NUCLEAR
Russian Defense Minister Arrives in Iran
Russia Defense Minister Visits Iran
Y2K Hubbub Largely Forgotten
Production under way at uranium mine in SA
Chinese espionage handbook details ease of swiping secrets
Spain Soldiers Checked for Radiation
Hope for world's worst flashpoint
Japan Nuke Plant Shut To Fix Leak
New Batch of Russian Strategic Missiles to Go on Duty Tuesday
Putin Vows Pragmatic Russian Foreign Policy
Putin's Priorities Emerge in New Missile Deployment
Russia Deploys New Nuclear Missiles
Greens See Greed, Neglect Tainting Siberia's Pearl
Lenin Voted Russia's Man of Century
Nuclear Reactor Halted in Ukraine
Nuclear Power Benefit
Tribe urges cleanup for radioactive homes
Energy Crisis in California Threatens the Stability of Utility Shares
K-25 fluorine releases due to pinhole leak
Major changes could be in store for Tennessee Valley Authority
DOE facilities celebrate Christmas
Two recall their first Oak Ridge Christmas
Firm Seeks 'Hotter' N-Waste Permit
Yucca Mountain Nuclear Waste repository
Missile Defense: The Jury's Still Out

MILITARY
Australian military seeks to expand
Submarine sinks in Rio de Janeiro
Brazilian submarine sinks at dock
Colombia weighs land for peace
Colombian Government Upbeat on ELN Enclave Deal
Bush Should Start Over in Colombia
Texas
Bombs in 4 Cities Wound Some 45 Pakistanis
Saddam calls for holy war on Israel
Bush to face fervor over Vieques
Radio contact regained with Mir
TENSE TIMES WITH MIR
Radio Contact Re-established With Mir Space Station
Quemoy to Open Up Port
Weary U.N. Envoys Worry Washington Won't Keep Word
States
Military expects Bush to perform
U.S. troops in Kosovo long for home during Christmas

OTHER
Another Tradition: Refuge in a Shelter
Argonne, Süd-Chemie sign agreement to accelerate fuel cell development
Californians trying alternative energy
Refiner agrees to curb pollution
Human testing strikes controversy
No Happy Holidays for Yellowstone's Bison
New Work Rules Jan. 1 for Most Construction, Drilling, Logging and Mining
A Cleanup for the Big Rigs
Private Sector May Sell Water to Southern California Agency
Whitman Gets 2 Grades for One Record
Land costs threaten preservation
Mysterious virus afflicts turtles
Underwater landslides pose risk
Neighborhoods React Angrily to Power Plan
Decrease demand for gas
It's time to rethink rules that limit gas supplies
Media Statement and Availability Surrounding California's Electricity Crisis
States
Police kill students amid protest against actor
New Mexico
Living it up
Russian researcher spy case opens
A Spy's Advice to French Retailers: Politeness Pays
Russia plans creation of new spy agency

ACTIVISTS
South Korea activist wanted
States


-------- NUCLEAR

Russian Defense Minister Arrives in Iran

Reuters
December 26, 2000 Filed at 1:26 p.m. ET
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-iran-ru.html

TEHRAN (Reuters) - Russian Defense Minister Igor Sergeyev arrived in Tehran on Tuesday for a three-day visit that will do little to allay U.S. fears that Russia might reinforce Iran's arsenal.

Russia assured the United States earlier this month that it would not sell offensive weapons to Iran, which Washington says has an active nuclear arms program and supports anti-western ''terrorist'' groups.

``We won't violate any international treaties by our military cooperation,'' Sergeyev said on arriving in Tehran. ``I don't think we will sign any contracts this time.''

U.S. concerns over military ties between Moscow and Tehran rose recently when Russia decided to withdraw from a 1995 pact agreeing not to sell conventional arms to Iran.

U.S. officials traveled to Moscow to press the concerns and make sure that any new transfers to Iran do not include technology that might improve its Sahab-3 missile, now in development with a range of about 1,000 miles.

Iran's defense minister said on Monday that Tehran wanted to expand military cooperation with Russia.

``The geographic position of the two countries in this sensitive region necessitates close cooperation,'' said Rear- Admiral Ali Shamkhani. ``In accordance with Iran's foreign policy, development of military ties with Russia is high on the agenda.''

Sergeyev is due to meet senior Iranian officials including President Mohammad Khatami on Wednesday.

---

Russia Defense Minister Visits Iran

Associated Press
December 26, 2000 Filed at 3:04 p.m. ET
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Iran-Russia.html

TEHRAN, Iran (AP) -- Russia's defense minister traveled to Iran on Tuesday to discuss increasing military cooperation and arms sales between the countries, despite U.S. pressure on Russia not to deal arms to the Islamic republic.

Igor Sergeyev is the first Russian defense minister to visit Iran since the 1979 Islamic revolution. During his three-day visit, he was expected to meet Iranian President Mohammad Khatami.

Other issues to be discussed include the Afghanistan conflict and regional security issues, Russia officials said earlier.

On Monday, Iran's defense minister, Rear Adm. Ali Shamkhani, said that developing military relations with Russia was important to Iran.

Russia alarmed Washington by announcing in November that it was abandoning a 1995 pledge not to sell tanks and other battlefield weapons to Iran.

Washington, which accuses Tehran of sponsoring terrorism, is trying to persuade Moscow to change its mind and has threatened economic sanctions.

The Russian government has said it will not supply hardware capable of creating or delivering weapons of mass destruction, but maintains that resumption of arms sales to Iran is an ``internal affair.''

The United States and other countries also have raised concerns that Russia's construction of a nuclear power plant in Iran could give it access to materials and knowledge that could be used in making nuclear weapons. Moscow and Tehran deny the claim.

---

Y2K Hubbub Largely Forgotten

Associated Press
December 26, 2000 Filed at 8:40 a.m. ET
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/business/AP-Y2K-Plus-One.html?pagewanted=all
http://www.salon.com/tech/wire/2000/12/26/y2k/index.html

NEW YORK (AP) -- The nation's Year 2000 czar is now a deputy mayor in Washington, D.C. The $50 million Y2K crisis center houses George W. Bush's transition team. The international Y2K coordinator plans to relax with friends this New Year's Eve.

A year after the turn-of-the-millennium computer scare, it's just a fading memory for most people. But leading figures in the Y2K consciousness-raising effort say the episode taught important and enduring lessons.

``It showed that we can, if we put the resources to it, solve tough global problems of our making,'' said Bruce McConnell, who directed the international Y2K effort. ``It was a great story of cooperation and hard work. It was expensive, but it was successful.''

For those quick to forget, Y2K was caused by decisions by computer makers decades ago to use two digits to represent the year. The shortcut saved money on memory and storage, but also caused some computers to wrongly interpret 2000 as 1900.

Left uncorrected, the Y2K glitch could have fouled computers that control power grids, air traffic, banking systems and phone networks.

Businesses and governments around the world threw some $200 billion at the problem -- and then they watched nervously, hoping enough of the errant dates had been fixed to avert a worldwide disaster.

For the most part they had. The lights didn't go out. Planes didn't fall out of the sky. Nuclear missiles didn't launch in the middle of the night.

Because few problems materialized, those who had sounded the Y2K alarm had to fend off criticism from people who believed they were victims of a big-money bamboozle.

``It's like saying to a surgeon after he conducts a major intrusive operation that because the patient's fine, it's not a big deal,'' said Harris Miller, president of the Information Technology Association of America. ``Problems did occur, and the fact that it was so minimal means that people did a good job.''

Among the failures: Computers that process images from U.S. spy satellites broke down. Some credit cards charged for the same items multiple times. Japanese nuclear power plants experienced glitches -- among them, a failed clock on a reactor monitoring system -- but no radiation leaks or safety problems.

Many more failures may have gone unreported. Leon Kappelman, a University of North Texas professor who helped businesses with Y2K assessments, says a major telecommunications company -- which he would not identify -- experienced 100 Y2K errors during the first week of 2000.

Those problems were quickly fixed, he says, and customers never noticed.

As a Y2K windfall, businesses and governments got better computers and other equipment. With the help of the World Bank and other Y2K funders, poorer countries got machines and Internet connections they were allowed to keep.

Many U.S. businesses weeded out older machines, combined redundant systems and did something they'd never done before: inventoried their software and computers. Individuals, businesses and countries learned to work together. Within companies, technologists talked with executives, often for the first time.

Mark Haselkorn, a professor of technical communications at the University of Washington, says previously technophobic managers got to see their organizations as dynamic ecosystems and better understand information systems.

For example, supervisors at International Paper Co.'s mill in Franklin, Va., last summer used their Y2K surveys to quickly locate defective circuit boards throughout the plant after a supplier warned of problems.

``There was a heightened awareness of people's perspectives, of people looking beyond just what was happening to them or their particular group, which was a big change,'' said Stephen Schaefgen, who headed International Paper's Y2K efforts.

At the international level, Y2K planners channeled their energies into improving access to technology and defending networks from security threats. Those planners still regularly communicate by e-mail and telephone.

The world discovered that while society has become dependent on machines, people are still in charge.

``There's nothing better than human capital,'' said John Hall, a spokesman with the American Bankers Association. ``I think people gained an appreciation for technology and the people who make that technology possible.''

Sen. Robert Bennett, the Utah Republican who headed the Senate's Y2K advisory committee, says the world also discovered the extent to which computers are interconnected.

Another reminder came in May, when the ``I Love You'' computer virus crippled systems worldwide and caused tens of millions of dollars in damages.

When his Y2K team dismantled in March, Bennett formed a working group in the Senate to address terrorism and other network security threats.

``What happens to us if someone comes at the United States in a very aggressive way?'' he asked.

Many companies and governments simply applied software bandages to address Y2K, noted Dale Way, the Y2K point person with the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers.

A common fix involved tricking computers into thinking the century rollover occurs 30 years or so from now; so more fixes will be needed within 30 years.

``We dodged a bullet,'' Way said. ``But lasting fixes will not be easy to implement. ... When you look at this infrastructure, it is highly uncertain and it breaks all the time.''

A year ago, Y2K planners urged individuals to have extra food, water and flashlight batteries on hand -- though they discouraged overstocking. Meanwhile, Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan sought to calm public fears even while increasing the money supply.

Companies set up command centers, canceled vacations, and then held their collective breath and watched the clocks.

Another Y2K date is coming on Dec. 31 for computers that calculate dates strictly on the basis of a 365-day calendar. Because 2000 is a leap year, Dec. 31 is Day 366. Major problems, however, are not expected.

Y2K contingency teams have disbanded, their personnel moving on to other tasks.

John Koskinen, who spent two years directing Y2K planning in the United States, took a job in September as the District of Columbia's chief administrator.

The U.S. Information Coordination Center -- where Koskinen and his staff prepared for the dawn of 2000 -- closed in March. The 90,000-square-foot space is now being used by the Bush presidential transition team.

Cathy Hotka, who worked on the National Retail Federation's Y2K efforts, has a bottle of New Year's Eve champagne in her refrigerator.

``I'm going to drink like a fish,'' she said. ``I couldn't do anything last year.''

Likewise, McConnell of the now-defunct International Y2K Cooperation Center will be ``reminiscing fondly over our success and grateful I don't have to work this year.''

Anticipating the worst last year, many people bought generators and laid in extra provisions. Some even built special shelters and took refuge in the countryside.

About 20 families who headed for the hills of Floyd County, Va., remain there a year later. Some went into debt to buy several years' worth of water, dehydrated foods and kerosene lanterns.

Howard King, who left his job in Baltimore to join the Rivendell community, plans to stay there for the long haul, his deep distrust of technology unsubsided.

``Now that we've moved here, we are more convinced that the Christian lifestyle in the modern world requires us to live with each other,'' he said.

In Hudson, Wis., Dennis Olson bought 400 boxes of Hamburger Helper, 175 pounds of pasta and nine tubes of toothpaste, along with drinking water and a power generator.

He has donated much of the food to charity, but still has about two months' worth of stocks left. He'll keep the first-aid supplies in case of tornados or other disasters.

Olson says he has no regrets about spending $20,000 to stockpile for Y2K.

``It's only money, and you can always make more, but a boat would have been fun,'' he said. ``You have to look at it satirically. It was a serious issue in its time, but it's behind us now.''

-------- australia

Production under way at uranium mine in SA

The Age
Tuesday 26 December 2000
By DAVID MOODIE ADELAIDE
http://www.theage.com.au/business/2000/12/26/FFXLMPH05HC.html

United States-based Heathgate Resources has confirmed its Beverley uranium mine in South Australia's far north has entered commercial production - making it Australia's first new uranium mine since WMC's Olympic Dam opened 12 years ago.

During a brief visit to Adelaide last week, Heathgate president Jim Graham told The Age the mine was in the "final stages of start-up", with full production rates of 1000 tonnes of uranium oxide a year expected to be reached in the first quarter of next year.

He said shipments had already begun to the mine's US and Japanese customers, with the official mine opening scheduled for February.

The news comes as another SA uranium development, Honeymoon - also in the Lake Frome area - awaits the final go-ahead from the Federal Government on plans to enter production in the first half of 2001.

Honeymoon's Canadian-based owner, Southern Cross Resources, itself 22 per cent-owned by listed Australian resources group Sedimentary Holdings, also intends producing 1000 tonnes of uranium oxide a year.

Heathgate, a subsidiary of privately owned US nuclear power giant General Atomics, has spent the past four years pursuing Beverley's development following its abandonment by previous owners in the early 1980s after the election of the anti-uranium Hawke Labor government.

Mr Graham said the mine's start-up was a welcome Christmas present as it removed future uncertainties hanging over the project, given federal Labor's commitment to allow existing uranium mines to continue operating should it win power in next year's general election.

"It's a very good job and I'm personally very pleased," he said. "It will make everyone associated with this project very proud."

One of the most strident critics of Beverley has been the Australian Conservation Foundation, not only due to historical concerns over the safety of nuclear power but specifically over the mine's use of the controversial in-situ acid leach (ISL) uranium recovery technique.

The ISL process requires sulphuric acid to be pumped down into the aquifer hosting the uranium mineralisation, where the acid dissolves the uranium into the groundwater, which is then pumped back up to the surface for extraction at the mine plant.

Although Beverley has entered production, the ACF is still hopeful of preventing Honeymoon - which will also use the ISL technique - from opening next year.

ACF spokesman David Noonan said the organisation had appealed to the South Australian ombudsman's office to "lift the cloak of secrecy surrounding waste disposal" at Honeymoon, including its long-term impact on the surrounding groundwater system.

Southern Cross Resources has lodged its final environmental impact statement with federal Environment Minister Robert Hill, whose job it is now to recommend to federal Resources Minister Nick Minchin whether the mine should proceed and, if so, under what conditions.

A spokeswoman for Senator Hill said a recommendation was due to have been made on Honeymoon by the end of December but this had now been put back until the end of January. She gave no reason for the delay.

-------- china

Chinese espionage handbook details ease of swiping secrets

Washington Times
December 26, 2000
By Bill Gertz THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/default-20001226232548.htm

China's government is engaged in large-scale science and technology spying targeted primarily on gaining U.S. defense secrets for military use, according to a translated Chinese government manual.

The spying handbook was obtained by the Pentagon earlier this year and reveals how Beijing gathers defense intelligence and has been doing so aggressively for more than 30 years.

"A common saying has it that there are no walls which completely block the wind, nor is absolute secrecy achievable," the book by two Chinese intelligence specialists states.

"And invariably there will be numerous open situations in which things are revealed, either in tangible or intangible form. By picking here and there among the vast amount of public materials and accumulating information a drop at a time, often it is possible to basically reveal the outlines of some secret intelligence, and this is particularly true in the case of Western countries. Through probability analysis, in foreign countries it is believed that 80 percent or more of intelligence can be gotten through public materials."

The 250-page book, "Sources and Techniques of Obtaining National Defense Science and Technology Intelligence," is not classified. However, Pentagon officials said its contents provide new insights on how China's government obtains secrets and technology.

The book was written by Huo Zhongwen and Wang Zongxiao, 30-year spy veterans who now teach intelligence at the China National Defense, Science and Technology Information Center (DSTIC) in Beijing.

The center coordinates sharing of technology from some 4,000 Chinese intelligence organizations.

"The Chinese do not spy as God intended it," said Paul Moore, a former FBI intelligence analyst who specialized in Beijing spying activities.

China uses a variety of collectors - students, business people, scientists or visitors abroad - instead of relying on professional intelligence officers working for the Ministry of State Security or the People's Liberation Army Second Department, he said.

Most often, Beijing's intelligence services do not pay cash for secrets and expect people friendly to the Communist government, many of whom are ethnic Chinese, to provide it free of charge, Mr. Moore said during a recent speech.

The book describes Chinese information-gathering as a science.

"Consider information piece by piece; place an excessive, one-sided emphasis on the absolute amount of the information collected; gauge the quality of collection work solely on the basis of the amount of information collected," it states.

The book contradicts official Chinese claims that its high-technology weapons development is indigenous.

Beijing has dismissed U.S. government charges that its nuclear weapons modernization program is based on stolen U.S. nuclear weapons technology, most obtained from U.S. nuclear weapons laboratories.

According to the spying manual, more than 80 percent of all Chinese spying focuses on open-source material obtained from government and private-sector information. The remaining 20 percent is gathered through illicit means, including eliciting information from scientists at meetings, through documents supplied by agents or through electronic eavesdropping.

Through negligence on the part of security review personnel, valuable secrets can be obtained.

The book states that a "Top Secret" scientific report known as "UCRL-4725 Weapons Development, June 1956" was mistakenly declassified by Los Alamos National Laboratory. It became the basis for Progressive magazine's 1979 article on the development of a hydrogen bomb.

"This incident tells us that, on one hand, absolute secrecy is not attainable, while on the other hand, there is a random element involved in the discovery of secret intelligence sources, and to turn this randomness into inevitability, it is necessary that there be those who monitor some sectors and areas with regularity and vigilance," the book states.

Among the best sources for national defense intelligence material, the book lists publications from Congress, the National Defense Technical Information Center and the National Technical Information Service.

As for numerous reports produced by the Energy Department, the Chinese view them as "a source of intelligence of great value."

Regarding clandestine spying, the report states: "It is also necessary to stress that there is still 20 percent or less of our intelligence that must come through the collection of information using special means, such as reconnaissance satellites, electronic eavesdropping and the activities of special agents purchasing or stealing, etc."

Through direct contacts with scientists and other spying targets, the report states that "this is the procedure commonly used for collecting verbal information, but it is not limited to verbal communications. Participation in consultative activities is also a person-to-person exchange procedure for collecting information."

The information is gathered from people and institutions, including government agencies, research offices, corporate enterprises, colleges and universities, libraries, and information offices.

A report produced by the National Counterintelligence Center, an interagency group based at CIA headquarters, called the Chinese military and defense industry's use of unclassified information "one of the most startling revelations" of the book.

The two-part report, issued in the center's June and September newsletters, suggests the release of the spying manual, first reported by Far Eastern Economic Review magazine, may have been a mistake on the part of the secretive Chinese national security bureaucracy.

A second theory is that "China's commitment to expropriating foreign technology is so much a part of its [research and development] culture that the book's authors simply took acceptance of this behavior for granted," the report said.

The report described the book as extraordinary "detailed proof" of China's efforts to obtain foreign defense technology "by the people who helped build China's worldwide intelligence network."

"Incredible as it seems, this frank account of China's long-standing program to siphon off Western military science and technology, written as a textbook for PRC intelligence officers, was sold openly in China for years," the report said. "But you will not find the book in any bookstore or Chinese library today."

The book "represents the first public acknowledgment by PRC officials of China's program to collect secret and proprietary information on foreign military hardware, especially that of the United States," the report said.

Chinese defense technology spying increased during the 1960s when the People's Republic of China (PRC) developed its nuclear arsenal and then fell during the turmoil of the Cultural Revolution when collected research material was put in warehouses and "consumed by mice instead of humans," the book said.

Since 1978, high-technology spying grew sharply under China's national development plan.

I.C. Smith, a retired FBI agent who specialized in Chinese spying, said the FBI severely curtailed its counterspy efforts - Chinese counterspying in particular - during the Clinton administration.

"The shortsighted view of the PRC, a view held by those with little intellectual capacity for counterintelligence, is that China doesn't pose a threat," Mr. Smith said in an interview. "After all, they aren't out there making dead drops, communicating via shortwave radio, paying cash concealed in hollow rocks, et cetera, as is the expected norm for the spy business."

"This view became dominant in the FBI and even to a large extent, the intelligence community, and this resulted in the FBI essentially de-emphasizing counterintelligence, in general, and the China [counterintelligence] program, in particular. This led directly to the debacle of the Wen Ho Lee investigation," Mr. Smith said.

Lee, the Los Alamos nuclear-weapons designer, was suspected of passing nuclear warhead secrets to China. Earlier this year, he pleaded guilty to lesser charges of mishandling classified data on computer tapes that are missing and agreed to tell what he knew to the FBI.

As part of the Lee investigation, FBI agents recently dug up computer tapes from a Los Alamos landfill, but later determined the tapes did not contain the secrets Lee took from the laboratory.

-------- depleted uranium

Spain Soldiers Checked for Radiation

Associated Press
December 26, 2000 Filed at 4:19 p.m. ET
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Spain-Troop-Check.html
http://news.excite.com/news/ap/001226/16/int-spain-troop-check

MADRID, Spain (AP) -- European NATO allies have begun checking whether their soldiers may have been exposed to dangerous levels of radiation from depleted uranium ammunition used by U.S. warplanes in Kosovo last year. Spain said Tuesday that initial tests were proving negative.

The Spanish defense ministry confirmed it would examine all 32,000 soldiers who have served in the Balkan region since 1992. A ministry spokesman said none of the first 5,000 soldiers screened for exposure in recent months had tested positive.

Portugal's Defense Ministry said Tuesday that it would send a team of experts to Kosovo to check radiation levels on spent rounds, but did not foresee screening its 330 troops there.

Spain has just over 2,000 troops stationed in the Balkans, half of them in Kosovo.

Fears arose after NATO acknowledged early this year that U.S. warplanes operating in Kosovo fired armor-piercing rounds containing depleted uranium during the alliance's 78-day bombing campaign in 1999.

Italian Defense Minister Sergio Mattarella said last week that Italy was investigating cancer cases among its soldiers from Kosovo and Bosnia to see if there is a link with the ammunition.

A U.N. team that went to Kosovo in November is doing a similar study and is expected to report its findings in February.

Twelve Italian soldiers who served in the Balkans have developed cancer. In addition, three peacekeepers who served in Bosnia died of leukemia last year. Four soldiers involved in aircraft maintenance have also died of cancer.

Pentagon spokesman Jim Turner said Tuesday there have been no problems with leukemia or other illnesses among U.S. troops who served in the Balkans. He said soldiers receive regular health checkups after returning from overseas.

