------- Index of Articles

NUCLEAR
Old Tactics Get New Life Under Sharon
Split Opposition Falters in Ukraine
Report recommends expanded missile defense program
Remove the Hair Trigger
California crisis sparks new look at nuke power
Radon warnings being ignored by county residents
WIPP Score: 200 Down, 19,100 to Go

MILITARY
FRANCE: ARMS SCANDAL WIDENS
If China Attacks Taiwan
Ex-Worker Details Drug Policy at Nightclub
U.S. Missionaries on Plane Downed by Peru
Drug Use at Nightclubs
Big Brother, Again
U.S. plane monitored shooting incident
U.S. plane shot down in Peru
FRANCE: WORLD WAR I THREAT EASES
AFGHANISTAN: U.S. TO HELP REMOVE MINES
Dispute on Putting Tourist on Space Station
CONGO: PEACEKEEPERS MOVE IN

OTHER
Environmentalists Weed out Problems for New Hemp Car
Tiny Bits of Soot Tied to Illnesses
Federal Judge Halts Opening of Slag Plant
BRITAIN: FOOT-AND-MOUTH `UNDER CONTROL'
UTAH: ROAD LIMITS CHALLENGED
Democrats criticize Bush environmental policy
Brazil oil company fined for spills
On Native Land, a Fear of Free Trade
Bush Will Press Free-Trade Issue at Quebec Talks
Quebec Summit Opens Amid Protests
Jury Awards Damages to Relatives of Man Shot by an Officer
Police Museum Has Its Staff Overhauled
Caracas Journal: A Veteran Cop on a Tough New Beat
64 INDICTED IN CINCINNATI
PERU: WITNESS BACKS BERENSON

ACTIVISTS
For Protesters at Yale, a Who's Who
Demonstrators at the Summit Are Greeted With Tear Gas
Dog lovers protest Bucharest mayor's canine killings


-------- NUCLEAR

-------- israel

Old Tactics Get New Life Under Sharon

By Daniel Williams
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, April 21, 2001
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A42095-2001Apr20?language=printer

JERUSALEM, April 20 -- In a recent newspaper interview, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon went out of his way to assure readers that "there is no new Sharon." A few days later, he set out to prove it.

Reviving a signature tactic from the days of Israel's full occupation of the Gaza Strip, Sharon ordered army bulldozers to clear swaths of Palestinian-run territory, knocking down trees and buildings to create free-fire zones to deter Palestinian mortar launchers and riflemen. Immediate U.S. criticism cut short the incursion, regarded as an assault on the 1993 Oslo peace accords that transferred 20 percent of the West Bank and two-thirds of the Gaza Strip to Yasser Arafat's Palestinian Authority.

But Tuesday's 24-hour reoccupation was just one facet of a consistent escalation that has taken place since Sharon took office six weeks ago, designed to pressure the Palestinians into ending their almost seven-month-old revolt against Israeli forces in Gaza and the West Bank. Despite the expression of U.S. concern, the escalation policy will not be abandoned, aides to Sharon said, because the veteran Israeli warrior believes it is the best way to deal with the Palestinians and protect Israeli civilians from attack.

"I am tired of always hearing people say that Israel uses excessive force," Sharon told the French newspaper Le Figaro, referring to language used Tuesday by U.S. Secretary of State Colin L. Powell. The Israeli leader added that foreign criticisms only "encourage Arafat to start shooting at Israeli civilians again."

Since taking over from Ehud Barak on March 7, Sharon has redefined many of the reference points in Israel's conflict with the Palestinians. After eight years of peacemaking in which Arafat was a negotiating partner and the goal was ending a half-century of war, Israel has reverted to calling Arafat a terrorist. And Sharon's government -- dismissing final peace as impractical for now -- has set out to show the Palestinians with military force that they must submit to continued Israeli occupation in the Gaza Strip and West Bank.

Sharon, 73, has made no secret of his desire to fulfill a lifelong goal of keeping hold of the West Bank and Gaza, which were captured in 1967, and maintaining the settlements there that now dot the landscape and house nearly 200,000 Israelis. It is an objective that is also vintage Sharon, part and parcel of the ideology of the Likud Party he heads. Asked if he would ever abandon any settlements, he told the newspaper Haaretz, "No. Absolutely not."

Sharon has insisted he still wants to negotiate with Arafat. But he wants the discussion to center on "interim agreements" that essentially would keep the present map in place, with Israeli troops and settlements remaining in place, too. That is a far cry from the final peace accord, with a Palestinian state in most of Gaza and the West Bank, that was under discussion during Barak's tenure. Palestinian leaders say it is a recipe for no talks -- and no peace -- at all.

At the same time, Sharon and his aides have repeatedly blamed Arafat and his administration for tolerating, and even directing, attacks against Israeli troops and civilians. They have accused him time and again of running an administration that promotes "terror" against Israelis, a revival of vocabulary that skips back to the 1980s.

Action has matched the words. Sharon has increased the use of tanks, helicopters and heavy automatic rifle fire against Palestinian civilians and military targets. In recent weeks, Israel has begun to use surface-to-surface missiles to bombard Gaza. Shelling of Bethlehem on Wednesday, in retaliation for gunfire on roads used by settlers traveling from the West Bank into Jerusalem, lasted at least two hours. It was the most persistent attack on a Palestinian town since the latest round of Israeli-Palestinian conflicts erupted last September.

Target selection in Bethlehem also represented an escalation. Not only was a stone cutting factory severely damaged, but Israeli tanks bombarded a new conference center on the southern end of the city. Both facilities symbolize major Bethlehem industries: stone working and tourism.

The military strategy, according to government officials, does not merely reflect Sharon's career-long reputation for an iron fist. Rather, it combines classic elements of anti-guerrilla strategy with limited warfare, a miniature version of tactics dating back to the Vietnam War: sending messages through destruction and killing.

Through carrot-and-stick methods -- bombing and bulldozing houses on the one hand, and on the other, pledging to ease travel and let more workers get jobs in Israel -- Sharon hopes to drive a wedge between civilians and the Arafat administration, his aides say. In effect, Sharon wants to poison the sea in which Palestinian armed groups operate.

"The tactic is out of the past, but we think it can work here. We believe the majority of Palestinians are ready to end this violence," said Raanan Gissin, an adviser and spokesman for Sharon.

Attacks on Palestinian Authority security facilities and efforts to assassinate activists in the Fatah movement, the main part of Arafat's Palestine Liberation Organization, have a similar, more focused goal. They are designed to fix blame on Arafat's forces and to sap the morale of his armed agencies by showing that they are vulnerable.

"Arafat will understand he can't provide security to his own people," Gissin said.

In execution of that strategy, Palestinians in recent weeks have been punished by the destruction of dozens of homes on the edges of the Khan Younis and Rafah refugee camps in Gaza, the source of gunfire and mortar attacks on nearby Israeli troops and settlements. The tin-roofed, one-story Palestinian houses are not suitable as launching pads for mortar fire; most were in positions from where snipers had no line of fire onto Israeli military positions or settlements. But hundreds of Palestinians were left homeless, and the message was sent.

Shells and missile fire into the Gaza Strip were also aimed at a police station, offices of the Preventive Security forces and military posts near the territory's frontiers with Israel. "If the Palestinians want to complain, they should complain to Arafat," remarked an Israeli military official.

Sharon has described his tactics as a means of "unbalancing" the Palestinians "so that they will be busy protecting themselves."

The other side of the policy, easing conditions on civilians, came in the form of permission for about 3,000 workers to cross from Gaza into Israel to return to jobs. Blockades along roads in the West Bank and Gaza were also lifted.

Sharon came under intense criticism in the Israeli press for invading Gaza, and for then pulling back, evidently under U.S. pressure. Commentators noted that mortar attacks on Israeli farms near the Gaza border and on military posts in the Gaza Strip did not stop, suggesting the decision managed only to provoke U.S. criticism.

"Now Sharon knows where the limits of Israel's might are . . . they pass through the White House lawn," wrote the Yedioth Aharonoth newspaper.

Labor Party members in the governing coalition seized on the controversy to offer their own plan for ending the confrontations. Transportation Minister Ephraim Sneh proposed opening talks with the Palestinians on "concrete measures" to end violence and offering a freeze on settlement construction and means to revive the prostrate Palestinian economy. Talks on a final settlement would begin after "a few months of quiet," he said.

"Military action is not enough. The events of this week and the . . . hasty withdrawal from the Gaza Strip showed us the limits of force and the thin tissue of international support for Israel," he said.

Nonetheless, Sharon has decided to continue attacks into Palestinian-ruled territories, albeit with smaller numbers of troops and without threats to reoccupy Palestinian land for an extended period. The day after the Gaza incursion, tanks and bulldozers briefly crossed into southern Gaza to knock down a police post and uproot trees.

The controversial assassination policy begun under Barak remains. Israeli undercover units will continue to enter Palestinian territory to pursue leaders of armed groups, government officials said.

"Israel will do what's necessary to protect its towns and cities," said Dore Gold, an adviser to Sharon. "What is important is the principle: This government will not negotiate under fire."

Despite the harsh tone from the Bush administration, Sharon is satisfied that the United States puts primary blame on the Palestinians and has "not confused the arsonist with the fireman," Gold said.

One departure from the Sharon of old is sensitivity to political and international opinion, Israeli observers said. As head of a coalition government, he needs to balance an urge to punish the Palestinians with the preference of such partners as Sneh to negotiate. If the government falls, Sharon will face a challenge in his own party from former prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu, who is waiting to run in the next elections.

"Twenty years ago, Sharon would have dismissed the American complaints and stayed in Gaza," said Gerald Steinberg, a political analyst at Bar-Ilan University. "He now understands the problem of image. He doesn't want to be seen as the Sharon of Lebanon," Steinberg continued, referring to the 1982 invasion led by Sharon, who was defense minister at the time. "The Gaza business revived the image of invasion, occupation and aggressiveness. He doesn't want to project that image."

-------- ukraine

Split Opposition Falters in Ukraine
Divisions Help Kuchma Retain Power

By Sharon LaFraniere
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, April 21, 2001
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A42408-2001Apr20?language=printer

KIEV, Ukraine -- Just for the moment, it seemed the loose coalition of politicians and students aligned against Leonid Kuchma, Ukraine's scandal-tarred president, had the upper hand.

Yulia Tymoshenko, the former energy minister and one of the opposition's leaders, had been thrown into a damp, dark prison cell on grounds of alleged corruption. Her plight there through the end of February and early March -- from humiliating body searches to cockroach-infested soup -- outraged some Western officials and galvanized the opposition in its argument that the Kuchma government brutally punishes dissent.

Suddenly the opposition had a unifying symbol -- and a beautiful, charismatic one at that. Then, just as suddenly, that unity vaporized.

It usually does. Kuchma seems securely in power today, as other Soviet holdovers have been throughout Ukraine's 10 years of independence, for a simple reason: Liberal democrats here fight more among themselves than against their foes.

In this case, Tymoshenko was freed three weeks ago and promptly declared she would keep fighting until she came into power. Her announcement shattered an agreement among anti-Kuchma leaders to shelve their own political ambitions until the president had been toppled following publication of tapes that appeared to implicate him in the disappearance of a crusading journalist.

Tymoshenko and other opposition leaders then publicly disagreed over whether to try to enter into talks with Kuchma or organize a popular referendum against him.

The four-month effort to unseat Kuchma is littered with so many such breakdowns that political analysts now joke that the president deliberately freed Tymoshenko so she could sow dissent in her own ranks.

"They just can't agree on who is in charge of what," said Viktor Pinchuk, Kuchma's son-in-law and a parliamentary deputy.

In another country, Kuchma might be on his way out of office by now. Tymoshenko and other political leaders joined forces after the November release of taped conversations that suggest Kuchma ordered the kidnapping of a journalist now believed to be dead. In other taped discussions, a man who sounds like Kuchma orders a crackdown on any local officials who don't deliver enough votes for his reelection.

The scandal gave his opponents more impetus to unite than any event since Kuchma won reelection two years ago in a campaign his foes say was scarred by dirty tricks and a virtual state takeover of the media.

But the events of the past four months have revealed as much about the opposition's flaws as Kuchma's. A former missile factory manager, Kuchma is widely seen as weak, petty, vindictive and out of his depth as the leader of 49 million people in a country poised between Europe and Russia. But no one else, as yet, is stronger.

Unless the opposition is unexpectedly shored up, even its own leaders privately predict that Kuchma will serve out the remaining three years of his second term.

"He is weathering the storm a lot more successfully than one could have anticipated when this whole issue arose," said Markian Bilynskyj, director of the U.S.-Ukrainian Foundation in Kiev.

Ironically, the only political leader who seems to be in real danger is the one Ukrainian's liberal democrats most want to keep in place: the reform-minded prime minister, Viktor Yushchenko. Some political analysts say the scandal rendered Kuchma too weak to protect Yushchenko from the business tycoons who make up one-quarter of parliament and are now uniting with the communists to oust him. Other say Kuchma wanted to replace Yushchenko anyway.

The opposition's travails highlight the half-finished character of Ukraine's political culture. The biggest of Russia's former republics, Ukraine never developed the widespread, grass-roots movement for independence that distinguished its eastern neighbor, Poland.

When independence was declared -- or fell into the country's lap, as some historians would say, when the Soviet power structure imploded -- the leaders of the independence movement were united only in their antipathy to communism. They failed to install their own leader to run the country, and the former Communist Party boss who ran Ukraine in Soviet times continued to rule the country until economic woes became overwhelming. Kuchma was elected in 1994 with key backing from the communists and ethnic Russians.

