investigations, according to the army.
Palestinians may register complaints through human rights organizations, military or civilian police, and at District Coordinating Offices located near every major town, a spokesman said.
Palestinians, apparently, have not been the only victims.
The army said yesterday that it had arrested soldiers accused of breaking into the cars of Israeli reservists who were called up for service. Many of the 20,000 mobilized reservists left their cars in large, secluded army lots and returned to find their contents, or the vehicles themselves, missing.
One recently released reservist was arrested on suspicion of breaking into cars, and an unspecified number of other soldiers are under investigation, according to the IDF.
-------- mideast
THE MEETING
Saudi Tells Bush U.S. Must Temper Backing of Israel
New York Times
April 26, 2002
By ELISABETH BUMILLER
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/04/26/international/middleeast/26PREX.html
CRAWFORD, Tex. - Crown Prince Abdullah of Saudi Arabia told President Bush bluntly today that the United States must temper its support for Israel or face grave consequences throughout the Arab world, Saudi officials said.
In several sessions lasting five hours at the president's central Texas ranch, the crown prince told Mr. Bush that if the United States did not do more to stop incursions into Palestinian areas by the forces of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, it would continue to lose credibility in the Middle East and create more instability there, the Saudi officials said.
"If Sharon is left to his own devices, he will drag the region over a cliff," Adel al-Jubeir, the foreign policy adviser to the crown prince, said after the meetings between Mr. Bush and the prince. "That does not serve America's interests, and it does not serve Saudi Arabia's interests."
Mr. Bush and American officials, while they did not deny that Prince Abdullah had presented his case forcefully, offered a far more positive account of the meetings.
"One of the really positive things out of this meeting was that the crown prince and I established a strong personal bond," Mr. Bush told reporters after the meeting. "We spent a lot of time alone."
Both Mr. Bush and Mr. Jubeir said the crown prince had not threatened in any way to reduce Saudi oil exports to the United States. A person close to the prince had suggested on Wednesday that could happen if the United States continued what the Saudis view as a one-sided policy toward Israel.
Saudi Arabia is America's second-largest foreign supplier of oil, and in 2001 exported nearly 605 million barrels to the United States, or 8.5 percent of what the country consumed.
"Saudi Arabia made it clear, and has made it clear publicly, that they will not use oil as a weapon," Mr. Bush said.
Mr. Jubeir echoed the president. "Oil is not a weapon," he said to reporters here. "Oil is not a tank. You cannot fire oil."
Saudi officials also denied today a suggestion from a person close to the royal family who was quoted in The New York Times that their government might demand that the United States leave strategic military bases in Saudi Arabia if the Bush administration refuses to rein in Mr. Sharon.
Mr. Bush, who a week ago infuriated the Arab world by calling Mr. Sharon "a man of peace," said he had told Prince Abdullah that he was counting on Israel to withdraw its forces from Palestinian areas, including, he said, resolving the standoffs in Ramallah and Bethlehem.
"I made it clear to him that I expected Israel to withdraw, just like I've made it clear to Israel," Mr. Bush said. "And we expect them to be finished. He knows my position. He also knows that I will work for peace. I will bring parties along."
"But I think he recognizes that America can't do it alone, that it's going to require a unified effort," the president added. "And one of the main things about this visit was to solidify that effort."
The meeting today seemed primarily to be a chance for the Saudis to lecture the American president, to strengthen their hand and quiet the growing unrest in their streets.
No joint statement was issued afterward, although the White House proposed one on Wednesday that was rejected by the Saudis, an official familiar with the talks said.
The Saudis objected to the United States' characterization of a peace initiative proposed by the crown prince in March, the official said. Specifically, the official said, the United States emphasized the recognition of Israel in the statement but did not include the requirement that Israel withdraw to its 1967 borders. The prince's plan calls for "normal relations" with Israel, the creation of a Palestinian state and Israel's return to its 1967 boundaries.
A Bush administration official who briefed reporters after the meeting did not explain the reason for the lack of a joint statement.
"You know, after these meetings, we sometimes have joint statements, and we sometimes don't have joint statements," the official said. "There is not going to be a joint statement for this meeting." Administration officials said the president and the prince had discussed the idea of an international peace conference, but had not come to a conclusion.
"We haven't made any decision about whether we think an international conference makes sense now," the administration official said. "Any such conference would have be to very well prepared."
Saudi officials appeared skeptical about the idea, particularly given Mr. Sharon's isolation of Yasir Arafat, the Palestinian leader, in his compound in Ramallah, and Mr. Sharon's refusal to have Mr. Arafat attend an Arab League meeting in March. "You can't have a peace conference if Sharon gets to decide who attends and who doesn't attend," Mr. Jubeir said. "That's not a peace conference. That's not going to fly."
Mr. Bush and Prince Abdullah also discussed American proposals to remove Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq, American and Saudi officials said, offering no details of the conversation.
"The president, once again, noted that Saddam Hussein and his efforts to acquire weapons of mass destruction are a threat to the region," the administration official said. He added: "The Saudis clearly understand the dangers from Saddam Hussein. They live in his neighborhood. They know what kind of regime that is."
Mr. Jubeir said after the meeting that the United States strategy for removing Mr. Hussein was not fully developed. "We do not believe the policy of the administration has been finalized," he said.