Spain's Defense Ministry medical chief, Col. Luis Villalonga, said the health tests were designed to calm any fears among the troops. He said last week that Spanish army studies coincided with others by allied forces that showed ``there has been no radioactive pollution.''

He said one case of a Spanish soldier dying of leukemia on returning home was unrelated. He said the soldier had been based in Macedonia, which was not directly involved in the war.

The Dutch Defense Ministry said it would keep abreast of Spanish and Italian inquiries via NATO. A spokesman said the ministry was looking into a National Soldiers' Union report about a peacekeeper with leukemia who served in Bosnia.

Earlier this year, the Yugoslav government reported that the region hit by uranium rounds in Kosovo stretched across a southwestern belt of the province. Most affected were areas surrounding towns such as Prizren, Urosevac, Djakovica, Decani and the Djurakovac village -- areas where Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Greek and U.S. troops have been posted.

In its report, Yugoslavia claimed some 50,000 rounds had been fired, while NATO admitted to 31,000 rounds.

Iraq long has blamed an increase in rates of leukemia and other cancers, as well as neurological and muscular diseases, on the use of depleted uranium bombs during the Persian Gulf War. Official statistics show that the number of Iraqi children with cancer rose to 130,000 in 1997 from 32 in 1990.

Depleted uranium, which has low levels of radioactivity, is used in artillery shells because it is extremely dense and can pierce armor. On impact, the shells create an airborne dust.

Some experts believe uranium rounds are environmentally harmful, especially if people and animals inhale the dust that forms when the shells disintegrate. The U.S. Defense Department has defended the use of the uranium, saying the rounds contained no more health risk than conventional weapons.

-------- india / pakistan

Hope for world's worst flashpoint

The Age
Tuesday 26 December 2000
By GWYNNE DYER
http://www.theage.com.au/news/2000/12/26/FFXZONH05HC.html

Eleven years of killing, more than 50,000 dead, and the highest ratio of soldiers to civilians in the world, with a nuclear war between India and Pakistan as the pay-off if things get out of hand: the conflict in Kashmir dwarfs every other global confrontation in its potential for harm. But the prospects for peace are actually rising in Kashmir.

As the clock ticks down on India's unilateral ceasefire in Kashmir, due to expire at the end of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan tomorrow, there have been no clear public responses from Pakistan or the main guerilla groups in Kashmir. But there has been no flat rejection of the Indian initiative either, and the local situation has remained sufficiently calm that India may well extend the ceasefire. That could be a new beginning for the whole region, and nowhere needs it more.

Pakistan and India have fought two full-scale wars over Kashmir in the past, and almost ended up at war again in the summer of 1999 over Pakistani troops that infiltrated into the Kargil district the previous spring.

Hundreds of soldiers on both sides were killed in firefights, and artillery and air power were used lavishly. All this happened after both countries had carried out a series of nuclear weapons tests in 1998. It could happen again as soon as the snow melts next spring - and the problem with both sides' nuclear weapons is that they have no safety catches.

Analysts in the subcontinent and elsewhere prattle on about a nuclear "balance of terror" between India and Pakistan, but they are talking through their hats. The old Cold War "balance of terror" between East and West came into existence only after the mid-1960s, when both sides had built thousands of nuclear weapons that were invulnerable to surprise attack because they were buried deep in missile silos or hidden at sea in submarines.

That stabilised the confrontation somewhat, because it was no longer possible to disarm your adversary with a surprise first strike that eliminated all his nuclear weapons. Every nuclear attack would be met with a nuclear counter-attack: "mutual assured destruction". But this period was preceded in the Cold War by a far more dangerous decade when surprise nuclear attacks might succeed - and that is the technological era that Pakistan and India are living through now.

Perhaps in 10 years India and Pakistan will have buried their nuclear missiles in silos or sent them out to sea too. Now, however, their few dozen nuclear warheads are just sitting out in the open, slung under the wings of aircraft at the end of runways, or screwed to the top of relatively short-range missiles at military bases not far from the border. A disarming surprise attack could work, and the warning time available is only 15 to 20 minutes.

So both countries have "launch-on-warning" policies, even though they know radar operators can make mistakes. Some dozens of nuclear warheads exploding over airfields and military bases across northern India and Pakistan (plus, almost certainly, over New Delhi and Islamabad) would not be literally the end of the world, but tens of millions would die.

The need to step back from this hair-trigger confrontation was part of the reason for the three-month ceasefire declared last August by the biggest of the Kashmiri guerilla outfits, Hezb ul-Mujaheddin. It collapsed after only two weeks, but it would never have happened at all without some encouragement from Pakistan (which arms and supplies the guerrillas, though it officially denies it).

The Indian Government's ceasefire this month has held considerably better, and behind the scenes major concessions are being discussed. New Delhi no longer demands that all the Kashmiri groups pledge allegiance to the Indian constitution before starting to talk. Pakistan is signalling that it no longer insists on being included in the talks from the start, though there must be some understanding that it will be brought in before the end.

"If we're genuinely interested in peace, we've got to engage," says Professor Abdul Ghani Bhat, chairman of the All-Parties Hurriyat Conference that unites all the pro-independence parties in Kashmir. "We have to put the past behind us." And as long as everybody keeps the final destination sufficiently vague, it may be possible for all the parties to stop the killing and start talking.

"Talks" doesn't mean a final solution for the Kashmir question, which dates back to the decision of the state's Hindu ruler to opt for India at partition in 1947 despite its majority Muslim population. It certainly doesn't mean the referendum on Kashmir's future that Indian prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru promised and the United Nations endorsed 50 years ago.

It just means talks, and maybe more autonomy for Kashmir - plus an end to the killing, and the withdrawal of a few hundred thousand Indian troops and police from Kashmir's towns and villages, and a long step away from the brink of a regional nuclear war. Enough for the moment.

Gwynne Dyer is a London-based journalist, author and film maker.

-------- japan

Japan Nuke Plant Shut To Fix Leak

Associated Press
December 26, 2000 Filed at 10:03 a.m. ET
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Japan-Nuclear-Leak.html
http://us.f23.mail.yahoo.com/ym/login?.rand=53ni02vhikbn7
http://news.excite.com/news/ap/001226/10/int-japan-nuclear-leak

TOKYO (AP) -- A reactor in the town that suffered Japan's worst nuclear accident was closed Tuesday to repair a four-month-old leak in the cooling system, the plant operator said.

No radiation was released at the Japan Atomic Power Co.'s No. 2 Nuclear Station in Tokaimura, some 70 miles northeast of Tokyo, company spokesman Tomokuni Sugiyama said.

Workers had monitored a small leak in the cooling system since September. Operators decided to shut the plant down after seeing signs that the leak was affecting the system, Sugiyama said.

It was unclear how long the plant would be idle.

Tokaimura was the site of Japan's worst nuclear accident, when two workers were killed and hundreds exposed to radiation at a uranium reprocessing plant in September 1999.

-------- russia

New Batch of Russian Strategic Missiles to Go on Duty Tuesday

Russia Today
Dec 26, 2000
http://www.russiatoday.com/news.php3?id=236448

MOSCOW -- (Agence France Presse) A new regiment of Russia's Topol-M ballistic missile systems will join active duty Tuesday, the strategic missile force's spokesman said Monday.

The first two regiments, each equipped with 10 missile launchers, had joined the Tatischevo military base in 1998 and 1999 respectively, the AVN military news agency reported.

Russian military officials said they expected the 47-ton Topol-M to become the backbone of Russia's strategic nuclear force.

According to the Russian military, the Topol-M missiles, part of a new generation of intercontinental weapons, are capable of evading all anti-missile systems currently in use or in development.

Six test flights of intercontinental missiles were successfully launched this year, among them three Topol-M missiles, military officials said last month.

---

Putin Vows Pragmatic Russian Foreign Policy

Russia Today
Dec 26, 2000
http://www.russiatoday.com/news.php3?id=236444

MOSCOW -- (Reuters) President Vladimir Putin said on Monday that Russia needed a pragmatic foreign policy that leaned neither to Soviet-era imperial expansionism nor to naive faith in the West.

"In the Soviet days we scared the world so that huge military and political blocs emerged," said Putin in an interview with RTR television almost a year after he took Russia's helm. "Did we really benefit from this? Of course not."

"But 10 years ago for some reason we decided that everyone heartily loves us," he added, referring to Russia's post-Soviet honeymoon with the West. "It turned out wrong as well.

Putin, a former KGB spy who won a presidential election in March with a promise to restore order and national dignity, has indicated that he favors a more pragmatic foreign policy than his predecessor Boris Yeltsin.

Next weekend marks one year since Yeltsin resigned, handing power to Putin and with it a foreign policy marred by bitter disagreements with the West on several vital international issues.

FIGHT FOR NATIONAL INTERESTS

"We must get rid of imperial ambitions on the one hand, and on the other hand clearly understand where our national interests are, to spell them out and fight for them," Putin said.

The West is suspicious of Russia's warming ties with some rogue states like Iraq, Iran and North Korea and accuses Moscow of helping Tehran to develop nuclear weapons.

For its part, Russia bitterly opposed NATO's eastward expansion and is alarmed by the prospect that it could embrace parts of the former Soviet Union, such as the Baltic states.

The latest major irritant for Russia is a U.S. plan for a national anti-missile defense system, banned by current treaties, which Moscow believes could ruin the international nuclear security system.

Many political analysts in Russia predict a strong chill in relations once U.S. Republican President-elect George W. Bush takes office in January. A strong proponent of the anti-missile system he has also urged a tougher line in dealings with Russia.

But Putin appeared undisturbed.

"I find it difficult to agree that we should expect any deterioration in U.S.-Russian relations," he said.

"Analysis of recent history shows that when Republicans were in power there has been no deterioration of our relations. We have always managed to find a correct tone in dealing with each other."

But Putin made clear that Russia would not bow to Western pressure, such as recent U.S. threats of possible sanctions for Russian nuclear and military cooperation with Iran.

"There are some specific things about this region, which prompt us to take into account international security concerns," Putin said, referring to both Iran and Iraq.

"Being a U.N. Security Council member and a G8 member we should take into account these concerns," he added. "But I will repeat we should not forget about our national interests.

---

Putin's Priorities Emerge in New Missile Deployment

Washington Post
Tuesday, December 26, 2000; 1:05 PM
By David Hoffman Washington Post Foreign Service
http://washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A51886-2000Dec26?language=printer

MOSCOW, Dec. 26, Russia today officially deployed a new unit of its most modern strategic nuclear weapon, but in smaller numbers than during the last two years, suggesting a shift in priorities under President Vladimir Putin.

The single-warhead, silo-based Topol-M is designed to replace the aging Soviet-era multiple-warhead missiles in Russia's arsenal. In 1998 and 1999, Russia deployed 10 missiles a year.

However, the unit deployed today comprises only six missiles, and the decline appears to be not only a response to budget pressures but a change in priorities.

Alexander Pikayev, a nonproliferation and arms control specialist at the Carnegie Moscow Center, said the reduced complement of missiles was not numerically significant but "symbolically" important, marking a possible shift away from nuclear weapons and toward conventional, or non-nuclear forces.

Putin this year has been refereeing a vigorous and sometimes public debate among top brass over the allocation of resources between nuclear and conventional arms.

The chief of the general staff, Gen. Anatoly Kvashnin, has argued that in the future Russia could do with far fewer nuclear warheads than envisioned by Defense Minister Igor Sergeyev, a former head of the strategic rocket forces. Kvashnin wants to direct money into building new high-tech conventional weapons.

The total number of Russian nuclear warheads is expected to decline to 1,000 or fewer in the next five to seven years because of obsolescence and arms control treaties. This is below the ceiling of 2,000 to 2,500 warheads called for START treaty which has yet to be formally negotiated with the United States.

Putin has not accepted Kvashninýs proposals for extremely sharp reductions - Kvashnin reportedly suggested as few as 550 warheads would be enoughýbut Putin also appears to be leaning away from making heavy new investment in long-range nuclear missiles to keep the levels higher.

The six missiles deployed today join others previously deployed near the Volga River city of Saratov. Pikayev said that producing six missiles a year probably did not major savings because small output is inefficient for a factory capable of making or hundreds a year.

By comparison, the government of former Prime Minister Yevgeny Primakov was suggesting in early 1999 that Russia could and should deploy 30 new Topol-M missiles year.That goal was never formally accepted, and it appears that Russia will not maintain the pace of even 10 new missiles a year.

The cost of the Topol-M program is not known. In general, Russia's fiscal situation is better than at any time in recent years because of windfall revenues from high global oil prices. However, there is still competition over resources inside the military.

---

Russia Deploys New Nuclear Missiles

December 26, 2000 Filed at 6:19 p.m. ET
Associated Press
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Russia-Missile.html
http://news.excite.com/news/ap/001226/18/int-russia-missile

MOSCOW (AP) -- A third set of new intercontinental nuclear missiles was deployed Tuesday at a base in southwest Russia -- part of government efforts to make the rugged, hard-to-detect weapon the backbone of its nuclear forces.

A regiment at the Tatishchevo base in the Saratov region was equipped with the Topol-M single-warhead missiles, said Sergei Derevyashkin, a spokesman for the strategic missile force. He did not say how many missiles were deployed.

The U.S. State Department said it supported the deployment as part of an effort to replace missiles banned by the START II arms control treaty.

``We support very much their efforts to prepare for a post-START II environment,'' spokesman Philip Reeker said in Washington.

The small missile can be fired from a mobile launcher, making it harder to detect and more likely to survive a first strike in a nuclear war.

Some experts have said the Topol-M could be converted to carry several warheads, a change that would violate START II. But Russia has supported the treaty, and any modifications to the missile would likely strain its nuclear arms budget, which was already stretched thin by the original Topol-M project.

Russia already has 20 Topol-M missiles in service, 10 per regiment, deployed in 1998 and 1999.

Topol-M was designed to replace older missiles that have outlived their service or must be dismantled under START II, which was ratified by Russia's parliamentearlier this year but is still awaiting final approval by the U.S. Senate.

Strategic Missile Force commander Vladimir Yakovlev hailed Tuesday's deployment. ``This is a major achievement ... against the background of limited financing,'' he said, according to Russian news reports.

---

Greens See Greed, Neglect Tainting Siberia's Pearl

Associated Press
December 26, 2000 Filed at 0:26 a.m. ET
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/science/science-environment-b.html?pagewanted=all

LISTVYANKA, Russia (Reuters) - Shimmering between the Siberian taiga and the mountainous Mongolian border, Lake Baikal is the crescent-shaped jewel in Russia's rusting ecological crown.

The world's deepest, oldest major lake is home to hundreds of animal and plant species found nowhere else on earth, but campaigners say a hunt for the more marketable assets of natural gas and fur is threatening to cloud its turquoise waters.

Conservation group Greenpeace also says Russia's failure to cut pollution in the 365 rivers flowing into Baikal is a symptom of state neglect presided over by President Vladimir Putin. Last spring he ordered the Ministry of Natural Resources to absorb the once-independent Environmental Protection Commission.

Without the commission's protection, Greenpeace fears a devastating effect on Baikal's mile-deep waters and 1,500 animal species. In response, the group asked UNESCO last month to transfer the 25-million-year-old lake to its list of endangered World Heritage sites.

Some 80 percent of Baikal's fauna is unique to the lake, making it particularly sensitive to changes in water quality, said Roman Pukalov, Greenpeace's Baikal Campaign coordinator.

But Valentin Brovchak, deputy head of Russia's Department for Environmental Analysis, said decisions were being taken on how to clean up Baikal's tributaries, and disagreed with Greenpeace that the lake's eco-system was in danger.

``I've worked on Baikal since 1992...and while there has not been any sharp improvement in its situation, it has not got worse, either. It's been stable for at least eight years,'' Brovchak said.

GAS, FUR-HUNTING FEARS

Pukalov said uncontrolled hunting was biting deep into one of Baikal's most famous natural attractions.

``The population of nerpa seal in the lake has fallen over the last six years by 30 percent at least. Hunters are allowed 6,000 a year, but illegal hunting claims twice that many.''

He said amateur hunters injured three seals for every one they killed with nets and guns, trying to satisfy a growing demand for skins in northern China and Mongolia.

Pukalov said he also feared the impact on Baikal of test drilling for gas in the delta of the Selenga river and mineral exploration close to the lake, which holds a fifth of the world's flowing fresh water.

``These are some of the biggest problems for Baikal and should not be allowed on World Heritage Sites,'' he said. ``This is why we want UNESCO to put pressure on the government.''

Brovchak said he had not heard of any mineral exploration near Baikal and that a resolution he expected to go before parliament early next year should outlaw oil and gas exploration close to Baikal.

``It says in the resolution that exploitation of new deposits is to be banned in the central ecological zone around Baikal... Already the reserve is probably one of the most strictly protected regions in the world,'' he said.

``You can hardly even pick mushrooms there.''

PUTIN'S ``ENVIRONMENTAL ERROR''

Baikal survived decades of Soviet industrialization relatively unscathed while Russia put its natural resources to work in breakneck economic pursuit of the West, sparing little thought for the environmental damage being wreaked.

The late-1980s 'perestroika' policies of Mikhail Gorbachev lifted ecological issues off the bottom of the Kremlin priority list, but campaigners say Putin is reversing the process.

He enraged campaigners in May when he decreed that the Ministry for Natural Resources absorb the State Environmental Protection Committee and the Forestry Commission.

The government said it was to cut costs but groups like Greenpeace and Baikal Environmental Wave (BEW) said it cleared the way for unchecked exploitation of Russia's overworked environment.

``I think Putin made a very grave error. With one hand (the ministry) is now exploiting natural resources while it is supposed to be protecting them with the other,'' BEW's Jennie Sutton told Reuters.

``If the decree was to cut down on bureaucrats then it would be a good thing, but it also means enterprises like gas exploration are not going to be monitored and held within some degree of state control.''

Greenpeace said it collected more than the two million signatures needed to force a state referendum on the restoration of independent environmental and forestry agencies and a ban on imports of nuclear waste to Russia.

But election authorities threw out half a million of the signatures as illegitimate in November, prompting another furious response from environmentalists and Greenpeace to threaten action in Russia's Supreme Court.

``PROTECTION NOW EASIER''

Brovchak denied any government wrongdoing over the referendum and said the merged ministry was working well.

``It's a lot easier now. If before certain structures involved departments in different ministries it was very complicated to make ecological decisions which related to all of them. There are still problems, but it is still taking shape.''

``I have not seen conflicts of interest or contradictions yet and if there are we will sort them out,'' he said.

Russia's economic problems have often forced the government to push environmental concerns into the shadows, but Brovchak said Baikal was just as precious to politicians as it was to the rest of Russia.

``It is only Baikal that has a specially decreed status, not the Caspian sea or the River Volga. There's so much there; the mythology, history, not to mention the economic significance of tourism and natural beauty,'' he said.

``Baikal is unique. It is a unique phenomenon for the whole world.''

---

Lenin Voted Russia's Man of Century

Associated Press
December 26, 2000 Filed at 12:42 p.m. ET
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Russia-Man-of-the-Century.html
http://www.infobeat.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/IBFrontEnd.woa/wa/fullStory?article=405535954

MOSCOW (AP) -- Russians listed Communist leader Vladimir Lenin as their No. 1 choice of ``man of the century'' for their country, followed by dictator Josef Stalin, the Interfax news agency reported Tuesday.

The poll asked 1,500 people across Russia to name a choice without offering any suggestions.

After the Soviet leaders, human rights advocate and Nobel Prize winner Andrei Sakharov came in third, Interfax said. The first man in space, Yuri Gagarin, took fourth place, and Soviet reformer Mikhail Gorbachev was fifth, followed by actors and politicians from Russia's past.

Lenin won the most support, with 14 percent of respondents calling him the most important man of the 20th century, showing that many older Russians still revere him. Lenin's lasting popularity among the older generation has also been explained by years of Soviet propaganda, which lionized him.

Stalin received support from 9 percent of respondents despite a consensus among most Russians that he was a cruel dictator responsible for the deaths of millions in arbitrary executions and forced labor camps. Stalin is still respected by a small group in Russia, who see him as a paragon of law and order.

Sakharov, a renowned nuclear physicist who drew attention to the cruelty of the Soviet system and became a symbol of his country's quest to shake off the legacy of Communism, received support from 8 percent of respondents.

The Public Opinion Foundation polling agency conducted the survey Dec. 16. The report did not mention the poll's margin of error. Many Russians consider 2001 to be the beginning of the new century, and pollsters apparently had that in mind when they conducted the survey.

-------- ukraine

Nuclear Reactor Halted in Ukraine

Associated Press
December 26, 2000 Filed at 11:50 a.m. ET
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Ukraine-Nuclear.html

KIEV, Ukraine (AP) -- A nuclear reactor at Ukraine's Yuzhna atomic power plant was halted for several hours following a malfunction in its electrical system, nuclear officials said Tuesday.

The Yuzhna plant's reactor No. 1 in southern Ukraine was stopped late Monday and restarted before dawn Tuesday, the State Energoatom company said in a statement.

Currently, 10 of 13 nuclear reactors at Ukraine's four atomic power plants are working, it said.

On Dec. 15, Ukraine halted for good the only working reactor at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant following pressure from foreign governments and environmental groups.

Chernobyl was the site of the world's worst nuclear disaster when its No. 4 reactor exploded, sending a radioactive cloud over much of Europe in 1986.

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

Nuclear Power Benefit

New York Times
December 26, 2000
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/12/26/opinion/L26NUC.html

To the Editor:

A Dec. 20 Business Day article about the renewed interest in nuclear power discussed the economic incentives. You should have mentioned the environmental benefits, with their long-term cost savings.

Increased use of nuclear power would help save irreplaceable fossil fuel for future generations and reduce production of climate-warming gases and air pollution. More than a dozen countries make greater use of nuclear power than the United States.

The environmental problem of waste burial can be solved by geologists, who have studied rock structures that have not moved in tens of millions of years. The political problems of such waste disposal require stronger, more honest leaders in government and environmental circles than have yet appeared.

DONALD J. KAHN Metuchen, N.J., Dec. 20, 2000

-------- arizona

Tribe urges cleanup for radioactive homes
But Superfund help not likely for now, EPA says

Dallas Morning News
12/26/2000
By Bill Papich/Special Contributor to The Dallas Morning News
http://www.dallasnews.com/texas_southwest/246551_nmradiate_26te.html

OAK SPRINGS, Ariz. - Walking through the rubble of a home she lived in as a child on the Navajo Indian reservation in northeast Arizona, Sarah Benally said the sandstone rocks strewn about were once a popular building material.

"We didn't know they were contaminated," said Ms. Benally, who suffers from a thyroid condition.

Her father built the home using uranium ore waste rock in the early 1950s. He was among thousands of Navajo men who worked in hundreds of uranium mines across the reservation from the late 1940s through the 1970s, mining the fuel for America's nuclear weapons arsenal.

The miners found that with a little chipping, the waste ore rocks from mines could be squared up for excellent building material for walls, floors and foundations.