Today's opposition is hobbled by some of the same problems that beset the independence movement a decade ago: Its leaders agree on the need to replace the president, but after that their goals diverge. The liberal-to-center coalition includes socialists, free-market democrats, nationalists, students and even some members of the young communist movement.

In the 450-member parliament, opposition leaders say they can count on only about 85 votes, compared to roughly 120 to 130 pro-Kuchma deputies and 112 communists.

Opposition leaders are still recovering from their surprise that Kuchma refused to step down when the tapes were made public. They suffered another blow when an international press organization that analyzed the recordings said it could not conclusively state it was Kuchma's voice.

The opposition has no leader, because selecting one would only drive off some of its supporters.

Tymoshenko is the most dynamic among them, and won a reputation as a reformer as Kuchma's energy minister. But she is tainted by her ties to former prime minister Pavlo Lazarenko, who was convicted in Geneva last year of money-laundering.

The Swiss alleged that one of Tymoshenko's companies paid Lazarenko $72 million as prime minister, presumably for favors to her business. Kuchma fired her from the government in January, citing suspicion of criminal conduct, and she now faces criminal charges in Ukraine. She dismisses them as politically inspired.

Recent street protests have drawn only a few thousand demonstrators, fewer than in December. And the head of at least one of the liberal-minded opposition parties opted out so as not to rub shoulders with socialists. The opposition's next step is uncertain. One proposal, a public referendum supported by Tymoshenko, would amount to no more than a survey, with no legal force, according to several opposition leaders.

"The logical way for them to go would be to form a political bloc that would take its message to the people in next year's parliamentary elections, with the idea of building up enough support to put their weight behind a presidential candidate in2004," said Bilynskyj, of the U.S.-Ukrainian foundation.

"But that will never happen for the simple reason that they are too diverse. An organization so diverse will never be a strong political force."

Yuri Lutsenko, the 36-year-old head of a political group called Ukraine Without Kuchma, has a ready example of the opposition's span. Lutsenko's father was a regional party boss under the Soviets.

Taras Chornovil, a 37-year-old opposition legislator, is the son of a famous activist in the independence movement who was imprisoned under the Soviet regime.

"Chornovil still has to explain to his voters in western Ukraine why he stands in protests next to me," Lutsenko said.

The political equation could dramatically change if Yushchenko jumps to the opposition. He regularly tops the polls as Ukraine's most trusted politician, and is liked in the West. Many analysts predict parliament will drive Yushchenko out in a vote on Tuesday. Asked this week if he would react by trying to rally anti-Kuchma forces, Yushchenko said cryptically, "I can strike a deal with the devil if it concerns Ukraine's choice."

Kuchma's allies say a new prime minister will help the president regain the shaky majority in parliament that collapsed when the scandal broke. But their eagerness to replace Yushchenko is tempered by concerns that the West will interpret the loss of Yushchenko -- wrongly, they say -- as a setback for economic reform.

It will also reinforce Ukraine's image as prone to political crisis: Yushchenko is the eighth prime minister in 10 years, the fifth under Kuchma.

Some Kuchma supporters suggest Yushchenko should be kept on if only to keep him away from the opposition. "Today the opposition doesn't have the people's confidence, the people's trust," said Pinchuk, Kuchma's son-in-law. "But if Yushchenko joins the opposition, then I think it will be bad for him, bad for Ukraine."

He doesn't have to add the obvious: bad for Kuchma.

-------- missile defense

Report recommends expanded missile defense program

CNN
April 21, 2001
http://www.cnn.com/2001/US/04/21/arms.usa.missiles.reut/index.html

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -- A Pentagon panel has issued a report recommending that the Bush administration expand a planned U.S. missile defense program to include sea- and space-based weapons, a defense official said Saturday.

http://www.cnn.com/WORLD/maps/usa.washington.jpg

The missile defense recommendation was made by a panel headed by retired Air Force Gen. James McCarthy on March 30 as part of a broad review by a number of groups of U.S. defense programs, Rear Adm. Craig Quigley, a Pentagon spokesman, told Reuters.

Quigley confirmed a Los Angeles Times report that the interim study stressed to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld the need to rapidly develop an ability to destroy attacking long-range missiles at any stage of flight -- from lift-off, through mid-course to final approach to target.

Critics have warned that such an ambitious plan could cost hundreds of billions of dollars, far beyond the estimated $60 billion for a more modest ongoing program to develop and deploy ground-based "hit-to-kill" projectiles to destroy attacking warheads in mid-flight.

That mid-course anti-missile program, contemplated by the former Clinton administration to protect against limited attack by rogue states, has suffered failures in two of its last three tests. Sea and space-based weapons, ranging from projectiles to lasers, are even further from final deployment.

Despite strong opposition from Russia and China, the Bush administration has made missile defense a priority and has promised to work with worried allies to help defend them from missile attack.

The Times reported that the committee was urging the new administration to continue funding the Clinton team's limited, ground-based system, while supplementing it with anti-missile systems based on warships, on aircraft and in space.

Quigley stressed that the recommendation by the committee -- part of a study being done by the private Institute for Security Analysis -- was not final and that another expert panel was making an even more detailed study of missile defense for Rumsfeld.

"This is strictly an interim report and is part of an overall study by a number of groups into different aspects of national security transformation," Quigley told Reuters.

"There is a separate missile defense study being conducted by the secretary that is looking into this in depth," he said.

The Times reported that the advisory panel said that an aggressive missile defense program would carry the risk of technical failure and unforeseen costs, but that the administration should "accept program risk to facilitate early development."

It urged the administration to develop systems that can destroy enemy missiles at three stages of flight.

The panel urged the Pentagon to begin development of a "robust sea-based boost-phase system", the Times said.

The report also said the Pentagon should assess systems built to strike warheads just before they hit the earth and urged continued work in the Airborne Laser Program.

The Airborne Laser program is seeking to develop a weapon small enough to be carried in an airplane and capable of burning up enemy missiles early in flight.

Russia, meanwhile, has urged Washington's European allies to reject the U.S. program to hit warheads in space during mid-flight and to work with Moscow to develop a "boost phase" defense, destroying missiles as they lift off their launch pads.

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

Remove the Hair Trigger

By John O. Pastore and Peter Zheutlin
Saturday, April 21, 2001
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A44210-2001Apr20?language=printer

Avoiding nuclear war is the most solemn, somber and awesome of all presidential responsibilities. Yet, throughout the long presidential campaign of 2000, nuclear weapons were barely a blip on the political radar screen.

Nevertheless the question facing President Bush and his new administration is real and pressing: What to do about the approximately 4,500 to 5,000 nuclear weapons in the Russian and American arsenals that remain -- 10 years after the Cold War -- on hair-trigger alert.

As incomprehensible as it may seem, we still live on the brink of nuclear war, with thousands of warheads ready to be fired in a matter of minutes. Nuclear war by accident or miscalculation remains a serious and very real threat. How could it happen?

According to "Dateline NBC," in September 1983, just weeks after the Soviet Union shot down Korean Airlines Flight 007, and with Soviet-American relations at a low ebb, Col. Stanislov Petrov was on duty outside Moscow monitoring nine Soviet satellites that were, in turn, monitoring U.S. nuclear missile bases. Shortly after midnight Col. Petrov's worst nightmare came true. Sirens sounded and his computer screen signaled the launch of a single U.S. missile (possibly carrying 10 nuclear warheads) just 30 seconds into its 25-minute flight to Moscow.

Petrov had to make an immediate assessment and relay it up the chain of command. If a full-scale U.S. attack was underway, the decision to retaliate would have to be made within minutes. All Petrov's systems appeared to be working properly. Remarkably, he reported to his superior that the alarm was false. Petrov reasoned that a U.S. attack would not begin with the firing of a single missile. It made no sense.

And then, within seconds, his computer detected the launch of four additional missiles causing alarms to sound at the Soviet Union's supreme command headquarters. The Soviets now had five minutes to "use them or lose them" -- that is, respond with a nuclear attack of their own or risk unilateral annihilation. But Petrov held firm -- he says he just didn't believe an attack was underway -- and assured those up the command that he was seeing a false alarm.

Had the Soviets launched under the pressure, U.S. retaliation would have been swift. Tens of millions would have been killed on both sides.

What prompted the false alarm? The satellite mistook sunlight reflecting off a cloud for the hot plume of a missile launch -- a software glitch. Petrov was not supposed to be on duty that night. Would another Soviet colonel have made the same assessment Petrov did?

The 1983 incident is not the only near catastrophe in recent times. In 1995 Russian radar mistook a Norwegian research rocket for an incoming U.S. ballistic missile speeding toward Moscow. President Yeltsin's nuclear "football" was activated. With only minutes to decide whether to launch a counterattack, it was determined that a U.S. attack was not imminent.

Today the combat-ready status of the Russian and U.S. nuclear arsenals keeps us poised on the brink. It need not be this way.

In a speech last May, then-candidate George W. Bush called for removing "as many [nuclear] weapons as possible from high-alert status." It is imperative that he work immediately with Russian President Vladimir Putin to do so.

De-alerting is made all the more urgent in light of the degradation of Russia's nuclear command and control systems over the past decade of economic and political turmoil there. De-alerting nuclear weapons increases the margin of safety by increasing the time that military and political leaders have to assess threats from minutes to days, or even weeks. It would, therefore, dramatically reduce the risks of accidental or inadvertent nuclear war.

De-alerting can be accomplished in several ways, some more readily verified than others. Warheads can be separated from their delivery vehicles (for example, removed from the missiles that carry them) and stored in secure areas. This is perhaps the most easily verified method and provides the greatest lead time before launch. Alternatively, switches used to fire missile motors can be pinned open, missile guidance systems or the pneumatic mechanisms that open missile silo covers can be removed, and/or explosion neutralizing wires can be inserted into the plutonium pits in warheads.

However it is accomplished, George W. Bush should act on his campaign promise to de-alert nuclear weapons quickly, because the next time a Russian or American president, or colonel, has to make the most fateful of all decisions, we may not be so lucky.

John O. Pastore is secretary and Peter Zheutlin associate program director of International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War.

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

California crisis sparks new look at nuke power

Environmental News Network
Saturday, April 21, 2001
http://www.enn.com/news/wire-stories/2001/04/04212001/reu_nuke_43160.asp

The unthinkable is happening: California's power crisis is helping spark renewed interest in the nearly taboo subject of nuclear power, even in this environmentally conscious state.

"Investors are increasingly looking at nuclear as an attractive asset for utilities to own rather than a liability like before," James Asselstine, a managing director with Lehman Brothers, told Reuters at a recent nuclear conference here.

Utilities are lining up to extend the lives of their nuclear units, and some are assessing building new reactors.

"I think you could see an application to build a new nuclear power plant in the United States within the next five years," said Asseltine, who was invited to speak at a conference sponsored by the Washington D.C.-based industry group Nuclear Energy Institute.

The watchdog Nuclear Regulatory Commission has not received a new plant application since the 1979 Three Mile Island nuclear accident put a freeze on the industry.

In the past two decades, construction was halted on more than 40 nuclear units that had received NRC permission to build, and others were shut down after starting operations due to cost overruns and safety concerns, a NRC spokeswoman said.

The last construction permit issued by the NRC - in 1973 - was for the government-owned Tennessee Valley Authority's 1,170-megawatt Watts Bar facility in Spring City, Tennessee, which began operating in 1996.

But the nuclear frost is now starting to thaw.

Nuclear experts expect most, if not all, of the nation's 103 nuclear units, which supply about 20 percent of U.S. energy needs, to extend their 40-year operating licenses by 20 years.

So far, the NRC says it has approved 20-year extensions for five nuclear units, has received applications to extend five more, and expects applications from about 33 additional ones.

Two top Silicon Valley leaders have even said quietly that California should take another look at nuclear power after a 1996 flawed deregulation law and supply crunch sent wholesale power prices skyrocketing, triggered rolling blackouts, and prompted the state's top utility to file for bankruptcy.

Scott McNealy, co-founder and chairman of Palo Alto-based high-tech giant Sun Microsystems, lamented over the country's steep energy costs and California's almost daily power alerts declaring precariously low supplies.

"It's like a Third World nation out there in the Bay area," said McNealy, referring to the alerts in a speech to the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., earlier this year.

"I'm going to do the politically incorrect thing and tell you the answer's going to be nuclear power."

Santa Clara-based Intel Corp. chief executive Craig Barret, head of the world's No. 1 computer chip maker, has also said nuclear power is one of the answers to the states's energy crisis, although it's not politically correct.

California has only two nuclear plants, which account for nearly 15 percent of its energy needs. Although residents may have developed a greater appreciation for them after the power crisis, the Golden State will be a hard nut to crack.

"California is probably the worst place to build anything, not just a nuclear power plant," said Marvin Fertel, NEI senior vice president of business operations. And memories remain.

California's two-unit, 2,200-megawatt Diablo Canyon nuclear plant was redesigned twice: once after an earthquake fault was discovered near the site, and later when engineers read the blueprints backwards. The final bill for the plant exceeded projections by several billion dollars.

Then in 1989, residents of Sacramento County in California voted to close down a nuclear plant. The Rancho Seco plant was the first - and only - operating nuclear power station in the United States to be shut down as the result of a local referendum.

Experts say the first new nuclear plants will probably be built on existing sites in the Southeast or Midwest where nuclear opposition is less strong than places like California.