But he nonetheless said Saudi Arabia would not allow the United States to use Saudi bases to stage any future attack against Iraq.
"The administration is not at the point where they would ask that question," Mr. Jubeir said. "Were they to ask that question, our response would be that it would not serve the interests of the U.S. and it would not serve the interests of the region."
Prince Abdullah arrived this morning at the airport in Waco, Tex., where he was greeted by Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, and was then driven for 50 minutes to Mr. Bush's 1,600-acre ranch.
The prince was 10 minutes late in arriving at the ranch, where reporters could see the president in the breezeway of the house shifting from foot to foot like an anxious host.
The president and the prince met for two hours in the morning, and spent part of that time one-on-one, administration officials said. Afterward, Mr. Bush gave him a tour of the ranch in his pickup truck.
"He's a man who's got a farm and he understands the land, and I really took great delight in being able to drive him around in a pickup truck and showing him the trees and my favorite spots," Mr. Bush said. "And we saw a wild turkey, which was good."
Afterward, the two had a lunch of beef tenderloin, potato salad, brownies and ice cream. The lunch broke up after 3:30 p.m., more than an hour after it was scheduled to end.
-------- spies/spy agencies
Senate Confirms Helgerson as CIA General Inspector
April 26, 2002
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/politics/politics-congress-cia-confirmation.html
WASHINGTON - The U.S. Senate on Friday confirmed the nomination of John Helgerson to the post of CIA inspector general, a position that conducts investigations of possible internal wrongdoing at the U.S. spy agency.
The Senate confirmed Helgerson, who fills the vacancy left by former CIA Inspector General Britt Snider, without dissent.
At his confirmation hearing earlier this month, Helgerson said that as the spy agency's third inspector general he would focus on the CIA's procurement and acquisition process for information technology and information systems.
Another area he said he would focus on was a multiyear program to produce ``truly auditable'' financial statements.
The inspector general is the agency's watchdog office and reviews any allegation of possible wrongdoing and conducts inspections of different components of the spy agency to identify strengths and shortcomings, as well as conducts financial audits.
Helgerson, 58, had a lengthy tenure with the CIA, joining in 1971 and serving from 1989 to 1993 as its deputy director for intelligence, which is the head of the spy agency's analytical department.
When he was nominated for the post of CIA inspector general, Helgerson was serving as chairman of the National Intelligence Council, which operates like a government think tank for intelligence issues and produces classified assessments on topics ranging from missile threats to terrorism.
He joined the National Intelligence Council in August from the post of deputy director of the National Imagery and Mapping Agency.
--------
Plane-Spotters Were Spying, Judge Rules, but They Go Free
New York Times
April 26, 2002
By WARREN HOGE
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/04/26/international/26CND-PLAN.html
LONDON - A group of British tourists pursuing their hobby of plane-spotting, a pastime as peculiar to Britain and incomprehensible to foreigners as playing cricket and drinking warm beer, found themselves convicted in a Greek court today on charges of spying.
Judge Potoula Fotopoulou in Kalamata, an olive-growing seaside town in Southern Greece, showed no sympathy for their argument that they were participating in an innocent, if eccentric, sport. She found eight of the group guilty of "illegally obtaining state secrets" and six others guilty of aiding them.
The first group were sentenced to three years in jail and the second to one year, but she promptly suspended all the sentences and said everyone was free to leave Greece.
"I didn't think this could happen in the 21st century in a European country," one of the men, Michael Bursell, 47, of Hull in Northeastern England, said on hearing the verdict.
Reactions in Britain tonight ranged from incredulity to outrage. "This is a farce, or rather a Greek tragedy," said Brian Jenkins, a Labor member of Parliament, whose constituent, Wayne Groves, 38, of Tamworth in Staffordshire, was among those convicted.
Plane-spotting and its humbler relative, train-spotting, attract thousands of devotees in Britain. Men and women in windbreakers and tweed caps can be seen at the ends of railroad station platforms with their notebooks and pencils or lined up like soccer spectators alongside landing strip fences at major airports with their binoculars and listening devices, recording with deliberation and the occasional moment of jubilation the serial numbers and models of locomotives and aircraft.
The 14 plane-spotters, two of whom are Dutch, were arrested in November at a military base air show to which they had been invited. They were originally charged with the more serious crime of espionage, which carries a 20-year sentence, and held in prison for five weeks. After a flurry of diplomatic exchanges between London and Athens, they were released on bail and the charges were reduced to "obtaining national secrets."
Prior to being arrested, the group had toured seven Greek air bases, two aircraft museums and a plane scrap yard. Greece strictly bans photography of military installations, and officials there said suspicions were aroused that the visitors were collecting information for neighboring Turkey, Greece's historic adversary.
The plan-spotters returned to Greece this week to clear their names, confident that Britain and Greece, both members of the European Union and allies in NATO, would have worked out a face-saving way to end the encounter. "Greece was supposed to be the birthplace of democracy and justice," said Julie Wilson, the wife of another of the convicted men, Christopher Wilson, 46, from Gatwick in West Sussex.
Downing Street said tonight that Prime Minister Tony Blair was closely following the events. "The government has always believed that the response to this case has been disproportionate," a spokesman said.
