August 2001

Blast in Tokyo leaves 27 dead
Posted: Friday, August 31, 2001

An explosion which sparked a fire in a building in a busy Tokyo entertainment district has killed at least 27 people and left dozens critically injured, police say.

It is unclear what caused the blast which went off about 0100 (1600GMT Friday) in the popular Kabukicho entertainment district near Shinjuku railway station.

A police spokesman said that a total of 47 people had been taken to hospital, many with critical injuries.

The death toll is likely to rise, with some sources already talking of 44 dead.

Police now believe that they have rescued everyone who was in the building, which houses a mahjong gaming parlour.

The death toll rose sharply from an earlier estimate of nine, as the fire was brought under control and police were able to enter the building.
NHK broadcaster

Activists urge caste debate
Posted: Friday, August 31, 2001

(BBC) Ahead of a major UN conference on racism, due to open in South Africa on Friday, many Indian non-government groups are demanding that caste-ism - discrimination on the grounds of caste - should be added to the agenda.

Indian officials have rejected their demands, saying the issue is not appropriate.

However, activists argue that despite many official measures, caste is still a constant cause of oppression for more than 250 million people at the bottom of the caste hierarchy.

In the small village of Kalvakol, the murder of a young lower caste man by higher caste villagers has highlighted an issue many feel should be discussed at the world forum.

Caste hatred

The man was dragged into the fields surrounding the village, tortured for more than an hour, then burned alive. More

East Timor offers to take boat people
Posted: Friday, August 31, 2001

East Timor has offered to help resolve the impasse surrounding the fate of hundreds of refugees stranded for five days on board a Norwegian cargo ship in the Indian Ocean.

East Timor's interim Foreign Minister Jose Ramos Horta said his country would "favourably" consider an Australian proposal for East Timor to offer temporary shelter to the asylum seekers.

But he attached two conditions: that the international community should pay all the costs of feeding and sheltering the refugees, and that they only stay for a limited time.

East Timor, one of the world's poorest nations is itself only just recovering from the destruction caused by retreating Indonesian forces two years ago when the territory voted for independence. More

Dow closes below 10,000
Posted: Thursday, August 30, 2001

The Dow Jones Industrial Average has closed below the 10,000 level for the first time in nearly five months as US stock markets absorb more gloomy news on the economy and from US companies.

New York's key stock market index, the Dow Jones industrial average, closed down 171.32 points, a 1.71% drop, at 9,919.58. The index has fallen 8% this year.

It last stood below the psychologically important 10,000 level on 12 April.

The Nasdaq technology stocks index fell too, losing 51.5 points or 2.79% to close at1.791.6, its lowest since 9 April.

In criticizing the President on Monday, Congressman Dick Gephardt said, "The numbers don't lie." Mr. Gephardt, you are exactly right. This morning's numbers paint a picture that continues to be troubling. They confirm the importance of the leadership President Bush has been providing since he first took office. They confirm the need for President Bush's economic recovery plan. More

Laser Technique Examines Movement In Nucleus Of Living Cell
Posted: Thursday, August 30, 2001

Source: University Of Illinois At Urbana-Champaign (http://www.uiuc.edu/)

CHICAGO — By colliding two laser beams head-on, scientists at the University of Illinois can measure the movement of chromatin (tiny packets of DNA) in the nucleus of a living cell. "DNA, in the form of chromatin, plays a key role in several important chemical reactions that occur in living cells," said Christopher Bardeen, a UI professor of chemistry.
"Understanding how chromatin motility affects reactions, like the transcription of DNA into RNA for the production of proteins, is essential to extending our knowledge in such areas as cell reproduction, embryology and genetic engineering."

While scientists understand how chemical reactions work in a simple test tube, the dense environment in a living cell presents a far more complicated system.

"A living cell is a very complex reaction vessel, crowded with proteins and other large molecules that must move around and interact," Bardeen said. "If we try to take a cell apart and examine its constituents, we find they no longer behave as they do in intact, living cells." To non-invasively measure chromatin movement in a live frog skin cell, Bardeen and graduate students Sara Davis and Andrew Stout combine a two-photon laser fluorescence technique with a standing-wave, counter-propagating geometry.

First, the cell is treated with a harmless fluorescent dye that selectively labels the DNA. Then, two counter-propagating, near-infrared laser beams are used to create a standing-wave interference pattern in the cell and excite fluorescence through a two-photon transition.

Next, the researchers turn up the laser power briefly, thereby bleaching some of the dye and creating a distinctive signal pattern. As the DNA wiggles around, this pattern gradually washes out and the fluorescence signal recovers.

"If the DNA wasn't moving, we could bleach a pattern and it would remain frozen in the interference signal forever," Bardeen said. "By monitoring the decay of the bleached pattern, we can tell that the DNA is moving, and we can measure that movement to a precision of about 20 nanometers."

Preliminary measurements have hinted at the occurrence of subdiffusion within the cell nucleus, Bardeen said. "The chromatin is wobbling around, apparently bumping into neighboring molecules and not moving as far as it should have in the time elapsed." This indicates that molecular crowding is extremely important at the nanometer length scale, and suggests a major difference between life and death, Bardeen said. "When a cell is dead, we don't see any diffusion occurring. In fact, we don't see any movement in the cell at all."

Cellular motion is not just a simple mechanical operation, Bardeen said. "Motion is somehow connected with life itself. It's one of the things that differentiates a living cell from a lump of DNA."

The researchers will describe their experimental technique and present preliminary data on chromatin movement at the 222nd American Chemical Society national meeting in Chicago. The presentation will take place in room N138, McCormick Place.

Measuring Brain Activity In People Eating Chocolate
Posted: Wednesday, August 29, 2001

Source: Northwestern University (http://www.nwu.edu/)

Measuring Brain Activity In People Eating Chocolate Offers New Clues About How The Body Becomes Addicted

CHICAGO --- Using positron emission tomography scans to measure brain activity in people eating chocolate, a team of U.S. and Canadian neuroscientists believe they have identified areas of the brain that may underlie addiction and eating disorders.

Dana Small, assistant professor of neurology at Northwestern University Medical School, and colleagues found that individuals’ ratings of the pleasantness of eating chocolate were associated with increased blood flow in areas of the brain, particularly in the orbital frontal cortex and midbrain, that are also activated by addictive drugs such as cocaine.

According to an article on their research that appears in the September issue of the journal Brain, the neuroscientists also learned that the brain regions activated by eating chocolate when it is rewarding are quite different from those areas that are activated by eating chocolate when it is perceived as aversive (as a result of having eaten too much chocolate).

Small is conducting research on the brain regions involved in reward because of the role of reward in addiction. She believes this is the first study to look at the brain’s activity in response to changes in the perceived pleasantness of a "primary reinforcer" -- in this case chocolate. More

Too Much Soy Could Lead To Kidney Stones
Posted: Wednesday, August 29, 2001

Source: American Chemical Society (http://www.acs.org/)

New research indicates that soybeans and soy-based foods, a staple in the diets of many health-conscious consumers, may promote kidney stones in those prone to the painful condition. The finding will be published in the September issue of the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, a peer-reviewed journal of the American Chemical Society, the world’s largest scientific society.
The researchers measured nearly a dozen varieties of soybeans for oxalate, a compound that can bind with calcium in the kidney to form kidney stones. They also tested 13 types of soy-based foods, finding enough oxalate in each to potentially cause problems for people with a history of kidney stones, according to Linda Massey, Ph.D., at Washington State University in Spokane. The amount of oxalate in the commercial products easily eclipsed the American Dietetic Association’s 10 milligram-per-serving recommendation for patients with kidney stones, with some foods reaching up to 50 times higher than the suggested limit, she noted.

“Under these guidelines, no soybean or soy-[based] food tested could be recommended for consumption by patients with a personal history of kidney stones,” she said.

No one had previously examined soy foods for oxalate, thus the researchers are the first to identify oxalate in store-bought products like tofu, soy cheese and soy drinks. Other foods, such as spinach and rhubarb, also contain significant oxalate levels, but are not as widely consumed for their presumed health benefits, Massey said.

During their testing, the researchers found the highest oxalate levels in textured soy protein, which contains up to 638 milligrams of oxalate per 85-gram serving. Soy cheese had the lowest oxalate content, at 16 milligrams per serving. Spinach, measured during previous research, has approximately 543 milligrams per one-cup (2 oz. fresh) serving.

Soy, a natural source of protein, fiber and healthy oils, is used to enhance a myriad of foods, ranging from hamburgers to ice cream. It can be ground into flour and used in a variety of grain products, or formed into chunks and ground like meat. Soy is also being studied for its potential to lower cholesterol, reduce bone loss and prevent breast cancer. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration recently approved a new label on foods containing at least 6.25 grams of soy protein per serving that boasts of a reduced risk of cardiovascular disease.

Oxalate, however, cannot be metabolized by the body and is excreted only through urine, Massey said. The compound has no nutritional value, but binds to calcium to form a mass (kidney stones) that can block the urinary system, she said. Further research is needed to find types of soybeans with less oxalate, or to develop a processing method to remove the compound before it reaches consumers, she added.

No one knows precisely why kidney stones occur in particular individuals. But Massey said high levels of oxalate in the urine increase the risk and those with a family history of the ailment are more likely to suffer from the condition; individuals with a low probability of kidney stones are unlikely to be affected by oxalate in soy-based foods.

More than one million people were diagnosed with kidney stones in the United States in 1996, the most recent available data, according to the National Institutes of Health. Stones can range in size from the diameter of a grain of rice to the width of a golf ball. An estimated 10 percent of the U.S. population, mostly men, will develop a kidney stone at some point in their lives, according to the NIH.

Dinosaurs Used Beaks to Sieve Food, Scientists Say
Posted: Wednesday, August 29, 2001

LONDON (Reuters) - Bird-like dinosaurs that roamed the Earth 70 million years ago may not have been as ferocious as scientists had thought, experts said Wednesday.

Fossils of two species of dinosaurs found by scientists in the Gobi Desert in Mongolia and in Canada show the ancient creatures did not use their beaks to prey on animals but to sieve food from water and marshes similar to modern-day ducks and flamingos.
"We are used to conceiving of theropods as dinosaurs with big teeth adapted to hunting large prey, but these beaked theropods adapted very differently and may have lived on tiny invertebrates similar to brine shrimp," said Dr. Peter Makovicky of The Field Museum in Chicago who found the Mongolian fossil.

Theropods are two-legged dinosaurs that are most commonly linked to birds. The fossils described in the science journal Nature belong to a group of ostrich-like dinosaurs called ornithomimids, which were about 15-feet long and seven feet tall. They were among the fastest-running dinosaurs. More

Jamaican PM seeks to 'free up' marijuana
Posted: Wednesday, August 29, 2001

WASHINGTON, (Reuters):

JAMAICAN PRIME Minister P.J. Patterson said yesterday that he found "persuasive" arguments for decriminalising the private use of ganja, the local term for marijuana, or cannabis.

A Commission in Jamaica has recommended decriminalising ganja for private use by adults, for medicinal purposes or as a religious sacrament.

Mr. Patterson, who is on a private visit to Washington, told reporters he wanted Parliament to discuss the Commission's report in the autumn and the Government would then recommend whatever legislative amendments were needed.

Asked what he thought of the report, he said, "I find the recommendations of the report persuasive."

"I want to make it absolutely clear that we are not considering legalising in the sense of making it legal for people to grow, to sell, to export. It is for private use, and, of course, it will have to be confined to adults," he added.

Mr. Patterson said that as part of a decriminalisation process, Jamaica would have to take some diplomatic steps because of international treaties and agreements it had signed.

"That process we intend to begin shortly," he said.

The United States, the main source of visitors for Jamaica's tourism industry, would see decriminalisation as incompatible with a 1988 UN convention on drugs, and such a step could affect Jamaica's status under the annual certification process that Washington conducts, a US official said. More

'Big bang' astronomer dies
Posted: Tuesday, August 28, 2001

The English astronomer who coined the term "Big Bang" to describe an academic theory on the creation of the cosmos, has died at the age of 86.
Despite popularising the theory by giving it a name, Professor Sir Fred Hoyle challenged the belief that the cosmos was caused by a huge explosion about 12,000 million years ago.

He advocated the "steady state" theory - that the cosmos had no beginning but new galaxies were formed as others moved apart.

Sir Fred also put forward the so-called Panspermia Theory, which suggests that life, or the building blocks of life, could be carried to planets by comets or drifting interstellar dust particles. More

Kenya develops drought, disease and frost resistant teas
Posted: Tuesday, August 28, 2001

Teas which are resistant to drought, diseases and frost have been developed in Kenya.

The Tea Research Foundation of Kenya has developed 10 new varieties of tea.

