------- Index of Articles

NUCLEAR
Court of Inquiry Submits Its Report on Submarine Collision
Nuclear agency approves MOX fuel for Niigata plant
U.S.-Russian Nuclear Programs on Edge
Chernobyl reactor casing could collapse
Investigation Finds No Bias Against Asians in U.S. Labs

MILITARY
French evacuate last holdouts from danger zone

OTHER
Bush Relaxes Clinton Rule on Central Air-Conditioners
In New Mexico, Debate Over Arsenic Strikes Home
Mexico Grows Parched, With Pollution and Politics
Northern Ireland finds more foot-and-mouth
Supporters of Justice Verniero Question the Case Against Him
City Officials Move to Increase Police Recruits
Blacks in Cincinnati Hear Echoes Amid the Violence
Police doing fine with powers they have
Saying you're sorry helps countries, kids
Bush back on China attack

ACTIVISTS
please sign petition


-------- NUCLEAR

Court of Inquiry Submits Its Report on Submarine Collision

New York Times
April 14, 2001
By JOHN KIFNER
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/14/national/14HAWA.html

HONOLULU, April 13 - The admiral's court of inquiry into the sinking of a Japanese fishing vessel by an American submarine submitted its report today to the commander of the Pacific Fleet, who will determine the submarine captain's future.

The commander, Adm. Thomas B. Fargo, recieved the 2,000-page document this afternoon. Admiral Fargo has 90 days to decide whether to order courts martial or take other disciplinary action against the commander of the submarine Greeneville, Cmdr. Scott D. Waddle, and other crew members.

Nine Japanese crewmen and students drowned when their ship, the Ehime Maru, was ripped open by the Greeneville, a nuclear attack submarine, on Feb. 9 in an emergency surfacing drill.

The submarine's control room was crowded at the time with 16 civilians going to sea as part of a distinguished visitors program designed to build support for the Navy.

The court of inquiry sought to determine whether Commander Waddle should be charged with dereliction of duty, improper hazarding of a vessel and negligent homicide.

The inquiry was led by Vice Adm. John B. Nathman, a naval aviator; Rear Adm. David M. Stone, a former destroyer commander; and Rear Adm. Paul F. Sullivan, a submariner.

A Japanese rear admiral, Isamu Ozawa, a submarine officer, was allowed to sit through the investigation and deliberations, but he was not allowed to vote on the recommendations.

Commander Waddle was relieved of his command on Feb. 10.

But when the Greeneville went back to sea on Wednesday, after $2 million in repairs at Pearl Harbor, two officers who had also been the subjects of the inquiry were aboard: Lt. Cmdr. Gerald K. Pfeifer, the executive officer, and Lt. j.g. Michael J. Coen, who was the officer of the deck on the day of the collision.

The Ehime Maru sank in 10 minutes. It lies at a depth of 2,003 feet, nine miles south of Diamond Head.

-------- japan

Nuclear agency approves MOX fuel for Niigata plant

Japan Times
Apr. 14, 2001
http://www.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/getarticle.pl5?nn20010414b4.htm

NIIGATA (Kyodo) The Agency for Nuclear and Industrial Safety issued a certificate on Friday to Tokyo Electric Power Co. stating that the company's plutonium-uranium mixed oxide fuel imports have passed safety inspection.

The agency issued the certificate for the 28 containers of MOX fuel imported from Britain for use in the No. 3 reactor of TEPCO's Kashiwazaki-Kariwa nuclear power plant in Niigata Prefecture, located on the Sea of Japan coast.

Although TEPCO submitted to the central government a plan for periodic plant inspections, expected to begin Tuesday, it did not state whether it plans to use the MOX fuel in its thermal reactor or continue using uranium fuel.

The utility had planned to begin using MOX fuel from Tuesday, but the Niigata Prefectural Government has been reluctant to allow Japan's first nuclear plant to use the controversial fuel.

"The company will continue to make efforts to obtain understanding from local residents and will decide whether to use the MOX fuel in the inspection after analyzing the situation with regard to the locals," reads the plan. The inspection is to finish July 13.

The company said it hopes to decide by June whether it will begin using the MOX fuel in thereactor.

The Kashiwazaki-Kariwa nuclear plant, which comprises seven reactors, has an output of 8,212,000 kilowatts, the largest in the world.

The company's move follows its decision in late March to postpone implementation of a similar project at its Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant in Fukushima Prefecture.

MOX, a pellet mixture of uranium dioxide and plutonium dioxide, is designed to be burned in light-water reactors, a process known as plutonium thermal use.

Plutonium is obtained by reprocessing spent nuclear fuel from nuclear power plants.

The electricity industry plans to implement the use of MOX fuel in 16 to 18 reactors by 2010. The project was originally scheduled to be launched in 1999.

-------- russia

U.S.-Russian Nuclear Programs on Edge

By Walter Pincus
Washington Post
Saturday, April 14, 2001; Page A13
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A16925-2001Apr13?language=printer

Top officials at U.S. nuclear weapons laboratories are concerned that current tensions between Washington and Moscow are starting to harm joint programs to reduce nuclear weapons and secure nuclear materials in Russia.

Both countries have called for high-level reviews of a $700 million program aimed at keeping Russian nuclear scientists employed in non-weapon areas and providing security systems, expertise and wages for guards to keep nuclear materials from being stolen.

The round of mutual diplomatic expulsions after the February arrest of former FBI agent Robert Philip Hanssen as an alleged Russian spy has apparently led to the cancellation or delay of scientific and other exchanges.

Kenneth Luongo, executive director of the Russian-American Nuclear Security Advisory Council and a major participant in exchange programs, said yesterday after returning from Moscow that the Russian foreign ministry had called for a three-month moratorium while the U.S. effort designed to secure Russian materials is reviewed in Moscow.

Luongo said he believes Moscow's action is a reflection of the Bush administration's announced review of the program, which a White House spokesman said yesterday "will take several months." It also follows the administration's proposed $100 million reduction in funds for the program in next year's budget, sent to Congress earlier this week.

However, Luongo said, "overall the pattern right now is inconsistent." On the plus side, he noted, the Pentagon's $475 million threat reduction program, which pays for the destruction of Russian intercontinental missiles and nuclear submarines, appears to be continuing. A Pentagon spokesman said it "has had no problems in the last several months."

Luongo also said the new leadership of Minatom, the Russian nuclear energy agency, "wants to continue the program," but shift the emphasis to joint research projects.

As is often the case when tension rises between Moscow and Washington, exchange programs, which involve relatively few funds and are easily reinstated, are among the first halted or delayed.

Last week, two high-ranking Russian nuclear scientists canceled their participation in next week's international arms control conference at Sandia National Laboratories in New Mexico. One of them, Vladimir Belugin, director of the Institute for Experimental Physics at Sarov, Russia's preeminent nuclear weapons laboratory, wrote that "with great regret" he had to bow out because of a meeting in Moscow with the new atomic energy minister.

Roger Hagengruber, Sandia's senior vice president for national security and arms control, said he was disappointed that the Russians had withdrawn and added that other cancellations could introduce "a chilling element" in the relationship. He noted that a delegation of members of the Russian lower house of parliament, the State Duma, scheduled to take part in an exchange program at Harvard University and in Washington, had also canceled earlier this week.

Ironically, among the major presentations scheduled for the Sandia conference is one called "U.S.-Russia Cooperative Efforts in Threat Reduction: Lessons Learned and Future Concerns."