Nikos Papadakis, the spokesman for the Greek embassy in London, countered, "By all accounts, it was a fair trial."
Stephen Jakobi, director of Fair Trials Abroad, said the verdict could have wide repercussions. "I've forecast all along that if the Greeks got this one wrong, the shock waves would be felt throughout Europe."
-------- us
Budget Concerns Are Raised on Continued Use of Guard
New York Times
April 26, 2002
By JAMES DAO
ttp://www.nytimes.com/2002/04/26/politics/26PENT.html
WASHINGTON - The Pentagon will not have enough money to keep the current level of more than 80,000 National Guard and Reserve troops on active duty through the end of the fiscal year in September, House Democrats and some military officials contend.
As a result, the Pentagon will either have to send thousands of Guard and Reserve troops home before the fall, or ask Congress for about $1 billion in added money to keep those forces deployed, those officials say.
A sharp reduction in Guard and Reserve troop levels could put greater stress on active-duty forces at a time when they are already stretched thin by counterterrorism operations around the world, some military officials contend. It could also lead to reduced security at bases, those officials said.
"The potential demobilization of reserve component personnel would have an adverse impact on current operations," a memorandum circulated this month in the office of the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said.
A spokeswoman for the Pentagon's budget office disputed assertions by some military officials that the Pentagon would not have enough money to maintain 80,000 Guard and Reserve troops on active duty through Sept. 30. Another Pentagon spokesman said any potential cutbacks in Guard and Reserve troop levels would be based on military calculations, not financial concerns.
"These decisions are not budget driven," said Lt. Col. James Cassella, the spokesman. "We will be good stewards of taxpayers' dollars, but our No. 1 goal is to defend the nation. We're going to make the resources available to commanders based on that."
One proposal outlined in internal Pentagon memorandums calls for demobilizing 14,500 Guard and Reserve troops by the end of June. But military officials said that plan had been put on hold pending further debate in Congress.
As of Wednesday, there were 81,926 National Guard and Reserve troops on full-time duty. Most of them are helping to provide tighter security at military installations, nuclear power plants and ports.
About 8,000 Guard and Reserve forces are deployed overseas, many of whom are helping in military operations in or around Afghanistan. Thousands more are helping maintain fighter jet patrols over American cities.
Some senior military officials said the Pentagon could reduce Guard and Reserve troop levels without straining active-duty forces if it simply scaled back security requirements at military bases and reduced the number of combat air patrols it flies over American cities.
But while it appears likely that the air patrols will be trimmed, there is resistance among some military commanders to relaxing security levels at military bases.
House Democrats are planning to offer legislation next week that would add between $700 million and $1 billion to a $27 billion emergency spending bill to maintain current Guard and Reserve troops levels through September. The emergency funding bill is expected to reach the House floor late next week.
"We are extremely concerned that these budgetary arguments are driving our troop deployments, as opposed to the officers on the ground," said David Sirota, a spokesman for the Democratic minority on the House Appropriations Committee.
A spokesman for Representative Jerry Lewis, a California Republican who is chairman of the defense appropriations subcommittee, said Mr. Lewis was concerned about whether the Pentagon would have enough money to sustain Guard and Reserves forces at the current levels. But he said Mr. Lewis has not decided whether to support adding more money to the bill.
The issue of Guard and Reserve troop levels poses political problems for the Bush administration, and Democrats are clearly interested in exploiting those problems.
Mr. Bush has enjoyed high poll ratings for his handling of the campaign against terrorism. But any indications that he was stinting on spending for the Guard and Reserves - who are a potent political force in state capitals and in Congress - might weaken that support.
At the same time, Mr. Bush is trying to address concerns that his administration is spending too much money on the military and not enough on domestic programs. Nearly half, or $14 billion, of the $27 billion emergency spending bill would go to the Pentagon. Mr. Bush has also asked for a $48 billion increase in military spending for next year.
Mr. Bush's top budget advisers in the Office of Management and Budget are also trying to prevent the projected federal budget deficit from growing. For that reason, the White House is likely to demand that any increases in the emergency spending bill for Guard and Reserve forces would have to be offset with cuts to other programs, a senior White House official said.
-------- POLICE / PRISONERS
-------- death penalty
Judge ready to rule death penalty unconstitutional
April 26, 2002
By Frank J. Murray
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20020426-94429260.htm
A U.S. District Court judge who says innocent people are convicted of murder gave the Justice Department "one last opportunity" yesterday to persuade him not to declare the federal death penalty unconstitutional.
Judge Jed S. Rakoff, a 1995 Clinton appointee, said he took that drastic step because he believes innocent prisoners were executed and more face death without a full opportunity to prove their innocence, if only by technology not yet discovered.
That violates the Fifth Amendment right to "due process," he said, since some will die before completion of a process the judge seemed to say must be endless.
Advances in science and criminology can help "only if such persons are still alive to be released," Judge Rakoff said.
He gave government lawyers until May 15 to reply in an order based largely on a much-criticized Columbia University study that found a 68 percent "prejudicial error" rate in capital trials, and review of Web site reports of prisoner releases.
The judge said he would block the prospect of a death sentence at the impending capital-murder trial of Alan Quinones and Diego Rodriguez on charges they killed police confidential informant Eddie Santiago in June 1999 to protect a Bronx heroin and cocaine ring. Eight co-defendants pleaded guilty.
