Judge Suspends Proceedings in Standoff on War Prisoner
In a standoff over the constitutional rights of prisoners captured during the war in Afghanistan, a federal judge in Virginia took the rare action today of suspending all proceedings in a case in which the government has classified a prisoner as an "enemy combatant" with almost no legal protections.

The judge, Robert G. Doumar, of Federal District Court in Norfolk, Va., canceled a hearing scheduled for Thursday in which the government was to explain why it had classified Yasser Esam Hamdi, a prisoner who was born in Louisiana and raised in Saudi Arabia, as an enemy combatant. The government says the classification denies a person the rights afforded to either a prisoner of war or someone indicted in a crime.

The judge's action came after the Justice Department refused to hand over by noon on Tuesday documents justifying the government's labeling of Mr. Hamdi as an enemy combatant.

Judge Doumar has suggested for months that Mr. Hamdi had certain legal rights as an American citizen. But government prosecutors have consistently rejected this notion, arguing that Mr. Hamdi was an enemy combatant and as such had no right to a lawyer and did not need to be charged with any specific crime while he was held in the brig at the Norfolk Naval Station.

Moreover, the government has argued that the executive branch has the sole authority to make such determinations in a time of war and that under the separation of powers clause of the Constitution the judiciary has little room to overrule decisions by the commander in chief.

The Justice Department had challenged Judge Doumar's order for the documents, saying it was inappropriate and that the material he requested was highly sensitive. With the stage set for a confrontation between the parties on Thursday in Norfolk, the judge did not respond to that challenge.

But in a terse order today, the judge canceled that hearing. He cited a dispute between Mr. Hamdi and the government over whether the case could proceed in light of a government-requested stay that had been issued earlier by the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, in Richmond, Va.

Justice Department officials would not comment on today's action.

Frank W. Dunham Jr., the public defender appointed to represent Mr. Hamdi, said he thought the judge's order made sense because the issue of whether the stay remained in effect had not been resolved.

"Once he realized that both sides thought the stay was in effect, he needed to pull back," Mr. Dunham said. "It's a confusing procedural situation."
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/08/08/national/08DETA.html

News: When brains meet computer brawn
People linking their brains together to form a global collective intelligence. Humans living well beyond 100 years. Computers uploading aspects of our personalities to a network.

These could all happen this century with the proper investments in technology, according to a recent report from the National Science Foundation and the Department of Commerce.

Titled "Converging Technologies for Improving Human Performance: Nanotechnology, Biotechnology, Information Technology, and Cognitive Science," the 405-page report calls for more research into the intersection of these fields. The payoff, the authors claim, isn't just better bodies and more effective minds. Progress in these areas of technology also could play a key role in preventing a societal "catastrophe." The answer to human brutality and new forms of lethal weapons, it suggests, is a kind of tech-triggered unity: "Technological convergence could become the framework for human convergence."
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1103-948545.html

Converging Technologies for Improving Human Performance
Converging Technologies
for Improving Human Performance:

Nanotechnology, Biotechnology, Information Technology and Cognitive Science
http://itri.loyola.edu/ConvergingTechnologies/

News: Symantec warns of firewall flaw
Researchers have discovered a flaw in Symantec's Raptor firewall that could allow attackers to hijack legitimate communications with a protected system.

The vulnerability lies in the way the software creates and uses random numbers--called TCP Initial Sequence Numbers--for each new connection. In order to speed performance, the system reuses the same number for connections coming from the same source IP address and TCP port for a short time after the initial connection is closed, researchers said. During this period, an attacker could use the IP address and TCP information for an earlier, legitimate connection and create a new, unauthorized connection, a technique called "spoofing".

This connection would appear to be coming from an address other than that of the real source, and could be used to carry out an attack. In addition, researchers said that the way the ISN is generated is not random enough. "A weakness in the generation of these ISNs could allow a remote attacker to easily predict the sequence numbers for a certain session," said Kristof Philipsen, a security engineer with e-security firm Ubizen Luxembourg, which discovered the flaw

The systems affected are:
· Raptor Firewall 6.5 for Windows NT
· Raptor Firewall V6.5.3 for Solaris
· Symantec Enterprise Firewall 6.5.2 for Windows 2000 and NT
· Symantec Enterprise Firewall V7.0 for Solaris
· Symantec Enterprise Firewall 7.0 for Windows 2000 and NT
· VelociRaptor Model 500/700/1000
· VelociRaptor Model 1100/1200/1300
· Symantec Gateway Security 5110/5200/5300
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1105-948579.html

News: A legal hack? Only in America
Could record and music executives who take advantage of the hacking provisions of a proposed U.S. bill face stiff penalties if they travel to countries that outlaw computer break-ins? Possibly.

Rep. Howard Berman, D-Calif., has pushed a measure that would allow intellectual property owners to use technical measures to prevent copyright infringement. These measures include spoofing--the seeding of file-swapping networks with false versions of songs--and hacking into sharing systems. The proposal has already come under fire from critics, who fear it would encourage corporate vigilantism. It may also put some entertainment industry folks squarely in the crosshairs of a complex web of inconsistent international and local laws that has already entangled executives, including former Yahoo CEO Tim Koogle.

For example, Australia's legal code contains a provision allowing a sentence of up to six months in jail if a person breaks into a computer system without legal authority. On Tuesday, Melbourne's The Age newspaper ran a story saying American executives could be banned from entering the country or face jail time if they employ the bill's hacking provisions.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1105-948597.html

"802.11b " Protocol Bridges 802.11a, 802.11b
With the standardization of the 802.11g specification pushed out until about next May, some companies are turning towards the proprietary "802.11b " specification to fill the gap.
http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,3973,437741,00.asp

Chicago Tribune | Faces of death
Inside a Palestinian Authority building in Ramallah hangs a poster urging Palestinian mothers to keep their children off the front lines of the intifada against Israel.

Peeking out from amid exhortations for Palestinian statehood, celebrations of Palestinian heroes and condemnations of Israeli military actions, the poster tugs at the heart but also appeals to the mind. The children are our future, the maxim goes, so let us take care.

This cry for calm is barely a whisper amid the cacophony of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, where too often death, not life, is glorified.

Palestinian mothers and fathers are congratulated for having sons who turned themselves into human bombs to kill Israeli civilians. They get payments from Iraqi President Saddam Hussein and pensions from the militant groups that sponsor the bombers.

The Israeli army, meanwhile, has brought the front lines of the intifada into the front yards of Palestinian homes.

Israel defends its military crackdown as a necessary measure to protect Israeli civilians, but rising civilian casualties accompany the sweeping incursions into Palestinian towns, such as Friday's operation in the West Bank city of Nablus.

Arab children are now killed and wounded not just throwing stones at Israeli troops but walking in fields, playing in the street, riding in cars--even, like two weeks ago in the Gaza Strip, sleeping in their beds.

Israel accuses Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat and others of sending mixed messages, of telling the world they want peace when they really prefer war. Yet the message that average Palestinians get every day is not so mixed: It is one of armed struggle, of the righteousness of the Palestinian cause, of the glory of martyrdom.

Not just on the walls of Palestinian Authority buildings, but everywhere one looks in the West Bank are homages to suicide bombers.

Like the sad, plaintive sign in the government office in Ramallah, the martyr posters are about promise as well. Many portray the dead with a flock of green birds, a symbol of the Palestinian suicide bombers that is based on a saying by the Prophet Muhammad about martyrs being flown off to paradise.

A shortcut to heaven is how a Palestinian militant once described martyrdom.

"It is very, very near--right in front of our eyes," said a would-be bomber who was arrested by Palestinian police before he could carry out his mission. "It lies beneath the thumb. On the other side of the detonator."
Militant leaders boast that the challenge is not in finding young people willing to strap on a specially tailored belt loaded with explosives, nails and scraps of metal. The challenge is choosing the right candidates among the many who come forward.

"Thousands of young men and women are ready to be blown up," said Rabah Mohanna of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. "This is a new phenomenon. You have no idea how big it is."

Said a Hamas leader: "Those whom we turn away return again and again, pestering us, pleading to be accepted."

A different kind of bombardment--that from Israeli tanks, planes and attack helicopters--also helps fill the ranks of Hamas, Islamic Jihad and other brigades of would-be martyrs.

Hamas was dealt a blow when its military leader, Salah Shehadeh, was assassinated last month in Gaza City by a rocket launched from a U.S.-supplied F-16 warplane. But that attack also killed 14 civilians, including nine Palestinian children, and left 150 neighbors of Shehadeh's wounded.

Within hours, Hamas and other militant groups, some of whom reject the notion of ever making peace with Israel, were using the killings to recruit new killers.

registration required
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/perspective/chi-0208040248aug04.story?coll=chi%2Dnewsopinionperspective%2Dhed

Chicago Tribune | Too many kids caught in the crossfire
Look at a child you love. Touch his hair, her skin. Look into those eyes, those bottomless eyes, those eyes that radiate more light than the sun and the moon and all the stars. Then imagine, for a split second, if your mind will allow in even that much horror, imagine that girl, that boy, dead. Killed in your arms, next to you, holding your hand.

