Private Sector Shouldn't Direct Airplane Traffic
By John C. Goodin
John C. Goodin is the president of the Van Nuys local of the National Air Traffic Controllers Assn.

August 30, 2003

The White House has put aviation safety on the chopping block. It convinced Republican members of a House-Senate conference committee to contract out the operation of 69 air traffic control towers to the lowest bidder. And the tower at Van Nuys Airport ? the busiest general aviation airport in the world ? is on the list.

This decision was a direct repudiation of bipartisan votes in the House and Senate for legislation that would permanently prohibit privatization of air traffic control. It comes in the face of strong opposition by the American public and it defies common sense.

Just last year, Congress and the administration mandated that all baggage screeners must be federal employees. After the catastrophic failure of private contractors on 9/11, it was determined that checking passengers' bags as they board aircraft was too important to be left to the private sector. Now, we may decide that the infinitely more complex and critical job of air traffic control can be contracted out to companies more concerned with cutting corners than protecting the safety of our skies.

Touted initiative's funds cut
EPA drew from energy program

By H. Josef Hebert, Associated Press, 8/30/2003

WASHINGTON -- "Energy Star" is the Bush administration's most highly touted energy conservation program, but that has not kept the Environmental Protection Agency from quietly slashing its budget by shifting millions of dollars to other programs.

…The program produces $70 in benefits for every dollar spent on it, according to EPA officials. Last spring, Whitman singled it out as "a shining example" of government-business cooperation to cut energy use, saying it has spurred $7 billion in energy savings. Two years ago, Vice President Dick Cheney's energy task force called for its expansion.

…The reason given, according to these sources, was that the EPA had to find money to pay for scores of congressionally mandated projects while at the same time absorbing an across-the-board spending cut.

But the cut was only about one-half of 1 percent, meaning Energy Star should have lost no more than about $250,000.

Instead, the $12.5 million was siphoned away to pay for other programs and projects within the agency, including "pork barrel" projects that lawmakers demanded be fully funded, said EPA and private sources familiar with the budget process.

"It's been used as kind of a slush fund," said Kara Renaldi, director of policy for the Alliance to Save Energy, an advocacy group. She said it was easy to target the program because Energy Star's specific funding level is not protected as a line item in the EPA budget, and because it is not linked to any specific regulatory requirement.

Greenspan Argues Against Strict Rules for Fed
By EDMUND L. ANDREWS

JACKSON HOLE, Wyo., Aug. 29 ? Fending off critics who say the nation's monetary policy has become too personalized and idiosyncratic, Alan Greenspan, the chairman of the Federal Reserve, stepped up his insistence today that the Fed should continue to have broad discretion and not be hemmed in by formal rules or even by long-established traditions.

"Some critics have argued that such an approach to policy is too undisciplined, judgmental, seemingly discretionary and difficult to explain," Mr. Greenspan told a symposium here attended by Fed officials and monetary policy experts from around the world.

"The Federal Reserve should, some conclude, attempt to be more formal in its operations by tying its actions solely to the prescriptions of a formal policy rule," he continued. "That any approach along these lines would lead to an improvement in economic performance, however, is highly doubtful."

W.T.O. Settles Drug Pact for Poor Nations
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

GENEVA (AP) -- Following an impassioned appeal from Africa, the World Trade Organization on Saturday sealed a deal to allow poor countries to import cheap copies of patented drugs for killer diseases like AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis.

``All people of good will and good conscience will be very happy today with the decision that the WTO members have made,'' said Kenyan Ambassador Amina Chawahir Mohamed. ``It's especially good news for the people of Africa who desperately need access to affordable medicine.''

The United States has been trying to protect the interests of drug companies, which feared they could lose control of patent rights. U.S. concessions this week broke an eight-month deadlock on the issue.

The final breakthrough followed a meeting Friday during which representatives of many African countries pleaded with other diplomats to stop trying to win last-minute advantages for their own nations.

In a joint statement, they noted nearly 2.2 million Africans have died from AIDS and other killer diseases since the issue became deadlocked on Dec. 16.

