NUCLEAR
U.S. uranium shells cited as peacekeepers' leukemia rate rises
Radiation tests for peacekeepers in Balkans
Thousands Of Kosovo Peacekeepers To Be Tested
FREEDOM'S TOLL A Fit City Offers Russia a Self-Help Model
U.S. Navy in 'War for Talent'
Researchers in town for four weeks
Lax safety at IAAP recounted
Bell's toll brings warmth to friends
Costly Energy Realities
Rumsfeld redux

MILITARY
As U.S. Military Settles In, Some in Ecuador Have Doubts
Nebraska
Rwanda Defends Presence in Congo
Hawaii

OTHER
A Rare Wildfire Burns Across Alaskan Tundra
States
3 Police Commanders in Bronx Are Replaced as Crime Rises
Arkansas
For Peru Ex-Spy Chief, on the Lam, a Trail of Intrigue
Where bin Laden Has Roots, His Mystique Grows

ACTIVISTS
Ex - Sen. Alan Cranston Dies at 86


-------- NUCLEAR

-------- depleted uranium

U.S. uranium shells cited as peacekeepers' leukemia rate rises

Edmonton Journal
Sunday 31 December 2000
The Sunday Telegraph
http://www.edmontonjournal.com/news1/stories/001231/5025459.html

Thousands of European soldiers who served in Nato forces in Kosovo are to be tested for radiation after claims of serious medical problems caused by "Balkan War Syndrome".

Portugal and Spain this week will join the Italians, French and Belgians in reviewing the health of the troops they sent to the region to discover whether they were exposed to dangerous levels of depleted uranium in ammunition used by U.S. forces.

Portugal will also send scientists from the National Atomic Institute to Kosovo to test radiation levels in areas where depleted uranium shells fell.

The decision follows a national outcry over the death from leukemia of Hugo Paulino, a young Portuguese corporal, three weeks after returning from peacekeeping in Kosovo. The Defence Ministry refused to release his body to his family for an autopsy and radiation testing, citing "herpes of the brain" as the cause of death. "It was depleted uranium that killed him," insisted his father, Luis, in an interview.

Two Italian soldiers have died of leukemia since returning from Kosovo and a leaked military document published in the last week admitted that Italian soldiers were dying from leukemia caused by depleted uranium.

Exposure to depleted uranium causes health problems that may lead to cancer and neurological and immune system defects in addition to damage to the reproductive organs.

Leaders in Portugal and Italy accused NATO of a cover-up.

A spokesperson for Britain's Ministry of Defence said that it was monitoring the investigations by its NATO allies but had no plans to test its own soldiers. She insisted, however, that there was no cause for concern. "Our medical advice has told us that depleted uranium is no more radioactive than, for example, a household smoke detector."

She said that the ministry had carried out a substantial amount of scientific research into the issue following the Gulf war, when weapons tipped or packed with depleted uranium were used extensively for the first time.

Evidence indicates exposure to depleted uranium is partly to blame for a number of illnesses. Tests last year by Canadian scientists found some Gulf veterans had uranium in their blood.

The Iraqi government claims the uranium is responsible for a surge in cancers and babies born with defects in the south of Iraq.

--------

Radiation tests for peacekeepers in Balkans exposed to depleted uranium

By Christina Lamb, Diplomatic Correspondent and Macer Hall
Sun, 31 Dec 2000 06:46:17 EST
http://www.telegraph.co.uk:80/et?ac=000118613908976&rtmo=r9XkFE9X&atmo=9999999

THOUSANDS of European soldiers who served in Nato forces in Kosovo are to be tested for radiation after claims that they developed cancer through exposure to allied munitions.

Health risk: American A10 planes fired depleted uranium cannon rounds over kosovo Portugal and Spain will join the Italians, French and Belgians this week in carrying out a systematic review of the health of the troops they sent to the region to discover whether they were exposed to dangerous levels of depleted uranium in ammunition used by American forces.

Portugal will also send a mission of military personnel and scientists from the National Atomic Institute to Kosovo to test radiation levels in areas where depleted uranium shells fell.

The decision follows an outcry in Portugal over the death from leukaemia of Hugo Paulino, a young Portuguese corporal, three weeks after returning from peacekeeping in Kosovo. The defence ministry refused to release his body to his family for an autopsy and radiation testing, citing "herpes of the brain" as the cause of death. "It was depleted uranium that killed him," insisted his father, Luis, in an interview on Portuguese television.

Two Italian soldiers have died of leukaemia since returning from Kosovo and a leaked military document published in La Repubblica last week admitted that Italian soldiers were dying from leukaemia caused by depleted uranium. Another Italian, Rinaldo Colombo, 31, who served as a peacekeeper in Bosnia in 1995, has also died of the disease.

Nato said last week that American aircraft fired 10,800 depleted uranium shells in Bosnia in 1994-95. Research has shown that exposure to depleted uranium causes health problems that may lead to cancer and neurological and immune system defects in addition to damage to the reproductive organs.

Politicians in Portugal and Italy have accused Nato of a cover-up and demanded that their governments should think more carefully before participating in future Nato operations. The Portuguese announcement leaves Britain increasingly isolated as one of the few members of the Nato forces not to be carrying out any investigation. The Dutch government is also planning an inquiry.

A spokesman for the Ministry of Defence said yesterday that it was monitoring the investigations by its Nato allies but had no plans to test its own soldiers. She said: "We do take the welfare of our personnel very seriously and we'll keep an eye on the outcome of any further investigations into depleted uranium."

She insisted, however, that there was no cause for concern. "Our medical advice has told us that depleted uranium is no more radioactive than, for example, a household smoke detector. It does have a recognised toxicity but only if ingested into the digestive system, not if it merely comes into contact with the skin."

She said that the MoD had carried out a substantial amount of scientific research into the issue following the Gulf war, when weapons tipped or packed with depleted uranium were used extensively for the first time.

About 5,000 British ex-servicemen who served in the Gulf war have reported symptoms of the various conditions referred to as Gulf war syndrome and about 3,500 are claiming war pensions, according to figures from the Gulf Veterans Association. More than 500 have died of related illnesses.

Campaigners say exposure to depleted uranium is partly to blame. Tests last year by Canadian scientists found that some Gulf veterans had uranium in their blood.

The Pentagon originally denied that uranium shells were used in Kosovo but in March Lord Robertson, the Secretary General of Nato, said that 31,000 shells containing depleted uranium had been used by American A10 ground attack aircraft in Kosovo. Known as Warthogs, the A10s use uranium bullets for knocking out tanks. The fine, poisonous dust remains in the atmosphere and pollutes water supplies.

America was the only allied force to use depleted uranium in its missiles. The United States Defence Department maintains that they carry no greater health risk than conventional weapons.

Roger Coghill, an experimental biologist who runs a research centre in Wales, accused the Americans and the MoD of brushing the "biological truth" under the carpet. "One single particle of depleted uranium lodged in the lymph node can devastate the entire immune system," he told a conference in London, adding a warning that there may be thousands more deaths in Kosovo.

The United Nations has a team in Kosovo carrying out its own investigation that will report in February.

---

Thousands Of Kosovo Peacekeepers To Be Tested For D.U. Poisoning

rense.com
12-31-00
By Christina Lamb -
Diplomatic Correspondent and Macer Hall
http://www.telegraph.co.uk

Thousands of European soldiers who served in Nato forces in Kosovo are to be tested for radiation after claims that they developed cancer through exposure to allied munitions.

Portugal and Spain will join the Italians, French and Belgians this week in carrying out a systematic review of the health of the troops they sent to the region to discover whether they were exposed to dangerous levels of depleted uranium in ammunition used by American forces.

Portugal will also send a mission of military personnel and scientists from the National Atomic Institute to Kosovo to test radiation levels in areas where depleted uranium shells fell.

The decision follows an outcry in Portugal over the death from leukaemia of Hugo Paulino, a young Portuguese corporal, three weeks after returning from peacekeeping in Kosovo. The defence ministry refused to release his body to his family for an autopsy and radiation testing, citing "herpes of the brain" as the cause of death. "It was depleted uranium that killed him," insisted his father, Luis, in an interview on Portuguese television.

Two Italian soldiers have died of leukaemia since returning from Kosovo and a leaked military document published in La Repubblica last week admitted that Italian soldiers were dying from leukaemia caused by depleted uranium. Another Italian, Rinaldo Colombo, 31, who served as a peacekeeper in Bosnia in 1995, has also died of the disease.

Nato said last week that American aircraft fired 10,800 depleted uranium shells in Bosnia in 1994-95. Research has shown that exposure to depleted uranium causes health problems that may lead to cancer and neurological and immune system defects in addition to damage to the reproductive organs.

Politicians in Portugal and Italy have accused Nato of a cover-up and demanded that their governments should think more carefully before participating in future Nato operations. The Portuguese announcement leaves Britain increasingly isolated as one of the few members of the Nato forces not to be carrying out any investigation. The Dutch government is also planning an inquiry.

A spokesman for the Ministry of Defence said yesterday that it was monitoring the investigations by its Nato allies but had no plans to test its own soldiers. She said: "We do take the welfare of our personnel very seriously and we'll keep an eye on the outcome of any further investigations into depleted uranium."