I don't know how parents survive. I don't know how their lungs continue to function, their blood to flow, their legs to propel them forward. But the highly regarded Israeli human rights organization, B'Tselem, reports that, in the past 22 months, the mothers and fathers of about 125 Palestinian kids age 14 and younger and 35 Israeli children of the same age have had to learn how to go on.

I'm an American-Israeli in a constant state of despair over the war Israel is waging against the Palestinian people. I'm never more horrified than when the victims of our vastly superior military force--whether through intent or negligence, it just doesn't matter--are children.

Earlier this summer, Randa al-Hindi was riding in a taxi with three of her children; at a roadblock outside Gaza City, Israeli soldiers in an armored carrier thought they saw "suspicious" figures in the car. Rather than shoot out its tires, demand that the riders disembark, take a closer look, anything, they fired into the cab, killing Randa and Anwar, her 2-year-old daughter.

One Friday in May, 7-year-old Amid Abd Alsamad abu Sief was on his way to the mosque with his father. Friday prayers are the high point of the Muslim week, so he was, no doubt, well-scrubbed and wearing his best clothes; I picture him running to keep up with his dad. He was shot dead by Israeli soldiers. His father was critically wounded.
Perhaps the most infamous example is this: 12-year-old Mohammed Aldura, shot dead in September 2000, as his unarmed father, waving frantically and shouting "Don't shoot!" tried to shield him with his own body, as soldiers fired round after round after round. For 45 minutes.

There are, of course, devastating cases of the murder of Israeli children: suicide bombings at establishments frequented by teenagers, on public buses, at an ice cream parlor. Thoughts of the Palestinian sniper who shot 10-month-old Shalhevet Pass, in the head, in her father's arms, still leave me breathless.

It is easy to understand when the parents of murdered children lose their minds in grief and turn with ravenous anger on those responsible. The almost incomprehensible thing is when they do not.

Five years ago, Israeli Smadar Elhanan was killed by a Palestinian suicide bomber while shopping for school books. She was 14. Today, on the door to her parents' Jerusalem apartment there is a bumper sticker that reads "Free Palestine."

Smadar's father, Rami, recently told the London Mirror that the blame for his daughter's death rests squarely on the shoulders of Israel's government.

"Our daughter was killed because of the terror of Israeli occupation," he said. "Every innocent victim from both sides is a victim of the occupation."

Rami's father survived the Holocaust; his grandfather, aunts and uncles all perished. He and his wife responded to their own tragedy by joining the parents of a Palestinian boy killed by Israeli soldiers, forming a group called the Bereaved Family Forum. If there is a more godly response to a history of hatred and death, I don't know it.

The heart's immediate response to these stories is to cry out for an end to the violence. It is, however, easier to demand that the killing end than to stop it. Not because people are animals, but because people are people. Because life is made up of infinitely more than just being alive.

This is what the occupation means: Malnourishment among Palestinian children is on the rise, a result of the curfews Israel has imposed on the towns and villages it has seized; as of April, Israel had demolished more than 225 homes since the outbreak of the intifada; in the last quarter of 2001, unemployment among 20- to 24-year-olds in the Gaza Strip stood at 45 percent, in no small part because most are no longer allowed to seek work inside Israel; Palestinian ambulances are regularly kept from reaching people wounded in Israeli actions, while the sick or injured or pregnant are frequently detained for hours on end at Israeli roadblocks while on their way to the hospital.

Hope an amazing thing

It is, to my mind, a wonder that anyone growing up under these circumstances is able to find any hope at all. Former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak once said that if he had grown up in a Palestinian refugee camp, he too would be wearing a mask and fighting the occupation.

registration required
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/perspective/chi-0208040247aug04.story?coll=chi%2Dnewsopinionperspective%2Dhed

Justice Dept. Details Its Loss of Weapons and Computers
The F.B.I. and other federal law enforcement agencies have lost hundreds of guns and other weapons in recent years, along with more than 400 laptop computers that, in some cases, may have contained classified national security information, according to an internal Justice Department report made public today.

The report by the department's inspector general found that from late 1999 through last January, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and four other Justice Department agencies had reported 775 weapons as lost, missing or stolen.

According to the report, at least 18 of those weapons later turned up at crime scenes or in the custody of criminals, including a handgun stolen from an F.B.I. agent's home in New Orleans that was recovered from the pocket of a murder victim. The other agencies surveyed in the report were the Immigration and Naturalization Service, the Drug Enforcement Administration, the United States Marshals Service and the Bureau of Prisons.

The report said there were also "significant concerns over laptop computer losses and the possible loss of sensitive data," including national security secrets commonly stored on the government's portable computers.

"It is impossible to determine if the lost laptop computers contained national security or investigative information" because the F.B.I. and the other agencies "generally did not record the sensitivity of information stored on the machines," the report said. "It is possible that the missing laptop computers would have been used to process and store national security or sensitive law enforcement information that, if divulged, could harm the public."

The inspector general, Glenn Fine, said in a statement that the losses of weapons and laptop computers at the five agencies indicated "a lack of accountability for sensitive department property."

A leading Congressional critic of the F.B.I., Senator Charles E. Grassley, Republican of Iowa, said the inspector's general report showed that "the problem of missing guns at the F.B.I., in particular, is a mess, and it's been that way for years."

"It stems from weak discipline, lax standards, tardy reporting and few, if any, consequences," Mr. Grassley said. "Tracking deadly weapons and computers with sensitive information may seem like housekeeping to some in law enforcement, but it's critical to public safety, national security and the credibility of these agencies."
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/08/06/national/06JUST.html

Japan in an Uproar as 'Big Brother' Computer File Kicks In
Japan put into operation a national computerized registry of its citizens today, provoking two un-Japanese responses: civil disobedience and a widespread feeling that privacy should take priority over efficiency.

Yokohama, Japan's second largest city, made the national government's registry voluntary, and half a dozen other cities refused to be included in the computerized system connecting local registries, effectively leaving four million people out of the system.

But a much larger mass of angry public opinion was behind this visible resistance. Critics noted that the government had labored for three years to produce the system on time, but had been unable to produce a privacy law that was to accompany it.

In a survey of 1,948 people conducted two weeks ago by the newspaper Asahi Shimbun, 86 percent of respondents said they were concerned about misuse or leakage of information, and 76 percent said the posting of the database should be postponed.

At a "disconnecting ceremony" this morning, Nobuo Hoshino, mayor of Kokubunji, one of the cities that refused to take part, said to television cameras, "Residents are sending us their views by e-mail, fax and various other ways, and almost all of them support us."

Under the system, all citizens, from babies in hospital nurseries to elderly in nursing homes, have been assigned individual 11-digit numbers. For now, the number allows retrieval of only basic information: name, address, sex and birth date.

The information is only to be available to government employees for official use, and is not on the Internet. Furthermore, all the information and more is already in government hands, in the creaking 19th-century era "koseki" or paper registry, which is scattered around city halls across this nation of 126 million people. The new system is intended to cut red tape and to make it easier for citizens as well as officials — by registering a change of address in only one place, for example.

But the government's zeal in creating the system was not matched by its zeal for pursuing a personal information protection bill, which died last week as Parliament ended its summer session.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/08/06/international/asia/06JAPA.html

F.B.I. Faces Inquiry on a False Confession From an Egyptian Student
A federal judge in Manhattan took the unusual step yesterday of ordering federal prosecutors to investigate how the F.B.I. had obtained a confession from an innocent Egyptian student who was detained in connection with the attack on the World Trade Center.

The judge, Jed S. Rakoff of Federal District Court, also agreed to unseal virtually all documents that have been kept secret in the case of the student, Abdallah Higazy. He was initially held as a material witness in the Sept. 11 investigation after a security guard said he had found an aviation radio in the safe in Mr. Higazy's hotel room, which overlooked the trade center site.

Mr. Higazy was later charged with perjury when he denied owning the radio, and spent about a month in jail. He was released after the guard admitted making up the story about the radio.

But while Mr. Higazy was in jail, prosecutors told Judge Rakoff that the student had confessed to an F.B.I. agent that he owned the radio, an admission now known to be untrue.

Mr. Higazy asked for a polygraph exam to prove his innocence, the judge said, and an F.B.I. agent administered it without his lawyer present. But at some point, the F.B.I. agent, who has not been identified, stopped, and reportedly began to question Mr. Higazy, who then confessed, the judge noted. The confession fueled suspicions he might be tied to the hijackers.

"The alleged misbehavior here," Judge Rakoff said, "consists, worst case, of an F.B.I. agent's taking unfair advantage of a situation created during a polygraph testing expressly requested by the witness to obtain from the witness a coerced or uncounseled confession that could be used to bring criminal charges against the witness."