``For us, the request by the African countries was a decisive factor. All of us couldn't fail to be touched by that,'' said Brazilian Ambassador Luis Felipe de Seixas Carrea.

Evan Martin writes "LiveJournal.com is an open-source weblog site with over a million users, some of whom use AOL. Last week, AOL began blocking all HTTP requests with "www.livejournal.com" Referer headers. This is a common practice by image hosting sites to prevent off-site linking of their images and 'bandwidth theft'. However, in AOL's case, they're blocking everything, not just images, effectively breaking all links to any AOL member's site--but only from LiveJournal. To be clear: nobody on LiveJournal can even make a link to any AOL member site without getting a '404 Not Found' error. We've also heard reports of the same thing happening on AOL properties (Netscape, Compuserve). This concerns us because we have to deal with the support requests: it worked in the past for our users, and it continues to work for other sites, so our users think it's our fault."

So, where does that leave us? Is the next step to remove from the Declaration of Independence, which is sometimes studied in public schools, the sentence: ?We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain, unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness??

No court, no legislature, no king or president created those rights, under our system of government. If that is not true, then the Courts, the Legislatures and the kings and presidents of the world DO create the rights ? and, therefore, can change them at will.

And, where would that leave the Rev. Martin Luther King if he were alive today? If an inanimate object like a monument is banned from public property, because of its silent witness of the notion that there IS an authority other than man and the law of the jungle, on which the law is based how could a minister operating out of his church, like Martin Luther King, have the ?right? to stand on public property and urge people to resist an unequal and unjust law as he did?

If the law, even if it is unjust , cannot be resisted EVER, and there IS no natural or God?s law, where would Martin Luther King or anyone else get such the ?right? to resist tyranny?

An Accent on Inequality
Unfortunately, how you sound may be how you're seen.
By Firoozeh Dumas
Firoozeh Dumas grew up in Iran, as well as Whittier and Newport Beach. Her memoir "Funny in Farsi" (Villard) was published in June.

August 29, 2003

They're the heroes of the English-as-a-second-language set ? Arianna Huffington and Arnold Schwarzenegger, serious candidates for governor with serious foreign accents. On TV, on the radio and occasionally in print, their "in-der-es-ding" consonants and "You say tomahto" vowels tell the quintessential immigrant tale: America is the land of opportunity.

If you're like me, though, and your mom still hasn't quite mastered the W sound and your dad's Engineer Speak has always been better than his American slang, you might not be so sure. The truth is, when it comes to the American dream, not all accents are created equal. The devil is in the details: Where exactly are you from? What color marks today's homeland security threat level? Do all of your linguistic brethren have their green cards?

Prosecutors Fight DNA Use for Exoneration
By ADAM LIPTAK

SHARPES, Fla., Aug. 26 ? After seeing more than 130 prisoners freed by DNA testing in the last 15 years, prosecutors in Florida and across the country have mounted a vigorous challenge to similar new cases.

Prosecutors acknowledge that DNA testing is reliable, but they have grown increasingly skeptical of its power to prove innocence in cases where there was other evidence of guilt. Defense lawyers say these prosecutors, who often relied on the same biological evidence to convict the defendants before DNA testing was available, are more committed to winning than to justice.

The fight has become particularly heated in Florida, where prisoners will soon be barred from seeking DNA testing for old cases under a 2001 law that set an Oct. 1 deadline for such requests.

In this state, the cases of two prisoners illustrate both the power and limits of DNA testing.

In one case, Wilton Dedge was convicted of rape based in part on two light-brown hairs found in the victim's sheets here in 1981. It was the only physical evidence against him. The hairs were, the prosecutor said at his trial, "microscopically identical" to those of Mr. Dedge.

In a 1983 trial of another man, Richard McKinley, for the rape of an 11-year-old girl in Homestead, the prosecutors told the jury that semen recovered from the girl matched his blood type.

DNA testing, which was not available at the time of either trial and which was performed recently only after fierce resistance from two sets of Florida prosecutors, showed that the hairs and the semen could not have come from the defendants.

Yet both men remain in prison serving life terms, and the prosecutors who relied on the biological evidence to convict them now say the DNA testing is not proof of their innocence.