She insisted, however, that there was no cause for concern. "Our medical advice has told us that depleted uranium is no more radioactive than, for example, a household smoke detector. It does have a recognised toxicity but only if ingested into the digestive system, not if it merely comes into contact with the skin."

She said that the MoD had carried out a substantial amount of scientific research into the issue following the Gulf war, when weapons tipped or packed with depleted uranium were used extensively for the first time.

About 5,000 British ex-servicemen who served in the Gulf war have reported symptoms of the various conditions referred to as Gulf war syndrome and about 3,500 are claiming war pensions, according to figures from the Gulf Veterans Association. More than 500 have died of related illnesses.

Campaigners say exposure to depleted uranium is partly to blame. Tests last year by Canadian scientists found that some Gulf veterans had uranium in their blood.

The Pentagon originally denied that uranium shells were used in Kosovo but in March Lord Robertson, the Secretary General of Nato, said that 31,000 shells containing depleted uranium had been used by American A10 ground attack aircraft in Kosovo. Known as Warthogs, the A10s use uranium bullets for knocking out tanks. The fine, poisonous dust remains in the atmosphere and pollutes water supplies.

America was the only allied force to use depleted uranium in its missiles. The United States Defence Department maintains that they carry no greater health risk than conventional weapons.

Roger Coghill, an experimental biologist who runs a research centre in Wales, accused the Americans and the MoD of brushing the "biological truth" under the carpet. "One single particle of depleted uranium lodged in the lymph node can devastate the entire immune system," he told a conference in London, adding a warning that there may be thousands more deaths in Kosovo.

The United Nations has a team in Kosovo carrying out its own investigation that will report in February.

-------- russia

FREEDOM'S TOLL A Fit City Offers Russia a Self-Help Model

New York Times
December 31, 2000
By MICHAEL WINES
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/12/31/world/31RUSS.html?pagewanted=all

DUBNA, Russia - In a nation where the average person barely lives to 66, Nina Nikolayevna Semenovskaya is a most notable exception: 93 years old, and still strong enough to bat out love songs on an equally aged upright piano.

Just as notable, though, is how she got to that milestone.

Every week, for seven years straight, a nurse has dropped by her flat, to check her glaucoma, her kidney stones, her pulse and blood pressure, her ability to walk. Twice a week, a social worker has come to make a grocery list, arrange for the food to be delivered and straighten things up.

And not just for Nina Nikolayevna. Dubna's city fathers dispatch nurses to look in on 384 elderly and disabled shut-ins, a service performed by almost no other city in Russia. And should they ever need it, they will also get full- time, in-home services - something unheard of in Russia and not universal in the West.

Sapped in the 1990's by soaring mortality and low fertility, alcoholism and rampant heart disease, Russia too often seems an almost incurably ill place.

But if there is a remedy, it may well lie here in Dubna (pronounced doob-NA). This city of 67,000 people about 100 miles north of Moscow is a textbook example of how Russia, the developed world's sick man, could heal itself.

It is also a lesson in how the rest of the world could help - and how a genuinely remarkable partnership between Dubna and the American Midwest did. Doctors and hospitals in La Crosse, Wis., have sent a thousand Wisconsinites to Russia to pore over Dubna's health-care system in the last eight years, and been host to a thousand Dubna residents in return. By the decade's end, the exchange has literally transformed medical care here, and drawn the attention of several Russian cities hoping to restore their own health.

Almost every curve on the winding streets of this placid, heavily forested town seems to boast a monument to health care: the rebuilt maternity hospital, which re- opened recently; the kidney dialysis center next door; the diabetes education center in the Bolshaya Volga neighborhood; the women's wellness clinics on both sides of the broad Volga River; the rehabilitation center for disabled children and adults in a former kindergarten.

Such an arsenal is unheard of for a Russian town this size. Dubna built it all in the 1990's, while bureaucratic chaos and economic malaise were making a shambles of hospitals and clinics elsewhere.

What is equally impressive is what those investments have wrought: streamlined medical procedures that have eliminated nearly a third of its hospital beds. A fivefold drop since 1992 in hospital admissions of patients in diabetic comas. A contraception program that has sliced the city's abortion rate to two-thirds the national level. A dramatic rise in residents' satisfaction with medical care.

One yardstick, however, remains more or less unyielding: the death rate in Dubna, like the rest of Russia, has yo-yoed in tandem with the nation's upheavals and the resultant emotional stress. Mortality here rose sharply after Russia became independent in 1991, and again after the 1998 economic collapse, just as it did elsewhere. The good news is that it remains 20 percent below national rates.

The rest of Russia could be so fortunate, said Dr. Sergei Riabov, the 48-year-old director of Dubna's health department. "There is potential in Dubna, and there is potential in Russia," Dr. Riabov, a bearded, bespectacled infectious disease specialist who has run the department since 1994, said in a recent conversation.

"You can stand around and say, `There's not enough money, and as long as the situation doesn't change, what can we do? But that's not productive. And even if there isn't any money, you should be honest about it, look yourself in the eye and work with what you have."

Dubna began with more than most Russian towns, for this is no ordinary place. And it would never have revived itself without the more-or-less accidental confluence of some extraordinary people, on both sides of the Atlantic.

But most of Dubna's luck is homemade. "Change is not begun without an environment that permits change," said Sandra J. McCormick, one of the Americans who has played nursemaid to Dubna's public-health recovery.

Hard Times in a Once-Elite City

For a long time, Dubna was so mysterious that it did not appear on Soviet maps.

After World War II, Stalin ordered the thick pine forest here near the Volga cleared to build a laboratory devoted to nuclear scientific research - and eventually, a city to serve it.

Khrushchev unveiled Dubna and its Joint Institute for Nuclear Studies in 1956 as the Communist-bloc locus of basic research into atomic physics. This is the site of the world's first atom smasher, and the only city to lend its name to an element (No. 105, Dubnium). Later, plants sprang up to make sport aircraft, satellite components and parts for nuclear reactors, but cutting-edge physics was and is Dubna's reason for existence. With that status came clean, high-tech industry that all but guaranteed a gusher of money from a Kremlin intent on matching Western advances.

Then, with the Soviet collapse in 1991, total dependence on the state turned overnight into a huge liability.

"At the beginning of the 1990's, we were in a much more difficult situation than many cities, particularly with foodstuffs," Valery Eduardovich Prokh, Dubna's mayor, said in a recent interview. "These companies lived on state orders, so without the state orders, there was practically no budget. Wages weren't paid; pensions were not paid.

"Nearly 2,500 people became unemployed. And the ones that were working had delays in their pay."

Mr. Prokh, an outgoing man with a booming voice and a take-charge manner, had been chairman of the Dubna city soviet in Communist times. But he proved no ordinary apparatchik. Appointed as mayor in 1991, he began trying to lift Dubna from its slough - and serendipitously, found a helping hand 6,000 miles away, in La Crosse.

In the late 1980's, a few doctors in La Crosse joined a symbolic effort by the American group Physicians for Social Responsibility to promote world peace. The idea was to float so-called peace lanterns down the world's major rivers, each bearing a child's name.

One La Crosse doctor gave a youngster's letter about the project to a Russian doctor in St. Petersburg. That doctor gave it to his mother, who lived in Dubna.

Soon children in Dubna and La Crosse exchanged lanterns, took them to the banks of the Volga and the Mississippi, and set them free. "The whole school gathered, teachers and kids," said David Bell, an American expatriate who has lived here for more than 40 years. "There was so much enthusiasm, and that's when it clicked. I said, `Why shouldn't we twin up?' And we began negotiating it."

As Sister Cities, a Perfect Fit

At the depths of Dubna's travails in the early 1990's, the two cities began a more-or- less traditional sister-cities relationship. Early on the people of La Crosse sent 170 tons of food, clothes and medical supplies to Dubna, along with 16 La Crosse residents to help unload it all. Jack Schwem, then the chief executive of La Crosse's Lutheran hospital, flew to Dubna to help set things up, and returned full of enthusiasm. His wife, Marti, returned the next summer.

Ms. McCormick was a vice president at the hospital. "I'd been listening to my boss talk for months about Russia and how fascinating it was," she said. "So I started looking around to see what sort of money was available."

What she found was a perfect fit, a United States Agency for International Development program that subsidized partnerships between American health care institutions and former Soviet cities. With the backing of Dubna, La Crosse's major hospitals and clinics received a grant, and Ms. McCormick became La Crosse's point person for the project. Eight years later, there have been exchanges totaling thousands of Russians and Americans - and nearly $1 million in spending.

Such programs are not uncommon, and like any arranged marriage, they are gambles. Some fail. Some click.

Dubna and La Crosse clicked. The chemistry between two small cities was surely part of it, as was the two sides' early agreement that theirs was not a relationship of American mentor and Russian protégé, but of equals.

But in large part, Ms. McCormick said, it worked because the leaders of Dubna were determined to make it so.

"The mayor is a visionary," Ms. McCormick said in an interview during her 35th visit to Dubna last month. "He was intolerant of obstacles to change. He surrounded himself with great people who were not committed to a project just as long as the money was there, but until it actually made life better for the people of Dubna."

Indeed, after some early wrangling over whether to splurge on expensive medical equipment - an idea the Wisconsinites rejected - money was not a big issue. Much of it went not to buildings or equipment but to airline tickets that allowed Russians and Americans to see different worlds of medical care,

After a 1993 trip to La Crosse, for example, Dubna officials surveyed 2,000 residents over age 60 and used the results to begin a home-care program and a hospice service much like the ones they had seen in Wisconsin. Starting from a three-person office, Dubna's home health care and hospice operation has grown to nearly two dozen people, and added home care for younger disabled people to its list of services.