Jeremiah Ruto, who made the announcement in Kirinyaga, says the tea has been developed to suit each ecological zone where it is grown.

He says the yields from 45 new clones which have also been introduced varies from an impressive 3,000kg to 7,000kg of made tea per hectare per year, reports the Sunday Standard.

Genetic materials from tea imported from China, Korea and Malawi have also produced clones that are highly resistant to drought, disease, pests and frost.

Mr Ruto says they are low in caffeine and have high anthocynine, which he says is good for people suffering from diseases like cancer.

He is urging farmers to take advantage of the improved varieties of tea to maximise production. http://www.kenyadaily.com/

Israel yesterday killed the highest ranking Palestinian victim
Posted: Tuesday, August 28, 2001

(Guardian UK) Israel yesterday claimed the highest ranking victim of its assassination policy since the Palestinian uprising began, killing the leader of the Popular Front for the Libertion of Israel with two missiles sent through the window of his office in a Ramallah apartment block.
Mustafa Zibri, universally known as Abu Ali Mustafa, died working alone at his desk.

The office is on the first floor of a block of flats in a well-do-do residential area.

Shortly after his death at 11.15am the PFLP's military wing said that as an "initial response" one of its groups had shot and wounded an Israeli settler near the settlement of Itamar.

A settlers' spokesman said the motorist was critically wounded.

To many Palestinians Mustafa had iconic status. The Marxist faction he led was once second only to Yasser Arafat's Fatah organisation. Thousands took to the streets in protest and there were calls for revenge from across the political spectrum.

The explosions shattered windows and mirrors in adjoining rooms, but otherwise, apart from scorch marks above the north and east facing windows of his corner office, the building was eerily unscathed.

Mustafa was by far the highest ranking of the 40 Palestinians assassinated by Israel since the intifada began.

Arguably he was the most significant since 1988, when Israeli commandos killed Mr Arafat's lieutenant Abu Jihad in Tunis.

His assassination was a departure from Israel's strategy, which has so far focused on eliminating activists of Mr Arafat's Fatah and the Islamist group Hamas rather than members of leftwing factions. More

Iraq 'shoots down' US spy plane
Posted: Tuesday, August 28, 2001

Iraq says it has shot down a US reconnaissance aircraft flying over the south of the country.

State television broadcast pictures of what it said was the mangled wreckage of the plane with American markings.

The Iraqi News Agency (INA) said the plane was equipped with "high-tech equipment", and was brought down near the southern city of Basra, 550 kilometres (340 miles) south of the capital, Baghdad.

The Pentagon admitted earlier on Monday that an unmanned Predator aircraft flying over southern Iraq had not returned from a mission.

Meanwhile, the Iraqi army says a civilian has been killed and three others injured in reprisal US-British air strikes on northern Iraq.

"Enemy planes, coming from Turkish airspace, bombarded civilian installations in northern Iraq, killing one Iraqi and wounding three others," a spokesman said, quoted by INA.

From Ankara, the US military confirmed it had bombed northern Iraq on Monday, in response to their planes being fired upon by Iraq.

Powell boycotts UN racism summit
Posted: Monday, August 27, 2001

(BBC) US Secretary of State Colin Powell will not attend the World Conference against Racism due to begin in Durban, South Africa, on Friday, the State Department has confirmed.

A department official said the US was still debating whether to send any representation at all to the conference.

He made it plain that Washington was still unhappy about language in preparatory documents, which he claims singled out Israel for condemnation.

Just hours earlier, the United Nations human rights chief, Mary Robinson, said delegates had agreed that moves to equate Zionism with racism would be off the agenda. More

Well Preserved Meteorite Yields Clues To Carbon Evolution In Space
Posted: Monday, August 27, 2001

Source: Arizona State University (http://www.asu.edu/asunews/)

The first results are in from the organic analysis of the Tagish Lake Meteorite' a rare' carbon-rich meteorite classified as a "carbonaceous chondrite" that fell on a frozen Canadian lake in January 2000 and is the most pristine specimen ever studied of this group of important space objects.
Carbonaceous chondrite meteorites contain vital clues to the evolution of carbon compounds in our solar system preceding the origin of life.

The analysis' conducted by a team headed by chemist Sandra Pizzarello' a research scientist at Arizona State University' on 4.5 grams taken from the sealed interior of the meteorite' found organic compounds in the meteorite with some similarities to other known carbonaceous chondrites' but also clear differences -- most notably the near-absence of the amino acids found in some meteorites studied before.

In an article scheduled to appear in the August 24 issue of the online journal Science Express (with publication in Science to follow) the team notes that the chemistry of the Tagish Lake Meteorite appears to preserve organics that accumulated or developed in the early history of the Solar System – including molecular bubbles of carbon (fullerenes or "buckyballs") containing the noble gasses helium and argon in a ratio similar to the gas and dust cloud that formed the planets -- and thus perhaps reflects an early stage in a process of evolution of complex carbon compounds in space.

"The chemistry here is different from that we have seen in any other meteorite'" said Pizzarello. "It’s simple' when compared with Murchison (a famous carbon meteorite found in Australia in 1969 that contained numerous amino acids and a variety of other organic compounds) and probably represents a separate line of chemical evolution. However' it still includes compounds that are identical to biomolecules."

Other members of the research team include Yongsong Huang from the Department of Geological Sciences at Brown University; Luann Becker from the Institute for Crustal Studies at the University of California Santa Barbara; Robert J. Poreda from the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences' University of Rochester; George Cooper from the NASA Ames Research Center; and Ronald A. Nieman and Michael Williams' both also from ASU.

The Science paper notes that many of the organic compounds found in the Tagish Lake sample have also been found in other meteorites' but that the distribution of compounds is different' particularly for the amino acids and carboxylic acids.

"Some people have been disappointed that we found virtually no amino acids' but scientifically this is very exciting'" Pizzarello said. "This meteorite shows the complexity of the history of organic compounds in space -- it seems to have had a distinct evolution.

"We found some compounds identical to some in Murchison that show the same 'interstellar connection’ in their abundance of deuterium (heavy hydrogen)' while some others differ from Murchison in amounts and variety'" said Pizzarello' meaning that for some groups of organic molecules' only the simplest species were found in Tagish Lake' as opposed to a broader distribution of species found in Murchison. "Overall' Tagish Lake represents a simpler' more unaltered stage than we have seen before."

What emerges from the analyses is evidence for what Pizzarello calls "a different outcome" of organic chemical evolution in space likely to have happened during the formation and development of the solar system' "but one that still might have contributed molecular precursors of biomolecules to the origins of life'" she noted.

Judiciary defends Iran floggings
Posted: Monday, August 27, 2001

Amid rising concern over a recent series of public floggings, the Iranian judiciary has said that such punishments were only being inflicted on those whose crimes were themselves committed in public.

In recent weeks, several hundred young men are reported to have been publicly lashed for offences including drunkenness and harassing women.

The level of concern provoked by the spate of public floggings and several recent hangings was evident at a meeting between several senior government ministers called by the parliamentary national security committee.

They included the ministers of the interior, foreign affairs, intelligence and justice, as well as the Tehran police chief.

Newspaper accounts of the meeting said all the ministers expressed their opposition to the practice of public lashing. Iran News

Israel kills key Palestinian leader
Posted: Monday, August 27, 2001

(BBC) The leader of the radical Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine has been killed in an Israeli attack.
Palestinian sources say Abu Ali Mustafa died when at least two missiles struck his office in the West Bank town of Ramallah, not far from the offices of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat.

Israeli military forces confirmed that they had carried out the attack, saying the missiles were fired by a helicopter gunship.

Mustafa is the highest-ranking Palestinian official to be assassinated by the Israelis during the 11-month Palestinian uprising.

A spokesman for the PLFP in Damascus condemned the attack and vowed revenge.

"The blood of Abu Ali Mustafa is very precious ... we will respond to this crime in a bigger way. Israel will pay a heavy price for its crime," Maher al-Taher told the Reuters news agency.

Mustafa - whose real name was Mustafa al-Zibri - was in his early 60s and had been Secretary General of the PFLP since founding leader George Habash stepped down in April 2000. More

French protesters destroy GM crops
Posted: Sunday, August 26, 2001

(BBC) Protesters have destroyed two fields of genetically modified (GM) crops near Montelimar in the Drome region of southern France.

It was part of a campaign launched last week by the radical Farmers' Confederation led by Jose Bove.

The GM crop protesters marched into the fields armed with machetes and shears and began systematically chopping down the maize.

They collected the maize stalks and dumped them outside the offices of the regional government.

The protesters said the crops were being grown to test their resistance to weedkillers.

They are concerned the modified genes could spread into the environment. Full Story

Arabs criticise US Mid-East inaction
Posted: Sunday, August 26, 2001

(BBC) Egypt and Jordan have accused the US of failing to curb the escalating violence between the Palestinians and Israelis.

The criticism came as Israeli tanks and helicopters are reported to have attacked Palestinian security posts in the West Bank, at the end of another day of retaliatory violence.

Palestinian sources say the helicopters fired missiles after nightfall at a target in Tulkarm, while tanks fired on three police checkpoints near Ramallah.

Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak warned that if the US continued to hold back, security in the whole region would be jeopardised.

"The situation requires America take a stand. If the Americans hesitate, it is dangerous for the region, for our interests and even for the Israeli people," he said.

Both Egypt and Jordan have peace agreements with Israel. Full Story

Angolan: Ambush of Train Kills More than 100 Civilians
Posted: Sunday, August 26, 2001

Washington, DC August 13, 2001 – Angola’s Ambassador to the United States Josefina Pitra Diakité today denounced a UNITA ambush of a civilian train in which more than 100 people were killed and another 140 were injured. "This latest attack on a civilian target by the rebels makes it clear that Jonas Savimbi has no interest in peace, nor is he interested in reconciliation. His are terrorist tactics: he deliberately chose a civilian target that had no military component. There were no military personnel on board, and no military equipment. There was not even a military escort,” Ambassador Diakité explained. "All he succeeded in doing was killing innocent civilians, including a number of women and children. Such acts should be seen for what they are – terrorism. They must be condemned by the international community," the Ambassador added.
On August 10 a train carrying 500 passengers hit a land mine and was derailed in Zenga do Itombe in Cuanza Norte province in northern Angola. As people began evacuating the train, UNITA rebels opened fire on them, killing many. A number of other passengers were killed when oil drums that the train carried exploded. This attack is only the latest in a series of hit-and-run guerrilla attacks in the area by Savimbi’s rebels.

Despite a 1994 UN-brokered peace agreement, Jonas Savimbi has repeatedly violated the terms of that accord and waged war against the government of Angola and its citizens. As a result of Savimbi’s violations of the peace agreement the international community has instituted wide-ranging sanctions on Savimbi and his rebels.

# # #
For Further Information Contact:
Evaristo José, Second Secretary - Press
202-530-0900
evarjose@angola.org

Aaliyah Killed in Plane Crash
Posted: Sunday, August 26, 2001

(ABC News) Aaliyah died Saturday, Aug. 25, 2001, when a small plane that was to carry her and eight others back to the United States crashed after takeoff in the Bahamas.

Investigators waded through the debris today trying to determine why the plane that was carrying the singer and eight others crashed last night. Officials say it looks as if one of the plane's engines may have failed.
The Cessna 402 crashed shortly after takeoff, just a few hundred feet from the runway in perfect weather, according to officials. The crash happened with little warning. Investigators say Aaliyah died instantly in the crash.

There was only one survivor who was flown to Florida for treatment. The passenger was in critical condition. More

UK population - above 60 million
Posted: Saturday, August 25, 2001

( Guardian UK ) The population of the United Kingdom has passed 60 million, fuelled by record immigration and increasing life expectancy.
It is growing at the fastest rate since the baby boom of the Sixties. Almost all the growth is in the South of England. The number of people living in the North and Scotland is declining.

The latest government estimates say the UK population rose from 59,755,700 on 30 June last year to 59,862,800 on 1 January 2001. If that growth rate continued, this country's sixty millionth resident was born last Tuesday.

The total remained a few million through the Middle Ages, but started rising dramatically after the Industrial Revolution. It shot past 20m in 1818 and rose to 40m in 1897. By 1948, it reached 50m.

The Government will not publish official figures, based on this year's census, until next summer. However, Roma Chappell, population statistician for the Office for National Statistics, said: 'If the growth this year has continued at the same rate as last year, then we would be passing 60m at about this time.'

Offensive virus breaks Windows
Posted: Saturday, August 25, 2001

( vnunet.com ) Security experts have identified a "very bad" ActiveX-based Trojan, dubbed Offensive, that cracks the Windows registry on an infected PC and kills off the operating system.
The Trojan is transferred via email as an apparently innocuous .html web link.

If it is executed, the target web page displays a button saying 'Start' that, if pressed, destroys the system registry.