At the U.S. Energy Department, a spokesman said, "We have not restricted travel but are observing all normal travel precautions." A meeting of Russian nuclear scientists and U.S. personnel in Moscow to discuss the direction of American aid to the nuclear cities program has been delayed, one participant said.

Another American nuclear expert just back from Moscow, Bruce Blair, president of the Center for Defense Information, said he found even his close Russian colleagues have become distant. Blair traced some of the new suspicion and hostility to "a general crackdown by the Russian internal intelligence service."

Blair also noted that it "has become more difficult to get visas to visit the nuclear cities . . . and self-censorship has emerged among journalists in Moscow who fear [if they write about nuclear matters] they will find themselves in hot water."

A number of Russian academics who wrote about nuclear weapons and related arms control matters recently have been accused of espionage by Russian authorities.

-------- ukraine

Chernobyl reactor casing could collapse: expert

AFP, 14apr01
From: Andrew Hund <axh69@po.cwru.edu>

THE stone casing entombing Chernobyl nuclear power reactor is in danger of imminent collapse, a former director of security services has warned.

Quoted in the upcoming issue of the German weekly Focus, Valentine Kupny said "the covering around the reactor could collapse at any moment". "The sarcophagus is so porous that radioactivity escapes each day," he said. "We don't even have the ability to measure the amount. If we could see the radioactivity there would be a cloud of smoke above the sarcophagus."

"What would happen (if the cover collapsed) would depend on the wind," Kupny said, but added that it was unlikely that radioactivity would reach the West again.

The number four reactor at Chernobyl exploded on April 26, 1986, contaminating three-quarters of Europe in the world's worst civilian nuclear accident.

Koupny was sacked from the centre last month for "violation of duty", according to a Chernobyl spokesman. But Focus said his dismissal came shortly after he had been interviewed by the author of its article.

The covering, which was quickly built around the reactor the day after the explosion, is covered with cracks.

Kupny said he did not know exactly what was happening inside the reactor nor how the 160 tonnes of radioactive magma inside reacted to rainwater, Focus reported.

"In September 1996 we recorded the last atomic chain reaction," Kupny said. "But it is very possible that something is happening now. We don't know."

The last of the four reactors at Chernobyl was closed definitively last December. http://thecouriermail.com.au/common/story_page/0,5936,1894896%255E1702,00.ht ml

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

Investigation Finds No Bias Against Asians in U.S. Labs

New York Times
April 14, 2001
By JAMES GLANZ
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/14/national/14LABS.html

An investigation by the Energy Department's inspector general concludes that scientists of Asian descent seeking security clearances were not subject to racial profiling in the wake of the Wen Ho Lee case.

The finding, which was made public this week, rebutted widespread accusations of bias by the scientists and by Asian-American organizations outside the laboratories, and seemed to contradict much of a study issued last year by a special Energy Department commission on racial profiling. That study compiled numerous reports of racial bias in the treatment of Asian and Asian- American scientists at the laboratories as a result of the charges against Dr. Lee, who eventually pleaded guilty to one count of mishandling nuclear secrets at the Los Alamos National Laboratory.

But the new report by the inspector general, Gregory H. Friedman, concluded that the information reviewed by his office "did not support concerns regarding unfair treatment based on national origin."

The inspector general's report had a narrower focus than the special commission's, examining a handful of complaints involving security clearance at the laboratories. The inspector general said that the Energy Department's ombudsman, Dr. Jeremy Wu, who deals with claims of racial profiling, had declined to identify several scientists with complaints, citing confidentiality.

The inspector general's report did note that Dr. Wu "stated his belief that there are `strong and continuing allegations about bias and profiling.' "

The investigation was ordered last November by Bill Richardson, then the secretary of energy. But an Energy Department official who is familiar with the report said that because Dr. Wu had declined to identify his sources, the investigation focused on just four cases involving Asian and Asian-American scientists whose security clearances had been either revoked or not renewed for a time.

"The facts that we have are the facts that we have," the official said. "We are not commenting on the overall climate on questions of discrimination in the national laboratories."

Some scientists and other observers of the laboratories said the report was more likely to confuse rather than to clarify the racial environment at the laboratories, which are operated by the Energy Department.

"There are severe limitations on the scope of this investigation, which I would say undercut its conclusion," said Steven Aftergood, director of the project on government secrecy at the Federation of American Scientists, a private group that monitors national security. "It did not investigate any of the complaints that the ombudsman has received."

Both Dr. Wu and Mr. Richardson were traveling today and could not be reached for comment. But Joseph H. Davis, an Energy Department spokesman, said Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham was reviewing the inspector general's findings.

"The secretary has said that he will continue to work with our many ethnic groups to ensure that their many concerns about racial profiling are met," Mr. Davis said.

The report's conclusions provoked conflicting reactions at Los Alamos. John Gustafson, a Los Alamos spokesman, said that while Dr. John C. Browne, the laboratory director, had not yet reviewed the report in detail, "certainly the bottom-line conclusion is an encouraging one."

"Absolutely, the laboratory did not and does not engage in racial profiling," Mr. Gustafson said.

Dr. Aaron Lai, a climate researcher at Los Alamos and a naturalized citizen born in Taiwan, said procedures for granting security clearances to Asian scientists had recently improved. But Dr. Lai said that during the period covered by the report, Asians and Asian-Americans at Los Alamos would agree that there was "very strong bias, very strong discrimination."

Those accusations of bias led to calls by Asian-American organizations for a boycott of the national laboratories, urging Asian scientists not to accept jobs there, widespread protests and a discrimination complaint against Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory by Asian employees. The complaint is pending at the California Department of Fair Employment and Housing, said Jack W. Lee, a San Francisco lawyer representing the employees.

Without commenting on the specifics of that case, Mr. Davis said Mr. Abraham planned to send a strongly worded memorandum to department employees on Monday declaring that he would combat any trace of profiling in the Department of Energy.

"Any practice of racial profiling shall be eliminated and prevented from occurring in the department," the memorandum reads, Mr. Davis said. "Sound management must be practiced throughout D.O.E. to create and maintain a respectful and productive work environment free of profiling, discrimination and fear."

-------- MILITARY

-------- france

French evacuate last holdouts from danger zone

USA Today
04/14/2001
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2001-04-14-french-munitions.htm

VIMY, France (AP) - Police and psychologists worked Saturday to persuade a few dozen holdouts to leave an area near a dangerous stockpile of World War I munitions that officials fear could explode or leak toxic chemicals, including mustard gas.

Authorities, going door-to-door, evacuated 12,500 people from the northern town of Vimy and some surrounding villages after announcing Friday that the stockpile posed a threat.

Many of Vimy's 4,500 residents spent the night in hotels or nearby school dormitories, sleeping in beds without sheets in rooms papered with movie posters and cluttered with toys.

Even as workers began the delicate operation of clearing away hazardous munitions Saturday, some 30 people were still refusing to leave the evacuated zone, a 2-mile radius from the depot, where officials found signs of cracking some munitions containers.

"In case of alert, they will be evacuated," said top regional official Remy Pautrat. For now, "they are not authorized to leave their homes."

The evacuees are banned from returning to their homes for up to 10 days while bomb disposal experts, emergency workers and firefighters transport 20 tons of munitions to a military camp.

"Ten days - that's going to be a long time," Bernard Bourgeois, a security guard whose three children are on spring break, said at one school. "We didn't expect to spend our holidays this way."

Yvette Allard, 62, said she spent the night crying out of frustration.

"I'll be walking the dog a lot, reading a lot of newspapers and finding ways to pass the time," she said.