After another trip, Dubna found some local funds to convert a little-used kindergarten into a rehabilitation center for children with bone deformities and other growth-related problems.

Before, children periodically made the three-hour trip to Moscow to be fitted with far bulkier orthopedic devices. Now the Dubna center treats about 300 people throughout the region.

"The people in La Crosse taught us this American technology," said Mariya A. Klubnikina, a rehabilitation specialist at the center, as she took a gypsum cast of a partly paralyzed 5-year-old's leg one recent afternoon. "I insisted on going to America to see how they did it. They do them in Moscow - but nothing like here, even now. These are much more comfortable, more practical.

"When you see the results," she said, "it's like a second wind."

It is also a second wind for parents. "A lot of parents drive here in the morning, and a bus from the center gathers all the children who want to come," said Mariya Osipova, a 45-year-old speech therapist and mother of Liza, the 5-year-old. "They spend practically the whole day here. They sing, draw, they have computer classes, they do embroidery - they even have psychotherapy."

A Laundry List of Successes

The list of accomplishments in Dubna seems endless. Using nearly $300,000 in city money, workers converted Dubna's old maternity hospital, in which mothers were kept apart from their newborns, into a La Crosse-style birthing center. Mothers have private rooms - and a choice of colors - in which they give birth and care for their babies.

To make the switch, doctors and nurses had to abandon the tenet that contact between a newborn and family posed too great a risk of infection.

"A trip to the U.S. inspired them," said Viktor S. Dimitriyev, chief doctor of the hospital that includes the maternity house, "and started the talk of possibilities."

After more visits, Alcoholics Anonymous, Al-Anon and a local sobriety center opened here, as did classes that teach adolescents how to handle conflicts. And with the help of a grant from the Department of Health and Human Services in the United States, instruction about health problems associated with tobacco and alcohol is becoming part of the school curriculum even in the primary grades.

At one point, Dubna asked La Crosse to donate a used kidney-dialysis machine and La Crosse balked, worried that maintaining such delicate foreign-made equipment would prove too difficult in a rural area.

Dubna wound up buying two machines, and sending operators and technicians to La Crosse for training, while a La Crosse expert helped set up the Dubna site. Now Dubna is the dialysis center for much of northern Moscow.

Dubna's two women's wellness centers wielded an American foundation grant to offer two years of free contraceptives to any woman who needed them. As a result, the city's abortion rate dived in a year to 1.2 abortions for every birth from about 2. The centers' new goal is to set up a laboratory to diagnose sexually transmitted diseases, something now done in Moscow.

Not least, Dubna doctors elected at La Crosse's invitation to study how Wisconsin hospitals treated the five most common ailments found in Dubna and found that they were admitting too many patients to Russian hospitals and often prescribing too much medicine.

Dubna's new guidelines for handling those diseases has contributed to the closing of 190 beds, and saved hundreds of thousands of dollars annually.

And patients, educated through newspaper articles, pamphlets and talk shows as to why it was preferable to get treatment at home, have flipped in surveys from being universal critics of medical care to near- universal advocates.

"It's been more successful than I had hoped it might be," said Dr. Kermit Newcomer, a retired La Crosse doctor and medical administrator who ran the program's Wisconsin end. "The physicians are proud of the change they've made. And the community is, too."

As they might well be. For they had to battle their own bureaucracies to make some changes.

For example, under Russian government formulas that base hospital aid on the number of patients, promoting home care meant a huge drop in subsidies.

Dubna and La Crosse managers argued to Russian authorities that the city should not be punished for gaining greater efficiencies - and managed to get a new formula to calculate assistance.

Westerners accustomed to fighting authority may not fully appreciate the fortitude needed to upset a Russian apple cart. And those unfamiliar with Russia's ingrained suspicion of things foreign - especially American - may not grasp the sea change in attitude here.

But Mr. Bell, the American living here, can offer a good illustration of the transformation.

Last spring, after American-led NATO forces started a bombing campaign against Yugoslavia, Russians everywhere felt not just outraged, but betrayed. And in Dubna, they wrote a letter to Mayor Prokh.

"They were demanding that he immediately cut off all relations with people in La Crosse if La Crosse didn't condemn Clinton's action in Yugoslavia," Mr. Bell said.

The mayor read the letter. Then he issued a diplomatically worded reply which can be summarized in a word: No.

"We have a lot of friends in La Crosse," Mr. Prokh said in a recent conversation.

Last year, United States funding for the health care partnership between Dubna and La Crosse ended, for the best of reasons: Dubna did not need more help.

The rest of Russia does. Whether it will get it is another question.

The Ministry of Health declined several requests for interviews for this series of articles. Officials did provide a two-page statement noting that federal spending on health care rose by a third this year, to about $440 million, and should grow another 25 percent in 2001.

President Vladimir V. Putin, who has cast Russia's population decline as a threat to national security and the Russian identity, has ordered aides to fix the health care mess. Last September, the Kremlin issued a blueprint for public health that stresses concepts embraced by much of the West, from greater reliance on market incentives to a new emphasis on disease prevention and healthy living.

Most experts applaud the plans, even as they wonder whether a Kremlin blueprint is a substitute for greater willingness to make difficult changes, or even recognize that change is needed.

This fall, Russia's health minister sought to dramatize Russia's epidemic of circulatory disease by pulling out a blood-pressure cuff at a Kremlin cabinet meeting and offering to test his fellow members. The results were telling: 80 percent of those tested turned out to have hypertension.

But half the cabinet refused to be tested.

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

U.S. Navy in 'War for Talent'

Associated Press
December 31, 2000
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Singapore-US-Navy.html

SINGAPORE (AP) -- The U.S. Navy is in a ``war for talent'' with the private sector and is on an all-out drive to retain highly skilled sailors -- especially those trained on nuclear submarines -- Navy officials said Sunday.

``For too long we've treated sailors as a commodity. Now we have to focus on treating them as a skilled work force,'' said U.S. Navy Cdr. Dennis Murphy.

Murphy is captain of the Honolulu-based nuclear fast attack submarine USS Tucson, which was in Singapore for a port call Sunday after a deployment in the Persian Gulf.

Sailors trained to handle U.S. subs' nuclear reactors are hardest to retain, Murphy told The Associated Press.

``They can walk out the door and nearly double their salaries by working in a commercial (nuclear) plant,'' Murphy said.

``We are in a war for talent,'' said Cdr. Betsy Bird, public affairs officer for the Chief of Naval Personnel in Washington, D.C.

``Retention levels in 1999 were the worst in 20 years,'' Bird told AP.

The retention rate of sailors after their first term of service dropped steadily from about 42 percent in 1991 to about 30 percent in 1999, according to a report from the U.S. Navy Department of Naval Personnel.

To retain sailors, a new bonus program offers cash bonuses of $20,000 to $60,000 for sailors who re-enlist after serving out their terms. The amount depends on the level of training and other factors.

On top of the bonuses, the program also includes higher regular pay raises and investment counseling to help sailors handle the extra cash.

As a result of the ``selective re-enlistment bonus'' program, retention levels have begun to climb over the past year, Navy officials said.

In the year 2000, the number of sailors who re-enlisted aboard the USS Tucson was more than double the number for 1998 and 1999 combined, Murphy said.

Retention rates for the entire Navy in 2000 were up to 5.5 percent higher than for 1999, ``an indication that the 1990's free-fall has ended,'' the Bureau of Naval Personnel report said.

First Class Petty Officer John Bodemer, a USS Tucson sailor, said the bonuses were a strong incentive to stay in the Navy.

``You have a young man, 21 or 22 years old, given up front a total of upward of $45,000. It's quite a big thing,'' he said.

Boedemer, a 27-year-old from Valencia, Calif., has been in the Navy for six years. He re-enlisted in October for four more years.

-------- iowa

Researchers in town for four weeks

The Hawk Eye
12/31/2000
By Mike Augspurger
mailto:maugspurger@thehawkeye.com
http://www.thehawkeye.com/daily/stories/ln31124.html

State officials contracted by the federal government to find people who worked in the nuclear-production facilities at the Iowa Army Ammunition Plant will be in Middletown for four weeks.

The University of Iowa College of Public Health has started tracking down as many as 40,000 people who may have worked at the plant. Officials plan to go through existing IAAP records to find names of former workers.

When this is done, a medical survey and work history questionnaire will be sent to all the former Line 1 workers that state officials were able to identify.

For those who have called the U of I officials, but have not yet received a survey, they shouldn't worry.

"It has taken longer than expected to complete the research and to gain access to necessary records. Anyone who has called in is on our mailing list, and will receive the survey as soon as it is completed," said Kristina Venske, a U of I researcher.

The U of I team and the local citizens advisory group -- the Burlington Atomic Energy Commission -- Former Worker Program -- plan to hold two public meetings next month in the area.

The first will be from 7 to 8:30 p.m. Wednesday, Jan. 10, at the plant's Union Hall, 1 mile east of the IAAP administration building, 16452 U.S. 34, Middletown.

The second will be 5:30 to 7 p.m. Wednesday, Jan. 24, Burlington Memorial Auditorium, 200 Front St., Burlington.