On an infected machine it is impossible to run any programs and the OS will lock, preventing a system shut-down. Additionally, it prevents subsequent access to the operating system, even in Safe Mode.

"The virus is very bad if you get it on your system because it totally locks you out," Andre Post, senior researcher at Symantec's Antivirus Research Centre, told vnunet.com.

"It takes quite some knowledge to fix the systems after they have become infected".

Symantec advised home computer users who have become infected with Offensive to seek professional advice, as the only way to repair the damage is using regedit from a DOS command line to fix the damaged registry strings.

The antivirus firm said that it was vital to apply the latest patch for Internet Explorer 5.5 to fight the Trojan.

"The only thing here is that Offensive does not spread by itself. It's got to be manually emailed," Post said.

"If it was self replicating, the threat would be much worse."

Neuroscientist searching for keys to memory
Posted: Friday, August 24, 2001

(CNN) -- Working memory is one of the essential components that makes us human. Whether you are performing a complex task such as playing Beethoven on the piano or just looking up a phone number or driving a car, you are drawing on your working memory.

"Almost everything you do probably has a working memory component to it," said Patricia Goldman-Rakic.

The neuroscientist is credited with providing the first blueprint of this critical area of the human mind, nestled in the prefrontal cortex of the brain.

Working memory is something that most people take for granted until they start losing it, due to the gradual aging process or something more acute.

"You might have trouble remembering where you left your keys, what is the name of that person. Those are the issues, the problems that pop up when your working memory system is deficient," Goldman-Rakic said.

Her courage to delve into what scientists say is the most complex part of the brain is providing insight into what drives normal behavior as well as what causes disorders such as schizophrenia, Parkinson's disease and Alzheimer's disease.

"She took a risk by starting to study something that there wasn't already a really firm foundation she could build on," said Stephen Kosslyn, a psychologist at Harvard University. "Most science is incremental. It's building on what's been done before. Every once in a while someone does something new and opens it up, and that was her."

After she became involved in her research, Goldman-Rakic said it dawned on her that "everyone else was over there and I am over here and I'm pretty lonely."

The Unfairness of American Elections
Posted: Friday, August 24, 2001

United States of America is the self-professed greatest democracy in the world. Besides the obvious offensiveness of such claim to countries that are equally democratic and that can claim a longer history of civil liberties than the US can, the very idea flies in the face of the actual structure of the American electoral system. This has been painfully demonstrated by the recent squabble between George Bush and Al Gore on who really won the election.

Let’s start with democracy 101. Ever since ancient Athens, democracy means the rule of the people (though for a long time the “people” have not included women, economically “lower” classes and slaves). By that simple criterion, the American system is undemocratic because it allows someone to win the presidential election even though she lost the popular vote—as has just happened to Gore and did happen a few other times before. This bizarre situation can occur because in the US the people don’t really vote, electors chosen by each State do. And since each State is guaranteed a certain number of electoral votes which is not commensurate to its population, rural states are over-represented and Mr. Bush won by acreage rather than votes. As a citizen of New Hampshire put it recently during one of many interviews the media broadcasted after the 2000 elections, “If we went to a proportional system, New Hampshire would count for nothing.” As it should, if this were really a democracy.

According to historians, there was originally a good reason for such a peculiar system. The United States were not really united, but rather resembled a loose confederation of largely independent entities, Swiss-style. Under those conditions, it was only natural to give precedence to the abstract entity of a “State” rather than to each of its citizens. Of course, the United States has never really become a nation—witness the harsh debates and court rulings on the limits of State vs. Federal power, but the fact remains that such a system is anything but democratic.

A second major fault with the greatest democracy of the world is that typically a minority of its population bothers to go to the voting booth. Furthermore, Republicans in Congress have strenuously fought to keep it that way, for example opposing bills such as the motor registration act, which would make it easier for people to register to vote. Now, in real democracies, the percentage of people casting their ballots is much higher than the pitiful American average, and people are automatically registered based on their biographical data (they receive the registration at home when they turn 18—but of course this would mean that the Government needs to know who you are and where you live, God forbid).

The situation is so bad that several years ago the Christian coalition devised a tactic to get their favorite people elected, called “the 12% strategy.” Since about 50% of eligible Americans are actually registered to vote, and of these little more than half bother to show up to cast their ballots, you need to get the vote of half of these (roughly 12% of the whole population) to be insured victory. On top of this, add the even stranger primary system, in which only a tiny fraction of really devoted people vote, thereby dramatically influencing the general election by eliminating candidates that might do well with the population at large but don’t fit the opinions of a skewed minority of activists. Here is some food for thought: twenty more millions of people watched the 2001 Super Bowl than cast their vote in the 2000 elections.

One could go even further and suggest that no current voting system is actually democratic, no matter the country in which it is implemented. A recent article by Dana Mackenzie in Discover magazine (November 2000) clearly demonstrates why. It turns out that people have been studying voting systems for quite a while, and better options than the proportional system adopted by most countries have been clearly devised—indeed, they have been historically used by different cultures in different times.

Perhaps the simplest alternative is what is known as approval voting, which dates back to the 13th century, when it was used in Venice to elect magistrates. In this system, a person casts one vote for every candidate that she considers qualified. It works much like an opinion poll, with the difference that the results are added up to determine the winner. One of the advantages of approval voting is that you can vote for a candidate likely to loose—say, Ralph Nader—and don’t feel like you are wasting your vote: he will get a good percentage of points while you can also cast your vote for somebody who is more likely to actually win. If approval voting had been used in the 2000 US elections, John McCain would have won, based on polls conducted in February. Furthermore, approval voting would have spared Minnesota from electing Jesse Ventura, and New Hampshire from handing the State’s primary to Pat Buchanan in 1996.

Another alternative to standard voting systems is the Borda count, named after a French physician and hero of the American Revolution. This system was actually in use in the Roman senate at least since 105 CE. It is similar to the method used to rank football and basketball college teams: each voter ranks all the candidates from top to bottom. If we take a poll by the Sacramento Bee during California’s open primaries in 2000, McCain would have beaten Gore 48 to 43, Gore would have bettered Bush 51 to 43, and McCain would have surpassed Bush 50 to 45. Overall, the final rank would have been McCain 98, Gore 94, and Bush 88. Quite a different outcome from what actually happened!

In both the approval and the Borda systems voters are asked something that is missing from the current system: they need to choose who they will pick if their favorite is eliminated. More powers to the voters, a better democracy.

Of course, neither system is perfect, but the point is that most people in the US don’t even realize that their way is one of the worst among those currently practiced by the world’s democracies, and serious discussion hasn’t begun in any country on how to improve the actual democratic value of our voting systems. Given that we have to live with the results for several years to come, wouldn’t it be worth taking a serious look at the alternatives?

© by Massimo Pigliucci, 2001

Only Fijians to lead: Rt Inoke
Posted: Friday, August 24, 2001

(The Daily Post) Only indigenous Fijians should lead Fiji, says former Opposition Leader Ratu Inoke Kubuabola.

Ratu Inoke says Fijian parties are not running short of experienced and capable leaders.

"Chaudhry must face reality; he is not a man for peace, he is for confrontation; he is trying to take what is not his for the taking, " Ratu Inoke said.

"The Fijian parties have leaders more experienced in government than Chaudhry, more skilled than he is in administration; more knowledgeable and much fairer in their dealings with the private sector, much better trained to do business with the international community.

"Fijian leaders in Fijian parties, above all in SVT, have a much broader acceptance among Fiji's diverse cultures, than the communal-minded and communally-driven Mahendra Chaudhry.

Ratu Inoke stressed that Mr Chaudhry is not the man to lead the country.

"The reality should tell Mahendra Chaudhry why he just doesn't qualify to lead this country.

"This general election is a consequence of May 19 2000 and its related events."

Substantial Resistance To HIV Infection Tied To Genetic Mutation
Posted: Thursday, August 23, 2001

Source: New York University Medical Center And School Of Medicine (http://www.med.nyu.edu/)

Scientists have found that people who carry one copy of a mutation that protects cells against HIV infection may be partially resistant to the virus causing AIDS. The new finding is reported in a study by a multi-center research consortium that included institutions in New York City, Boston, Seattle, and San Francisco.

"We looked for this mutation in a large cohort of high-risk people who were HIV-negative. We found that bisexual and homosexual Caucasian men with one copy of the mutation had a 70% reduced risk of HIV infection compared with men who didn't carry the mutation at all," says Michael Marmor, Ph.D., Professor of Environmental Medicine and Medicine at New York University School of Medicine, the first author of the study. In previous studies it had been established that men with two mutant copies of the CCR5 gene had even stronger resistance to HIV infection. More

Drugs trafficking arrest leads police to Israeli underworld
Posted: Wednesday, August 22, 2001

(The Guardian) Oded Tuito was alleged to be a global pill-pusher, whose Israeli mafia group was the biggest operator in a booming international trade in the lucrative "hug drug".
Now Mr Tuito, who allegedly stamped his ecstasy pills with the Star of David and the Tweety Bird cartoon character that reminded him of his own name, is sitting in a Spanish prison.

Picked up in the eastern coastal town of Castelldefels, just outside Barcelona, his arrest has provoked a deluge of extradition requests and police inquiries from four continents.

Mr Tuito, 40, had half a dozen homes and as many aliases. In Spain he called himself Adel Tonitou and lived in a luxury Barcelona hotel. He kept his wife and family in France but travelled the world, allegedly directing his operations while on the move.

"The fact that he could be based in Spain, away from his main production and distribution bases, allowed him greater security," a Spanish police spokesman asserted yesterday.

Mr Tuito was arrested in May, but allegedly continued directing shipments from his cell in Madrid's Soto del Real prison until a global police operation against the rest of his gang began two weeks ago. More

Notting Hill Carnival security bill tops £4m
Posted: Wednesday, August 22, 2001

(BBC) A massive police operation at this weekend's Notting Hill Carnival will cost the taxpayer £4m - the most spent on security in carnival history.
Security at this year's event will be tighter than ever in an attempt to prevent the violence which marred last year's festivities.

The police operation involves 10,000 officers, 1,500 more than last year, and the carnival is expected to draw more than two million people over Bank Holiday Sunday and Monday.

During the 2000 event there were two murders, 19 stabbings and 129 arrests.
More than 600 stewards - 200 up on last year - have been recruited to increase security and 80 extra CCTV cameras will cover this year's route.

At least one police officer will accompany each of the 100 floats and, for the first time, officers will carry hand-held metal detectors to identify knives and other weapons. More

Protesters sue Washington ahead of demonstrations
Posted: Tuesday, August 21, 2001

(Reuters) WASHINGTON — Lawyers for anti-globalization activists filed a lawsuit against the Washington police department Monday, arguing that planned measures to contain demonstrations during the International Monetary Fund and World Bank meetings were unconstitutional.

The lawsuit argued that creating no-protest zones in the nation's capital, erecting 2 miles of 9-foot high fencing and shutting down streets to contain demonstrations planned for next month violated the protesters' right to demonstrate at the meetings.

The preparations come as Washington police braced for as many as 100,000 demonstrators, who are expected to take to the streets of Washington, D.C., on Sept. 29-30 to protest against globalization, third-world debt, and the policies of President Bush, the IMF and the World Bank. More

Team Finds Tombs Near Birthplace Of Genghis Khan
Posted: Monday, August 20, 2001

Source: University Of Chicago (http://www.uchicago.edu)

An American-Mongolian research team has discovered an enclave of tombs, apparently associated with persons of high status, on a hill near Genghis Khan’s probable birthplace and near the site where he was proclaimed emperor of all the Mongols in 1206, according to an announcement made jointly in Chicago and Ulaanbaatar on Thursday.
No fewer than 20 unopened tombs have been discovered on a 600-foot elevation that is part of a walled burial ground known locally by a variety of names such as "the Almsgivers Castle," "Chinggis’ Castle" and "Red Rock." Additionally, there are roughly 40 unopened graves in lower area of the burial enclave. The site is near the town of Batshireet in the northern area of Hentii Province, about 200 miles northeast of Ulaanbaatar, the capital of Mongolia.

"The location of this site is intriguing," said John Woods, Professor of History at the University of Chicago and U.S. Academic Director for the Genghis Khan Geo-Historical Expedition. "We plan to explore this site further with additional experts from the U.S. and Mongolia, along with international specialists in Central Asian history. This is an unprecedented discovery; however, we need to investigate the area archaeologically before we can confirm this exciting finding."

Professor Sh. Bira, the chief Mongolian academic for the expedition and Secretary General of the International Association for Mongolian Studies, has expressed great enthusiasm about this discovery.

