The Senate recently rejected legislation designed to ensure USDA could close plants that violated salmonella limits.

Appeals Court Strikes Down Meat Tests
The Agriculture Department can't require meat processors to comply with limits on salmonella contamination, an appeals court says.

A three-judge panel of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals agreed with a Texas judge who blocked USDA from shutting down a ground beef plant that flunked a series of salmonella tests. Salmonella alone doesn't make meat unsafe, the appeals court said.

The department considers the tests a good measure of a plant's cleanliness. However, it is not known how much of the bacteria is necessary to make someone sick, and the meat industry says the testing limits are not justified scientifically.

The appeals court decision ``is clearly taking the harness off the ground meat industry by allowing meat that can be highly contaminated with salmonella to be sold to the public,'' said Caroline Smith DeWaal of the advocacy group Center for Science in the Public Interest.
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Meat-Safety.html

Melting Glaciers in Antarctica Are Raising Oceans, Experts Say
Ocean levels have been rising at a rate of about eight inches a century. Half of that is attributable to the fact that water expands as temperatures rise; 20 percent appears to be water running down mountain glaciers. The remaining 30 percent is a mystery, but the new data suggests it is coming from Antarctica.
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/12/11/science/earth/11GEO.html

After a Long Climb to Respectability, a Muslim Charity Experiences a Rapid Fall
The landlord wasted no time in slapping a "For Lease" sign on the offices of the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development after the federal government froze its assets on Monday, calling it a terrorist front. Several major corporate donors announced they would block all contributions to the foundation.

And on Wednesday, the foundation suffered an almost personal insult: its high-profile Washington law firm, Akin, Gump, informed the group's leaders that the government's accusations made it impossible for the firm to represent them in any efforts to reclaim their frozen assets or salvage their reputations.
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/12/10/national/10HOLY.html

Deported Immigrants With Nowhere to Go Wait in Jail
Immigration lawyers say that many of those who have been in I.N.S. detention since the terror attacks will most likely face long waits while the agency tries to make arrangements for their deportation. At best, the lawyers say, arranging for the repatriation of Palestinians, Iraqis, Iranians and Afghans is a slow process. At worst, it may be an impossible one.

"The people who will be in trouble are from the countries with which I.N.S. has had great trouble repatriating their citizens," said Chris Nugent of the American Bar Association's Immigration Pro Bono Project. "Iran and Iraq have been very difficult. And now Afghanistan will probably be like Somalia, where there's no functioning government.

"If you don't have a government and you don't have a consulate, how do you even begin to arrange travel documents? Or if the government is hostile to the United States, how does the I.N.S. make arrangements? Some of these new detainees are going to be here a long, long time."

"Palestinians of the diaspora may have travel documents from Kuwait, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Jordan or Egypt," said Karen Pennington, a Dallas immigration lawyer. "But they're not citizens and they don't have passports. The I.N.S. always alleges that they're nationals of the country where they were born. But those countries don't want them. They're on the voyage of the damned."

Post-Sept. 11 detainees face new hurdles. While Mr. Nofal and the others who have spent years in detention landed in jail because they committed crimes, the I.N.S. now detains those whose sole wrongdoing was overstaying their visas. And the Patriot Act, approved since the terrorist attacks, allows Attorney General John Ashcroft to detain indefinitely foreigners who are certified as endangering national security. Some detainees may be held even when the Zadvydas ruling would otherwise have limited their confinement.
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/12/10/national/10DETA.html

California Appellate Ruling Aids Foes of 3-Strike Law
Life imprisonment for a man who shoplifted a screwdriver, an electric razor and a map from a Kmart. The same sentence for one who tried to steal a meat slicer and a mixer from an International House of Pancakes. Twenty-five years to life for a homeless man who broke into a restaurant, only to come away with four chocolate chip cookies — two in his left pocket, two in his right.

Since a federal appeals court in San Francisco ruled last month that a 50-year prison sentence for a videotape thief was cruel and unusual punishment, public defenders across the state have been digging up old cases to mount the first broad challenge to California's three-strikes law in years.

In Los Angeles, public defenders are looking through more than 500 cases in which offenders received sentences of 25 years to life for nonviolent offenses like drug possession or petty theft. In rural Kern County, public defenders are hoping to reduce, if not overturn, as many as 350 sentences. And throughout Southern California, where prosecutors have vigorously enforced the state law that puts people with three felony convictions in prison for 25 years or longer, public defenders are selecting a wide array of cases that they hope will be eligible for application of the appeals court ruling.
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/12/10/national/10STRI.html?todaysheadlines&pagewanted=all

Ask Not What . . .
…If you just look at the amount of money spontaneously donated to victims' families, it's clear that there is a deep reservoir of energy out there that could be channeled to become a real force for American renewal and transformation — and it's not being done. One senses that President Bush is intent on stapling his narrow, hard-right Sept. 10 agenda onto the Sept. 12 world, and that is his and our loss.

Imagine if tomorrow President Bush asked all Americans to turn down their home thermostats to 65 degrees so America would not be so much of a hostage to Middle East oil? Trust me, every American would turn down the thermostat to 65 degrees. Liberating us from the grip of OPEC would be our Victory Garden.

Imagine if the president announced a Manhattan Project to make us energy independent in a decade, on the basis of domestic oil, improved mileage standards and renewable resources, so we Americans, who are 5 percent of the world's population, don't continue hogging 25 percent of the world's energy? Imagine if the president called on every young person to consider enlisting in some form of service — the Army, Navy, Marines, Air Force, Coast Guard, Peace Corps, Teach For America, AmeriCorps, the F.B.I., the C.I.A.? People would enlist in droves. Imagine if the president called on every corporate chieftain to take a 10 percent pay cut, starting with himself, so fewer employees would have to be laid off? Plenty would do it.
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/12/09/opinion/09FRIE.html?todaysheadlines

War's Hidden Cost
Of course, in this war as in every other, nobody ever really knows how many civilians are killed or wounded. The Taliban's tallies are not widely trusted, and with few forces on the ground, the Pentagon makes no attempt to estimate how many civilians its bombs have killed. Nor is it likely to attempt this later, though the Red Cross and human rights groups might.

Before every airstrike, the military does assess the risks to civilians, and legal officers must determine in advance that the risks are justifiable. Sometimes they veto proposed targets. But only in the event of a reported atrocity by United States forces would an investigation be carried out, as it was after the My Lai massacre in Vietnam.

It is clear that in the current conflict — part civil war, part holy war, part retribution for a terrorist outrage — no civilian is safe. In a survey of Afghanistan two years ago, the International Committee of the Red Cross found that more than half those interviewed had a family member killed. One in three was wounded, two in five were tortured, one in five imprisoned. One in four were soldiers. One in four had heard of the Geneva Conventions.

But to an American public that has come to expect pinpoint precision from 21st century weapons, it comes as a shock to see the images of widows and orphans hospitalized by an American air raid. In Europe, where political support for the war on terror is strongest, repeated reports of civilian casualtieshave stirred opposition to the American campaign. In the Islamic world, including Pakistan, the United States' crucial ally, the pictures of injured civilians spark outright hostility.
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/12/09/weekinreview/09CUSH.html

U.S. Seeks New Use for Secret Evidence
For national security reasons, the government argues that it should share secret evidence with only immigration judges and not with the immigrants and their lawyers.

The court did not act on the request, because it decided the case before it on other grounds. But legal experts say that request and other actions since Sept. 11 indicate that the government is moving toward the renewed use of secret evidence in immigration cases, one of the most criticized of the Justice Department's tactics in recent years.
The government, however, says that since President Bush's term began, it has not broken his campaign pledge not to use secret evidence against immigrants.

In the 1990's, immigrants' groups and other critics of secret evidence gained legal and political ground in their assertions that it relegates immigrants to a legal netherworld, having to disprove accusations like whether they have connections to terrorists without knowing specifically what the accusations are. The practice had ground nearly to a halt in recent years after several federal court decisions and under the criticism of some politicians.
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/12/09/politics/09SECR.html

Voucher Study Indicates No Steady Gains in Learning
The study by the Rand Corporation, released here Thursday, was neither a death knell for the school- choice movement nor a ringing endorsement. Rather, it revealed the paucity of reliable data from either side. For example, though the report reviewed hundreds of studies, the authors found only three on the crucial question of student achievement whose methodology they considered sound.
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/12/09/education/09RAND.html?todaysheadlines&pagewanted=all

TRAC Reports: Criminal Enforcement Against Terrorists
Many Investigations But Few Referred for Prosecution

The FBI now reports conducting more than 10,000 terrorism investigations a year. (See table.) By contrast, just released Justice Department data show that in the fiscal year ending September 30, 2001 that all the criminal investigative agencies of the government asked federal prosecutors to bring criminal charges against 463 individuals who the assistant U.S. Attorneys had identified as being involved in either international or domestic terrorism.

