NucNews - December 20, 2005



-------- NUCLEAR 


-------- china 

China's $8 bln nuclear deal postponed indefinitely

Tue Dec 20, 6:16 AM ET (Reuters)

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20051220/sc_nm/utilities_china_nuclear_dc_1

BEIJING - China will miss a year-end deadline for handing out an $8 billion contract to build four nuclear reactors, and plans to postpone its choice indefinitely, an industry source close to the bidding said on Tuesday.

Pittsburgh-based Westinghouse Electric Co., France's Areva and Russia's Atomstroiexport are vying for the contract to build China's first third-generation reactors.

Beijing's original plan was to make a final decision by the end of this year but officials have decided to put it off because of the high price of the foreign reactors, the source said.

Even though China was considering importing only those parts of the plants that could not be produced domestically, the prices offered by the bidders were still considered unreasonably high.

"There will be no new deadline for the decision. When the government announces the result will depend on how the talks are going," he added.

During a visit to France earlier this month, Premier Wen Jiabao indicated Paris would have to improve its offer in terms of both price and transfer of nuclear technology, the source said, adding the same message had been passed to other bidders.

"The ball has been kicked to the foreign side again. We will wait and see how they react," he said.

Industry officials have said both Westinghouse's AP 1000 and Areva's EPR technology are very competitive, while the Russian offer is less so.

In contrast with the delay in introducing foreign technology, Beijing is accelerating the construction of nuclear reactors that use existing domestic technology.

Work began last week on the second phase of the Ling'ao plant in southern Guangdong province. It will put two 1.0-gigawatt reactors into commercial operation in 2010 and 2011.

"These projects have nothing to do with the third-generation technology and will not be influenced by it," the source said.

The energy-guzzling nation plans to invest some 400 billion yuan ($49.56 billion) in building around 30 new nuclear reactors by 2020, bringing its total installed nuclear capacity to 40 gigawatts.

It currently has nine working reactors that supply around 2.3 percent of its electricity, but aims to boost the amount of power it gets from nuclear plants to 4 percent within 15 years.



<a name="du"></a>

-------- depleted uranium

Dr Anthrax released 
The Release of Dr. Anthrax 

By Felicity Arbuthnot
From: davey garland <thunderelf@yahoo.co.uk> 
Date: Tue Dec 20, 2005 10:50am 

On Saturday, eight 'high value' Iraqis held without charge for over two years by the United States were released.They included Dr Huda Ammash, a distinguished internationally renowned, environmental biologist, Professor at Baghdad University, whose earned her PhD at the University of Missouri. Her father, former Iraqi Ambassador to the US, under the government of Abdul Karim Kassem (1958-1963) was executed in a purge to stamp authority by Saddam in 1981. In the 1990's Dr Ammash was, ironically offered a seat in the Legislature. When Saddam offered a position to say:'No thanks, I've my career plan mapped out', was not an option, but her academic career remained her passion and primary focus.

Arrested by US troops, this brave, gentle woman suddenly became 'Mrs Anthrax' and featured on America's assinine playing cards of their 'most wanted', in the wild west, last chance saloon, Iraq became after April 2003.

Dr Ammash's crime was her numerous scientific papers on the environmental and biological impact of sanctions and the horrific health cost of the weapons used in the 1991 Gulf war by Britain and the US. In 'Iraq Under Siege -the Deadly Impact of Sanctions and War' (Pluto Press, updated 2003 Ed: Anthony Arnove) contributers included Noam Chomsky, John Pilger, Howard Zinn, Denis Halliday - and Huda Ammash. All those the US and UK Administrations love to hate most, were under one cover and she was firmly allied with them.

Her introduction reads: 'The Gulf war ended in 1991, but the massive destruction linked to it continues. An unprecedented catastrophe resulting from a mixture of toxic, radiological, chemical and electromagnetic exposure is still causing substantial consequences to health and the environment, excacerbated by santions .... much of Iraq has been turned into a polluted and radioactive environment.' She understated.  She refers to the International Treaties outlawing such weapons, to depleted uranium (DU) weapons not being 'depleted' but 'radioactive waste', the all in minutely detailed, careful, hard hitting, scientific, incontravertable fact. 'DU is radiologically and chemically toxic to humans and other forms of life.' She details, well on the side of caution the '... terrifying total of three hundred and twenty to three hundred and fifty tonnes of DU expended ammunition.... scattered throughout Iraq and Kuwait.' She reminds that US Army manuals warn of the dangers, that the pollution enters the water table and thus can spread through the entre region ravaging the lives of those - young, older and yet unborn - not even in the conflict zone.

She writes of a less adressed subject: 'Electromagnetic pollution'. '....particularly dangerous because it is often undetected'. In Finland near early wanring radar systems, '..pregnancy problems, anxiety, depression, fatality, heart failures, cardiovascular diseases, cancers ...leukaemia, eye and skin diseases ..' in excess have been recorded,as with those who work 'in other electromagnetic environments.' During the forty five day day war, widely deployed electronic devices '... advanced radar systems, lazer guided missiles ...released high frequency electromagnetic energy into the atmosphere ...' Chemical pollution included black rain, a soot laden atmosphere and environmental pollution was added to by soil ruination by heavy metals such as nickel and vanadium also '.. changing the components of the ecosystem ..' producing an increase in rodents and scorpions.' Plants died in poisoned earth and in formerly fertile land: ' .... new fields of sand dunes were created.' The British government were perfectly aware of Dr Ammash's non-anthrax credentials, they gave her a visa to speak at a Conference on Iraq's environment in Manchester in 2000, where their plants sat in their seats as the rest of the audience gave her a standing ovation. Iraqis too were in the audience, opposed to Saddam - many listened to her with tears in their eyes. 

Huda Ammash tried to alert the world and redeem, save, her country's environment. She might also have saved Ken Bigley. His kidnapper's demand in October 2004 was, as with Margaret Hassan, release of women prisoners - all women prisoners.The British government said there were none, that after the depravities of Abu Ghraib they had been released (to call this economical with the truth would be another understatement.) The US Administration linked the demand to only Dr Ammash and a colleague Dr Rihab Taha. Colin Powell whose country is holding all Iraq hostage, said he didn't do deals with hostage takers - and Ken Bigley was beheaded. Even two illegally held women might have been a life saving gesture.

Another life to be saved is Dr Ammash herself, who passionately fighting for the environment she loved, had fallen its victim. She never mentioned the cancer she suffers, to which she has lost both her breasts. Brave, steely, elegant, gentle. Her treatment shames us all. Oh, and anthrax? Perhaps the US should arrest a few scientists at their very own Fort Detrick, Maryland, the US Army's 'Medical Research Institute' - possibly the world's largest producer of weapons grade anthrax.



-------- india 

Congressmen seek to oppose India nuclear deal

Tue Dec 20, 2005 6:44 PM ET (Reuters)

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20051220/ts_nm/nuclear_india_usa_dc_2

WASHINGTON - Two U.S. lawmakers have proposed a resolution expressing congressional disapproval for President George W. Bush's sweeping nuclear agreement with India, one of the congressmen said on Tuesday.

If the resolution passed, it would signal lawmakers' "disapproval" of the July 18 deal, which has generated strong opposition from non-proliferation advocates because it would give India access to previously banned technology.

"The administration's move to launch nuclear cooperation with India has grave security implications for South Asia and the entire world," said Democratic Rep. Edward Markey (news, bio, voting record) of Massachusetts, who introduced the resolution with Republican Rep. Fred Upton (news, bio, voting record) of Michigan last week.

Markey, co-chair of the Bipartisan Task Force on Non-proliferation, and Upton are members of the House Energy and Commerce Committee.

"Supplying nuclear fuel to countries that are not party to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty derails the delicate balance that has been established between nuclear nations and limits our capacity to insist that other nations continue to follow that important non-proliferation policy," he said.

"We cannot break the nuclear rules established in the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and demand that everyone else play by them," he added in a statement.

For 25 years, the United States led the global fight to deny India access to nuclear technology because it rejected the treaty, developed nuclear weapons and tested them.

But Bush, aiming to improve ties with the world's largest democracy, jettisoned this approach in the July 18 agreement which would permit civilian U.S.-India nuclear cooperation.

Bush wants changes in U.S. law -- which would have to be approved by Congress -- and international regulations -- which would have to be agreed by the 44-nation Nuclear Suppliers' Group -- to let India obtain the restricted items, including nuclear fuel. Bush has yet to say exactly what changes he would seek.