Former IAAP workers may use a toll-free phone number to speak with U of I researchers. The toll-free number is (866) 282-5818.

People should have the following information ready: name, including middle initial; address; telephone number; years the caller or relative worked on Line 1 and job title (if known); health concerns and history.

People also may send information to: BAECP-FWP, Department of Occupational & Environmental Health, College of Public Health, 100 Oakdale Campus No. 222 IREH, Iowa City, Iowa 52242-5000.

The Hawk Eye 800 S. Main St., Burlington Iowa 52601 319-754-8461 Front Desk | 319-754-6824 FAX | 1-800-397-1708 Outside Burlington

---

Lax safety at IAAP recounted
Former workers share tales of fear, danger.

The Hawk Eye
12/31/2000
By Dennis J. Carroll
mailto:dcarroll@thehawkeye.com
http://www.thehawkeye.com/daily/stories/ln31123.html

MIDDLETOWN -- Working at the Iowa Army Ammunition Plant over the past 50 years -- producing the weapons that saved the world from Hitler and won the Cold War -- at times could be a trip into hell.

Perhaps as many as 40,000 southeast Iowans and others from nearby states often handled extremely hazardous materials, turning out weapons for soldiers who often were better protected than they were.

Safety measures could be minimal, nonexistent or considered a joke, and workers were routinely maimed in explosions, many of which were never reported to the outside community, former workers say.

Some workers, known as the "China ladies," blended explosive powders and literally turned yellow from exposure to the hazardous materials.

Others routinely handled radioactive substances with bare hands, and breathed in deadly fumes and powders unprotected by masks.

Some workers on Line 1 -- where atomic weapons were produced -- were said to have developed a certain death walk. Bent and sickly looking, their slow gait was known as the "Line 1 shuffle."

"The name of the game out there was production -- the hell with safety, get (it) built and get it out the door," said Vaughn Moore, 55, a guard at the plant from 1967 until the mid-1970s.

Working the security detail, there were few areas of the plant Moore and the other guards did not see.

And what they did see was scary -- assembled nuclear weapons left unattended on open ramps, detonator packages in unsecured areas.

Raccoons would find their way into some areas and rustle through who knows what, possibly carrying it back outside.

As fellow workers have continued to die of cancer and other illnesses that may be related to their work at the plant, Moore and others like him have become more willing to talk about their experiences.

They have painted a frightful picture of what it was like working at the plant from the late-1940s at least into the mid-1970s.

"We lost another one yesterday," Moore, West Burlington, said of a co-worker who died last week.

Moore said he figures he probably has something deadly eating away at him too, but he doesn't want to know for sure.

"I got some problems," he said. "I just hope it's the fast one and not the slow one." Moore said he has watched fellow workers die slow, agonizing deaths.

Despite the danger and stress, IAAP workers took great pride in their work. And few, if any, complained about the dangers.

"We were known as the 'sugar factory,' of the (Atomic Energy Commission) because we built the best," Moore said.

He said weapons made at other nuclear weapons plants were often shipped to Middletown. "We had to rework it because they didn't have quality."

When a weapon left Middletown, "it was perfect," Moore said. "The decals were exactly right, the screws were (tight)."

Former workers also tell disconcerting stories of how materials that may have been contaminated managed to find its way off the plant -- from the poisoned water and deadly toxins burned into the air, to possibly contaminated dinner buckets taken home, or the used metals given to high school shop classes; from contaminated laundry delivered to a Burlington cleaner to pop bottles retrieved from toxic trash bins for redemption at local stores.

"We took this stuff home with us and gave it to our families," Moore said.

Sam Creagan, 65, Burlington, worked at the plant from 1968 to 1973. He often hauled contaminated work clothes to the plant laundry.

"The health of the people who washed the clothes was terrible," said Creagan. "They were coughing all the time. They were real sickly looking and they had a lot of health problems."

Former workers laugh at the past assurances from local officials that radioactive or other hazardous materials or the nuclear weapons themselves were never transported across Burlington streets or on local rail lines.

"We went right down Roosevelt Street with that stuff in convoys" on the way to the airport, Moore said.

Everything shipped in or out of the plant was accompanied by armed guards, he said.

"You mess around with one of them and they'd blow your head off. Them couriers were serious boys. They'd pop you no questions asked."

He also told of close calls at the airport, which would be closed off to other air traffic when an IAAP shipment was being flown out.

On one occasion, a C-47 transport plane, loaded with an IAAP shipment, sputtered ominously after takeoff but managed to circle back and land without crashing.

The stress of working at the plant did not necessarily go away at the end of a shift.

Some workers believe their home phones were tapped, and that their comings and goings often were monitored.

"They knew more about you than you knew about yourself," Moore said.

Any trips out of the country were particularly suspect, and workers had to detail the plans for their trips and who they would be meeting.

Moore recalled a vacation he took to Mexico.

"I got down there and we were walking around (Juarez, Mexico) and this guy kept following us," Moore said. "Finally I confronted him, and he looked right at me and said, 'Hi Vaughn. How you doing?' And I said, 'How do you know my name?' And he said, 'Well, weren't you supposed to be here today?' .... He followed us until we got back across the border."

Moore said he and other security guards accompanied ambulance runs to work-site explosions.

"They used to have flash fires on Line 7, the old horseshoe line," said Moore.

"The only way they could get out of there when that room flashed was to get down on their hands and knees and crawl out."

Moore said that one time, the doors on the room had been installed backwards -- they opened inward instead of outward -- and "women were stacked up against the doors. We had a mess. We had broken arms, legs ... I'd never seen such a mess."

Moore and others also have told of many workers losing fingers or hands assembling grenades or working with other explosives.

Thurman Huffman, Burlington, also a former plant guard, recalled his exposure to baratol, a deadly mixture of barium nitrate and TNT.

"It would suck your eyes right out of your head," Huffman said. "It was bad stuff."

Many exposure or explosion incidents were not reported, Moore and Huffman said.

"They didn't want to make waves out there or make incident reports," Moore said.

The two also claimed that there were never any safety meetings or briefings for guards.

"We were responsible for the security of that plant," Moore said, "(but) we never had a safety meeting; we never had a debriefing meeting."

He said workers usually were never told what they were working with or what it could do to a person.

The guards, especially, were unprotected, Moore said, even though they often were required to enter some of the most dangerous areas.

"We never had any kind of meeting to tell you what you were working with," Moore said. "We had no protective clothing, we had no film badges, we had nothing. Yet we were required to go everywhere in that plant and be aware of what was going on."

Moore said he and many other workers are not interested in the $150,000 compensation package for former nuclear workers approved by Congress.

"That would (only) cover three trips to Iowa City for chemotherapy," Moore said. "We want the health coverage ... We want doctors, good doctors."

The Hawk Eye 800 S. Main St., Burlington Iowa 52601 319-754-8461 Front Desk | 319-754-6824 FAX | 1-800-397-1708 Outside Burlington

-------- tennessee

Bell's toll brings warmth to friends

Sun, 31 Dec 2000 11:20:13 EST
By Donna Webster
http://www.knoxnews.com/news/21065.shtml</A>

A cold and gray day after Christmas found at least two people willing to brave the elements to strike the Oak Ridge Friendship Bell in Bissel Park. Though the bell has triggered a court battle that could go to the U.S. Supreme Court, Paul Watkins and Uchida Nao rang the bell on Tuesday as an act of harmony between the United States and Japan.

Watkins, professor emeritus in art education at the University of Tennessee, brought his Japanese friend, Nao, who is spending the holidays with the Watkins family, to the park.

Nao is from Tokyo and is currently studying art at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. She met the Watkins family through a foreign exchange student program, and they have stayed in touch over the years.

Nao was impressed with the bell's beauty and and said she was "moved and excited" by the experience of ringing it.

Watkins has a close connection to the history of the Friendship Bell. After seeing Uppuluri Shigero, an Oak Ridge resident who was involved in the project, speak on the meaning of the bell, he was so moved he traveled to Kyoto to see the bell cast and was one of the first people to ring it while it was still in Japan.

"It was a very beautiful experience and was done with great ceremony," he said.

The Friendship Bell has been the subject of controversy since it arrived in Oak Ridge, and the ringing of the bell is tightly regulated throughout the year.

The Oak Ridge City Council passed a resolution earlier this month, allowing the bell to be rung freely between 8 a.m. Thursday, Dec. 21, and 6 p.m. Tuesday, Jan. 2.

The bell has been the focus of criticism by World War II veterans who say it constitutes an apology by Oak Ridge for the dropping of atomic bombs on Japan. The atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima contained uranium enriched at secret military facilities in Oak Ridge.

The perception that placing the bell in Oak Ridge is an apologetic act "is a total misconception," Watkins said. "The truth is just the reverse."

A lawsuit currently making its way through the federal courts contends the bell is a Buddhist religious symbol and its mounting in the city park violates the constitutional principle of the separation of church and state.

Watkins said the bell is meant to be a sign of peace and unity.

"It symbolizes humankind coming together to get beyond the past and shows that peace and hope exist now."

Donna Webster may be reached at 865-481-3625 or bfowler@knoxnews.infi.net.