But nobody told them that uranium waste ore rocks can emit harmful gamma radiation - including the Atomic Energy Commission, which received the uranium.

Officials with the federal Environmental Protection Agency acknowledge the 27,000-square-mile area is "a huge problem." But they say it falls short of Superfund cleanup status because of the area's sparse population and an incomplete knowledge of all problem locations.

Ms. Benally suspects her childhood home as the cause of the condition for which she takes medicine.

Navajo families who have lived or remain near old uranium mines on the reservation "are having so many health problems," she said. And she believes relatives of miners who suffer from cancer, respiratory disease, birth defects, kidney disease and other illnesses also became sick from exposure to the ore.

In the Navajo community of Teec Nos Pos, tribal member Carolyn Clark, 35, said her father built the uranium ore waste rock house she was raised in with her seven brothers and sisters. Her father, a uranium miner, committed suicide when he was 31.

"I guess he had health problems and he just decided to get it over with," Ms. Clark said. "We all have health problems, all sorts."

Her daughter has cerebral palsy.

The federal Indian Health Services agency, which administers health care to tribal members, does not acknowledge any link between disease and long-term living in waste ore rock houses. The government only recognizes that some uranium miners developed lung cancer by inhaling uranium ore dust while working in the mines.

The mines were usually tunnels bored horizontally into hillsides.

The miners worked without protective gear and were never told that radon gas and radioactive particles they inhaled and ingested during lunch breaks could kill them. Only the miners with lung cancer have each received $100,000 compensation as a result of the 1990 Radiation Exposure and Compensation Act.

President Clinton has signed an executive order for an extra $50,000 by July 2001.

"But what do you do with the people who don't qualify for compensation?" asks 50-year-old tribal member Phil Harrison, who needs a kidney transplant. His father was a uranium miner who died of lung cancer at 45.

Mr. Harrison and Ms. Benally belong to the Navajo Uranium Radiation Victims Committee, a grass-roots advocacy organization seeking compensation for miners' relatives.

Mr. Harrison recalls evenings when his father came home from work and his mother shook out the work clothes.

"Everything would be airborne," he said. "We need to find out who else is sick besides the miners. If the mother passed on, then what did she die from? How many kids are sick, mentally retarded, handicapped or have birth defects?"

The Navajo tribe's office of the Navajo Abandoned Mine Lands Reclamation Program has identified 1,300 abandoned uranium mines. Since 1989, about half the mines have been sealed with concrete and other materials. But piles of exposed uranium ore waste rock remain. The rock can contain "hot spots" of uranium ore.

Even where mine reclamation has occurred, there are waste rock houses left standing or only partially dismantled. And because traditional Navajo families are sheepherders who live spread out from one another - their high desert homeland covers parts of Arizona, Utah and New Mexico - the EPA does not know how many uranium homes exist on the reservation.

Since 1994, the EPA has used helicopters for radiation surveys of the reservation where uranium mining occurred, but it has identified only two structures that contain dangerous levels of radiation in their rock walls. Although once inhabited, the structures now are used only for storage, according to the EPA.

EPA officials say the structures will be torn down, the waste ore rocks will be removed, and the structures will be replaced.

Derritch Watchman-Moore, executive director of the Navajo Nation Environmental Protection Agency, expects other buildings, including occupied homes, will be discovered. "We're just at the tip of the iceberg," she said.

For instance, wood dwellings appear not to contain waste rock at first glance. But underneath there can be waste rock foundations. There are even outdoor bread ovens made of uranium ore waste rock.

One structure the EPA plans to dismantle is emitting 44 times the gamma radiation the EPA and U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission considers "acceptable."

The tribal EPA receives funding from the federal EPA. But its operations still lag. Its technology is behind the times, with officials relying on typewriters.

"That's reflective of some of our financial processes that we go through," Ms. Watchman-Moore said, adding that the tribe's strategy for obtaining a reservation-wide uranium waste cleanup is getting mine areas listed as Superfund sites. If a mine makes the national EPA Superfund list, a multimillion-dollar cleanup could go into action immediately.

But for now, that's not likely.

Betsy Curnow, an EPA manager for Superfund site assessment, notes the Superfund was enacted by Congress 20 years ago with the intention of cleaning up pollution in urban, industrial areas of the United States.

Population size near a potential site, she said, is one factor that determines whether it achieves Superfund status.

"Potentially we may list some of these sites on the Superfund, but this is a huge problem, a huge area, and we've got to make sure we're spending our money on the very worst problems out there," Ms. Curnow said.

She emphasized that the EPA has done hundreds of cleanups of hazardous materials on the Navajo reservation, although none have been on the scale of a Superfund cleanup.

Removal of waste rock structures on the reservation would be a long time coming, said Arlene Luther, director of the Navajo EPA waste regulatory compliance department.

She said the Navajo EPA also has identified structures containing concrete made from uranium ore.

"It's something we identified in the early 1980s and, unfortunately, we're still living with it today," Ms.Luther said.

Bill Papich is a Farmington, N.M., free-lance writer.

-------- california

Energy Crisis in California Threatens the Stability of Utility Shares

New York Times
December 26, 2000
By LAURA M. HOLSON
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/12/26/business/26PLAC.html?pagewanted=all

SAN FRANCISCO, Dec. 25 - It used to be that utility companies were the safest stocks for investors to buy, slow growers favored for their stable earnings and predictable dividends. But those assumptions no longer apply in California, where newly deregulated utility companies instead share a familiar characteristic with their Internet brethren these days - enormous cash burn - but lack the huge Internet growth prospects that might otherwise keep stock prices afloat.

After a summer that teetered on the edge of an energy debacle, California has again been gripped in recent weeks by a severe energy shortage that on some days has come close to threatening blackouts among 15 percent of California's 24 million utility customers.

With a cold snap in the Pacific Northwest and limited supplies here, utility companies were forced to pay power generators $1,500 per megawatt hour this month - 40 times what they paid last year - as state officials scrambled for as much as one- third of California's energy needs.

Not surprisingly, investors have shunned California utility stocks, including those of the parent companies of Southern California Edison and Pacific Gas and Electric. The primary worry is that the companies will not be able to recoup the $8 billion they have paid to power producers but - for now, at least - cannot collect from customers, because of a rate freeze in effect until March 2002.

Standard & Poors, the rating agency that monitors companies' financial health, warned last week that the utilities were on the verge of bankruptcy and risked bond downgrades to junk status unless something was done quickly to stem losses.

Share prices of the parent companies, Edison International and the PG&E Corporation, have fallen as much as one-third since the beginning of December, though both stocks rebounded a bit on Friday.

Top executives from the utilities met with state officials last week, and Southern California Edison announced on Friday that it would eliminate its fourth-quarter dividend and trim $100 million in spending, including the elimination of 400 jobs, in an effort to stave off bankruptcy.

Such measures, as well as the fact that the Public Utilities Commission in California agreed to hold emergency hearings beginning Wednesday on possible rate increases, have forestalled a financial brownout for the time being. But the situation remains in flux. "It is still probable the ratings will go down," said David Bodek, a utilities credit analyst at Standard & Poor's. "Conserving cash staved off insolvency only for a few weeks, giving them additional time for the crafting and implementation of a strategy."

The fact that politicians will strongly influence the utilities' fate - Gov. Gray Davis, in particular, is stepping up his involvement - further clouds the picture for financial analysts. "When there is a `protect the consumer' mode, the near-term impact on the companies will be much worse," said Jon Raleigh, a power and utilities analyst at Goldman, Sachs.

But even if the Public Utilities Commission approves a rate increase that somehow satisfies both consumer groups and Wall Street, analysts contend that the companies' prospects have changed.

"Even with a constructive outcome, it will likely be difficult for the utilities to argue they need rate relief to avoid bankruptcy, but keep paying the same dividend," said a report issued Friday by Merrill Lynch. At best, the report added, rate increases could make Edison and PG&E "financially viable, but not financially strong." Bankruptcy, Merrill Lynch concluded, is a real but unlikely possibility.

It should also be noted that the utilities' parent companies - power producers in their own rights - have benefited from the high prices being paid for electricity. PG&E paid power generators $4.5 billion more than it could collect from rate payers from June to November, but it earned $1.57 billion more than in the period a year earlier from its own nuclear and hydroelectric generation plants.

That revenue, a company spokesman said, is supposed to be used to pay off debt and other costs associated with deregulation, not to subsidize rates. Still, if the utility companies' bonds are indeed downgraded, the ripples could wash over the nonprofit agency that manages California's power grid and the exchange where electricity contracts are traded.

In particular, the Independent System Operator, which runs the grid, could be required to demand collateral from the utilities in advance of any power purchases made on their behalf. Otherwise, Kellan Fluckiger, the agency's chief operating officer, said power producers could balk at sending electricity to the state, as they did earlier in the month. Resolving that mess required Mr. Fluckiger's boss at the Independent System Operator to go behind Gov. Davis's back and ask federal regulators to order power producers to send electricity to California.

In the end, any resolution seems bound to be messy. Electricity shortages are expected to continue through the summer of 2002, say power executives, when new power plants will come on line. Utility companies will still have concerns about their viability. Consumers will not be happy paying higher rates.

And federal and state regulators have to come to some agreement on a regionwide solution to resolve the West's energy problems.

-------- tennessee

K-25 fluorine releases due to pinhole leak

The Oak Ridger
Tuesday, December 26, 2000
by Paul Parson Oak Ridger staff
http://www.oakridger.com/stories/122600/new_1226000010.html

A pinhole-sized leak in a section of piping appears to be the reason fluorine was released last week into a vacant building at the Oak Ridge K-25 Site.

Steven Wyatt, a spokesman for the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge Operations office, informed The Oak Ridger that site workers discovered the leak source Wednesday afternoon while conducting environmental monitoring activities in Building K-1302.

Site workers first reported the leak last week, saying an odor was emanating from building K-1302 -- a currently unused building that was formerly a fluorine storage and distribution facility. Fluorine was used at K-25 to refine fuel for nuclear power plants when the gaseous diffusion facility was operational from the 1940s to the mid-1980s.

On Wednesday, the workers discovered the leak was at a point near the ceiling where two half-inch pipes leading to a fluorine storage tank meet, according to Wyatt. The workers noticed a "telltale odor" of fluorine and saw about a 10-inch stream of gas coming from the leak.

Additional monitoring in and around the building showed that the level of the fluorine had diminished after several valves were closed, according to Wyatt.

Officials are still trying to determine what caused the pinhole-sized tear in the pipe. According to Wyatt, one theory is that changing atmospheric conditions were possibly causing changes in pressure within the tanks and piping, thus occasionally forcing the fluorine out through the leaking pipe.

According to Wyatt, plans are also under way to remove the section of pipe that leaked and the small amount of residual fluorine in the system that remained after a previous cleaning effort.

Last week's fluorine leak resulted in five people being treated for either nausea or headaches and more than 200 possibly "at risk" site workers being told to stay home for two days.

---

Major changes could be in store for Tennessee Valley Authority

The Oak Ridger
Tuesday, December 26, 2000
The Associated Press
http://www.oakridger.com/stories/122600/stt_1226000058.html

WASHINGTON -- A new chairman, a Republican U.S. president and a marginal Republican majority in Congress could bring major changes and a few challenges to the Tennessee Valley Authority.

Most observers agree TVA, the nation's largest public power provider, will lose one of its biggest allies in Washington when Tennessee native son Al Gore steps down as vice president.

TVA chairman Craven Crowell, a close friend of Gore's, announced his retirement this month -- one day after Gore conceded the presidential election to Republican George W. Bush. Crowell's retirement with nearly a year remaining on his nine-year term makes way for Bush to appoint a new chairman.

Traditionally, Democrats are viewed as more friendly to TVA than Republicans.

TVA was founded by a Democrat, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and a Democratic Congress. It was a Republican president, Dwight Eisenhower, who branded the agency "creeping socialism" and threatened to sell it off in the 1950s.

Even with Democrat Bill Clinton and Gore in office, a Republican-controlled Congress two years ago killed off TVA's $100 million annual appropriation for river and land management.

Stephen Smith of the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy said Gore was mindful of TVA's interests, and he expects that to change with the new leadership in Washington.

"I think you could say there's very little sympathy for TVA," he said.

Any changes Bush makes to TVA would come with the expected deregulation of the electric utility industry, a development that could lead to the breakup of TVA.

TVA consumers now enjoy some of the cheapest utility prices in the country -- $65 a month for the typical 1,000-kilowatt household compared to $83 nationally.

Bush-Cheney transition spokesman Scott McClellan said the team is focused on the move to Washington and will discuss TVA later. During his campaign Bush said he will push for a "comprehensive energy policy" that addresses a variety of issues.

Rep. Zach Wamp, R-Tenn., said utility deregulation will be difficult to push through Congress, considering the problems that have plagued California since state deregulation there.

The 50-50 split in the Senate (Vice President-elect Dick Cheney will serve as the tiebreaker) will further hinder legislation that does not protect TVA's interests, Wamp said.

"I think after this very narrow election, a simple meat and potatoes agenda is very much in Gov. Bush's interest," he said.

---

DOE facilities celebrate Christmas

The Oak Ridger
Tuesday, December 26, 2000
by Paul Parson Oak Ridger staff
http://www.oakridger.com/stories/122600/new_1226000008.html

The Department of Energy's three Oak Ridge facilities and their managers celebrated Christmas in a variety of ways this month.

BWXT Y-12 recently held a Christmas party for all Y-12 National Security Complex employees and their families at the Oak Ridge Mall. More than 2,000 people attended the event, and gifts were given to both adults and children.

Also, toys were collected at the Christmas party and at Y-12 for the facility's annual toy drive. The toy drive was conducted by the BWXT Y-12 Values Council and the Y-12 Fire Department.

"We had six barrels filled up and running over with toys," said BWXT Y-12 spokesman Bill Wilburn.

Wilburn said the toys were given to the Karns Fire Department, the Holiday Bureau and Tuppertown Baptist Church in Oliver Springs to be distributed.

BWXT Y-12 employees also participated in the Oak Ridge Christmas parade, using a float that was designed and built by volunteers from the Atomic Trades and Labor Council. The float was also used in the Kingston parade.

The company also gave donations to the Holiday Bureau and had several angel trees at the Y-12 Plant.

For the holiday season, Bechtel Jacobs Co., which manages the Oak Ridge K-25 Site, contributed more than $20,000 to charitable organizations in the Oak Ridge-Knoxville area, according to Bechtel Jacobs spokesman John Schlatter. Recipients included the Salvation Army, Second Harvest Food Bank, Knox Area Rescue Ministries, Toys for Tots, the Holiday Bureau and the Empty Stocking Fund.

For the second year, Bechtel Jacobs provided a $2,500 grant to an employee-initiated Community Involvement Team that coordinated donations and gift purchases for underprivileged children through the Angel Tree Program, according to Schlatter. J.C. Penney and Big Lots in Oak Ridge, and Kay-Bee Toys at West Town Mall either made donations or gave additional discounts to the committee.

More than 175 children were "adopted" this year and more than 500 presents were delivered to six surrounding counties -- Anderson, Knox, Loudon, Morgan, Roane and Union. Coats, jeans, shoes, remote-control cars, dolls, bicycles, Big Wheels, and lots of other goodies were brought in for children ranging in age from newborn to 17.

For a second year in a row, the Oak Ridge National Laboratory Values Committee sponsored an Angel Tree. Teresa Ferguson, who co-chairs the ORNL Values Committee, said this year the generosity of ORNL employees will help to make Christmas a little more special for more than 181 children in the area. That area includes Anderson, Blount, Campbell, Knox, Loudon, Morgan, Roane and Union counties.

The Values Committee Angel Tree Subcommittee collected gifts on Dec. 4 and 5 and the results were "tremendous," according to Ferguson. She said there were "bags and bags" of gifts for the children, and even six new bicycles were collected. In addition, monetary donations collected totaled more than $600, and the money was used to supplement 19 other area needy children's Christmas wishes.

Ferguson said it was the generosity of the ORNL employees that made the ORNL Values Committee's Angel Tree such an overwhelming success.

ORNL is managed by UT-Battelle.

In addition, employees of subcontractor services and trades for ORNL's Spallation Neutron Source recently provided Christmas gifts for foster children who would not otherwise have a Christmas, officials said.

Participating in the effort were employees of Knight/Jacobs Joint Venture, which performs engineering and construction management services for the SNS, along with members of the Knoxville Building and Construction Trades Council and the SNS Conventional Facilities Contractors and Suppliers.

In addition to corporate donations and employee and union membership gifts and donations totaling $5,200, Christmas gifts were provided to 23 children under the care of the East Tennessee Community Services Agency, which provides support to foster children and their families.

---

Two recall their first Oak Ridge Christmas

The Oak Ridger
Tuesday, December 26, 2000
by Amy L. Lee Oak Ridger staff
http://www.oakridger.com/stories/122600/com_1226000009.html

Ida Hagaman remembers her 14th Christmas -- her first in Oak Ridge -- as a family event. The year was 1943, and it was a "white Christmas."

"My sister and parents were working, so we were pretty much tied down. We lived in an 'A' house on Georgia Avenue," she said.

Although Hagaman was familiar with snow, "There were a lot of children here who had never seen snow before," she said.

Hagaman said Christmas was not as big a deal then, commercially, as it is now.

"We had a tree, but as far as packages ... we did our shopping in Knoxville when we could get there."

The middle of the year in 1943 saw people from all over the United States making preparations to move to Tennessee. Their mission was mysterious ... something about a "Manhattan Project."

Hagaman said her father, an equipment auditor, was transferred from Eau Claire, Wis., to the Manhattan Project. "Of course we didn't know what the Manhattan Project was then, but he helped find the equipment to build Oak Ridge" she said.

Hagaman remembered many families staying in their new town that year rather than returning to their points of origin.

"Quite a few stayed. There was gas rationing, so it wasn't easy to go back and forth if you (had) lived very far away."

The vast number of community activities we experience today were not part of the holiday hustle and bustle in 1943 either. Hagaman said her family's church was not organized at that time, so they attended services in Knoxville.

"It is much more commercialized now, but we still put an emphasis on the Christian part. It's still a family holiday for us," she said.

Colleen Black wasn't here for Christmas 1943, but arrived with her family from Nashville early in 1944.

Her uncles, who came in 1943 and were already working in Oak Ridge, told the family about the opportunities here. Her father had accepted a job with Midwest Pipe; "He probably moved the pipe in we had leak-tested," she said. That year, Black at age 19 was the oldest girl in her family, and she and her mother took jobs at the Oak Ridge K-25 site in leak testing in the Conditioning Building.

"We didn't ask any questions. We weren't supposed to. Everything was a secret," she said.

Security was so pervasive children were afraid Santa Claus couldn't get into Oak Ridge because he didn't have a badge, and Black said many people didn't receive their Christmas packages from friends and family back home because Oak Ridge wasn't even on the map.

Black remembered having to work Christmas Day 1944 and eating Christmas dinner at the cafeteria at K-25. But the holiday was observed differently then than it is now.

"It was low-key. You didn't buy anything, and if you tried, (the clerks) would say, 'Don't you know there's a war going on?' We were just hoping to get the war over with.

"We didn't hang up designer stockings like the kids do now -- we just used our own socks and hung them around," she said. "And it was unpatriotic to buy (Christmas) lights. There was a war going on, so all the houses weren't decorated inside and out like they are now.

"We had left all our decorations at home anyway because this was just a temporary place. We threw cotton on the tree and strung popcorn to put on it. It was just a different lifestyle, but they were fun times," she said.

Black found her contentment in the community and in the double trailer that eight of 10 siblings shared with their parents -- eating and sleeping in shifts. Black moved into a dormitory, and one brother was in the military.

"Everyone was working together ... We were all far away from family. We just went to church and tried to have a normal lifestyle," she said.

Black said she and some of her friends would get together and make fudge if they could get enough sugar together. "Sugar was rationed. I don't think the fudge ever got hard."

Not only was cooking more difficult, but the city itself was different in those days.

"It looked like an Army camp, which I guess it was. There were no permanent buildings, except some farm buildings. The streets weren't paved, and there were no traffic lights," Black recalled.

"There were a lot of buses, because they had quit making cars in 1942, and gas was rationed. And even if you had a car, it was always full -- it was unpatriotic to go somewhere by yourself.

"There were a lot of walkers, and there was mud everywhere. Soap was scarce and it was hard to keep things clean.

"We wanted to go back home. I never dreamed I'd still be here all these years later."

-------- us nuc waste

Firm Seeks 'Hotter' N-Waste Permit
Envirocare wants a hurry-up approval through Legislature

Salt Lake Tribune
Saturday, December 23, 2000
BY DAN HARRIE and JUDY FAHYS THE SALT LAKE TRIBUNE
http://www.sltrib.com/12232000/utah/56369.htm

A high-energy debate about low-level radioactive waste already is under way at the Utah Capitol, even before the public has had a chance to see or comment on the plan.

Envirocare of Utah wants to bring "hotter" waste to its specialized landfill in Tooele County, about 80 miles west of Salt Lake City. To get permission to do it under current law, the company first must pass muster with the state's technical experts and the public. Then it requires final approval by the Legislature and the governor.

Department of Environmental Quality officials have told the company and lawmakers that the agency review won't be completed in time for action by the 2001 Legislature. A mandatory 60-day public comment period is expected to last until March 2, two days after the end of the annual lawmaking session.

That would delay legislative and gubernatorial consideration of Envirocare's application until 2002.

Envirocare President Charles Judd said the company can't -- and won't -- wait that long.

"We're going to proceed," said Judd. "It's not like it's a slam dunk [to win approval] but we think we'll be able to get it through this legislative session without changes to the law."

The timing is critical, Judd claimed, for the company to be competitive.

"We've spent millions of dollars and a lot of time putting this together," said Judd. "We can't wait a year or we feel the market will be greatly reduced."

Judd said his position, and that of Envirocare attorneys, is that the Legislature can take up the bill simultaneously with the public comment period -- an interpretation that clashes with state officials' view.

Regulators point out they are just conducting the review that lawmakers dictated years ago for determining whether projects like Envirocare's are scientifically safe and politically palatable. And, based on when Envirocare completed its paperwork, it appears there is no way for the state Division of Radiation Control to review the application and complete the public comment before the Legislature ends February 28. "We see no reason to change the process as it is," said Bill Sinclair, director of radiation control.

Last year, Envirocare applied with Radiation Control for permits and licenses for Class B and Class C categories of low-level radioactive wastes produced by nuclear power plants, research institutions and hospitals. It is "low-level" in contrast to "high-level" wastes, such as the spent nuclear fuel proposed for another Tooele County site, on the Skull Valley Band Goshute Indian Reservation.

Still, Class B and C wastes are hundreds, and sometimes thousands, of times more radioactive than the Class A wastes Envirocare now disposes.

The company and its supporters recognize that the B and C waste proposal faces a big political challenge because some Utahns not only question the safety of the stuff but also worry Utah is at risk of being labeled the nation's dump for all sorts of nuclear trash.