Advocates have always touted nuclear power as a source of abundant and relatively cheap fuel that is also "clean" because it does not produce any greenhouse gas emissions.

Now several recent changes are helping their cause.

Prices of other fuels are rising, prompting calls for diversifying fuel sources, and the industry has also improved its safety record and performance and cut production costs.

And a new, streamlined licensing process for future nuclear units ensures that all major design, safety, siting and other regulatory issues are resolved as early as possible - before construction begins and billions of dollars are spent.

This is possible because the new NRC process uses standardized plant designs that are pre-approved, which means future nuclear plants will be almost fully designed when they are ordered, which should cut down the lead time between proposing and constructing a nuclear reactor.

"There is an air of optimism in the industry," Wes Taylor, president of generation at TXU Corp., a leading energy services company based in Texas, told the NEI conference.

But he added: "The question of when a new power plant may be ordered is less easy to predict. More reforms are need before the barriers are entirely removed."

No new nuclear plants have been proposed since the reformed NRC licensing process was introduced in 1992, which means the new system still needs to be tested, nuclear experts say.

A solution to the U.S. nuclear waste storage problem still needs to be found and capital costs remain high, they add.

And of course, public confidence remains key.

"When it comes to nuclear power, not much has really changed. The problems of nuclear waste disposal, reactor safety and siting remain," said Carl Zichella, the California's regional staff director of the Sierra Club, vowing to fight "hammer and tongs" against any new nuclear plants.

"Nuclear is a technology that has had its day."

-------- wisconsin

Radon warnings being ignored by county residents
Health officials push tests for cancer-causing gas

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
Last Updated: April 21, 2001
By DON BEHM of the Journal Sentinel staff
http://www.jsonline.com/news/ozwash/apr01/radon22042101a.asp

An increasing number of county health departments say they are not reaching enough of the public with the message that they should be testing their homes for radon.

After more than 11 years of distributing information about the risk of lung cancer posed by exposure to radon where people live, only 15% to 20% of homes in Wisconsin have been tested for the odorless gas.

But nearly one-tenth of tested homes - about 100,000 - have main-floor radon levels that exceed federal exposure guidelines, according to researchers at the state Division of Public Health.

In recent years, excessive levels were found in more than 20% of homes tested in large areas of Waukesha, Washington, Racine, Walworth and Dodge counties.

A summary of tests also shows high levels in 10% to 20% of homes tested in portions of Milwaukee and Kenosha counties.

High levels also were found in 1% to 10% of tests in the southern two-thirds of Ozaukee County.

Radon is emitted in the natural decay of radioactive materials in rock and soil.

The gas can flow into homes through cracks or other openings in foundations.

Excessive radon levels are found in homes in each county of the state, but the prevalence varies widely, even in areas with similar bedrock and soil, said Conrad Weiffenbach, a nuclear engineer with the state Division of Public Health in Madison.

Consequently, state and local health officials recommend universal testing as the only way to check the presence of radon in a home.

Ozaukee County's Public Health Department has been encouraging people to test their homes, said Glenda Madlom, the department Director. The department is selling a testing device to county residents for $3.

In Ozaukee, the southern two-thirds of the county has soil conditions more likely to produce high radon levels compared with the northern part of the county.

But even if you're neighbor tested for radon and came back with a negative result, it's still a good idea to test.

"The level of radon can vary from house to house on the same street," said Margaret Anderson, an environmental health specialist with the Washington County Health Department.

"Everybody should test because there is no way to predict what the levels of radon would be in a home."

After making her pitch over the years at county fairs, public health fairs and other community events in Ozaukee and Washington counties, Anderson decided last month to spend a few hundred dollars of a federal radon education grant on advertisements in four small circulation newspapers in the two counties. It was a first for her.

"I have had a hard time reaching people with this radon message," Anderson said.

"So, I thought I'd put in this ad with a coupon because coupons catch people's eyes," she said.

It did just that. More than 50 families responded within 10 days of the first notice.

Even a casual reader could not miss the coupon-style ad's bold headline: "Radon is the second leading cause of lung cancer in the United States."

Then Anderson offered readers a deal - half-price off the regular $6 cost of a radon test kit if they brought in or mailed the coupon to her office.

"We need to get more of these kits out to people," she said.

The health risks

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the surgeon general have recommended taking steps to reduce radon accumulation in a home if there are 4 or more picocuries of the gas per liter of air in the lowest living area, usually the first floor of a home.

A picocurie is a measure of radioactivity - the pace at which radioactive elements, such as uranium and radium, disintegrate.

The odds of someone developing lung cancer after breathing household air containing that much radon for several decades is about 0.2%, or 2 in 1,000, for people who never smoke, according to the EPA.

The National Academy of Sciences reviewed medical studies and determined that the odds might be even greater, up to 0.7%, or 7 in 1,000, for people who spend 75% of their time in the home.

An academy study released in 1999 estimated that 15,000 U.S. residents die each year from lung cancer due to radon exposure. About 2,000 to 3,000 of them never smoked.

Radon harms only the lungs and not other tissues. Radon atoms in the air spontaneously decay to other radioactive elements that attach to dust. If inhaled into the lung, those elements continue to decay by emitting a type of radiation capable of damaging cells in the lung.

Though tobacco smoke is the predominant cause of lung cancer, radon control is a way for former smokers and never-smokers to reduce their lung cancer risks, according to Conrad Weiffenbach, a nuclear engineer with the state Division of Public Health in Madison.

How to test

Only a test reveals how much radon is present in living areas, Weiffenbach said.

Special test kits generally cost about $10 at local hardware stores, home improvement centers or county health departments.

"It is important to do the tests when the windows are closed," said Dan Ziegler, an environmental health specialist in Ozaukee County's Department of Public Health. "Also, people should do the test in the part of the house where they spend most of their time."

A homeowner simply places the detector in a recommended location, waits four to seven days, then seals the detector in a package provided with the kit and mails it to a laboratory for analysis.

This initial test should be done when windows are closed.

If this short-term test finds less than 4 picocuries of radon per liter of air, then no other steps are necessary.

If the test results are between 4 and 10 picocuries, then a longer test of between 90 days and a full year is recommended with a different type of detector, according to Tellier. Cost of this test kit is about $15.

"Most homes where a short-term test finds elevated levels, they are slightly elevated, so the homeowner would benefit from the long-term test," Tellier said.

"And the annual test likely would show that radon is not a problem."

"Then you get a definite answer, an average of all seasons and all kinds of weather," he said. "And if you're not involved in the sale of a home, then you have time to do a second, long-term test."

Short-term results of more than 10 picocuries should be checked with a second, short-term test.

If the results are similar, then corrective steps should be taken as soon as possible, Tellier said.

"Because the levels are so high, a homeowner shouldn't test for a full year," he said.

"If the second short-term test verifies the result, you should be fixing the home to reduce exposure."

Journal Sentinel reporter Jeff Cole contributed to this report.

-------- us nuc waste

WIPP Score: 200 Down, 19,100 to Go

Albuquerque Journal
Saturday, April 21, 2001
The Associated Press
http://www.abqjournal.com/news/312616news04-21-01.htm

CARLSBAD - The federal government's nuclear waste repository east of here has received its 200th shipment of radioactive waste.

The Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, which accepted its first shipment in March 1999, was designed to permanently store plutonium-contaminated waste more than 2,100 feet underground in ancient salt beds.

The waste - such things as contaminated clothing, tools, debris and residue - comes from the nation's defense complex.

The 200th shipment arrived Wednesday from the Energy Department's Rocky Flats Environmental Technology Site in Colorado. Coincidentally, the 100th shipment that arrived last October also came from Rocky Flats.

"This marks another major milestone for WIPP as we work toward.

cleanup of transuranic waste at DOE sites across the country," said Ines Triay, manager of DOE's Carlsbad office, which runs the WIPP program.

Since beginning disposal operations, WIPP has received shipments from Rocky Flats, the Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory, Los Alamos National Laboratory in northern New Mexico and the Hanford site in Washington state.

During the next 35 years, WIPP officials expect to transport about 19,300 loads of radioactive waste from more than 20 locations nationwide.

WIPP has two sets of rooms to bury nuclear waste in the underground salt beds. Each disposal room is 300 feet long, 33 feet wide and 13 feet high and each will hold the equivalent of 12,000 55-gallon drums of waste.

-------- MILITARY

-------- arms sales

FRANCE: ARMS SCANDAL WIDENS

New York Times
April 21, 2001
World Briefing
Suzanne Daley
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/21/world/21BRIE.html

A scandal involving the illegal sales of arms to Angola, which led to the arrest of the son of former President Francois Mitterrand, has roped in former Interior Minister Charles Pasqua. Magistrates have begun an inquiry into Mr. Pasqua and his right- wing Rally for France party on allegations of illegal financing linked to arms traffic in the early 1990's. Mr. Pasqua has denied the accusations. (NYT)

---

If China Attacks Taiwan

New York Times
April 21, 2001
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/21/opinion/L21TAIW.html

To the Editor:
Re "Weapons for Taiwan" (editorial, April 19):

Regardless of the outcome of the debate over the extent of future arms sales to Taiwan and whether or not to include Aegis-equipped destroyers, the United States should consider what action it will take if China does in fact attack Taiwan.

Is our country prepared to go to war with China over such an occurrence, or is our policy only to provide sufficient arms to allow Taiwan to succeed in fighting off the Chinese by itself? The answer to that question should determine the type and quantity of weapons to be sold to Taiwan.

BURTON KREINDEL Newton, Mass., April 19, 2001

-------- drug war

Ex-Worker Details Drug Policy at Nightclub

New York Times
April 21, 2001
By JENNIFER STEINHAUER
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/21/nyregion/21CLUB.html

A former security guard at a Manhattan nightclub that the city has tried to close said in an affidavit that during his three years of work there at least 100 unconscious or nearly unconscious patrons were pulled into a back room by club workers and left there without medical help.

The club, Twilo, at 530 West 27th Street, in Chelsea, is one of several Manhattan nightclubs that have contracted with private companies to have ambulances wait outside their doors, ready to take patrons who have drug overdoses to hospital emergency rooms. The ambulances allow the clubs to bypass the 911 system and escape the attention of the police, city officials said.

The Manhattan district attorney's office is investigating the practice, which came to its attention last fall when emergency room nurses at St. Vincents Manhattan noted that a large number of young people suffering from acute drug overdoses were being brought in by ambulances run by MetroCare Ambulance, a private company, on weekend nights.

For two years Twilo has been a target of the city, which has alleged that the nightclub is a veritable supermarket for illegal drugs like Ecstasy and GHB, or gamma hydroxybutyrate. Last summer, a 21-year-old medical student, James Wiest, collapsed on the dance floor at Twilo and later died at St. Vincents.

The former security guard, Joseph Murray, was arrested and charged with reckless endangerment after three revelers at Twilo overdosed and were taken to hospitals in October. In an affidavit prepared by the city in connection with its lawsuit to close the club down, he gave details of that incident, in which he said that Twilo's managers asked him to assist in taking a semiconscious patron to a "safe area." He also said he had seen the same action taken in July with another patron who he later learned was Mr. Wiest.

"During the three years that I have worked on security inside Twilo, I have seen at least 100 instances in which unconscious or semiconscious patrons have been placed in the safe area by security and left there," his affidavit reads. Mr. Murray added that he was told by Twilo managers that "security is not permitted to call E.M.S. or 911 for any patron."

David Maloof, a lawyer representing Mr. Wiest's mother, said he was investigating whether his client's son was left in a back room without medical attention.

Club officials dismissed Mr. Murray's assertions.

"We feel horrible that he is making these allegations," said Peter R. Sullivan, a lawyer for Twilo. "The truth is that Twilo is far and away the safest venue of its kind."

Deputy Fire Commissioner Francis X. Gribbon said that during the incident on Oct. 8, Emergency Medical Service workers responded to a 911 call from the club. The workers were greeted by security guards who said there was "no situation at the club, no patients here," according to an E.M.S. report from that night.

According to the E.M.S. workers' report, as they were leaving, they received a report that patients were still inside the club. E.M.S. workers found a young man and a young woman in a room near the bar. Another patron told the emergency workers that someone had been "moving bodies around the club, trying to hide them," the report says.

Deputy Mayor Rudy Washington said yesterday that the city was still trying to close Twilo. "Until a court gives us an order to close them, there is not much we can do," he said. "We pray that no one else dies."

---

U.S. Missionaries on Plane Downed by Peru

New York Times
April 21, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/21/world/21PERU.html

LIMA, Peru, April 20 (AP) - A Peruvian Air Force jet shot down a plane carrying American missionaries in Peru's Amazon jungle region today, the American embassy said. The missionary group said a woman and her infant daughter were killed.

"The Peruvian pilot mistook it for an airplane transporting contraband drugs," an American Embassy spokesman, Benjamin Ziff, said.

The Rev. E.C. Haskell, a spokesman for the Association of Baptists for World Evangelism, said the group's plane was attacked as it flew from the Peruvian border to the city of Iquitos.

An American missionary, Roni Bowers, and her 6-month-old daughter, Charity, were both killed and a veteran missionary pilot, Kevin Donaldson, was wounded, he said. Mr. Donaldson was able to make an emergency landing in the Amazon River, Mr. Haskell added.

Also on board and unhurt were Mrs. Bowers' husband, Jim Bowers, and their son Cory, according to Mr. Haskell, speaking from the group's office in Harrisburg, Pa. The hometowns of the missionaries weren't immediately available.

There was no immediate comment from Peru's military.

