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NUCLEAR
Nuclear Waste Site Debate
BNFL hopes to resume MOX fuel supply to Japan
NZ says nuclear ships not welcome in waters
Ireland unhappy as UK nuclear cargo leaves Japan
Liabilities of UK's BNFL rise, to be ringfenced
The DU work at Memorial University Newfoundland has been stopped!
EU eyes environment clean-up scheme in north Europe
Aides Say Yucca Project Headed to Senate Approval
Republicans to Push Vote on Waste Site
Bush Walks Delicate Line On Business
MILITARY
Expecting Taliban, but Finding Only Horror
Afghan Killing May Be Linked to Drug Trade
Africa Buries OAU, U.N. Chief Sounds Warning
U.S. firm gives Cambodia list of 1970s U.S. bombing runs
Serb War Crimes Suspect Arrested
Balkans tribunal turns to Clinton
FEDERAL CONTRACTS
Saddam risk a lie, says UN expert
Kurds, Secure in North Iraq, Are Cool to a U.S. Offensive
Bush demand spurs criticism of Arafat
POLICE / PRISONERS
Debate to Begin on New Agency of U.S. Security
ENERGY AND OTHER
WIND ENERGY TURNS KINTYRE ECONOMY AROUND
Smallpox Vaccine Program Readied
Study: AIDS Shortening Life in 51 Nations
Scientists in Barcelona Report on New AIDS Drug
ACTIVISTS
Dr. Alice Stewart Dies at 95; Researched Radiation Risks
China Declares War on Falun Gong Satellite Hackers
-------- NUCLEAR
-------- accidents and safety
In Nuclear Waste Site Debate, Visions of Transport Disaster
Yucca Mountain's Foes Cite Fears of Terrorism and Spills
By Eric Pianin and Helen Dewar
Washington Post Staff Writers
Monday, July 8, 2002; Page A03
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A36463-2002Jul7?language=printer
Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) says her "worst nightmare" has terrorists blowing up a truckload of lethal nuclear waste and contaminating a heavily populated stretch of Interstate 15 between Los Angeles and Nevada.
Sen. Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.) sees danger in moving thousands of tons of nuclear waste through Chicago's dense hub of railways and highways or, "God forbid," on barges crossing the Great Lakes or traveling on the Mississippi River.
And Sen. Barbara A. Mikulski (D-Md.) dreads a repeat of last year's Baltimore rail tunnel accident and fire, but this time conceivably involving spent fuel from Maryland's Calvert Cliffs nuclear power plant. "We cannot risk this happening with nuclear cargo," she said.
As early as this week, the 20-year debate over whether to consolidate much of the nation's spent nuclear waste will come to a head when the Senate votes on whether the Bush administration should move ahead with plans to build a permanent repository 1,000 feet beneath Nevada's Yucca Mountain. Conceding they face an uphill fight, opponents are pinning their hopes on wavering senators who worry about the long-term risks of launching the largest cross-country transfer of highly radioactive material in the nation's history.
For years, the major concern was the safety of the Nevada facility's design and the possibility of groundwater contamination. Now, lawmakers and environmentalists are focusing on the problems associated with shipping as much as 70,000 metric tons of radioactive waste from 131 above-ground nuclear power plants and facilities in 39 states to Nevada over a quarter-century.
Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham has played down the risks, saying the United States has an "enviable" record of transporting more than 2,700 loads of spent nuclear waste over 1.6 million miles since the 1960s "without one accident resulting in the harmful release of radiation." Administration officials also say the proposed repository, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, is far superior to the alternative offered by Nevada officials and other opponents -- which is to store the waste where it is, in leak-proof steel and concrete cylinders, under increased security.
"We have an incredible track record," said Joe Davis, a spokesman for the Energy Department. "The amount of shipping would increase, but we think we could safely and securely continue to move it."
Still, the scope of the administration's preliminary plans for moving waste to the proposed $58 billion repository would dwarf anything attempted before. The government intends to ship at least 11,100 large casks of radioactive waste on 4,600 trains and trucks through 44 states, according to the Energy Department.
Critics say the plan will significantly increase the risk of accidents and spills while presenting an enticing array of moving targets for terrorists with explosives or shoulder-held missiles.
Moreover, they say, the project won't solve the nuclear waste problem. Waste shipped to Yucca will be replaced by an almost equal amount of new waste generated by nuclear power plants in the coming decades, according to government figures. Because Congress limited the storage capacity of the Yucca project to 70,000 tons, additional space -- at Yucca or another site -- will be needed around 2034 at the earliest.
The spent fuel from nuclear plants, among the deadliest substances known to man, will be solidified into ceramic pellets secured inside an assembly of strong, multilayered metal tubes. Ninety percent of the material would be shipped by rail in containers weighing about 140 tons, and the rest would go by truck, as envisioned by the Energy Department. Each rail shipment would carry 240 times the amount of long-lived radioactive material that was released in the U.S. bombing of Hiroshima, according to the U.S. Public Interest Research Group.
Senate Majority Leader Thomas A. Daschle (D-S.D.), who opposes the Yucca project, says transportation problems are a "huge concern" to his colleagues, especially the handful of Democrats undecided on the issue.
Sen. Jean Carnahan (D-Mo.) recently announced she would oppose the repository after learning there probably would be more than 19,000 truck shipments and 4,000 rail shipments of nuclear waste through her state in the coming 24 years. "I don't want Missouri to become the nation's nuclear waste superhighway," Carnahan said. The House voted overwhelmingly in May to affirm President Bush's decision to seek a license from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to build the massive repository. A majority of senators appear to favor the project, although Senate Majority Whip Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) and Sen. John Ensign (R-Nev.) are trying to change some votes by exploiting nagging concerns about transportation.
James E. Hall, former chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board and now an adviser to a group of opponents, said it would be "irresponsible" for the administration to proceed with the project before completing a risk assessment, a detailed transportation plan and full-scale testing of containers. Opponents say the casks could become ready-made "dirty bombs" in the hands of terrorists.
The NRC requires the Energy Department to conduct scale-model testing and computer simulation to determine how well the casks would withstand sudden impact, punctures, fire or immersion in water. However, NRC Chairman Richard A. Meserve said in April that his agency is "considering certain full-scale testing focused on cask performance in severe accidents," such as last summer's train derailment and fire in Baltimore.
Temperatures in the Howard Street tunnel reached 1,000 degrees to 1,500 degrees Fahrenheit, according to news reports. A study last September by Lamb & Resnikoff, a radioactive waste management firm, concluded that a similar accident involving a nuclear waste shipment would result in a "massive" failure of the transportation cask that could lead to thousands of cancer-related deaths. However, Meserve has told Congress that a preliminary NRC staff analysis concluded that a nuclear waste cask would have survived a comparable fire without "any melting of the fuel."
The Environmental Working Group, Public Citizen and other environmental organizations have fanned concerns about nuclear waste traffic by disseminating data and detailed maps of the potential transportation routes based on an Energy Department environmental impact study. Colorful maps on EWG's Web site, for instance, show that more than 2.7 million people in Illinois live within one mile of a likely nuclear transportation route, while there are 153 schools and three hospitals within one mile of the proposed transportation routes through the District.
There would be daily shipments of nuclear waste through Atlanta, Cleveland and San Bernardino, Calif., according to a U.S. Public Interest Research Group analysis. Trucks or trains carrying the cargo would rumble through Chicago every 15 hours, through St. Louis, Kansas City and Denver every 13 hours, through Des Moines and Omaha every 10 hours and through Salt Lake City every seven hours.
"If the terrorists miss the 10:30 truck, they can pick up the 1:30 truck -- it will be that simple," said Fred Dilger, a transportation and anti-terrorism adviser to Nevada's Clark County.
But administration and congressional advocates say existing, stationary stockpiles of nuclear waste pose far more inviting targets to terrorists than would secretly scheduled, heavily guarded shipments to Yucca Mountain.
"Without Yucca Mountain, companies with nuclear waste stored in temporary containers near waterways and population centers nationwide will begin contracting with private storage outfits to ship the waste to off-site locations" at even greater risk to the public, Abraham said last week.
Energy Department officials also stress that it will take years before a final transportation plan is developed, and that state and local officials will be consulted on specific routes. The government hopes to begin shipments in 2010.
Most of the nuclear waste is in the East; trips to Yucca would average 2,000 miles.
More than 123 million people live in the 703 counties traversed by the Energy Department's potential highway routes, and 106 million live in counties along potential rail routes, according to analyses of government figures. Between 10.4 million and 16.4 million people will live within half a mile of a transportation route in 2035.
Few states are likely to be traversed by more rail and highway shipments than Illinois. Durbin, who is undecided on Yucca, has peppered the Transportation Department and other agencies with questions about how the government would ensure the safety of shipments. How will the routes be selected? Are tests for the casks tough enough in light of post-Sept. 11 risks? He has gotten some answers but wants more.
The transportation risks have a special meaning for Chicago, Durbin says. "Chicago grew and prospered because of transportation, so we're honeycombed with railroad yards, railroad crossings, interstate highways," he said. "It has been a blessing for us in many respects and a challenge for us in others."
In Nebraska, Sens. Ben Nelson (D) and Chuck Hagel (R) view the transportation risks through different lenses. Nelson was governor in 1996 when an Energy Department tractor-trailer carrying nuclear warheads ran off U.S. Highway 83 in Nebraska, slid down an embankment and overturned during an ice and snow storm. Although no one was injured and there was no contamination, the incident left its mark on Nelson.
Among his concerns is that the small farming town of Gibbon, with a population of about 1,500, would become a major crossroads for waste shipments.
"It doesn't take much imagination" to figure what could happen if something goes wrong on either the highway or rail lines," Nelson said. "Tom Clancy could write quite a story about it."
Hagel, however, discounted the transportation risk in a recent Senate speech. "There is risk with everything we do," he said. "What is important is that the risk is acceptable in order to accomplish the objective. In this case, the risk is absolutely acceptable, because it is a risk we can control."
-------- britain
BNFL hopes to resume MOX fuel supply to Japan
REUTERS JAPAN:
July 8, 2002
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/16734/story.htm
TOKYO - Scandal-tainted British Nuclear Fuels hopes to resume supplies of MOX nuclear fuel - a mixture of plutonium and uranium oxides - to Japan by regaining customer confidence in its quality, BNFL's Japanese unit said.
"We are firmly committed to the Japanese market. Our goal is to supply MOX fuel to Japan, when the time is right for our customers," David Powell, president of BNFL Japan KK, told a news conference.
"But to do this, we must continue our efforts to regain the confidence of our customers, particularly Kansai Electric, Japan's government, the people in Fukui prefecture and the rest of Japan," Powell said.
The fuel was at the centre of controversy in 1999 when Kansai Electric Power Inc discovered that BNFL had delibrately falsified data on a MOX consignment that the state-controlled British firm sent to a nuclear power plant operated by the Japanese utility in Fukui, west of Tokyo.
British government officials later apologised, while BNFL agreed to take back the shipment - which it is now doing - and pay 40 million pounds ($61 million) in compensation.
A ship carrying the fuel slipped out of a Japanese port under tight security last week, defying protests from anti-nuclear activists who said the cargo could be at risk of theft or attack.
"Yesterday's departure is a good point to start and rebuild and look forward again...for the future," Powell said.
BNFL has several major markets worldwide and Japan is one of its largest customers, he said.
----
NZ says nuclear ships not welcome in waters
REUTERS NEW ZEALAND:
July 8, 2002
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/16741/story.htm
WELLINGTON - New Zealand said last week its airforce would track two British ships carrying nuclear waste from Japan to Britain to ensure they did not enter its territorial waters.
Although the route is secret, previous such shipments have passed through the Tasman Sea between New Zealand and Australia.
The first of the ships, carrying a potentially weapons-usable mix of plutonium and uranium oxides (MOX), left the Japanese port of Takahama last week.
"We have advised both Britain and Japan of our opposition to such shipments through the Pacific," Foreign Minister Phil Goff said in a statement.
"While acknowledging the safeguards which have been put in place, these do not eliminate risks posed by accident or by terrorist attacks," he said.
The MOX fuel is being returned to state-owned British Nuclear Fuels (BNFL) after Japan's Kansai Electric Power Co Inc discovered that data for a 1999 shipment from Britain had been deliberately falsified.
Goff said New Zealand Airforce planes would track the ships to ensure they did not enter New Zealand waters.
"As in the past we have sought and received assurance that this shipment will not enter New Zealand's Exclusive Economic Zone, other than in a humanitarian emergency," he said in a statement.
"New Zealand is also seeking the transport states to accept full responsibility and liability for compensation for any accident that might occur."
Meanwhile, Greenpeace said a flotilla of yachts plans to gather next week in the northern Tasman Sea to wait for the two ships.
----
Ireland unhappy as UK nuclear cargo leaves Japan
REUTERS REPUBLIC OF IRELAND:
July 8, 2002
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/16735/story.htm
DUBLIN - A shipment of nuclear material from Japan to Britain's Sellafield plant poses an "unacceptable risk" and is a potential terrorist target, the Irish government said.
As the first of two ships carrying a potentially weapons-usable mix of plutonium and uranium oxides (MOX) left the Japanese port of Takahama amid tight security, Ireland said it did not want the vessels passing through its waters.
"The shipment of such materials through the Irish Sea represents an unacceptable risk to the environment of Ireland and the health and economic wellbeing of its population," said Environment Minister Martin Cullen in a statement.
"There is also the enhanced risk of the shipments being the target of a terrorist attack or the materials being diverted into the hands of terrorists."
The MOX fuel is being returned to state-owned British Nuclear Fuels after Japan's Kansai Electric Power Co Inc discovered that data for a 1999 shipment from Britain had been deliberately falsified.
The planned route of the shipment has been kept secret for security reasons and BNFL insists all necessary safety measures have been taken.
"The Irish government is concerned to ensure that vessels carrying such materials do not pass through waters under Irish jurisdictions, and there are currently assurances from the UK authorities that they will not do so," said Cullen.
Sellafield, 110 miles (180 km) across the Irish Sea from Ireland on England's northwest coast, has been a long-running source of friction between the two countries, with repeated calls from the Irish government for its closure.
Ireland says the plant pollutes the Irish Sea and presents a serious risk from accident or terrorist attack, and fears have been heightened since the September 11 attacks on the U.S.
Britain first established nuclear facilities at Sellafield, formerly called Windscale, in the 1940s, and the world's first commercial nuclear power station opened there in 1956.
----
Liabilities of UK's BNFL rise, to be ringfenced
Story by Mike Peacock
REUTERS UK:
July 8, 2002
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/16736/story.htm
LONDON - Britain launched a new body last week to take on the liabilities of British Nuclear Fuels which have swelled to almost 50 billion pounds.
In a move industry experts view as a first step towards selling off the state-run operator, Energy Minister Brian Wilson published a policy White Paper creating a Liabilities Management Authority to manage nuclear "clean up" and the massive costs involved for decades to come.
As of March this year, the total estimated cost was 47.9 billion pounds ($73 billion), covering decommissioning and demolition of ageing plants, processing, storage and disposal of nuclear waste and environmental restoration, Wilson said.