Referrals for Prosecution Up Sharply Even Before September 11

The Justice Department’s internal administrative data -- unlike the information reported by the FBI -- distinguish between international and domestic terrorism. For both groups investigative requests for prosecution increased substantially in FY 2001 but still represented only a tiny fraction of all federal criminal matters:

But Federal Prosectors Usually Decline To Bring Charges

The data also show that federal prosecutors declined to bring charges against more than two out of three of the criminal suspects who they themselves had classified as being involved in domestic or international terrorism. (See graph.) Most of the suspects were referred to the prosecutors by the FBI.

The prosecutors cited many reasons for rejecting the recommendations of the investigators during the five-year period ending on September 30, among them Justice Department policy, the death of the defendant, and jurisdictional or venue problems. But the prosecutors said they had declined more than one third of the matters presented to them because the referrals lacked evidence of criminal intent, were of minimal federal interest, were backed up by weak or insufficient admissible evidence, or did not involve a federal offense. (See international and domestic tables for reasons.)
TRAC http://trac.syr.edu/tracreports/terrorism/report011203.html

Hitting the Trifecta
Shortly after Sept. 11, George W. Bush interrupted his inveighing against evildoers to crack a joke. Mr. Bush had repeatedly promised to run an overall budget surplus at least as large as the Social Security surplus, except in the event of recession, war or national emergency. "Lucky me," he remarked to Mitch Daniels, his budget director. "I hit the trifecta."
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/12/07/opinion/07KRUG.html

Ashcroft Defends Antiterror Plan and Says Criticism May Aid Foes

Some of the sharpest questioning came over the Justice Department's refusal to provide the F.B.I. with information about whether any of the more than 1,200 people who have been detained in the investigation of the Sept. 11 attacks had sought to purchase guns. The New York Times reported today that some F.B.I. and other law enforcement officials were frustrated by the Justice Department's decision to block its investigators from examining records of gun buyers' background checks to determine whether any of the detainees had purchased guns.

"Why is the department handcuffing the F.B.I. in its efforts to investigate gun purchases by suspected terrorists?" asked Senator Edward M. Kennedy, Democrat of Massachusetts.

Mr. Ashcroft said that he believed the law that created the national directory of gun purchase applications could not be used for anything other than an audit of the system.

"I believe we did the right thing in observing what the law of the United States compels us to observe," he said.

Senator Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York, suggested that Mr. Ashcroft's reasoning was incorrect and the decision reflected the administration's opposition to gun control. "You're looking for new tools in every direction and I support most of those," Mr. Schumer said. "But when it comes to the area of even illegal immigrants getting guns and finding out if they did, this administration becomes as weak as a wet noodle."
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/12/07/politics/07CIVI.html?todaysheadlines&pagewanted=all

Using Battle of Terrorism for Victory on Trade
President Bush won a major victory on trade in the House of Representatives today by updating a time- honored argument: Wartime is no time to undercut the president. This is especially true now, Mr. Bush and his allies argued, when the world is watching for any sign that an embattled America is pulling up its drawbridges.

Like the outcome of the presidential race that ended a year ago next week, his margin of victory could not have been narrower. He won streamlined trade negotiating authority by only one vote, 215 to 214. Even getting that required his Republican allies on the floor of the House to twist arms after the official clock had run out.
a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2001/12/07/politics/07ASSE.html">http://www.nytimes.com/2001/12/07/politics/07ASSE.html

Middle East Detainee Conducts Hunger Strike
A French citizen from Djibouti, in East Africa, Mr. Seif is one of 93 men whom the government identified last week as having been indicted or charged with crimes as a result of the investigation into the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. He is widely believed to be the lone man among the 93 who is protesting his treatment by refusing to eat. He has lost 25 pounds, restricting his intake to water, and weighs about 150 pounds.

But like many on the list, Mr. Seif, 36, who graduated from a flying school here and once flew turboprop planes for Djibouti Airlines, has not been charged with any crime that links him to the attacks. He was arrested in October on five felony counts, charged with providing false information to the Social Security Administration in 1999 and to the Federal Aviation Administration last year on questions about his name, ancestry and birthplace.

All that, the government says, makes him a criminal. Additional charges of bank fraud, arising out of information on credit-card applications, are generally expected to be filed against him by next week.

At a hearing here last month, John Bauman, an agent of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, testified that the government had no evidence to suggest that Mr. Seif was involved with the attacks or that he knew about them beforehand.

"This is government policy now," Mr. Hoidal said today, explaining why he believed that prosecutors were pressing so hard to convict his client, who has lived in the Phoenix metropolitan region occasionally since his brother attended Arizona State University in the early 1990's. "Ninety-three people are facing similar charges. Most are from the Middle East, and they have Muhammad, or a form of the word, in their names. So the government is bringing whatever charges they can against persons caught up in the investigation."
At a hearing here last month, John Bauman, an agent of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, testified that the government had no evidence to suggest that Mr. Seif was involved with the attacks or that he knew about them beforehand.

"This is government policy now," Mr. Hoidal said today, explaining why he believed that prosecutors were pressing so hard to convict his client, who has lived in the Phoenix metropolitan region occasionally since his brother attended Arizona State University in the early 1990's. "Ninety-three people are facing similar charges. Most are from the Middle East, and they have Muhammad, or a form of the word, in their names. So the government is bringing whatever charges they can against persons caught up in the investigation."
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/12/06/national/06ARIZ.html

Justice Dept. Bars Use of Gun Checks in Terror Inquiry
The Justice Department has refused to let the F.B.I. check its records to determine whether any of the 1,200 people detained after the Sept. 11 attacks had bought guns, F.B.I. and Justice Department officials say.

The department made the decision in October after the F.B.I. asked to examine the records it maintains on background checks to see if any detainees had purchased guns in the United States.

Mindy Tucker, a spokeswoman for the Justice Department, said the request was rejected after several senior officials decided that the law creating the background check system did not permit the use of the records to investigate individuals.

Ms. Tucker did not elaborate on the decision, but it is in keeping with Attorney General John Ashcroft's strong support of gun rights and his longstanding opposition to the government's use of background check records. In 1998, as a senator from Missouri, Mr. Ashcroft voted for an amendment to the Brady gun-control law to destroy such records immediately after checking the background of a prospective gun buyer. That amendment was defeated.

"We intend to use every legal tool available to protect American lives," John Collingwood, an assistant director of the F.B.I., said, but he added that "applicable law does not permit" the background check records to be used "for this purpose."
Justice http://www.nytimes.com/2001/12/06/national/06GUNS.html?todaysheadlines&pagewanted=all

Sharon's War Cannot Be Won
As a Palestinian I am often challenged by the press on my views about such horrific bombings. I emphatically repeat my condemnation and state that I oppose the targeting and killing of innocent civilians regardless of whether they are Israelis or Palestinians.

Yet I wonder why no one asked how I felt when five Palestinian schoolboys were killed by a bomb planted by the Israeli occupation forces in a refugee camp in Gaza less than two weeks ago — or why Israelis and pro-Israel spokesmen, who are called for comment by the same radio and television stations that call me, are rarely asked to condemn the violence that is committed in their name.

I watched in sadness the latest American envoy to the Middle East, Gen. Anthony C. Zinni, laying a wreath in Jerusalem at the site of the bombings. But where was the American wreath for the five boys killed in Gaza? Why are the targeting and killing of hundreds of Palestinian civilians, including more than 150 children, and the suffocation by siege of three million Palestinians so often considered mere background noise to Israel's drama?
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/12/05/opinion/05ABUN.html

A New Health Plan May Raise Expenses for Sickest Workers
…Deborah Chollet, an economist at Mathematica, a nonprofit research concern, said the new plans could be a barrier to needed care for some people. The plans would leave families essentially without insurance until they have spent several thousand dollars, she said. "Uninsured people don't consume much care" because they may have difficulty deciding whether care is necessary or not, she said.