With this in mind, the company began to make its case long before the 2001 session.

It has contributed heavily to politicians this year -- $53,700. That includes $36,000 to legislators, $11,500 to the state Democratic Party and $4,700 to Gov. Mike Leavitt for the period ending a few days before the election.

And last month, the company prodded the state's advisory Radiation Control Board for swift action on a separate part of the application involving a land-use exemption essential for the B and C waste expansion. The board responded by moving up its meeting date so that public hearings could be held and Envirocare could get a decision before the Jan. 15 start of the 2001 Legislature.

If that approval is wrapped up, the company only has to fight on one major issue: whether Envirocare gets the approval of lawmakers and the governor for B and C wastes before scientists have their say and the public has a chance to weigh in.

Sinclair insisted a change in state law would be required for Envirocare's application to go before the Legislature in the upcoming session. And, he said, while Sen.-elect Bill Wright, R-Elberta, has a bill drafted to amend the law for Envirocare, nothing's definite yet.

"That's under discussion," Sinclair said. "I don't think Sen. Wright has made a decision on whether or not to do that."

Wright did not return a phone message Friday.

The trouble with enacting the proposed change, said Sinclair, is that lawmakers would risk approving a project they don't know for sure will be safe.

"There is a technical part of the process [which is not yet complete,]" said Sinclair. "And there is a public policy part of the process."

The governor said this week that the current review process should be allowed to run its course without interference. "The Legislature may choose to do that [alter the process], but I don't see any particular likelihood that that will happen," said Leavitt.

One legislative critic of the political angling surrounding Envirocare's initiative is Rep. Keele Johnson, R-Blanding.

Johnson, who will not be returning to the Legislature in January, complained the company and its supporters in the Legislature are leveraging the B and C waste on the state's desperate drive to find new funding sources for public schools. Some legislators already have floated a plan that would dedicate to education any new waste fees paid to the state.

"Just don't use education as a reason to push this project through," he said. "It should stand up on its merits."

-------

Yucca Mountain Nuclear Waste repository
Waste storage plan called risky Two proposals would bring spent fuel to Nevada

Dec. 26, 2000
By Mary Manning <manning@lasvegassun.com>
LAS VEGAS SUN

If the Energy Department implements a plan to store high-level nuclear waste above ground outside Yucca Mountain while a permanent repository is being built, the health of Nevada residents would be at risk, state officials say.

The DOE is weighing storing nuclear waste above ground near Yucca Mountain to save money on a permanent repository at Yucca now estimated at $58 billion, the Las Vegas Sun has learned.

Construction of a permanent repository designed to bury 77,000 tons of radioactive commercial and defense waste would be stretched out over two decades -- with completion sometime after 2030 -- to make it more affordable, according to a DOE plan.

Meanwhile tons of waste would be shipped to Midway Valley, a stone's throw from Yucca Mountain, in a section of the Nevada Test Site not contaminated by nuclear testing. There it could be stored in shielded containers on the valley's surface or in pools of water, similar to the pools at the nation's 110 nuclear reactor sites.

Two Nevada officials see safety as the major problem with the DOE plan. There's a question of protecting the environment from radiation releases, and the potential for earthquakes in Midway Valley could stop the Nuclear Regulatory Commission from allowing the DOE to store waste there.

A 5.6 magnitude quake on June 29, 1992, rattled Little Skull Mountain, less than 12 miles from Midway Valley, and damaged a field office in the area, said Joe Strolin, administrator of the planning division for the state's Agency for Nuclear Projects.

"The big issue is whether the site could be licensed for storage under current regulations," Strolin said.

Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, is the only site being studied to become the nation's high-level nuclear waste repository. The DOE is in charge of studying the site's suitability and would oversee the construction of the repository, if it is approved.

The plan, offered by TRW Environmental Safety Systems Inc., the primary Yucca Mountain contractor, is tucked within two technical reports on the rising cost of the project, dated May and December 1999.

TRW's proposals would likely not be approved, said Bob Loux, director of the state's Agency for Nuclear Projects.

"The DOE could not meet the current Nuclear Regulatory Commission requirements for siting nuclear (waste storage) at the Test Site," Loux said.

TRW's proposals are being driven by costs, not science, Loux said.

Under TRW's plans, the DOE would gain time to work out safety and scientific concerns for a permanent dump. Meanwhile, the nation's high level waste would be stored at a convenient location for moving it to Yucca Mountain.

The reports focus on the high cost of titanium drip shields. The drip shields, designed to protect canisters holding nuclear waste from corrosion from ground water, were added in the mid-1990s after government scientists found more water than expected in Yucca Mountain. The shields would cost an extra $7.5 billion, the reports say.

By comparison the entire Yucca Mountain Project, including scores of scientific studies and the construction of an exploratory tunnel, has cost about $6 billion since 1982.

In a TRW report released this month, DOE downplays the use of titanium shields, touting the strength of the metal alloy that will be used for the waste canisters.

In addition, higher costs for drilling tunnels, building surface space to switch nuclear wastes from shipping to disposal containers and other costs add $12.3 billion to the proposed $43 million to $49 million estimate in 1999, the reports say.

The two reports, written as cost analyses, propose several measures to compensate for the high cost of the drip shields, including storing the waste above ground temporarily and building the repository in phases, spreading the cost out over two decades.

In delaying construction of the entire repository -- on a design, which the DOE has not yet finalized -- the reports suggest the waste could be stored in Midway Valley until the repository was completed sometime after 2030.

The report sets out two scenarios. In both, workers dig a tunnel, fill it with waste, and move on to the next tunnel. Through the digging process, waste waiting to be deposited would be held at Midway Valley.

In one scenario, workers would begin closing off the tunnels after 50 years. In the second, workers would close off tunnels after 125 years. The wait between filling and closing the tunnels is to allow the waste to cool.

The repository design does not yet establish how many tunnels would be dug.

The temporary storage of nuclear waste at Midway Valley also was proposed in a December 1998 TRW report that suggested that waste could be trucked to Nevada by 2007 -- three years before the current plan to complete a proposed repository.

In several reports, TRW suggested that bringing shipments of nuclear waste to Yucca Mountain up to three years earlier than the repository's expected opening in 2010 could save more than $500 million.

Jeff Gorman of Dominion Engineering in Maryland said the scientific questions about titanium and the metal alloy have not been answered.

"I have not as yet studied the design of the drip shield so I can't comment on the thickness they have selected," Gorman said. "Possibly in a year or two my colleagues and I will have some insights."

In September state consultants reported that in test results the metal alloy the DOE is planning to use in its containers for burying the wastes disintegrated in water from Yucca Mountain in less than a month, Loux said.

After the waste is on site, metal alloy waste containers themselves could disintegrate inside the mountain before the repository's 10,000-year lifespan is complete, state scientists maintain. Nevada officials have opposed any repository at Yucca.

Loux also points to studies by both state and independent consultants for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the agency that would license a repository at Yucca, that hint at possible weakening of the titanium shields from interactions between ground water, heat from the nuclear wastes and the rock's chemistry.

"The jury is still out," Loux said. "The data say the containers won't work, not just that the supposition that the containers are going to last for 10,000 years. Without reliable containers and without drip shields, there is no repository."

In addition, the project faces an inspector general probe and possibly an investigation by the General Accounting Office.

Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., and Energy Secretary Bill Richardson have asked the inspector general to investigate the "apparent bias" of TRW. Nevada's congressional delegation has said it will ask for the GAO report.

The investigations were prompted by a Dec. 1 copyrighted Sun story disclosing documents that suggested the DOE was collaborating behind the scenes with the nuclear industry to recommend Yucca Mountain.

Federal law prohibits the DOE from taking sides in the site selection process.

The Sun obtained a 60-page draft of a DOE overview that concluded Yucca Mountain was a safe site to store radioactive wastes even though a massive scientific study had not been completed.

Attached to the overview was a two-page memo from TRW that suggested the overview could be used by Yucca supporters to sell the project to Congress.

-------- u.s. nuc weapons

Missile Defense: The Jury's Still Out

Washington Post
Tuesday, December 26, 2000; Page A28
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A50314-2000Dec25.html

Robert Kagan's Dec. 18 op-ed column on missile defense missed the target ["Why Bush's Missile Plan Might Bomb"].

Mr. Kagan would have us believe that the only difficulty standing in the way of an effective missile defense is a lack of political will. According to this view, America could deploy a functional missile shield in short order if only we had a sufficiently committed president who wasn't afraid to stand up to Congress, Russia, China and our NATO allies. This line of argument papers over two fundamental truths:

(1) Seventeen years and tens of billions of dollars after Ronald Reagan inaugurated the Strategic Defense Initiative, the technology needed to reliably shoot down ballistic missiles still does not exist.

(2) The costs of developing, building and operating a missile defense are not well understood. Last April, the Congressional Budget Office estimated that the Pentagon's current missile defense architecture, which is designed to protect against attack by a relatively small number of incoming missiles, might cost from $30 billion to $49 billion. It further noted that it was unable to make a judgment as to the effectiveness of the proposed missile defense and warned that uncertainty surrounding the ultimate design of the system could result in cost increases.

The jury is still out on whether the new administration will be able to overcome the significant technological and budgetary hurtles that have prevented the deployment of an effective ballistic missile defense. Contrary to Mr. Kagan's assertions, the effort to develop a missile defense capability has enjoyed considerable bipartisan support; at the same time, legitimate, bipartisan concern exists about proposals to deploy a missile defense system that doesn't work and costs too much.

DANIEL JOURDAN Arlington


-------- MILITARY

-------- australia

--------
Australian military seeks to expand

Washington Times
December 26, 2000
By Aravind Adiga SPECIAL TO THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/world/default-20001226224712.htm

SYDNEY, Australia - Australia has embarked on an ambitious program to enhance its overseas deployment capabilities and expand its strategic role in the Asia-Pacific region, including a major increase in defense spending.

The government this month released a defense "white paper," or comprehensive policy statement, outlining an increase in military spending from the current annual level of $6.5 billion to $8.7 billion by the decade's end.

The cumulative increase of $12.6 billion in the military budget over 10 years is a landmark change in Australian strategic planning. The country's military spending has been declining in real terms since the end of the Cold War and now stands at only 1.8 percent of national gross domestic product, the lowest level since the end of World War II.

The white paper argues that a stronger military is necessary for Australia to cope with the increased potential for instability among its neighbors.

It notes that "the countries of our immediate neighborhood - Indonesia, East Timor, Papua New Guinea, and the island states of the southwest Pacific - face large economic and structural challenges."

Australia sent troops last year to East Timor as part of a U.N. peacekeeping force intended to quell rioting by Jakarta-backed militias after the territory voted in a referendum to separate from Indonesia. The mission was Australia's most significant military commitment in recent years.

As the white paper put it: "Our armed forces have been busier over the last decade, and especially over the past two years, than at any time since our involvement in Vietnam."

Since then, there has been further turmoil among Australia's neighbors.

Indonesia, still recovering from the loss of East Timor, has been stunned once again by an independence movement - this time in the province of Irian Jaya. In May, a coup in Fiji deposed the democratically elected government and plunged that island nation into a protracted crisis.

The new defense spending aims to strengthen Australia's ability to respond effectively to overseas flash points such as East Timor.

"Australia . . . cannot be secure in an insecure region, and as a middle-size power there is much we can and should do to help to keep our region secure, and support global stability," the white paper says.

To expand its strike capability, the air force will receive four new Boeing airborne early warning and control aircraft, with an option on another three. In the long term, the government envisages buying up to 100 new aircraft to replace the present combat fleet of F-111 bombers and F/A-18 fighters.

The navy will get at least three new destroyers to replace old frigates, in addition to new amphibious ships, patrol boats, Harpoon anti-ship missiles, and supply ships. The army will receive equipment upgrades and will be expanded to 54,000 troops by the decade's end - an increase of 3,500 over present numbers.

Underpinning the new defense system will be a major investment in intelligence-gathering equipment such as spy planes and radar systems.

The tone of the white paper is more strident than previous pronouncements from the government and signals a desire for greater self-reliance in the determination of Australia's military needs.

"We believe that if Australia were attacked, the United States would provide substantial help, including armed force. We would seek and welcome such help. But we will not depend on it."

Australia's military expansion acquires greater significance when viewed in the context of a general decrease in military spending among many of its neighbors, which are still recovering from the Asian financial crisis of 1997-98. Defense budgets in countries such as South Korea and Japan have decreased in real terms in recent years.

Australia's new spending plans could also provide an opportunity for major international defense suppliers.

Sikorsky, the helicopter manufacturer, is expected to receive a contract for the supply for 12 Black Hawk helicopters to the Navy. Lockheed Martin and Bofors are among the suppliers expected to compete for a new portable "bunker-buster" missile that the army will receive.

-------- brazil

Submarine sinks in Rio de Janeiro

Infobeat
Morning Coffee Edition
12/26/2000
http://us.f23.mail.yahoo.com/ym/login?.rand=53ni02vhikbn7

RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil (AP) - A Brazilian navy submarine sank at its mooring in Rio de Janeiro's harbor, local media reported Monday. Officials said there were no injuries or environmental damage. The S-21 Toneleiros was undergoing repairs at a navy maintenance dock in the harbor when a malfunction in the vessel's hydraulic system caused it to fill with water late Sunday night, Globonews television reported. The diesel-powered submarine remained submerged in 30 feet of water Monday, but authorities reportedly hoped to pull it out using forklifts and cables. Navy officials could not immediately be reached for comment. The vessel was reportedly capable of holding at least four missiles, but authorities said it was not armed at the time of sinking, Globonews reported. The 300-foot-long submarine was used mostly for training purposes, it said.

---

Brazilian submarine sinks at dock

Washington Times
December 26, 2000
World Scene Combined dispatches and staff reports
http://www.washtimes.com/world/worldscene-20001226213640.htm

SAO PAULO, Brazil - The Brazilian navy launched an investigation yesterday into what caused its largest submarine to sink at its moorings.

None of the crew was injured when the submarine Tonelero sank in shallow water yesterday at the naval base in Rio de Janeiro, where it was under repair, naval officials said.

A failure in the hydraulic system that controls the submarine's valves caused the vessel to take on water at an uncontrollable rate, naval Commander Joao Carlos Rezende said.

-------- colombia

Colombia weighs land for peace

Infobeat
Tuesday, December 26, 2000
By MICHAEL EASTERBROOK Associated Press Writer
http://www.infobeat.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/IBFrontEnd.woa/wa/fullStory?article=405534563

BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) - Colombia's second largest rebel group appeared on the verge of gaining a safe haven for holding peace talks with the government after freeing dozens of police and soldiers.

Speaking to reporters Sunday, President Andres Pastrana said ``there is a draft for an agreement'' on pulling out all government troops from a northern region that is a stronghold of the leftist National Liberation Army, or ELN.

A day earlier, the rebel group freed 42 police and soldiers they had captured in fighting during the past few years.

It had been using the men as bargaining chips to gain a demilitarized zone similar to one Pastrana granted two years ago to a larger leftist group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC.

The ELN has demanded the area be cleared to encourage dialogue.

But most Colombians believe the southern FARC-held demilitarized zone has been a disaster, and a new land concession in the north could spark protest, especially from residents of Bolivar State, where the zone would likely be created.

In its Switzerland-sized area, the FARC has allegedly abused local residents and used the zone to recruit fighters and stage attacks. Meanwhile, peace talks with the FARC on ending Colombia's 36-year conflict have gone nowhere.

Pastrana said government officials would meet with Bolivar residents and community leaders before making a final decision to surrender the territory to the ELN.

He said the draft agreement contemplates sending human rights monitors, and has other guarantees to protect civilians.

The announcement follows the hostage release and weeks of meetings between government envoys and rebel commanders in Cuba.

The ELN, formed during the 1960's, has been a major irritant to the Colombian government in recent years, blowing up oil pipelines and kidnapping large groups of Colombians for ransom.

Evidence is growing, however, that the rebels may be pining for a peace settlement, in part due to heavy pressure from the armed forces and surging right-wing paramilitary forces.

In their latest attack on suspected rebel sympathizers, paramilitary gunmen assassinated eight people Sunday in western Antioquia State, state police told the Associated Press.

---

Colombian Government Upbeat on ELN Enclave Deal

Yahoo News
World News
Tuesday December 26 4:21 PM ET
By Jude Webber
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20001226/wl/colombia_rebels_dc_2.html

BOGOTA (Reuters) - The Colombian government said on Tuesday it was moving closer to establishing another demilitarized enclave for leftist rebels as part of President Andres Pastrana's land-for-peace policy.

Pastrana led government representatives in a meeting with community activists in the departments of Bolivar and Antioquia, north of Bogota, to address resident concerns a demilitarized zone for the National Liberation Army (ELN) would heighten violence in their region.

Pastrana said over the weekend the government had drafted a deal to grant the 5,000-strong ELN, Colombia's second-largest rebel group, a demilitarized enclave similar to the tract of southern jungle ceded to the country's main rebel group, the FARC, two years ago to bring it to the negotiating table.

He said he hoped full-scale peace negotiations would take place within nine months after the land deal was in place.

The acceleration of peace moves with the 5,000-strong ELN came after it freed 42 policemen and soldiers in a Christmas goodwill gesture, crowning what both the rebels and government called positive talks in Cuba, the ELN's ideological homeland. Those talks were the latest in a year of informal contacts.

``I think we're at a stage now when white smoke will definitely emerge,'' Development Minister Augusto Ramirez told reporters shortly after Pastrana, his top peace commissioner, Camilo Gomez, and Interior Minister, Humberto de la Calle, began talks with the regional representatives on the ELN zone.

He was referring to the white smoke which emerges from the Vatican when cardinals succeed in electing a pope.

Scene Of Clashes

The planned ELN enclave has already been the scene of fierce clashes between rebels and far-right paramilitary death squads in Colombia's four-decade-old conflict, which has claimed more than 35,000 lives in the past 10 years alone.

Security forces say the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) has used its area, off limits to the military until Jan. 31, for recruitment and to plot bloody attacks. The government has said, however, that an ELN zone would be subject to stricter controls and international monitoring.

Ramirez said that if a deal were reached with the ELN, a national convention of civil representatives, the Roman Catholic Church and the international community would start immediately to pave the way to full-scale talks with the rebels which Pastrana said he hoped could start within nine months.

Two years of peace talks with the FARC which have yielded scant tangible progress ground to a halt last month when the rebels pulled out, demanding a government crackdown on paramilitary squads it says targets rebels and sympathizers.

The FARC has until Jan. 31 to decide to return to the negotiating table or see the Colombian military allowed back into its Switzerland-sized zone.

The government is seeking twin track advances with the ELN and the FARC and was due to meet FARC representatives on Wednesday to cover what would be the first prisoner exchange in Colombia's years of strife, a government source said.

The government has refused the FARC's offer to swap some 450 hostages for about 350 jailed rebels, but has dangled the ''humanitarian exchange'' of 20 prisoners a sweetener to spur the resumption of talks many Colombians believe have gone nowhere.

---

Bush Should Start Over in Colombia

New York Times
December 26, 2000
By PAUL WELLSTONE
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/12/26/opinion/26WELL.html

WASHINGTON - Earlier this month I traveled to Colombia to learn more about this war-torn country, whose military is getting nearly $2 million per day from the United States as part of an aid package that passed last June after narrow approval in the Senate.

I paid a visit to Barrancabermeja, an oil-refining port city on Colombia's Magdalena River. "Barranca," a city of 210,000, is one of the most dangerous places in one of the world's most dangerous countries. This year so far, violence in Barranca has killed at least 410 people. According to local human rights groups, most of those killed were the victims of right-wing paramilitary death squads.

These human rights groups operate in the midst of a 40-year-old civil war now in one of its most violent phases. Every year, the violence in Colombia kills nearly 4,000 people, most of them poor, powerless noncombatants. About 300,000 - more than half of them children - are forced from their homes each year. Another 3,000 people are kidnapped. Ransoms, extortion and the drug trade finance armed groups on the right and left.

In the name of the drug war, the American aid package approved this year allocates approximately 75 percent of its resources to Colombia's security forces. But Colombia's military is a deeply troubled institution, even though it has recently taken important steps to improve its overall human rights record.

The State Department recently reported that "civilian management of the armed forces is limited" in Colombia, and that in 1999 "the authorities rarely brought officers of the security forces and the police charged with human rights offenses to justice, and impunity remains a problem." Many members of the security forces continue to collaborate with the right- wing paramilitaries, who commit about three-quarters of the politically motivated murders in Colombia.

The country's two main guerrilla groups, the FARC and E.L.N., meanwhile, are supported in part by skimming from the drug trade (as are the paramilitaries), and commit about a fifth of killings while terrorizing the population. Yet even in these circumstances, I met many individuals in Colombia who are working for peace as prosecutors, investigators and journalists, and as workers in dozens of nongovernmental organizations. These people have little room for maneuver. A shocking number disappear, are assassinated or are forced to leave the country.

Now Washington has made their jobs harder. As part of an antidrug strategy that has failed so far, the new aid package is escalating the fighting and dealing a severe blow to President Andrés Pastrana's already troubled peace talks with the guerrillas.

Before things get any worse, the coming administration of George W. Bush would do well to take our Colombia policy back to the drawing board. A more effective approach has to include support for Colombia's peace process, strong new protections for human rights defenders and initiatives to make drug production less attractive to economically desperate peasants by providing support for sustainable alternative crops.

In the meantime, we need to make short-term improvements in the policy. The American aid package itself offers a guide.

The Senate's version included strong human rights conditions. It would have cut off military aid until the United States government could certify that Colombia's armed forces were disentangling from paramilitaries and punishing criminal conduct in their ranks. A House-Senate conference committee watered down this safeguard by giving the president the ability to waive it - essentially making the human rights conditions optional. The State Department recognized that Colombia's military did not meet these standards, but the administration took the easy way out and waived the conditions in August.

The waiver sent a terrible signal to Colombia's military and to its beleaguered defenders of human rights. The waiver eliminated what could have been an important source of leverage with the government for those working for human rights.

Next month, the United States government must once again certify that Colombia's military satisfies the conditions, so that delivery of antidrug aid can continue in 2001. This time, the Bush administration's State Department must take a tough stance: no waiver and no aid until all human rights conditions are met. Americans should not be supporting a partnership with a military that does not meet these very basic standards.

Paul Wellstone is a senator from Minnesota.

-------- drug war

USA Today
12/26/00
States
http://usatoday.com/news/states/all50.htm

Texas

Houston - Draden, a drug-sniffing dog, is home after more than two weeks of unintentional freedom. The Customs Service had offered a $5,000 reward, describing Draden as one of the agency's "best assets." The 6-year-old Labrador retriever was found wandering north of Houston and was returned to his handler, 10 pounds lighter and suffering from a slight infection.