Although Mr. Higazy made no claims of physical abuse, he said recently that after he was left alone for several hours with the agent, he started hyperventilating and was ready to say anything. Mr. Higazy also said the agent had threatened his family's safety if he did not confess, the judge noted, adding that the government denied that allegation.

The judge said that he believed prosecutors had put forward the information about the confession without realizing it was false, but that there were still questions about the agent's actions in the session, last Dec. 27.

Prosecutors had begun an investigation, he noted, but stopped pending his decision on whether the court would conduct its own inquiry. He ordered prosecutors to report back by Oct. 31, at which point he will decide whether to release the findings.

He also gave the government until Friday to object to the release of any portions of documents that he feels should now be made public. The judge said that "the determination to jail a person pending his appearance before a grand jury is presumptively public, for no free society can long tolerate secret arrests." The New York Times and Mr. Higazy's lawyer had both asked the judge to unseal the file pertaining to the case.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/08/06/nyregion/06CONF.html

Israeli Court Upholds Right to Destroy Homes Without Warning
The Israeli Supreme Court today upheld the military's right to demolish the homes of Palestinian terror suspects without warning, in the face of an assertion by a Palestinian official that the practice would only "widen the cycle of violence."

In new military action today, Israeli forces killed two Palestinian militants on the West Bank, including one suspected of plotting a suicide bombing last month.


The Supreme Court rejected a petition by 35 Palestinian families whose homes are scheduled for demolition that they be given 48 hours' notice, allowing them time to try to stop the actions with a court order.

In recent days, reviving a practice abandoned several years ago, Israeli troops demolished nine homes on the West Bank, and Israel is preparing to banish the relatives of suicide attackers from the West Bank to the Gaza Strip.

The Palestinian labor minister, Ghassan Khatib, said the practice of demolition violated international law and that the ruling supporting it widened the scope of Israel's punishment of ordinary Palestinians.

"This is only going to deepen the hatred and consequently widen the cycle of violence," he said.

A three-judge panel ruled that allowing court challenges to the demolitions could put soldiers' lives in danger because Palestinians would be able to booby-trap the houses or set up ambushes. The ruling leaves it up to the military to decide whether or not to allow hearings in some cases.

The court ruling and the new violence came after three Palestinian attacks on Sunday and early Monday killed 13 people. In response the Israeli government banned Palestinian travel through the northern West Bank, further tightening already stringent restrictions.

…9.3 percent of Palestinians between the ages of 6 months and just under 5 years were suffering moderate to severe malnutrition. That is more than four times the rate found in what the researchers called "a normally nourished population."

Another 13.2 percent of Palestinian children were found to be chronically malnourished, meaning their growth was stunted. Acute and chronic malnutrition were found to be more severe in Gaza than on the West Bank.

The study, based on a random sample of 1,000 households, was conducted by Johns Hopkins University and CARE, in coordination with two Palestinian institutions, Al Quds University and the Global Management Consulting Group.

In response to the finding, the Palestinian health minister, Riad Zanoun, declared a state of emergency.

Previous studies of nutrition in the Palestinian territories were less scientific and less broad, making it difficult to determine precisely whether malnutrition has been increasing or at what rate.

But the researchers said the problem appeared to be on the rise. The study attributed families' difficulty affording food mostly to the dire state of the Palestinian economy, and only secondarily to the closings as such.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/08/06/international/06CND-MIDE.html

New Israeli Rules Adopted in Wake of More Attacks
After three Palestinian attacks on Sunday and early today killed 13 people, the Israeli government banned Palestinian travel through the northern West Bank, further tightening already stringent restrictions.
"Nobody enters, and nobody leaves," Defense Minister Benjamin Ben-Eliezer said of West Bank towns and villages.

The stricter controls came as a study financed by the American government reported significant malnutrition among Palestinian children.

As violence flared again, Israeli helicopters fired rockets tonight at a metal factory in Gaza City that the army said was used to manufacture bombs. Palestinian officials reported that at least three teenagers had been injured in the air raid.

Earlier today the Israeli Army sealed off the southern end of the Gaza Strip, near the turbulent Rafah refugee camp.

With the government under sharp criticism from Israelis for not doing enough to stem terrorism, Mr. Ben-Eliezer promised a further "long list of actions" in the West Bank and Gaza Strip that would "make the closure much bigger than it is now."

The army is already in control of seven of eight West Bank cities, which it seized six weeks ago after back-to-back suicide bombings in Jerusalem.

But in the last week, Palestinians from the West Bank appear to have evaded the Israeli forces and penetrated the lines of security along the West Bank boundary to carry out at least three suicide attacks.

It is not clear how the travel ban will change life for Palestinians or Israelis, since the army has already hobbled Palestinian movement through the West Bank, declaring that people needed permits to move about. In the cities the army seized, it imposed 24-hour curfews, lifting them only sporadically.

Today Israeli soldiers opened fire on a group of Palestinians defying the curfew in the West Bank city of Nablus, killing a 15-year-old boy, Palestinian officials said. The army said it was checking the report.

In recent days the army has revived a policy of demolishing the homes of militants' relatives, and it is preparing to banish the relatives of suicide attackers from the West Bank to the Gaza Strip.

As it clamped down elsewhere, the army said that it was easing restrictions on Bethlehem and Hebron, also in the West Bank, and that it would take the same step in "all places that remain calm."

[At the United Nations, the General Assembly passed a resolution today, drafted jointly by the European Union and Palestinian envoys, demanding the immediate withdrawal of Israeli forces.]

As violence has surged since the killing of a leader of the Islamist group Hamas in an Israeli airstrike two weeks ago, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has come under sharp attack from rightist politicians and the news media.

The criticism was fed today by disclosures that in three months of construction, the government has managed to build only about 120 feet of fence on the West Bank boundary, along a possible 225-mile route.

Mr. Sharon won office more than a year ago on a promise of peace and security. Those goals may appear more elusive than ever, but Mr. Sharon retains substantial support, partly because Israelis have not been persuaded by any alternative policy or politician.

As travel restrictions tightened, researchers studying malnutrition in the West Bank and Gaza said today that the Israeli closings were contributing to what they called "a distinct humanitarian emergency."

Israeli officials said they were moving to ease Palestinians' predicament where possible, and they said Palestinians' own mismanagement and militancy had made the army's restrictions necessary.

The army said the measures "do not apply to medical and humanitarian needs." But aid groups report great difficulties in moving medicine and other supplies through the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/08/06/international/middleeast/06MIDE.html

SearchDay - 131 (Legitimate) Link Building Strategies - 7 July 2002
131 (Legitimate) Link Building Strategies
http://searchenginewatch.com/searchday/02/sd0711-linktips.html

SearchDay - Special Search Tools Issue, Part 2 - 1 August 2002
Special Search Tools Issue, Part 2
http://searchenginewatch.com/searchday/02/sd0801-stools2.html

MSN Adds Preview Screenshots, Ability To Dig Deeper Into Results
MSN Search is now showing "Search Preview" screenshots of web sites in results from within Internet Explorer while also offering the ability to go past the top 200 results.

Those using Internet Explorer's "Search Assistant" can see the screenshots. This is activated by pushing the Search button from the Internet Explorer toolbar. A new window then opens on the left-hand side of your screen, where you can enter a search. Once you've done this, text listings will appear in the left-hand side of the screen, while the first six listings from that list will appear with screenshots of their home pages on the right-hand side.

Unfortunately, there's currently no "next" button for the screenshot listings to let you visually review more than the first six queries for any topic. The functionality also doesn't work for those using the "Search Companion" mode within IE6.
http://searchenginewatch.com/sereport/02/08-msn.html

The Search Engine Report, July 1, 2002, Number 68
THE SEARCH ENGINE REPORT
August 5, 2002 - Number 69

In This Issue

+ Search Engine Strategies & Google Dance In San Jose Next Week!
+ Compare & Contrast: Ad Guidelines At Overture & Google
+ AOL Moves Fully To Google
+ Ask Jeeves To Carry Google's Ads
+ European Search Engine News
+ Google Adds More "Fresh" Pages, Changes Robots.txt & 403 Errors, Gains iWon
+ MSN Adds Preview Screenshots, Ability To Dig Deeper Into Results
+ LookSmart Extends Credits
+ Search Engine Resources
+ SearchDay Articles
+ Search Engine Articles Review
+ List Info (Subscribing/Unsubscribing)
http://searchenginewatch.com/sereport/current.html

What Voters Want
For members of Congress — 98 percent of whom have been re-elected in recent years — the August recess usually confirms that all politics is local.

But things are different this August. The country and all its people have lived through an extraordinary year, defined by searing events and inescapable symbols. People are haunted by the deaths of Sept. 11, the destruction of the World Trade Center and the still unsolved anthrax attack through the mail. This was followed by war in Afghanistan, and now the possibility of war with Iraq looms.

Enron came to represent a new kind of villainy, as corporate executives cashed out and employees lost their jobs and pensions. Arthur Andersen did more shredding than accounting. Ken Lay and a parade of other chief executives who had run their companies into the ground slunk across the news. The WorldCom scam was followed by a stock market crash and the shrinking of once-flush 401(k) plans.