Other Florida prisoners may never have the chance to argue about whether DNA evidence exonerates them. In 2001, the state Legislature opened a two-year window for DNA retesting in older cases. The window will close on Oct. 1, after which courts cannot hear the cases of hundreds of inmates who say that testing could free them, and lawyers across the state are in a race against time to file motions on behalf of such clients.

Your Message Here, in a Flash
By MICHEL MARRIOTT

…Standing on four metal legs, under two banks of fluorescent lights, was what appeared to be a modest-size billboard, measuring about 9 feet wide by 4 feet in height. Across its face, which looks like paper under glass, was a full-color advertisement for a soft drink maker. A few moments later the ad disappeared and was digitally replaced with a different one, and then another, like a screensaver cycling through images on a laptop computer screen.

But the surface of this billboard is not a liquid crystal diode screen - the energy-hungry display common to laptops and increasingly to cellphones, digital cameras, digital organizers and flat-screen computer monitors and television sets. Neither does this billboard share the light-emitting-diode technology that makes million-dollar-plus video screens light up the night in Times Square, Las Vegas and sports arenas around the world.

What makes the electronic billboard in Jersey City possible (and those installed for trials in London, Tokyo, Toronto and Panama City, among other locations) is an innovation by a New York-based display technology company whose name, Magink, is a combination of the words magic and ink. Its approach to imaging departs from the way most text, graphics and images are electronically presented, including the way expensive plasma screens work, as well as cathode-ray tubes, the old workhorses still found in most television sets and desktop computer monitors.

By creating a paste made of tiny helix-shaped particles that can be minutely manipulated with electric charges to reflect light in highly specific ways, Magink can produce surfaces that look like paper but behave like electronic screens, rendering high-resolution, full-color images without ink - or, as Magink executives like to refer to the process, with digital ink.

Magink prototype screens are capable of displaying video images at more than 70 frames a second, twice the speed needed to produce smooth, cinematic motion. But the digital images share so many of the characteristics of paper, its makers say, that they are easily viewed in bright sunlight but must be lighted much like conventional billboards when there is little light.

…With the new digital technology, Mr. McConnell said, a client could change its billboards several times a day - say, a fast-food chain, to promote its breakfast, lunch and dinner meals. And the process - from idea to installation - could be shortened from weeks to overnight, he said.

While Magink billboards cost far less than large-scale video screens, they are not inexpensive, Mr. McConnell said. One sign he is testing, measuring about 10 feet by 20 feet, cost $80,000. A standard billboard of about equal size would cost about $10,000, but would also require costly installation crews to change displays. More significantly, advertising companies could sell space on the billboards by the hour.

Mr. McConnell said that when the signs are mass-produced, their prices are likely to drop.

And then there are the power savings, proponents of digital ink displays are fond of pointing out. While the screens offer some of the flexibility of large video screens, they do not emit light and therefore require little energy to receive and make changes in their images and text.

U. of Michigan Alters Admissions Use of Race
By GREG WINTER

The University of Michigan unveiled an admissions policy yesterday that preserves affirmative action but applies it less strictly, without assigning any numerical advantage, or extra points, to minority applicants.

The new approach, a response to the Supreme Court's decisions spelling out how race may be used in admissions, will bring the university in line with the bulk of smaller, selective colleges nationwide. It may also serve as a model for how other public universities can seek to create diverse campuses in a constitutionally permissible ? though significantly more expensive ? way.

For Michigan, the costs of the admissions process should rise by $1.5 million to $2 million, or more than 33 percent. It takes effect this fall.

"Our fundamental values haven't changed," Mary Sue Coleman, president of the university, said in a statement in Ann Arbor. "We believe that in order to create a dynamic learning environment for all our students, we must bring together students who are highly qualified academically and who represent a wide range of backgrounds and experiences."

The authors of the report draw the conclusion that state governments, including Maryland's, are devoting too much money to prisons and not enough to education.

"States can find the money they need to reinvest in education and communities by reducing prison populations and creating alternatives to cut incarceration costs," the report states.

The report is critical of states that have cut K-12 education spending to balance their budgets in recent years while shielding prison expenditures.