The tombs were discovered this summer, during the expedition’s second season of surveying sites associated with the life and activities of Genghis Khan, whose exact burial place has never been established. The tombs are encircled by a two-mile wall varying in height from 9 to 12 feet. The wall is constructed without mortar of stones of various sizes and diverse geological composition.

Established in 1995 by Chicago attorney Maury A. Kravitz, the Genghis Khan Geo-Historical Expedition was created to enhance general awareness of and stimulate academic interest in the history of Genghis Khan and the Mongol Empire.

Expedition members have produced a preliminary plan of the site and photographed portions of the structure. They have also traced an ancient roadway passing from the southern wall of the enclave to its western wall, giving access to the higher levels.

Pottery shards found in the burial ground provide ambiguous evidence about the date of the cemetery. The shards were on the surface and may pre-date the era of Genghis Khan, who was born in 1162.

A crew from award-winning news journalist Bill Kurtis’ new, High Definition video production company, KURTIS HD, has traveled to Mongolia to document the Genghis Khan Expedition for the past two years. Currently in production is a High Definition television special that will showcase these discoveries.

Genghis Khan, whose original name was Temüjin, succeeded his father at age 13 as head of his family. His early years were marked by an intense struggle to secure his leadership in the face of overwhelming difficulties, but the Mongol leader soon demonstrated his military genius, subjugating both Mongol tribes and hostile neighbors. By 1206, Temüjin was master of almost all of Mongolia. In that year, a convocation of the subjugated tribes proclaimed him Genghis Khan ("Oceanic Lord"), leader of the united Mongol nation.

Genghis Khan invaded northern China and completed a successful campaign in 1215 with the capture of Beijing. He then turned west and conquered parts of the eastern Islamic world. At the time of his death in 1227, his armies controlled a landmass reaching from Beijing to the Caspian Sea. His generals raided Persia and Russia, and his successors continued to push by extending their power over China, Central Asia, and most of the Middle East and Russia to create the largest contiguous land empire in human history and one of its longest lived notions of dynastic rule.

Editor's Note: The original news release can be found at
http://www-news.uchicago.edu/releases/01/010817.khan.shtml

SA activist Donald Woods dies
Posted: Sunday, August 19, 2001

(BBC) The South African newspaper editor and anti-apartheid activist, Donald Woods, has died of cancer at the age of 67.
Mr Woods had drawn world attention to the case of Steve Biko, the black consciousness leader who was killed by South African security forces while in detention.

Mr Woods died in hospital near London surrounded by his wife Wendy and five children, his daughter Jane said.

She said the former South African President, Nelson Mandela, had telephoned his good wishes several days ago.

The South African High Commissioner in London, Cheryl Carolus, described Mr Woods as a "truly great son of South Africa".

She said that, though his great life of courage had ended, his spirit lived on with his people. More

Crossing the Land Bridge
Posted: Sunday, August 19, 2001

Researchers Believe First Americans May Have Come From Japan

By Reagan Duplisea , Staff

The first humans to enter the New World may have started their journey in prehistoric Japan, according to a comparative analysis of skulls from early Americans and modern peoples.

This latest theory on the origins of the first Americans was published July 31 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences by an international team of researchers led by C. Loring Brace of the University of Michigan’s Museum of Anthropology.

courtesy of the University of Michigan
The early American skulls — some up to 12,000 years old — most resemble the prehistoric Jomon people of Japan, Brace says. Statistically, he said, those Native American skulls (from along the U.S.-Canada border) are closer to the Jomon than to living Chinese, Mongols, Koreans, Japanese and Southeast Asians. More

Giving Cannibalism A Human Face
Posted: Friday, August 17, 2001

Source: Vanderbilt University (http://www.vanderbilt.edu/)

Cannibalism is one of the last real taboos of modern society. As such, it evokes a powerful mixture of fascination and revulsion. So strong are these preconceptions, in fact, that both the public and the scientific community have repeatedly fallen prey to them. “We assume that cannibalism is always an aggressive, barbaric and degrading act,” objects Beth A. Conklin, an associate professor of anthropology at Vanderbilt University. “But that is a serious over-simplification, one that has kept us from realizing that cannibalism can have positive meanings and motives that are not that far from our own experience.”
Conklin’s perspective is based on an intensive study of the Wari’, a group of native people who live in the Amazon rainforest. Her fieldwork provides detailed confirmation about how and why the Wari’ practiced an elaborate form of cannibalism until the 1960s, when government workers and missionaries forced them to abandon the practice.

“The Wari’ are unusual because they practiced two distinct forms of cannibalism in warfare and funerals,” Conklin says. “However, the two practices were very different and had very different meanings. Eating enemies was an intentional expression of anger and disdain for the enemy. But at funerals, when they consumed members of their own group who died naturally, it was done out of affection and respect for the dead person and as a way to help survivors cope with their grief.”

Conklin has focused on the less understood practice of funerary cannibalism in her new book, Consuming Grief: Compassionate Cannibalism in an Amazonian Society [University of Texas Press]. “I hope that this book will make people think more deeply about the meanings that the body has in human relationships, and to consider that other cultures may have understood those in ways that made the destruction and transformation of the body through cannibalism seem to be the best, most respectful, most loving way to deal with the death of someone you care about.”

From 1985 to 1987, the anthropologist spent 19 months living in Wari’ communities plus seven months collecting data at an indigenous health clinic and in national archives. Return trips in 1991, 1999 and 2000 allowed her to confirm her information and interpretations. The case for Wari’ cannibalism is based on the testimony of the Wari’ themselves, corroborated by accounts of missionaries and government officials who said they had witnessed cannibalism at Wari’ funerals in the 1950s and 1960s.

Conklin interviewed dozens of older Wari’ who remembered life before contact and talked freely about observing and participating in funerals in which cannibalism was practiced. At about the same time two Brazilian scientists—Aparecida Vilaça, from the National Museum in Rio de Janeiro and Denise Meireles from the University of Brasilia—conducted independent research among the Wari’, producing findings that closely correspond with Conklin’s.

During her discussions with older people, Conklin learned that some were uncomfortable with the practice of burial, considering it to be a less respectful and less comforting way to treat the passing of someone you care about. “In the past, the idea of leaving the body of a loved one in the dirt and letting it rot was as repulsive to the Wari’ as the idea of eating human flesh is to us,” Conklin explains.

As she began exploring these attitudes, Conklin found that the models developed by anthropologists and psychologists to explain cannibalism did not fit. The Wari’ did not eat human flesh because they needed the protein. They were not trying to absorb the dead person’s life force, courage or other qualities. They were not acting out aggression, dominance or a desire to hold onto the deceased.

Instead, Conklin concluded that the practice was deeply rooted in the world view of the Wari’ and their understanding of how memories affect the grieving process. Like a number of other groups in South America, the Wari’ have rituals designed to help bereaved relatives cope with their sorrow by eliminating things associated with the dead, which provoke sadness by reminding survivors of their loss and also may attract the dead person’s ghost.

To loosen attachments between the living and the dead, Wari’ burn all the dead person’s possessions, including the house he or she lived in. They stop speaking the person’s name and change the appearance of the village and other places where the dead person spent time.

“Consuming the body is part of this process as well,” Conklin says. “Far more than we do, the Wari’ see the body as a place where personality and individuality reside, and so, of all the things that remind you of dead people, the corpse is the strongest reminder. So they believed it was important to transform the corpse in order to help transform survivors’ memories of their dead relative.”

This transformation also involved developing new images of the dead person joining the animal world. According to their traditional beliefs, the spirits of dead relatives go to an underground world from which they return in the form of wild, pig-like animals called peccaries that are a major source of meat for the Wari’.

The ancestor-peccaries seek out hunters from their own families and offer themselves to be shot, ensuring that their meat will go to feed the people they love. This special relationship with peccaries is part of a native cosmology centered on ideas about communication and transformations between humans and animals.

To us, cannibalism looks like an extreme, exotic practice. “By stepping outside our own cultural framework to try to understand cannibalism from the Wari’ point of view, however, we can see some of the realities of social life, especially the ways of caring and coping, that unite us all as human beings,” she says. “Thinking about cannibalism as a way to cope with grief and mourning gives it a more human—even humane—face,” Conklin says.

BBC News Highlights
Posted: Friday, August 17, 2001

Philippines hotel fire kills 60

(BBC) More than 60 people have been killed after fire swept through a hotel in the Philippines early on Saturday morning.
Many of the victims are thought to have suffocated in their rooms after thick smoke spread through the building. More

Khartoum braced for flood misery

In the Sudanese capital, Khartoum, residents are bracing themselves for flood waters expected to reach the city within days.

The Nile, which snakes through the city, is swollen, fast-moving and perilously close to the top of its banks. More

Children riot in Kinshasa

Dozens of street children are reported to have been arrested in a police swoop in Kinshasa, the capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo, after a policeman shot dead a boy he saw stealing.
Witnesses said that, when the boy was caught in Kinshasa's central market, he threw boiling water at a police officer from a cooking pot and tried to run away. More

White farmers bail ruling delayed again

The High Court in Zimbabwe has again postponed its decision on a bail application by 21 white farmers detained after they clashed with black land-invaders.
The farmers, who were charged with beating up government supporters who invaded a white-owned farm in the northern region of Chinhoyi, have spent the past 12 days in prison. More

UN plane hit in DR Congo

A UN plane has been hit by 14 bullets over rebel-controlled territory in the eastern part of DR Congo. More

Lighter skin, darker lives
Posted: Thursday, August 16, 2001

(SIMON DENYER) As they celebrate their engagement, a Congolese man boasts about his fiancee's beauty and declares himself the luckiest man in the world.
Seconds later, a lighter skinned woman enters the room and all heads turn towards her.

"What a beauty. What skin colour," the awe-struck fiancé declares. All the men in the room flock to the woman's side, leaving the wife-to-be forlorn and alone at her table.

The advertisement for Rico Lemon Plus cream promises African women lighter skin, and with it the admiration of their menfolk.

But women across the continent are finding the dream turn to into a nightmare as they ruin their skin in an ill-starred quest to bleach it.

Most of the popular creams and soaps contain chemicals like hydroquinone and mercury, the latter a powerful poison the use of which has long been outlawed in skin-care products. More

From Union to common market?
Posted: Thursday, August 16, 2001

(Munetsi Madakufamba And Zarina Geloo.) African leaders have buried with honours the 38-year old Organization of African Unity (OAU) at July's Summit in Lusaka, which has seen the birth of a transformed, stronger African Union (AU), modelled along the lines of other regional groupings in the Americas, Asia and Europe.

In a bid to achieve economic development and move the continent into the mainstream of global economics, the summit merged the South African-led Millennium Africa Recovery Plan (MAP) with Senegal's proposal, code-named Omega, into one blueprint called "A New African Initiative".

The summit elected former Ivorian Foreign Minister Amara Essy as the new secretary-general, replacing Tanzanian Salim Ahmed Salim whose third term as head of the OAU effectively ends in September. Zambian President Frederick Chiluba takes over as the new chair of the AU until the next summit. OAU headquarters will remain in Addis Ababa.

"These are initiatives intended to forge Africa ahead in its socio-economic recovery," said Chiluba, who added that the important decisions made needed to be implemented without delay. More

ANGUILLA - A.I.M. letter to the Governor Peter Johnstone
Posted: Thursday, August 16, 2001

South Hill
Anguilla
B.W.I.
July 30, 2001

Government House
Old Ta
Anguilla

FAO, H. E. the Governor Peter Johnstone

Dear Sir:

We the members of the Anguilla Independence Movement hereby voice our concern with respect to the current relationship between Britain and its Overseas Territories (OT’s) in general and Anguilla in particular.

In recent weeks the Government of Anguilla and the HM Government has agreed to undertake a review of the Constitution of Anguilla. In light of this, our organization has raised a number of issues with regard to the purpose and the process of the review. In his general overview, the Chairman of the Constitutional Reform Committee, stated that the following areas of the Constitution will be reviewed, namely:

- Fundamental Rights and Freedoms
- Composition and form of Legislature
- Composition and form of the Executive
- Belonger status and citizenship
- Civil service and Ombudsman
- The electoral process and the attendant legislation, and
- The appellate court system

The above areas of the constitution to be reformed were selected by the Chairman prior to the establishment of the committee. We are not satisfied with the present composition of the committee as it is not representative of the full political opinion of Anguilla. We feel compelled to raise this issue because Anguilla is presently at a crossroad in terms of its development. Despite numerous objections and pleas to the Chairman, there has been no change to the composition of the committee. For example, HM loyal Opposition is not represented on the Committee and to the best of our knowledge has not been consulted on the process.

Secondly, Anguillians are very concerned over the British Overseas Territories bill 2001. We have not had the opportunity to learn about the implications and ramifications of the said bill as it relates to among other things, non-reciprocity, the inalienable right to seek full independence, UK and EU taxes and legislation etc.