Mario Justo, an official at the Iquitos airport, said that a single-engine plane belonging to the missionary group crashed 11:20 a.m. in the Amazon. Iquitos is 625 miles northeast of Lima.

---

Drug Use at Nightclubs

New York Times
April 21, 2001
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/21/opinion/L21DRUG.html

To the Editor:
Re "Nightclubs Hire Ambulances for Overdoses, Skipping 911" (April 20):

Our society insists on blaming nightclub owners and party promoters for the drugs that are consumed by their patrons. Why, then, are we shocked when they try to avoid the legal ramifications and bad publicity that reporting overdoses to the authorities might bring?

If our laws reflected a rational drug policy - one based on harm reduction, and not on the absurd premise that all drug use can be eradicated through criminalization - then we would see nightclubs working in tandem with the police, educators and health care workers to minimize the risks of drug use.

JOSHUA FISCHER Jersey City, April 20, 2001

---

Big Brother, Again

New York Times
April 21, 2001
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/21/opinion/L21AMTR.html

To the Editor:

I was surprised to read an April 19 letter writer say he had no objection to Amtrak's providing the Drug Enforcement Administration with information about its passengers because he had "nothing to hide." Presumably, that letter writer would also not object to being stopped and searched by a police officer on the street or to a warrantless search of his house. Does he also suspect that those who would object have something to hide?

PETER PERSOFF Piedmont, Calif., April 19, 2001

---

U.S. plane monitored shooting incident

USA Today
04/21/2001
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2001-04-21-peru-monitor.htm

IQUITOS, Peru (AP) - A U.S. surveillance plane monitored the Peruvian air force's downing of a seaplane carrying American missionaries mistaken for drug smugglers, a U.S. Embassy official said Saturday. The U.S. Embassy in Lima announced that drug interdiction flights had been suspended, ''pending a thorough investigation and review by Peruvian and U.S. officials of how this tragic incident took place.'' Also Saturday, Jim Bowers, whose wife and 7-month-old daughter were killed when the plane was shot down, gave his account of the hellish flight to a Peruvian air force colonel investigating the incident. His brother, Phil Bowers, sat in on the interview.

Phil Bowers, who was not on the flight, said his brother told the colonel that the Peruvian military made no attempt to communicate over the radio before two or three jets opened fire on the small plane. The incident was witnessed by villagers who live along Amazon river, and a U.S. "surveillance plane also saw the whole thing from up high," Phil Bowers said.

A U.S. Embassy official declined to comment on Bowers' statements. Earlier Saturday, a U.S. official in Lima confirmed that "a U.S. government tracking aircraft was in the area in support of the Peruvian intercept mission."

Speaking on condition of anonymity, he said U.S. tracking planes routinely pass information to Peruvian authorities about suspicious aircraft in the northern jungle region bordering Colombia and Brazil, a common route for cocaine trafficking.

Peru's air force issued a statement early Saturday confirming that the missionaries' plane was shot down after it was detected at 10:05 a.m. local time by "an air space surveillance and control system" run jointly by Peru and the United States.

In Quebec, where he was attending the Summit of the Americas, President Bush said Saturday he will "wait to see all the facts" before assigning blame for the deaths.

The missionaries' plane was en route from the Brazil-Peru border to Iquitos when it was attacked, said the Rev. E.C. Haskell, spokesman for the New Cumberland, Pa.,-based group, the Association of Baptists for World Evangelism.

"It happened very fast. The planes flew by first, did some swooping, and then came in from behind and started shooting," Phil Bowers told The Associated Press, in an interview at his missionary home in a working-class neighborhood on the outskirts of Iquitos, 625 miles northeast of Lima.

Missionary Veronica "Roni" Bowers, 35, and her daughter, Charity, were both killed. Pilot Kevin Donaldson, of Morgantown, Pa., was seriously wounded with gunshot wounds in his legs. The Bowers' 6-year-old son Cory, also survived.

"At some point, one of the bullets had gone through Roni's heart, right into the baby's head, from behind. They died instantly, which was a blessing," said Phil Bowers, who is a trained pilot. The Bowers brothers, from Muskegon, Mich., were raised by missionary parents in the Amazon jungles of Brazil.

There are no major roadways in the dense Amazon jungle area and almost all transport is by river boat or pontoon-equipped seaplanes that can land on water.

Phil Bowers said his brother told the colonel that the attacking planes continuing to shoot even after the seaplane crashed into the Amazon river.

"There were two or three jets coming in from behind and swooping down from the side and underneath them and in front of them," said Phil Bowers.

"The planes kept swooping down and shooting" at the survivors as they clung to the capsized plane's pontoons, he said.

There were conflicting reports Saturday about whether the missionaries' plane had a flight plan.

Under the agreement with the United States, Peru cannot use U.S. air surveillance or radar data to attack a suspected drug plane unless it is flying without a flight plan. The rules of engagement say Peruvian fighters must try to make radio contact and visually signal a suspect aircraft to land for inspection before opening fire.

The Peruvian government statement said the plane entered Peruvian air space from Brazil without filing a flight plan and that it was fired on after the pilot failed to respond to "international procedures of identification and interception."

But Mario Justo, chief of Iquitos' airport, told The Associated Press on Saturday that the plane did have a flight plan and that its pilot was in radio contact with Iquitos' airport control tower.

He later "clarified" his statement, saying the plane did not have a flight plan when it set out from Islandia, next to Brazil's border, Friday morning, but one was established when the pilot made radio contact with Iquitos' airport control tower at about 10:48 a.m. Friday.

"They said there had been a military plane but that they didn't know what it wanted," he said.

The plane was expected to land in Iquitos 40 minutes later, but failed to check in with a subsequent radio report.

Since the early 1990s, Peru has been a key South American ally in the United States' war on drug trafficking. Once the world's leading producers of coca leaf, the raw material used to make cocaine, Peru supplied Colombia's Medellin and Cali drug organizations. Much of that cocaine went to the United States, the world's biggest consumer of the drug.

U.S. officials have hailed Peru's coca eradication efforts as a success. CIA data released in January showed Peru's coca production fell for the fifth consecutive year in 2000.

Shootings of aircraft carrying suspected drug traffickers is nothing new. Between 1994 and 1997, Peru shot down about 25 suspected drug planes on their way to Colombian cocaine refineries from coca-growing regions in Peru's Amazon. The actions were the result of former President Alberto Fujimori's tough anti-narcotics policies in an effort to reducing trafficking in coca leaf.

The missionary group involved in the latest incident has worked in Peru since 1939, according to its Web site. It helps found Baptist churches in the Iquitos area and other parts of the upper Amazon, and sends missionaries into remote areas along the river's tributaries.

---

U.S. plane shot down in Peru

USA Today
04/21/2001 - Updated 08:15 AM ET
http://usatoday.com/news/world/2001-04-21-peru.htm

LIMA, Peru (AP) - Apparently mistaking American missionaries for drug smugglers, Peru's air force said Saturday that one of its jets shot down their plane over the Amazon River, killing a woman and her infant daughter.

Three others survived the shooting and the crash Friday morning, and members of their missionary, the Pennsylvania-based Association of Baptists for World Evangelism, described the drama that took place at the remote jungle site.

The survivors told of how the pilot, a veteran, second-generation missionary, was shot in the leg, mid-flight.

He then lost control of the flaming, single-engine plane before managing to guide it into the river, where the survivors floated on the craft's pontoons for a half-hour before being rescued by local villagers.

''Apparently the Peruvian pilot mistook it for an airplane transporting contraband drugs,'' U.S. Embassy spokesman Benjamin Ziff told The Associated Press Friday.

Peru's air force issued a statement early Saturday confirming that the missionary's plane was shot down after it was detected at 10:05 a.m. local time by ''an air space surveillance and control system'' run jointly by Peru and the United States.

The statement did not offer further details.

The statement said the plane entered Peruvian air space from Brazil without filing a flight plan and that it was fired on after the pilot failed to identify himself.

The Rev. E.C. Haskell, spokesman for the Baptist association, of New Cumberland, Pa., said the plane was en route from the Brazil-Peru border to the city of Iquitos, about 625 miles northeast of Lima, when it was attacked.

Missionary Veronica ''Ronnie'' Bowers, 35, and her 7-month-old adopted daughter, Charity, were both killed and pilot Kevin Donaldson was wounded, he said.

Also on board and unhurt were Bowers' husband, Jim Bowers, 35, and their 6-year-old son Cory, said Haskell.

The Bowers are from Muskegon, Mich. and the Donaldsons from Morgantown, Pa., Haskell said. The missionary group has worked in Peru since 1939, according to its Web site.

It helps found Baptist churches in the Iquitos area and other parts of the upper Amazon, and sends missionaries into remote areas along the river's tributaries.

Donaldson's wife, Bobbi, said her husband guided the plane into the river, where it flipped over. Veronica Bowers was holding her daughter on her lap when a bullet struck her in the back and then hit the child, Mrs. Donaldson said in a telephone interview from her home in Iquitos.

Mrs. Donaldson said ''there were two rounds of fire,'' and that the Peruvian jet fighter continued to fire as the plane went down.

The telephones were busy through the night Friday night at the regional command in Iquitos, and there was no answer Saturday morning at the defense ministry.

Quoting survivors, Mrs. Donaldson said local villagers brought the three survivors and two dead bodies to shore.

After her husband ''filled one canoe with blood, they put him a speedboat to take him for help'' to a nearby jungle clinic, she said. He remained there Saturday morning.

The Bowers had been returning from Leticia, Colombia, where they had picked up a Peruvian residency visa for Charity, Mrs. Donaldson said. She said another Peruvian air force plane - called in by the jet fighter - had taken Jim Bowers, his son, his dead wife and daughter back to Iquitos.

Late Friday, Rev. Bill Rudd, the Bowers' minister in Fruitport, Mich., said the family planned to return to the United States on Saturday. Ziff said U.S. Embassy personnel had traveled to the crash scene late Friday.

Mrs. Donaldson quoted Jim Bowers as saying that during the incident, he saw a plane flying nearby and that he believed it was an American aircraft.

She also quoted him as saying that he was kept by unidentified U.S. agents for two hours in Iquitos before he was allowed to identify his wife's body.

''We don't understand. We would like some answers,'' she said. Ziff did not have immediate comment about her statements. Between 1994 and 1997, Peru shot down about 25 suspected drug planes on their way to Colombian cocaine refineries from coca-growing regions in Peru's Amazon.

The actions were the result of former President Alberto Fujimori's tough anti-narcotics policies in an effort to reducing trafficking in coca leaf, the raw material used to make cocaine.

In July, Fujimori said the country would use its fleet of 18 Russian-made Sukhoi-25 fighter jets in the anti-drug fight.

The planes were originally bought after a brief border war with Ecuador in 1995. Haskell said Kevin Donaldson grew up in Peru.

Their group runs a theological seminary, schools, a camp and a center for pregnant women.

-------- france

FRANCE: WORLD WAR I THREAT EASES

New York Times
April 21, 2001
World Briefing
Suzanne Daley
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/21/world/21BRIE.html

Thousands of people evacuated last week from villages near a store of World War I munitions, including mustard gas, have been allowed to begin returning home. About 50 tons of the most dangerous shells were removed from the depot in Vimy by bomb disposal teams. Another 100 tons remain, but engineers have reinforced the storage area with a gravel wall. (NYT)

-------- land mines

AFGHANISTAN: U.S. TO HELP REMOVE MINES

New York Times
April 21, 2001
World Briefing
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/21/world/21BRIE.html

The United States has donated $2.8 million and 83 vehicles to the United Nations-led program to remove mines from Afghanistan, according to the American Embassy in Pakistan. Land mines, unexploded shells and other remnants of 22 years of war kill and maim thousands of Afghans every year. Barry Bearak (NYT)

-------- space

Deal Reported in Long-Running Dispute on Putting Tourist on Space Station

New York Times
April 21, 2001
By WARREN E. LEARY
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/21/science/21NASA.html

WASHINGTON, April 20 - The National Aeronautics and Space Administration has reportedly dropped its opposition to Russian plans to send an American millionaire to the International Space Station next week as the first tourist in space.

For months, NASA and the other partners in the international project have opposed a visit by the millionaire, Dennis Tito, while the space station is in a period of intense building, saying his presence could distract the station's crew and pose safety risks.

After weeks of negotiations between NASA officials and their Russian counterparts in Moscow, Mr. Tito has signed legal documents freeing NASA of responsibility if something goes wrong and requiring him to pay for any damages he might cause on the station, a report today on Time magazine's Web site says.

NASA spokesmen said they could not confirm an agreement with the Russians and Mr. Tito. A conference call scheduled for today among the heads of all the space agencies involved in the station project was canceled because negotiations were progressing between lower-level NASA and Russian officials, said Kirsten Larson, a NASA spokeswoman.

Daniel S. Goldin, the NASA administrator, expressed confidence on Thursday that the issues would be resolved before the scheduled April 28 flight of a Soyuz spacecraft with two Russian astronauts and Mr. Tito.

Michael Hawes, NASA's space station program director, said last month that except for Russia all of the nations taking part in the project recently voted to oppose letting tourists visit the station until guidelines on training and other issues could be drafted. These issues included legal liability for injuries to visitors and who would be responsible for damage they might cause, he said.

On Friday, Russian officials remained adamant about their right to send whomever they wanted to the station, half of which is now composed of Russian modules. Mr. Tito, a 60-year-old former NASA engineer who became a millionaire after founding a California investment company, is paying the cash- strapped Russian Space Agency up to $20 million to fulfill a lifelong dream of going into space.