-------- india/pakistan

Bombs in 4 Cities Wound Some 45 Pakistanis

New York Times
December 26, 2000
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/12/26/world/26PAKI.html
http://www.infobeat.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/IBFrontEnd.woa/wa/fullStory?article=405533493

LAHORE, Pakistan, Dec. 25 - Bombs went off in four Pakistani cities today, including a powerful blast that ripped through a crowded market in this eastern border city, the police said. Some 45 people were wounded.

Meanwhile today, in the Indian- controlled portion of Kashmir - the Himalayan territory disputed by India and Pakistan - a car bomb went off outside army headquarters, killing 8 people and wounding 23 others.

A Pakistan-based rebel group called the Jamaat-ul Mujahedeen claimed responsibility for the explosion in Kashmir in telephone calls to local newspapers. Within hours, a spokesman for the Jaish-e-Mohammad, another guerrilla group, also claimed it had carried out the attack.

In Pakistan, the first bomb ripped through a crowded market in Lahore, wounding 36 people, while the second bomb exploded at a railway station in Faisalabad, also in eastern Punjab province, wounding three people, they said.

Six people were wounded in an explosion on a passenger bus in Hyderabad in the southern Sindh province. A blast in Kharian, 70 miles north of Lahore, did not cause any injuries.

No group claimed responsibility for any of the blasts, but Pakistani police accused India of seeking retaliation for last weekend's attack in New Delhi on India's historic Red Fort.

Islamic militants from the Pakistani-based Lashkar-e-Tayyaba took responsibility for the Red Fort attack that killed three people, including two soldiers.

"We were expecting Indian-sponsored terrorist activities after mujahedeen hit New Delhi's Red Fort," said Malik Asif Hayyat, inspector general of the Punjab police.

There was no immediate reaction from India to those accusations.

The explosion in Lahore, the provincial capital of Punjab, caused a fire that destroyed several stalls and shattered glass in nearby buildings in a bazaar.

The bomb was apparently left in a shopping bag near stalls selling used clothing. The explosion touched off a stampede as fire and smoke billowed from the stores.

The bombing occurred as people were busy shopping for the Muslim festival of Id al-Fitr, which follows the end of the Islamic holy month of Ramadan. The festival begins on Wednesday.

-------- iraq

Saddam calls for holy war on Israel

Infobeat
Tuesday, December 26, 2000
http://www.infobeat.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/IBFrontEnd.woa/wa/fullStory?article=405534147
http://www.washtimes.com/world/worldscene-20001226213640.htm

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) - Saddam Hussein used his traditional Christmas message Monday to call on the world's Christians and Muslims to rise up in holy war against Israel and the ``Zionist conspiracy.''

The Iraqi leader praised Christians and other Iraqis for standing up to conspiracies through which ``the United States, Britain and Zionism ... have tried to bend Iraqis' will, bring them to their knees and master their independent decision.''

The letter was carried on the front page of every Baghdad newspaper.

The president called on Christians and Muslims everywhere to take ``the path of jihad (holy war), without which we cannot attain our aspirations of establishing right, justice and peace and delivering humanity from the evils of aggressors, criminal killers.''

Iraq opposes peace agreements signed between Israel and the Palestinians and those signed with neighboring countries.

``The Zionist conspiracy aims at Judaizing (Jerusalem) and other areas of Palestine and annihilating its indigenous population, Muslims and Christians, with the backing of America,'' al-Thawra daily quoted Saddam as saying in his letter.

Since Israeli-Palestinian clashes began in late September, more than 340 people, most of them Palestinians, have died and thousands have been injured. Earlier this month, Iraq pledged $881 million in oil revenues to support the Palestinian uprising.

-------- puerto rico

Bush to face fervor over Vieques

Infobeat
Tuesday, December 26, 2000
By EILEEN McNAMARA Associated Press Writer
http://www.infobeat.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/IBFrontEnd.woa/wa/fullStory?article=405535556

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) - George W. Bush will face battles in Puerto Rico, where the new governor intends to step up a push for the end of Navy training on Vieques, a dispute that has fueled nationalism in the Caribbean territory.

Governor-elect Sila Calderon has vowed to fight the incoming Bush administration in her efforts to immediately evict the U.S. Navy from its prized bombing range on Vieques, a small inhabited island off Puerto Rico.

Her plans would go against an agreement between the White House and Puerto Rican government that would delay any withdrawal by the Navy to 2003. Navy Secretary Richard Danzig warned her this week that if she does not follow the agreement, the federal government will not be obliged to keep its side of the bargain, including returning some 8,000 acres of Navy land on Vieques.

``When one believes in something and in a principle - in this case the people of Vieques' democratic rights and rights to security of life and health - we cannot act with fear,'' Calderon said Dec. 14.

She spoke after the Navy announced it plans an official referendum on Nov. 6 that would give residents of Vieques, population 9,400, the choice of voting for the Navy to leave by May 2003 or allowing it to stay and resume live bombing.

Calderon plans a local referendum that would allow Vieques islanders to vote to eject the Navy immediately, and she plans to withdraw local police guarding the range against protesters as required in the agreement.

Years of resentment over the Navy bombing exploded in anger after an April 1999 bombing accident killed a civilian Puerto Rican guard on the range. Protesters invaded the range and thwarted exercises for a year until U.S. Marshals ejected them in May.

After that, the Navy resumed exercises but with only non-explosive bombs and reduced the number of training exercises, as had been agreed.

Calderon's opposition could provide the impetus for renewed demonstrations and might allow protesters to regain access to an unguarded range and stop exercises.

Her election is seen as a rejection of an eight-year drive toward U.S. statehood by Gov. Pedro Rossello's party. Calderon supports the current commonwealth status but wants more autonomy, including more control of some $13 billion that the federal government gives Puerto Rico each year.

Bush has promised to improve the military and his vice president, Dick Cheney, is a former secretary of defense. However, he also has said he would honor the Vieques agreement.

A legislator in Calderon's party, Jorge de Castro Font, in a recent radio interview said Puerto Rico's new administration is going to have to proceed with caution with Bush.

``They're not going to be able to make threats nor seek out confrontations,'' de Castro Font said.

The Navy also will lose some leverage, since Rossello had always tried to keep an amicable relationship to further his statehood cause.

The 4 million residents of the Spanish-speaking island are U.S. citizens who served in the armed forces, but they do not pay federal taxes and cannot vote for president.

-------- space

Radio contact regained with Mir

Infobeat
Tuesday, December 26, 2000
By VLADIMIR ISACHENKOV Associated Press Writer
http://www.infobeat.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/IBFrontEnd.woa/wa/fullStory?article=405534146

MOSCOW (AP) - Russian ground controllers lost contact for nearly 20 hours with the Mir space station before re-establishing communication Tuesday, allaying fears the accident-prone, 140-ton vessel might have spun dangerously out of control.

It was the latest mishap for the nearly 15-year-old space station, which the Russian government reluctantly had decided to bring down in a controlled descent in late February.

Mission Control's last contact with the Mir had been at 6:40 p.m. (10:40 a.m. EST) Monday, said Valery Lyndin, a spokesman for Mission Control. Several successive attempts to restore the link later Monday failed, but on Tuesday afternoon, ground controllers managed to link up with the Mir three times.

Lyndin said the information received during the hookups showed that the station had not lost pressure - calming fears that the loss of communications could signal that the station was spinning out of control and could crash to Earth.

``The Mir will not fall on your head on New Year's Eve,'' Mission Control chief Vladimir Solovyov told reporters. ``The latest communications session showed that we are controlling events, not the other way around.''

Solovyov said the station's batteries had somehow lost nearly all their power, leaving too little energy for the Mir to communicate. Controllers then switched off energy-consuming systems so that more energy could be directed toward communications with the ground.

Recharging the batteries through the station's solar panels should take until Wednesday morning, he said. But he said it remained unclear what caused the power shortage.

Observers have been worried about the Mir's safety for a long time. However, after a fire and near-disastrous collision with an unmanned cargo ship in 1997 followed by a series of computer glitches, the Mir had been running relatively smoothly.

---

Morrock News, Tuesday, Dec. 26, 2000

Date: Tue, 26 Dec 2000 20:45:19 -0800
http://morrock.com

*TENSE TIMES WITH MIR: The rickety Russian space station Mir, plagued in recent years by mishaps such as a serious onboard fire and an orbital collision with a supply ship, lapsed into radio silence Monday and stayed dark for 24 hours -- raising fears that the 130-ton spacecraft might plunge to Earth unguided. If it did so, and struck a city, the result would be disastrous. Russian controllers regained communication with the unoccupied space station Tuesday and said there was no danger of an uncontrolled fall. They've already made plans to bring Mir down into the Pacific in February -- and to do that, they need to remain in radio contact with it.

---

Radio Contact Re-established With Mir Space Station

New York Times
December 26, 2000
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/12/26/science/26WIRE-MIR.html

KOROLYOV, Russia -- A 20-hour loss of contact with Mir fed fears that the troubled space station would plunge out of control, but after regaining contact with the vessel Mission Control said Tuesday that it was in no rush to send a rescue crew or hasten the Mir's scheduled descent.

Russian ground controllers in Korolyov, just north of Moscow, lost contact with Mir on Monday morning, and worked nearly around the clock to restore contact. A weak signal was heard Tuesday afternoon.

During the next radio linkup, they activated reserve batteries and declared the battle won. Mission Control chief Vladimir Solovyov blamed the mishap on a loss of power on the station.

``First we breathed a half breath, and then took a full chest of air,'' Solovyov told reporters, his face pale and haggard from lack of sleep.

Despite the scare, Solovyov said officials were not in a hurry to send a rescue crew or hasten Mir's descent.

``The Mir will not fall on your head on New Year's Eve,'' he said. ``We have a plan to bid farewell to the Mir in a civilized and organized way.''

After years of debate over what to do with the nearly 15-year-old space station, seen as the last major symbol of Soviet space glory, the government said last month that the 140-ton Mir would be brought down into the Pacific Ocean, 900 to 1,200 miles east of Australia on Feb. 27-28.

Solovyov said two cosmonauts would be ready to blast off for the Mir and direct the descent should problems arise.

If Mir's descent is uncontrolled, large fragments could survive its fiery plunge through the Earth's atmosphere and potentially wreak havoc on the ground.

But even an uncontrolled drop would take at least three months because of the Mir's 250-mile distance from the Earth, officials said.

Solovyov said the loss of radio contact occurred because Mir's batteries had suddenly lost most of their power -- an event he described as unprecedented. ``It was one of the worst breakdowns in our history,'' he said.

Mission Control spokesman Valery Lyndin said the information received during the hookups showed that the station had normal cabin pressure and temperature, and its systems were working normally.

Recharging the batteries through the station's solar panels should take until Wednesday morning, Solovyov said. It would take a few more days to analyze the data transmitted from the Mir to determine what caused the breakdown.

Observers long have been worried about the Mir's safety. However, after a fire and near-disastrous collision with an unmanned cargo ship in 1997 followed by a series of computer glitches, the Mir had been running relatively smoothly this year.

The Mir had only one, 73-day manned mission this year. Russian space officials decided in November to dump the Mir since it had no funds to keep it aloft and it could no longer guarantee the safety of its operation.

When the station was launched Feb. 20, 1986, it was the epitome of the Soviet technological edge, and it has far surpassed the three to five years it was expected to last.

Officials have said Russia should concentrate its funds on the new international space station instead of the Mir -- something NASA has been urging for years. NASA is leading the 16-nation international project, which has suffered repeated delays because of funding problems for Russian modules.

NASA declined to comment on the latest Mir mishap.

A Soviet satellite crashed into northern Canada in 1978, in a major embarrassment for the Soviet leadership. Nobody was hurt, but radioactive fragments were scattered over the wilderness.

The unoccupied U.S. Skylab space station fell to Earth in 1979 when its orbit deteriorated faster than anticipated, spreading debris over western Australia. No one was hurt.

-------- taiwan

Quemoy to Open Up Port

New York Times
December 26, 2000
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/12/26/world/26TAIW.html

TAIPEI, Taiwan, Dec. 25 - Taiwan's heavily fortified island of Quemoy, off China's southeastern coast, will invite bids in January for the clearing of mines to make way for a commercial port after opening up to Chinese visitors, officials said.

The operation is intended to complement Taiwan's plan to ease a decades-old ban on trade and transport links between its front-line islands and the Chinese mainland.

The successful bidder will have 200 days to clear the area, after which a commercial port will be built, Yang Ting-piao, a Quemoy county official, said today.

-------- u.n.

Weary U.N. Envoys Worry Washington Won't Keep Word

Yahoo News
Politics News
Sunday December 24 1:58 PM ET
By Irwin Arieff
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20001224/pl/un_usa_dc_12.html

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - As they completed the first major reform of U.N. finances since 1973, ambassadors worried aloud whether Washington would keep its promises next year and throughout the decade.

After a yearlong battle and round-the-clock bitter negotiations, the 189-member General Assembly on Saturday approved a cut in U.S. contributions to the United Nations (news - web sites) for the first time in two decades and reallocated the cost of running the world body among fast-growing developing nations.

``The United States has moved the goal posts so many times in the past, and if it does so again, there will be tremendous disappointment,'' said Singapore Ambassador Kishore Mahbubani, whose country was hit by an increase from $1 million to $10 million for peacekeeping expenses.

Ambassadors were seeking assurances that Congress would approve the release of more than $500 million earmarked for U.N. arrears to the United Nations before the Clinton administration leaves office in mid-January.

And they hoped for a commitment from the new administration of President-elect George W Bush that Washington would not again drive the world body to the brink of bankruptcy. Typical was Australian Ambassador Penny Wensley, who told the assembly: ``The membership of the organization has acted. We call now on the major contributor to pay its full arrears without delay, so the finances of the organization can at last be placed on a sound footing.

China's U.N. ambassador Wang Yingfan reminded the United States that having received concessions it should now show the political will to pay its arrears ``in full, on time and without conditions.''

Capping years of scrapping over payments, the assembly's complex package includes a cut in U.S. payments from 25 percent to 22 percent as Congress mandated.

The agreement also reduces the U.S. share of the $3 billion annual peacekeeping budget in stages from its current 30.1 percent down to about 26 percent by the year 2003. Congress had set a 25 percent target for peacekeeping and will be asked to amend its legislation.

Congress about five years ago began to cap the U.S. contribution at 22 percent of the administration budget and 25 percent of the peacekeeping budget, thereby giving the United States a unilateral, and some would say illegal, deduction in its U.N. obligations.

That action particularly angered the European Union (news - web sites), whose 15 members and Japan, pay more than 50 percent of the U.N. costs. Japan pays only about three percent less than the United States for U.N. administrative costs, although the U.S. economy is more than twice the size as Tokyo's.

However, the new deal approved by the assembly does not resolve the dispute between the $800 million the United States says it owes in past debts and the more than $1.3 billion shown in U.N. figures for December. Congress wants all past debts wiped off the books, which the world body cannot do without negotiations and approval by the assembly.

The U.S. legislation calling for dues reductions was part of a so-called U.N. reform package, adopted by Congress in 1999 and co-sponsored by Senate Foreign Relations Chairman, Republican Sen. Jesse Helms, and Sen. Joseph Biden, the ranking Democrat on the committee

Biden, contacted by telephone, said the only thing that could unravel the deal would be a rejection from the Bush administration and ``I can't imagine them not embracing it.''

The Bush administration is understood to want to get the issue out of the way before the president-elect takes over the White House on Jan. 20.

U.S. Ambassador Richard Holbrooke, who spent the last 16 months arguing for the U.S. dues cut at the United Nations, said he briefed the new secretary of state-designate, retired Gen. Colin Powell (news - web sites), several times on the U.N. budget controvers.

Holbrooke said Powell would like to see the issue resolved and it is now ``up to the Congress to decide.''

Holbrooke was philosophical about the skepticism among delegates. ``There was tremendous bitterness as you get to the wire. But then the very people who one hour before the agreement are denouncing it as the most unfair agreement in history are now praising it as a historic breakthrough,'' he said.

Few were more vitriolic about the United States than Cuba, which accused Washington of ``blackmail and intimidation'' in getting its share of U.N. payments reduced.

In a reference to 79-year-old Helms, Cuban ambassador Bruno Rodriguez Parrilla said the U.S. government ``has taken on the disguise of a lamb and blamed the undemocratic Congress, where a senile senator, who has managed to impose his own will, has decided to set conditions and pay less than what the prosperous U.S, economy should pay.''

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

USA Today
12/26/00
States
http://usatoday.com/news/states/all50.htm

Hawaii

Honolulu - The military is to install its own 911 emergency telephone system for the 22,000 military housing units on Oahu. The $3.3 million project is expected to be completed by the end of 2001. Currently, 911 calls from military homes are answered by city dispatchers, who take down the information and call a military operator to relay it. Delays of four to seven minutes are common.

Mississippi

Pascagoula - The USS Cole was floated on its own, unhooked from the Norwegian transport ship that has carried the stricken destroyer as cargo for two months. The Cole was damaged by a terrorist attack in October off the coast of Yemen. The destroyer will be repaired at Ingalls Shipyard.

New York

Lansing - The body of a Lockheed Martin engineer was found in Cayuga Lake, ending a four-day search that had begun after he slipped and fell into the murky water at the end of his shift. The Tompkins County Sheriff said Rocco "Rocky" Morganti's apparently fell from a barge where he was a test engineer.

---

Military expects Bush to perform

Washington Times
December 26, 2000
By Rowan Scarborough THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/default-20001226232316.htm

The 1.4 million-member armed forces may turn out to be President-elect George W. Bush's most-demanding constituency.

Mr. Bush directly sought the votes of service members, making their needs a pillar of his campaign.

Now, sailors and soldiers tell The Washington Times they have a long "to do" list for the incoming commander in chief.

They say they plan to hold him to his vow to rebuild the force after eight grueling years of social turmoil, budget cuts and expanded missions throughout the world.

Twelve officers and enlisted personnel, all speaking on the condition of anonymity because they are on active duty, said they want better pay and health care, new equipment and a full inventory of spare parts.

"We are all counting on Bush to increase training money, fuel, ammo and spare parts," said an Army Special Forces soldier. "Many of the planes we fly on become unavailable or strand us somewhere."

Others want a scaling back of sensitivity training on sexual orientation and feminism. They also like Mr. Bush's pledge to "restore honor and dignity" to the White House.

"Personally, what I want for Christmas is a new commander in chief who won't make me worry about being forced to attend a sensitivity session on 'homophobia' that coerces me to accept and or affirm behavior that my religion considers immoral," said an Army officer stationed at a post in Texas. "Also, I don't want to worry about being used as a pawn by feminists and gay activists."

Said an Army helicopter pilot: "I expect that the Bush administration will at least treat the military with respect. A refreshing change, that would be. I would hope that this administration will be more responsive to our concerns on issues like pay, morale and overall readiness, which, despite protestations by the Clinton administration, is in the crapper."

"I also don't expect them to continue the social experiments, like women in ground combat and the whole homosexual thing, which I am sick and tired of hearing about."

Mr. Bush has pledged to stick by a policy known as "don't ask, don't tell," which lets homosexuals serve as long as they keep their behavior private.

The president-elect has pledged more money for the Pentagon but has not given a specific number. The Congressional Budget Office said in September it will take an additional $51 billion, on top of the $309 billion budget, just to maintain the force for current operations.

Sen. James Inhofe, Oklahoma Republican and Senate Armed Services Committee member, wants a more drastic infusion of cash. He said in an interview he believes the military needs $100 billion more in each of the next five years.

"We are concerned about modernization," he said. "We did a lousy job during the Clinton administration. I think we will put that back in the fore again."

Mr. Bush's personal pledge to help the military was captured in Vice President-elect Richard B. Cheney's campaign line: "Help is on the way."

This commitment may be one reason Mr. Bush has not yet named a defense secretary from among the leading candidates - former Sen. Daniel R. Coats, Indiana Republican, and former Pentagon policy-maker Paul Wolfowitz.

The incoming president, Republican officials say, wants to make sure he has the right person to carry out his personal promise to men and women in uniform.

A senior officer at the Pentagon said that for him, pay and benefits rank behind an expectation that Mr. Bush will set a good example for the troops, unlike, he said, Mr. Clinton in his affair with former White House Monica Lewinsky.

Adultery in the military is prohibited when the relationship hinders good order and discipline.

"I am much more concerned about strong moral and ethical leadership from the commander in chief and his subordinates," said this officer. "I want to see a president who lives by the same standards he expects from his military and who sets an example that they can emulate.

"I sincerely hope that President Bush will not buy into 'advice' that he should 'unite' the country by pursuing policies that will promote gay, feminist or other interest groups' agendas for the military," he said.

An Army sergeant in Europe said Mr. Bush got off to a good start by naming Colin Powell, former Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman, as secretary of state; and Condoleezza Rice, a skeptic of U.S. peacekeeping missions, as national security adviser.

"He has sealed his role with the military already. He has chosen a brilliant gentleman, military leader and tactician whom many of us have served under, as his secretary of state," the sergeant said.

The soldiers also said Mr. Bush, a former Air National Guard fighter pilot, appears to be one of them.

"Many soldiers took their time and explained to me that George W. Bush struck them as a man who would jump in and play baseball with them or join them in a physical training run," the sergeant said.

Several officers said they hoped Mr. Bush would pick senior admirals and generals based on operational experience, as opposed to their tenure in Washington.

Richard Armitage, a former Pentagon official and Bush campaign adviser, has expressed general unhappiness with the practices of general officer promotion boards.

"Our new president needs to select our admirals and generals from the field, instead of the 'Army of the Potomac,' " added a Marine Corps pilot. "Too many of our leaders have won their starts by hiding in the Pentagon avoiding time in the tough, demanding jobs in the operating force."

Said the Army Special Forces soldier, "More than anything else, what I expect of Bush is dignity, integrity and honor in my president and commander in chief. . . . I expect to be sent on missions that are necessary and not feel-good operations. When we deploy, it will be in the national interest, not a whim or, worse, to deflect attention from a girlfriend's testimony."

This reference is to President Clinton's decision to order Tomahawk missiles strikes on suspected terrorist targets in Sudan and Afghanistan immediately after the grand jury testimony of Miss Lewinsky in August 1998.

Mr. Bush, who becomes president and commander in chief Jan. 20, inherits an armed forces that has debated a series of social issues, such as homosexuals in the military, sexual harassment, dating and adultery, and women in combat.

There have been at least three major reviews of "don't ask, don't tell," and new directives to the force on homosexual sensitivity.

"We need to concentrate on warrior skills, not social engineering crap." said the Special Forces soldier.

A Navy officer at the Pentagon said, "The Tailhook scandal is over, but with Tailhook went the comradeship that used to be an integral part of being in the military. 'Play hard. Work hard.'

"No more. Now it is work hard, and everyone needs their behavior to be beyond reproach at all times. I think sailors would like to be sailors again, and the adventure needs to return making the Navy more than just a job."