In a letter appearing in the May 4th 2001 issue of St. Helena News sent to Bishop John Salt of the citizenship commission of St. Helena, from Prime Minister Tony Blair, it is stated that, "the principles on which the British Overseas Territories bill will be based, has been settled" and that it "is a mater for the lawyers and officials rather than elected members" of the OT's. We consider this is a serious breach of the democratic process and an insult to the elected members and peoples of all the OTC’s, particularly in light of the British Government’s White Paper, namely, Partnership for Progress and Prosperity which stresses the need for transparency, accountability and good governance based on the accepted tenets of democracy.

We hereby appeal to you to use your good offices to address the issues raised. We look forward to your speedy response.

Yours respectfully,
A.I.M.

Response to School Shootings and White Denial
Posted: Tuesday, August 14, 2001

E-mail: magickcrest@Yahoo.com
name: CJ

I noticed many articles in where a black writer is telling people what Caucasians think? In one article he noted that Caucasians move away from poor people and black people thinking they will face less crime then school shootings happen...

This has no logic the truth is that school shootings are very rare and they DO face far less crime, for example in Atanta, Georgia where the population is 75% white about 25% black crimes against whites are very high. In the US 1,700,000 crimes happen against whites each year perpetrayed by blacks, and whites only commit 30,000 crimes against backs, and Atlanta has the highest crime rate against whites in the US. So we must ask ourselves why are they being targeted by so any blacks and is it not obvious as to this is why the majority of whites prefer to stay around only Caucasians and a rising exceptance of Asians as well with in our community. This may be only one element of the stuation. Another is respect. Caucasians have taken the burden of all these crimes upon them, the young Caucasians of today know not racism against blacks, but rather know of a hatred towards them by blacks. And anytime that a Caucasian or Asian will defend themselves they are labeled "racist".

I am a 21 year old Caucasian male and I have 10 white friends and 7 Asian friends. I have no black friends because I have found none so far that haven't felt like we "owe" them something because of what the Spanish Americans did like 300 years ago or something. I don't know any Spanish Americans so I can't ask them about the situation.

I am White yes, but there was no advantage in that my distant relatives were Polish and were slaughtered by Hitler because they were not blonde, And yet every "Holocaust" film excludes the non-Jew victims in Poland and they were labeled Jews because they didn't heil Hitler. But dspite this I am not going to play a victim, this happened before I was born and has nothing to do with me personally. My family struggled through poverty, Multiple Scorosis, 3 of my "White Advantaged" as your articles would say friends have M.D. and struggle each day just trying to do make good grades in college as they have to try to except only the things that they are capable of doing, as another "White advantaged" friend is homeless and can't find a job any where because he is not black and his doesn't match their criteria for their employment "Quotas". It took us generations to get where we are now in a nice up scale Neighborhood. But I will never forget my past so that I don't become a victim of someone telling me that I got here because I am White because that is an utter assumption and nothing more. Sure blacks may have it hard ALL races do. If there was some great white advantage then there wouldn't be so many living in poverty. I admit that there are allot of whites in colleges and in good jobs...

MAYBE THAT IS BECAUSE THEY ARE 75% OF THE US POPULATION.

Duh. This is America we all get ahead on our own and all face obstacles and challenges. But our goal is to have a safe stable family life with our family and friends. It is not to racially mix or support "affirmative action" that is by far not American and is straight up discrimination. Because Affirmative action belives that only black people have it hard in America. Which is completely absurd. For example: Instead of helping out just poor blacks, WHY NOT HELP ALL POOR PEOPLE? When did God help someone on the basis of skin color? And why would we support such a thing?

i am all for equal rights but giving "special advantages" is simply unAmerican. The only people that deserve that are the handicapped. The last time I looked black people could walk and see and talk. Black people from what I see on TV do not belive in racial equality, the belive in putting themselves above others with low SAT scores by forcing out kids with higher SAT scores out of college. Something that they worked hard for all their life just stripped from them because they were white.

This is not racial equality, black people need to focus on what is right. All races are special they all different in their own ways, we all need to focus on what is so right and not what is so wrong. All races should be proud of how God made them, and to call me racist because i am proud to be who i am is an assumption and nothing more. I do only date within my race also and that is far from racism that is called natural preference enforced over hundreds of thousands of years of evolution, and nothing more.

One should love his/her people despite race. One should also preserve that and keep that in which is what God intended. And not destroy it by mixing.

Caucasians are more open in general to Asians because they are more open to us. They do not critizise us and call us racist all the time because we do not want to be ashamed of who we are. They do not hate our people and attack us 1.7 million times a year. Trust me a school shooting is the least of our worries we are more likely to die in a plane crash then die in a school shooting anyway. But it all boils down to respect we will show none to people that show us none. The people of today have nothing to do with the people of before our time or ahead of our time. We will not appologize for something that dead Spanish Americans did or anyone in the future when we pass on. We and Caucasians world wide see how we are treated in the majority by a particular race and if it is respectabe we will treat them the same way. If 1/15 of Native Indians in the US were routinly attacked by whites each year, I would find it perfectly resonable that there would be tensions towards us. And we would work on trying to teach against violence in GENERAL and not trying to sway it towards another race by saying just don't commit crime against Indians. Like the "Black on Black" crime campaigne they were not teaching "Just say no to violence" they were teaching just don't do it to your own people, where else do you think they are going to take those crimes if not on there own people?

And on the issue of mass media, yes the majority is Caucasians simply because entertainment not only goes to America but to our main world audience, Europe, Canada and Australia which is of course primarily Caucasian countries. Why would you create all Spanish channels for a black audience? You would get very low ratings. Caucasians enjoy Caucasian entertainment just as blacks enjoy BET, BET JAZZ, BET HBO, and other channels and just as Hispanics enjoy the spanish channels. If all media become multi-racial entertainment Caucasians will eventually just make White entertainment channels. We enjoy black shows like "Martin" but we don't like "Martin" mixed in with "Friends". We prefer them separate simply because it is more realistic and entertaining.

Sorry for writing so long there are just so many issues that are causing tensions between the races, I belive above all we need more Asian entertainment, I see none. Even though there race is in small numbers in the US I think everyone might enjoy a Asian channel or two or more.

I am sure you may disagree with me on many issues, but this is the way we percieve the world. We (most anyways) are for STRICT equality yet we are also for preservation of ALL cultures and races be what they may. Because races and cultures is something to be respected and preserved and not to mix it up and turn it to trash.

Thank you for your time,
CJ
__________________________________________________________________

EDITOR'S NOTE: ( School Shootings and White Denial ) was written by Tim Wise, a White American.
Check: A New Round of White Denial: Drugs and Race in the 'Burbs
By: Tim Wise

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Study Identifies New Source Of Stem Cells
Posted: Tuesday, August 14, 2001

Source: McGill University (http://www.mcgill.ca/)

Montreal, August 13, 2001 -- A new study from the Montreal Neurological Institute (MNI) of McGill University has identified a non-controversial source of stem cells that can produce a number of different cell types, including the type of neural cells needed to potentially help patients recover from a spinal cord injury or Parkinson’s disease.
These findings are published today on-line in the highly cited scientific journal Nature Cell Biology in an article entitled "Isolation of Multipotent Adult Stem Cells from the Dermis of Mammalian Skin" by J.G. Toma, M. Akhavan, K.J.L. Fernandes, F. Barnabé-Heider, A. Sadikot, D.R. Kaplan, and F.D. Miller. The paper can be viewed on line at http://www.nature.com/ncb/future_issues/.

Dr. Freda Miller and colleagues at the Centre for Neuronal Survival and the Brain Tumour Research Centre at the Montreal Neurological Institute, McGill University, have isolated stem cells from the dermis of adult rodents that will proliferate and differentiate in culture to produce very different cell types- neurons, glia, smooth muscle cells, and fat cells. These novel stem cells, SKPs, were isolated from the skin of juvenile and adult rodents- an accessible non–embryonic source. Human studies have indicated that similar cells are present in adult human skin. "We believe our discovery is important as we have identified an exciting new stem cell from a non-controversial source that holds considerable promise for scientific and therapeutic research," says Dr. Freda Miller.

The work conducted at the MNI has led Dr. Miller and her colleagues to offer a new account of stem cells present in the adult. "SKPs represent a novel multipotent stem cell less biased than other adult stem cells– they have the ability to differentiate into diverse cell types of different embryonic lineage and can be cultured for one year without losing this ability," explains Dr. Miller. "This is extremely significant as rather than being programmed to generate only skin cells, SKPs can be directed to become neurons or neuronal support cells or even muscle cells- depending on what is needed. Importantly, SKPs also represent a potentially autologous (i.e. originating from within the same individual) stem cell source that can generate neural cell types damaged in spinal cord injury or Parkinson’s disease. This means that complications seen in donor transplantations are avoided as the patient's own cells are being transplanted." The MNI researchers expect that the new findings will contribute to our understanding of the impressive versatility of stem cells and offer a potential solution to individuals with Parkinson’s disease and other neural disorders.

Israeli Tanks Enter Palestinian City of Jenin, Open Fire
Posted: Tuesday, August 14, 2001

(FOX) Israeli tanks rattled into the Palestinian city of Jenin in the West Bank, opening fire and leveling the main police station early Tuesday, witnesses and Palestinian security sources said.

The incursion into Jenin — following two suicide bombings in less than a week — was the first time Israeli forces have entered the center of a Palestinian controlled city in 10 months of hostilities. Israel said the bombers were dispatched from Jenin.

The Israeli military said its tanks and bulldozers destroyed the structure and then withdrew. Palestinians appealed to the U.N. Security Council for protection.

About 10 tanks rumbled into the city from an Israeli base just outside of Jenin. They stopped in front of several key Palestinian buildings on or near the main square of the city, said Haider Irshad, the vice governor of Jenin.

The tanks concentrated their fire on the police headquarters, about 200 yards from the square, and bulldozers were also called in to help with the destruction of the building, Irshad said. [More]

Coup warnings grow in Venezuela
Posted: Tuesday, August 14, 2001

By Bill Vann
10 September 1999
http://www.wsws.org/

The protracted constitutional crisis unleashed by the election of former military officer and coup leader Hugo Chavez in Venezuela has increased the danger that the Venezuelan military may be preparing to seize power in an attempt to squelch potential social unrest. The threat of military intervention looms nearer following the eruption of street battles outside the Venezuelan Congress August 27 between supporters of Chavez and the newly elected Constituent Assembly and backers of Venezuela's traditional ruling parties which still control the legislative body.

Militarized units of the National Guard joined with police in breaking up the warring mobs outside the parliament, while the country's Catholic Church hierarchy worked to broker a compromise between the Chavez regime and Venezuela's old ruling parties.

Chavez, a former paratrooper who rose to the rank of lieutenant colonel, staged an abortive coup attempt in 1992 against the government of Carlos Andres Perez and was jailed for his efforts. Six years later, he was elected president as head of the Patriotic Pole, an electoral front comprised of his own Fifth Republic Movement and various parties of the petty-bourgeois nationalist left. MORE

While low on details this article points to increasing tensions in Venezuela. Keep your eye on the U.S.'s involvement.

Religious Struggle May Indicate Greater Risk Of Death
Posted: Monday, August 13, 2001

Source: Duke University Medical Center (http://www.mc.duke.edu/)

DURHAM, N.C. – A study of 595 hospital patients suggests older patients who are wrestling with religious beliefs during an illness may have an increased risk of dying, according to researchers from Bowling Green State University and Duke University Medical Center.

While several previous studies have demonstrated a reduced risk of death with more frequent church attendance, this is the first study to look closely at certain negative forms of religiousness as predictors of mortality. Feelings of "being abandoned or punished by God," "believing the devil caused their illnesses" or "feeling abandoned by one's faith community" were identified as key factors in risk of death among elderly participants, said Dr. Harold G. Koenig, one of the authors of the study and an associate professor of psychiatry at Duke University Medical Center.

The results of the study appear in the Aug. 13, 2001 issue of the Archives of Internal Medicine. "This study reminds us that religion is a rich, complex process, one that represents a potent resource for people facing problems and one that can, at times, be a source of problems in itself," said Kenneth Pargament, professor of psychology at Bowling Green State University and lead author of the study. "The finding of a link between religious struggles and increased risk of mortality was, in some ways, surprising to us," Pargament said. "Preliminary analyses among the survivors of this cohort suggest that patients who ‘stay stuck' in their struggles over time may be more likely to suffer declines in their physical and mental health than those who are able to resolve their struggles more quickly."

More at: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2001/08/010813081207.htm

Britons 'confess' to Saudi bombings
Posted: Monday, August 13, 2001

(BBC) Three British men have been shown confessing on Saudi TV to three bombings between December last year and March this year.
The film showed the men giving details of the attacks - two in the capital, Riyadh, and a third in the eastern city of Khobar.