-------- utah

Costly Energy Realities

Salt Lake City Tribune
Sunday, December 31, 2000
http://www.sltrib.com/12312000/public_f/58385.htm

We are glad to have Gov. Mike Leavitt call attention to problems with electrical power. Many Utahns have never considered where electricity comes from before it gets to their outlet.

The problems with deregulation in California are just part of a litany of challenges facing the national power industry and we would be wise to pay more attention. However, I think Gov. Leavitt is limiting our thinking when he casts the problem as a choice between the need for power and the environment.

Among the current capacity listed as off-line over environmental issues is nuclear plants. There is a disconnect in his position against the high-level nuclear waste storage on the Goshute Reservation and suggesting that nuclear plants should be brought on-line to address the current situation. His call to action could be improved by including the addition of new capacity from renewables: wind and solar power. But more fundamental than that, we should look at energy efficiency; how we can get more out of what we do use. Consumers have a wonderful opportunity to explore the energy ratings of the things they purchase that use electricity, and we all could be smarter in our choices about how we run our lights, TV, etc. Compact fluorescent bulbs use less energy and last longer.

In reality, no energy is cheap. So far we've often been able to externalize many of the costs. For instance, the true costs of nuclear power including waste disposal and health care costs for uranium miners are not paid by the people who use that electricity. It would be good for us to pay attention to the health, environmental, economic and political costs of our energy choices. We and our leaders have been avoiding thinking about the full ramifications of our energy choices. The painful truth is we cannot continue increasing consumption of energy without serious costs.

KATHY VAN DAME Wasatch Clean Air Coalition Salt Lake City

-------- us nuc politics

Editorial: Rumsfeld redux After a 24-year gap, he is tapped for the Pentagon

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Sunday, December 31, 2000
http://www.post-gazette.com/forum/20001231edrums2.asp

F. Scott Fitzgerald, who famously observed that "there are no second acts in American lives," has been contradicted big-time, as Vice President-elect Dick Cheney might say, by the composition of the emerging Bush-Cheney administration. Mr. Cheney himself, Secretary of State-designate Colin Powell and George W. Bush's nominee for secretary of defense, Donald Rumsfeld, all served in previous Republican administrations.

Mr. Rumsfeld's nomination, however, is the ultimate refutation of Fitzgerald's crack. Not only did he serve (with Mr. Cheney) in the administration of President Gerald Ford, but he also occupied the same Cabinet position. As Mr. Bush put it in introducing Mr. Rumsfeld on Thursday: "He's going to be a great secretary of defense - again."

Though some commentators are grumbling about too many retreads on the Bush team, we find Mr. Rumsfeld's experience reassuring. Novelty is a prized commodity in political campaigns, but continuity and competence are vital in good government - especially in the area of national security.

Ironically, it is not Mr. Rumsfeld's past stewardship of the Pentagon that makes him controversial to some. It is his more recent incarnation as an advocate of a national missile defense program to repel possible nuclear attacks by "rogue" states.

President-elect Bush, who is markedly more enthusiastic about missile defense than the outgoing Clinton administration, explicitly invoked the issue in presenting Mr. Rumsfeld to the press. The nominee himself included missile defense in his litany of challenges facing the nation, along with terrorism, threats to American satellites, the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and "information warfare."

To some Democrats and arms-control enthusiasts, these are ominous words, reminiscent of Ronald Reagan's musings about an Astrodome-like shield that would repel Soviet intercontinental ballistic missiles. By contrast, the new administration's paeans to missile defense are music to those for whom missile defense has become a strategic holy grail.

The truth lies very much in the middle. Reflexive complaints that missile defense will "never work" put too little faith in scientific ingenuity. But the insistence of some proponents that missile defense is a panacea - and just around the corner - is equally a triumph of ideology over empiricism.

Mr. Rumsfeld, though obviously an advocate of missile defense, owes it to himself and his boss to keep an open mind about whether the research that must go on should be followed by deployment of what will be a hugely expensive undertaking - $60 billion by one estimate. With that caveat, his return to the Pentagon reflects well on Mr. Bush.

-------- MILITARY

-------- drug war

As U.S. Military Settles In, Some in Ecuador Have Doubts

New York Times
December 31, 2000
By LARRY ROHTER
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/12/31/world/31ECUA.html?pagewanted=all

MANTA, Ecuador, Dec. 29 - United States Navy P-3 reconnaissance planes are parked at the airfield on the outskirts of town, the Pentagon is spending $62 million to expand and improve runways and hangars, and American military personnel are already mingling easily with their local counterparts. But Jorge Zambrano, mayor of this port city of 250,000 residents, would rather not call the project that promises to transform his city an American "base."

"It's an advance post for combatting narco-trafficking," he said firmly in an interview, and as such very welcome. "We don't feel we are being invaded by the Americans here. It's as if someone has come along and offered to build us a second story on our house for free, so of course we are going to say `go right ahead.' "

However you describe it, the flights that leave here daily have already become an important element in the United States' efforts to halt drug trafficking.

With the conflict in neighboring Colombia worsening and the American commitment there growing, a new foothold so close to the theater of action will "improve our response time and enhance our ability to detect and monitor flows of cocaine and heroin," Gen. Barry R. McCaffrey, the White House drug czar, said in an interview earlier this year.

The work here, which includes construction of living quarters for 200 American military and civilian contract personnel, is scheduled for completion late in 2001. Then the "forward operating location," as it is called, will be able to provide round- the-clock tracking of activity in Colombia and neighboring countries through a pair of Awacs surveillance planes, among America's most sophisticated, and tankers to refuel them in the air.

The major coca-growing areas of Putumayo and Caquetá are just a few minutes' flight time north of here, but the planes will also be able to monitor air and marine activity well into the Caribbean.

Until last year, such missions were flown out of Howard Air Force Base in Panama. But when the United States and Panama failed to agree on use of the base after the United States handed over the Panama Canal a year ago, the Pentagon and State Department were forced to shop for alternatives.

Two smaller outposts in the Dutch colonies of Aruba and Curaçao in the Caribbean were quickly found, and Jamil Mahuad, then Ecuador's president, agreed to a 10-year deal in November 1999 calling for an upgrading of the existing Ecuadorean Air Force base here. But two months later he was overthrown in a military coup, and complaints and challenges to the base are yet to be resolved.

Officially, the American presence here is merely a counternarcotics observation post and has nothing to do with Colombia's war against leftist guerrillas or with Plan Colombia, the $1.3 billion American aid plan for Colombia. But since the guerrillas earn money and arms from drug trafficking, that distinction seems increasingly unconvincing to Ecuadoreans worried about getting dragged into the conflict.

"This base is a provocation to all of the irregular forces in Colombia," Antonio Posso, an influential leftist member of Congress, said in an interview in Quito, the capital. "Our oil pipeline has already been attacked by Colombian guerrillas, and the paramilitary groups are killing people on Ecuadorean territory, so just imagine how a military installation like this acts as an enticement."

But the "agreement for cooperation" between the United States and Ecuador specifically states that the base here shall be used "for the sole and exclusive purpose of supporting aerial detection, monitoring, tracking and control of illegal narcotics trafficking." And Mr. Zambrano and other Ecuadorean supporters of the project argue that since trouble is likely to be coming anyway, it is in their country's interest to be prepared and have some American protection.

"The nature of the conflict in Colombia and the way it is moving southward are such that they are going to provoke a spillover whether the American detachment is here or not," said Col. José Bohorquez, the Ecuadorean commander of the air base here. "It is the result of geography and the situation in Colombia, not of the American presence, and we should be clear about that."

Though the United States is paying the entire cost of expanding the existing base and will rely to a large extent on the local economy for labor, supplies and equipment, the agreement does not require Washington to pay rent or local taxes during the period of the agreement. But this is a country burdened with $13 billion in foreign debt and a poverty rate that has doubled in the past three years, and many people had hoped for more generous terms.

As a result, the popular perception in many parts of Ecuador is that the base "was given away in exchange for nothing during a moment of economic pressure," said Adrián Bonilla, a researcher for the Latin American Faculty for Social Sciences in Quito. "Mahuad assumed that the United States would help him get an accord on the foreign debt as a sort of payback, and agreed to give Manta away without a real process of negotiation."

Since the document the two governments signed is an agreement and not a treaty, the government was able to press ahead on the project without a vote in Congress. But a challenge to the legality of the accord has been taken to Ecuador's highest court, and Ecuador's Congress is also clamoring for a look.

"This agreement needs to be reviewed, and it will be reviewed," Mr. Posso vowed. "Until Congress has approved this measure, it is simply not valid, and approval will depend on whether or not Congress judges the conditions to be beneficial to the Ecuadorean nation. We are all against narcotics trafficking, but if this gets us involved in the war against the Colombian guerrillas, then things get complicated for us."

Opposition to the base seems especially pronounced in Guayaquil, the country's largest city and commercial center, but for reasons that appear to have more to do with business than politics. Guayaquil has long enjoyed a monopoly on air shipments of bananas, flowers and fish, which a second Pacific Coast international airport here would surely challenge.

Trying to be sensitive to Ecuadorean concerns about sovereignty, American military officials have adopted a policy of what they call "minimizing our footprint." When they are off base they dress in civilian clothes, and they have eagerly plunged into community life here with programs to train firefighters, paint schools and churches and coach basketball teams.