Enron came to represent a new kind of villainy, as corporate executives cashed out and employees lost their jobs and pensions. Arthur Andersen did more shredding than accounting. Ken Lay and a parade of other chief executives who had run their companies into the ground slunk across the news. The WorldCom scam was followed by a stock market crash and the shrinking of once-flush 401(k) plans.

Meanwhile, revered public institutions, previously above criticism, came under intense public scrutiny. The scandal of pedophile priests forced the leaders of the American Catholic Church to struggle with the idea of accountability. And the top administrators of the Federal Bureau of Investigation faced public scorn when it became known that they ignored the warnings of F.B.I. field agents about terrorist attacks.

This unrelenting stream of bad news and broken faith has reshaped the public consciousness just as members of Congress head home. Nearly 75 percent of their constituents and likely voters say they are very angry about the Enron executives and their misdeeds, according to bipartisan national surveys conducted for National Public Radio. Nearly an identical percentage are very angry about chief executives taking lavish bonuses and perks as their companies fail and pensions lose value.

With 74 percent of likely voters in next year's election owning stocks or having retirement accounts, the financial scandals hit close to home: Three in five of these voters report suffering losses this year. These voters are looking at substantially diminished college funds and retirement savings.

A public consensus is emerging that the behavior evident in the Enron and other scandals reflects a bigger problem: people in powerful positions now feel free to act irresponsibly and hurt ordinary people, without fear of being held accountable.

It is not surprising that trauma from these scandals has in recent days overtaken the sense of national unity that existed in the months immediately after Sept. 11. Voters are moving toward a different set of conclusions about the country. In March, according to N.P.R. surveys, 60 percent of voters thought the country was headed in the right direction, and only 28 percent thought things were headed seriously off track. But in the last month, voters' moods have turned very dark. Just 36 percent still think things are going well, while 56 percent think things are headed in the wrong direction.

In the aftermath of Sept. 11, the public rallied around America's institutions, including Congress, but that feeling is gone. As recently as April, 52 percent of voters surveyed said they wanted to re-elect their member of Congress, but in the last month, many voters have moved to a different judgment: just 41 percent said they were likely to vote for the incumbent, while 42 percent said they now want somebody new.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/08/05/opinion/05GREE.html

Israel Further Restricts Palestinian Movement
``We are in a situation of total closure in the northern West Bank. No one goes in or out,'' Israeli Defense Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer told Israel radio.

``We will continue with a long series of measures which I cannot speak of now whose aim is to implement a much wider closure than we are doing now,'' he said.

The new measures appeared aimed at mollifying an Israeli public increasingly nervous about the army's failure to halt Palestinian violence, even though troops have re-occupied seven of the eight Palestinian cities in the West Bank.

But political analysts said Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon was unlikely to change his current military policy, under which Israel has occupied the seven cities, held 700,000 Palestinians under curfew and regularly sent troops on raids to arrest militants.

Nabil Abu Rdainah, a senior aide to Arafat, condemned the latest Israeli moves and called on the international community to force an Israeli pullout.

``No doubt the Palestinian suffering demands an immediate international intervention because of the humanitarian catastrophe of the people,'' he told Reuters.

Following Sunday's attacks, Israel suspended talks due this week with Palestinians on security and easing hardships.

But Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres went ahead with a meeting in Egypt Monday with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, who was expected to press demands for a quick Israeli withdrawal from Palestinian-ruled areas.

On his return to Israel, Peres said Mubarak told him that he did not believe Sharon had a plan for peace.
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-mideast.html

Israel Announces New Travel Curbs on West Bank Cities Israel responded today with yet another crackdown on Palestinian travel in much of the West Bank after a bomb ripped apart an Israeli commuter bus in northern Galilee early Sunday, igniting a fireball that left nine people dead and beginning a burst of widespread Palestinian violence.

In the Gaza Strip, about 25 tanks cut off the southern town of Rafah, a frequent center of violence, and an adjacent refugee camp from the rest of the strip. The army said it acted to prevent more attacks on Israelis.

After the new crackdown was announced, Israeli radio reports said a terrorist died today when a bomb in a car he was driving exploded about 100 yards from its apparent target, a bus station outside the Arab Israeli town of Umm el-Fahm. One other person was injured in what the Israelis called a "work accident," a term they use when a terrorist's bomb goes off prematurely. Israel's Channel Two television said both men were militants.

Defense Minister Benjamin Ben-Eliezer said restrictions on Palestinian movement would be tightened further, and that troops were planning operations to "maintain a much bigger closure than what we are doing now."

Under the new ban, Palestinians will not be able to drive in the northern half of the West Bank, between the towns of Nablus, Jenin, Qalqiliya, Tulkarm and Ramallah, the army said. Some movement will be permitted in the southern West Bank, including the towns of Hebron, Bethlehem and Jericho.

Stringent curbs on Palestinian travel have been in place since September 2000, with Palestinians confined to their communities for extended periods as Israeli troops try to prevent terror attacks.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/08/05/international/05CND-MIDE.html?pagewanted=all&position=top

Bus Bombed in Galilee; Ambushes Add to New Burst of Violence
The Palestinian attacks have intensified since the airstrike by Israel in Gaza on July 23 that killed Sheik Salah Shehada, the leader of the military wing of Hamas. In the strike, a one-ton bomb hit a densely populated Gaza residential neighborhood, killing 14 Palestinians besides Sheik Shehada, including 9 children. The bomb in a cafeteria at Hebrew University here killed 7 people, 5 of them American, and wounded scores. Hamas claimed responsibility for the attack.

Hamas also claimed responsibility for the bus bombing on Sunday, calling it a "further riposte to the killing of our leader," Sheik Shehada, in a statement to the Beirut television station of the Lebanese Hezbollah.

Israeli officials, however, continued to blame the increasingly marginalized Palestinian leader, Yasir Arafat — isolated by Israeli troops surrounding his ruined compound and criticized for failure and corruption by many Palestinians — for the actions of Hamas, his rival for power.

Mr. Sharon called off planned meetings with a few newly appointed Palestinian leaders whom the Americans consider to be reformers. Mr. Sharon's spokesman, Raanan Gissin, suggested there was little to talk about with a Palestinian leadership that continued to harbor and support terrorist activity. Another government spokesman, Avi Pazner, said Israel would pursue the bus bombers "without mercy."

Israel also announced a ban on Palestinian travel in much of the West Bank today and sealed off a chunk of the Gaza Strip.

For its part, the Palestinian Authority issued a statement condemning the bus bombing, but it added that Israel's "mass detentions, repressive measures and home demolitions" were responsible for the cycle of violence.

Other attacks on Sunday, in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, left one Palestinian man dead and seven people wounded.

Three Israeli settlers were injured near Ramallah, one seriously, when a roadside bomb went off beside their vehicle and shots were fired. Al Aksa Martyrs Brigades claimed responsibility.

In another incident in the West Bank, four people were injured, one seriously, when their bus was fired on as it traveled between settlements near Tulkarm. The attack was claimed by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/08/05/international/middleeast/05MIDE.html

TechRepublic - IT Leadership
Tech Republic Weblog
http://cio-republic.cnet.com/enterprise/weblog/0-7631-771.html

Broken Promises and Political Deception
There has always been a debate over the destiny of this nation between those who believed they were entitled to govern because of their station in life, and those who believed that the people were sovereign. That distinction remains as strong as ever today. In every race this November, the question voters must answer is, How do we make sure that political power is used for the benefit of the many, rather than the few?

For well over a year, the Bush administration has used its power in the wrong way. In 2000, I argued that the Bush-Cheney ticket was being bankrolled by "a new generation of special interests, power brokers who would want nothing better than a pliant president who would bend public policy to suit their purposes and profits." Some considered this warning anti-business. It was nothing of the sort. I believe now, as I said then, that "when powerful interests try to take advantage of the American people, it's often other businesses that are hurt in the process" — most of all, smaller companies that play by the rules.

This view was not partisan. It was based on a plain reading of the history of Republican governance under Presidents Reagan and Bush. And every passing day demonstrates that it was merely the truth.

This struggle between the people and the powerful was at the heart of every major domestic issue of the 2000 campaign and is still the central dynamic of politics in 2002. The choice, not just in rhetoric but in reality, was and still is between a genuine prescription drug benefit for all seniors under Medicare — or a token plan designed to trick the voters and satisfy pharmaceutical companies. The White House and its allies in Congress have just defeated legislation that would have fulfilled the promises both parties made in 2000.

The choice was and still is between a real patients' bill of rights — or doing the bidding of the insurance companies and health maintenance organizations. Here again: promise made, promise broken. The choice was and still is an environmental policy based on conservation, new technologies, alternative fuels and the protection of natural wonders like the Alaskan wilderness — or walking away from the grave challenge of global warming, doing away with Superfund cleanups and giving in on issue after issue to those who profit from pollution. And the choice, even more urgently today, is between protecting Social Security or raiding it and then privatizing it so that the trust fund can be used to finance massive tax cuts that primarily benefit the very rich.