The blasts left two British men and one Egyptian injured.

Under Sharia law, the suspects could face execution, usually by beheading in Saudi Arabia, if convicted.

The UK Foreign Office named the men as Les Walker, Jamie Patrick Lee and James Cottle.

Their appearance follows similar statements on Saudi TV in February by three other expatriates regarding separate bombings in Saudi Arabia. [More]

Macedonian peace deal signed
Posted: Monday, August 13, 2001

(Guardian Unlimited) Macedonia's political rivals today signed a peace accord aimed at ending six months of fighting and clearing the way for thousands of Nato troops to enter the country and disarm ethnic Albanian rebels.
Political leaders representing the Macedonian majority and its minority ethnic Albanian population formally endorsed an agreement giving Albanians a greater role in the police, parliament and education. But the fighting raged on just hours before the signing ceremony, in breach of the latest ceasefire declaration.

The secretary-general of Nato, Lord Robertson, and the European Union's foreign policy chief, Javier Solana, joined the French mediator François Léotard and his US counterpart, James Pardew, for the signing ceremony at the Macedonian presidential residence.

Lord Robertson said the deal marked "a remarkable moment for the history of Macedonia" and "the entry of Macedonia into modern, mainstream Europe". The agreement paves the way for the deployment of 3,500 Nato troops to disarm the Albanian rebels.

British troops will lead forces from the United States, France, Germany, Italy, Spain and Greece in Operation Essential Harvest.

It is expected to take one month to disarm the Ethnic Albanian rebels. [More]

Cloning in the silly season
Posted: Monday, August 13, 2001

(GWYNE DYER) IT'S August, traditionally the famine month for hard news, when the duplicitous and the deranged finally get their 15 minutes of fame in the mass media. But who would have expected the National Academy of Sciences to play a prominent role in the process?

Last Tuesday in Washington, an international conference sponsored by the National Academy of Sciences to examine ethical issues in human cloning gave a full day to the inflated claims of Dr Severino Antinori, Dr Panayiotis Michael Zavos and Dr Brigitte Boisselier. Free speech is important, but if the organisers thought that giving these three people a high-profile international platform would advance public understanding of the arguments for and against the cloning of human cells, they are hopelessly naive about the media.

Drs Antinori, Zavos and Boisselier are dedicated publicity-seekers operating on the lunatic fringe of the cloning business. Zavos, who runs an infertility clinic in Lexington, Kentucky, said that he and Antinori plan to start cloning human beings by November. The press dutifully made that the headline story.

Antinori, who has been warned that he may lose the right to practice in his native Italy by the Italian medical authorities, recently claimed that he has 200 women volunteers ready to receive cloned human embryos, and would perform the implants on a ship in international waters if he can’t find a country that will let him go ahead. That got into all the stories too.

And Brigitte Boisselier, director of the Bahamas-based Clonaid company and a follower of the Raelian religious cult which believes that cloning is a path to immortality, declared that she was “advancing’’ on human cloning in a country she would not name. (Rael is a French guru by comparison to whom even L Ron Hubbard would not seem a cynical fraud.) If you take Boisselier’s claims seriously, you should not be allowed out alone, but the world’s media predictably made a meal of them.

At a time when a moral panic about cloning is sweeping the non-scientific world, the National Academy of Sciences has let these bizarre people present themselves as the chief advocates of the pro-cloning case. The Three Stooges would have done a better job, and one almost suspects that the conference organisers were deliberately loading the dice against the pro-cloning argument. Or perhaps they were just innocent in the ways of the media, but they have done serious damage nevertheless.

Legitimate medical research using human cloning techniques is already at risk in the United States, where the House of Representatives passed the Human Cloning Prohibition Act last month, imposing prison terms of up to ten years and huge fines for any experiments in the field. The Senate rejected a comparable measure in 1998, but in the current hysteria it could be stampeded into upholding the House’s ignorant new law.

Japan adopted a law quite like the current US legislation last November, and most European countries have already banned research using human cloning techniques. Canada is considering a blanket ban, and Russia recently imposed a five-year moratorium on cloning research. On August 8, France and Germany even asked the United Nations Secretary-General, Kofi Annan, to put the question of a universal ban on the agenda of the UN General Assembly’s next meeting in September.

In all the world, only Britain and Israel have had the wit to make a clear distinction between reproductive cloning and therapeutic cloning.
Reproductive cloning is an entirely unproven technique in which embryos containing the DNA of living or dead people would be created, implanted in somebody’s womb, and eventually born as new human beings genetically identical to existing ones. This is what the Antinori, Boisselier and Zavos are pretending they will do, and it fully warrants the label of “Frankenstein science’’.

Therapeutic cloning, on the other hand, is a technique in which pre-embryonic tissue cloned from human donors who are suffering from a variety of diseases like Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s and diabetes would be used to produce stem cells. Medical researchers think that these stem cells might then be induced to grow into the kind of healthy cells that are needed and injected back into the original donor without risk of rejection (since they have the donor’s own DNA), thus curing otherwise fatal illnesses.

Some recent research suggests that therapeutic cloning may not be the only way to get stem cells with matching DNA, as it may be possible to trick the adult human body into producing new stem cells —but it is foolish to close the door on this promising technique by premature legislative bans. Nor does that mean we must also leave the door open to reproductive cloning. The British legislation last January neatly solved that issue by limiting researchers to using human blastocytes (the pre-embryonic stage when the cells are merely an undifferentiated sphere) that are no more than 14 days old.

There will remain the objections of religious conservatives who believe that even blastocytes that have never been implanted in a womb deserve the same legal protection as living human beings. But there are few countries where their votes alone would bring about a ban on therapeutic cloning.

It is the panic engendered by the advocates of reproductive cloning, and the confusion between the two, that is bringing about the current wave of rejection, and the National Academy of Sciences has contributed greatly to the confusion. The British bio-technology industry owes it a vote of thanks, as if things go on in this way Britain may soon be the only large developed country where this important research is not banned.

• Gwynne Dyer is a London-based independent journalist whose articles are published in 45 countries.

Mugabe has vowed to defy any threat of US sanctions
Posted: Saturday, August 11, 2001

Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe has vowed to defy any threat of sanctions by the United States and other Western countries and to continue with his controversial land reform.

Addressing a rally in honour veterans of the guerrilla war that ended white rule, Mr Mugabe also warned white farmers against organising attacks on black squatters.

On Friday, 21 whites were denied bail after being charged with violence and assault after they clashed with a group of squatters in the northern town of Chinhoyi.

"We will proceed with land reform with or without their cooperation, with or without sanctions. Let that be known here and abroad," Mr Mugabe said.

Saturday's rally came after a week of rising tension following the clashes and subsequent arrest of the white farmers.

They are accused of ganging up on and brutally attacking defenceless resettled farmers at a farm on Monday. [More]

Israeli police push back Palestinian protesters
Posted: Saturday, August 11, 2001

JERUSALEM -- Palestinian legislators and other protesters marched toward the PLO headquarters in Jerusalem today, a day after Israel took over the compound, but were pushed back by Israeli police as scuffles and shouting erupted.

Police wrestled several demonstrators to the ground and took some away in headlocks. Some Palestinians threw stones at Orthodox Jews after one of the Jews sprayed mace at a Palestinian. One policeman with a bloodied face was taken away in an ambulance.

Elsewhere, Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat met with foreign envoys in the West Bank town of Ramallah and asked for international intervention in the conflict with Israel.

U.S. and Russian envoys, speaking in Damascus and Ramallah respectively, condemned Israel's takeover of the PLO headquarters, which came in response to a suicide bombing that killed 15 people, including the assailant, this week in Jerusalem. [More]

Sixteen killed, 56 injured as train strikes landmine in Angola
Posted: Saturday, August 11, 2001

(Sapa-AFP) Sixteen people have been killed and 56 injured after a train struck a landmine near the Angolan capital Luanda.

According to reports, the accident occurred yesterday afternoon between Zenza and Dondo towns in Cuanza Norte Province, some 150 kilometers east of Luanda. Some of the injured are said to be in a serious condition at a local hospital.

Angola, ravaged by civil war almost non-stop since independence from Portugal in 1975, is one of the most heavily mined countries in the world. About 500 000 people are trapped in areas littered with anti-personnel and anti-tank mines or where fighting continues, according to a UN report issued on Wednesday.

Estimates vary on how many landmines are in the country. Independent groups put the number between eight and 15 million, while the government says the number is five to eight million.

The war between government forces and rebels of the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (Unita) has left an estimated 500 000 dead, another 100 000 mutilated, and four million people displaced out of a population of 12 million.

Zimbabwe's President, has warned white farmers
Posted: Saturday, August 11, 2001

(Sapa-AFP) Robert Mugabe, Zimbabwe's President, has warned white commercial farmers against organising themselves to assault landless blacks, saying such attacks could "ricochet".

Twenty-one white farmers were arrested earlier in the week and are facing charges of public violence after they clashed with black occupiers on one of their farms in Chinhoyi, northeast of Zimbabwe.

According to the police, the incident was an unprovoked attack on settlers, but farming officials said it was an attempt to rescue a farmer barricaded in his home by the occupiers.

The clash has sparked widespread violence and forced some 30 farmers to flee their homes.

Speaking at a function commemorating veterans of the country's 1970s war of independence from Britain Mugabe said: "We have seen of late some of those... who are organising themselves to attack the landless people who have been resettled on some farms.

"But we warn them to desist immediately continuing in these kinds of organised attacks, they will of course ricochet. Mind you, acts of this nature have the ability to rebounce, and ... when they bounce back and hit them they should not cry foul," [More]

A Closer Look At The Genome's "Black Holes"
Posted: Friday, August 10, 2001

The centromeres of chromosomes -- considered by some to be the genomic equivalent of black holes -- may hold the answers to many scientific questions, according Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator Steven Henikoff. For example, studies of the centromere may help in understanding the paradox that while centromeric DNA is evolving with extraordinary rapidity, it is still stable enough to perform its job during cell division.

In a review article published in the August 10, 2001, issue of the journal Science, Henikoff and colleagues Kami Ahmad and Harmit S. Malik at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center theorize that the rapid evolution of centromeric DNA may provide a mechanism by which newly evolving species rapidly become genetically incompatible with one another.

Each chromosome possesses a centromere, which is the site at which sister chromatids are held together. During mitosis and meiosis, the chromatid pair separates, and the centromere is the point of attachment of spindle fibers that pull each chromosome to opposite poles of the dividing cell. "While the centromere is a locus on the chromosome, it is different than a gene, because it is a locus that is acted upon by the apparatus of cell division," said Henikoff.

And unlike genes, which are amenable to mapping and sequencing, probing the genetic makeup of the centromere has proved to be a dead end because of the centromere’s unusual structure. "The centromere has remained enigmatic ever since it was discovered that centromeric DNA is highly repetitive," said Henikoff. "Current methodology really doesn’t allow the sequencing of centromeric DNA. Thus, nobody has sequenced the centromeres of the human genome, the fly genome, or that of any other complex organism. They remain big black holes often millions of bases in length in every chromosome." [More]

Palestinians Vow to Step Up Revolt After HQ Seized
Posted: Friday, August 10, 2001

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Palestinians vowed on Friday to intensify a 10-month-old revolt after Israel seized their main headquarters in East Jerusalem, asserting control over the city following a suicide bombing that killed 16 people.

Police raised the Israeli flag over Orient House, the main Jerusalem office of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), in a bloodless overnight raid in which seven security guards were detained and documents were confiscated.

Israel's crackdown on the deeply symbolic Orient House was a direct challenge to Palestinian claims on Arab East Jerusalem which they want as the capital of a future state. [More]

U.N. Rights Chief Urges Compromise to Avert U.S. Boycott
Posted: Friday, August 10, 2001

(Washington Post) As the curtain began to fall on meetings to prepare for the World Conference Against Racism, the United Nations human rights commissioner yesterday pleaded with delegates to reach a compromise on two contentious issues to stop the United States from boycotting the event.

In a statement to the preparatory committee in Geneva, U.N. High Commissioner Mary Robinson urged Arab and Jewish organizations to find common ground on the Palestinian issue, and African and European groups to come to a consensus on the issue of slavery and reparations.

"We cannot set deadlines on any particular issue," she said, "and everyone must participate in the search for solutions – at the highest levels. I make a strong appeal for this."

Days before the preparatory meetings began two weeks ago, President Bush said his administration would not attend the conference, which is scheduled to begin Aug. 31 in Durban, South Africa, if its agenda included language equating Zionism with racism and calling for reparations to African nations for colonialism and slavery. [More]

Jerusalem blast kills 15
Posted: Thursday, August 9, 2001

(BBC) A suicide bomb attack at a pizza parlour in the heart of Jerusalem has killed at least 15 people - including a number of children - and injured more than 90.