The costs had previously been put at 35 billion pounds.
"Nuclear clean up is one of the most important technical and environmental challenges facing the UK," Wilson said in a written statement to parliament. "We need to ensure that the nuclear legacy is cleaned up in ways which protect the environment for the benefit of current and future generations."
Once established, the LMA will take responsibility for the public sector civil nuclear liabilities currently held by BNFL and the UK's Atomic Energy Authority.
Commercial contracts will remain with BNFL and are unchanged by the proposals.
Analysts and critics of the scheme said the move could make a second wave of nuclear privatisation more attractive to investors by ring-fencing the liabilities in the public sector.
BNFL's 11 Magnox plants were mainly built in the 1950s and 1960s.Due to their age and high running costs they were kept in state hands along with BNFL's fuel reprocessing arm when the rest of Britain's nuclear industry was sold to private investors in 1996 as British Energy Plc.
Magnox stations use reactor rods of pure uranium metal, while most types of modern nuclear power station use uranium oxide and produce more electricity per plant.
CHEQUERED HISTORY
BNFL has had a rocky ride.
Two years ago, the government said its tarnished record meant plans for a partial privatisation could not be pursued until late 2002 at the earliest and may not happen at all.
Nuclear fuel is being returned to BNFL from Japan after a scandal in 1999, when Kansai Electric Power Co discovered the state-owned nuclear fuel reprocessor had falsified data on the fuel it had shipped to the company.
The move follows an agreement between the Japanese and British governments and will cost BNFL 114 million pounds, of which 40 million pounds is compensation to Kansai and the rest the logistical cost of the operation.
BNFL has also faced several legal challenges over its planned nuclear fuel manufacturing plant at Sellafield in north-west England. Environmental groups Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth and the government of Ireland have all tried and failed to block the plant from opening via the courts.
-------- depleted uranium
The DU work at Memorial University Newfoundland has been stopped!
From: Bertholet <L.Bertholet@chello.nl>
Date: Wed, 10 Jul 2002 14:17:39 +0200
Dear Du-members, We got the terrible news from Canada that the DU work at Memorial University Newfoundland has been stopped!
It is time to get this out to the press, so they can phone Memorial and ask questions. Pat Horan resigned on Friday after months of harassment. Here are the basic facts.
Pat does not want to talk to the press just now. She will accept a tel call to verify that these events did in fact happen as outlined. Her tel # is 709 7814702
Kind regards,
SOVB Louis Bertholet L.Bertholet@chello.nl The Netherlands
-
Pat Horan Another Casualty of Depleted Uranium
Pat Horan has been working on the analysis of depleted Uranium in human samples since 1999. The story came to media attention in 2000. (See New York Times and London Times )
Jim Wright became Head of Earth Sciences on January 1, 2000, two months before Pat Horan's office was broken into.
Since Jim Wright was put in charge of the Dept he has
1) Put human DU samples as low priority
2) Last summer he accepted and gave priority to a Department of National Defense study on DU control samples thereby intentionally delaying the analysis of the Gulf War veterans samples for almost four months
3) Accepted one sick veteran' urine sample from CBC where no medical consent forms or medical doctor was involved.
The results were not properly conveyed to the veterans. Six veterans, whose samples were collected by the CBC's Kathy Tomlinson, were told they were negative while only one was tested. There is a possible lawsuit over this deception. This samples was given priority over the medical research study being conducted.
Early in 2002, the great shuffle began leading up to Pat's removal
4) In early February, Jim Wright removed Greg Dunning as head of AURIF (the radiogenic isotope facility). Greg Dunning had always supported Pat Horan in this important research allowing her access to the TIMS machine. (Greg had been head of AURIF since 1993).
5) Jim Wright then put Pat Horan in charge of AURIF .Ten days later he removed Pat and installed Paul Sylvester as the new chair for AURIF at a user group meeting. (Paul has no working knowledge of a TIMS machine or clean lab.) Pat's assistant who did the chemistry on the DU samples was reassigned to other duties mostly sitting around. He was finally dismissed on Friday July 5, the day Pat resigned.
6) He then hired a French post doc from South Africa who is totally unfamiliar with the work on DU and unable to perform the analysis. Actually this was in the works unbeknownst to Pat since the fall of 2001 when he was first contacted.
7) Removed Pat Horan as manager of the AURIF facilities in early April. She had been manager of the AURIF facilities since 1989-1990.
8) Removed Pat's assistant and assigned him to other duties.
9) Ordered the locks changed on June 14th , they were actually changed June 20th thereby locking Pat Horan out of the TIMS lab and her office as she was preparing to go back to work in July 5th after her sick leave. Her first priority upon returning was to finish all the DU samples.
This marks the end of the DU work at Memorial.
10) Refused to answer calls from veterans, widow and legal representatives who were acting to retrieve the unfinished samples and data from the finished samples.
11) After several calls to the University, one of Jim Wright's superiors, the Dean of Science Robert Lucas agreed to speak with him. The outcome was an agreement that Jim Wright would allow Pat Horan in to the labs to collect the samples on 4th and 5th of July. Then in the afternoon of July 5th,she would be permitted to pack up her personal effects in her office.
12) Jim Wright changed his mind the evening of August 2nd regarding the retrieval of the samples he also decided not to allow Pat Horan even to enter her office to collect her personal belongings as he had previously agreed.
13) Finally Pat had no other choice but to ask for the assistance of the human resources people. When arrangements were made to go over to let her pack her office, Paul Sylvester told human resources that he would physically restrain her from entering her office. Human Resources then asked for the assistance of MUN security to prevent Paul from physically restraining Pat from packing up her office. When she did so they were all confronted with Paul Sylvester's assistant and a PC support person to ensure that whe did not access anything on her She was not allowed to access the DU data from her computer. It is sad that it has come to this, treating Pat Horan like a criminal . The only reason she gained access to her office that she has occupied for over 16 years is that the security guards and Human Resources were willing to stand up for her.
14) The samples and data are still being held, the samples may be released next week but they are refusing to give Pat access to the data on her computer. It will not work to have someone else access the data. Jim Wright is suggesting this .
15) Paul Sylvester has now placed an ad in a journal to hire a TIMS expert to teach "him" to use the TIMS machine after eliminating a very competent scientist who has been working there for 16 years running the lab and doing the analysis and the AURIF assistant who has been working for two years in the lab and who was hired to help with the DU work.
It may be stated that Pat Horan resigned. However many questions need to be asked as to why she was harassed and forced to resign in the middle of her year's research contract and with a firm intention of finishing the samples of sick veterans and bone specimens of deceased veterans.
Why did Jim Wright and the person he put in charge of the TIMS lab, Paul Sylvester, carry out months of harassment and lock her out of her office if not to force her to resign before finishing this DU work.
--
It is a repeat of several DU scientists in the US who were also locked out of their departments, denied access to their computers , harassed and dismissed simply for yielding to the pressure to stop their work on behalf of the GW veterans who were exposed to DU.
Another interesting point is that the same president ,Axel Meisen who awarded Pat the Presidential award for excellence in science for her work on DU among other research has allowed all of these events that lead to the resignation of the scientist he praised just last year.
Why did Jim Wright who also praised and defended her work suddenly turn and eliminate both Pat, her assistant and the DU work. Was it just coincidence that this change in attitude happened after he was approached by Ed Ough of the Royal Military College and the Department of National Defense and forced Pat to do work for them. This work proved that she could in fact see the levels of Uranium isotopes that distinguish DU from natural Uranium . Ed Ough and the DND had originally called Pat's work laughable and she proved during 4 months of work for them that her data was accurate and reliable. This work has never been mentioned.
The other labs that did the analysis on Canadian veterans most certainly did not succeed in the test organized by the DND and Ed Ough to try to discredit Pat's work, her accuracy in measuring the minute levels of U 234 U235 and U236 necessary to distinguish between natural and depleted Uranium were excellent. (The announcement made by Col Scott and the DND to the press that all 136 veterans tested in the commercial labs that they were negative were all based on measurements of U238 as they said that the levels were too low and they could not detect the other isotopes. Pat's success in the DND test proved she could accurately detect levels of U234 U235 and U236. Since the science stood up under scrutiny what else remained but to remove the scientist.
See below Jim Wright's quote defending Pat's work.
Jim Wright's quote from an interview by Mike Trickey in a Southam newspaper Ottawa article entitled MUN tests show "substantial" depleted uranium
"Memorial's equipment for testing for isotopes is considerably more sensitive than those used to test for the mere presence of uranium, which occurs in all humans
Maclean's March 21 2001 Jim Wright is quoted again
"DND has been critical of Pat Horan's work , but we have absolutely stuck behind her."
More quotes form the MUN gazette "Dr. Jim Wright, head of the Earth Sciences Department stands firmly behind their results.
"Pat's data is totally reliable, and clearly establishes there has been exposure to significant levels of DU contamination in those tested. What we have been doing is looking for the isotopic signatures of depleted uranium and, indeed, we've been finding them," he said, adding, "Memorial's equipment for testing for isotopes is considerably more sensitive than those used to test for the mere presence of uranium, which occurs in all humans."
Dr. Wright went on to say, "The laboratory is an Atlantic regional facility for isotopic analyses to measure minute amounts of uranium isotopes. The lab has been in operation for more than 10 years and it has a very strong peer review record both in Canada and Europe. " What happened to Jim Wright that he moved from absolutely sticking behind her to months of harassment and locking her out of her office. Was it that after wasting four months of valuable time and holding up the real research on sick veterans, she refused to do more work for the DND? This answer may be a long time in coming as Pat Horan has moved on. She did admirable ground breaking research for as long as she could .Quotes from the MUN gazette, the Memorial University newspaper:
"Dr. Meisen also had praise for the ," the work of faculty members such as Pat Horan, whose work with depleted uranium attracted international media attention earlier this year, and the "very consistent success of the Faculty of Business in national and international competition."" " In 2001, Pat Horan received the he Presidents award for excellence in Science at Memorial : the following was read during the award ceremony:
"Patricia (Pat) Horan Research and project geologist, Department of Earth Sciences
Pat began her career at Memorial University 15 years ago when she was hired after graduating from our Chemistry Department. Her laboratory, and the work that she performs there, are known nationally and internationally. She provides analyses for Memorial's researchers and, because her lab is the only one of its kind in Atlantic Canada, she consistently takes on work from other universities.
Pat is probably most well known for her work in identifying depleted uranium in British war veterans. While this project generated much controversy and military scrutiny, Pat continued her work, many times working through the night, with one goal in mind: determining if depleted uranium was indeed the cause of the veterans' health problems.
Pat has contributed to the evolution of a complex university lab facility into one of the most productive radiogenic isotope laboratories in North America; in turn this lab has enhanced the national and international reputation of Memorial University. And all this was done while continuing her work and commitment to Memorial."
-------- europe
EU eyes environment clean-up scheme in north Europe
REUTERS EU:
July 8, 2002
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/16744/story.htm
BRUSSELS - The European Union said last week it expected to launch a 1.8 billion euro programme next week to help clean the environment in northern Europe, focusing on the threats posed by nuclear waste in Russia.
The European Commission, the EU's executive body, said the long-awaited scheme would start if an international donors' conference in Brussels next Tuesday grants it, as expected, at least 100 million euros in initial funds.
"The problems of environmental degradation and particularly those of nuclear waste are matters of international concern. Future generations will not forgive us if we fail to act now," said EU External Relations Commissioner Chris Patten. The Commission will chair the donors' conference along with Russia and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development
"Our minimum target is 100 million euros. But the donors' pledges can be much higher," said Alistair MacDonald, a senior official at the Commission's Eastern Europe directorate.
The pledged funds will co-finance 1.8 billion euros worth of long-term loans from international financial institutions for the most urgent projects needed to reduce water and air pollution in the Baltic and Barents Sea regions.
Out of this sum, about 500 million euros is to be spent on dealing with dangerous nuclear waste in northwestern Russia, which is mainly the legacy of the Cold War, when the Soviet Union produced hundreds of nuclear submarines.
The vessels are now being decommissioned, with many just rusting away in various bases on the Barents Sea, and the spent radioactive material is stored in hazardous conditions.
"The Kola peninsula contains the world's largest repository of spent nuclear fuel. Its storage conditions are unacceptable," said Thomas Maier of the EBRD's nuclear department.
-------- u.s. nuc facilities
-------- nevada
Aides Say Yucca Project Headed to Senate Approval
July 8, 2002
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/politics/politics-energy-congress-yucca.html
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Proponents have the votes to win final U.S. congressional approval as early as Tuesday of President Bush's decision to bury the nation's nuclear waste in Nevada's Yucca Mountain, senior Senate Republican aides said on Monday.
They said unofficial head counts show a majority of the Democrat-led Senate supports the proposal to put the nation's first permanent nuclear waste repository 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas.
Backers plan to introduce a motion on Tuesday for the Senate to immediately begin consideration of the matter, aides said. If it passes, as expected, there would be up to 10 hours of debate before a vote is held on the $58 billion project, also likely on Tuesday, aides said.
``We have a firm majority,'' one Republican aide said.
``There is ample support to get this done,'' another Republican aide said.
``They do seem to have the votes,'' conceded an aide to a Democratic senator expected to endorse the proposal on Tuesday over the objections of the state of Nevada, which is challenging it in court, citing safety concerns.
A Senate Republican leadership aide said, ``A lot of senators are going to vote for Yucca because if they don't they know the nuclear waste could end up in their states.''
Sens. Bob Bennett and Orrin Hatch, both Utah Republicans, announced on Monday they would back the Yucca project after they were warned in a letter from U.S. Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham that if the facility was rejected, nuclear waste would likely be stored at a temporary site in their state.
Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, a South Dakota Democrat, sent a letter to Bush on Monday urging him to tell Senate Republicans to delay a vote on Yucca Mountain until the chamber completes work on a bill to crack down on the recent spate of corporate scandals.
UPHILL BATTLE
But Senate Republican leaders decided to push ahead and work with Democrats to reduce the amount of debate on the measure, aides said.
``We always knew this would be an uphill battle,'' said Tessa Hafen, a spokeswoman for Sen. Harry Reid, a Nevada Democrat who has helped lead the charge against it. ``But we haven't given up,'' Hafen said. ``Senator Reid is still working the phones and the Senate floor.''
Final congressional approval would clear the way for the U.S. Energy Department to apply to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to license the project, scheduled to open in 2010 and hold 70,000 tons of radioactive material.
The Senate will vote on a resolution to override Nevada Gov. Kenny Guinn's veto in April of Bush's decision to accept a recommendation by Abraham to build the facility in Nevada.
A similar resolution passed the Republican-led House of Representatives in May on a bipartisan vote of 306-117.
Nuclear power plants produce more than 20 percent of the country's energy. The so-called spent fuel from those plants is highly radioactive and is being stored in tanks usually on the plant site. Many of those waste storage tanks are nearly full. The government has faced lawsuits for failing to meet a 1998 deadline to open a permanent nuclear waste storage site.