The Vimy depot, which holds 157 tons of munitions, is the main storage site for a World War I bomb-hunting team that receives thousands of calls each year to collect stray weapons. Vimy, 90 miles north of Paris, was the site of several battles that left more than 200,000 soldiers dead.

Officials have started preparing to clear away the more dangerous munitions, a spokesman at the regional crisis center said. Some of the chemicals will be rendered inert before being shipped to a military camp in Suippes, east of Paris. Less threatening munitions will be reorganized and remain on site, he said.

"The major risk would be a chain explosion, but that is an unlikely scenario," said Yvan Consul, associate director of the bomb squad in nearby Arras.

In 1998, two bomb squad members were killed when a shell exploded at the Vimy depot.

Officials said the stockpile contains shells of mustard gas, used in World War I because of its irritating and blistering effects. Mustard gas can cause serious damage to the skin, eyes and lungs. Another chemical believed present is phosgene, which also was used as a poison gas in warfare.

-------- OTHER

-------- environment

Bush Relaxes Clinton Rule on Central Air-Conditioners

New York Times
April 14, 2001
By MATTHEW L. WALD
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/14/politics/14STAN.html

WASHINGTON, April 13 - The Bush administration said today that it would block a rule published in the last days of the Clinton administration requiring new central air-conditioners to be 30 percent more efficient than the current minimum and instead require that they be 20 percent more efficient.

In a statement that contrasted with President Bush's recent assertions that the nation faces an energy crisis, Spencer Abraham, the energy secretary, said energy conservation goals needed to be balanced against the need to minimize "future price increases on consumers, particularly low-income consumers."

The retail price difference between models meeting those standards is about $123, according to the Energy Department, for an appliance that generally costs $2,000 to $4,000. The extra cost is covered by the savings in energy over about 15 months of its 18-year average life, according to the department.

The industry's trade association had argued that 30 percent would be "a crushing burden" for some consumers, especially those who live in centrally air-conditioned mobile homes, because the more efficient machines are larger and would not fit. That problem would discourage people from moving to more efficient models, said Edward Dooley of the Air Conditioning and Refrigeration Institute.

The idea that the standard should be weakened to protect the poor was attacked by supporters of the old standard, including Dan W. Reicher, an assistant secretary of energy in the Clinton administration who helped write it.

"There are about 100-plus million households in the U.S., with 15 million classified as low-income, but of those, only 1.6 million have central air-conditioners," Mr. Reicher said. "We're going to lose, over time, a major improvement in the efficiency of the air-conditioning fleet, to save $122 per household in less than 2 percent of the people's homes."

David Nemtzow, director of the Alliance to Save Energy, a nonprofit group, said, "Guess what, poor people don't buy central air-conditioners, they tend to live in rentals." If the rented house or apartment is air- conditioned, the air-conditioner is owned by the landlord, he said, and if it is more efficient, then the tenant's bill is lower.

A better group to worry about, Mr. Nemtzow said, was old people whose health would be threatened by summer blackouts, which are made more likely by too much electric demand and too few generating stations.

According to the Energy Department, the 20 percent improvement it now favors would eliminate the need for 27 power plants of 400 megawatts each, nationwide, by 2030. Mr. Abraham in his statement said that the result would be to "help dramatically reduce electricity demand during peak periods."

The 30 percent improvement would avoid the need for 39 such plants, according to the department.

State governments in New York, California and Texas, worried about meeting summer electricity demands, had supported the 30 percent standard. Those states could now ask the Energy Department for permission to enforce the 30 percent standard within their own borders.

The economic difference between the two rules, taking into account higher purchase price but lower operating costs, is that a 20 percent increase would save about $2 billion over the next 30 years, compared with about $1 billion for the 30 percent standard.

But energy experts inside the department and outside acknowledged that all the estimates may be significantly off. If the price of electricity in 2010 is different from projections by only a few percent, the balance of costs and benefits to consumers may be far different.

The industry was also divided concerning the issue; Goodman Manufacturing, which owns Amana and is the second-largest producer of central air-conditioners, favored the stricter standard.

Senator Tom Daschle of South Dakota, the Democratic leader, said in a statement that the decision was "breathtaking in its cynicism."

"Since taking office, the president has used an `energy crisis' as justification to weaken environmental laws," he said.

Environmental groups rushed to criticize the decision, which they said would result in extra pollution from power plants. Some suggested that it was illegal, because the 1987 law that calls for standards forbids weakening them.

Energy Department officials said, however, that even though the rule had been published in the Federal Register, they had acted before it was scheduled to take effect - first with a 60-day delay on all rules, announced by Andrew H. Card Jr., the White House chief of staff, and now with a specific decision on the standard.

Under the Clinton rule, the "compliance date" - when the rule would affect sales - was 2006, to give manufacturers time to retool.

Technically, what the department did today was state its intention to propose a new standard. The Clinton standard was in the works for six years; it was not immediately clear how long a new one would take.

---

In New Mexico, Debate Over Arsenic Strikes Home

New York Times
April 14, 2001
By TIMOTHY EGAN
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/14/national/14ARSE.html

ALBUQUERQUE, April 12 - Turn on the faucet in the biggest city in New Mexico and what comes out the tap poses an instant question. It tastes fine, looks normal and contains the highest arsenic levels of any major American city's drinking water.

Until a few weeks ago, the guidance from Washington was that arsenic on the level seen here posed a cancer threat over prolonged exposure. Then the Bush administration changed the federal posture, arguing that the new guidelines may have been regulatory overkill.

And while the president's move caused a political furor that has taken on a life beyond the somewhat arcane subject matter, here in New Mexico and other parts of the West the political debate is secondary. While some people here are confused by what exactly the government is saying about a basic necessity of life, cash-strapped municipal officials are relieved.

New Mexico may be rich in arsenic, which occurs naturally in the volcanic soils here, but it is poor in tax revenue. With nearly one in five residents living below the poverty line, the state is among the poorest in the country. The city of Albuquerque estimated that compliance with the stringent federal standards that were withdrawn last month would have cost as much as $200 million.

"What we would like is some definitive scientific evidence that this would be worth doing," Mayor Jim Baca, a Democrat, said of compliance. "I'm a pretty strong environmentalist, but I was convinced that the data didn't justify the new level."

Others believe that the federal government has left Albuquerque in limbo.

"This is not India - I'd like to be able to drink the water," said Jeanne Bassett, executive director of the New Mexico Public Interest Research Group, which has pressed city officials to raise the water standards. "Some people are now spending more on bottled water than they do on gas."

In Albuquerque, the city water is used by schools, runs through drinking fountains, and is praised by city leaders for its taste. But smaller communities around Albuquerque have taken a different approach.

The town of San Ysidro, which has even higher arsenic levels than Albuquerque, has installed home-filtering devices on the taps in all houses. A neighboring Indian community, Isleta Pueblo, has sued the city to bring down the arsenic content in water that flows down the Rio Grande.

"It's amazing - the federal government has basically defaulted from where it was supposed to be," said Jim Piatt, the environment manager for Isleta Pueblo. "If people in power could just be honest, and say, `We're trying to prevent cancer, and let's see what the science says,' we could get something done. But now, I don't know what to expect from the federal government."

They have known for years that the water coursing through the volcanic soils beneath this high-desert city and pumped through the taps of nearly half a million people contained high levels of arsenic. An ancient form of poison, arsenic in drinking water can cause cancer of the liver, bladder, lungs, kidney and prostate after prolonged exposure, according to the National Academy of Sciences. The question has always been: How much arsenic poses a real health risk?

