Prometheus 6

A coalition of about 100 religious, political, and civil rights groups organized the rally to kick off a voter mobilization drive for next year's presidential and congressional elections.

The commemoration took place on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, where Rev. King appealed for racial equality in 1963. About 250,000 people heard the Baptist pastor declare, "I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character."

Bush 'Compassion' Agenda: An '04 Liability?
By ELISABETH BUMILLER

WASHINGTON, Aug. 25 ? President Bush is running for re-election as a "compassionate conservative" who has sought to bring a new Republican approach to poverty and other social ills. Indeed, his campaign Web site is lush with a "compassion photo gallery" showing him reading to schoolchildren, helping out at a soup kitchen and visiting an AIDS treatment center in Africa.

But supporters, some administration officials among them, acknowledge that Mr. Bush's "compassionate conservative" agenda has fallen so far short of its ambitious goals, in a number of cases undercut by pressure from his conservative backers, that they fear he will be politically vulnerable on the issue in 2004.

At the same time, some religious supporters of Mr. Bush say they feel betrayed by promises he made as a candidate and now, they maintain, has broken as president.

"After three years, he's failed the test," said one prominent early supporter, the Rev. Jim Wallis, leader of Call to Renewal, a network of churches that fights poverty.

Mr. Wallis said Mr. Bush had told him as president-elect that "I don't understand how poor people think," and appealed to him for help by calling himself "a white Republican guy who doesn't get it, but I'd like to." Now, Mr. Wallis said, "his policy has not come even close to matching his words."

Joshua B. Bolten, White House budget director and formerly Mr. Bush's chief domestic policy adviser, responded in an interview last week by saying that "I think that is one of the most unfair criticisms that has been leveled against the president."

At issue is Mr. Bush's willingness to demand financing from Congress on his signature "compassionate conservative" issues, like education reform and AIDS, with the same energy he has spent to fight for tax cuts and the Iraq war.

Critics say the pattern has been consistent: The president, in eloquent speeches that make headlines, calls for millions or even billions of dollars for new initiatives, then fails to follow through and push hard for the programs on Capitol Hill.

Dust and Deception

By PAUL KRUGMAN

Last week a quietly scathing report by the inspector general of the Environmental Protection Agency confirmed what some have long suspected: in the aftermath of the World Trade Center's collapse, the agency systematically misled New Yorkers about the risks the resulting air pollution posed to their health. And it did so under pressure from the White House.

The Bush administration has misled the public on many issues, from the budget outlook to the Iraqi threat. But this particular deception seems, at first sight, not just callous but gratuitous. It's only when you look back at budget politics in 2001 that you see the method in the administration's mendacity.

A draft E.P.A. report released last December conceded that 9/11 had led to huge emissions of pollutants. In particular, releases of dioxins — which are carcinogens and can also damage the nervous system and cause birth defects — created "likely the highest ambient concentrations that have ever been reported," up to 1,500 times normal levels. But the report concluded that because the outdoor air cleared after a couple of months, little harm had been done.

In fact, the main danger comes from toxic dust that seeped into buildings and remains in carpets, furniture and air ducts. According to a recent report in Salon, businesses that did environmental assessments of their own premises found alarming levels not just of dioxins but also of asbestos and other dangerous pollutants. So the most shocking revelation from the new report is that under White House direction, the E.P.A. suppressed warnings about indoor pollution. Scattered evidence suggests that as a result, hundreds of cleaning workers and thousands of residents may be suffering chronic health problems.

Why was crucial information withheld from the public? The report mentions "the desire to reopen Wall Street and national security concerns." Maybe — though the national security benefits of failing to remove toxic dust escape me. I suspect that there was another reason: budget politics.

GAO: Cheney Stifled Probe

General Accounting Office report says vice president's unwillingness to cooperate stymied efforts to learn details on the drafting of the energy plan in 2001.

…Comptroller Gen. David M. Walker, who heads the nonpartisan GAO, acknowledged Monday that the report would likely end the matter, as far as the watchdog agency is concerned.

"This is the first and only time that we have not been able to work out a reasoned and reasonable accommodation to get information that we need to do our job," Walker said in an interview. "We hope and expect that this is an isolated instance, but only time will tell."

Walker also defended his efforts to get the information. "National energy policy is a very important issue," he said. "It's not just what you're proposing but how you propose it. Process does matter."

…In its 26-page report, the GAO "pieced together" some information about the task force's dealings from thousands of pages of records that the Energy Department and other agencies — but not the vice president's office — were ordered to release last year under the Freedom of Information Act.