"This is taking coverage away from people," said Ms. Chollet, a health insurance specialist. "And it is obviously a greater hardship for the lower-income workers."
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/12/05/business/05CARE.html?todaysheadlines&pagewanted=all

Groups Protest Bush's Freezing of Foundation's Assets
"This action is really creating outrage in the Muslim community," said Ibrahim Hooper, a spokesman for the Council on American Islamic Relations, one of the groups. "The holy foundation has a long history of being a respected Muslim charity that does good work, not only in Palestine, but other parts of the world."

The Bush administration accuses the foundation, based in Richardson, Tex., of funneling money to the radical Palestinian group Hamas, which has claimed responsibility for a string of suicide bombings in Israel. The foundation, which has been under scrutiny by the American government for at least five years, says the accusations are untrue.

"We have always denied that accusation, and the administration did not produce any qualitative evidence," said Shukri Abu-Baker, the foundation's chief executive. "The foundation is strictly a humanitarian organization, and we have never supported Hamas."
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/12/05/international/middleeast/05HOLY.html

Demanding a Diagnosis, and Outwitting Anthrax
Though he did not know it on those days, Oct. 11, 12 and 13, Mr. Richmond was already sick. He had inhaled anthrax spores, postal officials later told him, most likely on the morning of the 11th, while cleaning near a contaminated mail-sorting machine. A medical odyssey that would shake him and his family to the core and help rewrite the book on anthrax — its complications, its treatment, its survivability — had begun. And no one knew.
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/12/03/national/03LERO.html?todaysheadlines&pagewanted=all

News: Got hacked? Blame it on the software
There's only one problem with software development these days, according to security analyst and author Gary McGraw: It isn't any good.

McGraw, noted for his books on Java security, is out with a new book that purports to tell software developers how to do it better. Titled Building Secure Software and co-authored with technologist John Viega, the book provides a plan for designing software better able to resist the hacker attacks and worm infestations that plague the networked world.

At the root of the problem, McGraw argues, lies "bad software." While the market demands that software companies develop more features more quickly, McGraw and others in the security field are sounding the alarm that complex and hastily designed applications are sure to be shot through with security holes.

McGraw's top five software-security nightmares
1. Buffer overflow
An attacker floods a field, typically an address bar, with more characters than it can accommodate. The excess characters in some cases can be run as "executable" code, effectively giving the attacker control of the computer without being constrained by security measures.

2. Race condition
"The idea is that you have something that should be done in an atomic fashion, all at once, that is done instead in multiple steps, and an attacker can sneak in between the steps and change things."

3. Random number generation
"The problem is that computers are predictable. And predictability turns out to be a big problem for cryptography, because what you want for cryptographic keys is real randomness, not pseudo-randomness. That's a mistake that a lot of programmers make."

4. Misuse of cryptography
"A lot of programmers think they can roll their own algorithms. But it turns out that crypto is a highly sophisticated art, and you need to be trained to do it."
5. Trust problems

"Not validating input, or (putting too much trust in things) sending you a message. No. 5 also could be authentication; it's a toss-up."
http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/news/0,4586,2829102,00.html

How Islam and Politics Mixed
Basically, this phenomenon involves the immoral, unscrupulous and irreligious exploitation of Islam as a political weapon — by everyone. The West, the United States, Arab and other Muslim tyrannies have all used the weapon of Islam. And all are paying their different prices for it.
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/12/02/opinion/02MEHI.html?todaysheadlines

African Artifacts Suggest an Earlier Modern Human
Until now, modern human behavior was widely assumed to have been a very late and abrupt development that seemed to have originated in a kind of "creative explosion" in Europe. The most spectacular evidence for it showed up after modern Homo sapiens arrived there from Africa about 40,000 years ago. Although there had been suggestions of an African genesis of modern behavior, no proof had turned up, certainly nothing comparable to the fine tools and cave art of Upper Paleolithic Europe.
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/12/02/science/02BONE.html?todaysheadlines&pagewanted=all

Tribunal Comparison Taints Courts-Martial, Military Lawyers Say
Former military lawyers say they are angered by a public perception, fed most recently by the top White House lawyer, that the military tribunals authorized by President Bush are merely wartime versions of American courts-martial, a routine part of military life with a longstanding reputation for openness and procedural fairness.

In fact, the proposed tribunals are significantly different from courts- martial, the lawyers say, adding that confusion between the two has distorted the debate over the tribunals and unfairly denigrated military justice.

"It bothers me that people are thinking we try thousands of people this way in the courts-martial system," said Ronald W. Meister, a New York lawyer who is a former Navy lawyer and judge.

"We do nothing of the sort," he said. "These commissions are a totally different animal."
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/12/02/national/02TRIB.html?todaysheadlines&pagewanted=all

Why is Attorney General Ashcroft using his office to punish this man so severely? At a time of national anxiety about Arabs and Muslims, Mr. Al-Najjar is a useful target: a Palestinian Muslim. More broadly, Mr. Ashcroft has claimed power to detain non-citizens even when immigration judges order them released.

It Can Happen Here
On the basis of secret evidence, the government accuses a non-citizen of connections to terrorism, and holds him in prison for three years. Then a judge conducts a full trial and rejects the terrorism charges. He releases the prisoner. A year later government agents rearrest the man, hold him in solitary confinement and state as facts the terrorism charges that the judge found untrue.

Could that happen in America? In John Ashcroft's America it has happened.

Mazen Al-Najjar, a Palestinian, came to the United States in 1984 as a graduate student and stayed to teach at a university. The Immigration Service moved to deport him for overstaying his visa — and asked an immigration judge, R. Kevin McHugh, to imprison him. Secret evidence, the government lawyers said, showed that Mr. Al-Najjar had raised funds for a terrorist organization, Palestinian Islamic Jihad. In June 1997 Judge McHugh issued the detention order.

Mr. Al-Najjar's lawyers went to federal court and challenged the use of secret evidence against him. The court held that he must at least be told enough about the evidence to have a fair chance of responding to it.

Judge McHugh then reopened the case in his immigration court. In a two-week trial the government's lead witness, an Immigration agent, admitted that there was no evidence of Mr. Al-Najjar contributing to a terrorist organization or ever advocating terrorism. At the end Judge McHugh found that there were no "bona fide reasons to conclude that [Mr. Al- Najjar] is a threat to national security."

Judge McHugh, a former U.S. marine, wrote a 56-page decision that evidently carried much legal weight. The Board of Immigration Appeals rejected a government appeal. And Attorney General Janet Reno, who had the right to step in, refused to do so. A year ago Mr. Al-Najjar rejoined his wife and three daughters.

Last Saturday immigration agents arrested Mr. Al-Najjar again. The Justice Department issued a triumphant press release saying that the case "underscores the department's commitment to address terrorism by using all legal authorities available." Mr. Al-Najjar, it said, "had established ties to terrorist organizations."

That flat, conclusory statement was in direct contradiction to the findings made by Judge McHugh after a full trial. And the department did not claim, this time, to be relying on undisclosed information. It said the detention was "not based on classified evidence."

Israel Tanks Surround West Bank Towns
The United States has asked Israel to stay out of Palestinian areas. Israeli tanks had just pulled out of Jenin last week, and the retaking of some areas came as Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon visited the United States.

At sundown Saturday, Israeli tanks fired randomly toward the southern outskirts of Jenin and an adjacent refugee camp, Palestinian witnesses said.

A 19-year-old taxi passenger and an 11-year-old boy were killed by large-caliber bullets fired from tank-mounted machine guns, said Mohammed Abu Ghali, director of Jenin Hospital. Both victims suffered head wounds, he said. Witnesses said the boy was shot as he and other youngsters threw stones at soldiers.
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Israel-Palestinians.html

Ashcroft Seeking to Free F.B.I. to Spy on Groups
The proposal would loosen one of the most fundamental restrictions on the conduct of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and would be another step by the Bush administration to modify civil-liberties protections as a means of defending the country against terrorists, the senior officials said.
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/12/01/national/01BURE.html?todaysheadlines&pagewanted=all

Groups Gird for Long Legal Fight on New Bush Anti-Terror Powers
Bill Goodman, legal director of the Center for Constitutional Rights in New York, said that his group, which grew out of legal efforts to defend civil rights protesters in the 1960's, is planning to challenge the executive order signed by President Bush on Nov. 13 allowing special military tribunals to try foreigners charged with terrorism. Mr. Goodman said he was discussing the possible challenge with lawyers representing some of those likely to face charges.