The order offered the government the unusual option of accepting Judge Rakoff's ruling by Wednesday and beginning an appeal then, or filing a reply by May 15 to change his mind.
Federal prosecutors were reviewing the 11-page ruling and had no comment, said U.S. Attorney's Office spokesman Marvin Smilon.
Two civilian federal prisoners were executed by injection at the Terre Haute, Ind., federal penitentiary last year - Timothy McVeigh and Juan Garza - and 24 are on death row now. Judge Rakoff's action, if upheld on appeal, would have the effect of also blocking executions in states where the NAACP Legal Defense Fund says 3,687 inmates wait on death row.
Kevin McNally, the Frankfort, Ky., defense lawyer who raised an issue so novel that both sides agree it never has been tested, said Judge Rakoff believes "it's inevitable that the innocent will be executed and they have."
"Even members of the Supreme Court are talking out loud about the number of innocents on death row so maybe it's time to take another look at this disastrous problem," Mr. McNally said yesterday.
Richard Dieter, who heads the Death Penalty Information Center, said "something needs to be done about an issue rumbling out there among the public, the courts and in the legislatures."
At a hearing March 15 Judge Rakoff told lawyers he was hesitant to grant Mr. McNally's request because of its "novelty."
Yesterday Judge Rakoff said emergence of DNA analysis in the last decade presages still unknown criminology advance. He said DNA analysis vindicated 12 "actually innocent" men from death row and 20 others have been released in cases not involving DNA.
"The inference is unmistakable that numerous innocent people have been executed whose innocence might otherwise have been similarly established, whether by newly-developed scientific techniques, newly-discovered evidence, or simply renewed attention to their cases," the judge said.
DNA analysis was used in the Santiago case solely to identify the victim.
Judge Rakoff dismissed as obsolete the Supreme Court's 1993 Herrera decision, a 5-4 ruling that declared remote the likelihood an innocent person would be executed.
Justices Sandra Day O'Connor and Anthony M. Kennedy supported execution in that case because mistakes seemed unlikely, but their concurring opinion declared "the execution of a legally and factually innocent person would be a constitutionally intolerable event."
Judge Rakoff said things have changed since the justices voiced optimism.
"That assumption no longer seems tenable," he wrote. "Evidence has emerged that innocent people - mostly of color - are convicted of capital crimes they never committed, their convictions affirmed, and their collateral remedies denied, with a frequency far greater than previously supposed."
-------- terrorism
Rumsfeld in Central Asia, Warns of Al Qaeda Offensive
April 26, 2002
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/politics/politics-afghan-rumsfeld.html
BISHKEK, Kyrgyzstan - Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, starting a trip to Afghanistan and its Central Asian neighbors, Friday predicted an imminent spring offensive by Taliban and al Qaeda fighters in Afghanistan.
Rumsfeld arrived in this small central Asian republic of Kyrgyzstan to visit the 1,900 U.S. and other Western troops and American and French fighter jets based at Bishkek's Manas international airport for the war in nearby Afghanistan.
En route from Washington, the Secretary said he expected Qaeda and Taliban fighters in Afghanistan to soon regroup and begin an offensive against the interim government of Hamid Karzai and Western troops there.
``My impression is that the al Qaeda and Taliban are avoiding, for the time being at least, concentrating themselves in larger groups,'' he told reporters flying with him from Washington.
``My guess is as spring comes and the weather improves, and as they find ways to communicate with each other, that they will probably again try to attack the interim authority and opposing factions in the country as well as U.S. and coalition forces.''
Rumsfeld was met at Manas airport by Kyrgyzstan Defense Minister Esen Topoyev and U.S. Air Force Brigadier General Wayne Lloyd. He immediately toured a new military base at the airport, a major regional foothold for U.S. and allied troops to launch strikes into Afghanistan.
TROOPS FROM EIGHT COUNTRIES
Nearly 2,000 troops from the United States, Australia, Denmark, France, the Netherlands, Norway, South Korea and Spain, along with a dozen fighter jets, are deployed at Manas, making it the biggest coalition base in the region.
Its contingent is expected to reach as many as 3,500 service personnel, with troops from Poland, Turkey and Canada due soon.
``Each of you can be enormously proud of the contribution you are making'' to the campaign, Rumsfeld told hundreds of cheering American and allied troops in a large tent at the base.
``As long as necessary,'' said the Secretary, standing in front of a large American flag, in response to a question from one American airman on how long U.S. forces would remain in the region.
``You stand against an evil. It is the evil of mass murderers that their purpose in life is to kill large numbers of innocent people. It is an evil that can't be appeased, can't be ignored and it certainly cannot be allowed to prevail.''
U.S. troops unofficially call the base Ganci Air Base in honor of New York City Fire Chief Peter Ganci Junior, killed in that city's World Trade Center on September 11, in hijacked airliner attacks that sparked Washington's declared war on terrorism.
``The time I'm going to be spending in Afghanistan is going to be focused essentially on the security situation. I hope to meet with a number of the elements and people in the country,'' Rumsfeld told reporters on his aircraft.
AFGHAN TALKS PLANNED
The discussions, he said, would ``include the U.S. and coalition forces' efforts to continue to conduct sweeps and find pockets of al Qaeda and Taliban... They are continuing to detain people, arrest people, apprehend people almost every day in small numbers.''