Those documents showed that industry groups and companies — including the American Petroleum Institute, the Nuclear Energy Institute and ChevronTexaco Corp. — provided substantial input in drafting the president's energy plan.[p6: and we trustthese corporations to put the public before crass profits, right?]

"The extent to which [the ideas of outside groups] were solicited, influenced policy deliberations or were incorporated into the final report is not something we can determine based on the limited information at our disposal," the GAO report concluded. [p6: I think we can make a pretty good guess, though]

The GAO said it also was unable to determine how much the task force's operations cost taxpayers. Cheney's office provided the agency with 77 pages of information, but the GAO complained that many pages contained information "of little or no usefulness."

Black women with heart disease get less care than white women
RENEE C. LEE, Associated Press Writer
Monday, August 25, 2003
©2003 Associated Press

(08-25) 22:31 PDT DALLAS (AP) --

Black women are twice as likely as white women to suffer heart disease, yet are less likely to be given certain standard drugs, a study found.

The findings, published Monday in the American Heart Association journal Circulation, show that black women also are twice as likely suffer heart attacks and deaths from heart disease. The gap is partly because black women have more severe heart disease and risk factors such as high cholesterol and high blood pressure, the study said.

The study was less clear about why black women receive less care for the disease.

…Black women were 10 percent less likely to get aspirin and 27 percent less likely to get cholesterol-lowering drugs called statins. Black women, however, got more higher-priced drugs, such ACE inhibitors and calcium channel blockers.

Stowaways dive for brief freedom
1 of 11 Dominicans remains at large

By Monica Rhor and Mac Daniel, Globe Staff, 8/26/2003

Ten of 11 stowaways from the Dominican Republic were plucked from the Mystic River yesterday afternoon after a few minutes of freedom they won by jumping overboard from a cargo ship docked in Everett.

Authorities were still searching for the 11th late yesterday in and around the gritty Island End Industrial Park, located within a quarter mile of one of the East Coast's most volatile natural gas facilities.

The men were taken into custody by federal immigration authorities. Typically, people caught trying to enter the country illegally, such as the stowaways, are immediately deported to their home country.

Democrats split on tax-cut issue

By Thomas Oliphant, 8/26/2003

WASHINGTON

THE LAST TIME I checked, the people who work for a living or who are retired on modest incomes -- the ones who comprise the foundation of the Democratic Party -- are not responsible for the stagnant economy or the absence of new jobs, much less for the government's explosion of debt and deficit. So why is it that two of the more prominent Democratic presidential candidates -- Howard Dean and Richard Gephardt -- would target their paychecks and pensions in seeking to lead the country out of the unprecedented mess President Bush has created? And why is it that three others -- John Edwards, John Kerry, and Joe Lieberman -- would not, focusing instead just on Americans with sky-high incomes?

It is not chic right now to suggest that there are a couple of serious issues in the contest that appears winnable, particularly because of Bush's inability to level with the country about either Iraq or the economy's anemic recovery.

For the moment, in the period before the campaign heats up and Democrats in the early voting states get ready to winnow the field, it is chic instead to wonder at the so-called Dean Phenomenon or marvel at the difficulty all of the other candidates appear to be having in establishing themselves. It is also chic to comment on the alleged desire of Democratic voters to cheer a candidate who will "take on" Bush, an elevation of attitude over substance.

For those of us who are rarely chic, this is more than unusual -- it is dangerous. A disagreement as fundamental as how to close the worst budget gap ever, a gap certain to keep the economy's long-run growth prospects minimal at best and greatly complicate the financing of the baby boom generation's retirement, is worth discussing more vigorously.

Bias in Belmont

8/26/2003

LANDLORDS IN Massachusetts who have half a mind to deny a house or apartment to a prospective tenant on the basis of race might want to reconsider. A settlement announced Friday by Attorney General Tom Reilly made clear that there's a price to pay for discrimination -- and that price is appropriately steep. A white Belmont landlord agreed to pay a black aerospace engineer $50,000 for rejecting his application to rent her single-family home after finding out his race. It is a victory for anyone concerned about racial justice and for a region struggling to overcome its image as an inhospitable place for minorities. Reilly's complaint alleged that Mary Murnane, 64, violated Massachusetts fair housing laws by refusing to rent to Stephen Ruffin, who was moving here with his wife, Karen, two children, and their border collie from an Atlanta suburb in the summer of 2000 to work as a visiting professor at MIT. After a real estate broker showed Ruffin the house, he completed the application, paid the security deposit and broker's fee, and provided positive character references, including one for the dog. The rental proceeded smoothly until Ruffin provided the owner with a copy of an offer letter from MIT for a position as a Martin Luther King Jr. Visiting Associate.