The economic debate, now as then, is fundamentally about principle. The problem is not that Mr. Bush and Dick Cheney picked the wrong advisers or misunderstood the technical arguments, but that their economic purpose was and is ideological: to provide $1.6 trillion in tax giveaways for the few while pretending they were for the many, and manipulating the numbers to make it appear that the budget surplus would be preserved. It was pre-Enron political accounting.

For them, incredibly, it is also post-Enron accounting. And the result is the replacement in one year of a surplus with another massive deficit.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/08/04/opinion/04GORE.html

Suicide Bomb Kills nine on Israeli Commuter Bus
A spokesman for Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said that as a result, Israel had suspended planned talks this week with Palestinian officials on security and easing hardships in West Bank cities under curfew.

The powerful blast on a Galilee country road tore through the bus crowded with civilians and soldiers returning to base in the morning rush hour at the start of the Israeli working week.

``I went to the door to get off and just then there was an explosion. I felt a ball of fire in the face and parts of people flew by,'' Boaz Altshuler, who was wounded, told Israeli TV.

Witnesses and rescue workers said the inferno blazed for 10 minutes before firefighters arrived. Bits of clothing, army uniforms and bags littered the ground.

In a statement issued in Gaza, the militant group Hamas said it had carried out the bombing in further revenge for an Israeli air raid on July 22 that killed its military commander Salah Shehada, his deputy and 13 other Palestinians.

The Palestinian Authority condemned the bus attack, but said in a statement that Israel's policy of ``mass detentions, repressive measures and home demolitions'' was responsible for the cycle of violence.

The bombing flew in the face of increased military action in the West Bank which Israel said to deter future attacks.

NINE HOMES RAZED

This included razing nine homes of relatives of Palestinian suicide bombers and gunmen. Palestinian President Yasser Arafat has called for international intervention to stop demolitions
Outside the Damascus Gate to East Jerusalem's Old City, police exchanged fire with a 19-year-old Palestinian who shot dead an Israeli in a telephone company truck. The gunman and a Palestinian passerby were killed, police said.

Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, the military group linked to Arafat's Fatah faction, claimed responsibility for the attack, the al-Manar television station reported in Beirut.

A military appeals committee reconvened Sunday to decide whether to deport two Palestinians, brothers of wanted militants, from the West Bank to the fenced-in Gaza Strip.

Israel's attorney-general has given the army the green light to exile to Gaza relatives of militants, on condition it can prove the family members had a link to attacks.

In the West Bank, the Israeli army has been going house-to-house in search of explosives and suspected suicide bombers and their handlers in the Casbah, or Old City, of Nablus. It said three soldiers were wounded by an explosive device during the operation Sunday, one of them moderately.

At least 1,479 Palestinians and 583 Israelis have been killed since a Palestinian uprising against Israeli occupation began in September 2000 after peace talks froze.
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-mideast.html

Bush Says Attacks Can't Stop Peace Bid
``There are a few killers who want to stop the peace process that we have started. We must not let them,'' Bush said before he began a daybreak golf game with his father and some friends.

Unprompted by reporters, Bush addressed the attack as soon as his cart pulled up to the first tee at the Cape Arundel Golf Club.

``For the sake of humanity, for the sake of the Palestinians who suffer, for the sake of the Israelis who are under attack, we must stop the terror. I call upon all nations to do everything they can to stop these terrorist killings,'' Bush said.

Bush, who rose before the sun for the second day in a row to play golf with his father, said he was distressed to hear about the latest bombing.

``For those who yearn for peace in the Middle East, for those in the Arab lands, those in Europe, those all around the world who yearn for peace, we must do everything we possibly can to stop the terror,'' said Bush, spending a long weekend with his parents at the Bush family's summer home on the Maine coast.
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Bush-Bombing.html

Bus Bombing in Northern Israel Kills at Least 9
The militant group Hamas claimed responsibility and said it was a suicide bombing. Israeli police said the attack was likely a suicide attack but that the investigation was continuing.

Three hours after the bombing at the Meron Junction near the town of Tsfat, a Palestinian attacker opened fire just outside the walls of Jerusalem's Old City, sparking a gun battle with police that left three people dead, including an Israeli security guard, an Arab bystander and the gunman.

The blast came four days after a bomb exploded in a cafeteria at Jerusalem's Hebrew University, killing seven people, including five Americans. Hamas claimed responsibility for that bombing as well.

In a statement received in Lebanon by Hezbollah's television station, Al-Manar, Hamas called Sunday's bombing the second retaliatory attack for the killing of the group's military leader, Salah Shehadeh, in an Israeli bombing in Gaza City last month. That attack also killed 14 Palestinian civilians.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/08/04/international/middleeast/O4WIRES-ISRA.html

U.S.-Mideast Connection: The News Becomes Less Foreign
Americans got a shocking reminder this week that their connection to the conflict here is not just strategic but personal, even intimate.

Five Americans were among the seven people killed at Hebrew University on Wednesday by a bomb in a cafeteria.

Daniel C. Kurtzer, the American ambassador to Israel, who visited the campus on Thursday to lay a wreath in memory of the dead, was himself a graduate of the university, which depends heavily on American donors. The cafeteria is named for Frank Sinatra, a donor, and it faces Nancy Reagan Plaza, which the wounded stained with their blood.

The connection runs deep on both sides of the ethnic and religious divide here. But even though Yankees caps are seen on the heads of both Arabs and Jews here, the divisions seem to erase any effect of the American melting pot.

American officials say that about 90,000 people living in this land have American citizenship; they are said to be evenly split between Palestinians and Israelis. In the West Bank, a Palestinian who has lived in New Jersey might describe arguing at a checkpoint with an Israeli soldier from Brooklyn.

People on both sides of the conflict have been seeking visas to go to the United States during the conflict, though recently fewer Palestinians have turned up at the American Consulate in East Jerusalem — apparently because of the Israeli restrictions on Palestinians' movements through the West Bank.

In Nablus, in the West Bank, where Israeli forces brandishing American-made M-16 rifles spent another day today hunting for explosive laboratories and suspects in the casbah, many shop signs are in English. One advertises washers by Maytag, whose factory in Newton, Iowa is a favorite stop for American presidential candidates.

The Bush administration, more than other recent administrations, has tilted toward the Israeli government in its policy, in the view of Israeli and Palestinian officials. From the time he came into office, President Bush refused to meet with Yasir Arafat, the Palestinian leader, and the administration has increasingly identified with the Israeli government since the attacks on the United States on Sept. 11. President Bush has demanded that Mr. Arafat be replaced as leader before substantive political negotiations resume.

But Mr. Bush is also the first president to speak explicitly of a state of "Palestine," which he has said could be established within three years. The attack on Hebrew University came just as the Bush administration was stepping up pressure on the Israeli government to ease the restrictions on Palestinians living in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.

Even some of the leaders of the militant Islamic group Hamas, which claimed responsibility for the Hebrew University bombing, were educated in the United States. Ismail Abu Shanab, a Hamas leader and structural engineer in Gaza City, dwelled in one interview on how stunningly beautiful he had found Vermont. It was there, and in Colorado, that he learned his fluent English.

Mr. Abu Shanab has argued that the United States, as the only country with sufficient power and influence, should step in and impose a peace on the warring peoples.

Hamas said its attack on the campus was in retaliation for an Israeli air raid on Gaza City last week that killed its intended target, a Hamas leader, but also 14 other people, 9 of them children. Israel used an American-made F-16 warplane for that attack.

The patterns of the American connections are different. For generations, Palestinians born in the West Bank have gone to the United States to study or to work. They have attained American citizenship, which they then passed on to their children, who as teenagers then followed their parents' path to the Bronx or Bakersfield, Calif.

Palestinian-Americans tend to return home eventually to rejoin their extended families, though more of them are fleeing the conflict, at least temporarily, for the United States.

Some Israelis also go to the United States to work or study. But American Jews in Israel tend to have been born in the United States. They come here to study for a time or to become dual citizens and to settle down — or, literally, to settle in the predominantly Palestinian West Bank or in the Gaza Strip, which they regard as their divinely promised home
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/08/04/international/middleeast/04MIDE.html

After Sept. 11, a Legal Battle Over Limits of Civil Liberty
The detention issues also carry an emotional punch. Many of the Arabs and Muslims caught in the government dragnet were cabdrivers, construction workers or other types of laborers, and some spent up to seven months in jail before being cleared of terrorism ties and deported or released.

Last month, at a conference held by a federal appeals court, Warren Christopher, the secretary of state in the Clinton administration, snapped at Viet Dinh, an assistant attorney general under President Bush, saying that the administration's refusal to identify the people it had detained reminded him of the "disappeareds" in Argentina.

"I'll never forget going to Argentina and seeing the mothers marching in the streets asking for the names of those being held by the government," Mr. Christopher said. "We must be very careful in this country about taking people into custody without revealing their names."