Until last month, when the Bush administration withdrew strict new standards for arsenic in the nation's water supply, Albuquerque was struggling to devise a plan to bring its drinking water up to levels that the scientific panel had deemed safe.

Still, most of this state's political leaders, Democrats and Republicans, say that New Mexico has lived a long time with its high arsenic levels and that the cost of making the water cleaner is simply too high. They also say even though the research is incomplete, they have little evidence of cancer clusters caused by arsenic in this state.

The current standard for arsenic in drinking water, established in 1942, is 50 parts per billion. At that level, the National Academy of Sciences found in 1999, people have a 1- in-100 chance of getting cancer from the arsenic over a lifetime of exposure. The academy urged a tougher standard to protect public health.

In January, in the final days of the Clinton administration, the Environmental Protection Agency proposed a standard of 10 parts per billion, which matches that recommended by the World Health Organization.

The federal agency said the new standard would give about 13 million Americans who now drink water with high arsenic content more protection from cancer, cardiovascular disease, diabetes and neurological problems.

Most places with the highest arsenic levels are in the West, among them Fallon, Nev., with levels of more than 100 parts per billion; Norman, Okla., home of the University of Oklahoma, with 8 to 18 parts per billion, and Albuquerque, with levels ranging from 2 to 40 parts per billion, depending on the different wells that feed its water supply.

Despite the Bush administration reversal, the University of Oklahoma is going ahead with plans to bring its arsenic down, said David L. Boren, the university president.

Mr. Boren, a former Democratic senator from Oklahoma, noted that he lived on campus, drank the water, and wanted to be assured that he was not putting himself or students and faculty at risk.

Here in Albuquerque, Mayor Baca said he had no fear of drinking the water, which is pumped by wells from a natural reservoir beneath the city. "I've been drinking it for 56 years and I feel just fine," he said.

But the Indians who live just downstream from Albuquerque say they do not trust the current levels. Using its sovereign power, the Isleta Pueblo, with a population of about 4,000, sued the city to force it to clean the waste water it dumps into the Rio Grande. Lower courts ruled for the tribe, and those rulings stood when, four years ago, the Supreme Court refused to hear the appeal.

The tribe has been asking the city to set arsenic standards at a level far less than the current federal standard of 50 parts per billion. Isleta leaders say that the Bush administration, by questioning the science of arsenic and health risks, has knocked out some of their negotiating leverage with Albuquerque.

Christie Whitman, the E.P.A. administrator, says the administration is studying the evidence linking arsenic with cancer, and will establish a new level based on evidence of the health risk.

Mrs. Whitman can find plenty of support for throwing out the tough new standards among city officials here.

"I feel arsenic is an essential metal - you can't live without it," said Roy Robinson, Albuquerque's water utility manager. "It's like salt: too much of it will pickle you, too little of it will kill you."

The 10-parts-per-billion standard was "based on conjecture, not science," Mr. Robinson said. The E.P.A. had initially considered 5 parts per billion, and environmental groups that study water contamination asked for an even lower level of 2 or 3.

The research is scant on the effect of arsenic on American communities, largely because the population is so mobile. Scientists have looked to Asian cities for comparisons. The National Academy of Sciences, which determined that current levels pose a health risk, has a reputation for caution in making such determinations. Opponents of strict environmental regulation often cite the panel in backing up their arguments.

"There's been this refrain, whenever people don't want tighter environmental standards, they say there is no sound science," said Representative Tom Udall, a Democrat who represents New Mexico north of Albuquerque.

"What the administration has done now is completely irresponsible," Mr. Udall added. "They seem to be saying they don't like the science. So what are people supposed to do?"

Mr. Udall and Senator Harry Reid, Democrat of Nevada, have both proposed bills that would provide money for cities to upgrade their water systems. But some people here believe that New Mexico's poverty will ultimately trump any effort to get rid of its arsenic. The E.P.A. had estimated that reducing arsenic to 10 parts per billion would cost larger communities anywhere from 86 cents to $32 a year, per household, to bring the water in compliance.

"We are the poorest state in the country," said Ms. Bassett of the New Mexico Public Interest Research Group. "But shouldn't people be able to turn on the taps and not have a cancer-causing metal come at you?"

---

Mexico Grows Parched, With Pollution and Politics

New York Times
April 14, 2001
By TIM WEINER
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/14/world/14MEXI.html

CHIMALHUACÁN, Mexico, April 13 - In this grim slum 12 miles past Mexico City's eastern edge, the lives of thousands of families depend on Enrique García and his partners at the local pump house.

But, as Mr. García said as he watched thousands of gallons flow from a dwindling underground aquifer, "Who knows if it'll last?"

The Chimalhuacán slum is growing rapidly, and the water may turn toxic before it runs dry: the pump house lies a quarter mile from an enormous open sewer and the municipal garbage dump.

Mexico's new president, Vicente Fox, calls water "a national security issue," and it is not hard to see why. Mexico lies along the same latitudes as the Sahara, and nearly half its land is bone dry. It has less drinking water per capita than Egypt, and 60 percent less than it did 50 years ago.

At that rate, the harsh truth is that someday - not this year, maybe not this decade, but before too long - Mexico could start dying of thirst.

Roughly 12 million people, one out of eight Mexicans, the poorest of the poor, have no easy access to drinking water at all. Those who can afford it pay dearly to have it trucked to their homes. Those without the money have to drink what they can find. Bad water kills thousands every year.

"There is no place in this country, with the exception of maybe one or two cities, like Monterrey, where you can drink the water without worrying you're going to get sick," said Victor Lichtinger, the environmental minister. The national water commissioner, Cristóbal Jaime Jaquez, says 73 percent of Mexico's water, underground and above, is contaminated and a danger to public health.

Almost every river and stream in the nation is polluted - 93 percent of them, the government says.

Rather than wellsprings of life, President Fox has said, they have become "a lethal source of sickness" after "decades of having been overexploited, without planning, without sense."

To stop the contamination, and to treat enough water to keep pace with people's needs, the water commission says, Mexico must spend at least $30 billion over the next decade. Mexico does not have that kind of money, nor even enough to maintain the water-treatment facilities it already has. For example, in Chiapas State, there are 13 treatment plants; for lack of money and maintenance, not one is working.

Mexico City, home to nearly 20 million people, is draining its immense underground aquifer, lowering it by as much as 11 feet a year and causing some of the city's most famous buildings, like the National Cathedral, the largest and oldest in Latin America, to bend and droop like a reflection from a funhouse mirror.

With the aquifer close to depleted, the city now pumps water nearly a mile uphill, from as much as 125 miles away, and half of that trickles away in leaks and cracks. The lost water would be enough to slake the thirst of the whole of Los Angeles. Some of the city's aqueducts date to Aztec times, five centuries ago, and replacing the century-old pipes beneath the city's streets could take decades, if it ever gets done.

Mr. Lichtinger, the environment minister, says there are in fact ways to begin to deal with a problem that has confounded a generation of Mexican scientists and environmentalists. But this will first require an overhaul of some sacrosanct political traditions.

Water has been used as a political tool in Mexico for decades. Under the Institutional Revolutionary Party, known as the PRI, which ran almost everything in Mexico from 1929 until Mr. Fox took office on Dec. 1, "water was a key to getting votes," Mr. Lichtinger said. "Decisions about where to deliver water were linked to politics, political favors, political alliances. Promises were made - `If you vote for us, you'll get water' - and that meant a lot."

One reason the PRI lost power last year was that it broke too many promises to too many poor people, eroding what had been its strongest political base.