Mr. Bush's order, he said, has effectively suspended the writ of habeas corpus, a centuries-old legal procedure protecting citizens from being held illegally by the government. No president has the right to do that without the approval of Congress, the center's lawyers argue.

"My job is to defend the Constitution from its enemies," Mr. Goodman said. "Its main enemies right now are the Justice Department and the White House."

Wake Up, America
The order is described as if it is aimed only at Osama bin Laden and other terrorist leaders. A former deputy attorney general, George J. Terwilliger III, said the masterminds of the Sept. 11 attacks "don't deserve constitutional protection."

But the Bush order covers all noncitizens, and there are about 20 million of them in the United States — immigrants working toward citizenship, visitors and the like. Not one or 100 or 1,000 but 20 million.
And the order is not directed only at those who mastermind or participate in acts of terrorism. In the vaguest terms, it covers such things as "harboring" anyone who has ever aided acts of terrorism that might have had "adverse effects" on the U.S. economy or foreign policy. Many onetime terrorists — Menachem Begin, Nelson Mandela, Gerry Adams — regarded at the time as adverse to U.S. interests, have been "harbored" by Americans.

Apologists have also argued that the Bush military tribunals will give defendants enough rights. A State Department spokeswoman, Jo-Anne Prokopowicz, said that they would have rights "similar to those" found in the Hague war crimes tribunal for the former Yugoslavia.

To the contrary, Hague defendants like Slobodan Milosevic are entitled to public trials before independent judges, and to lawyers of their choice. The Bush military trials are to be in secret, before officers who are subordinate to officials bringing the charges; defendants will not be able to pick their own lawyers. And, unlike the Hague defendants, they may be executed.
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/30/opinion/30LEWI.html?todaysheadlines

Justices Revisit the Issue of Child Protection in the Age of Internet Pornography
Four years after the Supreme Court overturned the federal government's first effort to shield children from pornography on the Internet, the justices were back today to consider whether the government's second try could pass First Amendment muster.

Even more sharply than before, the central question is whether a body of law that evolved in the heyday of the neighborhood adult bookstore and movie theater suits the age of the Internet.
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/29/national/29PORN.html

News: DeCSS ban upheld by court
A federal appeals court on Wednesday upheld an order that prohibits publishing or linking to DVD-cracking code--a decision with sweeping significance for free-speech rights and copyright protection on the Internet.
http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/news/0,4586,5100096,00.html

View from the Ground 09/27/2001; The View From The Ground - Police Stories
Boatwright was blind-sided. He had no warning the blow was coming. The officer said nothing prior to striking him. "He didn't say, 'I'm an officer.' He didn't say, 'Stop!' He didn't say anything."

Witnesses said that the officer's name is Andre Cuerton.

Boatwright passed out briefly. He lay face down on the concrete. His nose was broken. His two top front teeth were knocked out—driven through his upper lip.

"I sat up on the ground, trying to compose myself. Another plainclothes policeman said, 'Get your black ass up. Ain't shit wrong with you. Get your black ass up.' I rolled over and got on my knees. As I was getting up, he grabbed my arm and slammed me up against the wall."

This police officer took him to the paddy wagon where they were collecting dozens of people they had arrested. As far as Boatwright knows, he was the only one they roughed up.
http://www.viewfromtheground.com/index.cfm?vftg=31

SearchDay - Twelve Cool Sites and Tools for Searchers - 21 November 2001
Twelve Cool Sites and Tools for Searchers
Create your own web image database, search for streaming multimedia,
automatically track changes to your favorite web pages -- check out the
dozen sites and tools covered in this roundup.
http://searchenginewatch.com/searchday/01/sd1121-roundup.html

News: Search engines find the forbidden
Search-engine spiders crawling the Web are increasingly stumbling upon passwords, credit card numbers, classified documents and even computer vulnerabilities that can be exploited by hackers.

The problem is not new, security analysts say: Ever since search robots began indexing the Web years ago, Web site administrators have found pages not meant for public consumption exposed in search results.

But a new tool built into the Google search engine to find a variety of file types in addition to traditional Web documents is highlighting and in some cases exacerbating the problem. With Google's new file-type search tool, a wide array of files formerly overlooked by basic search engine queries are now just a few clicks from the average surfer--or the novice hacker.
http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/news/0,4586,5099914,00.html

A List Apart: Reading Design
An Entirely Incomplete List of Things a Non–Illiterate Designer Should Know Before Being a Designer:
http://www.alistapart.com/stories/readingdesign/

optimal web design
Designing a website that takes into account the human element requires both an understanding of our nature as well as our physiological limitations. Usable websites incorporate human tendencies and limitation into its overall design. The questions below are meant to address some of the more important human factors concerns in the design and building of usable websites.
http://psychology.wichita.edu/optimalweb//a>

Kangaroo Courts
Bush's latest self-justification is his claim to be protecting jurors (by doing away with juries). Worse, his gung-ho advisers have convinced him — as well as some gullible commentators — that the Star Chamber tribunals he has ordered are "implementations" of the lawful Uniform Code of Military Justice.

Military attorneys are silently seething because they know that to be untrue. The U.C.M.J. demands a public trial, proof beyond reasonable doubt, an accused's voice in the selection of juries and right to choose counsel, unanimity in death sentencing and above all appellate review by civilians confirmed by the Senate. Not one of those fundamental rights can be found in Bush's military order setting up kangaroo courts for people he designates before "trial" to be terrorists. Bush's fiat turns back the clock on all advances in military justice, through three wars, in the past half-century.

His advisers assured him that a fearful majority would cheer his assumption of dictatorial power to ignore our courts. They failed to warn him, however, that his denial of traditional American human rights to non- citizens would backfire and in practice actually weaken the war on terror.
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/26/opinion/26SAFI.html?todaysheadlines

Learning From Israel and Its Mistakes
The first responses to the attacks sounded quite familiar to me. America, it was said, was attacked not as a result of anything it had done but simply because of what it is. Globalization, cultural domination and support for oppressive regimes were not immediately considered plausible causes for the attacks. In the same way, many Israelis ignore the causes that lead Palestinians to wage a war of terror against them, choosing instead to argue that they have been attacked not for anything they have done but simply for who they are.

The attacks on targets in New York and Washington were perceived as attacks on every individual American; a huge wave of patriotic togetherness gripped the country. Nowhere — except in Israel — have I ever seen so many flags displayed. (In Israel people sometimes put up American flags in addition to our own flag.) Nowhere except in Israel have I seen a similarly enthusiastic wave of voluntarism and donations. Israelis often say that war brings out the best in us; something similar seems to be true in this country.

Other reactions also sounded familiar. Americans say, "We have survived Pearl Harbor; we will survive bin Laden." In Israel people often say, "We have survived the Holocaust; we shall survive Yasir Arafat." Then there is the worry that "the world" (meaning some United States allies in the Middle East) is not supportive enough of America's fight. Israelis, too, often contend that the whole world is against them.
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/25/opinion/25SEGE.htmlLearning From Israel and Its Mistakes

An Alternate Reality
From an economist's point of view, the most revealing indicator of what's really happening is the post- Sept. 11 fondness of politicians for "lump-sum transfers." That's economese for payments that aren't contingent on the recipient's actions, and which therefore give no incentive for changed behavior. That's good if the transfer is meant to help someone in need, without reducing his motivation to work. It's bad if the alleged purpose of the transfer is to get the recipient to do something useful, like invest or hire more workers.

So it tells you something when Congress votes $15 billion in aid and loan guarantees for airline companies but not a penny for laid-off airline workers. It tells you even more when the House passes a "stimulus" bill that contains almost nothing for the unemployed but includes $25 billion in retroactive corporate tax cuts — that is, pure lump-sum transfers to corporations, most of them highly profitable.