"We take money from schools and put it into prisons, and it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy for young people," said Vincent Schiraldi, executive director of the liberal-leaning institute and a co-author of the study.

Global Deal to Help Landlocked Countries
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks
August 28, 2003
Nairobi

Developing landlocked countries have agreed on a framework for cooperation with their maritime neighbours in a bid to ease massive transit costs which can gobble up to 50 percent of their export earnings - particularly in Africa.

The agreement was reached on Wednesday in the Kazakh capital Almaty, ahead of a UN-sponsored ministerial meeting of 30 landlocked countries and 33 transit access developing countries. Donor nations and international organisations are also taking part.

Landlocked Ethiopia - one of the lowest ranking countries on the UN Human Development Index - is taking part in the conference, as are its maritime neighbours Eritrea, Djibouti and Somalia.

The preparatory talks were held in a bid to "reconcile outstanding differences between all parties", the UN said.

"These negotiations have focused very successfully on building a partnership between landlocked, transit and donor countries," UN Under-Secretary-General Anwarul Chowdhury told a press conference.

Chowdhury is UN High Representative for the Least Developed Countries, Landlocked Developing Countries and Small Island Developing States.

The Almaty Programme of Action establishes, for the first time, agreement in principle on compensating the landlocked countries for their geographical handicaps with improved market access and trade facilitation.

It also reinforces the right of all countries to enjoy secure access to the sea and establishes a set of policy guidelines for reducing red tape for landlocked country exports, while also respecting the prerogatives of the access nations.

The Programme lays a foundation for strengthening national economies by cementing international and national commitment to upgrade rail, road, air and pipeline infrastructure in both the landlocked and the access countries.

In a recent interview with IRIN, Ishac Diwan, the World Bank head in Ethiopia, said the country was "truly isolated" due to massive transport costs. He stressed that costs had to be reduced so that the country could grow in a sustainable way.

"This country is taxed enormously by its geography and you need a lot of international support to reduce those transaction costs so a normal economy can function," he noted.

Since the border war with Eritrea in 1998, Ethiopia has lost its most direct outlet to the sea and now has to rely mainly on the port of Djibouti with significantly higher transportation costs.

Welcome to TCM's Movie Match quiz where you can discover which famous movie character you are most compatible with. To play, simply begin by answering the question on this page. You will answer a series of 12 questions before your match can be determined.

If Clark runs, all bets are off
(By Robert Kuttner)

WESLEY CLARK has told associates that he will decide in the next few weeks whether to declare for president. If he does, it would transform the race. Call me star-struck, but he'd instantly be among the top tier. Clark, in case you've been on sabbatical in New Zealand, is all over the talk shows. He's the former NATO supreme commander who headed operations in Kosovo, a Rhodes Scholar who graduated first in his class at West Point, and a Vietnam vet with several combat medals including a purple heart. He has been a tough critic of Bush's foreign policy. His domestic positions are not as fully fashioned, but he'd repeal Bush's tax cuts and revisit the so-called Patriot Act.

Mad Scientist's Plot Foiled By Budget Cuts

UPTON, ME—In response to recent budget cuts, the National Science Foundation has reduced grants to individual recipients, including those of megalomaniacal researcher Dr. Edward Mortis of Brookhaven Laboratories.

"My positronic raygun was nearly complete," said Mortis at a press conference Tuesday. "With one gigagram of destructonium [a rare element mined from a meteor belt that passes Earth once every 29 years], I could have ruled the world!"

Days before the window of destructonium-mining opportunity closed, the "ignorant fools" at the NSF slashed Mortis' Armageddon Project funding by 90 percent. The cut in funding forced the mad scientist to halt work on his raygun, and set back his plans for world domination indefinitely.

…"Mad-scientific progress has been set back 20 years," Mortis said. "If you want to see yet another boring paper on relativistic heavy-ion colliders or synchrotron radiation, by all means, drain my lifeblood! But don't come crying to me when you need technologies to enslave the human race."

U.S. Suspects It Received False Iraq Arms Tips

Intelligence officials are reexamining data used in justifying the war. They say Hussein's regime may have sent bogus defectors.