In addition to Nevada, the Yucca project has been opposed by a number of environmental and public interest groups who agree with the state that it would be a hazard.
But the Bush administration contends $4 billion in studies over the past two decades have shown Yucca Mountain to be a safe and sound site for a nuclear waste repository.
On June 5, the Democrat-led Senate Energy Committee gave its blessing to the project on a 13-10 vote. Among those who voted for it was committee Chairman Jeff Bingaman, a New Mexico Democrat.
``Although the governor raised several serious questions about the geology of Yucca Mountain, the design of the repository, the credibility ofcomputer models and the safety of waste shipments -- those questions are best answered by the technical experts at (the Nuclear Regulatory Commission),'' Bingaman said.
--------
Republicans to Push Vote on Waste Site
July 8, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Yucca-Mountain.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Republican senators said they will force a vote Tuesday on a proposed nuclear waste site in Nevada, despite a plea by the Senate's top Democrat not to interrupt consideration of a bill to deal with corporate accounting abuses.
Meanwhile, two key Republican senators -- Orrin Hatch and Bob Bennett of Utah -- were assured if they go along with the Yucca Mountain site the Bush administration would help keep nuclear waste from being stored in their state.
After a meeting at the White House, Hatch and Bennett said they were shifting from undecided to favoring the Nevada site, although they continued to have some concerns about transporting the waste.
A Senate vote will determine whether President Bush will be allowed to proceed with his plan, announced in February, to bury 77,000 tons of nuclear waste beneath the volcanic ridge known as Yucca Mountain 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas.
The House already has approved a resolution overriding Nevada's objections to the project.
GOP senators have accused Majority Leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D., of trying to block the project by not bringing it up for a vote by the July 25 deadline. So, GOP senators informed the White House on Monday they would force the issue on the Senate floor Tuesday, triggering a vote on the resolution.
Under a provision unique to a 1982 law governing nuclear waste disposal, any senator can force a vote on the resolution. Normally, only the majority leader brings up legislation for consideration by the full Senate.
In a letter to Bush, Daschle asked the president to intervene. He called the GOP push on Yucca ``ill-considered and ill-timed'' and an attempt to sidetrack action on legislation to overhaul accounting laws in light of recent corporate accounting scandals.
But the administration made clear it wants the Yucca decision resolved, and the sooner the better.
Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham said he expects the Senate to begin consideration of the Yucca Mountain resolution Tuesday. The 1982 law limits debate to 10 hours and allows for no amendments or filibuster.
Nevada's two senators -- Democrat Harry Reid and Republican John Ensign -- have been scrambling to try to get enough votes to kill the Yucca project.
They lost two potential GOP allies Monday when Hatch and Bennett announced their support of the Yucca waste site.
For weeks the two Utah senators had expressed concern about the thousands of shipments of use reactor fuel that are expected to go through their state on their way to Nevada if the repository is built, including much of it through Salt Lake City.
But they said they feared that if the Nevada site were not approved, the nuclear industry would begin to ship its waste to a proposed private storage site on an Indian reservation in Utah's Skull Valley.
``I would much rather have it go through than stop and stay,'' Bennett told reporters after he and Hatch met with Abraham and White House chief of staff Andrew Card.
In return, the senators got a commitment from the White House: Abraham promised that the Energy Department would refuse to provide any federal money to transport waste to the proposed private site, making it unlikely that utilities would want to ship wastes there.
Neither the two GOP senators or Abraham would speculate if supporters of the Yucca site had the 51 votes to override Nevada's veto.
``I assume it must be fairly close,'' said Bennett, adding that he had been lobbied heavily by opponents.
Abraham said that if Yucca Mountain were not approved there would be other ``makeshift, ad hoc arrangements'' by the nuclear industry to temporarily store wastes at sites such the one proposed for Utah, which is undergoing review by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
Reid and Ensign have argued that the waste is safe where it is now, at 103 commercial power reactors in 31 states, and would be less safe and more open to terrorist attacks while being shipped by truck or rail to Nevada.
If approved and if it gets the NRC license, the Yucca Mountain repository would be scheduled to open in 2010 and receive about 3,000 tons of waste shipments a year for at least 24 years.
-------- us politics
Bush Walks Delicate Line On Business
Policies and Personal Ties Pose Risks as Scandals Grow
By Dana Milbank and Mike Allen
Washington Post Staff Writers
Monday, July 8, 2002; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A36706-2002Jul7.html
While President Bush worked with aides on his upcoming speech addressing mushrooming corporate scandals, a question arose about whether the administration could look hypocritical because of the ongoing federal probe of Halliburton Co.'s aggressive accounting while Vice President Cheney was in charge of the firm.
"There are good actors and there are bad actors; he's one of the good guys," Bush said of Cheney, according to an aide.
The White House is anxiously hoping the American public embraces that distinction.
A year ago, Bush's status as the first MBA president was an asset, and his administration full of corporate executives symbolized efficiency and good stewardship. The dozens of industry-favored laws and regulations Bush proposed were indications that the administration would expand the economy. But now that Wall Street and corporate America have been tarnished by a wave of accounting scandals, the Bush administration's corporate background and pro-business policies are a potential liability.
Bush's speech on Tuesday to 1,000 business executives on Wall Street begins a delicate task for the president. He must make a credible denunciation of corporate wrongdoing and offer reform proposals to calm stricken markets and boost investor confidence. To do so, he must overcome questions about his administration's strongly pro-business record, as well as the records he and his administration officials compiled as corporate executives before coming to power.
Discussing the matter last week in Cleveland -- a message he will repeat tomorrow -- Bush said, "You need to know that by far the vast majority, by far, of corporate America are above-board and doing their job just the way you'd expect them to do."
Bush's opponents are eager to point out that his administration has been an ally of business at almost every turn, in areas of energy, the environment, health care, labor and financial regulations, and taxes. In boom times, when corporations are admired, such charges have had little impact. In a down market, when executives are suspect, they are more menacing. Among the items Democrats, environmentalists and labor groups are citing:
• In the area of business and the environment, Bush has proposed ending the Superfund cleanup tax, which would save money for oil and chemical companies and shift the burden to taxpayers. The administration has relaxed clean-air enforcement rules governing old coal-fired power plants, saving the utility and refinery industries from adding costly antipollution equipment. Bush's Environmental Protection Agency has proposed rules to let mining companies dump dirt and rock waste from mountaintop coal mining into rivers and streams.
• In energy policy, Bush pulled out of the Kyoto global warming protocol and dropped his earlier plan to regulate carbon dioxide as a pollutant. Both actions save U.S. industry from restraints that could have limited its energy use. Bush's national energy policy, developed in consultation with industry, included many proposals that would boost energy companies: drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, easing restrictions on expanded petroleum and electricity transmission, and tax incentives for producing alternative fuels.
The administration did not favor higher fuel-efficiency standards, which automakers opposed.
• In health care, Bush has lobbied for a prescription drug plan for senior citizens that is backed by industry over a costlier Democratic alternative. Bush negotiated a compromise HMO patients' bill of rights that prevented Congress from passing a measure that would have been costlier for health care providers. The administration also proposed easing confidentiality rules governing Americans' medical records, a decision that was hailed by the insurance industry.
• In labor policy, Bush signed legislation repealing workplace ergonomics rules, saving businesses $4.5 billion yearly and replacing the rules with voluntary standards opposed by labor unions. The Labor Department eased its enforcement of workplace rules after lobbying by business groups. The Bush administration also suspended a Clinton administration rule that directed federal agencies to see whether prospective contractors violated workplace safety laws.
• In the area of financial and tax policy, Bush had proposed a "zero growth" budget for the Securities and Exchange Commission for next year. The SEC's chairman asked Congress for $91 million more to increase staff and pay, and Congress's General Accounting Office warned in March that the "SEC has been faced with an ever increasing workload and ongoing human capital challenges," which "adversely affects SEC examination and inspection functions" and raises "concerns about enforcement."
Last fall, Bush endorsed a House economic stimulus package that would have provided $70 billion in corporate tax cuts.
Labor leaders and environmentalists say the administration routinely favors industry. "The administration has sided with workers when the interests of workers have coincided with the business agenda," said Bill Samuel, AFL-CIO legislative director. "When there's an issue that has divided business and labor, they have sided with business."
Business leaders acknowledge they have a reliable ally in Bush. "The attitude of the business community is the president can always do more, but that's part of the game," said R. Bruce Josten, U.S. Chamber of Commerce executive vice president for governmental affairs. He said business has "clearly appreciated" a number of Bush policies, particularly regarding the environment.
The administration and its ideological allies say Bush's support for business is not blind. While acknowledging that industry has embraced most Bush policies, administration officials maintained that they have also rejected entreaties by business. One of the biggest, they said, was the White House decision not to embrace the House GOP plan to retroactively repeal the corporate alternative minimum tax, which could have resulted in huge government payments to some companies.
After Sept. 11, Bush supported a $15 billion bailout of the airline industry, but refused to follow with similar packages for the hospitality industry, among others that were suffering in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks. And his acceptance of federal airport security screeners and a homeland security bureaucracy that will impose more restrictive Customs and immigration rules has worried some free-market proponents.
Wayne Crews, who examines federal regulations at the libertarian Cato Institute, said the tilt toward business has not been pronounced. He said pages of new regulations dropped 13 percent during the first year of the Bush administration. But the costs of these regulations, $800 billion a year, were "roughly flat," he said. Businesses "are in the very same position they were before," Crews said.
Often, Bush actions that boost one business hurt another. His $1.3 trillion tax cut was a boon for small-business owners because it reduced individual tax rates and eliminated the estate tax -- but it contained little relief from corporate taxes. Bush's move to protect U.S. steel from cheap imports pleased steelmakers but angered manufacturers who buy steel. And the administration's antitrust enforcers have surprised some business interests by continuing the Microsoft case and blocking United Airlines' acquisition of US Airways.
"It's a frustrating administration," said Fred Smith, head of the free-market Competitive Enterprise Institute. "I was more optimistic a year ago than I am now."
Bush aides hope they can convince the public that administration support of business is balanced. "We tried to put in place policies that help grow the economy," said one. "That doesn't mean we're sanctioning anything illegal. Who's prosecuting these cases? We are. If anybody turned the other cheek or didn't look at it, it was the Clinton administration."
One impediment to making this case is the corporate past of Bush and Cheney.
A top concern at the White House is Halliburton. The SEC is investigating possible irregularities in how the energy company began booking cost overruns on energy-related construction jobs when Cheney was chief executive. A Halliburton official said the accounting change had been widely made within the construction industry and said the decision was made by the company's financial group, most of them accountants, and not at Cheney's level. A Halliburton spokeswoman said the company has met with SEC investigators and is cooperating.
Bush had his own brush with the SEC 10 years ago: He was cleared during his father's presidency of insider trading when he was a director of an energy company. Bush had been tardy in disclosing his sale of a large chunk of shares in the company, Harken Energy, before it announced a large loss.The company was also forced to reverse a practice of accounting for income that should have been included in future years, at a time Bush was on the board's audit committee.
Senate Majority Leader Thomas A. Daschle (D-S.D.) said on CBS's "Face the Nation" yesterday that he had "real questions" about the Harken transaction and said Bush "would do well to ask the SEC to release the file, release it all, let everybody see just what is there."
Given the competing pressures on the Bush administration, the president faces a challenging task tomorrow. He must convince the public that he is taking serious action against corporate miscreants without betraying his innate trust in the free market.
White House officials said Bush plans to propose criminal penalties -- jail time, not just fines -- for chief executives who file misleading financial reports. But the officials said Bush's policy will stress that the inaccurate filings must be intentional -- which may be difficult to prove.
"We can't legislate good judgment, but we can have punishment for bad ethics and illegality," a White House official said. "The enforcement needs to be improved. The punishments can be expanded. The deterrence needs to be greater. But you can't go overboard and have a political reaction and impute more uncertainty and confusion into the markets, which will hurt the economy."
-------- MILITARY
-------- afghanistan
Expecting Taliban, but Finding Only Horror
New York Times
July 8, 2002
By CARLOTTA GALL
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/07/08/international/asia/08VILL.html
KAKRAK, Afghanistan, July 6 - After an American plane bombarded this village on July 1, American and Afghan soldiers surrounded the settlement and advanced at first light, searching houses and detaining people, apparently expecting to find Islamic militants, residents said today.
But as the soldiers neared the center of the cluster of mud-walled farmhouses, they found a horrifying scene, survivors said.
Women and children lay dead and wounded in and around one big house where they had been gathered for an engagement party, torn apart by cannon fire from the American attack plane, an AC-130 gunship. Survivors said they were gathering up the bodies, picking up limbs and body parts from the streets and adjoining orchard, and carrying the wounded to the village mosque, when the soldiers arrived.
What began as a major operation involving 300 to 400 American and Afghan soldiers against suspected Qaeda and Taliban positions in this isolated corner of southern Afghanistan had apparently turned into a slaughter of innocents. An Afghan delegation says the attack killed 48 people, mostly women and children, and injured 117, figures that American commanders said they accepted.
The Pentagon said after the attack that it had been responding to antiaircraft fire aimed at allied planes. Local officials said here today that faulty intelligence may have been provided by an Afghan.
A delegation that included the American commander of allied forces in Afghanistan concluded after a preliminary investigation that there had been civilian casualties but failed to come to firm conclusions about how they came about. President Bush called President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan on Friday to express his sympathy.
The ferocity of the attack, which encompassed four villages in Oruzgan Province, has angered local officials, though. And the incident has revealed the first rifts in Afghan government support for the American-led military campaign. The Afghan foreign minister has called for the American military to review its intelligence gathering and operational procedures and to improve coordination with local authorities. Province leaders said they wanted such raids to end altogether.
Villagers here in Kakrak said the American soldiers who appeared here were visibly shocked and saddened by the carnage they found last Monday morning.
"They were approaching from the neighboring village," said Pir Jan, a villager who was helping to gather up the dead. "They were very serious, and they were searching the houses and tying the hands even of the women. And then when they came right into the village and saw the dead women and children they were very sad and their attitude changed toward us.
"They told me through a translator that they had made a mistake," Mr. Jan said. "They said, `We are sorry, but what's done cannot be undone.' " The soldiers left later that day.
Mr. Jan was sitting in the courtyard of a house where the attack had blasted a hole in the roof and killed two boys, ages 7 and 13, who had been sleeping on the flat rooftop, he and others said. Five other children were injured at the house.
But the greatest effect was on the house next door, where the engagement party was under way. The women and children had been sitting on the flat mud roof of the farmhouse, enjoying the cool night air and singing wedding songs, when the first shell struck at 1 a.m. It blasted a huge hole in the roof and sprayed shrapnel across the rooftop and around the courtyard. A second explosion hit the adjoining compound, where the men had been sitting in groups in the open courtyard, drinking tea and chatting.
There was pandemonium as people fled the compounds, and more were cut down as they sought a place to hide behind walls or in ditches outside, survivors said.