The Markey-Upton resolution says the deal "poses far-reaching and potentially adverse implications" for U.S. non-proliferation objectives and will do little to bring India into closer alignment with U.S. strategic objectives.

Just when the resolution might be acted on is unclear. Congress is supposed to adjourn soon for a monthlong recess.

India conducted nuclear tests in 1974 and 1998. Markey said Bush's approach will signal to other nations that "there are no serious consequences for violating nuclear treaties."

Senior U.S. and Indian officials are to discuss the deal in Washington on Wednesday. 



-------- iran

Iran uncompromising on eve of crucial N-talks

Tuesday, December 20, 2005 - IranMania.com

http://www.iranmania.com/News/ArticleView/Default.asp?ArchiveNews=Yes&NewsCode=38957&NewsKind=CurrentAffairs

LONDON, December 20 (IranMania) - Iran has spelled out clearly it will not back away from its bid to conduct sensitive nuclear fuel work, limiting the chance for a compromise at a key meeting on Wednesday with Britain, France and Germany, according to AFP.

For Iran, conducting fuel cycle work and enriching uranium to make reactor fuel is a "right" afforded to all signatories of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

"Be certain that we will not back away one iota from our legitimate nuclear rights," Iran's hardline President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said last week.

But the so-called EU-3, backed by the United States, argues that the Islamic republic cannot be trusted to carry out enrichment, a process that can be extended to make the explosive core of a nuclear bomb.

Wednesday's talks in Vienna are aimed at seeing if any common ground exists and whether long-term negotiations on finding guarantees Iran will not acquire a nuclear weapon can restart.

The negotiations broke down in August, and a total deadlock in Wednesday's meeting would likely spark a push by the Europeans and the United States for the issue to be sent to the UN Security Council, which could in turn impose sanctions.

Iran has already vowed to retaliate to such a step by resuming uranium enrichment, suspended since October2003 , and limiting International Atomic Energy Agency inspections of its nuclear facilities.

"The world has understood that the national will of Iran to enrich is serious," Iran's top nuclear negotiator Ali Larijani said on Monday, adding that the Vienna talks will simply have to focus on Iran enriching and on ways to ensure that "Iran's enrichment is not diverted".

"We will make other proposals. The Iranian delegation will welcome all proposals, on the condition that they recognise the rights of Iran," said Gholam Reza Aghazadeh, a vice president and head of Iran's Atomic Energy Organisation.

He did not say what Iran could put on the table, but pointed to Ahmadinejad's standing offer for foreign firms to be involved in enrichment on Iranian soil as a form of supervision.

"The proposal for participation presented by Tehran is the best solution to guarantee there is no deviation from a peaceful programme," Hossein Entezami, a spokesman for Iran's Supreme National Security Council, told the student news agency ISNA.

He also said Iran wanted to bring an end to the enrichment suspension as soon as possible. It was the resumption of uranium conversion, a precursor to enrichment, in August that prompted the current crisis.

"Taking into account the resumption of the uranium conversion facility at Isfahan, the manner in which to lift the voluntary suspension at enrichment installations is on Iran's agenda," Entezami said.

The Europeans, however, have other ideas.

They want to push a proposal from Moscow whereby Iran could conduct much of the fuel cycle at home but only enrich its uranium on Russian soil, meaning the most sensitive nuclear work is out of the country.

Iran has already rejected this proposal, and has also poured cold water on a "Libya-style" deal offered by the EU- 3-- whereby Iran would voluntarily limit its nuclear activities in exchange for trade and other incentives.

With the two sides at odds on such a fundamental question, European and Western diplomats say they fear the meeting is all but futile, but could help in getting Russia to back a hardline against Iran's atomic ambitions.

"I fear that we'll just be going through the motions when we meet with the Iranians," an EU diplomat has commented. "The real diplomatic work at the moment is trying to bring the Russians on board so we can take this to the Security Council."

Russia, which has a veto on the Security Council, is backing Iran's right to civilian nuclear technology and says the issue should remain with the IAEA.



-------- israel

IDF: Iranian threat on Israel substantial
IDF Intelligence Chief says Iran's threat on Israel growing due to U.S.'s deep involvement in Iraq; MK Steinitz: Improvement in Iran's missile capabilities worrying

Moran Zelikovich
(12.20.05, 14:41) YNet

http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3187457,00.html

The Iranian threat on Israel is substantial and growing; the United States is stuck in the Iraqi mud, thus enabling the threat to grow, IDF Intelligence Director Major-General Aharon Zeevi Farkash said Tuesday during a Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee meeting.

He added that Iran is working on developing a second nuclear project at high pace.
 
Farkash referred to the Iranian issue in Sunday's cabinet meeting as well, saying "Iran is determined to reach nuclear capabilities and obtain ground to ground missiles. It is turning into a regional power."

Former Iranian President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani says in meeting with senior Hamas member Khaled Mashal in Tehran, ‘high spirit, resistance of Palestinians people for the restoration of their violated rights are among the factors leading to current situation encountered by the Zionists. Mashal: Politics can only compliment resistance

"I don't see a real possibility for diplomacy preventing Iran from becoming armed with nuclear weapons. In the coming months, we will witness the end of the abilities of our diplomatic maneuvers, and that of the world, against Iran. With that, I'm not saying we have to give up. We must carry on with economic and political sanctions," Farkash added.
 
Steinitz: These are crucial times

In a previous briefing by the military intelligence chief at the Foreign Affairs and Defense committee, Farkash warned that Iran was in a better position to deal with international pressure over its nuclear ambitions, with the International Atomic Energy Agency’s decision not to refer Tehran to the Security Council and to explore a Russian compromise on the issue.
 
If international diplomacy fails to place the Iranian nuclear file on the discussion table of the Security Council by March, the diplomatic process would have failed, he said.
 
The committee's chairman, MK Yuval Steinitz (Likud) said Tuesday that "the military intelligence director has portrayed a very worrying and serious picture, which proves the extent of the danger Israel is facing."
 
"These are crucial times. Iran is determined to promote its achievement of nuclear capabilities and is even improving its missile capabilities at a worrying pace," he added.
 
Steinitz also said that Iran is on its way to become the strongest power state in the region, adding that such a situation would have crucial implications on Israel.



-------- korea

North Korea to develop light-water nuclear reactors

SEOUL (AFP) Dec 20, 2005

http://www.spacewar.com/2005/051220052437.jhg7xgzj.html

North Korea announced Tuesday it intended to build an unspecified number of light-water reactors, saying the United States had reduced a 1994 deal on mothballing nuclear power plants to a "dead document."

Pyongyang's official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said in a dispatch that the Stalinist regime would also resume the construction of two graphite moderated reactors (GMRs) frozen under the 1994 accord.

North Korea will "start developing and building LWRs (light-water reactors) of Korean style in reliance upon its indigenous technology and potential when an appropriate time comes to put further spurs to its peaceful nuclear activities," it said.

The power plants are at the centre of six-nation talks on the North's nuclear programme, amid fears that Pyongyang could reprocess spent fuel to arm nuclear weapons.

Uranium from the light water reactors, however, cannot be used for weapons development.

Chon Hyun-Joon of the state-financed Korea Institute for National Unification said experts here were skeptical about North Korea's ability to develop lightwater reactors, citing its lack of expertise and cash.

The 1994 deal led North Korea to freeze a five megawatt reactor and a partially-built 50 megawatt reactor, both in Yongbyon, some 90 kilometersmiles) north of Pyongyang.

In April 2003, North Korea said it had begun reprocessing more than 8,000 spent nuclear fuel rods to make plutonium from its five-megawatt reactor. It also threatened to resume construction of other reactors in Yongbyon.

And in June this year it said it had a stockpile of nuclear bombs.

The five-megawatt reactor in Yongbyon alone is reportedly capable of producing enough uranium fuel to make about seven kilograms (15.4 pounds) of plutonium annually, enough to make a single atomic bomb.

The two graphite moderated reactors that Pyongyang wants to develop, would, if completed, be capable of producing enough spent fuel annually for 200 kilograms of plutonium, sufficient to manufacture nearly 30 atomic bombs per year, US experts said.

Frozen facilities also included another partially-built 200 megawatt nuclear power plant in Taechon County in the northwestern province of North Pyongan.

The North also made a fresh demand for compensation for the "huge" losses it suffered by scrapping the project to build the light-water reactors (LWRs).