Most political reporting about the stimulus debate describes it as a conflict of ideologies. But ideology has nothing to do with it. No economic doctrine I'm aware of, right or left, says that an $800 million lump-sum transfer to General Motors will lead to more investment when the company is already sitting on $8 billion in cash.
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/25/opinion/25KRUG.html?todaysheadlines

Legal Powers Are Expanded in Bush Plan
President Bush's authorization of secret military tribunals for noncitizens accused of terrorism and the systematic interviewing of 5,000 young Middle Eastern men in the country on temporary visas is well known. But broad new powers are also contained in more obscure provisions.

A recent rule change published without announcement in the Federal Register gives the government wide latitude to keep noncitizens in detention even when an immigration judge has ordered them freed.
And under new laws, the attorney general can detain for deportation any noncitizen who he has "reasonable grounds to believe" is "engaged in any activity that endangers the national security of the United States," according to a recent internal Immigration and Naturalization Service memorandum.

Critics have said that the administration's measures, taken together, amount to singling out people on the basis of nationality or ethnicity.

"We have decided to trade off the liberty of immigrants — particularly Arabs and Muslims — for the purported security of the majority," said David Cole, a law professor at Georgetown University who often represents detained foreigners.
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/25/politics/25LEGA.html?pagewanted=all

“A cynic might think that domestic extremists who share the attorney general's antipathy to abortion and gun control — and are opposed to the likes of Mr. Leahy and Tom Daschle — receive a free pass denied to suspicious-looking immigrants.”

Wait Until Dark
If the administration were really proud of how it's grabbing "emergency" powers that skirt the law, it wouldn't do so in the dead of night. It wasn't enough for Congress to enhance Mr. Ashcroft's antiterrorist legal arsenal legitimately by passing the U.S.A.-Patriot Act before anyone could read it; now he rewrites more rules without consulting senators or congressmen of either party at all. He abridged by decree the Freedom of Information Act, an essential check on government malfeasance in peace and war alike, and discreetly slipped his new directive allowing eavesdropping on conversations between some lawyers and clients into the Federal Register. He has also refused repeated requests to explain himself before Congressional committees, finally relenting to a nominal appearance in December. At one House briefing, according to Time magazine, he told congressmen they could call an 800 number if they had any questions about what Justice is up to.
This kind of high-handedness and secrecy has been a hallmark of the administration beginning Jan. 20, not Sept. 11. The Cheney energy task force faced a lawsuit from the General Accounting Office rather than reveal its dealings with Bush-Cheney campaign contributors like those at the now imploding Enron Corporation. The president's commission on Social Security reform also bent the law to meet in secret. But since the war began, the administration has gone to unprecedented lengths to restrict news coverage of not only its own activities but also Osama bin Laden's. A Bush executive order diminishing access to presidential papers could restrict a future David McCullough or Michael Beschloss from reconstructing presidential histories. To consolidate his own power, Mr. Ashcroft even seized authority from Mary Jo White, the battle-proven U.S. attorney who successfully prosecuted both the 1993 World Trade Center terrorists and the bin Laden accomplices in the 1998 African embassy bombings. He has similarly shunted aside state and local law-enforcement officials by keeping them in the dark before issuing his vague warnings of imminent terrorist attacks.

Thanks to a journalist, Sara Rimer of The Times, we now know that one of the attorney general's secret detainees was in fact a local official: Dr. Irshad Shaikh, a Johns Hopkins- educated legal immigrant who serves as the city health commissioner of Chester, Pa. Dr. Shaikh's door was broken down by federal agents who suspected he might be an anthrax terrorist. It's all too easy to see why Mr. Ashcroft wants to hide embarrassing fiascoes like this. But it's also likely that the attorney general wants to hide the arrests he is not making along with the errant ones that he is.
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/24/opinion/24RICH.html?todaysheadlines&pagewanted=all

We Have the Right Courts for Bin Laden
Two unsound proposals have recently emerged. The first, and by far more dangerous, is already law: the president's misguided and much criticized order authorizing secret trials before an American military commission. The second, more benign approach, offered by prominent international lawyers, is to try terrorists before an as yet uncreated international tribunal.

Both options are wrong because both rest on the same faulty assumption: that our own federal courts cannot give full, fair and swift justice in such a case. If we want to show the world our commitment to the very rule of law that the terrorists sought to undermine, why not try mass murderers who kill American citizens on American soil in American courts?
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/23/opinion/23KOH.html?todaysheadlines

Disaster Gives the Uninsured Wider Access to Medicaid
The need for health coverage is a vexing old problem that has become much worse since Sept. 11. Before the attack on the World Trade Center, one of four people in New York City had no health insurance. Since then, layoffs have driven the number far higher, though no precise figures are yet available. As a temporary solution, on Sept. 19, the state began offering four months of disaster-relief Medicaid to all low-income residents of the city, not just those directly affected by the attacks.

In the last six weeks, 75,000 families have applied. Before Sept. 11, typically only 8,000 New Yorkers a month applied for Medicaid, health care experts say.

Health insurance has always been an important part of physical and financial security. But since Sept. 11, as the people who lined up Wednesday morning at the Boerum Hill Medicaid office explained, it has become something far more elemental, a life's necessity in a city now preoccupied with death.
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/23/nyregion/23INSU.html?todaysheadlines&pagewanted=all

What Did You Do Before the War?
"There is a whole body of information out there in public records that people are generally not aware of," said James E. Lee, a spokesman for ChoicePoint (news/quote), a company based near Atlanta that compiles and searches public records.

Before the dawn of the Web, most of this personal information remained out of the spotlight. Because records were stored in the offices of individual companies and courts, often in backroom file cabinets or offline computer systems, they were difficult and costly to search. The shift to digital storage has meant that many of those records are now widely available.

Since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, the demand for such information has increased — and the inquiries are coming not only from law enforcement agencies. Organizations that conduct background checks report a surge in requests over the last two months from companies that want to screen job applicants and employees. More and more employers are discovering that they can now tap into a new generation of databases that integrate public and some private records, making the search process easier and less expensive than ever.
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/22/technology/circuits/22CHEC.html?todaysheadlines&pagewanted=all

Cyberspace Seen as Potential Battleground
"While bin Laden may have his finger on the trigger," he added, "his grandson might have his finger on the mouse."

Security experts who monitor attempts at computer intrusion say that other new tools and tricks are coming into use in that arena as well. In recent weeks, computer security experts have come to believe that malicious hackers have developed tools to take over computers using the Unix operating system through a vulnerability in a nearly ubiquitous computer communications protocol known as SSH.

Those experts say that they find the SSH flaw especially worrisome because it could provide a hacker who successfully attacks it unrestricted access to a computer. An intruder could gain access to machines linked to the compromised computer, could destroy all of the data on the machine or could use it to carry out denial of service attacks. "It's pretty nasty," said Dan Ingevaldson, a security researcher at ISS, a major vendor of security software and service.

The weakness in SSH has been identified since early this year, and many system administrators have fixed the problem with patches, but until recently the theoretical vulnerability had not been subjected to actual attack. Recently, however, security experts have noticed a sharp increase in probes by outsiders of a specific spot in their network known as Port 22 — the part of the system that SSH uses — presumably to see which machines are still open to attack. "They wouldn't be doing the scanning if it wasn't paying off for them," said Kevin L. Poulsen, editorial director of a SecurityFocus, a company that provides computer security information.
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/23/technology/23CYBE.html?todaysheadlines&pagewanted=all

U.S. Hunting Antiviral Drug to Use in Case of Smallpox
Two promising antiviral candidates have been identified, and one of them, cidofovir, has already been approved by the Food and Drug Administration, for use against cytomegalovirus, which causes illness in some people with AIDS.

Last month the National Institutes of Health applied to the drug agency for permission to use cidofovir for smallpox on an experimental basis. The company that makes the drug, Gilead Sciences Inc. of Foster City, Calif., could increase production in three to six months, but so far the government has not placed an order, said Dr. William A. Lee, Gilead's vice president for research.

Drugs that might be used against smallpox are hard to test for that purpose: the disease was eradicated in people more than 20 years ago, and no animal is naturally infected with the virus
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/23/national/23POXD.html?todaysheadlines&pagewanted=all

Increased Spending on Drugs Is Linked to More Advertising
Increases in the sales of the 50 drugs that were most heavily advertised to consumers accounted for almost half the $20.8 billion increase in drug spending last year, according to the study. The remainder of the spending increase came from 9,850 prescription medicines that companies did not advertise or advertised very little.