---

U.S. troops in Kosovo long for home during Christmas

Washington Times
December 26, 2000
By Fisnik Abrashi ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.washtimes.com/world/default-20001226224820.htm

CAMP BONDSTEEL, Yugoslavia - U.S. troops in the volatile Yugoslav province of Kosovo shared a festive Christmas feast yesterday, but for many the joy of the season was tempered by feelings of homesickness for family and friends.

Elsewhere around the world, Orthodox Christians kept the flames of hope and peace burning in the candlelit splendor of Istanbul's cathedral, while secular leaders use Christmas Day messages to appeal to the best in their citizens.

"This is my first Christmas away from home, and I am a bit upset," said Pvt. Christopher Ruffin, 18, of Stockton, Texas, as he stared at his plate of chicken, mashed potatoes and broccoli.

"I spent last night trying to get hold of my family and my girlfriend," he said. "I have not yet been able to get them to wish them Merry Christmas."

Pvt. Ruffin's colleague Spec. Paul H. Smith, 28, of Bangor, Maine, said he spent Christmas Eve working out in the gym to take his mind off of homesickness.

"I was working hard because I did not want to think about home," Spec. Smith said. He said his thoughts were of his grandparents in Florida.

Both soldiers, part of the 4,500-strong U.S. contingent to the NATO-led peacekeeping mission, have been serving in Kosovo for about a month. Here their duties include routine patrols to try to stem the flow of rebels and illegal arms from Kosovo into elsewhere in southern Serbia, where ethnic Albanians are trying to drive Serbian forces from the area.

Even though separated from her husband, Capt. Brook Maynelt, 28, of Illinois said she was happy to celebrate the holidays with "good friends, doing good things."

"I am a bit depressed, since my husband is back in Germany, but I have been away for Christmas before," Capt. Maynelt said. "I wish I was home for holidays, but what can you do? There's a job to be done."

About 1,000 miles away, in Istanbul, a more joyous celebration took place. The leaders of 13 Orthodox Christian churches gathered at the city's Byzantine cathedral to observe Christmas together for the first time in their history, as a culmination of festivities marking the 2,000th anniversary of Christ's birth.

Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I, in vestments of brocade and gold, led the two-hour service in ornate surroundings as throngs of the faithful crowded the aisles to film with video cameras.

Patriarch Bartholomew said his church has shown its "concern for the natural environment as well as for peaceful resolution among peoples, nations and various churches."

Secular leaders, too, expressed their concerns in a series of holiday messages.

Sweden's King Carl Gustaf said he was disappointed by the failure of the world climate talks last month in the Netherlands.

"This is worrying, especially considering that many scientists, already today, see more and more consequences of man's irresponsible behavior with, for example, a poisoned environment, climate changes and degenerative illnesses as a result," he said.

Queen Elizabeth II told a vast audience on television, radio and the Internet that the teachings of Jesus were part of the framework of her own life, and said many others had been inspired by Jesus' simple but powerful teaching to "treat others as you would like them to treat you."

In a traditional Christmas Eve message, Belgium's King Albert II warned his country against racism and xenophobia, issues that have gained attention since the electoral success three months ago of a Flemish nationalist party opposed to immigration.

The king spoke of his recent visit to Belgian peacekeeping troops in the Balkans, saying he was "horrified by the ravages caused in our times and on our continent by extreme nationalism and xenophobia."

King Albert also used his speech to pay homage to Belgian peacekeepers in the Balkans.

-------- OTHER

Another Tradition: Refuge in a Shelter

New York Times
December 26, 2000
By AMY WALDMAN
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/12/26/nyregion/26SOUP.html?pagewanted=all

On the coldest Christmas in more than a decade, the hungry and the homeless began lining up early yesterday for hot meals.

Outside the Y.W.C.A. at the corner of Third and Atlantic Avenues in the Boerum Hill neighborhood of Brooklyn, the temperature was 19 degrees at 10 a.m. and the line of people waiting for the annual Christmas meal stretched around the block. The doors, scheduled to open at 11:30, were opened early; within the first hour and a half, more than 350 people had been served, and by day's end, more than 1,500 - about 500 more than in years past.

Lee Perlman, one of the volunteer organizers of the holiday meal, said he was unsure how to explain the influx: The cold? A deep need belying an age of affluence? Wider publicity that a meal would be served?

That it was cold was irrefutable. Temperatures yesterday produced the coldest Christmas since 1989, based on the high of 27 degrees at midnight Sunday. Based on daytime temperatures, it was the coldest Christmas since 1983.

Todd J. Miner, a meteorologist with Pennsylvania State University, said a high pressure system over the Midwest and low pressure over southeastern Canada were directing cold air south and east from central Canada into the Northeastern states.

The gusty winds - as high as 46 miles per hour at La Guardia and 48 miles per hour at Kennedy International Airport - made the air feel even colder. Wind-chill temperatures were well below zero across the metropolitan region yesterday.

With the particularly cold weather, city police officers as well as social workers were operating at a "heightened level of intervention" regarding the homeless, said the city's commissioner of the homeless services, Martin Osterreich. Homeless people in mental or physical distress found on the street would automatically be taken to a city hospital or homeless shelter for evaluation, he said. Otherwise, they would be offered the opportunity to go to a shelter. If they refused and were not in distress, they would be left alone, he said.

The city had about 300 available beds left for single adults on Christmas Day, with another 400 or so emergency beds that could be set up to supplement its capacity of approximately 7,600 beds for single adults, and 18,000 beds for families, Mr. Osterreich said. In addition, the city had about 169 units of housing available for families, translating into about 600 beds.

By 5 p.m., there had been 1,008 complaints about a lack of heat or hot water to the Department of Housing Preservation and Development, said a spokeswoman, Carol Abrams. On a typical cold winter day, she said, the agency receives about 1,600 calls, a benchmark it seemed likely to surpass yesterday.

For the families going to the Y.W.C.A., the cold was the least of their worries. They had left homeless shelters, single rooms and overcrowded apartments to trudge, halfway across the city in some cases, to fill their stomachs and their children's hopes.

"This year I cannot buy my children nothing," said Constancia Riveria, a 38-year-old mother of four, including 5-year-old twins. "My husband have no job" - the candy store where he had worked has closed - "and I have no job." As it is, the family lives in a one-bedroom apartment in Brooklyn.

"This year, I really couldn't afford no presents," said Lois Chadwick, 27, a struggling mother of four who had traveled from the Bronx for turkey, stuffing, presents and diapers.

She said she had just received a letter from her welfare caseworker saying her case was being closed because she had missed an appointment. That left her entirely dependent on her children's father for support. She said that she would like to work so she would not have to depend on welfare, but that she had never really learned to read. And she kept having children "back to back."

Lisa Schnell, 33, had arrived from the Bronx, eight children in tow, aged 14 to 1, to try to fill in the gaps at Christmas. Her children's father was unemployed, and they had been homeless for two years, finally resettling in a home of their own recently. "Christmastime is the hardest time, especially with a large family," she said. "The bills."

A 26-year-old single mother said inflation seemed to be diminishing the value of an already meager public assistance check: $87 every two weeks, with her rent paid as well. She said she braided hair to earn money, but as her son, now 5, grew, so did the bills. And, she confessed, she spoiled him with fashionable clothes. "Now I'm stuck."

For many, there was comfort in the numbers - visible affirmation that many were as hard up as they were - and the range of ethnicities, ages and family sizes, a reminder that poverty is not an exclusive club.

"I'm not too embarrassed - there are a lot of people here today," said a 46-year-old woman who nevertheless refused to give her name. She was at the Goddard Riverside Community Center at the corner of Columbus Avenue and 88th Street on the West Side of Manhattan, where the first people had begun arriving for holiday meals at 9 a.m. She and two sons had been in a shelter since September, after relocating from Maryland. With no home and no job, she said, "I think God is testing us."

For Gerald Dupree, 39, who described himself as a former shoplifter and addict now living in a single- room-occupancy hotel, there was comfort in anonymity - the warmth of strangers preferable to the turmoil of family. "I wanted to go somewhere where I don't know nobody, and they don't know me, but there's unity," he said. He too found comfort, he said, in seeing others who had been dealt a "bad hand."

At 2 p.m., it was 21 degrees, and people were still coming in the center's doors.

-------- alternative energy

Argonne, Süd-Chemie sign agreement to accelerate fuel cell development

anl.gov
November 28, 2000
http://www.anl.gov/OPA/news00/news001128.htm

ARGONNE, Ill. - An ultra-efficient, environmentally friendly electric car is now looking a lot more real, thanks to the Chemical Technology Division at the U.S. Department of Energy's Argonne National Laboratory.

As a result of their work, Argonne and Süd-Chemie Inc. (formerly United Catalysts Inc.) have signed a licensing agreement under which Süd-Chemie Inc. will manufacture and distribute a partial oxidation catalyst developed and patented by Argonne. The catalyst forms the heart of a component that will allow fuel-cell-powered cars to run on conventional fuel.

The Argonne team, led by Michael Krumpelt and Shabbir Ahmed, developed this catalyst for use in the fuel processor of an automotive fuel cell system. It efficiently converts a wide variety of hydrocarbon fuels, including methanol, natural gas and gasoline, into a hydrogen-rich gas. In addition to this fuel flexibility, the novel catalyst has demonstrated excellent resistance to sulfur in the fuel, a property essential for reliable, long-term operation of the processor.

The new catalyst is a result of a long-term focus in Argonne's Chemical Technology Division. In the late 1980s, the division began exploring the catalytic conversion ("reforming") of liquid fuel to hydrogen inside a fuel cell system. Industry judged this work to be too risky because of the enormous challenge of finding the right catalyst. Diligent efforts by the Chemical Technology Division team, however, eventually uncovered a class of new materials that support the partial oxidation chemistry for gasoline and other liquid fuels. (Partial oxidation is the primary reaction by which the hydrocarbon fuel is converted into hydrogen.)

By mid-1999 they had developed an engineering-scale processor with this catalytic material that produces hydrogen from commercial gasoline and natural gas. This device produces about one-fifth the amount of hydrogen needed for a conventional car - a major step towards the realization of commercially available, fuel-cell-powered automobiles.

The partial oxidation catalyst also makes use of the fuel processor more attractive for other fuel cell applications, such as power for residential buildings and remote locations. Depending upon the commercial success of fuel cells, the worldwide market for such a catalyst could be as high as a half billion dollars per year within 10 years.

Argonne's licensing partnership with Süd-Chemie Inc. is the most recent of more than 600 partnering arrangements over the past 10 years. These licensing agreements are one way Argonne is working with industry to leverage government research to strengthen the nation's technology base. The agreement is also expected to open the door to further cooperative research efforts, leading to the possible development of the next generation of fuel processor catalysts.

The catalyst invented by the Argonne researchers was made possible by support from the Department of Energy's Office of Advanced Automotive Technologies program to overcome the technical barriers to fuel-cell-powered vehicles.

Süd-Chemie Inc. has been the leading developer and manufacturer of catalysts for the production of hydrogen from hydrocarbons for more than 50 years. From the inception of the fuel cell industry, Süd-Chemie has been a major supplier of catalysts used in the critical fuel cell processor.

America's first national laboratory, Argonne is one of the U.S. government's largest national research centers. The Chemical Technology Division has been at the forefront of fuel cell research for more than 20 years, drawing on multiple disciplines to create and improve materials and designs for a wide variety of fuel cell types and applications.

Argonne is operated by the University of Chicago as part of the U.S. Department of Energy's national laboratory system.

---

Californians trying alternative energy

12/26/2000
InfoBeat News - Morning Coffee Edition
http://us.f23.mail.yahoo.com/ym/login?.rand=53ni02vhikbn7

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) - Alternative energy sources are becoming more attractive to Californians as they face an energy crisis with soaring natural gas prices, tight supplies ofelectricity and imminent electricity rate hikes. But the energy generated by renewable sources,such as the sun, wind and the Earth's own heat, so far accounts for only 12% of California's power usage. Thanks to its price, natural gas had been the favorite means of producing electricity in the state, generating almost 90% of California's power. But that has changed dramatically. From last winter's range of $2 to $3 per 1,000 British thermal units, natural gas shot up to $30 per 1,000 Btu last month. For months, California's electricity grid has been stressed by high demand, scant reserves and soaring wholesale prices. With electricity imports slowing to a trickle, managers of the state's power grid declared an alert Thursday, asking consumers to cut their usage and warning some commercial customers they might be required to cut back. There have been nearly three dozen power alerts since June.

-------- environment

Refiner agrees to curb pollution

Infobeat
Tuesday, December 26, 2000
By SUZANNE GAMBOA Associated Press Writer
http://www.infobeat.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/IBFrontEnd.woa/wa/fullStory?article=405530233

WASHINGTON (AP) - Koch Petroleum Group will install up to $80 million in pollution-reducing equipment at three refineries in a settlement with the government.

The settlement among Wichita, Kan.-based Koch, the Department of Justice and the Environmental Protection Agency was filed in U.S. District Court in Minneapolis Friday.

The three had agreed in principle in July. At the same time, the government reached a similar agreement with BP Amoco concerning nine of its refineries.

The agreements are considered voluntary and are intended to allow the refiners to avoid future enforcement actions and years of litigation. The EPA has been taking a sector-by-sector approach to industry pollution problems and recently turned to refineries, said Cristine Romano, a Justice Department spokeswoman.

``I hope other refineries will take note,'' said Lois Schiffer, the Justice Department's assistant attorney general for the environment.

The agreement does not affect the Justice Department's criminal case against Koch. The company was indicted in September on charges of conspiring to violate the Clean Air Act at its Corpus Christi, Texas, refinery in 1995 and 1996.

Under the agreement, Koch will install up-to-date pollution control equipment at two refineries in Corpus Christi, Texas, and one at Rosemount, Minn.

In addition, Koch agreed to pay $4.5 million in fines. Of those, $3.5 million assessed for waste disposal violations has been paid. The remaining $1 million settles alleged Clear Air Act violations. Koch did not admit wrongdoing in paying the fines.

``This agreement addresses the past in a small way and the future in a big way,'' said Jim Mahoney, Koch's executive vice president of operations. ``It closes some old, disputed issues to the satisfaction of all parties involved and lays out an efficient, flexible path forward to implementing additional clean technologies and best practices at our Minnesota and Texas refineries.''

Federal officials said the agreement will cut nitrogen oxide and sulfur dioxide emissions from the three refineries by 5,200 tons by 2008.

The company also will cut releases of smog-producing organic compounds and benzene, a known carcinogen, through better leak detection and repair practices and will improve safety for workers and local communities by sharply reducing accidental releases of pollutants.

Koch Petroleum Group is a subsidiary of Koch Industries Inc., a worldwide oil and gas company.

---

Human testing strikes controversy

Infobeat
Tuesday, December 26, 2000
By LEON DROUIN KEITH Associated Press Writer
http://www.infobeat.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/IBFrontEnd.woa/wa/fullStory?article=405530286

LOS ANGELES (AP) _ Kimberly Wood pedals a stationary bicycle in a refrigerator-sized chamber and breathes into various tubes as she watches researchers monitor information about the air pollution levels inside.

A contraption outfitted with hoses and gauges concentrates the ultra-fine soot and dust inside the chamber to eight times its outdoor level.

Wood is among a growing number of research volunteers who are subjecting themselves to pollutants and other harmful substances, a trend some experts say raises ethical concerns because even a low risk runs counter to the physician's ancient creed, ``First, do no harm.''

The college student said she volunteered for the study, designed to monitor how particulate matter affects humans, because she is convinced such research benefits society at large.

She pointed to recent studies connecting secondhand tobacco smoke to childhood asthma.

``What if air pollution is doing the same thing to small children?'' said Wood, 22, who is paid $200 for tests that took more than a day. ``That's something that needs to be looked at and taken care of.''

Deliberate human exposure to pollutants was an element of nine of the 110 projects approved last fiscal year by the National Center for Environmental Research, a division of the Environmental Protection Agency.

Human testing has also been involved in studying the effects of a bacterium in causing diarrhea, and investigating whether certain doses of a water pollutant are harmful to humans.

In November, Loma Linda University Medical Center found itself on the defensive after questions were raised about its water-pollutant study, in which participants ingested dosages of a rocket fuel component.

Researchers there noted the amounts given to volunteers were low and said the possible health risks were outweighed by the study's potential benefit to the general public.

The issue came before an EPA ethics panel on pesticides in September. The panel concluded human studies should be used only with great caution, but two dissenting members said no human testing of pesticides should be allowed.

They said the recommendation ``lays the groundwork for a flood of submissions of data from research which should not be conducted and should not be accepted'' by the EPA.

``The issue, I think, comes down to whether an individual who is otherwise healthy should be put in harm's way for something that does not have any benefit to them,'' said Jeffrey Kahn, director of the Center for Bioethics at the University of Minnesota. He is a member of the EPA panel who doesn't favor an all-out ban on human testing.

Rancho Los Amigos National Rehabilitation Center in the Los Angeles suburb of Downey has exposed people to air pollutants in controlled conditions since the 1970s.

The center, where Wood was being monitored, has several test chambers, including a partially dismantled car used to test the health effects of air-bag chemicals.

The studies have been funded by a combination of local, state and federal agencies, and industry and nonprofit groups, said Dr. Henry Gong, chief of environmental health for the center.

The research must be approved by an institutional review board. The board ensures that the risks of human testing are minimized, participants are not coerced and the scientific value of the research is clear.

---

No Happy Holidays for Yellowstone's Bison:
Grinch-Like Government Bison Plan is Nothing to Celebrate (Unless You're a Cattle Rancher), Reports the Fund for Animals

Yahoo News
Tuesday December 26, 1:14 pm Eastern Time
Press Release
SOURCE: Fund for Animals
http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/001226/ny_fund_4_.html

NEW YORK, Dec. 26 /PRNewswire/ -- In a statement released today, The Fund for Animals condemned the government's recent Record of Decision on the Final Environmental Impact Statement on the long-term management of Yellowstone's bison. The Fund describes the plan as a scientifically fraudulent, inhumane, unnecessary, and costly strategy, which disregards more than 70,000 comments received in opposition to the killing of Yellowstone bison and dismisses the best available scientific evidence.

Government officials have approved a plan that permits the continued shooting and slaughter of America's bison for the sole purpose of placating the cattle industry and state livestock agencies. The integrity of Yellowstone National Park and the welfare of its bison and other wildlife are being sacrificed to allegedly protect a handful of ranchers and their 2,000 cows.

According to Andrea Lococo, Rocky Mountain coordinator of The Fund for Animals, ``In this season of giving, the government has given a gleeful cattle industry a bison destruction plan, while the public and America's bison have been given a stocking full of coal. Thank goodness the government is not in charge of Santa's reindeer, or Rudolph and the others would be captured, tested, slaughtered, or shot when they wandered into the state of Montana.''

The Fund asserted that the government's plan to harass, capture, slaughter, shoot, vaccinate, and otherwise persecute Yellowstone's bison, while imposing no new restrictions on cattle producers, is unacceptable and illegal. The Fund vowed to consider all options, including litigation, to force the government to implement a more sensible, humane, and scientifically sound management plan for Yellowstone bison.

Added D.J. Schubert, a wildlife biologist representing The Fund for Animals, ``The millions of people from around the world who cherish Yellowstone and its bison are rightfully outraged and offended by the government's plan. In the ten years that this plan was under development, thousands of bison have died, hundreds of meetings have been conducted, and millions of tax dollars have been spent to develop a scientifically fraudulent and inhumane bison slaughter plan entirely inconsistent with public opinion.''

The Fund for Animals is a national animal protection organization founded in 1967 by author and humanitarian Cleveland Amory. Since 1985, The Fund for Animals has advocated for an end to the slaughter of Yellowstone's bison.

The Fund's 6-page statement on the plan is available at http://www.fund.org or by calling 307-859-8840.

SOURCE: Fund for Animals

---

New Work Rules Jan. 1 for Most Construction, Drilling, Logging and Mining Workers

Yahoo News
Tuesday December 26, 12:26 pm Eastern Time
Press Release

SAN FRANCISCO--(BUSINESS WIRE)- California workers employed in on-site occupations in the construction, drilling, logging and mining industries have new workplace rules effective Jan. 1, 2001. Employees in these industries have worked without the overtime and work schedules in place in other industries.

The Industrial Welfare Commission (IWC), which sets standards for wages, hours and working conditions in California, adopted the new wage order on Oct. 23. As in the other 15 wage orders for California industries and occupation groups, IWC Order 16 regulates minimum wage and overtime, alternative work week schedules and make-up time, meals and rest periods, uniforms and equipment, and other standards for those engaged in on-site construction, drilling, logging and mining.

IWC Order 16 requires, for the first time in these occupations, payment of overtime for work performed between eight and 12 hours in a workday and for the first eight hours worked on the seventh consecutive workday. In addition, double time is now required after 12 hours in a workday and after eight hours on the seventh consecutive day in any workweek. Also included are provisions for an alternative work schedule in which employees could work up to 10 hours a day without incurring overtime and make up lost time resulting from personal obligations.

Order 16 applies to employees in on-site construction, such as remodeling, building, excavations, demolitions, renovations, and other work that requires a contractor's license. Those covered in the drilling industry include employees whose work requires them to drill, repair and rework wells for exploration or extraction of oil, gas and water resources. Employees working in logging for which a timber operator's license is required are also covered by the new wage order. Workers required to mine pits, quarries and surface or underground mines for exploration or extraction of nonmetallic materials and ores, coal, and building materials such as stone and gravel are also included.

The full language of Order 16 is posted on the Department of Industrial Relations Web site at http://www.dir.ca.gov/IWC/iwc.html.

---

A Cleanup for the Big Rigs

New York Times
December 26, 2000
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/12/26/opinion/26TUE2.html

Carol Browner, who has made air pollution her signature issue during eight years as administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, is ending her tenure with a ruling that will make the air in cities like New York much cleaner and healthier than it is today. Under a timetable announced last week by Ms. Browner and approved by President Clinton, big diesel-powered vehicles like trucks and buses will be subject to new rules that are intended to reduce emissions of soot and smog-producing pollutants by 90 percent over time. Environmentalists described the plan as the biggest step forward for cleaner air since the removal of lead from gasoline in the 1970's.

The linchpin of the strategy is a rule requiring refiners to reduce the sulfur content in diesel fuel by 97 percent. That is crucial because sulfur not only produces soot but clogs up a vehicle's catalytic converter, the device that removes other pollutants. With nearly sulfur-free fuel, manufacturers of diesel engines will be able to incorporate the sophisticated pollution-control devices that are now standard equipment in ordinary cars. The cleaner fuel will also allow the retrofitting of existing diesel engines, resulting in some short-term benefits even as the trucks and buses now on the road are phased out.

Over time, the benefits should be substantial. Buses and heavy-duty trucks, ranging in size from delivery vehicles to 18-wheelers, account for just 6 percent of all miles driven in the United States. But they produce one-fourth of the smog-producing chemicals in the nation and up to half the soot in cities like New York, where the health benefits will be greatest. Last spring, after years of pressure from health groups and environmental advocates, New York City announced that it would begin to convert its bus fleet to natural gas or hybrid electric vehicles. That conversion will continue because it offers immediate benefits, whereas the national program will take time to implement fully.