According to the Justice Department, 752 of the more than 1,200 people detained since Sept. 11 were held on immigration charges. Officials said recently that 81 remained in detention. Court papers indicate there were about two dozen material witnesses, while most of the other detainees were held on various state and federal criminal charges.

President Bush also has announced plans to try suspected foreign terrorists before military tribunals, though no such charges have been brought yet.

Last month, William G. Young, the federal judge presiding in Boston over the criminal case against Richard C. Reid, a British citizen accused of trying to detonate a bomb in his shoe on a trans-Atlantic flight, noted that the very establishment of those tribunals "has the effect of diminishing the American jury, once the central feature of American justice."

Judge Young, who was appointed by President Ronald Reagan, added: "This is the most profound shift in our legal institutions in my lifetime and — most remarkable of all — it has taken place without engaging any broad public interest whatsoever."

Ten days after last September's attacks, Michael J. Creppy, the nation's chief immigration judge, quietly issued sweeping instructions to hundreds of judges for what would turn out to be more than 600 "special interest" immigration cases.

"Each of these cases is to be heard separately from all other cases on the docket," Judge Creppy wrote. "The courtroom must be closed for these cases — no visitors, no family, and no press."

"This restriction," he continued, "includes confirming or denying whether such a case is on the docket."

The government has never formally explained how it decided which visa violators would be singled out for this extraordinary process, and it has insisted that the designations could not be reviewed by the courts.

But as it turns out, most of these cases involved Arab and Muslim men who were detained in fairly haphazard ways, for example at traffic stops or through tips from suspicious neighbors. Law enforcement officials have acknowledged that only a few of these detainees had any significant information about possible terrorists.

As the ruling on Friday in Washington suggests, a series of legal challenges to this secrecy has resulted in striking legal setbacks for the administration. Several courts have ordered the proceedings opened and have voiced considerable skepticism about the government's justifications for its detention policies generally.

Lee Gelernt, a lawyer at the American Civil Liberties Union, said the secrecy of the proceedings exacerbated the hardships faced by people who disappeared from sight on violations that in the past would not have resulted in incarceration.

"Preventive detention," he said, "is such a radical departure from constitutional traditions that we certainly shouldn't be undertaking it solely on the Justice Department's say-so."
After Sept. 11, a Legal Battle Over Limits of Civil Liberty

After Sept. 11, a Legal Battle Over Limits of Civil Liberty
In the fearful aftermath of Sept. 11, Attorney General John Ashcroft vowed to use the full might of the federal government and "every available statute" to hunt down and punish "the terrorists among us."

The roundup that followed the attacks, conducted with wartime urgency and uncommon secrecy, led to the detentions of more than 1,200 people suspected of violating immigration laws, being material witnesses to terrorism or fighting for the enemy.

The government's effort has produced few if any law enforcement coups. Most of the detainees have since been released or deported, with fewer than 200 still being held.

But it has provoked a sprawling legal battle, now being waged in federal courthouses around the country, that experts say has begun to redefine the delicate balance between individual liberties and national security.

The main combatants are the attorney general and federal prosecutors on one side and a network of public defenders, immigration and criminal defense lawyers, civil libertarians and some constitutional scholars on the other, with federal judges in between.

The government's record has so far been decidedly mixed. As it has pushed civil liberties protections to their limits, the courts, particularly at the trial level, have pushed back, stopping well short of endorsing Mr. Ashcroft's tactics or the rationales he has offered to justify them. Federal judges have, however, allowed the government to hold two American citizens without charges in military brigs, indefinitely, incommunicado and without a road map for how they might even challenge their detentions.

In the nation's history, the greatest battles over the reach of government power have occurred against the backdrop of wartime. Some scholars say the current restrictions on civil liberties are relatively minor by historical standards and in light of the risks the nation faces.

The current struggle centers on three sets of issues. People held simply for immigration violations have objected to new rules requiring that their cases be heard in secret, and they have leveraged those challenges into an attack on what they call unconstitutional preventive detentions.

People brought in and jailed as material witnesses, those thought to have information about terrorist plots, have argued that they should not be held to give testimony in grand jury investigations.

Finally, Yasser Esam Hamdi and Jose Padilla, the two Americans labeled "enemy combatants" for what the government contends is more direct involvement with terrorist groups, are seeking rights once thought to be fundamental to American citizens, like a lawyer's representation and a chance to challenge their detentions before a civilian judge.

So far, federal judges in Newark and Detroit have ordered secret deportation proceedings opened to public scrutiny, and on Friday a federal district judge in Washington ordered that the identities of most of the detainees be made public under the Freedom of Information Act.

"Secret arrests," Judge Gladys Kessler wrote in the decision on Friday, "are a concept odious to a democratic society."
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/08/04/national/04CIVI.html?pagewanted=all&position=top

TerraFly
TerraFly changes the way you view your world. Simply enter an address, and our system will put you at the controls of a new and innovative way to explore your digital earth.
http://www.terrafly.fiu.edu/

Powell Still Plans to Meet Palestinians
Secretary of State Colin Powell said on Saturday he still hoped to meet Palestinian leaders next week despite a bomb attack on an Israeli university that drew swift military retaliation from Israel.

Powell condemned Palestinian attacks and mourned the five Americans and two Israelis who died in the Wednesday blast at a cafeteria of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, but said efforts to end 22 months of bloodshed must continue.

``We can't walk away from it. We must continue to try to find a path forward,'' Powell told a news conference in Manila near the end of an eight-nation Asia tour. He made clear that no dates or participants for any peace effort had been set.

President Bush had said he was ``just as angry as Israel is'' after the university bombing, but said he still thought peace was possible.

The army on Friday also demolished the houses of families of militants and started to deport their relatives. Bulldozers and army engineers razed four homes in three West Bank towns, at least three of which belonged to relatives of suicide attackers.

Palestinian President Yasser Arafat condemned as a crime against humanity the demolitions, which left dozens homeless.

``I am asking for quick international intervention from the United Nations. If they are not able to send forces, they should send observers,'' Arafat said in the West Bank city of Ramallah.

Senior Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat said last week he expected to visit Washington with Abdel Razzak al Yahya, the new interior minister also in charge of Palestinian security forces, and Trade Minister Maher al-Masri for talks on August 5 and 6.

The meeting would be the most senior contact between the U.S. administration and Palestinian Authority since Bush called in June for Arafat to be sidelined as Palestinian leader.
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-mideast.html

Israelis Clamp Down on Nablus, Hunting Suspects
Penning the old city of Nablus with scores of tanks, bulldozers and armored vehicles, Israel sent soldiers house to house today in pursuit of explosives laboratories and suspected militants, acting against what it called a possible source of the bomb that killed seven people, including five Americans, at Hebrew University on Wednesday.

Elsewhere, Israel stepped up its punishment of the relatives of suicide attackers, destroying the homes of at least two families and preparing to banish the brothers of two assailants to the Gaza Strip.

Five Palestinians were killed in fighting today, two of them in Nablus's casbah. But Israeli officials and Palestinian witnesses said there was little resistance here as the overwhelming force swept in before dawn.

Today, the army took at least 50 Palestinian men, handcuffed with plastic straps, to an empty store on the casbah's edge, forcing them to kneel or squat there. Eventually, the soldiers blindfolded the men and loaded them onto Israeli tourism buses to be taken for questioning.

The army said it had found two explosives laboratories stocked with acids and fertilizer for making bombs as well as ammunition and weapons, including one crude rocket. It said soldiers had blown up the apartment buildings containing the labs.

The speed with which weapons laboratories were reconstituted after the April invasion suggests the difficulty facing the army in sustaining what it regards as the benefits of these raids.

Palestinian residents of the casbah said Israeli forces had demolished several homes as well, an accusation the army denied. Explosions were occasionally heard in Nablus today as squads of soldiers in battle gear moved through the otherwise silent, empty streets.

In the Gaza Strip today, Israeli soldiers shot and killed an elderly woman. The army, which said it was investigating the incident, said soldiers firing at a suspicious figure near an Israeli settlement had accidentally shot the woman in the leg. Officials said the woman had been treated at the scene and then taken to an Israeli hospital, where she died.

The woman's family said she was shot dead as she slept at home.

This week, the top security advisers to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon approved new tactics intended to deter suicide bombers, and the army appeared today to be stepping up its efforts to put them into practice.

In Tulkarm, Israeli soldiers blew up the home of a bomber from Hamas who killed three Israelis in an attack on the seaside city of Netanya in March. In Hebron, soldiers demolished the home of a gunman from Islamic Jihad who killed two teenagers in Jerusalem in November.

Although Israel has used such demolitions in the past, including during the first intifada, it has not relied on them recently as a deterrent. Military officials said many more such demolitions were likely.

The commander of Israeli forces in the West Bank region, Maj. Gen. Yitzhak Eitan, signed orders to banish to the Gaza Strip two men who are brothers of two Palestinian militants accused of killing Israelis. One of the accused is said to be behind two attacks on an Israeli settlement, and the other is said to have engineered the explosives for a double suicide bombing this month in Tel Aviv.