"The US is now under a legal and moral obligation to compensate for the huge political and economic losses it has caused to the DPRK (North Korea) by totally stopping the construction of the LWRs and scrapping the AF (Agreed Framework)," it said in reference to the 1994 agreement.

Construction of the reactors, started as part of a 1994 deal dubbed the Agreed Framework, has been in limbo ever since Washington accused Pyongyang in October 2002 of violating the accord by running a separate nuclear programme.

The project was officially scrapped last month by the Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organization (KEDO), the body formed to administer the light-water project and made up of the United States, South Korea, Japan and the European Union.

Under the Agreed Framework, North Korea promised to freeze its nuclear facilities in return for the construction of two light-water reactors at a cost of some five billion dollars.

The reactors are about one-third completed and more than one billion dollars has been sunk in the project.

At six-party talks in September aimed at resolving the rekindled nuclear confrontation, North Korea agreed in principle to dismantle its nuclear weapons program in exchange for diplomatic and economic gains and security guarantees.

But at the last session in November it said US sanctions were blocking any progress at the talks involving the two Koreas, the United States, China, Japan and Russia.

A North Korean foreign ministry spokesman said Monday North Korea would bolster its nuclear deterrent to counter a US bid to use the human rights issue as part of a drive to topple the communist regime.

North Korea said last week that six-party talks would be suspended indefinitely unless the United States lifts the sanctions.

----

Building of Nuclear-free World Called for

Korean Central News Agency of DPRK via Korea News Service (KNS), December 18, 2005

http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/library/news/dprk/2005/dprk-051219-kcna01.htm

    Pyongyang (KCNA) -- The Democratic People's Republic of Korea will as ever make every possible effort to make the world free from nuclear weapons. The DPRK delegate said this at the plenary session of the 60th U.N. General Assembly on Dec. 8.

    The DPRK delegation holds that what is basic in disarmament should be nuclear disarmament and it should be dismantlement of nuclear weapons, he said, expressing concern over the U.S. and its allies' insisting only on non-proliferation while disregarding nuclear disarmament. For non-proliferation it is necessary to remove its root cause, he said, noting that it is high time for all the nuclear states to take effective steps for complete dismantlement of nuclear weapons.

    He called for signing a binding international agreement on non-use of nukes as early as possible so as to remove the danger of the use of nukes by nuclear states, which is concerned by non-nuclear states. 

----

N. Korea vows to begin nuke work

By Jong-Heon Lee
Dec 20, 2005 United Press International

http://news.monstersandcritics.com/asiapacific/printer_1070332.php

SEOUL, South Korea (UPI) -- Standing firm against U.S. pressure, North Korea threatened Tuesday to resume work on graphite-moderated reactors that can produce large amounts of material for atomic bombs.

The threat was considered in South Korea as a way to intensify the nuclear standoff in a bid to cope with U.S.-led pressure on Pyongyang`s human rights abuses and alleged illicit activities such as counterfeiting and drug trafficking.

\'By raising the stakes in the nuclear dispute, North Korea wants to focus negotiations on the nuclear issue in order to avoid mounting pressure on non-nuclear issues,\' a South Korean government official said.

Under a 1994 agreement, North Korea pledged to freeze its Soviet-designed weapon-grade plutonium-producing graphite-moderated reactors, in return for a U.S. promise to build two safer 1,000-megawatt light-water reactors for North Korea.

But the agreement fell through in late 2002 when the United States accused North Korea maintaining a uranium-based nuclear weapons program, a charge Pyongyang denied. U.S.-led allies halted construction of light-water reactors in North Korea.

The $4.6 billion LWR project was officially scrapped last month by the Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organization, the body formed to administer the light-water project and comprised of the United States, South Korea, Japan and the European Union.

On Tuesday, North Korea criticized the United States for the failure of the LWR project, claiming it caused the communist country`s acute energy shortages.

\'Because the light-water reactor was not completed, we have lost billions of kilowatts of energy every year from 2004. This has greatly undermined our economic development and people`s lives,\' Pyongyang`s state-run Korean Central News Agency said.

\'The United States is now under a legal and moral obligation to compensate for the huge political and economic losses it has caused to the DPRK by totally stopping the construction of the LWRs,\' it said.

DPRK refers to the Democratic People`s Republic of Korea, the North`s official name.

North Korea vowed to \'start developing and building light-water reactors of Korean-style in reliance upon its indigenous technology and potential when an appropriate time comes to put further spurs to its peaceful nuclear activities.\'

\'Now that the United States has completely given up the construction of the LWRs ... the DPRK is left with no option but to pursue without let-up its peaceful nuclear activities based on the graphite-moderated reactors of Korean style,\' KCNA said.

North Korea also reaffirmed its possession of nuclear arms, saying it feels proud to \'legally possess\' nuclear weapons, saying it is a common knowledge that without the nuclear deterrent, the North could not but face the same fate as Iraq from \'U.S. war maniacs.\'

\'This clearly is a natural and legitimate exercise of our right to self-defense,\' KCNA said. North Korea will \'counteract even more fiercely should the United States continue to stick to hard-line, oppressive policy\' against the North, it said.

\'Considering the U.S. conduct that systemically violated the basic agreement and avoided its implementation, it was truly a right decision for us not to dismantle the nuclear facilities.

\'The United States has neither reason nor cause for us to take issue with our strengthening nuclear deterrent, while it continues to pursue this hostile policy against us,\' the KCNA report said.<!--page-->

On Monday, the North Korean Foreign Ministry said Pyongyang would bolster its nuclear deterrent to counter what it called a U.S. bid to use the human rights issue as part of a drive to topple the communist regime.

\'The United States is a typical criminal state which politicizes the human rights issue and applies selectivity and double standards concerning the issue,\' the ministry said.

The North`s statements come amid dimming prospects for the resumption of six-nation talks on ending Pyongyang`s nuclear weapons programs this month.

In September, the U.S. Treasury Department suspended transactions between its financial institutions and Macau-based Banco Delta Asia because it was alleged to be involved in North Korea`s money laundering and fake currency distribution. The bank has cut off ties with North Korea.

The move forced North Korea to change its main channel for financial transactions to Austria, according to South Korean government sources.

The U.S. administration has also frozen the U.S.-based assets of eight North Korean companies suspected of being implicated in the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.

Last week, U.S. Ambassador to South Korea Alexander Vershbow called North Korea a \'criminal regime\' engaged in the sale of weapons and drug trade.

\'North Korea`s revived nuclear threats seem aimed at winning U.S. attentions on its nuclear drive to defuse Washington`s pressure on human rights issue and North Korean illicit activities,\' said a government official.

In an effort to break the nuclear impasse, South Korea`s point man on North Korea, Unification Minister Chung Dong-young, is visiting Washington. He plans to meet Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and White House national security adviser Stephen Hadley before he returns home Friday.



-------- latinamerica

Truck with Radioactive Capsule Stolen in Venezuela

VENEZUELA: December 20, 2005
REUTERS 

http://www.planetark.com/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/34130/story.htm

CARACAS - Venezuela on Monday warned of a radiation hazard and launched a nationwide search for a capsule with highly radioactive material that was stolen along with the truck carrying it.

"We have a state of emergency at a national and regional level and are looking for the capsule everywhere," civil defense director Col. Antonio Rivero told Reuters. The truck was stolen in the central-western Yaracuy state.

Speaking on state television, Angel Diaz, director of nuclear affairs at Venezuela's Energy Ministry, asked the thieves to return the potentially deadly device, whose protective container is about the size of a lunchbox, and also urged the population to inform the authorities if they find it.

Diaz said he could not rule out the use of the capsule for "malicious purposes," but Rivero said the authorities were focusing on simple truck theft as the motive.

"We call on those who stole it, probably because of the truck, to say that they can suffer very serious consequences that can lead to death," Diaz said.

Authorities said they learned about the theft on Monday but aren't sure when it occurred.

The device contains Iridium-192, which emits powerful gamma radiation and is used for industrial radiography, such as for detecting faults in underground industrial pipes.

In March, two capsules with Iridium-192 went missing through negligence in two separate states in Venezuela. Rivero said one had since been found and authorities suspected the other had been disposed of at the bottom of Lake Maracaibo.

One of the worst incidents with radiography-grade nuclear materials occurred in Brazil in 1987.

Scrap-metal scavengers took a container with Cesium-137 from an abandoned radiation therapy clinic without knowing the material was radioactive and opened it. Children smeared the material on their faces and bodies because it glowed. Five people died and 249 suffered from radiation contamination.