A 70-year-old woman, Nazaka, ran from the house into an orchard beside the house. "When the first bomb hit, I escaped to the garden," she said. "I took my grandson and another woman who had been injured. I pulled her by her shirt. I was in the orchard in the far corner, and it got me." She showed a shrapnel wound on her leg.
Around her in the orchard, there was unspeakable gore. A woman's torso had landed in one of the small almond trees. Human flesh was still hanging on the tree five days after the attack, and more putrifying remains were tangled in the branches of a pomegranate tree, its bright scarlet flowers still blooming.
"They were collecting body parts in a bucket," said the governor of Oruzgan Province, Jan Muhammad, who arrived the day after the attack.
Sahib Jan, 25, a neighbor who escaped the worst of the bombardment, was among the first to help the wounded and gather up the dead. Walking through the compounds five days later, he named those who had been killed, pointing out the blood stains and the shreds of shrapnel still lying around.
He stood over a dark patch of congealed blood under an arch where a 12-year-old boy had died. "His name was Shirin, the son of Zaher Jan," he said. "There was shrapnel in his head."
The scene was similar in the village of Siya Sang, five miles away, where villagers said that six people had been killed and more injured. Jamala, a local woman, wept over a pile of bloody clothes in her courtyard. She pointed to the blood on the wall where her son, 15, had fallen dead, and a corner where she had found the bodies of her daughter and grandson. A neighbor woman had also been killed.
"My grandson and daughter's mouths were full of dust," she said, pulling her veil across her face. "Write about this so it will stop, so they leave us in peace to pray and fast."
It remains unclear what allied forces were trying to achieve here. This is the home province of the Taliban leader, Mullah Muhammad Omar, and remnants of Taliban and Qaeda forces are thought to have retreated to this hard to reach area.
Both the province governor and the district chief of Deh Rawud, where Kakrak and the other villages lie, gave little credence to the initial American contention that there were antiaircraft guns in the villages that had shot at coalition planes in past weeks and had even been active in the previous 48 hours. Searches here have produced no such weapons.
The district chief, Abdul Rahim, said that when he pressed an American commander who arrived from Kandahar, the regional capital, the American said that forces had been acting on faulty intelligence.
The two Afghan officials said that American commanders had since told them that they had had information that Mullah Omar and one of his top commanders, Mullah Bradar, were in the village of Kakrak, which lies less than five miles from Mr. Rahim's base in Deh Rawud. Neither of the Afghan officials were advised of the operation beforehand, they said, and only learned of it after the airstrike.
"If Mullah Omar and Mullah Bradar were sitting up the road with a whole load of soldiers, would we be sitting here?" Mr. Rahim, a longtime opponent of the Taliban, asked incredulously.
They said, though, that an Afghan might have supplied the faulty intelligence in order to use the Americans to settle a score or to win some advantage in a local power struggle. The governor even said he knew the man responsible and that he worked in the government in Kandahar.
But it is the scale of the operation in reaction to that intelligence that has angered people, from the villagers right up to ministers in Kabul.
"If they have information, they should surround the village and then question us. This is not the way to do it, to bomb the village," said Muhammad Shah, who is the bridegroom's brother and was wounded and lost 25 relatives in the raid.
Mr. Rahim said he asked an American commander who visited the scene: "Mullah Omar and Mullah Bradar are just two people and you bombed four villages. Why?" He went on to say that the four villagers arrested by the American soldiers were ordinary farmers.
The American who commands the coalition forces in Afghanistan, Lt. Gen. Dan K. McNeill, has promised a formal investigation to determine what caused the civilian casualties and what can be done to prevent more in the future.
That may not satisfy the leaders in Oruzgan Province. The governor, Mr. Muhammad, said that after 21 of his own soldiers, loyal to Mr. Karzai's government, were killed in an American-led raid in January, American promises of closer cooperation to prevent such mistakes never materialized.
"They said they would not make a mistake again and that they would contact us and cooperate with us on future operations, but they did not," he said in an interview in the provincial capital, Tirin Kot.
"We don't want these kind of raids, where they are killing women and children and innocent people. We want raids, but not against ordinary people. We want raids against Al Qaeda and the Taliban, we want them to finish them for good," he said.
Mr. Rahim, whose district has been hit by at least four deadly raids in the past few months, said he wanted a complete end to American attacks. He said that American forces should only attack if President Karzai asks for help.
--------
Afghan Killing May Be Linked to Drug Trade
New York Times
July 8, 2002
By DEXTER FILKINS
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/07/08/international/asia/08AFGH.html
KABUL, Afghanistan, July 7 - As Afghans around the country mourned the killing of a vice president, Afghan officials said today that they were investigating the possibility that he had been killed by drug lords who had been double-crossed during a Western-backed campaign to destroy the country's poppy crop.
Hajji Abdul Qadir, who was shot and killed on Saturday, had been overseeing the Western-financed campaign, which began in April, to root out the poppy crop in the country. Afghan officials have been paying poppy farmers about $500 per acre to destroy their plants.
A senior Afghan official said today that Mr. Qadir had recently complained that the money was not being distributed to the farmers even though they were bowing to his demand to uproot their poppies. The Afghan official said that Mr. Qadir's efforts, coupled with the failure to pay certain farmers, may have enraged powerful members of the country's opium mafia. Those drug lords, the Afghan official said, may have decided to take revenge.
"In some instances, there were problems with the flow of the money; there were people who didn't get any," the Afghan official said. "That was a concern to Mr. Qadir. That is why it is now a concern to us."
Mr. Qadir, a wealthy businessman from Jalalabad, had long been suspected of enriching himself through involvement in the opium trade. Some Afghans speculated that Mr. Qadir may have made enemies by favoring one drug lord over another.
In an interview after he was sworn in as one of the country's five vice presidents late last month, Mr. Qadir said that an Afghan organization designated to pay poppy farmers had kept it instead. But at the time, Mr. Qadir indicated that the problem had been resolved.
The Afghan organization "stole the money," Mr. Qadir said during the interview. "They stopped distributing the money, but now they will distribute it."
Mr. Qadir's troubles came to light theday after a pair of gunmen shot and killed him in his car as he left his office here. The killers escaped, and the police detained 10 government guards for failing to prevent the attack or chase his assailants.
Mr. Qadir's death could deal a heavy blow to the Western-backed government of newly elected President Hamid Karzai, though it may be less damaging if it turns out that it was tied to Mr. Qadir's individual problems.
President Bush suggested that the killing could have been related to the effort to stem the country's drug trade. In remarks he made Saturday, he said: "There's all kinds of scenarios as to who killed him. It could be drug lords, it could be longtime rivals. All we know is a good man is dead and we mourn his loss."
Afghan officials said they were examining a number of possible motives for Mr. Qadir's killing, including that he might have been the target of Qaeda fighters or his political rivals.
Mr. Karzai was relying on Mr. Qadir, an ethnic Pashtun, to coax members of that ethnic group, the country's largest, into supporting the government. While Mr. Karzai is himself an ethnic Pashtun, the government he heads is dominated by ethnic Tajiks, who led the resistance against the Taliban.
Mr. Qadir's long involvement in the cutthroat world of Afghan politics ensured that he had many enemies. He fought against the Taliban, but he belonged to a political party that once gave shelter to Osama bin Laden. As he emerged as the governor of Nangarhar province after the rout of the Taliban, he angered many of his rivals.
Mr. Qadir's faults seemed forgotten today, as Afghans poured into the streets of Kabul and Jalalabad, his home, to bid him farewell. The funeral began in the morning, when his flag-draped coffin was carried atop an artillery piece through the streets of Kabul, accompanied by a line of soldiers and a military band. The troops, dressed in wrinkled Soviet-era uniforms and carrying ancient bolt-action rifles, goose-stepped for a time and then gave up, and the music rose and fell away.
The people of Kabul saw many horrors in the 22 years of war that only recently subsided, and Mr. Qadir's killing, though noted with grief, spurred little discernible panic. The prevailing feeling here, among the residents as well as the city's protectors, was that Mr. Qadir's death was probably more related to Mr. Qadir himself than to a conspiracy hatched by the Taliban or Al Qaeda.
Col. Samet Oz, a spokesman for the international security force charged with keeping order here, said the attack on Mr. Qadir was most likely an isolated one. He did not elaborate, but predicted that the violence was over for now.
"I believe this attack will not be followed by others," he said.
-------- africa
Africa Buries OAU, U.N. Chief Sounds Warning
July 8, 2002
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-africa-summit.html
DURBAN, South Africa (Reuters) - Africa launches a continent-wide union on Tuesday in a fresh bid to end war and corruption, but leaders know they must convince a skeptical outside world they really mean business.
Amid the razzmatazz of marching bands, tribal dancers and a helicopter flypast, leaders of about 40 countries at a summit in South Africa will launch the African Union (AU) to replace the ineffectual Organization of African Unity (OAU).
Architects of the union, intended to attract foreign investment by promoting good governance and human rights, said they would not be able to transform the war-ridden continent into a haven of peace overnight.
``People were expecting us to run before we walk,'' Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo told Reuters.
``I think people should be patient with us, bearing in mind that even the (Western) countries that are shouting at the top today about being democracies, it took them time to get there.''
The AU aims to replicate the European Union in fostering prosperity and democracy through social, economic and regional integration. Unlike the OAU, the AU will have the right to intervene in member states in cases of war crimes and genocide.
But despite progress in ending long wars in Sierra Leone and Angola, belligerents from Liberia to Sudan, passing through both Congos and the Great Lakes region, are still playing havoc.
Diplomats and some delegates said prospects for promoting democracy appeared uncertain at best since some African leaders came to power through unconstitutional means and many remained reluctant to embrace accountable and transparent government.
As if to underline concerns in the West that African leaders privately hold widely divergent ambitions for the AU, Libya, a key backer of the project, lodged last-minute queries about the terms of the venture on the eve of its launch.
Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi on Monday proposed amendments to the union's founding charter that would create a single African country with a single army -- a long held dream of Gaddafi's that has virtually no support in the 53 member states.
Delegates said that after a long argument that delayed a state banquet by three hours, keeping business magnates and haute couture-clad First Ladies pacing impatiently, the leaders decided the founding document of the union meant the amendments could not be addressed at such short notice.
Obasanjo said that despite doubts about the willingness of some leaders to embrace democracy, the continent was moving in the right direction.
``I would not say I am satisfied where Africa is today, I'm not even satisfied where Nigeria is politically, economically and socially. But we are on the right track, and provided we remain on that track I am satisfied,'' he said.
``Some of us will be fast, some of us will be slow, some will even stop, but (I am satisfied) provided that when they stumble, they get up and get going again.''
U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan told leaders that Africa's vast size, economic under-development, debt and legacy of war meant it would be much tougher to build the AU than it was to build the European Union.
``To build a successful union in such conditions will require great stamina and iron political will,'' Annan said.
He said he sensed a new respect for Africa among Western governments but that warring had to stop before foreign investment would flow in.
President Thabo Mbeki of South Africa, the summit host and one of three leaders who had Zimbabwe suspended from the Commonwealth after the polls, made no mention of Zimbabwe when he referred to successful recent African elections.
``These successes demonstrate that those who characterize ours as a hopeless continent are wrong,'' Mbeki said.
``As with many other things African, from the very beginnings of its life the OAU was dismissed by our detractors as an organization that was destined to fail,'' he said, calling the change from OAU to AU an evolution, not a death.
-------- asia
U.S. firm gives Cambodia list of 1970s U.S. bombing runs
Associated Press
July 08, 2002
http://www.navytimes.com/story.php?f=1-292925-998564.php
PHNOM PENH, Cambodia - A U.S. defense contractor provided the Cambodian government with computerized information Monday detailing the hundreds of bombing runs that American planes made on Cambodian territory during the Vietnam War.
The information is intended to help Cambodian demining groups clear land for settlers and agricultural development, officials said. The information came from the U.S. national archive, originally supplied by pilots after completing their missions.
U.S. bombing runs against suspected Viet Cong supply lines on Cambodian soil began in 1969 and bombing of suspected communists in Cambodia continued sporadically until 1973.
Tens of thousands of Cambodians were killed and injured in the raids, many of which were orchestrated secretly by the Nixon administration and later declared illegal by Congress.
Many of the bombs remain unexploded and scattered about the Cambodian countryside in addition to the thousands of more unexploded ordnance from more than 30 years of civil strife in the country, one of the poorest in the world.
In a ceremony at the government's Cabinet office, Cambodia's de-mining authorities accepted the information, contained in a CD-ROM, from Michael Sheinkman, a private analyst with ties to the U.S. Defense Department. The donation has the blessing of the U.S. government.
"We look forward to this database helping us do our work," said the director general of Cambodia's national authority on demining, Sam Sotha, a Cambodian-American citizen.
Sheinkman, a geographer for the Federal Resources Corporation of Fairfax, Va., described the information as the most complete database of a U.S. bombing campaign ever collected.
"If they were dropping leaflets, that's in the database," Sheinkman said. "If they were shooting bullets, that's in the database. Large bombs. Cluster bombs - anything that was in the air at the time it was recorded."
U.S. Embassy Defense Attache Col. Mike Norton, who attended the ceremony, said the information may not be of "pinpoint" accuracy.
"But it's better to know, 'OK, this is the general area something may have happened.' It will assist the deminers in their planning of demining operations," Norton said.
Cambodia, funded by international donors, spends millions of dollars each year clearing land mines from its pockmarked countryside.
-------- balkans
Serb War Crimes Suspect Arrested
July 7, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Bosnia-War-Crimes.html
SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Herzegovina (AP) -- NATO-led peacekeepers in Bosnia on Sunday arrested a Bosnian Serb who was the top civilian administrator in a U.N.-protected enclave where up to 8,000 Muslim were killed seven years ago.
In a statement late Sunday, NATO said Miroslav Deronjic was arrested at 5 p.m. in his house in Bratunac, eastern Bosnia.
Deronjic's wife, Danica, told local radio that some 20 armed people in civilian clothes arrived in two vans and took her husband away.
Toward the end of the 1992-95 Bosnian war, Bosnian Serb troops killed thousands in the Srebrenica enclave in Europe's worst massacre since World War II.
NATO said that Deronjic has been indicted by the U.N. War Crimes Tribunal in The Hague, Netherlands, for crimes against humanity.
According to the statement, Deronjic, acting in a civilian role, allegedly was also involved in the 1992 razing of the village Glogova, near Srebrenica. Sixty Bosnian Muslims were killed in that operation.
Deronjic was processed for immediate transfer to The Hague, NATO said.
--------
Balkans tribunal turns to Clinton
July 8, 2002
By Jeffrey T. Kuhner
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20020708-3102700.htm
ZAGREB, Croatia - The Balkans war crimes tribunal is examining whether charges are warranted against former President Clinton and his aides for supporting a 1995 military offensive by Croatia that recaptured territory then held by rebel Serbian forces.
The Croatian World Congress sent a letter last week demanding that Carla Del Ponte, the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), open a criminal investigation into Mr. Clinton and other top officials of his administration for "aiding and abetting indicted Croatian Gen. Ante Gotovina in a 1995 Croatian military operation known as 'Operation Storm.'"