Although the Israeli government recently arrested 19 relatives of suicide bombers, the attorney general, Elyakim Rubinstein, found that only those actually implicated in the attacks could be legally punished. Still, the Israeli Army is anticipating that the two Palestinian men will challenge their banishment in the Israeli Supreme Court early next week.

In New York, Kofi Annan, the United Nations secretary general, expressed concern through a spokesman over the planned expulsions to Gaza.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/08/03/international/middleeast/03MIDE.html

Judge Orders U.S. to Release Names of 9/11 Detainees
The ruling by Judge Gladys Kessler of Federal District Court dealt a significant setback to the government's policy of secret detentions, mostly of immigrants, in connection with the Sept. 11 investigation. Judge Kessler rejected the Justice Department's arguments that disclosure of the names would impede its investigation of terrorists.

She said that while it was the obligation of the executive branch to ensure the physical security of American citizens, "the first priority of the judicial branch must be to ensure that our government always operates within the statutory and constitutional constraints which distinguish a democracy from a dictatorship."

"Unquestionably," she added, "the public's interest in learning the identity of those arrested and detained is essential to verifying whether the government is operating within the bounds of law."
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/08/03/politics/03DETA.html

Common-place: Ask the Author: Still the Framers' Constitution?
Still the Framers' Constitution?
Cass R. Sunstein


In some respects, the Framers' constitution remains alive and well. Understood as an effort to create a deliberative democracy, the constitutional plan has succeeded in many ways. Perhaps above all, the system of checks and balances has ensured a measure of reflection and circumspection in government. Consider, for example, the cumbersome processes for the enactment of legislation, which provide an excellent check on the most ill considered measures. The failure to convict President Clinton, after an unconstitutional impeachment by the House of Representatives, is also a tribute to checks and balances. Or we might also look to the recent debate over measures to combat terrorism. The law eventually enacted by Congress (informally called the Patriot Act) was far more cautious and circumspect than early drafts. The system of checks and balances was the reason. Here too the Constitution's deliberative mechanisms made things much better than they would otherwise have been. The process of deliberations between Congress and the president, leading to basically fair and even elaborate procedures in military tribunals, provides yet another illustration.

Yet in other significant ways, our Constitution is not really the Framers' constitution. They would see huge differences between their handiwork and our institutions and our rights. I don't mean to refer to the obvious fact that the document has been amended in major ways, beginning, of course, in 1789. The more interesting source of change has been on the interpretive side. The cornerstones of the Constitution include the system of checks and balances, federalism, and individual rights. And none of these is what it originally was. Abraham Lincoln was of course an important "framer," in the sense that his views about the union, and about slavery, helped to produce large-scale constitutional change. But much has happened in the last hundred years. We might even see Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Martin Luther King Jr., as Framers, insofar as they contributed to significant alterations in our understanding of the founding document.


http://www.common-place.org/vol-02/no-04/author/

Common-place: Roundtable: Introduction
Jill Lepore

Every October, midway through the fall semester, I deliver a lecture about the Constitutional Convention in my U.S. history survey course. I begin with three questions: How many of you have read the Constitution? Of more than a hundred students, mostly freshmen and sophomores, fewer than a dozen raise their hands. How many of you think the Constitution requires amendment? Maybe two or three, sitting, invariably, somewhere near the front of the lecture hall. How many of you think we ought to convene another Constitutional Convention and rewrite the Articles? This last is greeted by not one raised hand, not even by a quiet, anonymous nod from the class's most notorious radical. Instead, my class, to a person, glares at me, furious at my sacrilege.

This roundtable discussion is intended to help us all reckon with our rhetoric and remedy our indifference. In eight paired essays, historians, political scientists, journalists, and lawyers examine the uses and abuses of the Constitution in contemporary American political affairs, from Bush v. Gore to the The Clinton Impeachment. Meanwhile, our regular columns in this special issue tackle everything from re-enacting the Convention to restoring the parchment on which the Constitution was written. "The men who framed the Constitution could not see into the future," Carol Berkin writes in A Brilliant Solution (November 2002), her forthcoming history of the Philadelphia Convention. But we can see into the past, and we can measure our world against their words. And, in case you didn't raise your hand in answer to my first question, you can read those words now. http://www.house.gov/Constitution/Constitution.html
http://www.common-place.org/vol-02/no-04/roundtable/

Clarke Lambastes Software Industry
The government's top information security official sharply criticized the software industry, ISPs and the government itself for a lack of commitment to security. Saying that the current climate demands more and better security, Richard Clarke, chairman of the President's Critical Infrastructure Protection Board (PCIPB), said it was time for a change.

"The software industry has an obligation to do a better job producing software that works," Clarke said in his opening keynote speech at the Blackhat Briefings security conference here Wednesday. "It's no longer acceptable that the number of vulnerabilities identified goes up every year."

He cited Microsoft's Trustworthy Computing effort as a step in the right direction, but said that vendors as a rule need to write better quality code.

"We also need an improvement in the quality of software engineering. It's clear that what we're doing now isn't working," Clarke said. "I welcome Bill Gates' pledge, and I will hold him to it. I think we should ask other vendors to do the same thing."

Clarke's comments were part of a preview of PCIPB's forthcoming national cybersecurity strategy, which it will unveil Sept. 18 in Silicon Valley. The document will address security problems in several key market segments, including banking and finance, chemical manufacturing, IT and education. Clarke singled out several industries as bearing the lion's share of responsibility for the current security problems facing the country.

He was particularly critical of vendors who sell wireless LAN gear and ISPs. Citing the Department of Defense's recent decision to turn off all WLANs in its facilities, Clarke said other organizations should do likewise until there are better methods for securing these networks.

Clarke lambasted ISPs for failing to alert consumers to the dangers inherent in having an always-on broadband connection.

"Every ISP that offers broadband ought to be offering a firewall," he said. "If you ask ISPs off-the-record why they don't, they'll tell you it's too expensive and they want broadband to be cheap. So they want to make it cheap for people to be hacked."
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,3959,428553,00.asp

CNS - ANTHRAX: Background Report
ANTHRAX: Background Report
http://cns.miis.edu/pubs/reports/anthrax.htm

Public Agenda Special Edition: Terrorism
Sources and Resources

Terrorism
http://www.publicagenda.org/specials/terrorism/terror_sources.htm

CNS - Chemical and Biological Weapons Resource Page
Chemical & Biological Weapons Resource Page
http://cns.miis.edu/research/cbw/index.htm

Big Israeli Force Heads Into Nablus in Reprisal Raid
Residents reported that the Israeli force included more than 100 tanks and armored vehicles — including bulldozers — and that troops had entered the maze of alleyways in the old heart of the city, known as the casbah. There were unconfirmed reports of two Palestinians killed in Nablus.

A member of Hamas, the militant Muslim group that took responsibility for the bombing at the university, was reported killed in Salem, a neighboring village. A neighbor told the Associated Press that the Hamas member, Amjad Jubur, 28, had been handcuffed and then shot by Israeli soldiers.

In an interview on Thursday in Gaza City, one political leader of Hamas, Abdel Aziz Rantisi, expressed regret for the deaths of Americans. But he called the attack a success nonetheless and predicted more of the same.

Hamas said it had detonated the bomb in retaliation for Israel's killing last week of a top leader of the group. Fourteen other Palestinians, including nine children, died in the Israeli raid, on Gaza City.

The bombing of the university, a fenced and guarded campus, also left Israelis wondering what more they could do to protect themselves, since the Israeli Army has already seized seven of eight Palestinian cities in the West Bank.

Sadly accustomed to the unbiased way such terror attacks mete out death and injury, Israelis seemed more stunned that the university had been bombed than that Americans had died. Other Americans, generally with joint Israeli citizenship, have died in the 22-month conflict.

(Palistinian-Americans have died at Israeli hands as well -- A.I.)

The assault followed a suicide bombing on Tuesday that wounded five people in the first such attack here in more than a month, since Israel started its latest West Bank offensive in response to back-to-back suicide bombings in Jerusalem that killed 26 people.

Early Thursday, an Israeli man was found, bound and shot to death, near the West Bank city of Tulkarm. The killing, which Israeli military officials described as a lynching, occurred in the Buds of Peace industrial zone, where Israeli businessmen employ Palestinian workers.

Overnight Thursday, Palestinians reported that Israeli soldiers had shot dead a 9-year-old girl near a settlement in the Gaza Strip. The Israeli Army said it knew of no such incident. The army said its soldiers had exchanged fire with Palestinians in several areas of Gaza.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/08/02/international/middleeast/02MIDE.html

Again, Election Confusion for the Florida Secretary of State
Here they go again. Florida elections officials and political candidates are confused about another election.

And once again, the controversy involves Katherine Harris, who is leaving her post as Florida secretary of state to run for Congress. She did not follow state elections procedures regarding her candidacy and, after realizing the oversight, was forced today to do a bit of damage control.

