Olive Newsbriefs

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Bad Cells
            A court has ruled the Town of Woodstock was wrong to adopt a zoning ordinance to allow a controversial cell phone tower on Overlook Mountain. The state Supreme Court ruling came as the result of a lawsuit filed by the group Citizens for Responsible Cell Tower Ordinance, which opposed a town-approved zoning amendment that would allow cell towers in R-8 zones, where they previously had been prohibited. Because the town didn't follow recommendations from the Ulster County Planning Board, as required under state General Municipal Law, it needed a "supermajority" vote, or a majority plus one, to adopt the zoning change. The zoning resolution was approved by a 3-2 margin, one vote short of the "supermajority" requirement. The court ruling nullifies the portion of the zoning change that would have allowed cell towers.

GOP Flip Flop
            The Ulster County legislature amended a September resolution seeking full adjudication of issues related to the ongoing issues conference for the proposed Belleayre Resort after a long meeting on October 14,  and substituted new wording calling for a "thorough review." The move was approved 17-15, with most Democrats standing for full adjudication while Republicans supported the lesser wording. Twenty-one people spoke about the Belleayre, with all but two opposing the softened resolution or the resort plan itself.
            The idea of rescinding the original resolution was put into Republican legislators heads via a series of phone calls from project developer Dean Gitter, followed by a one-sided presentation to members of the legislature by the developers' attornies.
            Legislator Hector Rodriguez, who initiated the original resolution - which asked that a state Department of Environmental Conservation administrative law judge fully adjudicate 12 concerns about the resort raised by the Catskill Preservation Coalition, a group opposed to the project ˆ said."
            Some legislators said they did not fully understand the intent of the original resolution or the meaning of the term "full adjudication."

Clean Elections?
            The Kingston Common Council has passed a sponsoring resolution urging New York State Legislators to pass the Clean Money Clean Elections bill that would reduce big-money's influence in NY State politics by replacing private campaign contributions with "Clean" public funds. The bill covers races for Governor, the Senate, Assembly, Lieutenant Governor, Attorney General, and Comptroller. To conform with a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that says money is equal to speech, candidates can run with Clean money or not. If they opt to run with private money, they cannot have any public money. The sponsoring resolution was submitted to the Kingston Common Council by New York Citizens for Clean Elections (NYCCE).  In passing the resolution, Kingston joins other municipalities across the state who have similarly urged state legislators to pass Clean Elections, including Ithaca, Schenectady, Woodstock, Saugerties, the Town of Olive, the Village of New Paltz, Rensselaerville, and Thompkins County. Clean Elections would be funded by one tenth of one percent of the state's general fund. This would cost New Yorkers between $3 and $5 each per election cycle. Irene Miller, President of NYCCE, called that, "one of the very best investments tax payers could make, because when our tax dollars no longer go for corporate tax breaks and subsidies, our overall taxes could be reduced."


Casino Troubles
            Even as the state Lobbying Commission investigates a questionable incentive clause in one of his lobbying contracts, Dennis Vacco has signed another deal carrying huge "success fees." The former attorney general entered into the deal about a month ago with the Seneca-Cayuga Tribe of Oklahoma, which would reward his lobbying firm with more than a million dollars if a Catskills casino project is achieved.
            The Seneca-Cayuga are working with Empire Resorts, owners of Monticello
Raceway, on a proposal to create a casino somewhere in Sullivan or Ulster counties.
            Success fees are illegal under the lobbying law, but loopholes allow for such fees if the lobbying firm isn't focused on legislation. The Temporary State Commission on Lobbying's staff recently drafted a bill to plug that loophole and expand the definition of lobbying to include activities aimed at influencing any official action.
Skills Draft?                             In the second debate, President Bush asked those listening to "forget all this talk about a draft" and never did answer a question from the audience about how he would prevent one˜and then cut off Charles Gibson's next question as to why the overuse of Reservists on long deployments was not a back-door draft.                        Yet according to pundits, as well as many in the Military, the issue of the draft deserves a fair debate based on the facts before the election.                                              The main worry for young people is that beyond Iraq, Bush and Cheney are following the neo-con plan that would involve the invasion of still more countries, such as Syria and Iran.  A recent NY Times article stated that 36,000 medical personnel would be taken quickly if a Medical Draft was called.  Are that many doctors and nurses needed to support an invasion of Iran?                                                                            Most worrisome to those in the anti-draft movement was a Family Circle July 13 article "Could Your Child Be Drafted?", in which Rick Jahnkow, program coordinator of the nonprofit Project on Youth and Non-Military Opportunities, noted that 'Karl Rove polled Republican members of Congress on how they felt about the draft. They said they'd support the President.'"  Despite Family Circle's circulation of 23 million, this charge was never refuted by the White House.                                 Facts are that there already is a draft law, no matter the public vote by the House this month against instituting a new one. Any President can go to Congress under the Military Selective Service Act, the current registration law, and ask for re-authorization of the Combat Draft and Medical Draft. All Congress need do is pass a 1-page "trigger resolution" and the Combat Draft for men 18-25 is back.                                     The Freedom of Information Act document on a planned Skills Draft has been acknowledged as authentic by a Selective Service spokesperson. And on October 19, 2004, the New York Times printed a long article on Widmeyer Communications,  a contractor hired by the Selective Service to consult on how to discreetly collect names and handle PR for a Medical Draft.                                                                        The Selective Service will, by early 2005, be prepared to register about 40 million Americans for a Skills Draft and a Medical Draft.  They are right now creating the complex forms that will track a person's skills˜every man or woman under 35˜in a massive database for the entire country.
Eyes Have It
            You've seen it in horror movies, or even in real-life at the local museum: a painting in which the eyes of the person portrayed seem to follow you around the room, no matter where you go.
People have described the effect as creepy or eerie, and some have thought it supernatural. But now researchers have demonstrated the very natural cause for this visual effect.All it takes for the effect to work is to have the person in the painting, or photograph, look straight ahead, said James Todd, co-author of the study and a professor of psychology at Ohio State University. Our visual perception takes care of the rest."
The core idea is simple: no matter what angle you look at a painting from, the painting itself doesn't change. You're looking at a flat surface. The pattern of light and dark remains the same," Todd said. "We found that our visual perception of a picture also remains largely unchanged as we look at it from different vantage points. If a person in a painting is looking straight out, it will always appear that way, regardless of the angle at which it is viewed."