When asked if the prosecutor's office plans to indict Mr. Clinton and U.S. officials, Florence Hartmann, spokeswoman for Mrs. Del Ponte, said: "We are working on the basis of an ongoing investigation."
Besides Mr. Clinton, others named in the complaint are former National Security Adviser Anthony Lake, former Deputy National Security Adviser Samuel Berger, Ambassador Richard Holbrooke and former U.S. Ambassador to Croatia Peter Galbraith.
Fears that American officials and soldiers will be prosecuted for participating in U.N.-backed peacekeeping efforts lie behind the Bush administration's threat to scuttle the present U.N. peacekeeping mission in Bosnia.
The threat is part of a dispute involving a separate but similar U.N. tribunal, the International Criminal Court, which was modeled after the ICTY and opened its doors last week. Both courts are based in The Hague.
The Balkans court angered U.S. officials two years ago when it acknowledged it was looking into a similar complaint against NATO commanders for their role in the 1999 U.S.-led bombing campaign in Yugoslavia.
Court officials said at the time they felt obliged to look into all complaints placed before them, but they dropped the matter after a preliminary investigation.
Gen. Gotovina was indicted by the ICTY in June 2001 on charges that he exercised "command responsibility" over a military campaign in which 150 Serbian civilians were killed.
Secretly supported by the Clinton administration, Croatian forces launched a massive three-day military offensive - known as "Operation Storm" - on Aug. 4, 1995, in which Croatia recovered territories occupied by rebel Serbs following Zagreb's drive for independence from Yugoslavia in 1991.
The Croatian World Congress, a nongovernmental organization (NGO) that advises the United Nations, said it believes neither Gen. Gotovina nor Clinton administration officials are guilty of war crimes.
However, it said that if Mrs. Del Ponte insists on prosecuting Gen. Gotovina, then American officials should be prosecuted in the interests of "evenhanded justice" because they played a pivotal role in aiding the general's campaign in Operation Storm.
The Croatian World Congress said the U.S. administration gave the green light for the operation and provided diplomatic and political support for it.
But the NGO stressed that "the most just outcome would be to withdraw the indictment against Gen. Gotovina."
The possibility that the Gotovina case will lead to U.S. officials being indicted by the ICTY worries some lawmakers on Capitol Hill.
Rep. Henry J. Hyde, Illinois Republican and chairman of the House Committee on International Relations, said in a May 29 letter to Secretary of State Colin L. Powell that at committee hearings on the ICTY, "Testimony was presented at our hearing questioning the factual basis for this indictment.
"It was brought to our attention that the ICTY may investigate U.S. officials for potential command responsibility in connection with Operation Storm."
Mr. Hyde said the ongoing investigation in the Gotovina case poses "risks" that U.S. officials would be prosecuted by the "U.N. tribunal for formulating or carrying out U.S. government policy."
Gen. Gotovina, 48, was the military commander of Sector South of the operation that was responsible for the capture of the city Knin.
He is also accused by the prosecutor's office at The Hague of overseeing the ethnic cleansing of 150,000 Serbs in Croatia who fled the military assault. He is currently in hiding, his whereabouts unknown.
The United States provided military and technical assistance to Operation Storm in order to deliver a defeat to then-Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic's goal of forging an ethnically pure "Greater Serbia."
-------- business
FEDERAL CONTRACTS
By States News Service
Monday, July 8, 2002; Page E09
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A36802-2002Jul7?language=printer
A.C. Technologies Inc. of Fairfax won a $1 billion contract from the Defense Information Systems Agency for information-technology products and services.
Lockheed Martin Corp. of Baltimore won a $142.69 million contract from the Navy for six sets of the vertical launching systems.
Owens & Minor of Glen Allen won a $99.33 million contract from the Defense Supply Center for medical and surgical equipment.
Anteon Corp. of Chesapeake, Va., won a $93.09 million contract from the Navy for engineering and technical services for electronic systems on ships.
AMSEC LLC of Virginia Beach won a $92.89 million contract from the Navy for engineering and technical services for electronics systems on ships.
Westat Inc. of Rockville won a $42 million contract from the Health and Human Services Department for a medical survey.
Anteon Corp. of Fairfax won a contract worth up to $35 million from the Space and Navy Warfare Systems Center for scientific and technical information technology network maintenance and operation services.
Northrop Grumman Information Technology Inc. of Reston won a $25.51 million contract from the Air Force for revamping of information systems.
Applied Hydro-Acoustics Research Inc. of Rockville won a $25 million contract from the Navy for the small-business innovative research program.
Washington Gas Energy Services of Herndon won a $19.22 million contract from the Defense Energy Support Center for natural gas.
J.C. Driskill Inc. of Virginia Beach won an $11.09 million contract from the Navy for upgrading an electrical distribution system.
Northrop Grumman Information Technology Inc. of Reston won a $10 million contract from the Navy for computer integrated system design.
System Planning Corp. of Arlington won a $10 million contract from the General Services Administration for management, organizational and business improvement systems.
Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University of Blacksburg, Va., won a $10 million contract from the Agency for International Development for implementation of agricultural research, extension, and pilot watershed management and micro-enterprise development activities.
ICF Consulting Inc. of Washington won a $9.97 million contract from the Environmental Protection Agency for consulting services for climate change and stratospheric protection programs.
Westat Inc. of Rockville won a $9.83 million contract from the Environmental Protection Agency for research support for human environmental epidemiological studies.
Norfolk Shipbuilding and Drydock Corp. of Norfolk won a $6.99 million contract from the Navy for the dry-docking of the USS Elrod.
Computer Sciences Corp. of Falls Church won a $6.91 million contract from the Space and Navy Warfare Systems Center for scientific and technical network maintenance.
Lear Siegler Services Inc. of Annapolis won a $6.61 million contract from the Army for research services.
Bell-Boeing Joint Program Office of Patuxent River, Md., won a $6.25 million contract from the Navy for the manufacture, installation and testing services.
Mantech Systems Engineering Corp. of Fairfax won a $6.09 million contract from the Navy for engineering and maintenance support services.
New Directions LLC of Fairfax won a $5.2 million contract from the General Services Administration for management, organizational and business improvement services.
Centennial Contractors Enterprises Inc. of Vienna won a $5.1 million contract from the Navy for repair services.
Perrin Quarles Associates Inc. of Charlottesville won a $4.53 million contract from the Environmental Protection Agency for consulting services for climate change and stratospheric protection programs.
Nova Research Inc. of Alexandria won a $3.6 million contract from the Office of Naval Research for research and development support of material, environmental and sensor technologies.
McNeil Technologies Inc. of Springfield won a $3.2 million contract from the Energy Department for management, administrative and technical support services.
Spitfire Technologies of Montgomery Village won a $3.19 million contract from the Navy for design, development and evaluation support of maneuvering control systems for Navy submarines.
Federal Resources Corp. of Fairfax won a $2.9 million contract from the Navy for engineering services.
John C. Grimberg Co. of Rockville won a $2.56 million contract from the Navy for renovation services.
Neuralstem Inc. of Gaithersburg won a $2.42 million contract from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency for continuous assisted performance services.
Blueridge General Inc. of Norfolk won a $2.11 million contract from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration for rehabilitation of a building.
Solid Gold Corp. of Front Royal won a $1.82 million contract from the Customs Service for lodging services.
Northrop Grumman Systems of Linthicum Heights won a $1.47 million contract from the Office of Naval Research for integrated system for small software platforms.
Pinkerton Computer Consultants Inc. of Alexandria won a $1.37 million contract from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. for data depository support services.
Synergy Inc. of Washington won a $1.04 million contract from the Defense Logistics Agency for information network parts.
Pyramid Systems Inc. of Arlington won a $1 million contract from the General Services Administration for management, organizational and business improvement services.
Lyon Shipyard Inc. of Norfolk won a $988,144 contract from the Army Corps of Engineers for shipyard repairs and maintenance.
Eagle Systems Inc. of California won a $906,022 contract from the Office of Naval Research for engineering, maintenance, coordination and testing support.
Newport News Shipbuilding and Drydock Co. of Newport News, Va., won an $898,590 contract from the Navy for overhauling ships.
Litton Advanced Systems Inc. of College Park won an $813,043 contract from the Navy for indicator controls.
Defense Group Inc. of Alexandria won a $791,010 contract from the Defense Threat Reduction Agency for analytical services for the hard and deeply buried target defeat program.
Trident Systems Inc. of Fairfax won a $745,087 contract from the Air Force for collaboration guards.
Raytheon Systems Co. of Baltimore won a $533,021 contract from the Navy for electronic components.
Metalcraft Inc. of Baltimore won a $487,000 contract from the Army for fire-fighting equipment.
Simpson Unlimited of Manassas won a $375,000 contract from the Army Corps of Engineers for roof repairs.
ITT Industries Inc. of Roanoke won a $358,347 contract from the Navy for mounting plates.
Dimensions International Inc. of Alexandria won a $278,424 contract from the Army for research services.
Doggetts Parking of Washington won a $264,000 contract from the Secret Service for parking spaces.
Comptech Corp. of Rockville won a $253,451 contract from the Defense General Supply Center for nose bearing plates.
A.J. Chemical of Richmond won a $250,400 contract from the Navy for butyl sebacate chemicals.
Birchfield Jacobs Food Systems of Annapolis won a $250,000 contract from the General Services Administration for management, organizational and business improvement services.
Comptech Corp. of Rockville won a $199,766 contract from the Defense General Supply Center for aircraft holdback collet fingers.
Mortgage Asset Research Institute of Reston won a $190,000 contract from the Housing and Urban Development Department for data management.
Management Support Technology Inc. of Fairfax won a $184,736 contract from the Office of Naval Research for secretarial/administrative support for director acquisition.
Sigmon Group LLC of Virginia Beach won a $169,500 contract from the Navy for damage control high-visibility utility belts.
Hewlett Packard of Rockville won a $155,410 contract from the Census Bureau for maintenance of computer critical support systems.
United Parcel Service of Washington won a $150,000 contract from the Treasury Department for mail delivery services.
Virginia Commonwealth University of Richmond won a $149,923 contract from the Space and Navy Warfare Systems Command for metabolic engineering for cellular stasis.
Virginia Marine Structures Inc. of Virginia Beach won a $144,000 contract from the Coast Guard for dredging services.
Tech Systems Inc. of Cabin John won a $131,970 contract from the Air Force to operate a library.
P.W. Allen Inc. of Washington won a $125,000 contract from the General Services Administration for recreational, hospitality, law enforcement, facilities, industrial and environmental services and products.
New Clients Inc. of Richmond won a $125,000 contract from the General Services Administration for recreational, hospitality, law enforcement, facilities, industrial and environmental services and products.
SecTek Inc. of Reston won a $125,000 contract from the General Services Administration for recreational, hospitality, law enforcement, facilities, industrial and environmental services and products.
RCI of Virginia Beach won a $125,000 contract from the General Services Administration for recreational, hospitality, law enforcement, facilities, industrial and environmental services and products.
Premier Glass Tinting of Baltimore won a $125,000 contract from the General Services Administration for recreational, hospitality, law enforcement, facilities, industrial and environmental services and products.
ParmaSTAT Inc. of Baltimore won a $125,000 contract from the Veterans Affairs Department for contracting services.
Science Applications International Corp. of McLean won a $123,688 contract from the Army for electronic security support.
Comptech Corp. of Rockville won a $121,829 contract from the Defense Supply Center for electrically driven bilge pump units.
Whipp & Bourne Inc. of Ashburn won a $113,719 contract from the Defense Logistics Agency for circuit breaker boxes.
Lear Siegler Services Inc. of Annapolis won a $103,119 contract from the Army for research services.
Northrop Grumman Systems Corp. of Linthicum Heights won a $100,000 contract from the Defense Supply Center for power transformers.
MAC Aerospace Corp. of Chantilly won a $99,740 contract from the Defense Logistics Agency for direct action shock absorbers.
Booz Allen Hamilton Inc. of McLean won a contract worth up to $99,533 from the Department of Commerce for Internet protocol technical support services.
ITT Industries Inc. of Roanoke, Va., won a $99,360 contract from the Defense Logistics Agency for battery compartments.
Imagecorp Inc. of Greenbelt won a $99,000 contract from the Army for defense services and products.
Ocean Products Research Inc. of Diggs, Va., won a $98,484 contract from the Defense Logistics Agency for filter rope assemblies.
Summit Associates of Richmond won a $98,000 contract from the Defense General Supply Center for special bearings.
Zarc International Inc. of Gaithersburg won a $97,848 contract from the Air Force for pepper spray.
Environmental Systems Inc. of Arnold won a $96,400 contract from the Defense Industrial Supply Center for sewage pumping units.
Sauer Compressors USA Inc. of Stevensville won a $95,831 contract from the Defense Supply Center for compressor parts kits.
Shivaan Corp. of Laurel won a $95,200 contract from the Justice Department for rubber-edge banding.
Paper Pilot Research Inc. of Sterling won a $92,194 contract from the Transportation Department for research and development of affordable, autonomous navigation systems for general aviation aircraft providing safety back-ups for global positioning systems.
American Heavy Industries of Norfolk won a $91,800 contract from the Navy for elevator maintenance.
Intelligent Decisions Inc. of Chantilly won a $91,344 contract from the Transportation Department for computers.
Mamas Potomac Dredging of Coles Point, Va., won a $90,800 contract from the Coast Guard for dredging a boat basin.
W.R. Grace & Co. of Columbia won an $87,254 contract from the Defense General Supply Center for activated desiccants.
Holmes Brothers Enterprises of Portsmouth, Va., won an $86,800 contract from the Navy for technical work on the USS Saipan.
Caption Reporters Inc. of Alexandria won a contract worth up to $86,400 from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for real-time captioning services.
Dela Technology Corp. of Rockville won an $86,043 contract from the Defense General Supply Center for static power inverters.
Jo-Kell Inc. of Chesapeake won an $85,666 contract from the Defense Supply Center for circuit-breaker trippers.
ITT Industries Inc. of Roanoke won an $82,231 contract from the Defense Logistics Agency for housing image intensifiers.
Ibide International Corp. of Woodstock, Md., won an $82,387 contract from the Navy for shipping and storage services.
R.L. Bryan Inc. of Baltimore won a $78,809 contract from the Coast Guard for construction of a retaining wall.
Argo Turboserve Corp. of Virginia Beach won a $77,707 contract from the Defense Supply Center for electrical contacts.
Tek-Lite Inc. of Union Bridge, Md., won a $78,010 contract from the Defense Industrial Supply Center for aircraft utility cockpit lights.
Perkinelmer Inc. of Beltsville won a $76,255 contract from the Defense Industrial Supply Center for fuel nozzle gaskets.
GAD of Locust Hill, Va., won contracts of $75,040 and $68,648 from the Navy for evaporator pumps.
H.R. General Maintenance Corp. of Washington won a $68,400 contract from the Army Corps of Engineers for renting trailer equipment with utilities, furniture and computers.