Saturday morning, Rumsfeld will meet Kyrgyzstan President Askar Akayev, Foreign Minister Muratbek Imanaliyev and Defense Minister Topoyev.
Before returning home Monday, he will visit Afghanistan and other yet-unidentified states in the region before flying to Moscow for talks on nuclear arms cuts with Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov.
Kyrgyzstan, with a population of 4.8 million and a chiefly agricultural economy, gained its independence when the Soviet Union broke up in 1991. It is one of several countries providing bases or overflight rights for the U.S.-led coalition.
The poor, mountainous country, sandwiched between China and Kazakhstan, shares no border with Afghanistan, but is only a brief flight away and has become a prime ally. Six U.S. F/A-18 and six French Mirage fighters, along with refueling and military cargo jets, are based there.
-------- ENERGY AND OTHER
-------- alternative energy
Senate Approves Energy Measure
Scaled-Back Bill Pushes Conservation
By Helen Dewar
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, April 26, 2002
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A49778-2002Apr25?language=printer
The Senate yesterday overwhelmingly approved a scaled-back energy bill aimed at increasing conservation and the use of renewable fuels, dismaying both the White House and its environmentalist critics by excluding some of their main proposals.
The bill calls for a wide array of incentives and tax breaks to encourage conservation, increase the use of corn-based ethanol and other alterative fuels, and encourage the buying of energy-saving appliances. The bill also supports more domestic production from coal and other traditional energy sources.
The 88 to 11 vote sends the bill to an uncertain fate in negotiations with the House, which last year approved an approach reflecting President Bush's emphasis on incentives for more production of oil, gas, coal and nuclear power.
The Senate bill was designed by Democratic leaders as an alternative to Bush's more traditional approach to energy production. But some of their most ambitious proposals were scrapped or watered down during six weeks of grueling action on the legislation.
As it wound up, the Senate bill is probably notable more for its omissions than for its relatively modest provisions. It underscores the difficulty of enacting far-reaching measures in a narrowly divided chamber when so many powerful forces -- from the oil industry to the environmental lobby -- pull in opposite directions.
The Senate rejected the centerpiece of Bush's energy plan, a controversial proposal approved earlier by the House to allow drilling for oil and gas in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Under pressure from the auto industry, many Democrats joined Republicans in scuttling a Democratic plan to increase fuel efficiency standards for motor vehicles by 50 percent over 13 years. Instead, the Senate bill gives the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration two years to set new standards.
The Arctic drilling and fuel efficiency proposals had been framed as important steps to help reduce dependence on foreign oil.
In final action on amendments yesterday, the Senate voted 52 to 47 to drop a provision requiring a 30 percent increase in minimum efficiency standards for air conditioners. By 57 to 42, it rejected a proposal -- designed as a compromise on the gasoline consumption issue -- to require the government to issue regulations aimed at reducing anticipated usage by 1 million barrels per day by 2015.
The vote to pass the bill was unusually bipartisan, despite partisan fights over many of its provisions. Voting in favor were 42 Democrats and 45 Republicans; eight Democrats and three Republicans opposed it. All Washington area senators voted for the bill.
The White House, which clearly prefers the House bill, supported the Senate measure only as a ticket to a House-Senate conference. Bush tried to put the best face on the situation, noting in a statement that the Senate bill includes "many of the provisions" he had sought.
"It is imperative that America increase its energy independence and I look forward to working with the conferees to ensure that we enact a balanced and comprehensive energy policy," Bush said.
Environmentalists denounced both bills and called the Senate version a missed opportunity. "While clearly superior to the House version, the Senate bill offers no coherent view of how to fuel our economy in a cleaner way," said Friends of the Earth President Brent Blackwelder. It would have reflected "forward-thinking when Grover Cleveland was president," he added.
But Majority Leader Thomas A. Daschle (D-S.D.) said the bill "recognizes that we can't be content to pursue an energy policy based on the old philosophy of dig, drill and burn and begins the process of moving towards more innovative approaches. . . . It doesn't get us all the way there, but it gets us moving in the right direction."
There will almost certainly be an effort by GOP conferees to allow at least some drilling in the Alaska refuge, but the Senate is likely to remain strongly opposed. Sen. Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.) said yesterday that Senate conferees will not agree to Arctic drilling. Bush has not said whether he would veto a bill without the drilling provision.
The Senate bill includes scores of proposals spread over 580 pages, including tax breaks and other incentives to construct a pipeline to carry natural gas from Alaska's already-developed Prudhoe Bay as well as smaller initiatives such as tax credits for the purchase of energy-saving appliances.
It includes $14 billion in tax cuts, which sponsors say are evenly divided between production and incentives to encourage both conservation and development of solar, wind, geothermal, corn-based and other sources of renewable energy.
Among other things, there would be tax breaks for insulating houses, buying hybrid (gas and electric) and other fuel-saving vehicles, producing power from animal waste and rewarding electricity producers who use "clean coal" technologies. There would also be incentives for expanded fossil fuel and nuclear power production.