-------- ukraine

Ukraine Restarts Nuclear Reactor

Text of report by Ukrainian news agency UNIAN, 20 December 2005

http://www.redorbit.com/news/science/335993/ukraine_restarts_nuclear_reactor/index.html?source=r_science

Kiev: Electricity generation at generating set No 2 of the Khmelnytskyy nuclear power plant was restored yesterday at 1556 [1356 gmt], the State Committee for Nuclear Regulation of Ukraine has said.

This morning its capacity was brought to 80 per cent of its nominal level (800 MW). The generating set is being gradually loaded.

At present, 13 out of 15 generating sets at Ukrainian nuclear plants are operating. In addition to generating set No 1 at the South-Ukrainian nuclear power plant, repairs are continuing on generating set No 3 at the Rivne nuclear power plant. Nuclear fuel is being removed from generating set No 3 of the Rivne nuclear power plant. Repairs at generating set No 1 of the South-Ukrainian nuclear power plant, which was stopped due to the need to eliminate excessive vibration in a turbine, will be continued until 31 December.

----

Ukraine to Stop Shipping Spent Nuclear Fuel to Russia in 2009

Excerpt from report by Interfax-Ukraine news agency
20 December 2005

http://www.redorbit.com/news/science/335997/ukraine_to_stop_shipping_spent_nuclear_fuel_to_russia_in/index.html?source=r_science

Kuznetsovsk, Rivne Region: Starting from 2009, the national atomic energy generating company Enerhoatom, which operates all Ukraine's nuclear power plants, is going to stop shipments of spent nuclear fuel to Russia completely, Enerhoatom president Yuriy Nedashkivskyy said to a news conference in Kuznetsovsk (Rivne Region) today.

"Enerhoatom and the winner of the international tender, the American company Holtec International, are completing the preparation of contractual documentation. The signing of a contract is scheduled for 26 December," Nedashkivskyy said, commenting on the process of preparation for the signing of documents with the winner of the international tender on designing and building a centralized storage facility for spent nuclear fuel from three [Rivne, Khmelnytskyy and South-Ukrainian] nuclear power plants.

[Passage omitted: The preparation process will continue through 2006.]

"We will build the storage facility using the investors' funds. After this, in the second half of 2009 or at the end of 2009, we will stop shipping spent nuclear fuel from Ukrainian nuclear power plants to Russia completely," Nedashkivskyy said.

[Passage omitted: details of the international tender on the construction of the storage facility]



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


-------- missouri

University of Missouri gets grant for nuclear industry training

December 20, 2005 KCTV

http://www.kctv.com/Global/story.asp?S=4264109

COLUMBIA, Mo. -- The nuclear power industry received a boost Monday with a $2.3 million federal job-training grant for the University of Missouri-Columbia, home to the nation's largest campus research reactor.

The U.S. Department of Labor grant, announced by Labor Secretary Elaine Chao and Missouri Sens. Jim Talent and Kit Bond, follows a similar $7 million grant the University of Missouri received last year from the federal Department of Energy, said nuclear engineering professor William Miller.

The Department of Energy grant enabled Miller and colleagues at Linn State Community College to create an Advanced Technology Center for nuclear industry job training in Mexico, Mo. _ Bond's hometown. Linn, which is east of Jefferson City, is across the Missouri River and about 70 miles from Mexico.

Miller described the Linn State effort as a pilot program in which 28 students are pursuing two-year associate degrees for eventual careers as radiation protection technicians. While most of those trained will eventually work in the nuclear power industry, the need also exists at hospitals, universities and in private industry, he said.

The grant announced Monday will enable Missouri officials to develop a uniform curriculum and expand the program to link community colleges and energy companies in Arizona, California, Texas and Virginia, said Chao. The effort could lead to 200 new jobs, she predicted.

"There are employers out there waiting for the graduates of these programs," she said. "There is a worker shortage in this industry."

The industry too is poised to expand, which would mean a greater demand for new employees to replace a rapidly aging work force.

After decades of dormancy fueled by public concern and critical fallout following accidents at Three Mile Island and Chernobyl, several utilities are in discussions with the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Authority to build new nuclear power plants.

"This couldn't be more timely," said Talent. "We're expecting to see ... a restarting of the nuclear energy industry."

A spokesman for St. Louis-based Ameren Corp., which is considering building a second plant at its Callaway County nuclear facility, said the industry is poised to attract fresh recruits.

"People were reluctant to get into these types of professions because no new nuclear plants were being built," said Ameren spokesman Mike Cleary. "Now there's a lot of attention being paid to building new plants. It's opened up the nuclear industry again as a viable career choice."

The Missouri effort will be known as the Center for Excellence for Radiation Protection Technology, Education and Training. The training program will be offered at Central Virginia Community College in Lynchburg, Va.; MiraCosta Community College in San Diego, Calif.; Hill College in Hillsboro, Texas; and Estrella Mountain Community College near Phoenix, Ariz.

More community colleges could join the program later, Miller said.



-------- washington

Hanford plant won't face $100 million more in cuts

By SHANNON DININNY
Tuesday, December 20, 2005 Associated Press

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2002693361_hanford20m.html?syndication=rss

YAKIMA — Congress on Monday elected not to reduce funding by an additional $100 million for a waste-treatment plant at the Hanford nuclear reservation, according to U.S. Rep. Doc Hastings, whose district includes the south-central Washington site.

The funding reduction, proposed as part of cuts to help pay for Hurricane Katrina relief, was widely criticized by officials in Washington state.

The Hanford site is the nation's most contaminated nuclear site, with cleanup managed by the U.S. Department of Energy.

A vitrification plant under construction has long been considered the cornerstone of Hanford cleanup. The plant will convert millions of gallons of highly radioactive waste stored in underground tanks into glasslike logs for permanent disposal in a nuclear-waste repository.

However, the project has been mired in delays and cost overruns for years. The Energy Department, which manages Hanford cleanup, halted construction on large portions of the plant earlier this year amid new seismic concerns and skyrocketing costs.

The Bush administration cited those concerns in its $626 million budget request for the plant for 2006, down from $690 million in previous years. A House-Senate budget committee reduced that amount by $100 million more last month, to $526 million.

In addition, the Bush administration had proposed tapping the 2005 budget for $100 million, money that was not spent but was intended to be banked for construction costs in later years. That proposal was part of a $2.3 billion package of cuts to help pay for hurricane relief.

Gov. Christine Gregoire threatened to sue if the additional reductions were approved, calling them a clear violation of the federal government's obligations.

Gregoire said she was pleased with the news but still disappointed with the direction the project has taken.



-------- wisconsin

Emergency drill report was altered at Wisconsin nuclear plant

Associated Press, Tue, Dec. 20, 2005

http://www.duluthsuperior.com/mld/duluthsuperior/13449434.htm

MILWAUKEE - The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is proposing that the operators of the Point Beach nuclear power plant be fined $60,000 for failing to provide complete and accurate information concerning an emergency preparedness drill at the plant near Two Rivers in August 2002.

The agency said Monday that an investigation concluded that the plant's emergency preparedness manager and emergency preparedness coordinator deliberately provided NRC inspectors with inaccurate information about a problem identified during the drill.

In the simulated radiation leak, the plant staff allegedly failed to identify the emergency within 15 minutes, as required by federal rules during nuclear emergencies.

The NRC determined that regulators - not the plant operator Nuclear Management Co. - identified the problem during a critique of the drill. But two plant employees later falsified information on a drill performance evaluation submitted to the agency, showing incorrectly that the company, not the regulators, identified the problem.

For that falsification, two employees, William Yarosz and Dave Seebert, were disciplined and later dismissed by Nuclear Management.

The NRC violation came more than three years after the incident because a criminal case was also filed in the case, agency spokesman Jan Strasma said.

Yarosz, the Point Beach emergency preparedness manager, pleaded guilty last summer in federal court to misdemeanor making false statements and possessing false papers to defraud the government. He was sentenced to one year of probation and fined $500.

Seebert, an emergency preparedness coordinator at the time of the incident, cooperated with the investigators and was not charged.

The two-reactor plant near Two Rivers is owned by Milwaukee-based Wisconsin Energy Corp.

"What's most important to us is the fact that we believe this isn't indicative of the current performance and, most of all, even the NRC acknowledges that NMC has taken the appropriate corrective action," said Barry McNulty, a Wisconsin Energy spokesman.