It was the most deadly bomb attack since a Palestinian suicide bomber killed 20 Israelis in Tel Aviv on 1 June - and the worst by far in Jerusalem during the ongoing 10-month Palestinian uprising.

A senior adviser to Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon blamed Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat for the bombing.

But Mr Arafat condemned the attack and called for a joint ceasefire.

In a strongly worded statement, US President George W Bush called on the Mr Arafat to "act now to arrest and bring to justice those responsible, and take immediate, sustained action to prevent future terrorist attacks". [More]

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FBI ordered to reveal bugging trick
Posted: Wednesday, August 8, 2001

(BBC) A judge in the United States has ordered the FBI to reveal how it bugged the keyboard of the son of a mafia boss.

The bureau bugged the computer keyboard of Nicodemo Scarfo Jr, charged with running illegal gambling and loan operations, after it failed to unscramble encrypted files stored on his computer's hard disk.

But it refused to reveal how the bugging was done, arguing that this would endanger national security and FBI investigators.

Mr Scarfo's lawyers are trying to discover the bugging method and have the FBI's evidence ruled inadmissible. [More]

Macedonia orders attack on rebels
Posted: Wednesday, August 8, 2001

(BBC) Macedonia's leadership has called for decisive military action against ethnic Albanian rebels who have been fighting the army for the past six months.

The country's National Security Council, which includes the president and prime minister, said there could be no question of implementing a peace deal before the rebels had been pushed back from recently-seized territory in the north and west.

The call for action followed a rebel attack on a Macedonian military convoy, an ambush that left 10 soldiers dead.

It comes despite Wednesday's breakthrough in peace talks, which saw Western envoys manage to persuade Macedonian and ethnic Albanian leaders to initial an accord after 12 days of talks.

But all parties were sceptical when European Union negotiator Francois Leotard announced that there would be an official signing on Monday.

"I hope it's possible now to have peace on the ground and stabilisation of the situation, but I know that it's very complex," Reuters news agency quoted Mr Leotard as saying. [More]

South Africa Between a Rock and a Hard Place
Posted: Wednesday, August 8, 2001

(ZNET) If you were planning a holiday in South Africa's east-coast resort of Durban before the warm winter season is over, you'd be well advised to steer clear of the city during the last few days of August and the first week in September.

Unless that is, you are a government official, a UN bureaucrat, an academic or a journalist with a burning desire to discuss racism, xenophobia and related forms of intolerance. If you are one of the latter, you probably already have your hotel room booked.

If you are one of thousands of delegates coming for the official inter-governmental World Conference Against Racism (WCAR) you may well be booked into the Royal Hotel, with its splendid colonial-style accommodation. If you are a lowly NGO worker, you will most likely have to make do with the spartan Holiday Inn Garden Court.

Either way your programme will be very full, as you ponder the fight against racism in Durban's world class International Convention Centre (ICC), conveniently located opposite the Hilton Hotel and a stone's throw away from the beachfront, rubbing shoulders with Presidents, Prime Ministers and luminaries such as Kofi Annan, Thabo Mbeki, Mary Robinson, Manning Marable and Harry Belafonte.

During your stay in Durban you may take a stroll along Marine Parade, the beachfront promenade, to be confronted by a stream of Zulu-speaking hawkers (South African slang for informal street vendors) eking out an existence or Durban's incongruous rickshaw drivers desperately competing to pull you along in decorated two-wheeled chariots. As long as you stick to the official conference transport you won't be bothered too much by the beggars, pickpockets and prostitutes.

It's highly unlikely that you'll follow any of these unfortunate folk back to their homes in the townships of Chatsworth, Cato Manor or Umlazi where unemployment is up above 50% since the collapse over the past few years of the textile industry and other globally 'uncompetitive' sectors. As South Africa has implemented WTO tariff reductions, these jobs have moved to East Asian sweatshops where wages are even lower than in Africa. [More]

Human Rights Watch: An Approach to Reparations
Posted: Tuesday, August 7, 2001

(Human Rights Watch) Human Rights Watch traditionally advocates reparations as part of the remedy for any serious human rights abuse. For example, under traditional human rights law and policy, we expect governments that practice or tolerate racial discrimination to acknowledge and end this human rights violation and compensate the victims. However, the U.N. World Conference Against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia, and Related Intolerance to be held in Durban, South Africa from August 31 to September 7, 2001, is likely to address a more complex reparations issue. It will ask whether, and if so how, reparations should be provided to people who may not have been the direct victims of racial discrimination but whose ancestors suffered such discrimination, particularly in the severe forms of slavery, the slave trade, certain especially racist aspects of colonialism, and other extreme official racist practices. This paper is Human Rights Watch's contribution to this debate. It is not a maximalist position but, rather, one that we hope will point the way to possible consensus on this contentious issue.

We begin with the premise that slavery, the slave trade, the most severe forms of racism associated with colonialism, and subsequent official racist practices such as apartheid in South Africa or the Jim Crow laws in the United States are extraordinarily serious human rights violations. If committed today these would be crimes against humanity. Under traditional and straightforward human rights law and policy, each living victim of these practices is entitled individually to seek and receive reparations from those who committed or permitted these wrongs. By "reparations" we mean not only compensation but also acknowledgment of past abuses, an end to ongoing abuses, and, as much as possible, restoration of the state of affairs that would have prevailed had there been no abuses.

In principle, we believe that the descendants of a victim of human rights abuse should also be able to pursue claims of reparations. That is, the right to reparations should not be extinguished with the death of the victim but can be pursued by his or her heirs. However, there are practical limits to how long, or through how many generations, such claims should survive. Because human history is filled with wrongs, many of which amount to severe human rights abuse, significant practical problems arise once a certain time has elapsed in building a theory of reparations on claims of descendancy alone. If one goes back far enough, most everyone could make a case of some sort for reparations, trivializing the concept. Moreover, the older a wrong, the less the residents of countries called on to provide reparations will feel an obligation to make amends. [More]

The Roots of Racial Profiling
Posted: Tuesday, August 7, 2001

(Reason Mag) Why are police targeting minorities for traffic stops?
It is early in the morning, and the well-dressed young African-American man driving his Ford Explorer on I-75 sees the blue lights of the Georgia State Patrol car behind him. The officer pulls behind the sport utility vehicle and the young man’s heart begins to sink.

He is on his way to Atlanta for a job interview. The stop, ostensibly for speeding, should not take long, he reasons, as the highway patrol officer walks cautiously toward the Explorer. But instead of simply asking for a driver’s license and writing a speeding ticket, the trooper calls for backup. Another trooper soon arrives, his blue lights flashing as well.

The young man is told to leave his vehicle, as the troopers announce their intention to search it. "Hey, where did you get the money for something like this?" one trooper asks mockingly while he starts the process of going through every inch of the Explorer. Soon, an officer pulls off an inside door panel. More dismantling of the vehicle follows. They say they are looking for drugs, but in the end find nothing. After ticketing the driver for speeding, the two officers casually drive off. Sitting in his now-trashed SUV, the young man weeps in his anger and humiliation. [More]

Abu Sayyaf kill 9 hostages in Philippines
Posted: Tuesday, August 7, 2001

(Kavkaz) LAMITAN, Philippines: Abu Sayyaf Muslim guerrillas who seized more than a dozen hostages in this southern town have beheaded nine of their captives, local officials said on Saturday.
Inocente Ramos, mayor of Lamitan town in the island of Basilan, said that another four headless bodies were found on Saturday in addition to five found on Friday. Police and civilian volunteers chanced on the bodies, all belonging to Filipino Christian males, in forested areas and took them to the Lamitan funeral parlor where hundreds of people showed up to try to identify the deceased.

Efren Natalaray, 49, whose 24-year-old son Elmer was among those beheaded, said they were both seized late on Thursday when about seven Abu Sayyaf gunmen surrounded a neighbours' house where they were visiting. He said that the Abu Sayyaf forced them out, tied their hands behind their backs and made them to walk into the forests. In the darkness, he managed to escape to a coconut plantation but his eldest son remained in Abu Sayyaf hands. Natalaray, toting a rifle, wept only when his son's head was discovered some distance from his body. [More]

The Ancients Were Right - Delphi Was A Gas!
Posted: Tuesday, August 7, 2001

(Science Daily) The Oracle of Delphi was the most important shrine in ancient Greece and was considered the center of the world. It was a crucial pilgrimage for those seeking guidance from Apollo's mouthpiece, the Pythia, who gave cryptic answers to such matters as timing for planting crops, preparing for war, or resolving a moral dilemma.
The temple's high priest, Plutarch (c.46-c.120), explained that the Pythia's trance state was induced by gaseous emissions and that the Oracle's power began to wane because the source of the emissions was running out. Other ancient authorities also attributed the Oracle's "power" to geological features—a fissure in the bedrock, a gaseous vapor, and a spring. When French archaeologists failed to find such features a century ago, they dismissed the notion of intoxicating vapors as the "source" of the revelations. The modern misconception that vapors and gases can only be produced by volcanic activity has also discouraged scientists from probing the geological forces behind the Oracle.

But these days, scientists are revisiting the problem with results that would definitely please the ancients. In the August issue of GEOLOGY, J.Z. de Boer reports on a four-year interdisciplinary study that has successfully identified young faults at the Oracle site and has also pinpointed the emissions responsible for the Pythia's trance state—light hydrocarbon gases from bituminous limestone. De Boer and colleagues found ethane, methane, and ethylene in spring water near the Oracle. The euphoric effects of ethylene, which had been used as anesthesia in the last century, jibe very well with Plutarch's description of the gas the Pythia inhaled. Henry Spiller, a medical doctor who recently joined the research group, provided details on the narcotic effects of ethylene that completed the team's theory. Spiller works in the Poison Center at Kosair Children's Hospital in Louisville, Kentucky. [More]

S.Africa: No Country Should Dictate Anti-Racism Agenda
Posted: Tuesday, August 7, 2001

LETTER: From Ghifari
JOHANNESBURG: No one country should be allowed to dictate to the world what should be on the agenda of the UN-sponsored conference against racism, South Africa's ruling African National Congress (ANC) party said Sunday.

The United States has threatened to boycott the week-long conference -- scheduled to begin August 31 in Durban -- if measures to equate Zionism with racism and reparations for slavery are on the agenda.

Speaking after a two-day meeting of the ANC's National Executive Committee (NEC), party spokesman Smuts Ngonyama said a democratic process should be followed to conclude the agenda.

He said a country should be encouraged to express opinions but could not dictate to other nations what they should discuss.

"Other countries also have a right to express what should be on the agenda but the democratic process has to follow. If more (countries) want the issue on the agenda then it should be on.

"We don't want a world where a player can completely dictate to others."

The party hoped that the United States would still participate in the conference, but if not, the process should continue, he said.

"It is their responsibility to participate because racism knows no boundary."

The Durban conference is aimed at forging an international consensus in the struggle for racial harmony and tolerance.

Ngonyama said the party was still discussing whether affected countries should demand reparations for slavery and colonialism.

It should come out with a clearer view as the conference approached.

Regarding the participation of the opposition political parties in the conference, Ngonyama said South Africa would be represented by a delegation from the country's democratically elected government.

The ANC leadership believed that the conference was a milestone in the global struggle against discrimination and oppression.

It was a unique opportunity for South Africans to reflect on the history of colonialism and racial oppression in the country, Ngonyama said.

"Durban will create an opportunity to openly discuss and debate its continuing impact on our people," he said.

Washington skipped the two previous UN conferences on racism, in 1978 and 1983, because of the attempts of Arab countries to equate Zionism with racism.

Delegations from 194 countries are expected to attend Durban, including dozens of heads of state and 160 foreign ministers.

The United Nations, once announced equation of Zionism and racism in 1975, but the resolution has been disregarded due to U.S. pressures.

Waalikumassalam
Ghifari al MukhtarGhifari
Photojournalist.

Philippines: 13 Hostages Rescued
Posted: Sunday, August 5, 2001

(Sky News) The Philippines army has rescued 13 hostages after a gun battle with Muslim guerrillas - but 21 other hostages, including an American missionary couple, remain in captivity.

The soldiers stormed the militants' hideout on the southern island of Basilan, 560 miles south of Manila, after the rebels beheaded 10 of their captives.

The rescued 13 and the beheaded were among 35 villagers captured by the Abu Sayyaf guerrillas on Thursday in a raid on the town of Lamitan. The remaining 12 were either released or escaped.

One of those released was a young mother allegedly raped by two abductors in front of her child, the Manila Standard newspaper said. [More]

Seven killed in India bomb blast
Posted: Sunday, August 5, 2001

GUWAHATI, India (Reuters) - Seven people, including five paramilitary personnel, have been killed in a bomb blast in the remote northeastern state of Assam, a police official said.