The study attributed the spending increase to a boost in the number of prescriptions for the 50 drugs, and not from a rise in their price.

Only the United States and New Zealand permit advertising of prescription medicines to consumers. The advertising has grown more controversial as both the number of ads and spending on prescription drugs continue to rise.

The Food and Drug Administration is now reviewing whether it should change rules it enacted in 1997 that made it easier for pharmaceutical companies to advertise their products on television.
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/21/business/21DRUG.html?todaysheadlines&pagewanted=all

News: Web ads watch the clock instead of clicks
Sessions are just one of many new online ad formats bubbling up to lure reluctant advertisers to spend money on the Internet. But online ad experts said the sessions may push advertising out of a rut by recasting the way publishers and advertisers price Web ads and measure their success.

More than changing shape or style, the new format touts the measurements traditional advertisers have come to feel comfortable with in print, television and radio. Known as "reach" and "frequency," they refer to the audience an advertisement reaches and the amount of time people see it.

Such measurements are also common in brand advertising--the Holy Grail for Internet publishers hoping to tap the budgets of major consumer packaged-goods advertisers.
http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/news/0,4586,5099772,00.html

News: Privacy suffers at health Web sites
About 65 million Americans have sought health information on the Internet, but many of their online activities are not protected by U.S. medical privacy rules, a report released Monday said.

The Bush administration unveiled the first legal protections for medical information last April. The rules, which take full effect in April 2003, aim to give patients more control over who sees sensitive, personal information.

Consumers should be aware, however, that the rules will not cover most purchases, searches or other actions on thousands of health-related Web sites, the report said.
"Many probably assume that the personal information they provide to health Web sites is covered by the new regulation, and they are wrong," Susannah Fox, research director for the Pew Internet Project, said in a statement.

That means the sites can collect information and are not required by law to keep it confidential, the report said.
http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/news/0,4586,5099803,00.html

Earth from Space
Earth from Space provides several ways to search the selected images. Each image is available in three resolutions and includes a cataloging data and a caption. However, this site contains only a small selection of the best of our Earth photography.
Clickable Map
http://earth.jsc.nasa.gov/categories.html
Click on the area you want to search.
Search will return photos within a 5 degree range of latitude/longitude. More specific searches by latitude and longitude can be performed from the technical search page.

http://earth.jsc.nasa.gov/

The Vanishing Act
Seldom in the last half-century has the U.S. been so poorly prepared to assist individuals and families struggling with the effects of a recession. Example: the unemployment insurance system, which was established to ease the pain of temporary joblessness, covers less than 40 percent of the people who are out of work. Example: the food stamp program, which was supposed to slam the door on hunger in the world's greatest nation (and which once served 90 percent of eligible families), now serves just 60 percent of the poverty- stricken folks who qualify for help.

And then there's welfare. In the summer of 1996 Bill Clinton signed the so-called reform bill ending "welfare as we know it." Among other things, it imposed a five-year lifetime limit on welfare assistance to needy families.

The potentially tragic consequences of that legislation were concealed for a while by the extraordinary economic boom in the last half of the decade. But Daniel Patrick Moynihan and others had warned all along of the dire implications of ending the guarantee of federal help to the nation's poorest families. Marian Wright Edelman of the Children's Defense Fund noted that supporters of the welfare bill assumed there would be "no recession in the next decade, which is unprecedented."
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/19/opinion/19HERB.html?todaysheadlines

With Water and Sweat, Fighting the Most Stubborn Fire
In a hot flaming fire, many toxic chemicals are incinerated, with little given off except carbon soot, carbon dioxide, water vapor and other fairly innocuous emissions.

But the relatively low temperatures of the trade center fires mean that traces of dozens of toxic chemicals and heavy metals are carried into the air, including benzene, a cancer-causing compound released when fuels are burned, and styrene, a gas emitted by burning plastic. At times the chemicals in the air at the site reach dangerous levels, particularly when fire flares up, as it did on Nov. 8.
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/19/nyregion/19FIRE.html?todaysheadlines&pagewanted=all

Challenge Revives SAT Test Debate
In the nine months since the university president, Richard C. Atkinson, proposed that his system stop requiring the main SAT exam, he has brought attention to an arcane debate that was being conducted mostly at gatherings of psychometricians and on small liberal arts campuses.

Unlike those previous conclaves, hundreds of professors and administrators from perhaps the nation's most influential public university system gathered this weekend to discuss what many perceive as the exam's major shortcomings: that it is a distraction to too many high school students, and that it further handicaps disadvantaged students, particularly minority students.

Signaling the broader reach of this gathering, which was titled "Rethinking the SAT," representatives of other state university systems, including those of Washington and New Jersey, as well as from private colleges mostly from the West, joined the conference.

But the end of the test, known as the SAT I, is not yet in sight…
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/19/education/19EXAM.html?todaysheadlines&pagewanted=all

News: Citibank offers free Web payment service
Who says the days of the free Web are over?

Banking giant Citibank announced Thursday that it will soon remove fees for all U.S. transactions on its c2it online payment service. Previously the company charged people 1 percent of the transaction cost to send money.

Citibank made the change to expand the number of users of its service and of online payments in general, said Antony Jenkins, chief operating officer of c2it. The service has about 200,000 users, compared with about 11 million users for market leader PayPal.

"We think this is a key opportunity for Citigroup," Jenkins said. "Removing the price point is important because it allows us to grow quicker.
http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/news/0,4586,5099713,00.html

Powell Outlines Steps Needed for Israeli-Palestinian Accord
Mr. Powell said Israel must be willing to end its occupation of the West Bank and Gaza and recognize that Palestinians have legitimate grievances, including the building of Israeli settlements, the deaths of innocent civilians and the daily annoyances and indignities of going through checkpoints.

And he said Palestinian leaders must hunt down and prosecute terrorists who attack Israeli civilians if Israel is ever to shed its doubts about whether the Palestinians really want peace. "The intifada is now mired in the quicksand of self-defeating violence and terror directed against Israel," he said.
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/19/international/19CND-DIPLO.html

Israeli Tanks Enter Palestinian Territory, Kill Two Policemen
In Monday's incursion, three Israeli tanks drove about 900 yards into Palestinian territory near the town of Beit Hanoun in the northern Gaza Strip, police said. Witnesses said troops fired randomly from tank-mounted machine guns. The Israeli military had no comment on the raid.

On Sunday evening, two armed Palestinians were killed by Israeli tank fire about half a mile south of the Jewish settlement of Dugit in northern Gaza, said an army spokesman, Capt. Jacob Dallal.

However, Palestinian police said the officers, members of the naval police, were killed about three miles south of Dugit.

The Palestinian police commander in Gaza, Brig. Gen. Abdel Razek Majaida, said members of the naval police who witnessed the incident told him the two men were lying wounded on the ground when they were killed by Israeli troops.

Dallal denied the charges. ``The armed terrorists were approaching the settlement and they were shot and killed,'' he said.

Palestinian doctors said tanks drove over the bodies. The body of one of the policemen was mangled, his head flattened.

As part of the incident, two Israeli tanks and an armored personnel carrier drove about a half-mile into the coastal neighborhood of Sudaniyeh in the town of Beit Lahia, Palestinian officials said. The armored vehicles fired machine guns and shells.

Two shells punched holes into the private American International School, which has American teachers and is attended by Palestinian children. School officials had no immediate comment. A large American flag flew atop the building.
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Israel-Palestinians.html

Waiting for America
In the bitterness and violence of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict today, can there be any hope of peace? Two longtime negotiators, Yasir Abed Rabbo of the Palestinian Authority and Yossi Beilin, former justice minister of Israel, insist that there can. But they both say it will require U.S. intervention.
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/17/opinion/17LEWI.html

Seizing Dictatorial Power
Misadvised by a frustrated and panic-stricken attorney general, a president of the United States has just assumed what amounts to dictatorial power to jail or execute aliens. Intimidated by terrorists and inflamed by a passion for rough justice, we are letting George W. Bush get away with the replacement of the American rule of law with military kangaroo courts.