Electro-Tec Corp. of Blacksburg won a $67,039 contract from the Defense Supply Center for slip platters.
Northrop Grumman Systems Corp. of Sykesville, Md., won a $66,414 contract from the Defense Supply Center for circuit card assemblies.
Aero International Inc. of Sterling won a $64,570 contract from the Defense General Supply Center for direct-current motors.
Loktite Inc. of Lutherville, Md., won a $64,994 contract from the Defense Logistics Agency for hook, loop and synthetic fastener tapes.
Mechanical Resources Inc. of Newport News won a $64,220 contract from the Navy for capstan maintenance at Norfolk Navy Shipyard.
Total Electrical Sales of Virginia Beach won a $63,280 contract from the Defense Supply Center for circuit breakers.
Dela Technology Corp. of Rockville won a $62,756 contract from the Defense Supply Center for industrial cooler fluids.
GAD of Locust Hill, Va., won a $62,151 contract from the Navy for centrifugal pump units.
AEPCO Marine of Virginia Beach won a $61,888 contract from the Navy for work on the USS Nassau.
Nurad Technologies Inc. of Baltimore won a $60,672 contract from the Defense Supply Center for antennas.
KWK Graphics Inc. of Newport News won a $60,305 contract from the Government Printing Office for printing local notices for mariners.
National Mechanical Services Inc. of Aberdeen won a $60,209 contract from the Air Force for repairing and altering the general-purpose aircraft shop.
John Crane Inc. of Chesapeake, Va., won a $59,170 contract from the Navy for seals.
Mandex Inc. of Fairfield, Va., won a $56,022 contract from the Navy for back-plane assemblies.
Virginia Space Grant Consortium of Norfolk won a $53,461 contract from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration for development of feasibility studies and planning in support of the redesigned micromaps mission.
Environmental Systems Inc. of Arnold, Md., won a $53,100 contract from the Defense Supply Center for rotary pumps.
Computer and Hi-Tech Management Inc. of McLean won a $52,339 contract form the Agriculture Department to inventory computer tapes.
Mistral Inc. of Bethesda won a $52,166 contract from the Defense Supply Center for pump control assemblies.
Tabet Manufacturing Co. of Norfolk won a $52,000 contract from the Defense Supply Center for permanent magnet loudspeakers.
The contracts listed were awarded by the federal government to companies and other vendors in Virginia, Maryland and the District. For more information, contact states2001@aol.com, or 202-628-3100, ext. 266.
-------- iraq
Saddam risk a lie, says UN expert
Exclusive
AARON HICKLIN and ROB CRILLY,
July 8, 2002
UK Herald
http://www.theherald.co.uk/news/archive/8-7-19102-0-23-36.html
UNITED Nations weapons inspectors colluded with British secret service agents to spread disinformation about Saddam Hussein's nuclear, biological and chemical weapons programmes as part of a campaign to justify military strikes, according to the head of the UN inspection team in Iraq.
In an interview with The Herald, Scott Ritter, who led the United Nations Special Commission (Unscom) team in Iraq for seven years in the 90s, claims he helped to leak propaganda to journalists. He resigned from the post in 1998 but said his experience then suggested that recent claims that Iraq was developing weapons of mass destruction should be treated sceptically.
Hawks within the US administration insist Iraq's suspected nuclear, chemical and biological weapons programmes should be the next target in the war on terrorism.
Last week, Kofi Annan, UN secretary general, failed to persuade Naji Sabri, Iraqi foreign minister, to allow weapons in-spectors back into the country. The stance could make a US military strike more likely. President George W Bush has reportedly been briefed on a Pentagon plan to send 250,000 troops into Iraq, though he has yet to approve it.
However, Ritter, a former intelligence officer in the US marines, maintains there is scant evidence that Iraq is a threat.
He says claims that Iraq is re-arming come from unreliable witnesses and that factories bombed in 1998 during Operation Desert Fox had not breached UN resolutions. "Every single one of those facilities was subjected to repeated inspections and never did we detect anything to remotely suggest that these were involved in producing anything prohibited. There's nothing there. Nothing."
----
Kurds, Secure in North Iraq, Are Cool to a U.S. Offensive
New York Times
July 8, 2002
By JOHN F. BURNS
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/07/08/international/middleeast/08IRAQ.html
ERBIL, Iraq, July 6 - As the United States considers ways of accomplishing President Bush's call for an end to Saddam Hussein's rule in Iraq, Washington's goal of a "regime change" in Baghdad is running into strong reservations from Iraqi Kurdish leaders who would be crucial allies in any military campaign.
These leaders, interviewed in their strongholds in northern Iraq in the last week, say flatly that they would be reluctant to join American military operations that put Kurds at risk of an onslaught by Iraqi troops of the kind they suffered after the Persian Gulf war in 1991. A Kurdish uprising then that was encouraged by the first President Bush was brutally suppressed by Mr. Hussein, and American forces failed to intervene as thousands of Kurds were killed.
No group has suffered more from Mr. Hussein's 23-year-old rule than the Kurds, who lost tens of thousands of lives to Iraqi offensives in the 1980's and 90's. The most brutal attacks, cited by the present President Bush recently as part of the justification for toppling the Iraqi ruler, involved Iraqi use of poison gas at Halabja and dozens of other towns and villages in the northern Kurdish districts during the eight-year Iran-Iraq war that ended in 1988.
Still, no Iraqis have benefited more from Western support in the last decade than the Kurds. Protected by a "safe haven" declared by the United Nations and a "no-flight zone" patrolled by American and British warplanes, the Kurds, with barely 40,000 troops and only light weapons, have built a 17,000-square-mile mini-state that arcs across a 500-mile stretch of Iraqi territory bordering Syria, Turkey and Iran.
The threat of Western airstrikes has kept Iraqi armored battalions immobilized to the south, often within artillery range of Kurdish strongholds like Erbil, a sprawling city of 750,000 people 250 miles north of Baghdad. In this "liberated area" of soaring mountains, fertile foothills and semi-desert, the Kurds have built a society with freedoms denied to the rest of Iraq's population.
The Kurdish-controlled area has opposition parties and newspapers, satellite television and international telephone calls, and an absence of the repressive apparatus that has prompted international human rights organizations to brand Mr. Hussein's Iraq a terror state.
The drawback is that all this exists outside international law, and could be made permanent only by a new government in Baghdad that embraced freedoms for all of Iraq.
But while an American-led military campaign to topple Mr. Hussein holds out the possibility of making their freedoms more secure, the Kurdish leaders, backed by almost every Kurd who discussed the issue, said Washington would be asking them to put all they have gained from their decade of autonomy at risk of a fresh Iraqi offensive.
"We are not ready to take any risks, and if we are not sure of the outcome of any step, then we are not ready to take that step, because we are not sure of improving our circumstances," Massoud Barzani, leader of one of the two main Kurdish political groups, the Kurdistan Democratic Party, said at his mountaintop headquarters outside Salahuddin, north of Erbil.
He added, alluding to the centuries of oppression Kurds suffered from Turks, Arabs and Persians, "This is a golden era for Iraqi Kurds."
Their concerns are so deep that the Kurds have set aside political differences among themselves to speak with a common voice on the possibility of American action against Mr. Hussein. After a history of internecine strife, including a brief civil war in 1996, Mr. Barzani's Kurdistan Democratic Party and Jalal Talabani's Patriotic Union of Kurdistan have divided the northern territory into two separate areas, each with its own government and army.
But at their respective headquarter cities, Erbil and Sulaimaniya, the reluctance of the Kurds to support American moves against Mr. Hussein is expressed in virtually identical terms. Leaders in both cities said officials from the Pentagon, the State Department, the National Security Council and the Central Intelligence Agency visited the Kurdish territory this year to discuss American options, and had also met with Kurds in Washington and Europe.
At one meeting in Europe this spring, Kurdish officials in Sulaimaniya said, Mr. Barzani and Mr. Talabani, bitter rivals for years, sat down together to meet with American officials. Their main message, the Kurdish officials said, was that Washington should not expect Kurds to subordinate their own safety to American priorities. "Nobody has suffered more from Saddam than the Kurds," one senior official said. "We told the Americans, `This time, the Kurds will put their own interests first, and last.' "
Although the Kurds' fear of again being abandoned by the United States seemed real, the greater fear seemed to be of Mr. Hussein. An official in Erbil acknowledged that the Kurdish leaders, in publicly discouraging American military action, were signaling to the Iraqi leader that the Americans, not the Kurds, were his adversaries. "Saddam is our shadow," the official said. "He's always there, right behind us, and we don't want him to think that we're drawing the Americans in to overthrow him."
Concern among the Kurds seems certain to increase with the failure in Vienna on Friday of the latest talks between the United Nations secretary general, Kofi Annan, and Iraqi officials aimed at resuming United Nations weapons inspections in Iraq. The inspections are to determine whether Baghdad is continuing efforts toward building nuclear, chemical and biological weapons, as Washington has charged, and to destroy any programs that are found.
Many United Nations members, including important American allies, see a resumption of weapons inspections, suspended after Mr. Hussein drove inspectors from Baghdad in 1998, as the only way of forestalling American military action. United Nations and Iraqi officials said talks would continue in Europe in coming months, but Washington viewed the Vienna meeting as a watershed. Iraqi officials placed blame for the talks' failure on an "American plot" to prepare for a military attack.
In an American-led campaign, Kurdish territory would be a crucial platform for a ground assault.
In one plan discussed in Washington, American forces, with Kurdish and other Iraqi opposition fighters, would seek to replicate the war against the Taliban in Afghanistan, using the Kurdish-controlled areas and troops much as the territory and troops of the Afghan Northern Alliance were used.
But the Kurdish leaders, in the interviews, said they would resist any American actions aimed at toppling Mr. Hussein unless Washington gave "guarantees" in advance. They said these would include an undertaking that a future Iraqi government would adopt a democratic political system, with a federal structure that provided for wide-ranging Kurdish autonomy in the north.
In effect, this would require Washington to promise that Kurds would maintain effective control of the area they now rule. But it is far from certain that other Iraqi opposition groups drawing support from the country's Arabs would agree, partly because of the Baghdad's reliance on revenues from the north's oil fields.
The Kurdish leaders spoke with a sharp edge of distrust for the United States, which they said had "betrayed" Iraqi Kurds at crucial moments in the past, most recently during the Iraqi onslaught against the Kurdish uprising in 1991. Mr. Barzani and other leaders also referred bitterly to events in 1975, when the United States encouraged Iraqi Kurds to ally themselves with Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi of Iran in a territorial dispute with Iraq, only to back a reconciliation between Iran and Iraq that left the Kurds exposed to a military crackdown by Baghdad.
Mr. Barzani coupled this bitterness with a reminder that Washington's hawkishness on Iraq is led by a president whose father, many Iraqi Kurds contend, let them down in 1991.
After American troops liberated Kuwait, then stopped at Iraq's southern border, the first President Bush encouraged Kurds in northern Iraq and Shiite Muslims in the south to "take matters into their own hands." He then withheld American military support when their uprisings drew savage retribution from Baghdad.
When they discuss American plans, the Kurdish leaders reserve their harshest condemnation for any attempt to topple Mr. Hussein by C.I.A.-led covert action, possibly by fomenting a military coup. Reports from Washington have said Mr. Bush this year strengthened a presidential directive authorizing the C.I.A. to mount covert operations inside Iraq with the aim of toppling Mr. Hussein, and authorized American agents to kill him if necessary in self-defense.
But Barham Salih, who heads the government in the eastern half of the Kurdish territory under the authority of Mr. Talabani, said American officials had been told bluntly that the Kurds would oppose any attempt to topple Mr. Hussein by a coup. "We are not interested in exchanging one dictator for another," Mr. Salih said. "We want a democratic, pluralistic, responsible government in Iraq, and that cannot come from a coup."
-------- israel / palestine
Bush demand spurs criticism of Arafat
July 8, 2002
By Patrick Bishop
LONDON DAILY TELEGRAPH
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20020708-96829528.htm
GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip - President Bush's call for changes in the Palestinian leadership appears to have intensified an internal debate about the performance of Yasser Arafat and emboldened dissenters to air their views in public.
Critics of the move maintained that the American intervention would result in a surge of support for the veteran leader.
But in Gaza yesterday, Palestinians spoke frankly about the corruption and inefficiency of Mr. Arafat's rule. There was also censure of his handling of relations with Israel, which has resulted in it re-establishing an iron grip on the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
The consequences of the Israeli policies could be seen at the Erez checkpoint, where rows of Palestinian workers lined up for hours in the asphalt-melting sun to register for permits that may allow them to work inside Israel again.
Before the second intifada began 21 months ago, about 40,000 crossed each day. Since then, the border has been closed and almost all these jobs have disappeared, along with 100,000 others, as the local economy has run into the ground.
"I haven't made a penny for nearly two years," said Mohammed Attar, 36, who has a wife and eight children to support and who previously worked as a chef inside Israel. "My family tried to help, but they have run out of money."
Mr. Attar blames Israel for closing the border. But he is also angry with the Palestinian Authority, which has paid him the equivalent of $190 in the time he has been jobless. Last week he joined tens of thousands of workers who marched in Gaza to demand work or dole money.
Mr. Attar's view of Mr. Arafat is simple: "If he can solve our problem he is welcome to stay. If not, he should go."
Palestinian intellectuals are bemused by the U.S. enthusiasm for reform. They accuse Washington and Israel of previously ignoring the corruption and repression practiced by the Palestinian Authority and of supporting Mr. Arafat. They also wonder how the Palestinians can rebuild their society with large swathes of the West Bank under Israeli occupation.
They accept, however, that the U.S. call has forced Mr. Arafat into long-overdue elections. "It's come about because of Arafat, and not because they are convinced of the need for reform, that is the sad reality," said Salah Abdel Shafi, a management consultant who may be a candidate. "But it doesn't mean that the process is bad."
There seems to be wide agreement that the system Mr. Arafat planted after his return - installing his cronies in positions that they abused - must be uprooted. There is also a perception that his handling of the new uprising has been disastrous.
"Arafat has made big mistakes," said one political analyst. "He failed to create a consensus about the objectives of the intifada, and the leadership has kept people in the dark."
Mr. Abdel Shafi believes that the uprising should have ended once it had made the point that "when there's no just solution, there will be no stability." Instead, its continuation and the advent of suicide bombers has put the Palestinians on the defensive, especially after September 11. "We became the Palestinian Taliban," he said.
Some Palestinians resent the idea that they have silently tolerated corruption and repression and point out there has been opposition to Mr. Arafat's rule from the beginning.
The elections offer a mechanism for hope, but not if the Israeli occupation persists, some say.
"If you continue with incursions and assassinations, I guarantee the extremists will win," said Mr. Abdel Shafi.
-------- POLICE / PRISONERS
Debate to Begin on New Agency of U.S. Security
New York Times
July 8, 2002
By DAVID FIRESTONE
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/07/08/politics/08SECU.html
WASHINGTON, July 7 - The federal government begins to reorganize itself in earnest this week to respond to a new world of terror and domestic unease, as Congress returns from recess to a dizzying round of votes on creating a Department of Homeland Security by summer's end.