By Bob Drogin

Times Staff Writer

August 28, 2003

WASHINGTON — Frustrated at the failure to find Saddam Hussein's suspected stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons, U.S. and allied intelligence agencies have launched a major effort to determine if they were victims of bogus Iraqi defectors who planted disinformation to mislead the West before the war.

The goal, according to a senior U.S. intelligence official, "is to see if false information was put out there and got into legitimate channels and we were totally duped on it." He added, "We're reinterviewing all our sources of information on this. This is the entire intelligence community, not just the U.S."

The far-reaching review was started after a political firestorm erupted this summer over revelations that President Bush's claim in his State of the Union speech that Iraq had sought to import uranium from Niger was based on forged documents.

Although senior CIA officials insist that defectors were only partly responsible for the intelligence that triggered the decision to invade Iraq in March, other intelligence officials now fear that key portions of the prewar information may have been flawed. The issue raises fresh doubts as to whether illicit weapons will be found in Iraq.

Davis Praises Black Chamber For Leadership

By Antoinette Rodriguez | OBSERVER STAFF WRITER

MILLBRAE, Calif. - Gov. Gray Davis continued his efforts to reach African American voters and others throughout the state in his strong push to retain his seat. This month Davis met with the California Black Chamber of Commerce to discuss his ongoing efforts to enact meaningful reform to California's workers' compensation program.

Oil Companies And Gas Flaring in Niger Delta

Daily Trust (Abuja)

OPINION

August 27, 2003

By Charles Ikedikwa Soeze

Oil production has been going on in Nigeria nearly unregulated for over 45 years together with the flaring of natural gas in the Niger Delta Region. This has lasted so long because of the dynamics of the influence of oil companies over natural resource management in developing countries. It is necessary to state here that as the entire issues of curbing gas flaring or terminal gas flares boils down to one question: who manages natural resource exploitation in Nigeria. Will it be the government or the oil companies?

Oklahoma charges Ebbers, other former WorldCom executives

RON JENKINS, Associated Press Writer

Wednesday, August 27, 2003

©2003 Associated Press

(08-27) 16:56 PDT OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) --

Oklahoma prosecutors filed the first criminal charges Wednesday against WorldCom and former CEO Bernard Ebbers in the $11 billion accounting scandal that plunged the long-distance giant into bankruptcy.

The company, Ebbers and five other former executives were accused of falsifying the books in violation of Oklahoma securities law.

Each executive faces 15 charges, each carrying up to 10 years in prison. The former executives have one week to appear in court in Oklahoma City. WorldCom, which now calls itself MCI, could face millions in fines and restitution.

"By falsifying information, the company looked stronger on paper than it really was," Oklahoma Attorney General Drew Edmondson said. "Investors counted on this information when buying WorldCom securities. The company lied. These employees lied. The law was broken. It's just that simple."

EPA Loosens Clean Air Rules

By Elizabeth Shogren

Times Staff Writer

2:18 PM PDT, August 27, 2003

WASHINGTON -- The Bush administration revised regulations in the Clean Air Act today, exempting companies from installing new pollution control devices if they modify their facilities in ways that may make the plants more efficient even if they also increase pollution.

The decision, which came in response to years of pressure from industry, allows a utility, refinery, manufacturing plant or other large industrial facility to spend up to 20% of the costs to replace a major component of its plant on repairs without triggering the "new source review" provision of the act.

U.S. Weighs U.N. Command in Iraq, but With a Condition

By DOUGLAS JEHL

WASHINGTON, Aug. 27 — The Bush administration signaled for the first time today that it might be willing to allow a multinational force in Iraq to operate under the sponsorship of the United Nations as long it was led by an American commander.

The idea was described by the deputy secretary of state, Richard L. Armitage, as just "one idea being explored" in discussions at the United Nations. Such a plan was first described publicly last week by the United Nations secretary general, Kofi Annan.

Still, Mr. Armitage's remarks signified an important shift in course for the administration, which has until now insisted that all military, economic and political matters in Iraq remain under American control. By allowing the United Nations to assume more authority, the United States would be aiming to win the support of the Security Council for a new mandate authorizing the American-led occupation of Iraq.