In his infamous emergency order, Bush admits to dismissing "the principles of law and the rules of evidence" that undergird America's system of justice. He seizes the power to circumvent the courts and set up his own drumhead tribunals — panels of officers who will sit in judgment of non-citizens who the president need only claim "reason to believe" are members of terrorist organizations.

Not content with his previous decision to permit police to eavesdrop on a suspect's conversations with an attorney, Bush now strips the alien accused of even the limited rights afforded by a court-martial.
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/15/opinion/15SAFI.html

News: Chip revolution turns 30
The foundation of modern computing was something of an accident.

The Intel 4004 Microprocessor, which debuted thirty years ago Thursday, sparked a technological revolution because it was the first product to fuse the essential elements of a programmable computer into a single chip.

Since then, processors have allowed manufacturers to embed intelligence into PCs, elevators, air bags, cameras, cell phones, beepers, key chains and farm equipment, among other devices.

But that's not the way the story was supposed to turn out.
http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/news/0,4586,2824457,00.html

Al Qaeda Plans for Nuclear Bomb Reportedly Found
Al Qaeda Plans for Nuclear Bomb Reportedly Found
Detailed plans for a nuclear bomb similar to the one used on Nagasaki have been discovered in a hastily abandoned al Qaeda safe house in the Afghan capital of Kabul. The Times of London said that, after Kabul was taken by Northern Alliance fighters, one of its reporters covering the war in Afghanistan discovered the notes, along with applications for Canadian passports and other instructional material about weapons and bomb-making. Osama bin Laden, the al Qaeda leader suspected of masterminding the Sept. 11 attacks on the U.S., has previously claimed that his terrorist organization had a nuclear bomb. Western officials have dismissed that claim, but they say there is evidence that al Qaeda has tried to acquire chemical and biological weapons, as well as materials to build a nuclear bomb.
http://www.publicagenda.org/headlines/headline.htm

The Tower Builder
On September 11th, each building took the impact of a 767 (which is nearly twenty per cent heavier than a 707) and stood long enough to allow most of the people below the crash sites—the ninety-fourth floor to the ninety-ninth floor in the north tower, and the seventy-eighth floor to the eighty-fourth floor in the south tower—to escape. Had the buildings toppled immediately, nearly all those survivors would have died, and there would have been huge losses as well in the buildings and streets around the towers. The fact that the terrorists chose to hit the buildings on opposite faces suggests to some that they intended to knock the buildings over—which would have increased the destruction and loss of life. "Ninety-nine per cent of all buildings would collapse immediately when hit by a 767," Jon Magnusson said.
http://www.newyorker.com/FACT/

Death of a Child: How Israel's Army Responds
Khalil Mughrabi, an 11-year-old Palestinian boy, was resting after a soccer game on July 7 in Rafah, in the Gaza Strip, when an Israeli tank fired warning shots to repel nearby protesters. A bullet pierced the boy's head, killing him instantly.

Last week a sheaf of documents from the Israeli Army arrived at the offices of the human rights group B'tselem, containing records of a military inquiry into the incident.
B'tselem had asked the army about the case, and unexpectedly received the military's file of its internal investigation through an unusual — and apparently inadvertent — disclosure. An accompanying letter informed B'tselem that no criminal wrongdoing by soldiers was suspected, and therefore the military police would not investigate.

But the file tells a different story, strongly suggesting culpability by the soldiers. It provides a rare glimpse of how the Israeli Army investigates killings, decides whether to take disciplinary action and formulates public responses.
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/13/international/middleeast/13ISRA.html

Ballots Cast by Blacks and Older Voters Were Tossed in Far Greater Numbers
"The finding about black voters is really strong," said Philip Klinkner, a political science professor at Hamilton College who has studied the Florida vote and reviewed the Times study. "It raises the issue about whether there's some way that the voting system is set up that discriminates against blacks."

There is no conclusive evidence of systematic efforts to discriminate against blacks, but this pattern — the same kind that courts look at in determining racial discrimination in voting rights lawsuits — raises suspicions.

"It raises questions about how they administer elections — where they put the best voting machines, how many poll workers they put out, what kind of education is done," Mr. Klinkner said.

Alan J. Lichtman, a political science professor at American University, said, "It suggests there was not just a disparate effect, but disparate treatment — not necessarily deliberate — of black voters in the election." Mr. Lichtman came to a similar conclusion in a study of more limited data for the United States Civil Rights Commission.
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/12/politics/recount/12NUMB.html

Sagging Economy Threatens Health Coverage
A 1986 federal law allows people to keep their health insurance even after they lose their jobs, but they must pick up the full cost of the premiums — a huge burden for someone laid off, as much as $500 or $600 a month for coverage of a family, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation.

At the same time, state officials and health care experts are warning that the basic government safety net for covering low-income people — the Medicaid program, jointly financed by the states and the federal government — is under increasing strain. Declining tax revenues because of the economy, rising health care costs and an expected jump in the Medicaid caseload because of layoffs all make for a dangerous combination, officials say.
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/12/national/12HEAL.html?todaysheadlines&pagewanted=all

Israeli Minister Vacates Home After Assassination Warning
Israeli security agencies have been on alert for possible threats to senior Israeli political and military figures since the assassination on Oct. 17 of Rehavam Zeevi at a Jerusalem hotel. The militant Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine claimed responsibility for that killing, calling it revenge for Israel's assassination of the group's leader, Mustafa Zibri, known as Abu Ali Mustafa, in a helicopter missile strike on his headquarters in August.

The killing of Mr. Zibri, a senior official in the Palestine Liberation Organization, marked the first time Israel had assassinated the head of a Palestinian faction as part of its policy of killing suspected militants. Israeli officials said that Mr. Zibri had organized terrorist cells responsible for several car bombings, but Palestinian officials called him a political figure, and warned of retaliation in kind.
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/10/international/middleeast/10MIDE.html

Harsh Civics Lesson for Immigrants
The startling new lesson about this country for the immigrant owner, accountant, maître d' and busboy at the Crazy Tomato restaurant was forced upon them a month ago in a incident known as the perp walk.

This was the photo arranged by law-enforcement officials that saw the four Islamic restaurant workers and five Islamic friends paraded in prison stripes, leg irons and manacles across the front page of the hometown newspaper.

The preceding court hearing had been tightly closed to public view, with the windows taped and a gag order invoked against ever discussing it. So the perp, as in perpetrator, walk would have to do for anyone curious about the innocence or guilt of the nine caught in the terrorist dragnet.

"I am so happy to come back to my real life," declared Khaled Nassr, exultant tonight at surviving the perp walk and standing fetter- free once more as maître d' at the Crazy Tomato.

"All I want to do is make a better future," said Mr. Nassr, more interested in discussing the veal parmigiano than Osama bin Laden.

But diners kept apologetically chatting to him about the experience of the Egyptian newcomers in this American community who, while never charged with crimes, were taken off in chains for a week.
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/11/national/11JOUR.html

Single Letter With Anthrax Is Discounted
We're thinking there may be one more letter and maybe more than one," said Kenneth Newman, the deputy chief postal inspector for investigations.

The basis for this view, said John Nolan, the deputy postmaster general, is that experts at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention say it is unlikely that the mail handler at a State Department postal center in Virginia who contracted inhalation anthrax could have been infected by a letter that had merely come in contact with the one to Mr. Daschle.
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/10/national/10ANTH.html?todaysheadlines&pagewanted=all

'Afghan Arabs' Said to Lead Taliban's Fight
The "Afghan Arabs," as the foreigners are called, are proving crucial to the survival of the Taliban, whose leaders are former religious students with limited military expertise. The American and Pakistani officials say the foreigners taking leading roles in military and internal security and — unlike their Afghan cohorts — cannot be bribed into defecting or swayed to surrender.

"The Arabs are the best fighters they have," said Anwar Sher, a retired Pakistani general with longstanding influence on Pakistan's intelligence officers and Afghan military commanders. "A group of 30 of them can engage a battalion of 1,000. They will kill 100 before they take a loss."

Aid workers now in Pakistan also identify the Afghan Arabs as the men who have attacked United Nations operations and offices in Kandahar, the eastern city of Jalalabad, Mazar-i-Sharif and other towns. The foreign fighters assaulted Afghans working for the United Nations, stole Land Cruisers and trucks and took hundreds of tons of wheat flour destined for destitute Afghans, the aid workers said.