In Chimalhuacán, for example, the PRI's power broker until last year was Guadalupe Buendía, nicknamed La Loba, the she-wolf. She controlled the water supply - and almost everything else, because her husband was the municipal treasurer, and a first cousin was the mayor. If someone crossed her, she would cut off their water, and their neighbors' too, for good measure. She was jailed last summer after instigating a riot against her cousin's successor as mayor, a riot in which 10 people died.

But the party kept many promises to more prosperous Mexicans. And one result is that agribusinesses, mining firms and cattle ranchers across Mexico get their water free. They consume at least 70 percent of the nation's water, losing half of it through evaporation, leaks and profligacy, according to most estimates.

Mr. Lichtinger says most of those enterprises are going to have to start paying for their water, if Congress passes a new tax law proposed by Mr. Fox. "That's the most important thing - starting to charge big agribusinesses," the minister said. "That's the beginning."

The money could reopen the closed plants in Chiapas and pay for new ones in Mexico's poorest states, like Oaxaca, where 54 of every 100,000 people die each year from bad water, according to data compiled by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

It could help save the wells feeding the city of Mérida, capital of Yucatán State, where sewage and industrial waste threatens the city's water supply. Today, only 14 percent of Mexico's municipal and industrial wastewater is treated at all.

And the money could help lay the groundwork for a rational way to cope with Mexico City's water problems, which have defied solution, and where water subsidies alone consume more than 1 percent of Mexico's entire federal budget.

"We have subsidized the rich and the middle-class much more than the poor," Mr. Lichtinger said. "We have to have clearer criteria." For too long, he added, those criteria have been "not poverty, not health, but power."

---

Northern Ireland finds more foot-and-mouth

USA Today
04/14/2001
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/footandmouth/2001-04-14-ireland.htm

BELFAST, Northern Ireland (AP) - Thousands of pigs, sheep and cows will be slaughtered, officials said Saturday after a second case of foot-and-mouth disease was confirmed in Northern Ireland. The livestock ailment was confirmed Friday in a herd of dairy cows near Cookstown in County Tyrone, about 16 miles from the border with the Republic of Ireland. Pigs within two miles of the infected site will be killed, along with sheep and cows within a radius of two-thirds of a mile, Agriculture Minister Brid Rodgers said.

The highly infectious ailment does not harm humans but is devastating to livestock.

Northern Ireland confirmed its only other case of foot-and-mouth six weeks ago, and officials had been hopeful that they had stopped the disease's spread. The latest case is 60 miles from the first.

"It goes without saying that this is a huge setback for the whole of Northern Ireland agriculture industry and comes just at a time when our hopes were high that we might have escaped this dreadful scourge," Rodgers said.

Rallies commemorating the 1916 Easter Rising against British rule in Ireland were called off in three communities near the outbreak, Sinn Fein party lawmaker Martin McGuinness said.

The Protestant group Apprentice Boys of Derry also canceled a march scheduled for Monday.

Slaughter also began at a third farm, in County Antrim on Northern Ireland's northeast coast, where livestock showed symptoms of the disease.

The European Union agreed April 3 to lift restrictions on meat and dairy exports from all areas of Northern Ireland except Newry and Mourne, where the first case was found.

The Republic of Ireland also has reported one case of foot-and-mouth. Irish Agriculture Minister Joe Walsh said the country should be vigilant in the wake of the latest outbreak across the border.

"We have to be on full alert here and redouble our efforts at all of the border checkpoints," he said.

-------- police

Supporters of Justice Verniero Question the Case Against Him

New York Times
April 14, 2001
By LAURA MANSNERUS
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/14/nyregion/14TROO.html

TRENTON, April 13 - The calls for Peter G. Verniero to resign from the New Jersey Supreme Court have come from almost every quarter: Republicans in the State Senate, Democrats in the State Senate, the acting governor, civil rights groups, editorial writers.

But, as Assembly Speaker Jack Collins ponders an 11-page letter from the Senate Judiciary Committee calling for impeachment proceedings, voices of support for Justice Verniero are emerging and raising questions about the hearings that have presented the case against him.

Two former State Supreme Court justices this week protested "a portrait of Justice Verniero as the central villain in the racial profiling debate." Several people who have spoken with the court's current members say the justices are appalled by his treatment. Lawyers accustomed to defending clients note that the Senate hearings were a political event, not a legal proceeding.

A trial, they point out, with defense counsel and cross-examination, would at least elicit responses to the charges that Justice Verniero ignored racial profiling by the state police when he was the state's attorney general and then gave deceptive testimony about it in his court confirmation hearings. There are, his supporters say, at least two very different versions of Mr. Verniero's treatment of racial profiling, each leading to a different conclusion as to whether his testimony at his confirmation hearings was honest, equivocal, slippery, mistaken or purposefully false.

In the first scenario, Mr. Verniero shoved aside evidence given to him, withheld documents sought by federal civil rights investigators and kept news of the investigation carefully contained. He acknowledged discrimination against minority motorists only when his court nomination was in the balance, and excused himself by saying he had only recently seen the damning evidence.

In the second, Mr. Verniero's biggest offenses were naïveté and inattention. He was assured that racial profiling was not a problem. His predecessor, Deborah T. Poritz, now the State Supreme Court's chief justice, said claims to the contrary were based on "junk science." He may or may not have seen a few abbreviated sets of statistics that landed in the vast bureaucracy of the attorney general's office. When the Justice Department undertook an investigation, he defended the state's interest by declining to surrender anything he was not legally obligated to produce. The first version prevailed at the current hearings.

Mr. Verniero "perpetrated a huge injustice on our community," Senator Wayne R. Bryant, a Democrat from Camden, said after testifying this week. "The minority community won't feel vindicated until he is off the court."

And Justice Verniero has not received good reviews for his own 13 1/2- hour defense. "I think he had every opportunity to explain himself; I don't have any question about that," said Frank Askin, the director of the constitutional litigation clinic at Rutgers Law School in Newark. "I think it was a legitimate process."

But Justice Verniero's supporters say that if the accusations sound persuasive, it is partly because the committee members and lawyers all took prosecutorial roles.

"Nothing has been brought out from all the favorable evidence they had that would have supported Verniero's version of the facts," said Alan L. Zegas, a former president of the Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers of New Jersey. "None was used except those portions that were bad for him. So he was put in an unfair light, and I think that's wrong."

Robert B. Reed, a former member of the bar association committee that screens judicial candidates, said, "I did not get the impression that the conclusions resulted from any search for the truth." Mr. Reed, who was on the committee when it reviewed Justice Verniero, added that recent news coverage reflected "a bias against the justice which I thought bordered on hysteria."

The Judiciary Committee investigation was undertaken to examine discrimination against black and Hispanic motorists by the state police, and much of the testimony concerned evidence that minority drivers were stopped on the New Jersey Turnpike at rates far higher than that for whites. The questioning focused on Mr. Verniero's treatment of that evidence when he was attorney general from 1996 to 1999. Then, in the 14th hour of Justice Verniero's testimony on March 28, the committee chairman, Senator William L. Gormley, accused him of misrepresenting that record when the committee considered his nomination in 1999. That charge became the basis of the committee's call for Justice Verniero's resignation, which was seconded by Acting Gov. Donald T. DiFrancesco, and its letter this week urging Mr. Collins to start impeachment proceedings. The letter contends that Mr. Verniero gave false statements about the status of the Justice Department's investigation and about when his department had begun collecting data about traffic stops and searches. It also says he misled the judiciary committee at his confirmation hearings when he responded to a question of when he had become aware of that data and, in response to a written request from minority legislators in March 1999, told them the statistics were not readily available.