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

CONGO: PEACEKEEPERS MOVE IN

New York Times
April 21, 2001
World Briefing
Norimitsu Onishi
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/21/world/21BRIE.html

United Nations peacekeepers who had been prevented from entering Kisangani last weekend reached it after an agreement between Rwanda-backed rebels and the United Nations. The arrival of 123 Moroccan soldiers is the first time peacekeepers have been on territory held by rebels and their Rwandan and Ugandan backers, who have been obstructing a recent cease-fire. (NYT)

-------- OTHER

-------- alternative energy

Environmentalists Weed out Problems for New Hemp Car

"Ex" marks the spot
Saturday, April 21, 2001
BIZARRE NEWS

A hemp-fueled car scheduled to begin a record-breaking 10,000 mile trip around North America was unveiled in Washington, D.C., at a conference devoted primarily to legalizing marijuana. The car is a white, modified 1983 Mercedes diesel station wagon festooned with colorful hemp-related logos and bearing the license plate "HEMPCAR." It's the creation of Grayson and Kellie Sigler, who plan to use roughly 400 gallons of hemp biodiesel during their trip. Environmentalists say biodiesel fuel is much cleaner than gasoline, putting out 80 percent less emissions than gas. The only distinctive side effect bystanders may experience from the car is a funky odor. Most people who are familiar with the smell of burning marijuana seeds will recognize it.

-------- environment

Tiny Bits of Soot Tied to Illnesses

New York Times
April 21, 2001
By ANDREW C. REVKIN
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/21/science/21AIR.html

In a new review of the science behind its proposal to purge fine soot from the air, the Environmental Protection Agency has concluded that there is a stronger link than ever between the tiniest soot particles and thousands of premature deaths each year.

The analysis, still being revised, considered more than 3,000 new health studies published since the agency proposed rules in 1997 intended to cut levels of soot and other smog ingredients produced mainly by power plants and vehicles. The proposed rules are still under review, and the final analysis could be a crucial factor in the Bush administration's decision about how tough the final rules should be.

From the start, businesses had strenuously fought the rules, saying the science was suspect and the costs would be enormous. But in the review of more recent research, one of the highlighted studies was in fact partly financed by industry.

Agency officials said that more changes in the report were inevitable and another draft was likely before the document was considered complete. But they said the review clearly eliminated almost any doubt that this kind of pollution posed a serious health threat.

"There is a veritable deluge of new research," said Dr. Lester D. Grant, the director of the agency's national center for environmental assessment, in Research Triangle Park, N.C., which is conducting the review.

"The bottom line is the studies very substantially confirm the original findings. That goes a long way toward laying to rest the sort of controversy that swirled around those studies."

So far, the Bush administration has not indicated whether it will change direction on the soot rule. In fact, President Bush's choice to head the environmental agency's air division, Jeffrey R. Holmstead, has not yet had his confirmation hearing.

But the administration did take a strong stand on a big source of this kind of pollution in February, when Christie Whitman, the E.P.A. administrator, strongly endorsed a rule drafted by the Clinton administration that would sharply curtail emissions of soot and other emissions from diesel engines.

The separate standard proposed for soot and air would limit concentrations of particles smaller than 2.5 microns to an average of 15 micrograms per cubic meter measured for three years in a row. Until now, the agency has only had limits on particles of 10 microns and smaller, but no specific limit on the smallest ones.

Levels of these particles have been slowly declining on average across the country for years, as stricter controls have been instituted on coal- fired power plants and as other plants have switched to cleaner- burning fuels, particularly natural gas. But many cities still see dozens of days each year when levels of the small soot particles far exceed the proposed federal standard.

For example, the study shows that in 1999, the latest year with comprehensive data, New York City, Los Angeles, Atlanta, Chicago, and several other cities had annual average levels of the 2.5-micron particles that would - if seen for three years in a row - violate the proposed rule.

Since the early 1980's, scientists' concerns about soot have focused increasingly on the smallest particles, which penetrate farthest into the lungs.

In 1987, regulations took effect that limited the concentration in air of particles less than 10 microns in diameter (a human hair is about 100 microns across). But the rule proposed in 1997 would sharply reduce allowable levels for particles less than 2.5 microns across.

These microscopic motes - composed of metals, carbon and other ingredients - are able to infiltrate the tiniest compartments in the lungs and pass readily into the bloodstream and have been most strongly tied to illness and early death, particularly in people who are already susceptible to respiratory problems.

One critical new research effort cited in the E.P.A. review was an analysis by an industry-financed research center, the Health Effects Institute, that supported the conclusions of two keystone studies from the early 1990's that drove the agency to write the new rule.

Those studies, by the Harvard School of Public Health and the American Cancer Society, found strong links between high levels of small particles and a rise in death rates. They were attacked by industry groups and some members of Congress as biased.

The Health Effects Institute, based in Boston, is financed by industry and the E.P.A. and was established in 1980 to serve as a referee on air pollution research. Its study, published last year, largely approved of the methods and data in the original studies and concurred that there was a link between soot and illness.

Many other new studies, Dr. Grant said, corroborate the link between the smallest particles, those under 2.5 microns, and the most serious health effects. Other studies cited in the new analysis strengthen the relationship between sooty conditions and a rise in hospital admissions of children with asthma attacks.

The 632-page research review, which was posted on the agency's Web site (www.epa.gov/ncea/) this month, has already been through one round of public comments and a critique by an agency panel that includes officials from industries that generate some of the pollution.

A second round of public comment will end in July, followed by another critique by the panel, the agency's Clean Air Science Advisory Committee. The agency is also beginning to draft a paper recommending how to translate the findings into the final language of a rule to cut fine soot.

Eventually, Mrs. Whitman, assessing the science and her staff's recommendations, would propose either to accept the Clinton administration standard or to modify it. Some supporters of strict controls decried the pace of the rule making, which has been delayed by court challenges, including one from the American Trucking Association and other industry groups that was rejected by the Supreme Court in February.

"We're already having another scientific review completed before step one has actually been taken to cut the pollution," said David G. Hawkins, a lawyer for the Natural Resources Defense Council, a private group. "In the meantime, there are about a quarter million Americans who have died prematurely as result of fine particle exposure."

Studies, including some cited in the new review and one by the natural resources group, have estimated that more than 50,000 people die prematurely each year from illnesses caused by exposure to fine soot.

More delays are expected, agency officials and environmental groups said, both because of other litigation and a law passed last year that could allow the Office of Management and Budget to review the quality of the data underlying the studies cited by the agency to justify its decision.

Despite the voluminous nature of the document, industry representatives said the E.P.A. analysis was basically a laundry list of existing work. With the regulation likely to cost industry billions of dollars a year, trade groups are demanding to see not only the studies, but also the raw data underlying the work.Agencies have generally not had to go to such lengths, which would require enormous amounts of paperwork.

"We're going to have to sit down and go over what the E.P.A. is basing its decision on and what other documents are out there," said William L. Kovacs, the vice president for environmental, technical, and regulatory affairs of the United States Chamber of Commerce, a lobbying group.

"If they really believe so strongly in the data, then why don't they release it? If it's that compelling, I'd be plastering it on the walls."

---

Federal Judge Halts Opening of Slag Plant

New York Times
April 21, 2001
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/21/nyregion/21POLL.html

A federal judge has blocked the opening of a cement additive plant in a poor black neighborhood in Camden, N.J., a ruling that legal experts said was the first time an environmental agency that issues permits had been found in violation of civil rights law.

The decision, a preliminary injunction issued Thursday by Judge Stephen M. Orlofsky of United States District Court in Camden, found that the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection violated permitting rules established under Title VI of the federal Civil Rights Act.

The department issued the permit, dated Oct. 31, after finding that the plant would not exceed air pollution limits established by the federal Environmental Protection Agency, but the judge ordered it to conduct a broader review based on E.P.A. guidelines that call for incorporating the heavily industrialized neighborhood's racial and ethnic makeup, existing pollution sources and potential cumulative health effects from the plant.

He ordered that the department complete the review within 30 days, and that the plant, which was built by the St. Lawrence Cement Group of Montreal at a cost of $50 million, not open at least until the more thorough review is complete.

Judge Orlofsky wrote that the plaintiffs had "established a prima facie case of disparate impact discrimination based on race and national origin in violation of the E.P.A.'s regulations."

The suit was filed by Olga Pomar of Camden Regional Legal Services, with help from the Public Interest Law Center of Philadelphia and the Center on Race, Poverty and the Environment in San Francisco, on behalf of 10 residents of the South Waterfront neighborhood of Camden who call themselves South Camden Citizens in Action.

Spokesmen for the Department of Environmental Protection and the state attorney general's office said that officials had not decided whether to appeal, but St. Lawrence Cement issued a statement indicating that it would.

"We are confident in our investment and proud of the integrity with which our company submitted to extensive environmental review, engaged in substantial outreach and responded to community concerns," Patrick Doberge, the president of St. Lawrence, said in the statement.

Legal experts said the decision was a milestone that would force all states to do more than just gauge whether technical emissions standards were met when issuing permits.

"I think if this decision is upheld on appeal it will be the most important environmental justice case ever decided, by a wide margin," said Michael B. Gerrard, an adjunct professor at Columbia University School of Law and author of "The Law of Environmental Justice," published in 1999 by the American Bar Association. Officials at the state and federal environmental agencies said they were unaware of any similar rulings.

The decision was a potential blow to the environmental record of Christie Whitman, now the administrator of the federal Environmental Protection Agency. She was governor when the permit was issued.

Barbara Pfeiffer, one of the plaintiffs, said the group wanted the plant to remain unopened indefinitely. "We want it to be a monument to the folly of Governor Whitman," she said.

Mrs. Whitman has not commented on the decision and could not be reached yesterday, said Mary Helen Cervantes, an E.P.A. spokeswoman.

Some in the neighborhood welcomed the plant, which would employ 15 people. The Rev. Al Stewart, a director of the Waterfront South Neighborhood Partnership, said that the community needed economic activity. "We're going to need private dollars; the city can't do it, the state can't do it, and the feds can't do it," he said.

The 14-acre plant site, where slag would be ground down and shipped out as an additive to cement, is leased from the South Jersey Port Corporation, a state agency, under a 45-year deal estimated to be worth $1.8 million a year.

But part of the suit's argument was that the area was already overburdened by industry. Waterfront South has, among other businesses, an incinerator, a power plant, a sewage treatment plant, a scrap metal yard and two Environmental Superfund sites. One of the plaintiffs, Phyllis Holmes, said she was worried that her asthma would be aggravated by emissions from the plant.

Ms. Holmes, 57, said hers was the first black family to move into the neighborhood in 1968, before much of the industry moved in. "I started realizing that when black and Hispanic families started moving in here that things were being put here that ordinarily wouldn't be put here."

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BRITAIN: FOOT-AND-MOUTH `UNDER CONTROL'

New York Times
April 21, 2001
World Briefing
Warren Hoge
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/21/world/21BRIE.html

The government's chief scientific adviser, David King, said foot-and-mouth disease was now "fully under control," and restrictions on moving livestock were lifted in two counties, Northampton and Leicestershire. Mr. King said confirmed new cases, once averaging 50 a day, were now fewer than 10. (NYT)

--

UTAH: ROAD LIMITS CHALLENGED

New York Times
April 21, 2001
National News Briefing
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/21/national/21BRFS.html

With the Bush administration facing a deadline for a decision on a forest- protection plan, the State of Utah and a timber-industry trade group joined in efforts to reverse a Clinton administration plan. The state and the American Forest and Paper Association became the latest groups to file lawsuits against a plan to put one-third of the national forests off limits to road building and most logging. In response to other court challenges, the administration has promised a decision by May 4. The suits come on top of challenges by Alaska, Idaho and Boise Cascade, the timber company. Douglas Jehl (NYT)

MITHSONIAN REBUFFS OFFER The Department of the Interior presented a proposal to save the Smithsonian Institution's Conservation and Research Center, a 3,200-acre field station in Virginia that trains conservation scientists. But J. Dennis O'Connor, under secretary for science at the Smithsonian, told department officials in a meeting on Thursday that the Smithsonian would stick to its proposal to Congress to close the center and shift its funding to what the museum's top official, Lawrence Small, above, considers more worthwhile projects. Mr. O'Connor said the Smithsonian had rejected proposals to keep the land and lease it to the Interior Department or to continue to operate the site if the department can raise the money for it. Several influential lawmakers said they were determined to keep the center open. Elaine Sciolino (NYT)

---

Democrats criticize Bush environmental policy

USA Today
04/21/2001 - Updated 12:43 PM ET
http://usatoday.com/news/washdc/2001-04-21-dems-environment.htm

WASHINGTON (AP) - President Bush's recent steps to establish an environmental policy are woefully short on substance, the House's second-ranking Democrat said Saturday.

Rep. David Bonior, D-Mich., contended in the Democrats' weekly radio address that Bush has sold out to big business on the most important environmental issues.

"Since taking office, the president has treated the big polluters to an all-you-can-eat smorgasbord of environmental giveaways," said Bonior, the House minority whip. "Last month, the Bush administration revoked the important new rules to help rid our drinking water of arsenic, a poison that increases the risk of cancer. The president also broke his campaign promise and announced he wouldn't cut carbon dioxide pollution from power plants."

This week, Bush added a measure of balance, backing a treaty to phase out a group of toxic chemicals used mostly in poorer countries.

He also left in place a Clinton-era rule expanding wetlands protection, and upheld regulations requiring thousands more businesses to report their releases of toxic lead.