Murnane, who had never met the family, became angry and called the broker to confirm that the Ruffins are African-American. The complaint alleges that the landlord told the broker the neighbors would be unhappy if she rented to a black family.

"We're the fly and they're the elephant," laments one Black small-business owner in Harlem. "Overnight, our clientele has been snatched right from under our nose. It's a problem and, to be honest, it doesn't help that the owner of a few of these stores is Magic Johnson, a wealthy Black man."

Johnson's investment is part of a movement by wealthy Blacks, such as poet Maya Angelou and singers Nick Ashford and Valerie Simpson, to invest in areas of Harlem. Johnson's entrepreneurial skill has opened the way for many Blacks, who otherwise might not support big chain stores, to grab a cup of coffee at his Starbucks or watch a movie at his theater because he is African American.

"It just complicates matters," the business owner adds. "How can any Black person be against Magic investing in the Black community? But if his enterprise continues to expand, he's going to kill many of these businesses."

Long before the commercial outlets came, Harlem, like other Black neighborhoods, was known for a host of Black-owned small businesses. But when property values began to soar, these businesses were forced to move elsewhere because they could no longer afford to stay put.

"You can't maintain these small businesses when larger businesses are coming into Harlem and people are not really shopping at the small minority-owned businesses," says Thelma Russell, executive director of the Harlem Business Alliance, a coalition of local businesses in Harlem. "These businesses are really suffering. They are trying to maintain themselves, but many of them are on a month-to-month lease and they don't know if they will be able to continue doing business."

But Russell and others are cautious to curb themselves.

No one who remembers the dilapidated buildings that stood vacant in Harlem throughout the 1970s and '80s wants to return back to those times. But community and business leaders are struggling to find a nice compromise that would allow the big businesses and the minority-owned small businesses to share in the local wealth.

"We need to co-exist, and I think you can have them both," Russell says. "Everyone has to stick together. We can't overlook the small businesses and go straight to the big ones. We need to support each other."

Bush to address nation on Iraq

Oh boy. According to the AP, the number of Americans killed after Bush's crotch-padding "mission accomplished" moment on the USS Lincoln has now surpassed those killed before.

139.

The total of US and Brits killed in the war varies story to story, but it's at least 328.

Indeed, things are so bad, it's forcing Bush to emerge from his month-long vacation to actually defend his FUBARed war.

Daniel Kahneman has integrated insights from psychology into economics, thereby laying the foundation for a new field of research. Kahneman’s main findings concern decision-making under uncertainty, where he has demonstrated how human decisions may systematically depart from those predicted by standard economic theory. Together with Amos Tversky (deceased in 1996), he has formulated prospect theory as an alternative, that better accounts for observed behavior. Kahneman has also discovered how human judgment may take heuristic shortcuts that systematically depart from basic principles of probability. His work has inspired a new generation of researchers in economics and finance to enrich economic theory using insights from cognitive psychology into intrinsic human motivation.

In interviews, Moore has argued that he is doing no less than what the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. did when he disobeyed police and ended up in jail in Birmingham, Alabama, in 1963. He also has remarked, "I believe you should obey higher courts except when that higher court is not going by the law."

There are three versions of the Decalogue mentioned in the Hebrew Scriptures (Old Testament). All are different. They are at Exodus 20:2-17, Exodus 34:12-26, and Deuteronomy 5:6-21. The Qur'an, the Holy book of Islam, all discusses God giving tablets to Moses containing laws, but do not list the commands.

Although most North Americans hold the Ten Commandments in extremely high esteem, many are not particularly familiar with many of their features:

• The Decalogue contains on the order of 22 commandments, not ten.
• Most people incorrectly believe that the Commandments govern moral behavior in society -- to not lie, steal, commit adultery, commit perjury, etc. In reality, the first four commandments are religious in nature, uniquely related to the worship of Yahweh. When promoted by the government, they are quite offensive to the followers of many adults who do not happen to worship the God of the Hebrew Scriptures.
• Some theologians believe that there are two commandments which are routinely broken by many Christians: the possession of images and failure to observe the Sabbath.
• The Commandment in Exodus 20:5 (the first of ten Roman Catholics and some Lutherans, and the second of ten for other Christians and Jews) promises that the children, grandchildren, great grandchildren and great great grandchildren will be punished for the misdeeds of their fathers. Most Americans would find this an immoral concept -- to punish individuals for the actions of an ancestor, perhaps before they were born.