A group calling itself the Marxist- Leninist Communist Party of Ecuador has posted graffiti demanding that "warmongering Yankees get out of Manta." But for the most part, residents here, from shoeshine boys up to the business elite, seem to welcome the American presence, or at least the dollars that have begun to be injected into the local economy.

"With the Americans here, I am certain that many new jobs are going to be created and lots of money will be spent," predicted Margarita Macías Farfán , a shop clerk. "We already see them in the restaurants and hotels, and we hope that many more of them will come and invest here so that our lives improve."

---

USA Today
12/31/00
States
http://usatoday.com/news/states/all50.htm

Nebraska

Lincoln - Parole was approved for a woman who sold methamphetamine that ultimately killed a York High School student at the school's prom in 1996. Lori Connely, 29, was accused of originally selling the drug that killed Kory Sierp, which he obtained through others. His death was blamed on meth-related cardiac arrest. Connely was sentenced in January 1999 to 1 to five years in prison.

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

Rwanda Defends Presence in Congo

Associated Press
December 31, 2000 Filed at 3:15 p.m. ET
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Rwanda-UN-Congo.html

NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) -- Rwandan officials on Sunday reacted angrily to a demand by the United Nations that they withdraw troops from Congo, and blamed the fighting in Africa's third-largest nation on the slow deployment of U.N. peacekeepers.

The U.N. Security Council demanded in a statement Thursday that Rwanda and Uganda, which back rebels fighting to oust Congolese President Laurent Kabila, cease new offensives and pull back from Congo's two-year civil war.

``It is embarrassing for all of us to engage in such a debate when the ball is in the U.N. court,'' Patrick Mazimhaka, the presidential foreign policy adviser, said from Kigali, Rwanda's capital. ``None of this would happen if the U.N. secretary-general and the Security Council had fulfilled a minimum and sent the observers and troops into Congo.''

Mazimhaka said the Rwandan army was forced to launch an offensive in southern Congo only after it had been provoked by Kabila's army and his foreign allies.

In northwestern Congo, Jean-Pierre Bemba, leader of the Ugandan-backed Congolese Liberation Movement, said his forces shot down one Zimbabwean MiG fighter-jet after it had bombed Basankusu, about 600 miles northeast of the Congolese capital, Kinshasa, on Saturday.

Bemba said one person was killed and another wounded in the bombing. He said the pilot died after his plane was hit by an anti-aircraft missile and crashed in a nearby forest.

In Harare, Zimbabwe, President Robert Mugabe's spokesman George Charamba dismissed the rebel claim, saying that Zimbabwe does not operate MiG planes.

Kabila is backed by the armies of Zimbabwe, Angola and Namibia. All the warring sides signed a peace agreement last year, which called for a 5,537-strong force of U.N. observers and troops to monitor a fragile cease-fire and the withdrawal of foreign forces from Congo.

But with fighting continuing, only 224 unarmed observers have deployed so far, most of them in rebel-held eastern Congo. Kabila has repeatedly violated his earlier promises to remove bureaucratic and logistical obstacles to a faster U.N. deployment, such as denying clearances for U.N. flights.

``Our forces have prevented what was intended as a devastating launch of Kabila's forces and his allies on our positions,'' Mazimhaka said.

The Rwandan troops have captured several key towns along Lake Tanganyika's western shore and forced about 6,000 Congolese troops and allied Zimbabwean soldiers mixed along with Rwandan and Burundian Hutu rebels into exile in neighboring Zambia.

Some of them were disarmed by the Zambian army and police, while the others escaped back into Congo, according to Zambian authorities.

Since then, fighting has intensified in both southern and northwestern Congo, where the Ugandan-backed rebels reported fresh attacks by the government army.

Mazimhaka also called for a more vigorous response from the United Nations in dealing with the remnants of the Rwandan Hutu militia, who fled into Congo after taking part in the 1994 genocide in Rwanda. Up to 30,000 militiamen have since joined Kabila's army and received training in Zimbabwe and Angola, Mazimhaka said.

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

USA Today
12/31/00
States
http://usatoday.com/news/states/all50.htm

Hawaii

Honolulu - A federal jury found two men guilty of murder in the death of an Army helicopter pilot on June 3, 1998. Chief Warrant Officer John Latchum, 33, was shot in an apparent robbery attempt while vacationing with his family at a rented Army beach cabin. Roberto Miguel, 19, and Bryson Jose, 22, face mandatory life sentences without parole.

-------- OTHER

-------- environment

A Rare Wildfire Burns Across Alaskan Tundra

New York Times
December 31, 2000
National News Briefs
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/12/31/national/31NATI.html

ANCHORAGE, Dec. 30 (AP) - Firefighters are monitoring a rare 20,000-acre blaze on frozen tundra in the Yukon Delta National Wildlife Refuge on the southern coast of the Norton Sound.

Alaska's wildfire season is usually over by December.

"I haven't heard of anything like it," said Andy Williams, a spokesman for the Alaska Interagency Coordination Center.

Larry Vanderlinden, fire management coordinator for the agency, said fire crews would be brought in only if residents or structures were threatened by the blaze, which was spotted on Wednesday.

Fighting the fire would be dangerous because of the elements and the speed with which it was moving,spreading at least 13 miles by Friday, he said.

---

USA Today
12/31/00
States
http://usatoday.com/news/states/all50.htm

Conneticut

Hartford - NRG Energy Inc. is buying the last of Connecticut's polluted power plants for $325 million. The Minnesota-based company plans to cut emissions by burning cleaner fuel and using other pollution-control technologies. It purchased the Bridgeport and New Haven stations from Wisconsin Energy Corp. It now owns all six of the state's oldest and dirtiest power plants.

Montana

Billings - The Bureau of Land Management has designated 85,000 acres of mostly undisturbed prairie in northeastern Montana as an "area of critical environmental concern" to prevent development and protect habitat of the mountain plover. Ranchers will continue to lease some of the land for grazing but will be subject to some restrictions to protect the bird.

North Carolina

Bryson City - Eagles are making a comeback in the western part of the state after showing signs of a resurgence in the eastern part. Area bird watchers and biologists have reported increasing numbers of eagles near lakes in Swain, Graham and Clay counties. However, nests have only been found on Lake James in McDowell County and in east Tennessee.

-------- police

3 Police Commanders in Bronx Are Replaced as Crime Rises

New York Times
December 31, 2000
By WILLIAM K. RASHBAUM
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/12/31/nyregion/31BRON.html

Saying he was concerned that increases in reported crime in three Bronx precincts were not being addressed, Police Commissioner Bernard B. Kerik has replaced the precincts' commanders.

Although reported crime is down citywide, Mr. Kerik said, the Bronx precincts have shown troubling increases, and he said the commanders there had failed to put plans into effect to bring crime down.

After he was appointed police commissioner in August, Mr. Kerik replaced the commander overseeing all 12 precincts in the Bronx and has said the borough as a whole has shown significant improvement since.

But killings in the Bronx are up more than 38 percent over 1999, while the number of murders citywide has edged up slightly for the year. The biggest increases in killings came earlier this year.

A senior police official said the commissioner was not simply reacting to recent increases in reported crimes, but had looked at the statistics over time. "It's not just a matter of numbers alone," the official said. "It's that the numbers have gone up and the commissioner has not seen a plan to get them back down. It's a failure to rectify increasing crime trends in their precincts."

On Friday, Mr. Kerik replaced the commanders of the 41st Precinct, covering the Hunts Point section and parts of Mott Haven, where reported crime had climbed 10.44 percent as of Dec. 24; the 44th Precinct, covering the Tremont, Morris Heights and Highbridge neighborhoods, where crime rose 13.5 percent; and the 52nd Precinct, covering Bedford Park, which had a 5.29 percent increase in crime and a 92.3 percent increase in killings, to 25 from 13 last year.

"This is just some movement to make sure that conditions are addressed in precincts," Mr. Kerik said in an interview. "It's in response to overall index crime stuff, in the 41st 52nd and 44th. Those are the major concerns."

Commissioner Kerik said he did not believe he was focusing too narrowly on numbers. "It's not about summonses or arrests," he said. "I don't care if you go out there and ride around singing Mozart through a bullhorn, as long as you can bring crime down."

The commissioner replaced Capt. James Capaldo in the 41st Precinct with Capt. Paul McCormack, who had previously served as the second- ranking commander in the 33rd Precinct in Washington Heights. Capt. Capaldo was transferred to the Manhattan South Vice Enforcement Squad, Mr. Kerik said.

The 44th Precinct commander, Deputy Inspector Thomas King, was replaced by Inspector Kevin P. Clark, who had served as the commanding officer of the 47th Precinct in the northern Bronx, officials said. Inspector King was transferred to an administrative position in the borough command.

The commander of the 52nd Precinct, Capt. Stephen Fischer, was also replaced. He was transferred to the department's Housing Bureau, and Capt. Raymond Rooney, who until Friday had served as the commanding officer of the 50th Precinct in the Bronx, took over in the 52nd, officials said.

Mr. Kerik praised Captain Rooney's involvement with the people in the precinct where his officers patrolled. "Rooney's crime numbers are O.K., but he has phenomenal outreach," Mr. Kerik said. "The community leaders love him and one thing I've been trying to stress is staying in touch with the community."

One police official in the Bronx said the new commanders were all strong leaders who would be expected to improve morale and community relations while bringing down crime. "The people that are moving in are all young, energetic, can-do types," the official said.