But Bonior said those steps were not enough, criticizing the Bush administration for not releasing an Environmental Protection Agency report that finds cancer risks from exposure to dioxins may be significantly greater than previously thought.

A draft of the report, described by EPA officials familiar with it, concludes that the cancer risk from dioxins among individuals who eat large amounts of fatty meats and dairy products may as high as 1 in 100, or 10 times as great as previously projected.

"The chemical industry is pressuring the EPA not to issue an important study on dioxin, one of the most dangerous substances known to mankind," Bonior said.

Dioxins are a group of toxic compounds produced through a number of chemical processes, including combustion.

---

Brazil oil company fined for spills

USA Today
04/21/2001 - Updated 08:50 AM ET
http://usatoday.com/news/world/2001-04-21-oilspill.htm

RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil (AP) - Environmental authorities slapped a multimillion dollar fine on the state-run oil company for ecological damage caused by two recent accidents on offshore oil platforms.

Petrobras was ordered to pay $8.9 million for spilling 316,000 gallons of oil into the ocean after an oil rig exploded March 15. Eleven workers were killed in the accident and the rig sank into the ocean, 120 miles northeast of Rio, four days later.

The fine also covered another spill on April 13 after a blowout - an uncontrolled gush of gas and oil - spilled some 6,600 gallons of crude into the sea.

Both spills occurred in the Campos Basin, which accounts for most of the about 1.5 million barrels of oil Brazil produced daily before the disasters.

The sunken rig, which had been the world's largest, producing 83,000 barrels a day, accounted for 6% of Petrobras' total production.

Ibama said Petrobras had to pay another $890,000 for the inappropriate use of detergents to break up one of the spills.

Petrobras has already been fined millions of dollars for other recent spills, including one in July 2000 that spewed more than a million gallons of crude oil into Brazil's famous Iguacu River and another that soiled Rio de Janeiro's Guanabara Bay.

-------- imf / world bank

On Native Land, a Fear of Free Trade

New York Times
April 21, 2001
By RICK HORNUNG
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/21/opinion/21HORN.html

HADDAM, Conn. -- All this week, the Mohawks of Akwesasne used provisions of the United States' oldest major international trade agreement - the Jay Treaty of 1794 - in reacting to America's newest trade effort, the Free Trade Area of the Americas agreement currently being negotiated, and fiercely protested, in Quebec City. As Canadian officials detained protesters flying in from North and South America, busloads trekked along New York State Route 37 to the St. Regis Mohawk Indian Reservation, or what Mohawks call The Land Where the Partridge Drums.

This 28,000-acre stretch of islands, coves and inlets that spans the borders of Canada and the United States has its own government. Many Mohawks on both sides of the St. Lawrence River consider themselves not citizens of the United States or Canada but residents of an aboriginal nation. And the 34 nations meeting in Quebec City are not the only ones with something to say about sovereign power in the Americas. If anything, indigenous peoples may already understand the pressures of globalization better than the negotiators in Quebec.

From the Strait of Magellan to Hudson Strait, Inuit and Kayapo, Mundurucu and Navajo live on reserved territories that contain many billions of dollars' worth of gold, silver, metal ores, uranium, coal, timber, oil, natural gas, water, fish and wildlife. These American nations enjoy various types of constitutional and statutory sovereignty that give them - not trade officials from Washington, Brasília, Buenos Aires or Ottawa - the authority to negotiate development agreements. Aboriginal nations on both continents have blocked the sort of multibillion-dollar development deals that are characteristic of the globalized economy.

The new, new microchip world without borders is colliding with the old aboriginal world of turf and tools. The Yanomami control the gold in their plush Amazonian jungles, as the Inuit and Innu control the nickel in their jagged subarctic rocks. Regardless of the agreements negotiated at the Summit of the Americas, these resources will not move without their consent - or so native peoples hope.

The creation of a free-trade market of 800 million people exchanging $11.5 trillion worth of goods and services is, to many aboriginal nations, a step backward. The great nations around them are trading away their tariff powers and other sovereign rights in Quebec City. If Brazil and Venezuela cannot resist the demands of globalization, what chance will the Yanomami have?

At the same time, the Free Trade Area of the Americas agreement could give aboriginal nations access to more customers and higher prices for their prized resources. An aboriginal nation in Canada, for example, could sell its water rights for hydroelectric generation to California rather than British Columbia, and the Navajo could sell their uranium to Colombia.

One nonindigenous entity in Canada is already looking forward to the benefits of free trade. The province of Quebec - at least, the separatists in the Parti Québécois - has come to believe that globalization would be a boon. The separatists want economic integration because they think it will strengthen political and ethnic segregation. By making Canada's sovereignty less significant, the separatists assume, globalization would make francophone Quebec more independent. To the separatists, this Free Quebec, liberated to pursue its cultural and economic destiny, would inevitably win in global competition.

Indigenous nations, by force of experience, have a dimmer view of the promise of the coming free-trade agreement. To them it looks more like exposure to a harsh northerly wind. An indigenous nation alone, facing large corporations roaming across a continental marketplace, would not count for much.

But there are many indigenous nations, and they might consider making common cause. Perhaps the indigenous people of the Americas will use their sovereign powers to create their own free-trade agreement. Such a federation would not, at least, be ignored the next time the other Americans get together to talk about trade.

Rick Hornung, author of the forthcoming ``The Word and the Wire: A Journey Through the Many Nations of Quebec,'' teaches at Eastern Connecticut State University.

---

Bush Will Press Free-Trade Issue at Quebec Talks

New York Times
April 21, 2001
By DAVID E. SANGER
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/21/world/21PREX.html

QUEBEC, April 20 - President Bush arrived at his first summit meeting today declaring that he would make the expansion of economic and political ties with Latin America his first foreign policy priority.

But before Mr. Bush and other leaders could get down to work, tonight's opening ceremony of the Summit of the Americas was delayed for an hour, to about 7:30, as thousands of mostly young protesters clogged the narrow streets of this walled city seeking to block talks over a Free Trade Area of the Americas.

For Mr. Bush, the tear gas battles that broke out between the police and several thousand protesters marked his first close-up view of the raw emotions that free trade pacts now routinely encounter.

Mr. Bush made no direct reference to the periodic skirmishes taking place just outside his hotel, but several of the leaders he was supposed to meet this afternoon could not make it through the streets, and his aides watched as the Canadian police, dressed in riot gear, tried to restore order tonight so the summit sessions could begin.

"We already know from the North American Free Trade Agreement that free trade works," Mr. Bush insisted just before leaving the White House this morning, invoking the trade accord negotiated by his father and supported by President Bill Clinton that would form the model for a broader accord. "It has created good jobs for our workers. Now is the time to extend these benefits of free trade throughout the entire hemisphere."

But on television, Mr. Bush's message was drowned out by scenes that were reminiscent of Seattle in December 1999, but that in reality were far more tame.

All afternoon, protesters milled around Quebec's antique fortifications, modern concrete barricades and tall steel fences that the police had set up to keep demonstrators far from the 34 presidents and prime ministers here for the summit meeting. Periodically, the crowds surged forward, knocking over one section of the fence, and periodically the police drove them back with tear gas. Few injuries were reported, and arrests seemed sporadic. But the center of the old city was boarded up, and overnight the local McDonalds literally disappeared: workers took down all its signs and covered all its windows, so that it looked like a long- abandoned storefront.

"We expected this," one senior Bush administration official said. "You can't have a trade summit these days without tear gas; it would be like having a cheeseburger without cheese."

In fact, a senior administration official said this evening that Mr. Bush had not been able to meet with Caribbean leaders because they could not get near his hotel - a situation reminiscent of Seattle, where many trade negotiators were blocked from entering the city's world trade center. But the president did manage to meet with Andean leaders and the leaders of Brazil and Panama.

"The chemistry was really quite good," one Bush administration official told reporters, saying there was "solid agreement" that "trade is the engine that is needed for development" But such generalities ignore the question of the terms on which that trade should occur.

The official said that "the president did note that there were some outside who were trying to isolate this process," and added that Mr. Bush had watched some of the television footage of the protesters' clashes with the police.

Mr. Bush faces three separate challenges to his trade agenda: one on the street, one in Congress and one with the countries on the other side of this negotiation.

The challenge on the street is the most familiar, and the least cohesive. Just as Seattle attracted everyone from anarchists to human rights advocates to environmental groups and labor unions, here in Quebec every kind of protester was on the street today.

Some complained that trade accords do not guarantee rights for gays and lesbians, others said they put corporate profits ahead of creating democracy. Still others argued, bullhorns in hand, that the poorest workers in Mexico were no better off now than they were in 1995, when Nafta went into effect.

So far, Mr. Bush has rarely addressed those complaints directly. But Canada's prime minister, Jean Chrétien, who had to delay the opening of tonight's ceremonies, said the protesters were ignoring new provisions of the proposed free trade agreement without mentioning that the draft agreement has yet to be published. (Mr. Bush has promised to make it available soon.)

"If they looked at the texts on all these subjects that are on the table," Mr. Chrétien said, "in fact we are making sure that there will be a better preoccupation in many of these countries about human rights and democratic rights."

He appeared to be referring to the "democracy clause" expected in the final communiqué of this meeting, which will stipulate that any country that retreats from democracy will be banished from the summit meeting process and thus from the next four years of negotiations over a free trade area in the hemisphere.

"There is, in fact, a very strong democracy clause in the summit's political declaration," Condoleezza Rice, Mr. Bush's national security adviser, said on Thursday in Washington. "It's quite remarkable." But it is unclear how, or if, that clause would be enforced.

While all 34 nations here are celebrating hemispheric democracy - only Fidel Castro of Cuba has been excluded - several of those democracies are shaky. Ecuador had a military coup last year, though the military quickly stepped aside; Colombia is on shaky ground; and Peru's future is still uncertain.

Mr. Bush is also facing economic uncertainties in Latin America that are bound to make a free trade agreement harder to negotiate. Argentina has been in crisis for a year, and Brazil has argued against Mr. Bush's efforts to speed up negotiations, for fear that lowering its trade barriers would threaten a number of politically influential industries.

Such problems derailed Mr. Clinton's promise, at the first Summit of the Americas in 1995, to negotiate such a pact before he left office.

"There's a huge gap between promises made at these summits and what actually gets done," said Richard E. Feinberg, a professor at the University of California at San Diego and a former Clinton administration official. "People get disappointed, and leaders haven't responded. And that makes it harder and harder."

And Mr. Bush must now decide how much political capital he will put into winning a free trade accord, in a year he clearly wants to devote to tax cuts and education.

It will be politically costly. Congress remains sharply divided on the wisdom of new free trade accords, and the issue is so sensitive that Mr. Bush himself has not yet submitted the legislation needed to give him the authority to negotiate the Free Trade Area of the Americas. That legislation, once called "fast track," is now called "trade promotion authority." It would give Mr. Bush the ability to negotiate an accord and submit it to Congress for an up or down vote, without amendments - the only way, advocates of free trade say, to keep the American agricultural or textile industries, or other groups, from altering negotiated agreements to their advantage.

One main sticking point is how to deal with sanctions against countries that violate basic labor or environmental standards - the same issue that bedeviled Mr. Clinton throughout his presidency.

Democrats say any accord must include stiff sanctions, and Republicans have traditionally insisted that those issues have no place in free trade agreements. Mr. Bush is trying to weave a middle ground, one that would permit the United States to impose financial sanctions against countries that violate labor or environmental standards, but that would forbid trade sanctions. It is unclear whether this watered-down approach will be viewed as tough enough by Democrats, or whether countries like Brazil or Venezuela would sign any accord that allowed other countries to dictate minimum wages, working conditions or the internal workings of their economies.

No agreements are expected here. Mr. Bush is simply starting a dialogue, as President George Bush did in 1990 and Mr. Clinton did in 1995. The fact that both men ran aground is, one of Mr. Bush's aides said, "a warning signal." But the declaration signed by the leaders should have considerable symbolic importance, both for Mr. Bush and the nations of Latin America. During last year's presidential campaign, Mr. Bush often accused the Clinton administration of having neglected Latin America, skewing American foreign policy too far toward Asia.

This weekend Mr. Bush is expected to describe how he would change that. But even while he is making the case, he is also considering arms sales to Taiwan - scheduled for announcement on Tuesday - and deciding when to renew surveillance flights along the Chinese coast.

"It's fair to say our minds are in two places," one of his advisers said.

---

Quebec Summit Opens Amid Protests

Associated Press
April 21, 2001
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Summit.html

QUEBEC (AP) -- Western hemisphere leaders debated how to create the world's largest free-trade zone without eroding hard-fought democratic gains, while riot police faced down demonstrators Saturday protesting capitalism, globalization and the trade plan.

President Bush told the 34-nation Summit of the Americas that expanded trade ``creates new jobs and new income. It lifts the lives of our people, applying the power of markets to the needs of the poor.''

Other leaders said democratic nations have not done enough to help the needy. ``The challenge we all face as leaders,'' said Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien, ``is how best to steer our government agendas back to the most critical problems facing our citizens.''

Mexican President Vicente Fox said, ``There is a lot to celebrate but there is also a lot to lament. We need a strong expansion of economic citizenship, to democratize the markets. Only by doing that can we develop the energy of the millions who have been excluded from economic development.'' Fox and Bush met privately Saturday.

Bush, after meeting privately with Fox, said he invited the leader to the White House for his first state dinner, probably in September.