The House approved roughly $33 billion in tax cuts, or more than twice the Senate total, most of which would go toward increasing the production of oil, gas, coal and nuclear energy. Its proposals reflected priorities laid out last year by Vice President Cheney's task force, which critics accused of listening only to energy producers. The House bill includes some, but fewer, incentives for conservation and renewable fuels.
Another controversial provision in the Senate plan would triple the amount of ethanol, which is produced largely from corn, that must be mixed with gasoline over the next decade. The provision was included at the insistence of Daschle and other Farm Belt senators, including Democrats in critical reelection contests this fall.
-------- environment
Spanish mine spill site may be unsafe - green lobby
Story by Amanda Cooper
REUTERS UK:
April 26, 2002
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/15665/story.htm
LONDON - Four years after the Spanish mining spillage that caused one of Europe's worst ecological disasters, the mine site has been sealed and the area cleaned but environmentalists say the threat of contamination persists. In late April 1998, a dam storing mining waste at the Los Frailes lead and zinc mine burst and released a black river of toxic sludge that devastated plant and wildlife in its path, narrowly missing the Donana nature reserve.
Boliden AB, the Swedish firm that owned Los Frailes, transferred all the mud, containing heavy metals such as cadmium, lead, and nickel, to the disused Aznalcollar pit at the mine, where it would be permanently locked in.
But the Worldwide Fund for Nature (WWF) warned that the dangerous minerals could seep into the ground and eventually poison the drinking water of over one million people in the bustling Seville area in Andalucia.
"The old open pit is gradually filling up with rainwater and faster than this can evaporate, which means that...in 75 years time, this water will come into contact with the Nieblas-Posadas aquifer which supplies the whole Seville area," Guido Schmidt, coordinator of the WWF Donana Project, told Reuters.
"The problem is that if nothing is done, the aquifer will become polluted, which is something that at the time (of the spill) was said to be totally unacceptable," he said.
"Okay, we've still got 75 years left but the more time goes by without anything being done, the worse the situation will get," he added.
GOVERNMENT SAYS MINE SAFE
But the regional government, which played a vital role in the 370 million euro ($332.1 million) clean-up of the Aznalcazar area, argues that the pit is safe and poses no threat.
"The top part of the dam has been completely sealed with a layer of earth, and the water has been removed so that now it's a dry, closed-off storage space," Jose Maria Arenas, director of the technical department of the "Guadiamar Green Corridor" of the Environmental Council of Andalucia, told Reuters.
"There is no risk (of spillage) at the moment because of the maintenance work that the Public Environmental Management Company (EGMASA) is doing."
EGMASA is under contract for six months to pump water out of the pit to keep the tailings below the water table, he said.
Boliden, which closed Los Frailes in December last year, cleaned the mess at the mine site and compensated local farmers for the loss of their crops through the spillage, but the company will have no more part to play at the mine.
"The local government took over the responsibility for closing the mine in the global agreement we reached last autumn," Jan Johansson, president of Boliden said.
While the WWF warns of contamination at the mine, it praises the remediation - clean-up - of the Aznalcazar area.
"We are following the restoration work to see how they are progressing and we believe that it's going extremely well. It's not often that we can say something positive about the action taken by the Ministry of the Environment, but we certainly can in this case," the WWF's Schmidt said.
Tailings are a mixture of water, rock and residual metals that are not sent on for processing, many of which like cadmium, arsenic or lead, can kill off plants and animals.
AREA REVITALISED
But now, four years later the "green corridor" that runs along the banks of the Guadiamar through Donana - one of Europe's largest nature reserves-boasts a thriving range of trees, and fish are gradually returning to the river.
Ninety-five percent of the tailings waste was cleaned from the surface of the land and water, and the remaining traces of metals in the soil are no longer a danger, according to both the WWF and the regional government.
"The whole area looks marvellous. There are metals in the soil...but they don't worry me too much because people can walk through there without any problem. These heavy metals aren't a problem, but we can't forget about them," WWF's Schmidt said.
Los Frailes was one of Europe's largest lead and zinc mines but operations were stopped after the spill, and the regional government thinks it will not be reopened in the near future.
"In the short term I don't think it's very likely that anyone would buy it. That would be like buying a car that was not only very beaten up, but also very ugly," the Environment Council's Arena said.
"That doesn't mean that in 10 years the situation won't change but at the moment, I can't see that happening," he said.
-------- health
US cites hazards of metalworking fluids
Story by Paul Simao
REUTERS USA:
April 26, 2002
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/15680/story.htm
ATLANTA - People who work with or near metalworking fluids could be at risk for serious respiratory illnesses if protective equipment and other workplace safety measures are ignored, U.S. health experts said yesterday.
Metalworking fluids are substances, usually oil-based, that cool and lubricate machinery during high-speed cutting, grinding and honing. An estimated 1 million Americans are exposed to such fluids in the workplace, according to a study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The CDC warned of the potential health risk after an investigation into a recent outbreak of work-related respiratory illnesses among machinists at a TRW Inc. brake manufacturing facility in Mount Vernon, Ohio.
The CDC said it was called in last year to investigate the outbreak, one of the largest ever among machinists, after three workers were hospitalized with coughs, shortness of breath, fatigue and other symptoms of respiratory illness.
A review of plant records later revealed that more than a quarter of the facility's 400 workers had been placed on work restriction by their doctors due to respiratory problems in the preceding 11 months.