Mr. Kerik, who met Friday with the new Bronx commanders, said that commanders in several other precincts around the city have been put on notice to watch small but troubling crime increases. Those precincts include the 20th on Manhattan's Upper West Side, the 26th in Harlem, the 69th and 70th in the Canarsie and Kensington neighborhoods in Brooklyn, and the 113th, which covers South Jamaica, Queens.

---

USA Today
12/31/00
States
http://usatoday.com/news/states/all50.htm

Arkansas

Conway - The city has agreed to pay $45,000 to a man who claimed he was beaten by police in 1996. The agreement settled the last of three lawsuits against the city stemming from the incident. William Wynne said he was beaten at a motel as he was being questioned as a suspect in an attempted robbery, for which he was later exonerated. The other lawsuits were filed by officers who reported what they believed to be a cover-up.

-------- spying

For Peru Ex-Spy Chief, on the Lam, a Trail of Intrigue

New York Times
December 31, 2000
By LARRY ROHTER
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/12/31/world/31SPY.html?pagewanted=all

LIMA, Peru Dec. 30 - Never mind about Carmen Sandiego and Waldo. Where in the world is Vladimiro Montesinos?

Since disappearing late in October, Mr. Montesinos, former chief of Peru's intelligence network, has become the most hunted man in Latin America. But in spite of a tantalizing trail of clues and reports of stopovers and sightings in places ranging from the Galápagos Islands to Caracas, he has managed - with the help of fake passports and disguises - to elude all of his would-be captors.

Mr. Montesinos is the key figure in the scandal that last month toppled President Alberto K. Fujimori of Peru, who is now in self-imposed exile in Japan.

Peruvian investigators accuse Mr. Montesinos, 56, of corruption, election fraud, extortion, drug trafficking, money laundering, bribery and rights abuses. They have pledges from countries in the region that he will be extradited to Peru if caught.

The Peruvian crisis erupted in September with the broadcast of a videotape that showed Mr. Montesinos, who had spent a decade as the president's most powerful adviser, apparently paying a $15,000 bribe to a member of Congress. Mr. Montesinos sought asylum in Panama, but returned semi-clandestinely to Peru less than a month later. His return set off a widely publicized manhunt, led by Mr. Fujimori himself, that critics dismissed as a farce.

On Friday, Gen. José Villanueva Ruesta, commander-in-chief of the Peruvian Armed Forces until October, was arrested on charges of illicit enrichment and aiding Mr. Montesinos in his escape. The authorities moved against Gen. Villanueva, a former military academy classmate of Mr. Montesinos, after he turned up in the town of Tumbes on the border with Ecuador, apparently raising suspicions that he too would soon leave the country.

Three of Mr. Montesinos's former bodyguards, who parted ways with him and ended up back in Peru, have told congressional investigators there that they left Peru with Mr. Montesinos on Oct. 29 aboard a yacht called the Karisma. They said the vessel sailed to Puerto Villamil, Ecuador, on the island of Isabela in the Galápagos, where a group of Montesinos associates took refuge at a secluded beachfront hotel called the Ballena Azul, or Blue Whale.

The hotel's proprietor, Dora Gruber, recalled that a woman - believed to be Mr. Montesinos's aide Aurora Guzmán - made the group's reservation and was reluctant to discuss Mr. Montesinos when he was mentioned on television.

Hotel owners and staff members were told that a group of journalists would be coming from Peru. But the supposed journalists "hardly left their cabañas, even for meals," Ms. Gruber said, "and if Montesinos himself were here, he never showed his face," apparently staying aboard the yacht.

The bodyguards have told Peruvian investigators that Mr. Montesinos eventually sailed from Isabela to Cocos Island, a Costa Rican possession in the Pacific. But airport officials in Puerto Villamil say that a man roughly matching Mr. Montesinos's description left their island aboard a chartered plane in mid-November.

The Costa Rican government, in turn, maintains that Mr. Montesinos entered its territory on Nov. 21, using a Venezuelan passport issued in the name of Manuel Antonio Rodríguez Pérez. Two days later, their records show, a man using the same passport boarded a private flight bound for Aruba, a Dutch possession in the Caribbean just off Venezuela.

By this point, Mr. Montesinos, who is tall, hawk-nosed, balding, fair- skinned and wears glasses, is said to have grown a beard. And his appearance may have been altered further in Venezuela, which has a flourishing plastic surgery industry.

Venezuela's foreign minister, José Vicente Rangel, at first dismissed reports that Mr. Montesinos was in the country, saying they were based on "speculation and false rumor." Just before Christmas, security officials produced a 27-year-old Peruvian engineer named Manuel Alexander Rodríguez Pérez who they said was the cause of the muddle.

"There has been a mistake in trying to confuse Mr. Alexander with Vladimiro," said Edgar Rodríguez, deputy director of Venezuelan state security, some of whose members have in the past had close relationships with Mr. Montesinos.

"This man could never be Vladimiro Montesinos," he said of the young engineer, brown-skinned and chubby, who has now returned to Peru and dropped out of sight.

But the director of the Instituto Diagnóstico, a private clinic in Caracas, said last week that a man named Manuel Rodríguez Pérez underwent surgery on his nose and eyelids on Dec. 13. The doctor who performed the operation is said to have taken photographs of his patient, but his current whereabouts are not known.

Now authorities in all the countries involved in the manhunt say they are baffled. There have been reports that Mr. Montesinos never left Peru and remains in hiding there; reports that he flew secretly to Paraguay; theories that he may have headed for Morocco; even talk that he has made his way to Europe to be closer to an estimated $800 million stashed in bank accounts there. The uncertainty feeds the legend.

"Up until some time ago, it was thought he was in Venezuela," Peru's prime minister, Javier Pérez de Cuellar, said on Tuesday.

"Now we have no evidence to say that he is still in Venezuela," he said. "Maybe he is, maybe he isn't. That's all I can say."

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Where bin Laden Has Roots, His Mystique Grows

New York Times
December 31, 2000
By JOHN F. BURNS
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/12/31/world/31BINL.html?pagewanted=all

AL-RIBAT, Yemen - Hemmed in by 2,000-foot rock massifs, this village seems, by measure of its beauty and mystery, altogether more like a place to stay than to leave. Yet Al-Ribat's villagers, driven by poverty, have migrated for centuries - in recent decades, mostly northward, out of Yemen and across the vast desert known as the Empty Quarter that forms a barrier between here and Saudi Arabia.

Historically, few places anywhere in the Arabian Peninsula have been less exposed to outside influences, except for the experiences - rarely liberalizing - of those who have migrated to Saudi Arabia and returned.

Al-Ribat, in consequence, remains an archetype of the deeply conservative, devoutly Islamic and, toward outsiders, insistently wary community that typifies much that is unchanging in remoter parts of the Arab world.

One migrant, in 1931, was a baggage carrier bound for Jiddah, the Saudi Arabian port city that is a gateway to Mecca, Islam's holiest place. His name was Muhammad bin Laden. In time, he and his brothers founded a construction company, now known as the Bin Laden Group, which prospered by building roads and palaces under the patronage of the Saudi royal family, and made the bin Ladens a fortune estimated at billions of dollars.

But what has drawn attention to Al-Ribat is not Muhammad bin Laden, who died in the 1960's, so much as Osama, the 17th of his 51 children. Osama bin Laden, in recent years, has been America's most wanted terrorism suspect, with a $5 million reward on his head for his alleged role in the August 1998 truck bombings of two American embassies in East Africa that killed more than 200 people, as well as a string of other terrorist attacks.

In the indictment drawn up by the F.B.I. against 15 men accused in the embassy bombings, Mr. bin Laden is listed first, as leader of "an international terrorist group," Al Qaeda, that has been largely financed out of Mr. bin Laden's inheritance from his father, estimated at about $300 million. Most recently, the F.B.I. has named Mr. bin Laden as a prime suspect in the suicide bombing of the American destroyer Cole, which was attacked in Aden harbor, 350 miles by road southwest of here, on Oct. 12, with the loss of 17 sailors' lives.

In Al-Ribat, there are no direct connections, at least none that are known, to the attacks mounted by Mr. bin Laden, who has taken sanctuary since 1996 in Afghanistan. He was born in Jiddah, to a Syrian mother, in 1957, and educated through university level, in civil engineering, in Saudi Arabia. But Mr. bin Laden, himself, has frequently cited his Yemeni ties, speaking often of his hope of leaving Afghanistan and seeking sanctuary somewhere in the "high mountains and deserts" of Yemen, where, he has said, he could breathe "fresh air."

This, and the restaints Saudi Arabia has placed on any reporters attempting to delve into Osama bin Laden's roots, has made Al-Ribat an obvious destination for anybody seeking to learn more about one of the F.B.I.'s most wanted men. But with at least three hours of driving to the closest strip of paved road, the village is as remote as any in Yemen, and guards its privacy with care - much like Yemeni authorities who, since the Cole bombing, have insistently discouraged efforts to probe into the domestic links of all suspects in the attack.

In October, a reporter trying to reach Al-Ribat was halted 50 miles north of the village by agents of Yemen's secret police. Later, they ordered villagers elsewhere in this part of Hadhramaut Province, in eastern Yemen, not to discuss Mr. bin Laden, or the bombing. But by December, with official surveillance of reporters easing, a visit to Al- Ribat became possible.