Florida's "resign to run" law requires that elected officials seeking another office submit a letter on the day of qualifying for the upcoming race stating when they intend to resign. If they do not, their resignation becomes effective immediately. Ms. Harris, whose office enforces state elections law, said she did not realize that the law applied to her because secretary of state becomes an appointed position next year.

So today, Ms. Harris, the official who made so much of "following the letter of the law" during Florida's botched 2000 presidential election, resigned as secretary of state in a letter to Gov. Jeb Bush dated Aug. 1, but she said her resignation was effective July 15, the day she qualified for the Congressional race.

The letter seemed to contradict that point, however, stating, "To this date, I have vigorously engaged in my duties as secretary of state, particularly with respect to our preparations for the upcoming elections, despite the increasing demands of my Congressional campaign."

The coincidence of Ms. Harris's campaign foul-up has not been lost on the Florida Democratic Party leaders who came to Al Gore's aid in the presidential race.

"She doesn't know election law," said Bob Poe, head of the Florida Democratic Party. "She couldn't even resign properly."

Now, the state Democratic Party wants to know exactly what Ms. Harris has been up to for the last two weeks to determine if she had in fact been working simultaneously on behalf of the state and herself. Late this afternoon, the Democrats filed a public information request seeking access to Ms. Harris's travel records, any documents she has signed since July 15 and records of all payments made to her by the state for travel and expense reimbursement during that time.

At a hastily called news conference this afternoon in the Capitol cabinet room in Tallahassee — the same place where she certified the election results in favor of George W. Bush — Ms. Harris told reporters, "I made a mistake in not filing a letter of resignation at the time I qualified for my Congressional race."
Againhttp://www.nytimes.com/2002/08/02/national/02HARR.html

News: Online content: It’s not about the cost
Americans are more warming up to paying for content on the Web, according to a study released on Thursday.

The study, conducted by the Online Publisher's Association (OPA) and Web measurement company ComScore, showed that U.S. consumers spent $300 million to access Web content in the first quarter of 2002. That's a 155 percent increase from the same period last year. During that period, 12.4 million U.S. consumers opened their wallets for content, up from 5.3 million last year.

On a yearly basis, spending for online content in 2001 increased 92 percent to $675 million from 2000.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1106-947617.html

As Israel Eases Its Grip, Palestinians in Nablus Say: 'Curfew? What Curfew?'
This is what a curfew declared by the Israeli Army looked like here today: taxis jammed downtown streets, vendors hawked fruits and vegetables at the central market and thousands of townspeople shopped in stores and strolled the sidewalks.

No Israeli soldiers were to be seen, though they guarded checkpoints and kept watch from the mountains surrounding this commercial center, one of seven West Bank cities occupied by Israeli troops for more than a month in an effort to forestall suicide bombings.

An army spokeswoman said today that Nablus was under curfew and that violators were breaking the law. The city's 120,000 residents were supposed to be confined to their homes.

An army spokesman, Lt. Col. Olivier Rafowicz, said, "We are aware of the situation, and we're acting in accordance with our own considerations."

The "situation" is nothing less than the defiant reclaiming of the streets.

Residents said that the process began a few days ago after the army thinned out its presence downtown and people running out of food and money furtively began to open stores and buy supplies. Gradually their numbers grew.

"At first I was afraid," said Ala Juma, 28, who sold sundries today from a sidewalk stand. "But when I saw people coming and going I was encouraged." Mr. Juma is one of many shopkeepers and workers who have been reduced to sidewalk peddling by the business-crushing effects of months of Israeli Army blockades and incursions.

Because people "just want a normal life," said Muhammad al-Bouz, 35, a clothing wholesaler, they "started to ride in their cars and to go downtown, and they encouraged each other to open the shops." He added, "They have no fear now and they have nothing to lose."

According to other accounts, the city's governor, Mahmud Alul, and the mainstream Palestinian movement Al Fatah urged residents to break the curfew. Mr. Alul described such action as "a way of civic resistance."

On Tuesday, shopkeepers recalled, a few Israeli jeeps drove down a main street without incident. The soldiers made no move to shut down the shops — and no stone was thrown at the jeeps.

In fact, the scene downtown today looked like business as usual. Thousands of shoppers filled the narrow alleys of the Old City and the fruit and vegetable market, where stands were piled high with summer produce: grapes, watermelons, cucumbers and tomatoes.

Although it seemed unlikely with so many people crowded together, some shoppers said they feared a sudden return of the Israeli soldiers, who have used stun grenades, tear gas and gunfire to clear the streets.

"We're still afraid, but we have to go out, to buy what we need," said Isis Malhis, 30, a teacher. "Life has to go on."

After weeks in which residents throughout the West Bank were largely confined to their homes, the army has substantially lengthened the hours during which curfews are lifted. Today, in four cities — Ramallah, Hebron, Bethlehem and Tulkarm — they were lifted from morning until evening. And in one, Qalqilya, there has been no curfew for two days.

Until the recent events, Nablus residents were allowed out for a few hours every four or five days.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/08/01/international/middleeast/01NABL.html

At Least 7 Killed as Militants Bomb Jerusalem Campus
A powerful bomb hidden in a bag and left on a table by Palestinian militants tore apart a bustling cafeteria during lunch at Hebrew University here today, killing seven people, including at least three Americans, and wounding more than 80.

Because of the campus' diverse student body — it is one of the few enclaves here where Israeli Jews and Israeli Arabs still mix — students said they had felt safe, even as new violence threatened the city this week. Arab students were among the wounded, hospital officials said, as were foreign students.

In Washington, the State Department reported the deaths of the three Americans, two women and one man. One victim, Janis Ruth Coulter of New York City, was identified tonight by the American Friends of Hebrew University.

The State Department declined to identify the American victims further as consular officials worked to notify relatives.

An administration official said there might be more Americans among the dead. He gave no further details, except to say that the identification process was continuing. The Israeli consul in Boston, Hillel Newman, told The Boston Globe last night that four Americans had been killed in the attack.

The bombing at the campus, on Mount Scopus, was the second in two days in Jerusalem. The Islamist group Hamas claimed responsibility for the bombing, saying that it acted in retaliation for Israel's killing last week of a top Hamas leader. Fourteen others, including nine children, died in that attack, in which Israel bombed a house in Gaza City.

The attack was unusual in that it appeared not to be the work of a suicide bomber. Police officials said initial investigation suggested that the bomb was hidden in a bag.

The Palestinian Authority, led by Yasir Arafat, issued a statement saying that it "absolutely condemns the attack against Hebrew University" but adding that it blamed Israel's prime minister, Ariel Sharon, for provoking violence.

After back-to-back bombings killed 26 people here more than a month ago, Israel began a ground offensive in the West Bank to suppress Palestinian violence.

But Palestinian militants vowed retaliation after the bombing last week. After five people were injured in the suicide bombing here on Tuesday, Mr. Sharon met senior security advisers before today's attack to discuss ways of coping with suicide bombers, and the group endorsed the idea of deporting members of the killers' families. Tonight, Israeli military officials convened to consider possible retaliation.

Just outside the campus this afternoon, the police detained scores of Arab men, including some who appeared to be students, keeping them standing in the sun for several hours as they searched for suspects.

Representatives of an anti-Palestinian faction arrived at the blast site and unfurled a banner declaring, "It's them or us" and "Expel the Arab enemy." Dror Lederman, 26, a student of economics and accounting, angrily accosted one man. "Get out of here," he said. "You come every time. You come to dance on the blood."
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/08/01/international/middleeast/01MIDE.html

Rare Place for Jews and Arabs to Meet
Before today. the current conflict had been felt on campus, not only in the sharpening political debate but also in the declining enrollment of Americans in the Rothberg International School, steps from the site of the bombing in the Frank Sinatra, which killed at least seven people and wounded more than 80.

Opened in 1925, Hebrew University has grown like the Jewish nationalism it sought to promote, and its history has paralleled Israel's own turbulent development. From 33 faculty members and 141 students, it has grown to include 1,400 senior faculty members and 23,000 full-time students spread over several campuses.

The original campus, where the attack took place today, is on Mount Scopus, built on an estate acquired in 1918. Although Muslim and Christian religious figures attended the ceremony to lay the foundation stones, the campus later became an isolated Jewish redoubt in largely Arab East Jerusalem.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/08/01/international/middleeast/01MBOX.html

Builder.com -- Web Services
Builder.com -- Web Services
http://builder.com.com/builder/sub_area.jhtml?id=w109&fromtm=e601-1

Earthweb Networking and Communications: XML:
XML articles at developer.com
http://softwaredev.earthweb.com/xml/archives/

WDVL: Dynamic Dreamweaver MX
Get up to speed on using the advanced features of Dreamweaver MX. Produce dynamic web sites that comply with web standards and accessibility guidelines.
http://wdvl.internet.com/Authoring/DynamicDW/index.html