President Bush proposed the department last month, but the labor to build it will actually take place in committee rooms around Capitol Hill, where the reorganization bill will be debated beginning on Tuesday. More than a dozen House and Senate committees with jurisdiction over the various government components designated to become part of the department will have their chance to rewrite the language, often in ways that may differ sharply from the administration's vision.
Though the reassignment of security tasks from one department to another may seem bureaucratic and even trivial outside of Washington, it is considered a solemn and even historic responsibility to those doing the work. The proposed cabinet department represents the biggest reorganization of the government since the 1940's, and many say it could stand as the nation's most lasting response to the events of Sept. 11.
"This is one of the most important things I will ever get a chance to do as a senator," said Joseph I. Lieberman, Democrat of Connecticut, who as chairman of the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee has taken on his chamber's most prominent role in creating the department. "There are 180 different agencies dealing with homeland security that are out there on their own, uncoordinated and undirected. We are not just bringing them together, but we are giving them a whole new responsibility to protect this nation."
Many in Congress are concerned that the changes ahead will represent more than just a different phone number or letterhead for the agencies they oversee. If the Coast Guard, for example, moves from the Transportation Department to the Homeland Security Department, will its basic mission of ensuring maritime safety and mobility shift more toward defense? Several coastal-state representatives are preparing to fight such a move. Members from farm states are similarly worried about moving the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service out of the Agriculture Department.
Several lawmakers are angry about weakened civil service protections in the new department, and Congressional appropriations leaders, accustomed to deciding how the government will spend its money, have protested the administration's proposal that the department be able to shift money among its divisions without their approval.
The most serious responsibility of the new department, of course, will be learning of and preventing terrorist attacks, and it is in the area of intelligence sharing that Congress will be devoting the most scrutiny.
The White House proposed that the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Central Intelligence Agency send their reports and analysis of raw intelligence data to the new department for further analysis of potential threats, and House Republican leaders say they are prepared to accept an essentially passive arrangement that would leave most of the raw intelligence in the hands of the agencies that gathered it.
"Someone is going to have to make the case that allowing the new department to collect raw intelligence is worth the risk," an aide to a House Republican leader said. "We don't really see the benefits of doing that."
But many legislators, particularly on the Senate side, have been unhappy with the performance of the F.B.I. and the C.I.A., and want to create a requirement that the raw data, like tapes and transcripts of conversations with informants, be turned over to Homeland Security.
Mr. Lieberman said he would press for language to create a much more active intelligence division within the department, able to demand raw data and not just request it, as the administration has proposed. The department would also be able to require the F.B.I. and C.I.A. to perform various tasks under his proposal, language that will probably not be welcome at two agencies accustomed to autonomy.
"It's not that we want the department to have its own agents, but it has to have the best intelligence analysis and dissemination capability that we can achieve," Mr. Lieberman said. "That means it has to be able to task the F.B.I. and the C.I.A., tell them to get such-and-such a piece of information, or check out this port of entry."
The nature of these debates will mean that the internal reorganization of the F.B.I. and C.I.A., which had been under discussion in Congress before the president's proposal, will be put off for several months, Mr. Lieberman and other legislators said, possibly until next year. There is no point in discussing the future role of those agencies, they said, until it is clear how strong a role the new department will play, particularly with some members of Congress eager to create a domestic intelligence agency that has long been resisted in Washington.
If there is strong disagreement between the House and Senate on issues like intelligence sharing, it is possible that the self-imposed memorial deadline of Sept. 11, originally proposed by the Democrats, may be missed. With Congress scheduled to be in recess for most of August, several legislative staff members and outside experts have begun to worry that a major new cabinet department cannot be created so quickly without the risk of mistakes and haphazard planning.
At the same time these issues are being debated, Congress will also be taking up several other high-profile bills this week, including the proposal to move nuclear waste to Yucca Mountain in Nevada and a plan to tighten accounting rules to help prevent future business scandals. Both houses are behind on basic appropriations. But even Democratic leaders say they are still hoping to meet their goal on domestic security.
"We are always looking for the right balance between speed and efficiency, or speed and success," Representative Richard A. Gephardt, the House minority leader, said last week. "But I don't think you get anywhere by saying: `Oh, this is all too complicated. It's going to take us four years to do it.' "
"They cleaned up ground zero in a record amount of time," Mr. Gephardt said. "They built the Pentagon back in a record amount of time. And they did not do that by saying, `Oh, gee, this is a hard job, it's going to take us forever.' "
This week, a dozen House committees will begin editing the language of the bill. Next week they will turn their work over to a committee that will decide what kind of department the full House will vote on. That special committee, headed by Representative Dick Armey, Republican of Texas, the majority leader, has invited several cabinet secretaries to testify on Thursday about the nature of the global threat.
A smaller number of Senate committees will also take up the proposal, led by Mr. Lieberman's panel. Both houses hope to take floor votes on the new agency before the August recess, and will work out any differences in conference committee when members return after Labor Day.
-------- ENERGY AND OTHER
-------- alternative energy
WIND ENERGY TURNS KINTYRE ECONOMY AROUND
July 8, 2002
ENS
http://ens-news.com/ens/jul2002/2002-07-08-03.asp
CAMPBELTOWN, Scotland - Originally an area known best for its fishing fleet, its music festival, and the distillation of whisky, the Kintyre Peninsula is now host to the UK's most efficient windfarm, which officially opened today. The 46 wind turbines on the peninsula's highest hill will deliver an output of 30 megawatts, enough to supply electricity to 25,000 homes.
Scottish Power's £21 million (US$32.4 million) wind energy project is able to produce its power so efficiently because the Kintyre Peninsula is one of the windiest spots in Europe.
Minister for Energy Brian Wilson said, "This project shows that the technology is now available to produce not only clean but also efficient electricity from wind power."
The 40 metre (131 foot) high towers sit on top of a hill called Beinn an Tuirc, 454 metres (1,489 feet) above sea level. The wind travels unimpeded across the Atlantic Ocean, gathering speed, until it hits the blades that extend 47 metres (154 feet) in diameter.
The development is expected to prevent 92,000 metric tonnes (101,400 tons) of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide from entering the atmosphere.
As part of the windfarm project, conservation reserves will be created on the surrounding land, to help build the threatened population of black grouse.
The windfarm is situated at the edge of a long established golden eagle territory and during development there has been large scale habitat management aimed at making the territory more sustainable in the future.
The traditional sources of employment on the Kintyre Peninsula are in decline. The fishing fleet is a fraction of its former size. The area was once the capital of whisky production in Scotland with 30 distilleries, but only one is still producing. A menswear factory is the single largest employer in the area, but it has recently cut its workforce. There was a factory producing model aircraft that has recently closed. Golf and yachting draw some tourists to Kintyre's charming accomodations.
But now there is hope of sustainable employment in the wind power industry.
The Kintyre wind farm is the first three windfarm developments planned in Argyll by Scottish Power. Two further developments, one of which one has already gained consent, are expected to bring local jobs, primarily in their construction.
In another wind boost for the economically depressed peninsula, a new Vestas wind turbine manufacturing plant has been constructed on the site of a former Royal Air Force base near the Kintyre town of Machrihanish. It will produce the first British built wind turbines.
The Macrihanish factory will carry out the construction of the wind turbine towers and generator cabins, and will also be responsible for their final assembly. Manufacturing of the turbines' fibreglass nose cones will be subcontracted. The Danish firm Vestas currently holds 30 percent of world sales of wind turbine capacity.
UK windfarm developer Powergen Renewables announced in June that it will buy its first British built wind turbines from the Macrihanish Vestas factory in a £25 million deal.
The 71 turbines have been earmarked for Powergen Renewables' 60 megawatt Derrybrien project in County Galway in the Republic of Ireland. An option has been agreed for a further 51 turbines.
Powergen Renewables general manager Dr. Chris Morris said, "Until now, the option of buying British built turbines did not exist, and we're delighted to be able finally to put that right."
"As one of the UK's leading wind farm developers, we believe that this order is good news for everyone," he said. "We get proven, effective turbines, the UK wind industry gets a major boost and we help create and maintain jobs in the local community hard hit by unemployment."
Earlier this year, Powergen Renewables announced a 1,000 megawatt target in its renewable capacity by 2010, split 80-20 between its existing wind farm business and a new biomass division. Energy Minister Wilson said, "Renewables is not just about energy and the environment but also about manufacturing and jobs. There are very significant opportunities for UK industry and if they respond well to this, it will result in new generating equipment and services being supplied by UK firms."
The UK government has called for 10 percent of the UK's electricity requirements to be generated from renewable sources by 2010, and the Irish government has targeted 500 megawatts of renewable energy by 2005.
-------- health
Smallpox Vaccine Program Readied
Inoculations May Surpass 500,000 Under U.S. Plan
By Ceci Connolly
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, July 8, 2002; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A36612-2002Jul7.html
Federal health officials say they are finalizing a plan that would vaccinate hundreds of thousands of emergency medical personnel against smallpox this fall and expand to include other health care and rescue workers most at risk if the deadly virus is unleashed in the United States.
"At the end of the day, the numbers could be significantly greater than 500,000," said Jerome Hauer, acting assistant secretary for emergency preparedness at the Department of Health and Human Services. He said vaccinations could begin within eight weeks.
Eventually, as more vaccine becomes available and experts have a chance to study adverse reactions to the inoculation, administration officials expect to make it widely available on a voluntary basis.
What began as a small, conservative approach by the government for protecting against the unlikely event of a smallpox attack is rapidly developing into a broad, aggressive proposal. Demand for the vaccine, new projections on how easily the smallpox virus could be spread in a terrorist attack and the size and scope of the U.S. medical profession have pushed the Bush administration to expand its view.
For now, any vaccination would be voluntary. However, even a single case of smallpox could trigger mass vaccination and quarantine, Hauer warned, because "we would assume any presentation of smallpox at this point in time is likely to be an intentional" attack, rather than a naturally occurring outbreak.
The debate over smallpox vaccination revolves around two unknowns: the likelihood of an outbreak vs. the likelihood of severe, sometimes fatal, complications from the vaccine.
Although smallpox was eradicated worldwide in 1980 and only the United States and Russia are known to hold small caches of the virus, some experts believe that samples of the virus may have gotten into the hands of terrorists or rogue states. Because of its potency and its stealthy nature, it is among the most feared biological weapons today.
A smallpox attack could go undetected for days or weeks, the first hint of trouble coming in the form of a mysterious rash. There is no known cure for the disease, and because it is highly contagious it could spread quickly through a community.
Even with the slim chance of an attack, the Bush administration is moving rapidly on several fronts to prepare for one -- stockpiling millions of doses of vaccine, developing a quarantine plan and negotiating with interest groups such as the truckers' association that wants vaccine for its members.
Last month, a panel of scientific experts recommended a limited vaccination plan targeting small teams of health care workers who would be protected in the event of an outbreak. The panel, arguing that the risk of serious side effects outweighed current fears of an outbreak, estimated 20,000 people nationwide would be inoculated as a preventive measure. Complications include a sore arm, low-grade fever, encephalitis (brain inflammation) and even death.
The group also endorsed traditional "ring vaccinations" of isolated, infected patients and people in close contact with them to contain the outbreak.
Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy G. Thompson, who will decide the policy, is likely to go far beyond the panel's position, said several of his top advisers.
"We're going to have to have a large number of people vaccinated," said D.A. Henderson, chairman of the Council on Public Health Preparedness at HHS. His rough count of emergency department staffs at one-fifth of the nation's 5,000 hospitals puts the number at 250,000.
Firefighters, police officers and doctors and nurses in private practice could quickly be added to the list, said Hauer. Some states have lobbied for their own supply of vaccine -- and some federal officials privately concede they may be legally obligated to provide it.
Most Americans older than 30 were inoculated against smallpox as children, but medical experts doubt the vaccine would still protect them from disease.
Julie L. Gerberding, the new director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said in an interview last week that in a series of conference calls, medical associations, hospital groups and public health workers were pressing for more widespread vaccination of their workers.
"It's an unfolding process," she said, noting the vaccination program could expand in coming months. Plans for a larger vaccination program were first reported in yesterday's New York Times. In interviews Sunday, officials stressed that Thompson has yet to approve a final plan.
In theory, the idea of vaccinating front-line health care workers seems straightforward. The federal government already has more than 75 million doses of vaccine and by year's end expects to purchase enough for every American.
But as Thompson's aides attempted to craft a plan, they found "it's much more complicated than one might imagine," said Henderson.
Each vial in the U.S. stockpile contains 100 doses of vaccine, which would be diluted five times. That means 500 people would have to be inoculated at once, since vaccines lose their potency once a vial is opened.
Since routine immunization ended in 1972, most medical workers would need training in administering the live vaccine, a process that includes 15 quick stabs in the arm. Immunized health care workers would likely be out of work for 10 days, Hauer said, to prevent the spread of live vaccine to patients.
Thompson's team is also debating whether to require an HIV test for anyone receiving the vaccine, since it could be harmful to people with weakened immune systems.
Several advisers to Homeland Security Director Tom Ridge have been pressing for a way to vaccinate more Americans, said Alan Zelicoff, a physician and biological weapons expert at Sandia National Laboratories in New Mexico.
"They are trying to find an approach that has the highest benefit-to-risk ratio," he said. Starting with medical workers makes sense, he said, because they are most likely to understand the risks of vaccination.
The CDC will monitor everyone who receives the vaccine, Hauer said, to track any adverse reactions.
Experts at the CDC have also developed a quarantine plan based on a hoax that occurred last year. In the scenario, a person infected with smallpox boards a plane with 500 passengers. Upon arrival, passengers would likely be escorted to private rooms for vaccination and quarantine, said Marty Cetron, a CDC investigator who helped develop the quarantine proposal.
But that sort of "ring vaccination" scenario unrealistically assumes health officials would know before the plane landed that it contained a person with smallpox and that the other passengers would peacefully agree to quarantine, argued William Bicknell, a physician at Boston University School of Public Health and former Massachusetts health commissioner.
Given today's mobile society and the likely craftiness of a terrorist armed with a virus, Bicknell advocates vaccinating millions of adults, an approach that could serve as a deterrent. "If you vaccinate a couple million people, it becomes easier to vaccinate the rest" if there is an outbreak, he said.
Still, noted Zelicoff: "If we vaccinate a few million people, we know a few are going to die."
----
Study: AIDS Shortening Life in 51 Nations
Life Expectancy in Botswana Has Been Nearly Halved, Barcelona Conference Is Told
By David Brown
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, July 8, 2002; Page A02
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A36452-2002Jul7.html
BARCELONA, July 7 -- The AIDS pandemic will cause a decline in life expectancy in 51 countries in the next two decades, a demographic effect essentially without precedent in modern times, according to a study released here on the opening day of the 14th International AIDS Conference.
Seven countries in sub-Saharan Africa now have average life expectancies under 40 years. In tiny Botswana, the hottest of AIDS hot spots, life expectancy is now 39 years, instead of the 72 it would have been without the emergence of AIDS.