-------- MILITARY 


-------- spies

F.B.I. Watched Activist Groups, New Files Show

By ERIC LICHTBLAU, December 20, 2005 NY TIMES

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/20/politics/20fbi.html?ei=5094&en=171df5b870cdd147&hp=&ex=1135141200&partner=homepage&pagewanted=print

WASHINGTON, Dec. 19 - Counterterrorism agents at the Federal Bureau of Investigation have conducted numerous surveillance and intelligence-gathering operations that involved, at least indirectly, groups active in causes as diverse as the environment, animal cruelty and poverty relief, newly disclosed agency records show.

F.B.I. officials said Monday that their investigators had no interest in monitoring political or social activities and that any investigations that touched on advocacy groups were driven by evidence of criminal or violent activity at public protests and in other settings.

After the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, John Ashcroft, who was then attorney general, loosened restrictions on the F.B.I.'s investigative powers, giving the bureau greater ability to visit and monitor Web sites, mosques and other public entities in developing terrorism leads. The bureau has used that authority to investigate not only groups with suspected ties to foreign terrorists, but also protest groups suspected of having links to violent or disruptive activities.

But the documents, coming after the Bush administration's confirmation that President Bush had authorized some spying without warrants in fighting terrorism, prompted charges from civil rights advocates that the government had improperly blurred the line between terrorism and acts of civil disobedience and lawful protest.

One F.B.I. document indicates that agents in Indianapolis planned to conduct surveillance as part of a "Vegan Community Project." Another document talks of the Catholic Workers group's "semi-communistic ideology." A third indicates the bureau's interest in determining the location of a protest over llama fur planned by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals.

The documents, provided to The New York Times over the past week, came as part of a series of Freedom of Information Act lawsuits brought by the American Civil Liberties Union. For more than a year, the A.C.L.U. has been seeking access to information in F.B.I. files on about 150 protest and social groups that it says may have been improperly monitored.

The F.B.I. had previously turned over a small number of documents on antiwar groups, showing the agency's interest in investigating possible anarchist or violent links in connection with antiwar protests and demonstrations in advance of the 2004 political conventions. And earlier this month, the A.C.L.U.'s Colorado chapter released similar documents involving, among other things, people protesting logging practices at a lumber industry gathering in 2002.

The latest batch of documents, parts of which the A.C.L.U. plans to release publicly on Tuesday, totals more than 2,300 pages and centers on references in internal files to a handful of groups, including PETA, the environmental group Greenpeace and the Catholic Workers group, which promotes antipoverty efforts and social causes.

Many of the investigative documents turned over by the bureau are heavily edited, making it difficult or impossible to determine the full context of the references and why the F.B.I. may have been discussing events like a PETA protest. F.B.I. officials say many of the references may be much more benign than they seem to civil rights advocates, adding that the documents offer an incomplete and sometimes misleading snapshot of the bureau's activities.

"Just being referenced in an F.B.I. file is not tantamount to being the subject of an investigation," said John Miller, a spokesman for the bureau.

"The F.B.I. does not target individuals or organizations for investigation based on their political beliefs," Mr. Miller said. "Everything we do is carefully promulgated by federal law, Justice Department guidelines and the F.B.I.'s own rules."

A.C.L.U officials said the latest batch of documents released by the F.B.I. indicated the agency's interest in a broader array of activist and protest groups than they had previously thought. In light of other recent disclosures about domestic surveillance activities by the National Security Agency and military intelligence units, the A.C.L.U. said the documents reflected a pattern of overreaching by the Bush administration.

"It's clear that this administration has engaged every possible agency, from the Pentagon to N.S.A. to the F.B.I., to engage in spying on Americans," said Ann Beeson, associate legal director for the A.C.L.U.

"You look at these documents," Ms. Beeson said, "and you think, wow, we have really returned to the days of J. Edgar Hoover, when you see in F.B.I. files that they're talking about a group like the Catholic Workers league as having a communist ideology."

The documents indicate that in some cases, the F.B.I. has used employees, interns and other confidential informants within groups like PETA and Greenpeace to develop leads on potential criminal activity and has downloaded material from the groups' Web sites, in addition to monitoring their protests.

In the case of Greenpeace, which is known for highly publicized acts of civil disobedience like the boarding of cargo ships to unfurl protest banners, the files indicate that the F.B.I. investigated possible financial ties between its members and militant groups like the Earth Liberation Front and the Animal Liberation Front.

These networks, which have no declared leaders and are only loosely organized, have been described by the F.B.I. in Congressional testimony as "extremist special interest groups" whose cells engage in violent or other illegal acts, making them "a serious domestic terrorist threat."

In testimony last year, John E. Lewis, deputy assistant director of the counterterrorism division, said the F.B.I. estimated that in the past 10 years such groups had engaged in more than 1,000 criminal acts causing more than $100 million in damage.

When the F.B.I. investigates evidence of possible violence or criminal disruptions at protests and other events, those investigations are routinely handled by agents within the bureau's counterterrorism division.

But the groups mentioned in the newly disclosed F.B.I. files questioned both the propriety of characterizing such investigations as related to "terrorism" and the necessity of diverting counterterrorism personnel from more pressing investigations.

"The fact that we're even mentioned in the F.B.I. files in connection with terrorism is really troubling," said Tom Wetterer, general counsel for Greenpeace. "There's no property damage or physical injury caused in our activities, and under any definition of terrorism, we'd take issue with that."

Jeff Kerr, general counsel for PETA, rejected the suggestion in some F.B.I. files that the animal rights group had financial ties to militant groups, and said he, too, was troubled by his group's inclusion in the files.

"It's shocking and it's outrageous," Mr. Kerr said. "And to me, it's an abuse of power by the F.B.I. when groups like Greenpeace and PETA are basically being punished for their social activism."

----

An insidious culture of surveillance

By Thomas Oliphant, Boston Globe Columnist  |  December 20, 2005

http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2005/12/20/an_insidious_culture_of_surveillance?mode=PF

WASHINGTON - IT ALWAYS STARTS SMALL, almost logically.

In a basically free society, abuses of civil and human rights often initially make sense, which appears to have been the case when President Bush took his baby steps toward a system of warrant-free, electronic surveillance of persons inside the United States -- some citizens, some not.

Over time, however, the inch that government first takes becomes a mile, and that also appears to have been the case, as senators and congressmen from both parties, who were too trusting initially, are beginning to understand. The one enduring lesson that conservatives used to teach effectively is that government that is not checked, balanced, and watched like a hawk can gradually become oppressive.

And now, it's happened again.

The latest abuse of civil rights and the Constitution began with the first round of captures of Al Qaeda operatives in Afghanistan and Pakistan in the weeks and months following the 9/11 attacks.

Some of these terrorists were caught in possession of their cellular telephones and laptop computers. Naturally, it occurred to the US agents involved to see where these cellphones and hard drives led -- a perfectly understandable notion.

And then, as night follows day, it all got out of hand, morphing into a system of snooping that can only be justified by authoritarian theories of executive supremacy, complete with legal justifications for a super-secret program that are themselves super-secret.

The clue that even the government recognizes it is doing wrong lies in the almost laughable inability of top officials to discuss all this without resort to the tortured euphemism that authoritarians always rely on.

President Bush's truculent response on Saturday to the surveillance program's belated unmasking by The New York Times -- which held up its story for a year for reasons that remain largely undisclosed -- included the claim that it was designed ''to intercept the international communications of people with known links to Al Qaeda and related terrorist organizations."

As always, the problem arises from the government's claim that it alone decides what a ''link" and ''related" mean; if thousands of people have had their ''communications" monitored, it follows that those links are decidedly tenuous, if not nonexistent.

On Sunday, the designated TV spokeswoman, Condoleezza Rice, invented ''seams", ostensibly exploited by terrorists, between foreign intelligence and domestic law enforcement capabilities out of whole cloth. In fact, the government has bugged thousands of people, and it remains to be seen just how careful the targeting actually was.

One powerful piece of evidence that it got out of hand is the fact that surveillance has been government-wide in the last few years. American groups involved in nothing more than traditional protest and activism have been infiltrated and followed, by the FBI red-flagged by military intelligence agencies. There is a culture of surveillance now, not a few carefully limited operations against severe and immediate threats.