"An improvised device exploded on the roadside near Bijni in Bongaigaon district of Assam on Sunday afternoon, killing five Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) men and two civilians on the spot," a police spokesman said on Sunday.

Three others were wounded in the explosion, which wrecked the vehicle in which they were travelling.

Police suspect militants of the National Democratic Front of Bodoland (NDFB) to be behind the explosion.

Formed in the early 1980s, the NDFB is fighting for an independent homeland in northern Assam for Bodo tribesmen, accusing the federal government of neglecting their welfare. [More]

Couples 'join human cloning trial'
Posted: Sunday, August 5, 2001

(BBC) Two hundred couples are reported to have been selected to take part in a human cloning project run by an Italian embryologist. Dr Severino Antinori said he intended to go ahead with attempts to produce human clones, after announcing the successful cloning of 10 mice.

Eight British women are believed to be among those who have volunteered to undergo fertility treatment using a human cloning technique he is developing, reported the Sunday Times newspaper.

Dr Antinori, who earned international fame in 1994 for enabling a 62-year-old woman to have a baby, is expected to give full details of the project at a meeting in Washington, US, later in the week. He has selected the 200 couples from several countries.

'Monster' warnings: The technique he will use is similar to that used to produce Dolly the sheep, the first vertebrate clone created from the cell of an adult animal. It involves injecting genetic material from an infertile father into the mother's egg, which is then implanted in the woman's uterus. [More]

US denounced for blocking efforts to equate Zionism with racism
Posted: Saturday, August 4, 2001

TEHRAN: Former Iranian president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani on Friday denounced US pressure to block Arab states from equating Zionism with racism at an upcoming UN conference on discrimination.

"The United States has said it would boycott a UN anti-racism conference which is to be held in South Africa. During the conference Zionism will be hit out at as a manifestation of racism," Rafsanjani told worshipers attending the weekly Friday congregational prayers.

"We should wait and see if the United Nations can be adamant on holding the conference," Rafsanjani said. "US, in turn, should show when it intends to end playing its double-standard policy," he added.

The United States threatened last week to boycott the conference on racism, which opens August 31, if Arab states mount efforts to blacklist Zionism, a nationalist ideology espousing the Jewish right to a homeland. A 1975 UN resolution, repealed in 1991, defined Zionism as racism. [More]

Leading Palestinian survives missile attack
Posted: Saturday, August 4, 2001

A leading Palestinian activist in the West Bank, Marwan Barghouti, has narrowly escaped with his life after Israel launched a missile strike on a convoy of cars he was travelling in.
One of two missiles fired hit a bodyguard's car in front of Mr Barghouti, who heads Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's Fatah movement in Ramallah.

A shaken Mr Barghouti was immediately helped away from the scene by his bodyguards, witnesses said.

Palestinian officials said it was the latest in a series of Israeli attempts to assassinate prominent local activists and militants in the West Bank and Gaza.

The Israeli army made no immediate comment on the incident, but Israeli security sources quoted by Reuters said missiles had been fired at the convoy from the nearby Jewish settlement of Psagot.

The target was the car of Muhanad Abu Halaweh, a member of Mr Arafat's presidential bodyguard Force-17, the source said. [More]

Strategies Launched to Rescue Hadzabe Tribe From Extinction
Posted: Friday, August 3, 2001

(All Africa) The government of Tanzania has embarked on a special program to rescue Hadzabe tribe from extinction. Hadzabe is the only remaining community in the country living in bushes and the government will among others, be proving free social services.

With current population standing at around 1,500 living in northern and northeast Tanzania, Hadzabe, are the only tribe in Tanzania which has not transformed their economic activities and ways of living. They gather fruits and live in bushes.

The tribe is on the verge of extinction as their number has been reducing over time due to among others, natural calamities and lack of social services. The situation has prompted the government to provide free services and apparently registering special villages for them in Arusha Region northeast Tanzania. [More]

Avoiding World Racism Conference Would Be a ‘Serious Mistake,’
Posted: Friday, August 3, 2001

Bush Pitches Education Plan At National Urban League Conference

WASHINGTON (NNPA)–President Bush appeared to play it politically safe before a massive Black audience on Wednesday as he pitched his traditional education speech to 3,000 attendants at the final day of the National Urban League’s annual conference.

By pushing the education plan already passed by Congress, Bush appeared to strategically avoid more controversial issues like the World Conference Against Racism (WCAR), police profiling, election reform and faith-based initiatives.

Urban League President and CEO Hugh Price, who before the speech received Bush with smiles and accolades, after the speech told NNPA that Bush would make a "serious mistake" by boycotting WCAR.

In a 20-minute speech, Bush gave generally the same message spoken to the conference by Secretary of Education Roderick Paige on Tuesday.

"Some see social promotion as a form of compassion, but it’s a form of discrimination, the soft bigotry of low expectations," Bush said. [More]

Artifact Analyses Dispute Assumptions About A Prehistoric Society
Posted: Friday, August 3, 2001

(Science Daily) CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — Fragments of red stone artifacts – bits of smoking pipes, decorative ear lobe spools and a figurine, all plucked out of rich prehistoric soil in the U.S. Midwest – used to tell one story about the complex culture and the ancient people who left them behind. Now they tell another.
So say University of Illinois scientists, whose recent mineral analyses of red stone artifacts from Cahokia are upsetting an apple cart of important archaeological assumptions. Among other things, their study shoots down the idea that the great mound-building mecca in what now is southwestern Illinois traded extensively with distant cultures to the northwest.

One of several Middle Mississippian chiefdoms, Cahokia was inhabited from A.D. 700 to 1400, and at its peak at about 1100, it had a population of 20,000. Cahokia was the most sophisticated prehistoric native civilization north of Mexico, a culture that seems to have been focused on religion. The new findings about the ancient culture are discussed in the current issue of Plains Anthropologist. [More]

Peru issues arrest warrant for Fujimori
Posted: Thursday, August 2, 2001

LIMA, Peru- A Supreme Court judge declared disgraced ex-President Alberto Fujimori a fugitive from justice Thursday and issued an international order for his arrest to face charges of abandonment of office and dereliction of duty.

Magistrate Jose Luis Lecaros issued the order after Fujimori, who fled to Tokyo late last year, failed to appear for scheduled court hearings, a court spokesman said.

Prosecutor Nicanor de la Fuente petitioned the court last month to declare Fujimori an "absent defendant" and to seek his arrest on the charges, which are punishable by up to two years in prison.

After 10 years of autocratic rule, Fujimori fled to his parents' native Japan in November amid mounting corruption scandals involving his former intelligence chief, Vladimiro Montesinos, who was captured on June 23 in Venezuela. [More]

Bomb explodes near London station
Posted: Thursday, August 2, 2001

(BBC) A suspected car bomb has exploded near Ealing Broadway railway station in west London.
The explosion happened just before midnight on Thursday evening in Uxbridge Road, about 100 metres from the underground and mainline railway station.

The area, which is lined with bars and restaurants, is usually packed, but eyewitnesses said wet weather had been keeping people away.

There are no reports of fatalities but six people were admitted to Ealing Hospital with "non-life threatening" injuries.

"There are five males and one female. Two of them were walking wounded and two have head injuries, but none of them have any life-threatening injuries at the moment," a spokeswoman said.

Student Jagpreet Sidhu, 22, from south east London, saw the bomb go off while standing outside the Townhouse pub on the corner of Uxbridge Road. [More]

Too young to vote, old enough to be executed
Posted: Thursday, August 2, 2001

(Guardian UK) Amnesty International accused the United States yesterday of "contempt for international law and common standards of decency" for the planned execution this month of a convicted murderer who was a juvenile, aged 17, at the time of his crime.
Napoleon Beazley has admitted shooting dead an elderly man in a 1994 car theft. John Luttig, 63, was shot twice in the head in front of his wife at their home in Tyler, Texas. Beazley's bloody footprint was found beside Luttig's body.

However, with only a fortnight to go before Beazley is due to die by chemical injection, his lawyers are pointing out that he had no prior criminal record and demonstrated profound remorse over the killing, to the point of contemplating suicide.

The statements used by the prosecution to persuade the trial jury that he would pose a future threat to society if allowed to live were part of a plea bargain by Beazley's two friends who also took part in the theft of Luttig's Mercedes.

The two accomplices, Cedric and Donald Coleman, later recanted statements that helped the prosecution describe Beazley as an "animal", in a trial Amnesty alleges was tinged with racism. Beazley is black and his victim was not only white (as in 80% of US murder cases which lead to execution) but also the father of a federal appeal court judge, Michael Luttig, who is tipped as a possible supreme court justice. The jury was all white. [More]

Meet the Neanderthals
Posted: Thursday, August 2, 2001

Reconstructions of Neanderthal skulls add to growing evidence that the creatures were not close relatives of modern humans.

The distinctive features of the Neanderthal skull were established in early infancy - possibly even in the womb - say researchers in Switzerland.

Their conclusion is based on sophisticated computer graphics charting the cranial development of Neanderthals, from babyhood to adult life.

The findings support the idea that Neanderthals did not interbreed with early modern humans and contributed little or nothing to the present human gene pool. [More]

Ancient human DNA claim
Posted: Wednesday, August 1, 2001

One of our oldest ancestors crouches in a cave under African skies clutching a stone tool. The hominid, an early member of the human family, nicks itself and a drop of blood oozes on to the rock. Nearly two million years later, scientists detect microscopic traces of blood on the tool and extract the DNA. They say it is the oldest human genetic material ever found.

This is the claim that is dividing the archaeological community. Two researchers say they have extracted the DNA of a 1.8-million-year-old hominid from stone tools excavated at the Sterkfontein Caves near Johannesburg.

"The DNA we have found is something between a chimpanzee and a human, which suggests a hominid," Bonnie Williamson of Wits University, South Africa, told a Johannesburg newspaper this week.

"We strongly suspect that the DNA that we have is that of a hominid, but we still want to conduct more research to verify our claim," added co-researcher Tom Loy of the University of Queensland, Australia. [More]

Anti Farrakhan forces are upset in the UK
Posted: Wednesday, August 1, 2001

(BBC) The government and anti-racist groups have condemned a High Court decision to allow controversial US black political leader Louis Farrakhan to visit the UK after a 15-year ban.

Home Office Minister Beverley Hughes said the government was "very disappointed" by Tuesday's ruling and would be considering an appeal.

Groups opposed to racism and anti-Semitism also attacked the judge's decision, saying Mr Farrakhan's visit had the potential to threaten racial harmony in the UK.

The head of the Nation of Islam has been dubbed a "black racist" by opponents after using inflammatory language about Jews and whites in speeches. [More]

Full story - Guardian Unlimited
(http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,3604,530219,00.html)
List of people banned from Britain
(http://www.guardian.co.uk/Archive/Article/0,4273,4220790,00.html)

Thousands attend funeral for Islamic guerrillas in Kashmir
Posted: Wednesday, August 1, 2001

About 20,000 mourners marched at a funeral for three Islamic guerrillas killed in a battle at the shrine of a Shia Muslim saint in Indian-ruled Kashmir, wailing and waving their hands as pallbearers carried the bodies to their graves.

Shouting "Down with India" and "Long live Pakistan," mourners accompanied the bodies of Mustafa Khan, a Hezb-ul Mujahedeen commander, and two other members of the militant group, to graveyards near Goigam, 20 miles west of Srinagar, the summer capital of Jammu-Kashmir state.

Thousands of women and children joined the procession as men carried the corpses above their heads on stretchers. The bodies were wrapped in sheets, with garlands of yellow flowers around their necks.

The guerrillas were killed Monday as they emerged from the shrine of Sayed Mohammad Ali in Goigam firing automatic weapons, the Indian army said. Witnesses said one army officer was injured, but the army would not confirm it. http://www.nandotimes.com/world/story/53530p-789906c.html

Landslide kills 60 in Indonesia
Posted: Wednesday, August 1, 2001

(BBC) At least 60 people have been killed and hundreds are still missing in a landslide on the Indonesian island of Nias, about 100km (60 miles) northwest of Sumatra.
Rescue workers were on their way to the villages hit hardest, said Abdurrahman Nasution, a local government official.

Three villages were swept away before dawn on Tuesday as most villagers were still sleeping. Mr Nasution said at least 103 houses were destroyed in the landslide, which followed two days of incessant rain, which left most of the village of Sambulu on Nias under water.

Three earthquakes measuring a magnitude of 5.3 to 5.4, which were recorded near the island on Tuesday, might also have been the cause of the landslide.

Emergency medical and food supplies have been flown in from the city of Medan, the provincial capital of North Sumatra. [More]

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