Outside the summit, riot police fired water cannons at rock-throwing protesters trying to breach a barrier. It was the second day of police clashes with hundreds of demonstrators who returned to the site where they briefly broke through the 2.3-mile chain-link and concrete wall on Friday. Tens of thousands of protesters were expected Saturday.

The streets were littered with spent tear gas canisters and debris from Friday's confrontations, which lasted into the night. Police used tear gas, then rubber bullets and water cannons to disperse the crowds.

Police arrested about 100 people. Authorities said five police officers were injured, and several protesters and journalists also were seen with minor injuries.

Bush, making his first appearance at an international summit, urged his fellow leaders to work toward building ``a fully democratic hemisphere, bound by goodwill and free trade.''

For his part, he promised to hold ``intense consultations'' with members of Congress to obtain the authority he needs to negotiate the Free Trade Zone of the Americas that the leaders hope to establish by 2005.

``I'm confident I will get it,'' Bush said, predicting that Congress will grant the authority before year's end.

Acknowledging the protests, Bush said he would listen to the voices ``inside this hall and those outside this hall who want to join us in constructive dialogue'' about expanded trade.

``Open trade reinforces the habit of liberty that sustains democracy over the long haul,'' Bush said.

Chretien opened Saturday's meeting with a call for fortifying smaller democracies that are ``facing a crisis of legitimacy and relevancy.''

``The declining voter turnout is just one indicator of this phenomenon,'' Chretien said. ``It challenges us to be ever more creative in the policy directions we set.''

He urged leaders to set aside reservations about freer trade in the hemisphere. ``Today, more than ever before, we will be judged as elected leaders on a basis of how much we contribute to improving the well-being of our people,'' Chretien said.

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said Friday that few of the goals set out at the first Summit of the Americas, in Miami in 1994, have been met.

``It's not just that we haven't advanced -- we have gone backwards,'' he said. ``Today there is more poverty than yesterday. Today there are more children in the street than yesterday.''

As the summit opened Friday evening, police protected by helmets and shields kept protesters at bay with volleys of tear gas that sent a burning mist to greet leaders as they arrived.

Those opening ceremonies were delayed an hour after demonstrators tore down a section of the concrete blocks and chain-link fence that barricaded the heart of Quebec City where the summit is being held.

Protesters hurled rocks, bottles, hockey pucks, stuffed animals and part of the destroyed fence at police. Officers advanced on demonstrators banging their shields with truncheons to beat out a menacing rhythm.

The protesters represent a diverse range of activists -- organized labor, human rights organizations, environmental groups and others who say the talks on creating a Western Hemisphere free-trade zone should be held in public instead of in a locked conference center.

Some charge that the agreement would allow corporations to bypass environmental and worker-protection laws.

Some of the leaders inside said they shared the protesters' concerns, although they criticized their violent methods.

Brazilian President Fernando Henrique Cardoso said the protest ``is motivated by the fear of a free trade agreement or globalization without a human face.''

He said Brazil would insist that ``trade openings are reciprocal and help close rather than widen the disparities in our region.''

All 34 countries at the summit have endorsed the goal of a free-trade zone stretching from the Arctic Circle to Cape Horn. The only absentee is Cuba, not invited at the insistence of the United States even though the rest of the region is friendly to Havana.

-------- police

Jury Awards Damages to Relatives of Man Shot by an Officer

New York Times
April 21, 2001
By MONTE WILLIAMS
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/21/nyregion/21DOBB.html

A jury awarded the brother and son of a Westchester County man killed by an off-duty New York City police officer $4.5 million in damages yesterday in United States District Court in Manhattan.

The former officer, Richard D. DiGuglielmo, several members of his family and the family's businesses were found liable in the civil case.

Mr. DiGuglielmo, who is serving a sentence of 20 years to life in the 1996 killing, his father and his brother-in- law got into a scuffle with the victim, Charles Campbell, after arguing over a parking space outside a Dobbs Ferry, N.Y., deli owned by Mr. DiGuglielmo's mother, Rosemarie.

Mr. DiGuglielmo testified in court that when he fired three shots from a .32-caliber Colt into Mr. Campbell's upper body outside the deli, he believed he was saving the life of his father, Richard B. DiGuglielmo. Mr. Campbell had struck the elder Mr. DiGuglielmo in the leg with an aluminum bat.

Speaking after court, Ms. DiGuglielmo, the president and principal owner of Mimie Di-Scat Corporation, which owns the land on which the deli and several stores sit in a strip mall in the Hudson River village, said: "How do you put a number on a father's life? How do we answer that question? My son could answer it if he were here. My son gave up his life to save his father's life."

Ms. DiGuglielmo, who said she was not sure if she would appeal, noted that she had begun struggling with the family business's insurance companies, which have appeared reluctant to pay the damages related to the incident.

Randolph M. McLaughlin, the lawyer for the dead man's brother, William Campbell, and his son, Vaughn, 17, said he did not think there were grounds for an appeal. He would not discuss how he planned to collect the judgment, which exceeds by $1 million the amount that he had requested.

Mr. Campbell, an insurance broker and financial consultant from Yonkers, said he was pleased with the verdict. "The system worked well," he said.

The jury forewoman, Grace L. Jones, said that jurors had Vaughn's best interest in mind. "We hope he goes far," she said.

A juror who lives in Bedford, N.Y., said he found the testimony of a nurse who witnessed the shooting critical in determining the amount of the award. The nurse, Marianne Wekerle, asked an employee of the Venice Deli to bring towels so that she might assist the shooting victim. Using expletives, the shooter ordered her not to touch Mr. Campbell, and to forget about the towels, she said. The elder Mr. DiGuglielmo, according to Ms. Wekerle, instructed her to leave the scene, adding, "You didn't see anything."

The juror said, "It pretty much undermined the testimony of the DiGuglielmos."

He added that the jurors' decision on the amount of the award was influenced by testimony that the elder Mr. DiGuglielmo had a history of accosting people who parked in front of the deli. About a half-dozen witnesses testified that the elder Mr. DiGuglielmo had assaulted them in the parking lot.

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Police Museum Has Its Staff Overhauled

New York Times
April 21, 2001
By WILLIAM K. RASHBAUM
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/21/nyregion/21POLI.html

The Police Department yesterday overhauled the management of the New York City Police Museum in Lower Manhattan, reassigning its executive director and cutting the number of officers working there in half after an investigation into suspected improprieties at the institution.

Police Commissioner Bernard B. Kerik began the investigation last week after receiving an anonymous letter that said the museum's executive director, Sgt. Thomas Gambino, and a lieutenant assigned to the museum were driving expensive automobiles leased by the museum, a private institution. The letter also said the two were using prime office space near the museum at 25 Broadway as an administrative office without paying rent.

Mr. Kerik was unaware of the vehicles and office space before receiving the letter, and aides said last week that he was so angered when he learned of them that he began weighing a transfer for Sergeant Gambino and the lieutenant. Police regulations prohibit officers from accepting gratuities or gifts.

Sergeant Gambino and the lieutenant were among those transferred from the museum yesterday, along with another sergeant and five officers. And Mr. Kerik ordered that the museum hire its own civilian executive director, a post that Sergeant Gambino filled since the museum opened two years ago.

While officials yesterday sought to play down any rift, the changes suggest a disagreement between Mr. Kerik and his predecessor, Howard Safir, who was the primary force behind the creation of the museum and whose wife, Carol Safir, is its president. Last week, Mr. Safir, who originally assigned Sergeant Gambino to the museum, defended the use of the automobiles and the additional office space, at 55 Water Street.

Mrs. Safir could not be reached for comment, but her husband said late yesterday that he thought the museum "had matured." He said he thought it "should have a civilian executive director and should be self-sufficient and independent of the city."

Yesterday, police officials said the investigation was nearly concluded, and that while no criminal or serious administrative misconduct had been uncovered, Commissioner Kerik had decided a reorganizing of the museum was necessary. Until yesterday, 17 officers were assigned there.

"Looking at this after the investigation, I don't think we found any criminality - certainly no criminality and certainly no serious violation of department protocols," said Assistant Chief Thomas P. Fahey, a spokesman. "The museum is in a transition and is going to a civilian director, and this is a re-engineering."

The museum opened in April 1999, replacing a smaller gallery of historical police artifacts at the department's academy. But it has been mired in controversy since its inception, when Mr. Safir came under criticism for a deal with a business group that had said it would pay for renovations at the museum in exchange for a police substation in the financial district. Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani canceled that agreement.

The relationship between the private museum and the public agency it was created to build support for may be at the root of some of the problems. Police officers working there, for instance, serve both the department and the museum.

Mr. Safir originally assigned 22 officers to the institution, a number that Mr. Kerik cut to 17 after he succeeded Mr. Safir in August. The new transfers leave nine officers at the museum. Last night, Mr. Safir said that the city, which contributed $1 million toward the museum, had been "very helpful" in getting the project off the ground and that the transfers would require the museum to spend far more of its budget on staffing.

The transfers of the eight officers are to be completed this weekend, officials said. Sergeant Gambino is being assigned to the department's Legal Bureau, and the lieutenant, James Augello, is being transferred to the 106th Precinct, in Ozone Park, Queens. The other sergeant and five police officers are being reassigned to patrol duty.

All eight were working in a two-room suite at 55 Water Street obtained free by Sergeant Gambino this year, officials said.

During questioning last week by Internal Affairs investigators, the sergeant and lieutenant said the space was needed to do "museum work," according to a person familiar with the inquiry. They said they only moved into the new space after they were displaced from their offices in 25 Broadway, the same building that houses the museum.

The two 2001 Ford Explorers leased by the museum that had been used by Sergeant Gambino and Lieutenant Augello will revert to the museum, officials said.

Philip Karasyk, Lieutenant Augello's lawyer at his questioning, said his client had been involved in no wrongdoing. "He is very proud of the work that he has done in bringing the museum into existence and he is happy to go wherever the Police Department can best take advantage of his abilities," he said.

Sergeant Gambino could not be reached for comment.

Last week, police officials could not say whether the two men had notified anyone in the department about the vehicles or the new office space. But yesterday, one official acknowledged the men had sent a fax about the arrangements to police headquarters, but neither Mr. Kerik nor his chief aide had seen it or been told about the issues.

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Caracas Journal: A Veteran Cop on a Tough New Beat

New York Times
April 21, 2001
By LARRY ROHTER
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/21/world/21CARA.html

CARACAS, Venezuela, April 20 - When William J. Bratton walked into police headquarters here this week, Henry Rivas, the director of the Caracas Metropolitan Police, was waiting at the door for him. In a nearby conference room, division heads and precinct chiefs of the 8,000-member force had assembled for a strategy session with the former New York City police commissioner.

"Welcome to your police," Mr. Rivas said to Mr. Bratton. "We have even got a uniform for you."

Going along with the joke, Mr. Bratton smiled and raised his right hand. "I'm ready to take my oath," he replied.

As New York's top cop from 1994 to 1996, Mr. Bratton presided over a sharp drop in homicides and other serious crimes that earned him a national reputation. He has come here to take on what may be an even more daunting challenge: helping the local government apply his crime-busting techniques to this sprawling and violent capital.

"Not only do we have poverty and unemployment, but we must also contend with corruption, weakness of the rule of law, a lack of resources and a culture of impunity," said Iván Simonovis, the recently appointed municipal secretary of public security here. "That creates an ideal climate for the growth of crime."

Indeed, crime here has been on a steady rise for the past 15 years, with the number of reported incidents leaping 30 percent just in the past two years.

Public opinion polls consistently list "lack of security" as the top concern throughout this nation of 24 million people.

"I thought I'd seen it all" during 30 years of police work, Mr. Bratton said as he, accompanied by Spanish- language interpreters, visited police stations, talked with civic, business and political leaders and met with the chiefs of the city's six separate police forces to prepare an anti- crime offensive. "But the public safety issues here are incredible."

What local authorities are calling the Bratton Plan has been heralded as the solution to that crisis, and so Mr. Bratton is regarded here as both a savior and a celebrity.

At a police graduation ceremony that he attended on Wednesday, the police band struck up "New York, New York" when he arrived, residents greeted him by waving banners bearing his name and one especially grateful man, Antonio Belandria, even rushed up to kiss his hand.

"He is the Supercop, so we are confident that he will be able to help us," said Felipe Eduardo Manríquez, 63, a government employee, as he watched the proceedings. "Crime is out of control: I've been robbed five times, there is no police presence in the neighborhood where I live, and the criminals no longer have fear of anyone."

Even before Mr. Bratton was brought on board last month, local authorities were making efforts to restore flagging public confidence and strengthen the force. More than 4,000 new police officers are to be hired and trained this year and next, for instance; 361 officers have been dismissed for corruption; and starting salaries have been more than doubled, to $700 a month, in an effort to recruit better-educated officers and make corruption less tempting.

But the mayor of Caracas, Alfredo Peña, said that visits to New York had made him eager to have Mr. Bratton introduce innovations like community policing, computerized tabulation of crime statistics, standardized complaint forms and business improvement districts here. "These are systems to fight crime that are not unique but can be applied in many places," he said.

Mr. Bratton, though, has been careful to damp expectations of any sort of a miraculous turnaround.

In an interview before he returned to New York on Thursday, he noted that Caracas's six police forces have a combined strength of only 11,000 to keep order in a city of five million people, compared with about 40,000 police officers for New York City, which has about eight million residents. The police here are also burdened with weak antinarcotics, internal affairs and investigative divisions, all of which he said need to be reinforced and coordinated.

"The growth of this city has far outstripped that of its police," Mr. Bratton said. "They admit they have a problem, and they want to take steps, so at least the journey back has begun. There is potential here, but the reality is that they are facing a real crisis."