During intense negotiations with Ms. Browner, industry representatives warned that the costs of producing the cleaner fuel would be so onerous that some refiners might stop producing diesel fuel altogether. But administration officials and even some big producers, including British Petroleum, reject this gloomy assessment, in part because the rules give refiners ample lead time. About 80 percent of all diesel fuel must be virtually sulfur-free by 2006, the rest by 2010.

The administration also argued that the public health benefits - including reduced rates of cancer, asthma and other diseases - would outweigh the projected costs. The E.P.A. has pegged this extra expense at only $1,200 to $1,900 apiece for cleaner engines in big vehicles that can cost up to $250,000. Cleaner diesel fuel would cost an extra four to six cents a gallon, the E.P.A. estimates. Industry sources put the extra fuel costs at three times that amount. But it is worth noting that ever since the original Clean Air Act was written into law in 1970, industry in general has regularly overestimated the costs of environmental rules while underestimating the ability of its own engineers to satisfy those rules in a timely, cost-effective way. Ms. Browner is betting that improved technology can deliver cleaner fuels and cleaner vehicles at affordable prices. Historically, that has been a safe bet.

Of course, President-elect George W. Bush could order his new E.P.A. administrator, Gov. Christie Whitman, to overturn the new regulations. Some of Mr. Bush's friends in the oil industry may well ask him to do so. But that would require him to begin the laborious process of drafting regulations all over again. It would also demonstrate an amazing indifference to the public's demonstrated desire for cleaner air.

---

Private Sector May Sell Water to Southern California Agency

New York Times
December 26, 2000
By JAMES STERNGOLD
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/12/26/national/26WATE.html?pagewanted=all

CADIZ, Calif. - In an agreement that would introduce a new level of market influence over the management of water in Southern California, the government agency that supplies roughly 17 million people in the Los Angeles area plans to buy large volumes of privately owned water for the first time.

The decision, which effectively relaxes the tight government controls that have always prevailed over this scarce and basic resource, comes after a shift in federal policy and projected shortages of water in the years ahead.

After years of planning and disputes, the Metropolitan Water District is within weeks of concluding its first contract to buy large volumes from one of the state's largest farming companies, Cadiz Inc.

Under the terms of the nearly concluded contract, officials on both sides say, Cadiz Inc. (pronounced KAY-deez) will provide the agency each year with as much as 47 trillion gallons (or in the industry measure, 145,000 acre-feet of water).

There have been many issues to overcome in this unusual deal - already some environmentalists are threatening litigation - but none are greater than the psychological hurdle of whether the private sector should be allowed to play such a large role in the management of this critical commodity.

About all the experts agree on is that the impact will be large, and that in time there are likely to be more private players and less government control.

"No question, this is introducing a whole new era," said Norris Hundley, a professor emeritus of history at the University of California at Los Angeles and author of "The Great Thirst: Californians and Water, 1770's-1990's." "The marketing of water is really new and will have a big impact. We're just seeing the tip of the iceberg of what's possible."

The proposed deal comes at a time when Californians are already questioning the role of market forces in the delivery of basic resources. An unprecedented spike in power and natural gas prices, plus critical power shortages, have led many to wonder if the state's experiment in energy deregulation was such a wise move.

But even as some state officials call for more government controls on energy, Southern California's water planners feel they have no choice but to head down the road to a freer market to overcome what they describe as a sort of slow-motion supply crisis that will play out over the next two decades.

Federal government and court decisions have reduced how much water California will be able to take from the Colorado River. The Met, as the government agency is known, has changed only reluctantly, and had to take on a new general manager to carry out the new ideas, but it has now embraced the market-oriented approach.

"For years, the Met assumed the world would be a certain way," said Ronald Gastelum, the new manager. "There was a certain arrogance. After the first court decisions, people were saying, `Well, at least we have the Colorado River surpluses.' Then those got taken away. What we're now saying is: `O.K., that's reality. Let's make the best business deal.' "

Cadiz is offering that deal, and it has almost no competition because it is the only known source of such large volumes so close to the region. That fact heartens the British entrepreneur who runs the company, Keith Brackpool.

"The one thing I don't have to worry about when I wake up in the morning is that someone else has just solved California's water problem," Mr. Brackpool said. "If you do the math, the price of our water just soars."

The water would be pumped from an aquifer deep under the Mojave Desert at this sun-blasted old rail stop about 200 miles east of Los Angeles, where Cadiz operates a farm of scientifically managed, laser-straight rows of bushy lemon and orange trees and grapevines.

The math is particularly cheering for Cadiz, which has been losing substantial amounts of money every year. It lost $8.6 million on $115 million in revenues in 1999, and is expected to be in the red again this year. The deal with the Met could make a gold mine of this site.

Achieving that will require tough negotiations and political savvy, something Cadiz has worked hard at. Mr. Brackpool was a large contributor to Gov. Gray Davis's election campaign, and has been appointed by the governor to serve on several advisory boards related to natural resources and growth. In addition, the company named to its board last year Tony Coelho, formerly a powerful Democratic congressman and a former chairman of Vice President Al Gore's presidential campaign.

"I don't think anybody knows the value of that water, that's how valuable it is," said Mr. Coelho, whose district was the agricultural Central Valley of California. "Let me just be blunt," he added. "Careers are made and lost in water politics, and that will be true here."

Los Angeles, which lies in an arid coastal region, has always had growth ambitions far exceeding its meager indigenous water supply. The city pipes its water in from the Owens Valley in Northern California. The rest of Los Angeles County and the surrounding counties rely on the Met, which transports federal allocations of Colorado River water through an aqueduct that cuts across the desert 35 miles south of here.

The law now grants California 4.4 million acre-feet of water a year, but it has been taking about 5.3 million acre-feet, much of that at the expense of Arizona and Nevada.

That will not be possible for too many more years. As a result of the court decisions and a directive from the Interior Department, California and the Met will have to cut back to the official allotment before 2020.

Mr. Gastelum, the district's new manager, took over last year with a mandate to ease the transfer of water, and to push much harder on plans to save it - though conservation and recycling have already reduced needs by some 700,000 acre- feet a year over the last decade.

The Met's arrangement with Cadiz has two components. Under the first, surplus water would be diverted from the Met aqueduct in wet years and transferred through a pipeline to the Cadiz property for storage. The water would be sprinkled into shallow spreading ponds, where it would seep slowly underground.

Even environmentalists embrace this part of the plan, because water storage below ground in the sandy, porous soil here is considered less damaging to the surroundings than reservoirs. And in dry years, the stored water would be pumped back up. The Met would pay Cadiz about $90 for each acre-foot of water stored and then returned.

Under the second, more hotly disputed part of the plan, Cadiz would sell as needed to the Met up to 145,000 acre-feet a year of water pumped up from an existing aquifer deep under the desert here. The fee would initially be about $230 an acre-foot and would rise over the years.

Once the final deal has been negotiated and the Met and Cadiz boards have approved it, the two will face perhaps the most critical hurdle. An environmental impact statement would have to be approved by the federal Bureau of Land Management. Even if it is approved, environmental groups have vowed to fight in court. Environmentalists contend that the existing underground water would be pumped out faster than it could be replenished. If that happens, they argue, springs in the region may dry up, killing wildlife like bighorn sheep and coyotes.

They also fear that the briny water just below two huge dry lake beds in the area might sink, loosening the surface dust. Winds could whip that up, creating major pollution problems, which is precisely what has happened in the Owens Valley.

"The problems this is going to create are going to be very expensive to fix, more expensive than any benefits," said Elden Hughes, a regional director of the Sierra Club.

The Met and Cadiz have proposed a system of monitoring wells to ensure that the water table does not drop sharply, but critics warn that the demands from the cities would overwhelm prudent management.

Mr. Gastelum of the Met, however, argues that the agency has to move forward. "Unfortunately," he said, "we don't have the luxury of lining up a bunch of projects and being able to just choose which one we want. There's just one source of new water here. Cadiz is not a panacea. It's a piece of the puzzle."

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News Analysis: Whitman Gets 2 Grades for One Record

New York Times
December 26, 2000
By DAVID M. HALBFINGER
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/12/26/politics/26WHIT.html?pagewanted=all

TRENTON, Dec. 25 - In her seven years as governor of New Jersey, Christie Whitman has been firm about how she wants her approach to the environment to be measured.

Do not tally up the fines paid by industry and do not count the number of new regulations put on the books, she has urged, but do look at the quality of the air and of the water. And watch for a good balance of competing forces.

"This great country of ours has the ability and the will to build a more prosperous America while meeting our environmental obligations," Mrs. Whitman said Friday in Austin, Tex., as President-elect George W. Bush announced that she was his choice to lead the Environmental Protection Agency.

In New Jersey, whose most recognizable symbols might well be a factory smokestack and the Jersey Shore, industry and the environment make for particularly powerful political forces. And Mrs. Whitman is fond of saying that her policies often subject her to vitriol from business interests and environmental advocates alike.

"The fact that we're being attacked by both sides leads me to believe that we're probably right where we need to be, which is in the middle, to find some kind of common ground," she said in an interview earlier last week in her office in the State House here.

Mrs. Whitman has been a national leader in land conservation, a bold experimenter in finding ways to combat air pollution, a magnetic spokeswoman for smart-growth strategies to prevent suburban sprawl. Leading business groups praise what they call her balanced approach to environmental issues. But some New Jersey environmentalists say that she is a foe doing a remarkable job of masquerading as a friend, loudly preaching the eco- gospel while hobbling regulatory enforcement efforts, chipping away at pollution-control standards, and supporting controversial development projects in New Jersey's vanishing wetlands and woods.

Her record as governor includes noteworthy clashes between state regulators and the Environmental Protection Agency over wetlands development, clean air and clean water, raising questions about how Mrs. Whitman will guide policy at the federal level.

As she said in Austin, "Having served as governor, I also know what it's like to be on the receiving end of mandates from Washington."

Mrs. Whitman, 54, has dealt with virtually every major environmental issue in her seven years in office: regulatory reform, suburban sprawl, air pollution and water quality.

As a regulator, Mrs. Whitman has valued consensus and cooperation over confrontation, styling her approach after that of the Netherlands, where businesses are given great leeway to arrive at goals for pollution control on their own terms.

"She and I share the same point of view," Mr. Bush said in announcing her selection. "We share a philosophy that moves beyond the old, central command-and-control mind-set that believes Washington has got all the answers."

Mrs. Whitman took office in 1994 and sharply altered the regulatory policy of her predecessor, Jim Florio, a zealous environmental advocate who had written the federal Superfund law while in Congress.

Conservatives in Congress who have long wanted to cut back or eliminate the environmental agency might be cheered by a review of Mrs. Whitman's first term: Frequently blaming the state Department of Environmental Protection for causing job losses, she cut its budget by 30 percent and laid off hundreds of workers. She ordered that state regulations be no more stringent than federal rules. And she cut inspections, eliminated penalties and introduced grace periods for violators, to the point that collections of environmental fines plunged 80 percent.

Adopting the motto "Open for Business," Governor Whitman eliminated the environmental prosecutors Mr. Florio had introduced, and replaced a public advocate's office, which had at times sued the state on behalf of environmental groups, with a business ombudsman's office to guide businesses through the permitting process. And she sought to move away from punitive measures toward voluntary compliance.

"We'd spent an awfully long time with a very negative business environment for manufacturers," said Hal C. Bozarth Jr., spokesman for the Chemical Industry Council of New Jersey. "What she finally did was to bring the pendulum back somewhere in the middle, to balance economic development and environmental protection."

Jeffrey Tittel, director of the New Jersey chapter of the Sierra Club, who is perhaps Mrs. Whitman's harshest critic, put it another way. "A month doesn't go by where we don't find there's been a rollback or attempted rollback," he said.

If Governor Whitman is seen by many as more green than brown - stronger at preserving open space than protecting the air, water and soil from pollution - it may be because her signal achievement was in conservation: borrowing $1 billion to buy up vulnerable parcels of open space in the nation's most densely populated state.

Critics say it will not be enough money to achieve the governor's goal of preserving a million acres of land, and say that on her watch about 60,000 acres have been lost to development each year. Still, more than 250,000 acres of open space and farmland have been protected since 1994, nearly as much as in the prior three decades combined, officials say.

Governor Whitman has spoken frequently of the need to control growth by steering new development to urban areas, redeveloping old industrial sites and reining in suburban sprawl. Yet her administration has supported two projects that would further cut into New Jersey's remaining wetlands: a 200-acre retail development in the Meadowlands, and an eight-mile highway connector through Middlesex County. The federal Environmental Protection Agency opposes both.

The Whitman administration has also been at the vanguard of interstate and international efforts to reduce air pollution, although attempts to reduce in-state emissions have led to embarrassing failures. New Jersey's environmental protection commissioner, Robert C. Shinn Jr., played a crucial role in persuading the Midwestern states to bear responsibility for the air pollution they were exporting to the East, said Ned Sullivan, who was Maine's top environmental official and now runs Scenic Hudson, an advocacy group in Poughkeepsie, N.Y.

"The Midwestern states had never, until then, admitted that their emissions from dirty, coal-fired power plants were causing the pollution and health problems that we experienced in New Jersey, New York and New England," Mr. Sullivan said. "Gaining that consensus, based on an analysis of the science, was the critical achievement."

The multistate agreement led to the E.P.A.'s 1998 order requiring power plants in 22 states to curb such smog-forming pollution, to lawsuits against those power plants filed by New York, New Jersey and other states, and ultimately to settlements such as one announced last week by the Cinergy Corporation, a utility in Cincinnati that said it would clean up 10 electric generating plants in Indiana, Kentucky and Ohio.

Mrs. Whitman's efforts to comply with the federal Clean Air Act in New Jersey, however, gave rise to a managerial disaster. The governor chose to enhance the state's automobile- emissions inspections to detect more pollutants. But the contract was delayed for two years, ran about $100 million over budget, and, when it finally opened in freezing temperatures last year, proved a nightmare of frozen equipment, lines dozens of cars deep, poorly trained workers and the occasional mangled tire. That the contractors included several Republicans with ties to the state Republican party did not help.

On water, Mrs. Whitman's record is one of progressive ideas, but, critics say, wanting in execution.

She won praise for establishing 20 watershed management areas across New Jersey, setting in motion what advocates say could eventually prove an effective way to put limits on new development. But in 1996, the Department of Environmental Protection, putting into place the federal Clean Water Act, proposed a set of rules that critics said would have let hundreds of millions of gallons of carcinogens and other pollutants into the waterways. Dozens of lawmakers objected, advocates sued, and the E.P.A. rejected the rules.

The state is now revising its proposal, but has encountered heated opposition from environmental groups as well as builders.

Mrs. Whitman, of course, asks to be judged not on the regulatory process itself but on its results - in short, on the quality of New Jersey's water, and of its air. Yet the statistics she chooses to highlight almost always allow for a counterpoint.

On Friday, for example, even as Mrs. Whitman was in Austin, New Jersey's environmental agency released a report on the quality of water in the state's rivers and streams. The report, based on data collected from waterways that flow into the Delaware River in northwest New Jersey, painted a somewhat blurry picture.

The portion of rivers and streams "severely impaired" by pollutants had declined to just 1 percent in 1998 from 5 percent in 1993. But in 1993, 67 percent of the waterways, some of which are used for drinking water, were free of pollution. By 1998, that number had declined to 58 percent.

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Land costs threaten preservation

Infobeat
12/26/2000
InfoBeat News - Morning Coffee Edition
http://us.f23.mail.yahoo.com/ym/login?.rand=53ni02vhikbn7

BOULDER CREEK, Calif. (AP) - A 300-foot-tall redwood tree towers over the Waterman Gap property in the Santa Cruz Mountains. So does another 300-foot tree. And another, also 300 feet. And another and another. The dense forest is a mass of 300-foot-tall redwoods, the result of seedlings growing up together for a century, restoring the land that logging had left barren. Trying to keep such deforestation from happening again, a nonprofit land preservation group bought the land for $10.9 million in October, despite timber companies' efforts to pay nearly twice as much for it. It was a rare bargain for preservation groups. Skyrocketing land prices these days are forcing them to pay more for less, and some wildland has proved too expensive to save. Nowhere is the pain felt more deeply than in the San Francisco Bay area, where the nation's highest housing prices have encouraged people to move into areas that once were relatively immune to runaway development. In the land where tech workers' stock options have made for legendary real estate bidding wars, even the most charitable sellers can drive hard bargains.

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Mysterious virus afflicts turtles

Infobeat
12/26/2000
InfoBeat News - Morning Coffee Edition
http://us.f23.mail.yahoo.com/ym/login?.rand=53ni02vhikbn7

MIAMI (AP) - Dozens of endangered sea turtles have been found near-death, stricken with a mysterious virus that leaves them unable to eat or blink and may be linked to herpes, researchers say. In the past six weeks, 11 loggerheads have been brought into the Turtle Hospital in Marathon. Four other turtles with similar symptoms have been rescued outside the Florida Keys, and dozens of infected, floating turtles have been spotted by boaters but left for dead, said Richie Moretti, director of the Marathon hospital. Two of the 11 loggerheads brought to Moretti have died so far, he said. Researchers are treating about 25 sick turtles, found from Sarasota to Juno Beach to the Keys. At the hospital, the turtles are force-fed a "squid milkshake,"' a mixture of Gatorade and liquefied squid. Most lie motionless beneath heat lamps making gasping noises symptomatic of the pneumonia-induced mucus blocking their airways.

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Underwater landslides pose risk

Infobeat
12/26/2000
InfoBeat News - Morning Coffee Edition
http://us.f23.mail.yahoo.com/ym/login?.rand=53ni02vhikbn7

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) - Coastal communities in California and elsewhere are at risk of being swept away by tsunamis generated by undersea landslides near to shore, scientists say. Until recently, experts believed the tidal waves were caused primarily by distant earthquakes or volcanoes below the ocean's surface. That changed in 1998, when an underwater landslide generated a 50-foot wave that killed 2,200 people on the coast of Papua New Guinea. And unlike tsunamis unleashed by distant quakes, those generated immediately offshore give only a few minutes warning before landfall. Last week, experts in the budding field of tsunamis and undersea landslides gathered at the fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union to discuss early attempts to locate hazardous areas and assess risk.

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Neighborhoods React Angrily to Power Plan

New York Times
December 26, 2000
By SARAH KERSHAW
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/12/26/nyregion/26POWE.html?pagewanted=all

A state agency's plans to install 10 temporary generators around the city to meet power needs next summer is facing staunch opposition, particularly in Queens, where community and business leaders fear a setback to development taking place along the waterfront of Long Island City.

One of the city's largest television and film facilities, Silvercup Studios, said it would abandon a plan to build studios on the East River waterfront in Long Island City because of the proximity to two of the planned gas turbine generators, which it fears would be too noisy.

Opponents say the New York Power Authority railroaded its proposal through the application process and failed to conduct even a cursory environmental study. But authority officials say they have met legal requirements and must move quickly, or the city could face a crippling shortage of electricity next summer. A similar shortage was avoided last summer, they added, because temperatures were unusually cool.

The warning did little to ease the concerns of Claire Shulman, the Queens borough president. "If there is a power emergency, I'm happy to do my part," she said. "But I am not going to give them the East River. That is absolutely out."

The generators would be in place for at least two or three years, until private energy companies, taking advantage of the deregulation of the state's power industry, begin to supply electricity from new or rebuilt plants around the city. Proposals for more than a dozen plants from several different companies are in the works, and have touched off opposition from different corners of the city.

The state authority needs the temporary generators to add 400 megawatts to the city's electricity supply, enough to avert blackouts and brownouts for the next two summers and to hold down the cost of electricity until the new permanent plants come on line, officials said. Four are planned for the Bronx, three for Brooklyn, two for Queens, one for Staten Island and one for Islip, on Long Island.

"It was not our intention to site plants near a waterfront," said Michael A. Petralia, a spokesman for the authority. But, he added, there were no alternative locations in Queens that would enable the agency to meet the target installation date of June 1.

Mr. Petralia added that authority officials believe they can resolve any differences with critics. "We think there are ways we might be able to deal with their concerns," he said.

The temporary plants must still be approved by the state Department of Environmental Conservation, which recently held hearings for residents to speak out.

The Long Island City generators are slated for installation on Vernon Boulevard, just south of the Queensboro Bridge on the eastern shore of the East River.

Silvercup, whose studios elsewhere in Long Island City are used for production of the HBO television series "Sex and the City" and "The Sopranos," had planned a major expansion on the Vernon Boulevard waterfront, studio officials said.

The company had hoped to buy the land where the generators would be installed and, pending a zoning change, hoped to construct more studios, as well as a tower with residential and office space. But the property has been sold to the Power Authority.

An attorney for Silvercup, Michael D. Zarin, said last week that he was preparing to file a lawsuit to block the generators on Vernon Boulevard. Mrs. Shulman and several business leaders said they had proposed alternative sites in Queens that would help meet the increasing demand for electricity without chasing developers away from the waterfront.

"We're not even saying not in our backyard," said Gayle Baron, executive director of the Long Island City Business Development Corporation, which represents 3,000 businesses. "We're saying let's find a place in our backyard rather than prime waterfront."

In Brooklyn, community and environmental groups are also protesting the proposed temporary generators, planned for the Sunset Park waterfront and Williamsburg, saying the neighborhoods are already burdened by pollution. They also contend the plans are unfairly aimed at communities that are largely minority and working class.

The generators would be powered by natural gas and would take up one to one and a half acres. Built by General Electric, each can produce 44 megawatts. They would be the cleanest generators in use in the city in terms of nitrogen oxide emissions, which cause smog and other pollution, the authority said. They would be equipped with muffling devices and could be modified to be still quieter, Mr. Petralia said.

A study of the full environmental impact is not required because the plants would produce just below the threshold to mandate a complete review. Production will be limited to 79.9 megawatts; a review is required at 80 megawatts.

Officials at Silvercup Studios said the authority offered to build an enclosure around the Vernon Boulevard generators. But they said the offer was not enough to persuade them to go ahead with plans for a 250,000-square-foot facility with six television studios on the property they already own while trying to buy the parcel where the generators are planned.

"The Power Authority is saying they'll work with us," said Stuart Match Suna, president of Silvercup. "But regardless of what they say, they're wrong. You don't build sound stages next door to jet engines."

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Decrease demand for gas

USA Today
12/26/00- Updated 01:33 PM ET
By Carl Pope
http://usatoday.com/news/comment/ncoppf.htm

Winter storms have our nation shivering, and many families will feel the sting twice - now and when their heating bills arrive. Experts worry that skyrocketing natural-gas prices will squeeze family budgets and threaten our economy. They shouldn't threaten our environment, too.