The senior Democrat on the committee, Senator John A. Lynch, said the letter "sets forth the undisputed facts concerning Justice Verniero's actions regarding racial profiling and his conduct during his confirmation to the Supreme Court."

But Mr. Zegas said that Justice Verniero's general response - that the evidence of racial profiling did not "crystallize in my mind" until 1998 - was credible. "There's no reason to disbelieve that, given the testimony of his immediate subordinates," Mr. Zegas said.

While current justices refuse to comment publicly, two former justices, Marie L. Garibaldi and Daniel J. O'Hern, said in a statement that "we are not judges of the Legislature or its proceedings, but we are concerned about the public impression of the character and integrity of our friend."

Justice Verniero has turned aside pleas that he resign, and maintains that he has answered every question truthfully. His lawyer, Robert A. Mintz, is writing a response to the committee's letter that he plans to deliver to Mr. Collins on Monday.

Mr. Collins, a Republican but not a friend of Mr. DiFrancesco's, responded coolly and said he would announce a decision next week. He and the Assembly are consumed by redistricting and, many legislators say, are not eager to take up impeachment. Finally, the Assembly has only until May 15 to meet the impeachment time limit.

Still, Justice Verniero will be judged again in 2006, when his initial term expires and he must be reappointed and reconfirmed. So far, a majority of the 25 Republican senators have called for his resignation. The 15 Democrats in the Senate opposed his nomination in 1999.

---

City Officials Move to Increase Police Recruits

New York Times
April 14, 2001
By WILLIAM K. RASHBAUM
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/14/nyregion/14RECR.html

With a deadline fast approaching, applications for the coming police test have lagged, suggesting that interest in a career with the New York Police Department remains anemic. While unwilling to concede they have a recruiting problem, police officials said yesterday that they would make a wide range of changes to the recruitment program.

The changes include waiving the $35 application fee, extending the deadline to apply for the June 23 test, and offering additional test dates at military bases around the country and at campuses in New York City, Police Commissioner Bernard B. Kerik said yesterday.

So far this year, with the original application deadline two weeks away, only 800 people have signed up to take the June 23 test. The number pales in comparison to recent years, when tens of thousands of men and women applied. Police officials yesterday acknowledged the number of applicants was low, but contended that it was not a clear-cut indication of low interest in police careers. They said it was usual for many applications to come in the final weeks of the sign-up period.

But rather than wait for a last-minute surge that may not come, officials decided to take the steps to increase the number of candidates for the force of 40,000 officers. Chief among them, Mr. Kerik said, was the elimination of the filing fee. The decision, made last week, will require city personnel officials to refund the entry fees already paid by the current applicants.

In addition, the city has extended the filing period for the June 23 test by two weeks, from April 30 to May 15, in the hope of reaping the full benefit of eliminating the fee.

In the past, the department offered the police test twice a year, and only in New York City. Now, officials plan to schedule more testing days over the next six weeks, with on-the-spot registration, at Fort Bliss in Texas, Fort Campbell in Kentucky and Camp Lejeune in North Carolina, as well as at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in Manhattan, St. John's University in Queens and St. Francis College in Brooklyn, Mr. Kerik said.

Next year, the department will also offer the free test using a dozen city public school sites, with tests in February, June and October, and both morning and afternoon sessions. The department is also exploring giving the exams at the State University of New York campuses at Albany, Binghamton and New Paltz.

Mr. Kerik is facing the same problems that plagued his predecessor, Commissioner Howard Safir: a department dragged down by abysmal morale after several high-profile incidents that tarnished the department's reputation, including the torture of Abner Louima in a Brooklyn station house in 1997 and the fatal shooting of Amadou Diallo, an unarmed African immigrant, in 1999.

At the same time, officers are almost unanimously bitter over a pay scale roundly criticized as miserly in an economy that for years has offered attractive alternatives. But concern appears to have deepened in recent weeks, because the applications have lagged even as the economy has shuddered.

Yesterday, Mr. Kerik, talking to reporters about the new recruiting initiatives, sought to play down the concerns. He said he was taking the new measures because he believed the department, which he said hired more people than any other city agency, would generally benefit from a consistently larger pool of candidates.

"This department, unlike just about any other city agency, should be recruiting constantly," he said. "Because we're constantly hiring, I think we should maintain a bigger pool, instead of just testing one or two times a year," as the department has in the past.

But the head of the Patrolmen's Benevolent Association, the union that represents police officers, said the new efforts failed to respond to what he called the underlying problem.

"The city is refusing to address the real problem in recruiting," said Patrick J. Lynch, the P.B.A. president. "The problem in recruiting is we have a substandard salary. Surrounding jurisdictions, who pay their police officers a decent, livable wage, have thousands of thousands of applicants for hundreds of spots."

Members of the P.B.A. start at an annual salary of $31,305, and the union is now engaged in contract talks with the city. Mr. Lynch said a smaller pool of recruits meant that the city might be forced to lower its standards for hiring officers. "What the city has to be careful of doing is lowering the standards to increase their numbers," he said. "Once you lower the standards, it affects the city's citizens as well as their fellow police officers. Raise the salaries and you can keep the high standards."

Mr. Kerik said the department was undertaking a new advertising campaign, with print, radio and television ads that he said would be unveiled next week. While he was unable yesterday to provide the cost for the advertisements, he said the budget would be less than the department's last advertising blitz, which cost about $20 million over two years under Mr. Safir, with limited success. Mr. Kerik said the advertisements would be produced largely in- house.

The 800 candidates who have signed up during the last five weeks for the June 23 test represent an increase over the 375 who signed up during a five-week period in July and August of last year for a test that was given in December, officials said. "We're really enthused about these numbers," said Patrick J. Muldowney, a spokesman for the city's Division of Citywide Administrative Services.

But neither figure measures up to the roughly 4,000 who signed up in a five-week period early last year. In the end, 8,300 signed up for that test - a figure that itself represented a marked decline from the 1990's, when 15,000 to 30,000 people applied to take the tests.

---

Blacks in Cincinnati Hear Echoes Amid the Violence

New York Times
April 14, 2001
By FRANCIS X. CLINES
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/14/national/14OHIO.html

CDINCINNATI, April 13 - Charles Wimms looked back today from some fresh scars on storefronts in the black Avondale neighborhood to the old, still chilling memories of the last time local youths erupted in violent protest, when the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated more than three decades ago.

"This wouldn't have happened if they had listened to us in those years back then," said Mr. Wimms, a 39- year-old construction worker, recalling that police treatment of black Cincinnatians - the issue that drove the wave of protest and vandalism by clusters of angry blacks this week - was also a principal issue in the 1968 violence.

"So now we have a new generation of young black men running the streets again to stir things up for what is right," he sadly contended.

Mr. Wimms stood before broken windows where youths looted a sneaker store on Wednesday night, at the height of protests over a white police officer's fatal shooting of an unarmed black teenager last Saturday. Blacks maintain that the killing, the fourth of a black by the police since November, resulted from racial profiling that they say has long been rampant here.

While an investigation into the killing proceeds, officers quoted in the local press have disputed that version of events. They say the slain teenager, Timothy Thomas, was pursued by officers in the first place not because he was black but because the officers had recognized him as someone against whom a total of 14 warrants were outstanding, although most related to traffic charges.

With Easter-season allusions to resurrection and regrets at the damage to this city's streets and reputation, people like Mr. Wimms warily greeted the return of civil order after an all-night curfew took hold, with no clear idea of when it might be safe to end it.