In addition, Venezuela's political climate is highly charged these days, making Mr. Bratton's presence controversial in some quarters. President Hugo Chávez is a left-wing nationalist who has been strengthening ties with Cuba, China, Iraq and Libya. At the same time, he has been distancing himself from the United States by limiting cooperation in joint counternarcotics efforts and withdrawing from regional military exercises.

In its annual human rights report this year the State Department said that "excessive use of deadly force by police and security forces was a serious problem" here, estimating that at least 2,000 suspected criminals were killed by the Venezuelan police last year.

Mr. Chávez and his government quickly responded by telling Washington to mind its own business. "How many people died in the United States in the year 2000 as a result of human rights abuses and executions?" Mr. Chávez said in a speech.

Foreign Minister Luis Dávila, who was minister of internal affairs and justice during the period covered by the report, described Mr. Bratton's hiring as unnecessary. "Venezuela rejects any kind of outside interference in its internal affairs," he said.

Mayor Peña is also a member of Mr. Chávez's governing Patriotic Pole coalition, but he minimized official resentment of his decision to hire a foreign adviser.

"Since drug traffickers and organized-crime groups recognize no boundaries in a globalized world, the nations of the world must unite to fight them," he said. "So we must look for help wherever we can, and bring in the people who have shown that they know how to deliver results."

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64 INDICTED IN CINCINNATI

New York Times
April 21, 2001
National News Briefing
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/21/national/21BRFS.html

OHIO: Sixty-two people have been indicted in the violence that followed fatal shooting by the police of an unarmed black man in Cincinnati earlier this month, a prosecutor said. The charges ranged from misdemeanors like resisting arrest to felonies like aggravated rioting and breaking and entering, said the local prosecutor, Michael Allen. All but one of the defendants are black. (AP)

-------- terrorism

PERU: WITNESS BACKS BERENSON

New York Times
April 21, 2001
World Briefing
Clifford Krauss
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/21/world/21BRIE.html

AMERICAS - A convicted guerrilla leader testified that rebels under his command had duped Lori Berenson, a New Yorker who is on trial on terrorism charges, into renting a house that was used to plan a terrorist attack. Miguel Rincón, a top leader of the Túpac Amaru Revolutionary Movement, suggested that the main prosecution witness had lied about Ms. Berenson's activities to hide his own involvement in terrorism. (NYT)

-------- activists

For Protesters at Yale, a Who's Who

New York Times
April 21, 2001
By PAUL ZIELBAUER
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/21/nyregion/21YALE.html

NEW HAVEN, Conn., April 20 - In recognition of Yale University's 300th anniversary, many of its most famous alumni have returned to campus this weekend to participate in a series of private seminars and lectures on the school's impact on world culture and politics.

But if today was any indication, the select group of returning Yalies - former President George Bush, former Treasury Secretary Robert E. Rubin, Tom Wolfe and William F. Buckley Jr. among them - may end up sharing the glare of television camera lights with hundreds of graduate students protesting Yale's opposition to their efforts to unionize.

The weekend of events began Thursday, but today was the first full day of meetings, luncheons, dinners - and pro-union demonstrations. The largest demonstration was heldlate this afternoon, as Mr. Rubin and Janet L. Yellin, the former chairwoman of the Council of Economic Advisors, discussed their Clinton-era economic policies in a large campus auditorium here.

When the talk ended, as hundreds of mostly graying Yalies and their spouses streamed into the street, a clutch of local clergy members and several dozen graduate students in baggy pants and T-shirts began chanting and shouting pro-union slogans. Two dozen armed campus and city police officers stood by and coralled the students onto sidewalks. There were no arrests.

In all, about 1,400 Yale alumni are scheduled to participate in more than 50 lectures, galas and musical performances on campus this weekend, a 72-hour affair the university is calling the Alumni Leadership Conference. The lecture topics seem as diverse as some of the college's returning graduates.

Saturday morning, Anita Hill, the 1980 Yale Law graduate who became famous for her role in Clarence Thomas's confirmation hearing to the Supreme Court, will be part of a discussion on "Yale law school and the law of sexual harrassment."

At 2 p.m., Christopher Durang and Wendy Wasserstein, award-winning playwrights, are scheduled to view and discuss scenes from their plays - Mr. Durang's "For Whom the Southern Belle Tolls," and Ms. Wasserstein's "Heidi Chronicles" - to be performed by Yale undergraduates.

Mr. Wolfe is to talk about how Yale's Graduate School of Arts and Sciences helped him develop his writing and storytelling styles.

Many of the lectures even have suggested homework: readings and Web sites for those attending to review before they arrive.

Although many of the lectures are planned to occur simultaneously, former President Bush, a member of Yale's Class of '48, is the only lecturer scheduled for 3:45 p.m. on Saturday. He plans to discuss his presidency and his opinions of the nation's political future.

It was not clear whether the weekend's events would be accompanied by the vociferous pro-labor demonstrations that graduate students and members of Yale's clerical, maintenance and hospital workers union held on and around campus today.

The most passionate of the demonstrators were graduate students who have called on Yale's administration to recognize their union's effort to organize though a "card count," in which an employer agrees to recognize a union when a majority of an employer's workers sign union membership cards.

Yale opposes the graduate students' efforts to organize, and it dismisses the card-count method as unacceptable.

Asked to explain Yale's opposition to the graduate-student unions, Tom Conroy, Yale's spokesman, read a statement from the university's president, Richard C. Levin.

"Yale is committed to free expression and open debate," Mr. Levin's statement said, "and the secret ballot is the time-honored method used in American democratic elections of all kinds. It is the procedure used in elections by the National Labor Relations Board to protect the rights of employees."

In October, the National Labor Relations Board ruled that graduate teaching and research assistants at New York University had the right to organize as any employees would under federal labor laws. That ruling inspired the beginning of a similar unionization drive at Columbia University in March.

Today's student protests at Yale were intended to catch the attention of some of the college's most distinguished and influential alumni, and they appeared to surprise quite a few.

Mehmet Kahya, a Yale alumnus from the class of 1973 who flew in this weekend from Turkey, observed the protests with unmistakable amusement.

"This reminds me of 1968 and '69, when we had demonstrations all the time," said Mr. Kahya, now the president of the only Yale Club in Istanbul. "If the students want something, I think one has to listen to them."

Across the street, seven undergraduates from the Committee for Freedom, a conservative campus group, taunted the graduate students and held up anti-union slogans scribbled on squares of paper.

"Teaching is part of the educational process - it's not labor," said Bill Rogel, 20, a political science major from Pittsburgh, who held a sign that read, "Unions: Enslaving America one workplace at a time."

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Demonstrators at the Summit Are Greeted With Tear Gas

New York Times
April 21, 2001
By ANTHONY DePALMA
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/21/world/21SUMM.html?pagewanted=print

QUEBEC, April 20 - The Summit of the Americas got under way in this fortified city today with 34 leaders passing through color guards and red-coated Mounties inside the delegates' hall, while outside hooded protesters tangled with riot policemen under billowing clouds of tear gas.

A crowd that the police estimated at 2,000 tore down about 150 feet of a chain-link fence atop concrete barricades that had been erected near the convention center where President Bush and the other leaders of the Western Hemisphere gathered this afternoon.

With gas masks and heavy shields, the police formed a line to push back the protesters, firing dozens of tear gas canisters. High winds often pushed the tear gas back onto the police, and after a while protesters picked up the tear gas containers and lobbed them back.

Many of the people amassed on René Lévesque Boulevard near the site of the summit meeting at the highest point of this city were college age. They had walked about 45 minutes from the campus of Laval University, where they had been allowed to stay overnight. The police said some of the demonstrators belonged to the Black Bloc, a group of anarchists that the authorities said came to Quebec to disrupt the meetings.

But many people, like Madeleine Lepage, 56, of Montreal, came to protest peacefully the hemispheric free trade agreement being discussed at the weekend sessions. She said she expected trouble because the police "put up that fence and provoked people." As she spoke, a tear gas canister exploded about 10 feet away. She covered her head with her sweater and moved a few feet away. "That just makes me want to stay even more," she said.

Some people admitted being swept up in the moment and wanting to be part of the scene as it developed alongside the Quebec Palace of Theater. "I really don't have an opinion about any of this except to say it's all bad," said Patrick Dubé, 23, a computer salesman from Quebec.

The standoff between protesters and the police lasted for several hours and was the kind of scene, reminiscent of disruptions in Seattle in 1999, that the authorities had hoped to avoid.

By tonight, the police had arrested 25 people. One arrest was made this morning after the police searched a car and found material they believed could be used to incite violence. The authorities said four police officers had been injured during clashes throughout the day. But by 8 tonight, the streets were reported quiet.

The demonstrations, carried live on French-language television here, were something that organizers of another summit meeting - the Peoples' Summit - had hoped to avoid. That shadow meeting is being run by citizens groups from throughout the hemisphere that wanted to express serious objections that would not get muddied by the kind of violent images seen today.

Throughout the last week, the Peoples' Summit attracted a few thousand people who came to voice their concerns about an array of issues as diverse as the protesters themselves, without resorting to the mayhem that they fear had clouded their message about the dangers of globalization and free trade.

The hemispheric trade deal - which would bring together 800 million people in North, South and Central America, along with the Caribbean, into the world's largest trading bloc - is so vast an undertaking that it appears to have become a lighting rod for a range of issues, some with very little direct connection to trade.

"We say no to the F.T.A.A., no to the abuse of women, no to the exploitation of labor, no to endangering the environment, no to infringement of the democratic process," said Tom Hanson, an organizer with the Alliance for Responsible Trade. Other groups here are supporting the Zapatista guerrillas in Mexico, indigenous rights, the rights of artists and the rights of farmers. One group concerned with gay rights hung bras and panties on part of the chain-link fence on the perimeter of the official summit meeting.

Nashina Shariff, a 21-year-old student at Queens College in Kingston, Ontario, attended the Peoples' Summit meeting in the morning and then joined the large street protest in the afternoon, during which she had to run from the gas. "Down on the waterfront we went through everything but it felt like we were putting on a show for an empty city," Ms. Shariff said. "Up here, at least, people are being heard by the people inside the summit."

The street battles in Quebec's upland section contrasted sharply with the scenes at the Peoples' Summit meeting on the waterfront, which wound down through the day. For a time, there seemed to be as many people with gray hair as with green hair, as many baby strollers as grungy backpacks.

At one table, Marie-Céline Domingue of Quebec was selling small cotton handbags printed with the symbol of the Peoples' Summit meeting. Mrs. Domingue, who said she was taking part in the meeting because she feared that "in a few years we will all be controlled by multinational corporations," had discounted the bags from the $20 she was charging yesterday to $5.

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Dog lovers protest Bucharest mayor's canine killings

USA Today
04/21/2001
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2001-04-21-dog-killings.htm

BUCHAREST, Romania (AP) - Politicians and dog-lovers rallied outside the home of Bucharest's mayor on Saturday to protest his order to start killing hundreds of stray dogs.

Dozens of demonstrators stood outside Mayor Traian Basescu's upscale villa shouting "assassins." Flooded by appeals, President Ion Iliescu on Saturday telephoned Basescu to urge city hall "to find a civilized and negotiated solution" to the dog problem, a statement from his office said.

Basescu on Thursday declared an adoption program backed by French actress and animal lover Brigitte Bardot to save some of Bucharest's 200,000 stray dogs a failure, and gave the order to start killing the dogs in the city's pounds.

Anca Tomescu, a spokeswoman for Austrian animal rights' group Vier Pfoten - or Four Paws - said on Saturday that 280 dogs had already been killed.

Basescu wouldn't confirm the number, but said there were hardly any dogs left in the pounds. Earlier in the week, there were about 400.

City authorities say packs of stray dogs are health hazard and a financial burden, blaming them for 20,000 bites in the past year.

They blame the glut of strays on the late dictator Nicolae Ceausescu, who demolished tens of thousands of homes, forcing residents to move into cramped apartment blocks and often abandoned their pets. Ceausescu was toppled in a 1989 anti-communist revolt.

Prime Minister Adrian Nastase criticized Bucharest's handling of its stray dog problem, saying it was harming the country's image abroad.

Some protesters carried posters reading: "They looked at you with tender eyes, and you killed them in cold blood."

"I cannot accept this cruelty and sadism" said Adrian Ilie, a 33-year-old manager and owner of three dogs.

The chairman of the nationalist Greater Romania Party, Sen. Corneliu Vadim Tudor, who has saved dozens of stray dogs in the past, joined the protest, calling on the mayor by megaphone to come out of his villa and meet the protesters.

Basescu was not in the villa at the time. Anti-riot police stood by, but no arrests were made. The villa is surrounded by a high metal fence.

Unbowed, Basescu insisted his was the best way to get rid of the dogs. "No protest by animal foundations and politicians will make me stop the plan to kill stray dogs," he said.

Basescu was going to start putting the dogs down earlier in the year, but his plan was suspended on March 1 after a foundation run by Bardot pledged $140,000 over two years to help sterilize strays. Basescu promised about $1.6 million in city money.

Under the plan, sick or aggressive dogs were to be killed immediately while healthy dogs were offered for adoption for 10 days, after which they would be killed.

Some 2,000 dogs were adopted. But on Thursday Basescu called the program off, charging that most of the strays were being let back onto the streets.

Basescu said he would allow dog adoptions to resume on Monday if applicants can guarantee the dogs would not end back on the streets.


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