One Afghan working for a United Nations relief agency described being spat on and threatened by several armed Arabs outside the main United Nations compound in Kabul hours after the first American bombing raids began Oct. 8.

"The Arabs are the ones you have to worry about most," he said. "They will kill you in a moment if they see any sign that you are resisting."
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/10/international/asia/10ARAB.html?todaysheadlines&pagewanted=all

Hijackers' Meticulous Strategy of Brains, Muscle and Practice
What has emerged, nearly two months into the investigation, is a picture in which the roles of the 19 hijackers are so well defined as to be almost corporate in their organization and coordination.
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/04/national/04PLOT.html?todaysheadlines&pagewanted=all

SearchDay - Build Your Own Yahoo! - 1 November 2001
The itch to create your own online portal eventually strikes just about every web searcher, usually after you've built up a collection of a few thousand choice bookmarks or favorites that you'd love to share with the rest of the world. There are several ways to scratch this itch, and to do it properly, you should make sure you have the right tools for the job.
http://searchenginewatch.com/searchday/01/sd1101-directory.html

The Rich-Poor Division Is in Stark Relief in Talks for Trade Agenda
Brazil and India are leading a coalition that wants trade rules rewritten to make it clear that nations can violate patents and save money on, for example, AIDS or malaria drugs when they face an acute health crisis.

They argue that poor countries often cannot afford vital medicine. Industrial nations, they say, often seek to punish them if they buy or produce knockoff versions of the drugs.

Paulo Teixeira, director of Brazil's anti-AIDS program, told reporters this week that the United States' efforts to reduce the price of Cipro, under threat of breaking Bayer's patent, mimics similar strong-arm tactics that Brazil has used. Washington threatened at one point to file a W.T.O. case against Brazil on behalf of American drug makers.
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/01/business/01TRAD.html

Rich Nations Have Been Too Insensitive to Poverty
Rich nations are shamefully stingy about aiding the poor, but none more so than the United States. In 1999, the World Bank reported that the United States gave 0.1 percent of its economic output for development, or $9.1 billion, the lowest proportion among the 30 or so wealthiest nations. Japan gave more than $15 billion — still skimpy, but 0.35 percent of its output. Moreover, America stipulates that about two-thirds of the $9 billion must be spent on American products.
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/01/business/01SCEN.html

Chicago Tribune | A Soviet general and nation building
Consider Gen. Ruslan Aushev, the most distinguished Soviet war hero in Afghanistan and a Muslim from Russia's North Caucasus. In his native republic of Ingushetia, Aushev has fought and defeated Al Qaeda. More importantly, he won peace without the dirty methods professionals of espionage portray as necessary evils.

Ingushetia, one of the ethnic republics within the Russian Federation, is a tiny mountainous place along the frontier of the rebellious Chechnya. In contrast to Chechnya, Ingushetia remains in obscurity because only wars in distant lands make global headlines.

In Ingushetia, peace is the lesson.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/perspective/chi-0110280314oct28.story?coll=chi%2Dnewsopinionperspective%2Dhed

U.S. Appears to Be Losing Public Relations War So Far
The Bush administration has belatedly deployed its forces for a propaganda war to win over the Arab public. But the campaign, intended to convince doubters that the American attacks on Afghanistan are justified and its Middle East policy is evenhanded, has so far proved ineffectual.

Thousands of words from American officials, it appears, have proved no match for the last week's news, which produced a barrage of pictures of wounded Afghan children and of Israeli tanks rolling into Palestinian villages.
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/10/28/international/middleeast/28PROM.html

Efforts to Calm the Nation's Fears Spin Out of Control
People in the grip of fear want information that holds up, not spin control.

Again and again in recent weeks, administration officials tried to reassure the public; again and again, the situation proved more serious than the officials had suggested. As a result, public trust has evaporated.

While the number of people known to be affected by the disease is still relatively small, and the number of deaths smaller still, the admission that the type of anthrax used was so deadly and so highly refined that it could infect postal workers and contaminate the mail amplified the sense of a situation that was careening out of control.
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/10/28/weekinreview/28SCHW.html

Developing Warning System for Biological Attack Proves Difficult
The military has spent hundreds of millions of dollars to develop detectors. The truck-based system stationed at the Pentagon can identify four biological agents in less than 45 minutes, according to the latest annual report from the Pentagon to Congress on the status of chemical and biological defenses. Some air bases use a network of these sensors and compare their readings, to cut down on false warnings.

Another system tries to use light to detect aerosol clouds from miles away, but it cannot tell whether the clouds contain pathogens.

The Pentagon's inspector general last year criticized development of a new, more advanced system known as the Joint Biological Point Detection System for achieving only one of 10 critical goals. It broke down often, failed to identify lethal pathogens and sometimes gave false warnings when no danger existed.
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/10/28/national/28DETE.html?todaysheadlines&pagewanted=all

Bin Laden Family Strives to Re-establish Its Reputation
Despite the family's public disavowal of the terrorist mastermind suspect, federal agents swooped in to question family members' neighbors and friends. Reporters piled up outside their doors. More critically, companies that did business with the $5 billion family construction empire in Saudi Arabia were starting to get jittery about dealing with the family.
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/10/28/international/middleeast/28BINL.html

Nature Pre-publication
Recent events have confirmed that bioterrorism is no longer a threat but a reality. To provide wide-ranging access to the latest scientific information about anthrax and other potential bioweapons, Nature has put together a special online focus on this issue. This focus includes the pre-publication* of two research papers on anthrax toxin, as well as a collection of research, news and feature articles from our electronic archive. Because of the heightened interest in this area, among both the scientific community and the general public, all material in this feature has been made freely available.
http://www.nature.com/nature/anthrax/

All Suicide Bombers Are Not Alike
Whoever kills himself with an iron weapon, then the iron weapon will remain in his hand, and he will continuously stab himself in his belly with it in the Fire of Hell eternally, forever and ever."

A few days after Sept. 11, that quotation from a sacred Muslim commentary turned up on an English-language Web site calledwww.fatwa-online.com. There it was brandished by a Muslim scholar who argued that Islam could never, under any circumstances, justify the practice known in the West as ''suicide bombing.'' Suicide bombers, he seemed to be warning, would blow themselves up through eternity. It was, in its way, a comforting thought, but there was no assurance that this learned discussion on the Internet was being followed in Arab centers where the bombers were found and recruited. In the days after Sept. 11, it also became clear that there was no Arab leadership with the inclination or stature to call a jihad against suicide bombings and the latter-day cult of martyrdom that may date from the Iran-Iraq war, in which Iranian teenagers, sent out by the thousands to be human minefield sweepers, were given keys to wear around their necks. Those keys, they were promised, would open the doors of paradise.
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/10/28/magazine/28TERRORIST.html?pagewanted=all

Videoconferencing May Get Much-Needed Critical Mass
\But people have been forecasting the takeoff of videoconferencing for
decades. In the early 1970's AT (news/quote
)
offered Picturephone service in Chicago for $86.50 a month. Jeff Rohlfs,
a Bell Labs economist who was involved with the project, describes the
history of this technology in his new book, "Bandwagon Effects in
High-Technology Industries" (MIT Press).
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/10/04/business/04SCEN.html?pagewanted=all

LinkVoyager: Terrorism
This directory exists to educate web users about Terrorism, a subject much on people's minds in the wake of the tragic events of September 11th. Feel free to submit sites.
http://www.linkvoyager.com/cgi-bin/serve.fcgi/terrorism/

ResearchBuzz 911 Coverage
http://www.researchbuzz.com/911.html

SearchDay - Attack on America: Coping with Information Overload - 17 September 2001
Attack on America: Coping with Information Overload

Trying to make sense of the events of the past week has been an enormous challenge, not only because of their complexity, but because of the massive amounts of misinformation that's been generated. Here are a few authoritative sources that are providing comprehensive background, analysis and news and links to trusted sources to help us cope with the information overload we're all experiencing.
http://searchenginewatch.com/searchday/01/sd0917-news.html

Finding Disaster Coverage At Search Engines
Following the unprecedented terrorist attacks on the United States today, web users turned en masse to search engines for information. It took those services some time to adjust to the demand, but as the day progressed, many came up to speed.
http://searchenginewatch.com/sereport/01/09-wtc.html