To those who are continually surprised that government behaves in this manner, it helps to remember that we have been down this road before. It is not as if international terrorism is the only modern threat the US has had to confront. There used to be a country called the Soviet Union, armed with thousands of nuclear weapons and motivated by a particularly devious kind of expansionism. During Vietnam, the war was so controversial that at any given moment, a large chunk of the country was involved in trying to stop it -- legally. In both cases, these supposedly dire threats to national security gave birth to a large bureaucracy of oppression whose exposure during Watergate led to what we all thought were lasting reforms.

Even before Watergate exploded, there were two important Supreme Court decisions that appeared to define the limits of government power and (in the late 1970s) one important statute that appeared to close an obvious loophole.

In 1967, much closer to the dawn of the electronic age, the principle was established that evidence from wiretaps should be discarded from legal proceedings unless it was produced under the authority of a court-issued warrant based on a finding of probable cause that a crime had been committed.

Obviously, that didn't cover purely intelligence-related fruits from electronic snooping, so five years later a unanimous court ruled that the wiretapping of alleged domestic subversives without a warrant was unconstitutional.

That left an obvious loophole with regard to the agents of other countries, and Congress presumably filled it in 1978 by enacting the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. This statute established a secret court here that had to approve government applications for surveillance, a court that quickly established procedures for very rapid approvals in emergency situations.

You would think that had established an understandable, fair and efficient mechanism, but here we go again with another government for whom any procedure, any check or balance, is too cumbersome. You wonder why Bush claims he needs the so-called Patriot Act at all.

Thomas Oliphant's e-mail address is oliphant@globe.com  

----

The Hidden State Steps Forward

Jonathan Schell
December 20, 2005 The Nation (January 9, 2006 issue)

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20060109/schell

When the New York Times revealed that George W. Bush had ordered the National Security Agency to wiretap the foreign calls of American citizens without seeking court permission, as is indisputably required by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), passed by Congress in 1978, he faced a decision. Would he deny the practice, or would he admit it? He admitted it. But instead of expressing regret, he took full ownership of the deed, stating that his order had been entirely justified, that he had in fact renewed it thirty times, that he would continue to renew it and--going even more boldly on the offensive--that those who had made his law-breaking known had committed a "shameful act." As justification, he offered two arguments, one derisory, the other deeply alarming. The derisory one was that Congress, by authorizing him to use force after September 11, had authorized him to suspend FISA, although that law is unmentioned in the resolution. Thus has Bush informed the members of a supposedly co-equal branch of government of what, unbeknownst to themselves, they were thinking when they cast their vote. The alarming argument is that as Commander in Chief he possesses "inherent" authority to suspend laws in wartime. But if he can suspend FISA at his whim and in secret, then what law can he not suspend? What need is there, for example, to pass or not pass the Patriot Act if any or all of its provisions can be secretly exceeded by the President?

Bush's choice marks a watershed in the evolution of his Administration. Previously when it was caught engaging in disgraceful, illegal or merely mistaken or incompetent behavior, he would simply deny it. "We have found the weapons of mass destruction!" "We do not torture!" However, further developments in the torture matter revealed a shift. Even as he denied the existence of torture, he and his officials began to defend his right to order it. His Attorney General, Alberto Gonzales, refused at his confirmation hearings to state that the torture called waterboarding, in which someone is brought to the edge of drowning, was prohibited. Then when Senator John McCain sponsored a bill prohibiting cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment of prisoners, Bush threatened to veto the legislation to which it was attached. It was only in the face of majority votes in both houses against such treatment that he retreated from his claim.

But in the wiretapping matter, he has so far exhibited no such vacillation. Secret law-breaking has been supplanted by brazen law-breaking. The difference is critical. If abuses of power are kept secret, there is still the possibility that, when exposed, they will be stopped. But if they are exposed and still permitted to continue, then every remedy has failed, and the abuse is permanently ratified. In this case, what will be ratified is a presidency that has risen above the law.

The danger is not abstract or merely symbolic. Bush's abuses of presidential power are the most extensive in American history. He has launched an aggressive war ("war of choice," in today's euphemism) on false grounds. He has presided over a system of torture and sought to legitimize it by specious definitions of the word. He has asserted a wholesale right to lock up American citizens and others indefinitely without any legal showing or the right to see a lawyer or anyone else. He has kidnapped people in foreign countries and sent them to other countries, where they were tortured. In rationalizing these and other acts, his officials have laid claim to the unlimited, uncheckable and unreviewable powers he has asserted in the wiretapping case. He has tried to drop a thick shroud of secrecy over these and other actions.

There is a name for a system of government that wages aggressive war, deceives its citizens, violates their rights, abuses power and breaks the law, rejects judicial and legislative checks on itself, claims power without limit, tortures prisoners and acts in secret. It is dictatorship.

The Administration of George W. Bush is not a dictatorship, but it does manifest the characteristics of one in embryonic form. Until recently, these were developing and growing in the twilight world of secrecy. Even within the executive branch itself, Bush seemed to govern outside the normally constituted channels of the Cabinet and to rely on what Secretary of State Colin Powell's chief of staff has called a "cabal." Former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill reported the same thing. Cabinet meetings were for show. Real decisions were made elsewhere, out of sight. Another White House official, John DiIulio, has commented that there was "a complete lack of a policy apparatus" in the White House. "What you've got is everything, and I mean everything, being run by the political arm." As in many Communist states, a highly centralized party, in this case the Republican Party, was beginning to forge a parallel apparatus at the heart of government, a semi-hidden state-within-a-state, by which the real decisions were made.

With Bush's defense of his wiretapping, the hidden state has stepped into the open. The deeper challenge Bush has thrown down, therefore, is whether the country wants to embrace the new form of government he is creating by executive fiat or to continue with the old constitutional form. He is now in effect saying, "Yes, I am above the law--I am the law, which is nothing more than what I and my hired lawyers say it is--and if you don't like it, I dare you to do something about it."

Members of Congress have no choice but to accept the challenge. They did so once before, when Richard Nixon, who said, "When the President does it, that means it's not illegal," posed a similar threat to the Constitution. The only possible answer is to inform Bush forthwith that if he continues in his defiance, he will be impeached.

If Congress accepts his usurpation of its legislative power, they will be no Congress and might as well stop meeting. Either the President must uphold the laws of the United States, which are Congress's laws, or he must leave office.

----

Gonzales: Congress authorized domestic spying

12/20/2005 (AP)

http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2005-12-19-gonzalesNSAprogram_x.htm

WASHINGTON — Responding to a congressional uproar, the Bush administration said Monday that a secret domestic surveillance program had yielded intelligence results that would not have been available otherwise in the war on terror.

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said Congress had essentially given President Bush the authority for domestic surveillance after the Sept. 11 attacks.

At a White House briefing and in a round of television appearances, Gonzales provided a more detailed legal rationale for President Bush's decision authorizing the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on international phone calls and e-mails of people within the United States without seeking warrants from courts.

He refused to say how many people had been targeted and insisted, "This is not a situation of domestic spying."

Gonzales defended Bush's decision not to seek warrants from the Federal Intelligence Surveillance Court, saying that "we don't have the speed and the agility that we need in all circumstances to deal with this new kind of enemy."

Gen. Michael Hayden, deputy national intelligence director who was head of the NSA when the program began, said, "I can say unequivocally we have got information through this program that would not otherwise have been available."

Gonzales said he had begun meeting with members of Congress on the Bush administration's view that Congress' authorization of the use of military force after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks was ample authorization for the surveillance.

"Our position is that the authorization to use military force which was passed by the Congress shortly after Sept. 11 constitutes that authority," Gonzales said.

It was the most detailed legal explanation given by an administration officials since The New York Times reported Thursday that since October 2001 Bush had authorized the NSA to conduct the surveillance.

Gonzales said Congress' action after Sept. 11 essentially "does give permission for the president of the United States to engage in this kind of very limited, targeted electronic surveillance against our enemy."

The domestic spying revelations has created an uproar in Congress, with Democrats and Republicans calling for an investigation.

"This is just an outrageous power grab," said Sen. Russ Feingold, D-Wis. on NBC's Today show. "Nobody, nobody thought when we passed a resolution to invade Afghanistan and to fight the war on terror ... that this was an authorization to allow a wiretapping against the law of the United States."

Democrats and Republicans called separately Sunday for congressional investigations into the domestic spying.

Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Penn., chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said Sunday he intends to hold hearings.

"They talk about constitutional authority," Specter said. "There are limits as to what the president can do."

Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid of Nevada also called for an investigation, and House Democratic leaders asked Speaker Dennis Hastert to create a bipartisan panel to do the same.