By the end of this decade, 11 countries in the region will have life expectancies of less than 40 years, a level they have not experienced since the end of the 1800s, according to Karen A. Stanecki, a demographer at the U.S. Census Bureau, where the calculations were made.
"The AIDS pandemic is dramatically changing the demographic makeup of African countries. Unfortunately, many . . . are only beginning to see the impact of these high levels of HIV prevalence," she said.
The falling life expectancy reflects not only the death of people in young adulthood, but also an increase in infant mortality.
AIDS is eroding decades of increasing child survival, the demographers found. Zimbabwe and South Africa each have higher child mortality rates now than in 1990. In Botswana, Zimbabwe, South Africa and Namibia, more infants will die from human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection in 2010 than from all other causes, according to the research, which was funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development.
Longevity is also in decline in some nations in the Caribbean (the region second only to Africa in HIV prevalence). In Haiti, life expectancy is now 51 years instead of 59; in the Bahamas it is 66 instead of 74.
In Africa, about 55 percent of infected people are women, and the number of female cases is increasing. Among teenagers, girls are more likely to be infected than boys. In a survey in the Kenyan city of Kisumu, for example, the rate of infection among teenagers ages 15 to 19 was 23 percent in females, while it was 3.5 percent in males.
The increasing likelihood that AIDS will kill more women than men has potentially worrisome implications. "Current evidence indicates that older men are infecting younger women, who then go on to infect their partners, particularly through marriage. This vicious cycle could result in even higher HIV infection levels," Stanecki wrote.
Noting similar statistics at a pre-conference press briefing yesterday, Stephen Lewis, U.N. special envoy on HIV/AIDS in Africa, said, "This pandemic has become a war on women. AIDS has become the ultimate symbol of gender inequality."
Lewis predicted that in a decade or so "we're going to have a demographic rupture. . . . We're going to have all kinds of men without partners, wandering the landscape on a continent where there is already substantial instability."
The AIDS conference, which opened yesterday and will end Friday, is the largest one ever, with about 15,000 delegates, including journalists and commercial representatives. The last conference, two years ago in Durban, South Africa, had just under 10,000.
The U.S. delegation is headed by Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy G. Thompson, who will address the gathering on Tuesday. At a news conference yesterday, he said the United States is "committed to the fight against global HIV/AIDS. We want to serve those most in need, and we're ready not just to discuss and learn, but to act."
He noted that the Bush administration has provided more money to fight AIDS overseas than any previous administration, including that of former president Bill Clinton, who will speak at the conference's closing ceremonies.
In other data released yesterday, figures from 25 states suggest the number of new cases of HIV infection reported every three months in the United Statesis at 1998 levels. Between 1994 and 1998, the number of new cases fell by 24 percent.
However, it is difficult for two reasons to know whether that prolonged plateau represents the current state of the nation as a whole. The count is only complete through 2000. More importantly, California, New York and Florida, the three states with the largest number of HIV cases, aren't in the sample. They were not included because when the 25-state survey began in 1993, those states didn't require that new HIV patients be reported to public health authorities either by name or by a number-coded identifier.
Hidden in that seemingly stable picture, however, is evidence of a mini-epidemic of HIV infection in black women, and of continual risky behavior in many gay men that could potentially send the epidemic curve upward again. From 1994 through 2000, 27 percent of new HIV infections in the United States were acquired through heterosexual contact. In the last two years of that period, however, HIV diagnoses among heterosexuals grew by 10 percent. The biggest growth was among black women, who accounted for about half of all cases of HIV infection acquired heterosexually.
"Black women are suffering a highly disproportionate toll in the epidemic now," said Ronald Valdiserri, deputy director of AIDS prevention at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
About 43 percent of infections in the last half of the 1990s occurred in gay or bisexual men. At that time, CDC epidemiologists conducted a survey of young gay men in six American cities. The men, all under 30, were interviewed at dance clubs, health clubs, bars and community centers. About 10 percent were HIV positive, but few of them knew it, and many believed they weren't at high risk.
Among the black men who were infected, 91 percent were unaware; among Latinos, 70 percent, and among whites, 60 percent. Slightly more than half of the entire group of infected people had either never been tested for AIDS or hadn't been tested in more than a year.
In the group of infected men who had been previously unaware, half reported having engaged in unprotected anal intercourse -- an extremely high-risk activity -- in the previous six months. Asked why they did not use a condom, about half said they were relying on a previous negative blood test from either themselves or their partner to convince them they weren't at risk for getting the virus.
--------
Scientists in Barcelona Report on New AIDS Drug
New York Times
July 8, 2002
By LAWRENCE K. ALTMAN
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/07/08/health/08CND-IMMU.html
BARCELONA, Spain, July 8 - A novel experimental drug showed highly promising results in two large late-stage trials, offering new hope for thousands of patients who are infected with drug-resistant AIDS virus, scientists reported at the 14th International AIDS Conference here today.
The drug, T-20 or Enfuvirtide, is a member of a new class of drugs called fusion inhibitors that fight H.I.V., the AIDS virus. When added to combinations of standard drugs, T-20, reduced high levels of H.I.V. in the blood in at least twice the percentage of patients with documented resistant virus than among those who took the standard drugs.
The drop exceeded the amount the study expected, said the researchers who conducted the trials at 112 hospitals in the United States, Europe, Australia and South America.
Also, T-20 combination led to an increase in the number of the CD-4 white blood cells that H.I.V. destroys.
AIDS experts welcomed the news about T-20 because they have long pleaded for pharmaceutical companies to develop new classes of drugs to help save the lives of the thousands of patients who are infected with resistant H.I.V.
Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases in Bethesda, Md., said that the trial findings "are important because they are proof of concept" that infusion inhibitor type drugs can work.
The trials "were meticulously done by meticulous researchers," Dr. Fauci said in an interview.
"Any time you get a drug aimed at a new target in a virus it's good news because it provides another roadblock to the virus," Dr. Fauci said.
The Food and Drug Administration has given T-20 fast-track designation, meaning it will expedite data filed as part of applications of drugs for marketing.
If licensed, T-20 would become the fifth class of anti-H.I.V. drugs approved for standard use. "That would greatly broaden therapeutic options" for fighting AIDS, Dr. Fauci said, because it probably would allow doctors to expand the more than 100 combinations of the anti-H.I.V. drugs now possible.
But because the T-20 trials lasted 24 weeks, the long-term benefits and dangers of the drug are not known. Once started, lifetime treatment of H.I.V. is needed, AIDS experts say.
So H.I.V. resistance to T-20 could eventually become a problem, Dr. Fauci and other AIDS experts said.
T-20 is a synthetic drug that has been developed by Trimeris and Roche. Dr. David Reddy, a Roche official, said at a news conference that T-20 is the most complex drug the industry has ever produced.
T-20 blocks H.I.V.'s cell machinery at a different site than do any of the standard anti-H.I.V. drugs. Whereas existing anti-H.I.V. drugs disrupt enzymes in the virus, T-20 blocks the fusion of H.I.V. with cells in the body.
Most participants in the two trials had taken 12 different drugs over a seven-year period.
T-20 has a drawback in that it has to be injected under the skin twice daily much like diabetics do in taking insulin. But experts like Dr. Fauci said they held out hope that the pharmaceutical industry would eventually develop newer fusion inhibitors that could be taken as pills.
Meanwhile, an injectable anti-H.I.V. drug may pose difficulties for use in some areas of third world countries.
Many recipients of T-20 experienced reactions at the skin site of injection, but only 3 percent dropped out of the trials for that reason. A number of T-20 recipients experienced fatigue, insomnia and damage to peripheral nerves.
Powerful combinations of anti-H.I.V. drugs became available in 1996 when drugs belonging to the protease inhibitor class began allowing thousands of H.I.V.-infected people to go back to work and live more normal lives.
But the drugs have failed for thousands of other people who find the regimens too difficult to take. And H.I.V. develops resistance in thousands of others who adhere to the regimens.
Trials like the T-20 ones are not intended to provide guidelines on how and when to use experimental drugs. Although some experts predicted that T-20 would become a key compontent of future standard anti-H.I.V. therapy, the investigators who conducted the trials conceded that doctors will have to learn when and how to use it, if licensed.
Roche said it hoped to manufacture enough T-20 to allow expanded use later this year.
-------- ACTIVISTS
Dr. Alice Stewart Dies at 95; Researched Radiation Risks
By Richard Pearson
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, July 8, 2002; Page B04
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A36826-2002Jul7?language=printer
Alice Stewart, 95, a noted British physician and research epidemiologist whose findings on the dangers of low-level radiation brought her international acclaim and controversy, died June 23 in Oxford, England. The cause of death was not reported.
She devoted her professional life to issues of social medicine, especially to studies warning of the danger of even low-level radiation doses to such groups as pregnant women and nuclear workers. Along the way, she took on the British and U.S. governments, as well as the nuclear establishment, to reveal that radiation can be more dangerous than was thought.
Dr. Stewart, the author of more than 400 technical papers and a founder of the British Journal of Industrial Medicine, always contended that she was a scientist rather than an activist. Yet she became known for her speeches to groups questioning nuclear policies, especially after the Three Mile Island and Chernobyl incidents. In 1986, she received the Right Livelihood Award, which is often called the alternative Nobel Prize, for her contributions to society.
She first gained headlines while at Oxford University in the mid-1950s and working on the Oxford Child Health Surveys. The number of childhood leukemia cases in Britain was skyrocketing, a phenomenon Dr. Stewart attributed to the exposure of pregnant women to low-level radiation doses from medical X-rays. At the time, X-rays were commonly used by physicians to study the position of the fetus.
Dr. Stewart's research showed that the children of women who had been X-rayed were more than twice as likely to develop leukemia by age 10 than the children of women who had not been X-rayed while pregnant.
Her findings raised a storm in the nuclear establishment, including among physicians who saw opening horizons for nuclear medicine to diagnose and treat myriad diseases.
Others who were outraged included many in governments who had been assuring their military forces and their nuclear workers of the benign effects of mild radiation. And nuclear power enthusiasts felt that studies like hers threatened the spread of nuclear power plants.
Dr. Stewart found funding for further studies hard to come by and found government groups blocking her access to raw data she needed for her research. Other studies backed her conclusions, though, and by the 1970s, prenatal X-rays had become largely a practice of the past.
The stakes were dramatically raised in the mid-1970s when Dr. Stewart was invited to become a consultant to a federal study into the effects of low-level radiation on workers at the historic nuclear plant in Hanford, Wash., a huge government facility remembered as the source of plutonium used in World War II atomic bombs.
The Hanford Survey was the largest study of its kind into the long-term health of nuclear workers. Dr. Stewart's initial findings indicated that workers at Hanford, which by all accounts met or exceeded international norms for nuclear safety, were 10 times more likely to develop cancer in later life than was commonly believed.
Another uproar resulted, with the study's director being fired and a new rule precluding the use of consultants being enacted. The federal government tried to seize the study data in Dr. Stewart's possession and barred her access to further government data. The study was not published by the government, and Dr. Stewart published work based on her data and on material submitted to her by others.
If she was attacked by governments and by scientists of the nuclear establishment, her work majestically gained support. Reexamination of data dealing with survivors of the Hiroshima bomb indicated that perhaps Dr. Stewart was more right than wrong. The International Commission for Radiation Protection issued guidelines reducing the recommended safe dosage of radiation by two-thirds.
Dr. Stewart fought the Energy Department for more than a decade seeking access to health data of nuclear workers. After testimony before congressional groups, the department was told to make data available to independent scholarly researchers such as Dr. Stewart.
Alice Mary Naish was born in Sheffield, England, to parents who were both physicians. She received her medical degree from Cambridge University and, during World War II, conducted acclaimed studies on the health risks of factory workers and miners.
Dr. Stewart joined Oxford University's School of Social Medicine and became a fellow of the university's Lady Margaret Hall shortly after World War II. She taught and did research at the university until 1974. She then became a senior research fellow in Birmingham University's Social Medicine Department. She retired about two years ago.
--------
China Declares War on Falun Gong Satellite Hackers
July 8, 2002
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-religion-china-falungong.html
BEIJING (Reuters) - China vowed Monday to punish members of the banned Falun Gong spiritual movement who hijacked state-run satellite signals during the soccer World Cup finals in one of the group's most daring protests to date.
``This is extremely despicable and represents yet another crime committed by Falun Gong,'' said Liu Lihua, Director-General of Ministry of Information Industry'sRadio Regulatory Department told a media conference.
The MII said Falun Gong followers had, under the guidance of U.S.-based leader Li Hongzhi, hijacked nine national channels and 10 provincial stations by interfering with signals of state-run Sino Satellite (SINOSAT) company between June 23 to 30.
``We solemnly warn the Falun Gong cult to immediately stop its lawless disruption of normal communications,'' the ministry said in a statement.
Followers had hacked into cable television networks earlier this year but this was the first time Falun Gong had intercepted the Sinosat satellite, which serves strategic interests such as the national weather bureau and state-run Xinhua news agency.
Millions of Chinese missed part of the World Cup finals, celebrations for the fifth anniversary of Hong Kong's return to Chinese rule, and news related to the fatal floods that had swept the nation, Liu said.
Instead, viewers concentrated in poor and mountainous areas of the country were intermittently shown blackened screens and, at one point, around 20 seconds of images showing Falun Gong adherents meditating in seated positions.
It disrupted a government scheme to broadcast propaganda to the massive rural population, part of efforts to maintain social stability as wrenching reforms threaten to see millions lose their jobs ahead of an expected key leadership re-shuffle.
Xinhua quoted a senior official as saying the act was an ``overt challenge to modern civilized society'' and a ``flagrant subversion of social order.''
China's sensitivity over Falun Gong was highlighted last week when Beijing stopped transmission of the BBC's World Service Television channel after it showed group members in Hong Kong protesting against visiting Chinese President Jiang Zemin.
MEDIA TARGETED
Falun Gong, banned in China after followers staged a peaceful demonstration to demand recognition of their faith in 1999, practices a mixture of Taoism, Buddhism, traditional Chinese exercises and its founder's own ideas.
The group's once frequent demonstrations, mostly on Beijing's Tiananmen Square, have petered out following a fierce crackdown.
Followers appear to have changed tactics to focus on state media, and successfully hacked into cable television networks in the southwestern city of Chongqing in January and in the northeastern city of Changchun in March, Liu said.
He said substantial progress had been made in tracking down the perpetrators, who he said had breached national security and international telecommunications conventions.
``They can run but they cannot hide forever. They will be subjected to severe punishment according to the law,'' Liu said.
The interception of Sinosat's signals, which disrupted more than a dozen hours of viewing, had caused extensive but unspecified economic losses to the commercial reputation of Sino Satellite Communications Ltd, officials said.
While it was easier to interfere with cable television systems than with a satellite, people could buy some of the necessary equipment from local shops and learn how to analyze satellite signals, said Du Baichuan, deputy chief engineer of the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television (SARFT).
``It is not as high-tech as a layman may think,'' Du told the news conference.
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