The knee-jerk response is to increase energy supply. But reducing consumption has to be a major part of the equation. It doesn't have to be complicated. Light your home for one-fourth the cost and energy by using compact fluorescent light bulbs instead of incandescent bulbs. Wrap your water heater with an inexpensive insulation jacket, reducing heat loss by up to 40%. Corporate America can save with new technologies to make offices and factories energy-efficient. Conservation saves energy and cuts costs now; building drilling platforms, pipelines and production facilities will take years to make a dent in prices.

Increasing supply doesn't require drilling our wilderness and destroying the irreplaceable. We can find quick relief by tapping into existing wells now sitting dormant. Many wells were capped when recovering the remaining gas became too expensive. Today's prices give gas companies an incentive to recover the rest.

While drilling for more natural gas may provide some temporary economic respite, it will definitely have long-term environmental costs. Gas drilling brings problems attendant with oil drilling: fluids and drilling muds pollute the ocean and landscape, and sprawling on-land industrial production complexes destroy fragile wildlife habitats. In addition, natural-gas-drilling accidents threaten people and wipe out wildlife.

Drilling for natural gas can release pockets of poisonous hydrogen sulfide, called "sour gas." Across the USA, communities have suffered when sour gas clouds from local wells have leaked into town, burning residents' lungs. The leaks can be lethal to wildlife.

Don't get us wrong: The Sierra Club isn't opposed to drilling new wells on previously developed land where the environmental impacts are minimized, but we want to keep our oceans and remaining pristine public land unspoiled for our children to enjoy. And we want our government to understand that a shortsighted energy policy built solely on increasing supply spells doom.

One day, the wells will run dry.

We can't drill our way out of this energy crunch, but we can conserve our way out. Congress can start us in the right direction by investing in the Weatherization Assistance Program to help households conserve energy and by expanding the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program to provide emergency aid to families who can't afford gas or oil to heat their homes.

President-elect Bush can lead us to energy independence by decreasing demand rather than the reflexive supply increase insisted upon by the oil and gas industry.

Carl Pope is executive director of the Sierra Club, the nation's oldest and largest grassroots environmental organization.

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It's time to rethink rules that limit gas supplies

USA Today
12/26/00- Updated 01:36 PM ET
http://usatoday.com/news/comment/nceditf.htm

Millions of bleary-eyed families recovering from the holiday season are about to get an unpleasant surprise in their mailboxes. Along with fat credit card bills will come an equally fat bill from their gas company.

This winter, natural gas will cost homeowners who use it about 40% more than last year. In the Midwest, the average family will pay more than $800 this winter to heat the home. And almost everyone will be hit with bigger bills as higher prices for gas, which now supplies a quarter of the nation's energy, work through the economy. That's all thanks to a short-term supply problem. Extraordinarily low prices a few years ago discouraged drilling. That supply cutback is causing today's price spike, and only now is the industry ramping up production.

But today's temporary pain could turn into tomorrow's nightmare if the federal government doesn't get its regulatory house in order. On the one hand, the government champions the use of natural gas as a cleaner alternative to coal and oil. On the other, it sharply restricts access to enormous supplies out of environmental concerns. If one sidedoesn't give, consumers will find natural-gas prices on the permanent high side.

The reason for the boost in demand is easy enough to understand. Compared with other energy sources, natural gas is relatively benign to the environment. It produces half as much greenhouse gas as coal, for example, and almost a third less than oil for the same amount of energy. According to the U.S. Department of Energy, sharply boosting natural-gas use will be critical to meeting the nation's greenhouse gas-reduction goals.

As a bonus, natural gas used here comes almost entirely from domestic supplies. Only about 15% is imported, and most of that comes from Canada.

The result is that almost all new electrical generators are powered by natural gas, roughly 70% of new homes built are heated with it, and city buses and car fleets increasingly run on it. But while demand for natural gas is expected to climb 45% during the next two decades, getting access to more gas is another story.

Roughly 214 trillion cubic feet of gas - a decade's worth at current consumption rates - is off limits to drillers. A moratorium forbids drilling off both U.S. coasts. More than half of the identified natural-gas supply is blocked in the Gulf of Mexico. And overlapping regulations from several federal agencies on federal lands in the West make exploration for much of its gas impossible.

Those restrictions may have made sense when they were enacted years, sometimes decades, ago. But technology and the changing market for natural gas call for a re-examination of those policies. As a recent Energy Department report noted, advances in drilling technology in recent years allow gas to be recovered with minimal environmental harm. Horizontal drilling technology, for instance, lets a well dug in one place reach gas supplies miles away. Better detection technology minimizes noise pollution. Rigs are smaller and less intrusive.

That same report also urged the federal government to take a more flexible approach to bans and restrictions , and called for greater coordination among regulators.

That's what Canada is trying to do. Its natural resources department says the nation is trying to accommodate multiple uses of sensitive areas, including gas drilling, by getting interested parties together to work out agreeable terms . Already Canada has a natural-gas well just north of Maine, where drilling is strictly forbidden. Ironically, the well supplies gas to New England.

So far, however, Canada's prudent approach hasn't caught on here. There has been little talk of opening the oceans to any gas drilling, and little awareness of how environmental rules conflict with the need to boost natural-gas supplies. That could change under a Bush administration. Last week President-elect Bush called boosting natural-gas production a top goal, and officials in his camp have said that means looking at areas currently off limits to drilling.

What's needed first is a top-down review of federal regulations, with an eye toward protecting the environment without needlessly blocking access to natural gas. If the nation wants to boost use of natural gas, it can't afford to keep the supply valve shut.

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Media Statement and Availability Surrounding California's Electricity Crisis

Yahoo News
Tuesday December 26, 4:18 pm Eastern Time
Press Release
http://biz.yahoo.com/bw/001226/ca_busines.html

California Chamber of Commerce and California Business Roundtable Call Reliable Electric Service Critical to State's Economy; Urge Immediate CPUC Action to Protect Solvency of State's Utilities

SACRAMENTO, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Dec. 26, 2000-- In response to the interim decision by the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) to conduct further analysis regarding California's dysfunctional electricity market, the California Chamber of Commerce and the California Business Roundtable issued the following statement. Representatives from the California Chamber and the Business Roundtable are available for interviews upon request.

Statement by Allan Zaremberg, President, California Chamber of Commerce & Bill Hauck, President, California Business Roundtable:

A reliable supply of electricity is the lifeblood of California businesses, California jobs and our state's economy. Businesses cannot function in a climate where there is a constant threat of electric service interruptions and the potential for rolling blackouts.

The threats from the financial community and Wall Street are very real: without swift action by the CPUC to allow retail rates to at least moderately reflect wholesale rates, the ability of the state's major utilities to purchase electricity on behalf of their consumers and provide reliable electric service will be severely restricted or eliminated altogether. Bankruptcy of the state's major privately owned utilities would result in chaos, crippling California jobs and our entire state's economy.

Before we can concentrate on the long-term problem of increasing the supply of electricity, state regulators must first take immediate action to maintain utility solvency while keeping the cost of electricity reliable and stable for California's residents and businesses.

We wish to commend the Governor for his efforts to keep rates stable and to take the necessary short run steps to assure everyone that ``the lights will stay on.''

Contact:
Burson-Marsteller Brandon Castillo @ 916-730-1011 (cell)

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USA Today
12/26/00
States
http://usatoday.com/news/states/all50.htm

Conneticut

Stamford - A deadly shellfish parasite known as MSX has almost disappeared from the Long Island Sound, leading acqualture experts to predict a bumper crop of oysters over the next few years. The parasite began its assault in 1997, dropping the harvest some 76%, according to the Bureau of Acqualture. But cold weather has helped kill the parasite.

Georgia

Brunswick - The birthing season for northern right whales, the rarest large whale species, is off to a promising start. Biologists say two newborns have been spotted off the Georgia coast this year; three more have been seen off the Florida coast. Only one baby whale was documented last year. Scientists estimate about 300 of the giant black whales remain in the Atlantic Ocean.

Idaho

Winchester - A wolf missing from the Wolf Education and Research Center is probably roaming the Camas Prairie or has dropped down into the Salmon River Breaks, officials believe. Chemuhk escaped from the 20-acre enclosure near Winchester in October. If she has stayed on the prairie or moved to the breaks, she likely will be killed by coyotes, officials said.

Montana

Glacier National Park - A sow bear with at least one cub has chosen the crawl space under a park building for their long winter's nap. The building is closed for the winter, so rangers have posted warning signs and are hoping mama and cub wake up before humans return in the spring. They're probably black bears, but no one's getting close enough to be sure.

-------- police

Police kill students amid protest against actor

USA Today
12/26/00- Updated 10:40 PM ET
http://usatoday.com/news/world/nwstue09.htm

KATMANDU, Nepal (AP) - Police shot and killed two demonstrators as thousands of students clashed with authorities and ransacked a theater to protest an anti-Nepalese remark attributed to an Indian movie star.

Four police officers were seriously injured by stones thrown by the students in the Nepalese capital of Katmandu, officials said.

The police were trying to keep a mob from damaging the theater, which was screening ''Mission Kashmir'' starring Hrithik Roshan.

Nearly 5,000 students from at least six colleges in Katmandu participated in the protest, which blocked traffic for at least two hours.

They were protesting comments allegedly made by Roshan in an interview to an Indian television channel on Dec. 14. Roshan allegedly commented that the country and people he hated the most were Nepal and the Nepalese, published reports have said. Roshan has denied making the comment.

''I have never given a TV interview to any channel stating that I dislike Nepal and its people,'' he was quoted as saying by the Press Trust of India news agency.

''I love Nepal as I love India and have tremendous respect for the Nepalese people,'' he said.

Indian film stars are very popular in Nepal, where most theaters show Hindi language movies.

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USA Today
12/26/00
States
http://usatoday.com/news/states/all50.htm

New Mexico

Gallup - State Police officers are angry about the handling of drunken driving cases in McKinley County courts. Capt. Glenn Thomas said 42% of more than 1,500 cases filed last year were dismissed or pleaded down to a lesser charge. He said mistakes by police accounted for only about 10% of the dismissals. District Attorney Mary Helen Baber said the problem was due partly to understaffing in her office.

West Virginia

Morgantown - The Monongalia County Commission is seeking an audit of an account in the sheriff's office. In five years, the account fell from $36,500 to $7.59. A prosecutor is questioning more than two dozen payments by Sheriff-elect Joe Bartolo's previous administration in the mid-1990s. Several checks were payable to two women with names similar to that of the incoming sheriff's sister-in-law.

Wisconsin

Madison - County officials across Wisconsin have endorsed an idea to consolidate all law enforcement activities under county sheriff's departments, which would replace municipal police departments. The idea has drawn criticism, but county officials said the proposal would cut costs and eliminate duplicate services.

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Living it up

Washington Times
EDITORIAL • December 26, 2000
http://www.washtimes.com/op-ed/ed-house-2000122620207.htm

The Metropolitan Police Department recently completed a probe of the D.C. Fraternal Order of Police Labor Committee after its new chairman learned of a few problems. An independent, private company is also reviewing the union's books, and so is the U.S. Attorney's Office. According to sources familiar with the investigations, union officials misused union funds for, among other things, a stay at a couples-only resort in Pennsylvania and buying shoes from an upscale shop in Bethesda. Wonder if the rank and file knew their hard-earned dues would be used for such purchases?

Internal Affairs conducted MPD's probe, "but it's probably open and suspended pending the outcome of the audit," Chief Chuck Ramsey told reporter John Drake of The Washington Times. The chief said the probe was sparked by a letter from Sgt. Gerald G. Neill, who became FOP chairman in October.

The investigation includes $80,000 in questionable union expenditures, such as credit-card purchases, made between October 1998 and September of this year. Specifically, the various investigations are looking at:

* A $300 getaway at Caesar's Cove Haven Resort near Lakeville, Pa., in January 1999.

* Purchases totaling more than $800 at Hecht's in Marlow Heights, Md., Gentlemen's Jodhpur and another men's clothing store. A $439.46 stay at a Hampton Inn in Prince George's County in March 1999. One name connected to those purchases is Officer Tyrone Best, labor committee treasurer.

* $1,300 in purchases at the Grandma's Fine Art Gallery in Prince George's County. One name connected with those purchases is Detective Renee Holden, former committee secretary and current vice president.

* Several thousand dollars worth of purchases for computers and related equipment from Circuit City. "Those computers are missing from the labor committee's office," Mr. Drake reported.

Officer Best and Detective Holden did not return telephone calls made by The Washington Times. Sgt. Neill would not comment on the probes, nor would federal prosecutors.

Frank Tracy, who was labor committee chairman when the questionable expenditures were made, has since retired from the Metropolitan Police Department and now works as a paid consultant for the department on unsolved homicide cases. He denied any wrongdoing and said he had "never been" to the couples-only resort or to Gentlemen's Jodhpur.

An independent audit by the accounting firm of May & Barnhard cited 29 financial transactions "that require follow-up," including invoices, receipts or proof of disbursement, canceled checks and credit-card statements, Mr. Drake reported. Those discrepancies led the firm to broaden the scope of its audit to include all credit-card statements. In a May 7 letter to the union the auditors made several recommendations, including strongly encouraging "the immediate cancellation of all credit cards and writing checks out to 'cash.' " The emphasis is the auditors'. However, it wouldn't at all be a bad idea if the police department's rank and file sought more immediate resolution. Now would it?

-------- spying

Russian researcher spy case opens

Infobeat
Tuesday, December 26, 2000
By ANNA DOLGOV Associated Press Writer
http://www.infobeat.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/IBFrontEnd.woa/wa/fullStory?article=405534749

KALUGA, Russia (AP) - The trial of a Russian researcher accused of using scholarly work as a cover for spying for the United States opened Tuesday, the latest high-profile espionage case to be tried in Russia over the past few months.

Igor Sutyagin, a staff member of the respected USA and Canada Institute in Moscow, was arrested in October 1999 and charged a year later with espionage. He denies any wrongdoing, and Western colleagues have said the charges are absurd. He faces 20 years in prison if convicted.

The closed-door trial in a rundown regional court building in Kaluga, a small town southeast of Moscow, near Sutyagin's hometown, came just three weeks after American businessman Edmond Pope was convicted on espionage charges and sentenced to 20 years in prison. Pope was pardoned by President Vladimir Putin on Dec. 14 and has returned to the United States.

Sutyagin, 35, spent 13 months in jail awaiting trial. He received the first details of the charges against him only in an indictment filed on Dec. 15, according to his lawyer, Vladimir Vasiltsov.

In the document, prosecutors accused Sutyagin of working as a spy for the United States and using his status as a scholar to gain access to state secrets from closed military bases. It said Sutyagin had been recruited by U.S. intelligence agents in England during a scientific conference in 1998. The evidence is secret.

Vasiltsov said his client worked only with published sources and had not broken any Russian laws.

At Vasiltsov's request, judges on Tuesday agreed to adjourn the court until Jan. 9 so that Sutyagin could carefully review the charges. The court also granted a defense request to allow a second lawyer into the closed proceedings when the trial resumes, Vasiltsov said.

Sutyagin had worked on several projects before his arrest, including a part-time job studying Russian military factories for potential foreign investors. He also contributed to a book about the Russian military written by researchers at the USA and Canada Institute.

Vasiltsov said his client is being punished for his analysis ofinformation gathered from open sources.

``You can read all you want, but don't you dare compare and analyze this information, because that can produce a state secret,'' he said, summing up the charges against Sutyagin.

Agents of the Federal Security Service, the main successor agency of the KGB, arrested Sutyagin in his home in the town of Obninsk on Oct. 27, 1999.

That same day, Russian agents searched the Moscow apartment of Princeton University graduate student Josh Handler, who had worked in the same room with Sutyagin at the USA and Canada Institute while compiling information for a thesis.

Agents confiscated Handler's laptop computer and notebooks. Handler said his work in no way concerned state secrets, and he left Russia soon after the search.

In another spy case heard by Russian courts this fall, prosecutors have accused a Russian diplomat of selling state secrets to South Korea's government. Lawyers for another Russian diplomat have appealed a spying conviction on the grounds that their client was mentally unstable and was in contact with British agents only because he was writing a spy novel.

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A Spy's Advice to French Retailers: Politeness Pays

New York Times
December 26, 2000
LA DÉFENSE JOURNAL
By SUZANNE DALEY
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/12/26/world/26FRAN.html?pagewanted=all

LA DÉFENSE, France, Dec. 22 - In his flannel shirt and leather jacket, Yannick Bichon could be just another thirty-something customer seeking a year-end bargain here in a large mall on the outskirts of Paris. But actually, he has no intention of spending a franc. He is a "mystery shopper," taking notes on how the salespeople treat him.

Right now Mr. Bichon is pretending to look for a printer in a large appliance store. After a 10-minute wait, he begins to chase anyone in a red blazer to try to make eye contact. Eventually he gets someone, who tells him to get someone else. Finally, a young man comes over offering up a big "bonjour" and the hint of a smile.

The pleasantries don't last long. The young man uses his foot to point toward the printer he would recommend. "This is what you want," he says, with a deft swing of his leg. Mr. Bichon - staring at 21 machines on display asks why that one. "It's a good machine," the young man says. But the boredom is creeping in. There is a sigh. The young man begins to inspect his nails. "I'll let you think about it," he says as he moves away.

Being a customer in France can be a humbling experience, and no one knows this better than Mr. Bichon. The client, he observes, is not yet king here. Far from it. Sales people routinely make it clear that their phone conversations should not be interrupted. Handling, the merchandise? This could be annoying. Questions? You might have to wait until the vendor is finished tidying a shelf.

No one finds it surprising here that the owner of a store should complain that he was unable to work on his books all morning because he kept being bothered. Bothered by whom? Clients, of course.

Just getting any help at all can be a challenge and the sullen stare seems almost practiced. But all this could be changing. Mr. Bichon works for Dynamic Mystery Shopping, a three-year-old company based in Suresnes, a Paris suburb. In America, companies have long taken it for granted that service should be delivered with a smile. Sending people into the field to make sure that happens is a common part of doing business.

It is a nascent idea here. Dynamic Mystery Shopping was started by François Léauté, who had traveled to the United States to visit his sister and noticed how pleasant shopping could be. Eureka, he thought, he would start a "mystery shopping" company back home. His company, described as the first of its kind here, has been the subject of more than a half-dozen articles in the last year.

Mr. Léauté says it is still an uphill battle trying to convince many French companies that they even want this kind of feedback from their customers. While the French, he said, have a clear understanding of the need for a quality product, they tend to minimize the impact of a salesperson's indifference.

"There are certain things that seem very clear in America," Mr. Léauté said. "For instance, better service will raise your income. French have a long way to go in making that link. It just isn't here yet."

Still, the Mr. Léauté's business is going well enough. He counts Air France, Disneyland Paris, the children's clothing chain Jacadi and the oil company Elf. Often too, he works for a product line.

On a recent day, Mr. Bichon was nosing around the printers on assignment from one of the manufacturers. His client will no doubt do some hard swallowing when Mr. Bichon's report is finished. The young man with the swinging foot did not recommend the maker Mr. Bichon was working for. Asked why, he said it was just a preference. "I don't like Peugeots either," the salesman said. "I like Renault. But if you gave me a Peugeot, I wouldn't complain."

Mr. Bichon also noted the display counter was dirty and there were no pamphlets available on the machines before moving on to another store, another client, and more sales people apparently only reluctantly willing to wait on clients.

One of the first companies to hire Mr. Léauté was Pharmactiv, an association of 550 pharmacies throughout France. Marie-Laure Fron, the director general of the group, said she approached Mr. Léauté after reading an article in the press about his business. She thought service was particularly important for pharmacies because what they sold was more or less the same thing.

But at first, she had to convince skeptical pharmacists who thought the idea sounded a little like being spied on.

"It is true that customer service does not dominate the thinking in business here," Ms. Fron said. "Worrying about how the customer feels is not in the culture here. Making money yes, but not this kind of thing. "

In a phone store, Mr. Bichon worked hard to keep a salesman's attention.

But removing the phone he was interested in from the front window was apparently out of the question. In a large CD, video and computer parts store, the checkout person never even made eye contact with him. No hello or goodbye.

The closest Mr. Bichon came to getting any attention at all was in an ecology-oriented gift shop. One sales person who was rearranging a display looked at him with contempt when he asked what one item was used for. But when he asked for a book on dogs, a young woman heaved a big sigh and walked him over to the right shelf. The book, however, was sold out. Or at least maybe. She opened a drawer that was a chaotic mess, gave a brief glance and slammed it shut again. Sorry, she said, we don't have any more.

And that, was that.

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Russia plans creation of new spy agency

Washington Times
December 26, 2000
World Scene Combined dispatches and staff reports
http://www.washtimes.com/world/worldscene-20001226213640.htm

MOSCOW - Russia, home to some of the world's most feared secret services, plans to create a new intelligence agency next year to penetrate the darkest corners of the country's finances.

Tax Police head Vyacheslav Soltaganov told a news conference yesterday that the agency, which he described as an analytical center, would stick to the letter of the law. But it would leave no stone unturned in its operations inside a country that is still a hotbed of crime and corruption.

The center, answering to the Finance Ministry, will probably be established in the next few months, he said. But parliament will first have to pass several laws, including one that would list all organizations obliged to report any suspicious deals.

-------- activists

South Korea activist wanted

Infobeat
12/26/2000
InfoBeat News - Morning Coffee Edition
http://us.f23.mail.yahoo.com/ym/login?.rand=53ni02vhikbn7

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) - For somebody on a police wanted list, Jin Jae-young, 31, is awfully visible. The leftist activist lives in downtown Seoul on the grounds of South Korea's biggest cathedral. For months, he has collected donations from visitors and shouted anti-government slogans at passing shoppers. His crime? In 1994, the former student leader set up a makeshift altar on his campus to mourn the death of Kim Il Sung, the founder of communist North Korea. "I believe that it was ethically proper to grieve the death of the leader of our brother country," Jin said. The tribute classified him as a violator of the National Security Law, a Cold War-era legal bulwark against communism that South Korea's past military-backed governments used against political opponents. Jin went underground, although he's hardly on the run now. The law is so at odds with the climate in today's South Korea - a democracy reconciling with its old enemy to the north - that police enforcement has waned. The United Nations and Washington have criticized the law, while North Korea says it is an obstacle to rapprochement.

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USA Today
12/26/00
States
http://usatoday.com/news/states/all50.htm

Illinois

East St. Louis - A group intent on finding the secret hiding places of the Underground Railroad and turning them into tourist sites may get some help from the state. Illinois has given the project a designation that will enable organizers to apply for funding. Researchers will focus on Brooklyn, where residents in the 1830s were believed to have hidden runaway slaves in two churches.

North Dakota

Mayville - A small nonprofit group has channeled more than $2 million in revolving, interest-free short-term loans to struggling farmers. Levon Nelson helped found the group, Partners in Progress, in 1991. About 270 farmers have contacted the program seeking financial advice; 69 have received loans, Nelson said.

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