Bush acknowledged in his weekly radio address Saturday that he had authorized the spying, saying it was a necessary step in the war against terror.

The existence of the NSA program surfaced as Bush was fighting to save the expiring provisions of the USA Patriot Act, the domestic anti-terrorism law enacted after the Sept. 11 attacks.

Renewal of the law has stalled over some its most contentious provisions, including powers granted law enforcement to gain secret access to library and medical records and other personal data during investigations of suspected terrorist activity. 



-------- POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE


-------- courts / tribunals

Environmentalists Declare Opposition to Alito for Supreme Court

WASHINGTON, DC, December 20, 2005 (ENS)

http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/dec2005/2005-12-20-06.asp

Judge Samuel A. Alito Jr. has run into opposition from environmentalists in his bid to assume the seat of retiring Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor.

Four environmental groups and a nonprofit, public interest environmental law firm today formally declared their opposition to Alito for the lifetime Supreme Court appointment - the first environmentalist campaign against a Supreme Court nominee in 18 years.

The Sierra Club, Friends of the Earth, National Environmental Trust, and Greenpeace joined the law firm Earthjustice in stating that Alito's nomination endangers laws that Americans rely upon, including fundamental safeguards for public health and the environment.

The last Supreme Court nominee to be opposed by Earthjustice and other national environmental groups was Judge Robert Bork, nominated in 1987. Earthjustice did not oppose any of the eight Supreme Court nominees between Judge Bork and Judge Alito.

"Like Judge Bork, Judge Alito has an extreme record on issues that are central to fundamental legal safeguards for public health and our environment, including the scope of the Commerce Clause, which is the constitutional basis for most federal environmental laws," the groups said.

Judge Alito’s views raise concerns that he would support Commerce Clause challenges by polluters and developers to public health and environmental laws that Americans have relied upon for decades, including the Clean Water Act, the Clean Air Act the Endangered Species Act, and the Safe Drinking Water Act, the groups said.

They base their concerns in part on Judge Alito's dissent in the 1996 case of U.S. v. Rybar. The case was heard in the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals, where Judge Alito sits today. In that case, Alito argued that the Constitution did not give the government authority to regulate sales of machine guns that do not cross state lines, contradicting many circuit courts of appeal decisions.

The Rybar case did not cover environmental regulations, but environmental advocates say Alito's dissent shows that he may seek to limit congressional authority on other laws.

If confirmed, Judge Alito would be ruling on two cases now pending before the Supreme Court on whether this same Constitutional provision - the Commerce Clause - gives Congress the authority to protect America's streams and wetlands. This same philosophy could also eventually jeopardize the environmental laws that protect clean air, clean water, wildlife, and more.

Alito's position in Rybar was "extreme and unusual, said Glenn Sugameli, Earthjustice senior judicial counsel.

"Judge Alito’s record indicates that he would pursue his own extreme legal theories to create new barriers that prevent the enactment and enforcement of national laws that protect families and communities from pollution," said Sugameli. "There is too much at stake; Judge Alito’s nomination must be defeated."

What is at stake, Sugameli said, is the ability of the Supreme Court to act as check and balance to the other two branches of government - the executive and the legislative.

Also at stake is the balance of the Supreme Court on environmental issues. There is now a four judge anti-environmental minority on the court, the environmentalists say. If confirmed, Alito could provide the fifth vote to tip the court against environmental protection.

The environmentalists worry that if he is confirmed, Judge Alito's decisions could erode the public’s legal right to go to court to stop or penalize violators of environmental safeguards. As a Supreme Court justice, they said today, "Judge Alito could essentially rewrite the Constitution to establish new barriers to justice for people who want to ensure that environmental laws are upheld and enforced."

The groups point to his past rulings that imposed restrictions on Americans’ ability to enforce environmental laws.

In the case of Public Interest Research Group (PIRG) v. Magnesium Elektron, Alito ruled that the Constitution bars citizens from enforcing the Clean Water Act even against a company that admitted it had been violating the law for years. The Magnesium Elektron decision threatened to put a stop to most Clean Water Act enforcement. But the Supreme Court effectively reversed this decision three years later in another case.

"Judge Alito has also voted to shut courthouse doors to citizens concerned about their environment," said Sara Zdeb, legislative director with Friends of the Earth (FOE).

"Citizen enforcement suits are an indispensable feature of every major environmental law, empowering ordinary Americans to sue polluters when government lacks the resources or political will to enforce the law," said Zdeb.

"In one case," she said, "Judge Alito held that FOE and other environmentalists lacked standing to sue a polluter - even though it was uncontested that the company had violated the Clean Water Act 150 times."

On the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals, Alito has provided the deciding vote in favor of polluters to overturn pro-environmental actions by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the environmental groups said.

One of these cases overturned an EPA emergency Safe Drinking Water Act cleanup order that protected drinking water for 180,000 people from toxic pollution in Lansing, Michigan. The polluter, W.R. Grace, sued to block the recommendations of the collaborative cleanup team, known as the Saginaw Aquifer Technical Evaluation Team.

Judge Alito and a colleague ruled in favor of W.R. Grace. This decision blocked both the health standard for safe ammonia cleanup and the preferred technology to remove excess ammonia from the drinking water supply.

"Americans deserve mainstream, independent Justices, with unassailable integrity, who will protect individual rights and freedoms," said the Sierra Club in a statement today.

Sugameli agrees. "We're looking for mainstream justices who will reject the sweeping activist claims by industry that Congress cannot enact laws that we've all come to depend on," he said.

The current administration and the current Congress have a record of anti-environmental activism, Sugameli said, so it it is even more important that the courts remain the independent check and balance intended under the Constitution.



-------- POLITICS


-------- us politics

Gonzales defends spying, Cheney defends Bush, etc.

Washington Politics
USA Today December 20, 2005

http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/digest.htm

Gonzales defends spying

WASHINGTON — Responding to a congressional uproar, the Bush administration said Monday that a secret domestic surveillance program had yielded intelligence results that would not have been available otherwise in the war on terror.

Cheney defends Bush

ABOARD AIR FORCE II — Vice President Dick Cheney on Tuesday vigorously defended the Bush administration's use of secret domestic spying and the expansion of presidential powers, saying "it's not an accident that we haven't been hit in four years."

VP rushes home for budget

WASHINGTON — A Senate vote on a deficit-reduction bill looks to be so tight that Vice President Dick Cheney was rushing home from an overseas diplomatic mission to be the tiebreaker for saving one of the Bush administration's top priorities.

ACLU: FBI misuses powers

WASHINGTON — The American Civil Liberties Union accused the FBI of misusing terrorism investigators to monitor some domestic political organizations, despite apparently disparate views within the FBI whether some groups supported or committed violent acts.

Dems: Spying not OK'd
WASHINGTON — Some Democrats say they never approved a domestic wiretapping program, undermining suggestions by President Bush and his senior advisers that the plan was fully vetted in a series of congressional briefings. Until the program was disclosed last week, those with concerns raised them only privately.

Bush to continue spying

WASHINGTON — President Bush made an unapologetic defense Monday of a controversial program to spy on some Americans' international phone calls without court warrants, vowing to continue it as long as the nation faces "an enemy that wants to kill American citizens."

Gonzales backs wiretapping

WASHINGTON — Responding to bipartisan concern about possible abuse of presidential power, the White House laid out a two-pronged argument Monday that President Bush has legal and constitutional authority to order electronic surveillance on domestic targets without court permission.



-------- ENERGY 

Merger To Create Largest Competitive Energy Supplier

12/20/2005 Power Online

http://www.poweronline.com/content/news/article.asp?docid=%7B48681E21-4A12-4C77-8139-364164144412%7D&VNETCOOKIE=NO

FPL Group, Inc. and Constellation Energy, two of the strongest, fastest-growing and most successful energy companies in America, announced that they have signed a definitive agreement to create the nation's largest competitive energy supplier and its second-largest electric utility portfolio.

The transaction will create a company with a market capitalization of approximately $28 billion (based on current market values), combined annual revenues of $27 billion, and $57 billion in total assets. The combined company will be named Constellation Energy.