When Britain was the ruling colonial power in this region of the Arabian Peninsula, up to 1967, this part of the Hadhramaut region was a remote hinterland, reachable only by donkey or camel. The village lies at the extreme southern end of Wadi Doan, a dried-up river valley bordered by rocky mountains that narrows and deepens until it reaches a cul-de-sac at Al-Ribat.

Along dusty alleyways that run between mud brick homes, villagers willing to speak of Mr. bin Laden refer affectionately to "Osama," smiling proudly. Ali Ahmed Bagader, a bright-eyed, keen-witted 8- year-old studying at the Bin Laden Madrassah, or Islamic school, met visitors as they pulled up in the dusty square near the village's main mosque. Along with Salim Saeed al- Gerin, a 26-year-old baggage carrier, Ali offered a guided tour of the village's bin Laden sites.

"A lot of Yemenis love him," he said during a pause at the madrassah, which operates in a wing of a home belonging to Abdullah bin Laden, Osama's uncle and one of the three brothers who founded the construction company. Holding a boxed copy of the Koran, Ali said villagers had come to know Osama bin Laden mainly through television, piped into the village via satellite dishes.

"We love him because he's a mujahid," he said, using the Arabic term for a holy warrior. "We know that he fights for his faith, and for his country, that he has God's protection, and that he lives in Afghanistan."

The only remaining member of the bin Laden family living in the village is Khaled al-Omeri, a 30-year-old second cousin of Osama, who runs a small grocery store, having failed to secure a niche in Saudi Arabia as an automobile mechanic. He, his wife and five children share a three-room apartment in a large, ramshackle home that belongs to Abdullah bin Laden, his grandfather.

The home, with rotting wooden shutters and rain-stained walls, is known among villagers as the bin Laden house, and the dirt track that runs past it, on the edge of the dried- up riverbed running through the village, is called Bin Laden Street. Nearby is a one-room office for the Bin Laden Group, overseeing a project to bring piped water into Al- Ribat; the project is the bin Laden family's gift to their ancestral home.

But like many villagers, Mr. Al- Omeri judged it wiser to keep his views of Osama bin Laden to himself. "This is my jihad," he said, motioning to his small son, as he sat on a stoop outside his store. As for Mr. bin Laden, he smiled.

"On that matter, I'd just as soon keep my peace," he said.

Al-Ribat, with a population of about 7,000, is dotted with mosques and lives, still, mainly from porterage - the trade of Osama bin Laden's father when he left here by donkey 70 years ago. But for nearly 3,000 years, Hadhramaut has been renowned for its extraordinary agglomerations of 10- and 12-story mud brick skyscrapers, clustered together for defensive purposes behind high mud walls.

Al-Ribat, typical of such villages, has traditionally combined its porterage business with a specialization in construction - thus, in all probability, the transition that Muhammed bin Laden made, once established in Saudi Arabia, from porterage to building.

When Mr. Gerin, the porter who assisted in the visitors' tour, was asked about what made the village the main center of construction in Wadi Doan, he offered an incredulous response that said much about the persistence of all things in this remote hinterland.

"Why are we builders?" Mr. Gerin said, leaning on a cane. "Well, that's the way it is, and always has been, and always will be, until Judgment Day."

Along with this steadfastness come heavy doses of faith. Some of this was echoed in the pamphlets stuck to Al-Ribat's walls by an Islamic summer school, with question- and-answer strictures that reflected a deeply conservative attitude. One of these, on Bin Laden Street, posed the question,"Is it all right to shake hands with a foreign woman?" and offered the answer, "It is forbidden to shake hands with any women you can marry" - meaning any woman outside a man's own home.

But at least one of the village's Muslim clerics, who doubles as headmaster of the madrassah in the bin Laden house, was willing to speak out against intolerant forms of Islam, including Mr. bin Laden's.

"What do I think of Osama's `holy war against Crusaders and Jews?' " he said. "Well, I'll tell you: I am against it, because it harms Yemen's reputation more than it harms America. What I say is, if Osama wants to harm Americans, let him do it in America, not here in Yemen. From my point of view, Osama is a Saudi Arabian, not a Yemeni, and he and his beliefs do not belong here."

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Ex - Sen. Alan Cranston Dies at 86

Associated Press
December 31, 2000 Filed at 9:55 p.m. ET
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Obit-Cranston.html?pagewanted=all

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) -- Former Sen. Alan Cranston of California, a nuclear arms control activist who ended a 24-year Senate career in 1993 under the cloud of the savings and loan industry scandal, died Sunday at 86.

Cranston died at his home in Los Altos, his daughter-in-law Colette Cranston said. His son Kim found him slumped over a sink, she said. The cause of death wasn't immediately known, though she said Cranston had been taking antibiotics and had recently had trouble maintaining balance.

After Cranston's retirement from Congress, the Democrat largely dropped out of public view. But he continued to champion the cause of nuclear arms control, which had been the centerpiece of his political career and his 1984 campaign for president.

In 1996, he became chairman of the Gorbachev Foundation USA, a San Francisco-based think tank founded by former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev to promote world peace and nuclear disarmament.

``Sen. Cranston's lifelong dedication to peace in the world and nuclear arms reduction have been inspirational to me,'' said Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer, who took over Cranston's seat in 1992. ``My heart goes out to his family.''

When Cranston announced in 1990 that he wouldn't seek a fifth Senate term, he cited his diagnosis of prostate cancer. However, at the time, his approval rating had plunged to a record low due to the savings and loan scandal and his relationship with Lincoln Savings & Loan President Charles Keating, who had just been indicted on securities fraud charges.

A Senate Ethics Committee investigation later led to a formal reprimand of Cranston and sanctions against four other senators, known as ``The Keating Five,'' for intervening with federal regulators on Keating's behalf.

Cranston, who received nearly $1.2 million in political funds from Keating, initially insisted he had been ``politically stupid'' but ethically correct to intervene.

While he ultimately agreed to a finding that he had ``engaged in an impermissible pattern of conduct in which fund raising and official activities were substantially linked in connection with Mr. Keating and Lincoln,'' he remained defiant.

In his final response to the reprimand on the Senate floor in 1991, Cranston declared that his actions ``were not fundamentally different from the actions of many other senators.''

The remark clouded the former majority whip and No. 2 Senate Democrat's relationship with his Senate colleagues, and Cranston's reputation as a champion of liberal activism and progressive reform never recovered from the scandal.

In a 1996 interview, Cranston said: ``I don't feel any need for redemption.''

``I'm satisfied with what I did in the Senate,'' he said. ``I don't look back. I look forward.''

In a 1985 speech, Cranston said he chose to serve in the Senate ``because there I can work on the issues of war and peace, and the environment, and justice, and opportunity.''

It's ``where I kept the commitment I made in my 1968 campaign and get us out of the tragic war in Vietnam; where one act of mine helped keep us out of war in Angola ... one step I took, followed by many more, did much to prevent war in Angola, ... where I'm doing the utmost to dispel the threat of nuclear war that hangs over our children, darkening their days and filling their nights with fear,'' he said.

Cranston was a journalist before he became involved in politics. He became a lobbyist for the Common Council for American unity, an organization opposing discrimination against the foreign born, then served two terms as California state controller before he was elected to the U.S. Senate on his second try in 1968. In 1977, he became assistant majority leader, or whip.

In 1983, at the age of 68, Cranston announced his candidacy for president, declaring that his age would be an advantage because, he said, the American people ``want wisdom, maturity, proven capability'' in the White House.

Cranston announced that ending the arms race would be the ``paramount goal'' of his campaign. But he never attracted significant support and withdrew from the race for the Democratic nomination, later won by Walter Mondale.

Early in his Senate career, Cranston earned a reputation for uncanny skill in determining how senators would vote on an issue.

He ``runs around with a pencil and a computer -- which is his mind -- and keeps a complete record on everyone's past voting record, future voting record, and apparently even their innermost thoughts,'' former Sen. Dale McGee, D-Wyo., once said.

Cranston was born into a prosperous family in Palo Alto in 1914. After graduating from Stanford University in 1936, he started working for International News Service, reporting from London, Rome and Ethiopia.

He never lost his interest in journalism. In 1973, at the height of the Watergate scandal that drove President Nixon from office, Cranston introduced legislation to guarantee reporters the right to keep their informants confidential.

Cranston also edited the first unexpurgated English translation of Adolf Hitler's ``Mein Kampf'' published in the United States. Hitler successfully sued for copyright violation, and for decades, Cranston's resume proudly included the fact that he had been sued by the German dictator.

He and cartoonist Lee Falk also wrote a play, ``The Big Story,'' based on his newspaper experiences. It was tried out in New Jersey but never reached Broadway.

Cranston enlisted in the Army during World War II and was assigned to lecture on war aims. After the war, he wrote ``The Killing of the Peace,'' a book about the Senate struggle over the League of Nations in the aftermath of World War I.

During the late 1940s, Cranston worked at his father's Palo Alto real estate firm and became president of United World Federalists, an organization advocating world government.

When he announced his presidential candidacy more than 30 years later, Cranston said he no longer believed that world government was ``a practical solution to problems in the form in which they now exist.''

Cranston was married and divorced twice. One of his two sons, Robin, was killed in a traffic accident in 1980 at age 33. He is survived by his son Kim and one grandchild.

------- Onelist (submissions from subscribers)