[p6: emphasis added]

The Federal Courts, specifically the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, does not have the authority to order him, as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Alabama, to remove the monument. This argument recalls the conflict in Little Rock, AR, when Governor Faubus attempted to impose state law in contradiction of a court order to integrate the schools. He, and the governors of some other Southern states, argued that the federal courts had no authority to order them to desegregate their schools. "In each case, the courts, including the U.S. Supreme Court disagreed, principally relying upon the supremacy clause of the Constitution. That clause makes federal law supreme over conflicting state law."

Against this backdrop, President George W. Bush's approval ratings continue to decline. His current approval rating of 53 percent is down 18 percent from April. And for the first time since the question was initially asked last fall, more registered voters say they would not like to see him re-elected to another term as president (49 percent) than re-elected. Forty-four percent would favor giving Bush a second term; in April, 52 percent backed Bush for a second term and 38 percent did not.

Fifty-seven percent say Bush is doing a better job than Democrats in finding and defeating terrorists abroad, while 21 percent say Democratic party leaders in Congress are dealing better with terrorists. At the beginning of last year, nearly three-quarters of those surveyed thought Bush was doing a better job than the Democrats on fighting terrorism overseas--just 9 percent gave higher marks to Democrats. Fifty-seven percent say Bush is best at handling the fight against terror at home, down from 74 percent in January 2002. Nearly a quarter (24 percent) now think the Democrats do a better job at handling homeland security, versus 11 percent in January 2002. [p6: reasonable doubt seeps into the public consciousness]

Forty-five percent of respondents now think the Democratic party leaders are doing a better job of finding ways to stimulate the economy (36 percent say Bush is)--a huge shift from January 2002, when 55 percent thought Bush was better on the economy and just 29 percent thought Congressional Democrats were. Over the past year-and-a-half, Americans have also shifted their views of Bush's tax cuts--45 percent prefer his cuts to those supported by Democratic leaders now, but that's down 12 percent from January 2002.

Nearly half of those polled (47 percent) say Democratic leaders have the best approach to health care (31 percent say Bush does), a flip from January 2002, when 45 percent preferred Bush's approach and 36 percent liked the Democrats'. Bush has lost the most support for his handling of education issues. Just 39 percent prefer his approach now--down 16 percent from January 2002. Forty-three percent say the Democrats are now doing the better job in their approach to education issues. [p6: this is the only way Bush's education plans make people smarter; they figure out his plans don't work]

Similarly, more Americans (45 percent) say Democrats have the better approach to handling Social Security issues. About one-third (32 percent) say Bush has the best approach to Social Security, down 12 points from January 2002. On the environment, 53 percent prefer the Democrats' approach, while 29 percent support Bush's handling of environmental issues versus 43 percent and 38 percent respectively in January 2002. Finally, 42 percent of Americans prefer the Democrats' approach to energy policy, while 33 percent say Bush is doing a better job on the issue (versus 33 percent and 46 percent respectively in January 2002).

The problem I'm having blogging, recently, is the way in which it works... with that "sequential scrolling posts" aspect of it; there's a catch-22 at the center of it all. If one writes fairly long, well researched or well-thought-out or whatever posts, there is still a significant possibility (if not a likelihood) that the post will have no impact whatsoever. It'll just disappear into the archives, and once that's happened, it's gone. This creates a disincentive towards longer posts, unless you're absolutely sure that you'll get noticed. Even then, there's the problem of getting people to actually read through the thing, instead of skipping ahead to something more easily digestible.

The alternative is smaller, pithier postings, akin to Instapundit or Atrios. This does wonders for one's visitor numbers, because people come back often to see "what's new", but often there isn't much content to the post beyond the link itself. Atrios doesn't suffer from this that much, but Instapundit is notorious for this problem. It means that blogs themselves become less useful, as there are other, better ways of filtering information (such as Google News). Comments threads can help flesh things out, but they're a crapshoot too... length seems to depend more on the contentiousness of an issue, rather than any intrinsic worth.

Plus, since there's so many blogs nowadays, a "linker's blog" has that much more trouble standing out, and the mad hunt for visits and hits is at least partially due to the fear that one is simply typing into the ether, unknown and unread. (I've been hit with that somewhat lately, despite not being a "linker", and it's starting to affect my entire attitude towards blogging.)

Damned if you do, damned if you don't. Write long original stuff, and too soon it'll disappear, unread and unremarked, into the archive; all that time and effort is for naught. Write shorter link-based stuff, and you're just a links page with some pithy words attached, no different than literally thousands of other writers. Try to find a balance between the two, and length becomes the priority instead of content.

No matter how it works out, it seems like maybe weblogs really are best suited for the purpose that they were originally designed for: personal journals.

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.

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.

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."

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?

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.

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.

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."

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.

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.

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.

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.

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."

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.

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.

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?

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?

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."

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.

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."

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.

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.