Under the definitive merger agreement, which was unanimously approved by both companies' boards of directors, each common share of Constellation Energy outstanding immediately prior to the merger will be converted into 1.444 common shares of Constellation Energy at the time of the merger, and each common share of FPL Group outstanding immediately prior to the merger will be converted into one share of Constellation Energy at the time of the merger. This represents a premium to Constellation Energy shareholders of approximately 15 percent based on the exchange ratio calculated using the average of the 20-day closing prices for both companies ending December 13, 2005. Upon consummation of the merger, FPL Group shareholders will own approximately 60 percent, and Constellation Energy's shareholders will own approximately 40 percent of the combined company. Based on both companies' previously communicated earnings expectations, the transaction is expected to be accretive to both companies in the first full year of combined operations, excluding transaction and integration costs and the positive effects of purchase accounting.

The combined company will maintain dual headquarters in Juno Beach, Fla., and Baltimore. It will have approximately 21,750 employees and will serve more than 5.5 million electric customers in Florida and Maryland and 625,000 gas customers in Maryland. Its competitive wholesale and retail businesses will serve thousands of commercial, industrial and utility customers, including 72 of the FORTUNE 100 companies. Its generation portfolio will be the nation's largest, exceeding 45,000 megawatts of capacity. It will be the third-largest nuclear plant operator in the United States, owning and operating seven nuclear power stations with eleven units, including FPL Group's pending acquisition of the Duane Arnold nuclear station.

Lewis Hay, III, currently chairman, president and chief executive officer of FPL Group, will become chief executive officer of Constellation Energy. Mayo A. Shattuck III, currently chairman, president and chief executive officer of Constellation Energy, will become chairman of the board of Constellation Energy upon completion of the merger and will also head the combined company's competitive energy business. The Constellation Energy board will be composed of 15 members, nine of whom will be named by FPL Group, and six of whom will be named by Constellation Energy. Thirteen of the company's board members will be non-executive directors.

"This historic transaction will create growth potential for the combined enterprise that exceeds what our two companies could have achieved separately," said Hay. "It brings together two strong, successful industry leaders with extensive and complementary assets and skill sets, combining the best of the regulated utility and competitive energy sectors. This combination will create the premier competitive energy company with the critical mass and requisite skills across the competitive energy value chain. We also will have the second-largest and one of the fastest-growing electric utility businesses in the nation. All of this will be supported by the strongest balance sheet among our industry peers."

"The strategic combination of these two great companies will bring out the best in each, in ways that will drive major gains in growth, productivity and efficiency and build upon both companies' proven track record of creating shareholder value," said Shattuck. "We will build scale in our generation fleet by more than doubling our competitive generation assets and will leverage that increased scale with our customer-facing businesses and world-class risk management. Most importantly, we are creating an enterprise extraordinarily well positioned to create shareholder value by seizing growth opportunities with our unique combination of people, assets, strategic vision and financial strength."



-------- OTHER


-------- environment

EPA Slammed for Allowing Power Plants to Emit Mercury

WASHINGTON, DC, December 20, 2005 (ENS)

http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/dec2005/2005-12-20-09.asp#anchor2

A coalition of conservation groups, Native American tribes, and public health organizations is calling upon the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to stay its decision to remove coal-fired power plants from a list of industries requiring protective emission standards.

EPA agreed to reconsider the decision last month, after the agency received petitions from 14 states, four tribes, and five environmental groups. Groups today called upon the agency to stay implementation of the decision and to "fully and fairly assess all the comments it receives and reevaluate whether the delisting was lawful and appropriate."

"Power plants are a major source of mercury, lead, arsenic and dioxins," said Ann Brewster Weeks, litigation director for Clean Air Task Force. "EPA has failed to protect the public from these harmful pollutants. The agency should suspend its decision to deprive Americans of the protections that the Clean Air Act is supposed to guarantee."

"The bottom line is this: EPA faces a choice between protecting higher profits for electric utilities and protecting children's health," said John Suttles, an attorney with Southern Environmental Law Center. "So far, EPA has chosen to protect profits over children."

Instead of issuing the protective emission standards that the Clean Air Act requires, the EPA has chosen to require a cap-and-trade regime that critics say will delay mercury reductions from power plants for nearly 20 years.

The EPA intends to establish a mercury credit market, where facilities can trade pollution credits. "Three of the top five dirtiest power plants in Texas will actually be able to increase mercury outputs under this program," the coalition says

"Mercury pollution is poisoning our lakes, rivers and streams and poses a serious health threat to millions of Americans," said Chesapeake Bay Foundation litigation director Jon Mueller. "EPA needs to protect our waters and our health from power plant pollution."

"There are fish consumption warnings for the Chesapeake Bay, thanks to mercury pollution from sources such as power plants," Mueller said. "EPA has done a pitiful job of reducing mercury from power plants with this rule."

Last month, the State and Territorial Air Pollution Program Administrators and the Association of Local Air Pollution Control Officials released a model rule that provides a menu of options for states to reduce harmful mercury emissions from power plants.

The model rule was written in response to EPA's decision last March to exempt power plants from the protective emission standards that the Clean Air Act requires for all other major sources of toxic air pollution.

"We want the agency to fulfill its legal obligation to write strong nationwide regulations that will at last provide the public health and environmental protections that the Clean Air Act was enacted to guarantee," said James Pew, an attorney with Earthjustice. 



-------- health

Ancient Chinese Remedy May Prevent Breast Cancer

SEATTLE, Washington, December 20, 2005 (ENS)

http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/dec2005/2005-12-20-09.asp#anchor5

A plant substance used in China for centuries to fight malaria has been shown to precisely target and kill cancer cells. Today scientists said it also may someday help to stop breast cancer before it becomes established.

Two University of Washington bioengineers have found that the substance, artemisinin, appeared to prevent the onset of breast cancer in rats that had been given a cancer causing agent. The study appears in the latest issue of the journal "Cancer Letters."

"Based on earlier studies, artemisinin is selectively toxic to cancer cells and is effective orally," said Henry Lai, research professor in the Department of Bioengineering, who conducted the study with fellow UW bioengineer Narendra P. Singh, a research associate professor in the department. "With the results of this study, it's an attractive candidate for cancer prevention."

The properties that make artemisinin an effective antimalarial agent also appear responsible for its anti-cancer effectiveness.

When artemisinin comes into contact with iron, the chemical reaction spawns free radicals – highly reactive chemicals that, when formed inside a cell, attack the cell membrane and other structures, killing the cell.

Because they multiply so rapidly, most cancer cells have a high rate of iron uptake. Their surfaces have large numbers of receptors, which transport iron into the cells. That appears to allow the artemisinin to selectively target and kill the cancer cells, based on their higher iron content.

In the latest study, the researchers administered to rats a single oral dose of 7,12-dimethylbenz[a]anthracene, a substance known to induce multiple breast tumors. Half of the rats then were fed regular food, while the other half were fed food with 0.02 percent artemisinin added. For 40 weeks, researchers monitored each group for the formation of breast tumors.

Among the rats that did not get artemisinin, 96 percent developed tumors. By comparison, 57 percent of the rats fed artemisinin developed tumors.

The tumors that did develop in the artemisinin-fed rats were both "significantly fewer and smaller in size when compared with controls," the researchers said.

They speculated that the substance may kill precancerous cells, which also tend to use more iron than ordinary cells, before those cells develop into a tumor.

Artemisinin also may impede a tumor's ability to grow networks of blood vessels that allow it to enlarge.

Because artemisinin is widely used in Asia and Africa as an anti-malarial, it has a track record of being relatively safe and causing no known side effects, Lai said. "The present data indicate that it may be a potent cancer chemoprevention agent.

Lai said additional studies are needed to investigate "whether the breast cancer prevention property of artemisinin can be generalized to other types of cancer."

Chongqing Holley Holdings, a Chinese company, and Holley Pharmaceuticals, its U.S. subsidiary, supported the research. The company, located in Chongqing, China, has been in the artemisinin business for more than 30 years farming, extracting and manufacturing artemisinin, its derivatives and artemisinin-based anti-malaria drugs. 



-------- ACTIVISTS

FBI Spied on Greenpeace, PETA, Catholic Worker

Tuesday, December 20th, 2005
Democracy Now! Headlines 

http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=05/12/20/1434238

In Washington, newly released documents show counterterrorism agents at the Federal Bureau of Investigation have been monitoring domestic activist groups including Greenpeace, Catholic Worker, the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee and PETA, the People For the Ethical Treatment of Animals. The documents indicate the F.B.I. monitored protests organized by the groups and used confidential informants inside the organizations to gain intelligence. In one case, government records show the FBI launched a terrorism investigation of PETA in Norfolk, Virginia.