"Some people have had fairly severe illnesses and are still symptomatic," Dr. Douglas Trout of the CDC's National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) told reporters in a conference call.
"They are being followed by their physicians and have not returned to work," Trout added.
The Atlanta-based CDC said the sick workers may have been exposed to an aerosolized form of nontuberculous mycobacteria, which can lead to deadly infections, especially in people with weak immune systems.
The CDC did not accuse TRW of any wrongdoing.
The agency noted that, since the beginning of the outbreak, the company had taken a number of measures to improve workplace safety at the plant, including steam cleaning its metalworking fluid systems and machines and upgrading its ventilation system.
There have been no new cases of work-related respiratory disease among employees at the plant since April 2001.
MICROWAVE POPCORN FACTORY CITED
In a separate study, the CDC said that some workers at factories that produce microwave popcorn might be at risk for a rare but serious lung disease, possibly due to high exposures to vapors from from vats of butter flavorings.
The CDC said that eight people who had worked at the Gilster-Mary Lee Corp. popcorn packaging factory in Jasper, Missouri, between 1992 and 2000 had been diagnosed with an illness resembling bronchiolitis obliterans, a buildup of scar tissue blocking the bronchioles.
The disabling illness, which sometimes follows pneumonia, is characterized by persistent cough, shortness of breath and obstruction of the airways. At the time of the CDC investigation, at least four of the workers were waiting for lung transplants.
Preliminary animal tests suggest that exposure to high air concentrations of the butter flavoring used in the Missouri plant may cause severe damage to the airways.
The CDC said it had recommended that the Missouri plant improve its ventilation system and take other measures to reduce dust and airborne hazards. Workers at the popcorn plant have the option of wearing respiratory ventilators.
The agency added that there was no evidence to suggest that eating or handling microwave popcorn posed a risk for consumers.
The CDC said it issued the reports to highlight the need to increase workplace safety in the United States. Sixteen people on average die every day from workplace injuries and another 9,000 suffer disabling injuries while on the job.
Dr. Kathleen Kreiss, acting director of NIOSH, said the nation had improved its workplace safety record in the past two decades, but she noted that workers still faced hazardous exposure to such things as lead, silica and noise on the job.
-------- ACTIVISTS
Yemen Protesters Want U.S. Ties Cut
April 26, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
SAN'A, Yemen (AP) -- Yemeni police dispersed about 2,000 anti-American demonstrators who called on their government Friday to break diplomatic ties with the United States.
The protesters gathered following noon prayers in the capital, San'a, and began to march on the U.S. Embassy, but police blocked their path.
Demonstrations against the United States and Israel also took place in Jordan, Bahrain and Egypt.
The Yemeni protesters carried signs that read ``We ask for the expulsion of American military experts doing anti-terrorism work.''
Organizers distributed a statement in the name of ``Supporters of Palestine'' that condemned Yemen's cooperation with the United States in security matters and the U.S. training of Yemeni military and anti-terrorism units.
The statement asked for the U.S. Embassy to be closed, its ambassador to be expelled and for the recall of Yemen's ambassador to the United States.
Yemen and the United States are cooperating in a number of security fields, including training and the exchange of intelligence information. The United States is helping Yemen to modernize its immigration computer system.
Security in Yemen, a poor nation at the southern tip of the Arabian peninsula, has been a top concern of the United States since the attack on the destroyer USS Cole in October 2000 that killed 17 American sailors in Aden harbor.
U.S. investigators believe the al-Qaida terrorist group was responsible for both the Cole bombing and the Sept. 11 attacks on New York and Washington.
Yemen's government has said there may be members of al-Qaida in the country, but says their number is limited.
-----
Probe Urged After Vieques Tear-Gassing
By Guy Gugliotta
ashington Post Staff Writer
Friday, April 26, 2002
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A50915-2002Apr25.html
A Puerto Rican activist group is demanding a Justice Department investigation into the tear-gassing of 150 of its members by U.S. Marines outside a Navy base on the island of Vieques, the group's leader said yesterday.
Manuel Mirabal, president of the National Puerto Rican Coalition, said he will meet today with Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Ralph E. Boyd to complain about the "callous and insensitive" actions outside the U.S. military's Camp Garcia on April 6.
"We posed no threat. We don't know what provoked the Navy," Mirabal said in an interview, noting that the activists were sitting in vehicles when they were tear-gassed. "It is inconceivable that anyone sitting in a school bus could be considered a threat."
A Navy spokesman disputed the coalition's description of the incident, saying that protesters were throwing rocks "and other objects" at Marine guards while a contingent of Navy engineers tried to repair a 50-foot gap cut in the camp's perimeter fence.
"They had to move a very large crowd away from the fence line," the spokesman said. "It was a very dangerous situation that posed a security and safety risk to everyone."
Mirabal said that if there was a gap in the fence, "it's news to me."
The incident is one of many during the past few years between U.S. armed forces and opponents of the continued use of Vieques as a U.S. Navy firing range.
President Bush has said he wants the Navy to end exercises on Vieques by 2003, but Congress has passed legislation barring the Navy secretary from closing the site until an equivalent facility can be found.
Mirabal said 150 members of the coalition, a Washington-based community development organization, went to Vieques on April 6 to discuss local economic possibilities once the Navy stops using the island.