"This all feels kind of strange, like a return to the 60's, you know?" said Todd Bigger, a 39-year-old black resident who said the 1968 violence was remembered as a frightening benchmark among blacks, but also as a desperate symbol of demand for change that, he said, still has not been accomplished.

"But when stuff like this goes on, I guess authorities have to act," Mr. Bigger said, looking uncertain on a sunny spring day that city officials vowed was the turning point as they ordered a second night of curfew.

This patchwork city of black and white enclaves did indeed offer time- warp facets of the old ways of street protest and official crackdown. Black clergy members once more worked their congregations, pleading for an end both to what they described as decades of police abuse and to the angry violence that has mainly redounded upon the blacks' own neighborhoods. At the same time, white officials looked for something more creative than the sweeping 8 p.m.-to-6 a.m. curfew, which on Thursday night and into this morning substituted eerie scenes of urban emptiness for the hit-and-run confrontations of earlier this week, when protesting youths vandalized stores and the police responded with rubber bullets and tear gas. More than 200 people have been arrested, and more than 50 treated at hospitals.

In the debate over what to do, pointed criticism of the police was offered by the Ohio secretary of state, J. Kenneth Blackwell, a former Cincinnati mayor respected as a careful, conservative Republican.

"The truth is, we have a real pathology in police community and race relations in Cincinnati," Mr. Blackwell said in calling for a review of procedures for applying deadly force. There is no public confidence, he said, that officials sworn to root out crime will "just as swiftly act on rooting out folks - officers - who are in violation of policy and procedures."

But the police union defended its own, as Keith Fangman, president of the local Fraternal Order of Police, warned against concessions to violent protest. "If we give one inch to these terrorists in the form of negotiations, then we've got no one to blame but ourselves when we turn into another Detroit or Washington, D.C.," Mr. Fangman said.

The shooting of the 19-year-old Mr. Thomas brought to 15 the number of suspects, all of them black, slain by the police here in the last six years.

Officers say that Mr. Thomas had a clear history of fleeing efforts to detain him for traffic violations and that Steven Roach, the 29-year-old officer who shot him, thought he was reaching for a gun. No gun was found, however, and Mayor Charlie Luken has said there are official doubts about that account.

"We have not done ourselves any favors in terms of our image in the last few days," a weary-looking Mayor Luken declared after the first night's curfew, in which local officers and state troopers enforced a virtual lockdown on Cincinnati streets. That step netted 153 scattered violators, the police said, but stopped the wave of violent protest and vandalism. As the city turned to Mr. Thomas's funeral on Saturday as its next test of civility, plans for a special grand jury to look into his death were announced, and the mayor met with Justice Department officials monitoring the troubles.

"Make this Good Friday a better Friday," a clergyman prayed before a crowd of worshipers attending the annual Way of the Cross pilgrimage downtown. A truncated version of the outdoor Crucifixion ritual, it avoided outlying hot spots where groups of young blacks had raided stores, set fires and alarmed whites before the police took the streets back with the curfew.

As city leaders took stock, those familiar with the thorny, long-running problem of race relations and police behavior said that for all the urgent national attention drawn by fresh images of violence, there could be no quick fixes.

"Simply tinkering with the infrastructure won't do it," said Barbara Glueck, chairwoman of the Citizens Police Advisory Commission, who has worked on interracial problems for years. "Firing people won't change the great disparity here," she said of the deep gulf between whites and blacks on crucial issues, including the racial profiling that blacks allege.

Change is not easy under city laws, Ms. Glueck said, noting that the police union has a powerful arbitration procedure under which 10 officers whom the city had sought to fire were recently reinstated. Beyond that, black leaders complain of a law requiring that the police chief come from the ranks and not from outside the city; a proposal to change that was rejected by voters.

But even more basic is the need for people on the two sides of these issues to "begin to talk to each other," emphasized Ms. Glueck, who volunteers in the Hands Across the Campus program of teaching young students to discuss and face racial problems.

Tom Diskin, a 79-year-old retired carpenter from the city's white West Side, said the solution was as simple as the lesson he learned in childhood.

"When the police tell you to stop, you stop," Mr. Diskin said outside Holy Cross-Immaculata Church's hilltop shrine, where worshipers quietly prayed on a Good Friday pilgrimage. "I mean, that guy had 14 warrants out," said Mr. Diskin. "But how would the cop know they were misdemeanors?"

"And now here's the media's open mike, the chance of a lifetime for those people," he said of the protesters.

But Lori Hawkins, a white resident attending the Way of the Cross gathering downtown, said it was sad to note that "this city counts sports teams and stadiums more important than social justice" and racial equality.

"There's been a lot of lip service to the problem in recent years," Ms. Hawkins said. "But why does it always take violence and property destruction for a problem to be taken seriously?" she asked as crowds moved freely in the workday sunshine that bathed the city before the curfew's return.

------

Police doing fine with powers they have

Montreal Gazette
Saturday 14 April 2001
BRIAN KAPPLER The Gazette
http://www.montrealgazette.com/news/pages/010414/5009045.html

The Romans couldn't answer it, and evidently Anne McLellan can't either: who will protect us from our protectors?

It was no doubt an old, old question when the Roman writer Juvenal framed it. How do you ensure that the police, who by the nature of their authority have frequent opportunity to misuse their powers, do in fact stay on the right side of the line?

In current terms, do Canadian police really need extra powers to use against gangs?

People are worried about "biker" gangs. Some police officials and politicians have been clamouring for more elbow room in fighting back.

So last week McLellan, the federal minister of justice, proposed some Criminal Code amendments. Among other things, the measures would give police the right to perform otherwise illegal acts if they do so as part of the fight against gangs.

Oddly, these measures came just as existing police powers led to major raids that seem to have dealt a serious blow to the power of the Hells Angels, Quebec's pre-eminent gang. So are these new powers really needed?

Too Many Abuses

The great majority of Canadian policemen use their power sensibly and prudently, even in difficult situations.

But still, police abuse of the law already takes many forms: too-zealously clubbing a drunk or a demonstrator; burning down a separatist's barn; planting evidence; getting another cop to ignore a relative's drunk driving; using firearms too quickly; letting each other park illegally; treating members of visible minorities unfairly; taking bribes; showing up wearing firearms at a union rally outside a cabinet minister's appearance; abandoning Indian "troublemakers" out in the country on a freezing Prairie night.

All these abuses have taken place in Canada, and they're just some of the ones we know about. Some are them are downright ominous.

A clannish and protective culture within unionized police forces makes the rooting out of abusive practices very difficult. And no politician dares challenge "blue power," for fear of being called "soft on crime."

The result: the public, and especially visible-minority people, are increasingly wary of police.

Still, public-opinion polls suggest that most people would hold their noses and go along with tougher anti-gang laws; between police and gangsters, we know whose side we're on.

McLellan's proposed amendments cover other ground, too. It will now be illegal just to participate in the activities of a criminal organization; until now you actually had to join such a group to break the law.

Who decides what's a criminal organization? The government does. (Another proposed amendment broadens the definition.) There's a special adjective for countries where you can't belong to organizations the government doesn't like; the word begins with T.

Existing Powers

Even if all these amendments become law, Canada will not be a totalitarian country. But governments naturally tend to grasp more and more control. Giving police added powers should be a last resort, and we're not that desperate. A "guilty" plea by the eight Blatnois bikers in Quebec City this week, along with the Hells raids, suggests that existing laws and police powers are indeed sufficient.

What's in short supply now, in some places, is political will to pursue criminal cases. Provincial prosecutors in Quebec - who prosecute Criminal Code cases - have been staging escalating protests to draw our attention to their plight: overworked, understaffed, underpaid and inefficiently organized.

The Quebec government's very best weapon against organized crime would be well-supported, well-protected, decently paid, well-motivated crown attorneys.

Federal crown attorneys, who prosecute certain other cases, appear to have the resources they need. And last week McLellan also announced an additional $200 million to make sure the fight against organized crime, in particular, gets enough manpower, technology and other resources. Quebec should do something similar.

But the widening of police powers should make every Canadian nervous. Crime is a problem in our society, but swollen police power threatens to be more damaging, in the long run, than any biker bomb.

- Brian Kappler can be reached by E-mail: bkappler@thegazette.southam.ca

-------- spying

Saying you're sorry helps countries, kids

USA Today
04/14/2001
http://www.usatoday.com/news/comment/columnists/neuharth/2001-04-13-neuharth.htm

So, the most powerful country in the world and the one that arguably is No. 2 have made up. It really shouldn't have taken the leaders of the U.S. and China 11 days to settle their tiff. Most kids probably would have fixed a similar fight in 11 minutes.

Whether it's countries or kids, bully types usually find it harder to settle fights or arguments. Both President Bush and China's President Jiang Zemin talked a bit bullyish when the air crash occurred.

There really wasn't a dime's worth of difference in some of these words our two countries haggled about. Webster's definitions:

• Sorry: "Feeling sorry, regret or penitence."

• Regret: "Sorrow caused by circumstances beyond one's control or power to repair."

• Apology: "A formal justification."

• Spying: "To observe or search for something.

• Surveillance: "Close watch kept over someone or something."

Arguing for days over these semantics or meanings was silly, or juvenile. Fortunately, our government finally settled for being "very sorry."

The best quote I saw during this impasse came from the star of the current hit movie Spy Kids. Alexa Vega, 12, told The Washington Post : "It's actually pretty scary. My teachers said that we were flying in their territory and then the Chinese tried to make our plane crash. It sounds like we were trespassing. These things happen when you act dumb."

Bush and Jiang might not agree with that assessment by Alexa. But kids usually cut through the crap quickly, kiss and make up after minor fights or disagreements. At our house, with six kids age 10 or younger, that happens a dozen or so times every day.

Saying you're sorry is the surest way to settle a fight. Country leaders could learn a lot from kids about that.

FEEDBACK
Other views on conflict resolution

"A big thanks is owed to the real pros at the State Department, who understood there are seven ways of saying sorry in Chinese. They opted for bao qian , an expression of apologetic regret that implies a willingness to make amends. It is not clear whether bao qian is a full apology; that ambiguity made it a useful phrase." - Sergio Sanchez, president, Institute for International Mediation and Conflict Resolution

"The U.S. and Chinese leaders were children once, too. My hunch is they would love to have fixed that fight in 11 minutes! Now that they know each other, maybe they can forge friendships of service to all." - Fred Rogers, host, Mister Rogers' Neighborhood

------

Bush back on China attack

Australian News Network
14apr01
By MICHAEL BEACH in New York
http://news.com.au/newspulse/pulseframe/0,4711,1893590^401,00.html

WITH the 24 detained US spy plane crew members back on home soil in Hawaii, President George W. Bush yesterday swapped diplomacy for tough talk.

"From the all the evidence we've seen, the United States aircraft was operating in international airspace in full accordance with all laws and regulations and did nothing to cause the accident," Mr Bush said.

"I will ask our representative to ask the tough questions about China's recent practice of challenging US aircraft operating legally in international airspace."

China's demand for the US to scale back spy flights was also ignored.

"Reconnaissance flights are part of a comprehensive national security strategy that helps maintain peace and stability," Mr Bush said.

Mr Bush told pilot Lieutenant Shane Osborn yesterday he had done America proud.

"Thank you for getting us here," Lt Osborne told the President as his crew listened to the conversation on a speakerphone.

"Your represent the best of America," Mr Bush replied. "As an old F-102 pilot, let me tell you, Shane, you did a heck of a job bringing that aircraft down.

"You made your country proud."

Earlier the crew was given a hero's welcome when they landed after an eight-hour flight from Guam to Honolulu.

Wearing their one-piece green flight suits, the 21 men and three women gave crisp salutes to the admirals, generals and politicians gathered at the plane's steps.

A brass band played God Bless America while hundreds of well-wishers waved American flags.

"We're definitely glad to be back," Lt Osborn told the crowd.

"We're all healthy and ready to go home."

Mr Bush has told military officials to ensure the crew returns to their families before the Easter break ends.

But first they will have to endure intensive debriefing sessions at the Pearl Harbor Navy Base.

To expedite the process, 12 teams will talk to the crew in groups inside a conference room. The sessions are expected to last up to 14 hours.

Officials want to know how much of the spy plane's sensitive equipment the crew was able to destroy and how much has fallen into Chinese hands.

They also want to hear what caused the plane to collide with the Chinese fighter. Each side has blamed the other for the crash.

Sometime over the weekend the crew will return to their permanent base on Whidbey Island, in Washington State, for the long-awaited reunion with their families.

In a rare breach of security, the gates of the military installation are likely to be thrown open so that the entire town can join in celebrating the crew's return.


-------- activists

please sign petition

From: <ecofree@nownuri.net>
Sat, 14 Apr 2001

Dear.

We, Korea Eco-Center, are young environmental movement group in Korea, mainly acting against nuclear-powered energy policy.

Now there are 16 nuclear power plants in operation and 4 additional plants have been under construction for more electricity demands in future. Furthermore, the government has a plan to build nuclear waste storage as one of the nuclear-powered energy policy project and made an offer for public subscription of a site to local autonomous entities. The closing day of the public subscription is 28 June.

Though Korea Electric Power Corporation(KEPCO) cannot guarantee the management of nuclear wastes, it is appeasing local residents with about 40 million US dollars to secure a site. We express clearly our dissatisfaction to authorities concerned and KEPCO and will give out a statement against nuclear policy in our land.

We have a signature-collecting campaign against supporting nuclear technologies.

Please sign pettion. write your name, organization and nation and send by e-mail(ecenter@nownuri.net or ecofree@nownuri.net) or fax: +82-2-2238-0377

In waiting.

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A protest Statement against nuclear policy of South Korea

We are concerned about energy policy focusing on nuclear power plant. Chernobyl and Three Mile Island accidents already got rid of a large number of lives and millions of people have suffered from them until now. Besides this, the economic losses in Soviet Union and USA are tremendous. But government authorities boast of its ranking first in the national average capacity factors ranged from a high of 94%, neglecting the past catastrophes, and push the construction of nuclear waste storage.

In fact Korea has not yet had large-scale nuclear accidents like those of Chernobyl and Three Mile Island. But there are so many troubles including leakage of heavy water, reactor shutdown, cracked inner wall, radiation exposure to workers, deformed livestock, etc. The nuclear waste storage is extremely more dangerous than nuclear power station. Researches into management of high level radioactive wastes have been made a lot of times but they have not led to any reliable safety supervision technique at present. In particular the reason why nuclear waste storage construction plan cause trouble so much is that that is under way with the intention of building new nuclear power station.

We are against nuclear energy use. 'Atom for peace' is a lie and cannot cheat all of us any more. We urge government to repeal nuclear energy policy before people lose their lives, health and happiness. And doing so, it is also necessary for government authorities to open the methods of disposing of nuclear wastes to the public

Korea Eco-Center
http://www.eco-center.org
Tel) +82-2-2254-1914 Fax) +82-2-2238-0377


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