The group had completed a protest march along a two-lane road outside Camp Garcia and had stopped to visit Puerto Rican activists encamped next to the base's perimeter fence, Mirabal said.
"While we were there, there was a tear gas can launched from the Navy side 20 to 30 yards inside the camp," Mirabal said. The coalition members decided to leave, he added, and climbed aboard two yellow school buses and an air-conditioned van parked on the road.
Mirabal said Marine guards then fired 13 tear-gas grenades from behind an interior fence about 30 yards inside the base perimeter. He said the grenades went over both fences and a line of Puerto Rican police officers spaced along the perimeter. Four grenades landed in the activists' camp, and tear gas from the rest blanketed the three vehicles, he said.
Puerto Rico Gov. Sila Calderon (D) expressed "indignation" over the incident and asked the Navy for an investigation. Puerto Rico Police Superintendent Miguel A. Pereira condemned the guards for an "extremely irresponsible act."
Mirabal said many coalition members, several of them elderly, suffered eye and respiratory problems. Coalition members filed eight complaints of excessive force and civil rights violations with the FBI's Puerto Rico office two days after the incident but have heard nothing since, he added.
"So we're initiating a formal complaint process," said Foster Maer, legal director of the New York-based Puerto Rico Legal Defense and Education Fund, which has joined the coalition in demanding a federal investigation. "We wanted to put it in writing and get it on the record with the Justice Department and the Navy."
-------
Moscow Police Beat Anti-Nuclear Protesters on Chernobyl Day
April 26, 2002
ENS
http://ens-news.com/ens/apr2002/2002L-04-26-03.html
MOSCOW, Russia, Anti-nuclear activists and journalists documenting their protest were roughed up by police Thursday on Red Square in front of the Kremlin. More than 20 activists from Moscow, Kaliningrad, Voronezh, Vladimir, Yekaterinburg, Ryazan, Orel, and Ozersk were arrested.
Journalist videos protesters in white jumpsuits crawling across Red Square. (Photos by Alisa Nikulina and Vlad Tupikin courtesy Socio-Ecological Union)
The action was organized by Ecodefense and the Youth Human Rights Movement and was dedicated to the 16th anniversary of the explosion and fire at the Chernobyl nuclear plant on April 26, 1986.
Activists from 30 Russian cities gathered in the center of Moscow to protest the government's intention to import nuclear waste to Russia and against nuclear energy development in general. Journalists from international media outlets came to cover the action on the Red Square, which was considered a bold venture, as it is one of the most heavily guarded places in Russia.
Dressed in white jumpsuits marked with a radiation danger sign, activists crawled across Red Square up to the Kremlin gates. Vladimir Slivyak of Ecodefense says this action "symbolized bringing of the nuclear waste right to the Kremlin, where the chief decision maker sits."
The action had been in progress for about 10 minutes, when police came and without issuing warnings or requests to leave, started beating people, activists said. One woman demonstrator was slammed with her head against bars of the metal fence.
Slivyak was thrown down and stamped by police boots and so was Nadezhda Kutepova of the environmental group in Ozyorsk, the location of the Mayak nuclear waste reprocessing plant, Russia's only such facility.
Police grab a photographer in Red Square
Journalists covering the event were also beaten and arrested, their video and photo cameras were taken away, videotapes and film cassetes were taken out of the cameras. One of the cameras was broken.
Many tourists walking around the Red Square observed the police action. Police searched the nearby streets for activists and journalists who escaped from Red Square. Police arrested journalists from several newspapers and from the Russian nonprofit news agency Internews.
"After the action the square was covered by the light-struck films," said one witness.
Police wrestle a photographer to the ground to confiscate his camera while tourists look on.
"We have not seen such violence from police for a long time. It seems that there was a special order to act like this," said an activist who escaped the arrest and managed to smuggle film and camera away.
Police have released all the demonstrators they arrested. According to Slivyak, 23 protesters appeared in court today and Thursday, and two more will appear in court at a later unspecified date.
All those who came to court were charged with "participation in a not permitted action" under administrative, rather than criminal law. The judge found all the demonstrators guilty and handed down a "warning" to everybody, the lightest action the court could take. According to administrative law, for participating in a not permitted action, people can get a warning, or a fine of up to $500, or up to 15 days in jail.
The arrests in Red Square did not stop the protesters. Today there was an anti-nuclear rally in Moscow organized by a coalition of groups.
The demonstrators are protesting a plan sponsored by the Russian Ministry of Atomic Power (Minatom) to import spent nuclear fuel to Russia. It was approved by both the Russian parliament and President Vladimir Putin in 2001, and Russian law was changed to permit such imports.
A plan sponsored by the Russian Ministry of Atomic Power (Minatom) to import spent nuclear fuel to Russia was approved by both the Russian parliament and President Vladimir Putin in 2001, and Russian law was changed to permit such imports.
Earlier this month, Minatom chief Alexander Rumyantsev confirmed to a meeting that included some of the same activists who demonstrated Thursday in Red Square that a contract to import spent nuclear fuel from British research reactors would be signed next year.
Russian environmentalists say their country cannot even handle its own nuclear waste safely, and until problems with Russian waste are solved, waste from anywhere else should not be imported.
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------- Depleted Uranium Keeps On Killing!