Pataki Threats
Governor Pataki's recent budget veto threatens the health of New York's children, according to Donna Lawrence, Executive Director of the Children's Defense Fund - New York.
 "This $1 million veto threatens the community-based facilitated enrollment program, which has been a nationally recognized model of how to help families get health insurance," Lawrence said. "This is a small budget cut with big consequences." 
 While Governor Pataki's veto saves the state budget $1 million, it will cost New York $2 million in federal matching funds. The $3 million loss is 15 percent of the entire budget for the community-based initiative and will result in about 20,000 New Yorkers not getting the help they need next year to enroll in, and keep, their health insurance. When families can not afford health care they have no choice but to turn to the most expensive alternative there is - emergency room care. In addition, the programs will be forced to lay off highly trained and dedicated staff.
 Additionally, this year's budget reduces Medicaid eligibility for children ages six to 18, which endangers health coverage for as many as 77,000 children. Lack of health care can have devastating and long-term consequences for children including poorer school attendance and achievement.   
 The community-based facilitated enrollment program, which was launched in 2000, along with the simplification and expansion of public health insurance programs, has been a major factor in the dramatic drop in the number of uninsured children in New York State.  The number has decreased 34 percent during the last five years from 729,000 to 479,000, despite New York's high unemployment rate. 
 
Brain Disease!
State health officials have said that a preliminary investigation into a recent spate of deaths in Kingston from a rare brain-wasting disease related to Mad Cow Disease is not a threat to public safety. The investigation focused on reports of five deaths in the Mid-Hudson region linked to Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease, or CJD, in recent months. A state Health Department spokesman said investigation has found that there had been two deaths from the disease in Ulster County, one in 2003 and one in 2004, but the presence of the disease was ruled out in a third Ulster County case while another suspected CJD death in Ulster County could not yet be confirmed because no autopsy was performed. Additionally, one CJD death was actually reported in Dutchess County.
The state official, citing patient confidentiality laws, declined to provide names or identifying details of any of the victims. Of the two suspected CJD victims whose names are known, one, Colleen Staccio, who died at Benedictine Hospital on Aug. 28, was determined not to have had CJD following a brain autopsy performed last week, her father, Don Genther, said. CJD was confirmed through a brain biopsy on Richard Tobey, who died Oct. 9, family members said.
While the National Centers for Disease Control and Prevention identify the incidence of CJD as one per million people each year, experts say the syndrome is widely under-diagnosed and the true incidence of the disease is likely higher. Health Department officials said that 20 to 25 cases of CJD are diagnosed each year in New York state.
CJD is an invariably fatal brain disease whose origins remain mysterious. In most cases, the syndrome, which causes dementia and loss of motor function, occurs for no known reason or due to a family history of the illness. In a few cases, CJD has been spread through contaminated surgical instruments. CJD has also been linked to eating beef contaminated by Mad Cow Disease. But while the Mad Cow variant of CJD has killed more than 150 people in the United Kingdom, there has been only one case identified in the U.S., in a Florida woman who was born and raised in England.

Singling Out...
            Singling out one child for special treatment ˜ positive or negative ˜ can throw off an entire family, according to Canadian researchers. In two recent studies, differential parenting affected all the children in a family, not just the kids getting special treatment. The greater the difference in a child's treatment, the more adjustment problems arose.
The association was stronger when mothers treated their child negatively, compared with lavishing them with affection at the expense of their siblings.
The link was also stronger for aggressive-disruptive child behavior than for depressed mood and anxiety.
Besides putting the singled-out child on the spot, the effects rippled out to brothers and sisters. For instance, disfavored children "may experience themselves as diminished and less worthy of love," write the researchers.
Siblings could also resent a favored brother or sister. And if one child is treated harshly for no good reason, brothers and sisters might fear becoming targets themselves.
But doctors note that taking an evenhanded approach to parenting doesn't require treating kids identically. The Canadian research team says children can tell when their siblings are being treated differently for a good reason, and when parents are being unfair.

"Disappeared"
            At least 11 al-Qaida suspects have "disappeared" in U.S. custody, and some may have been tortured, Human Rights Watch said in a recent report.
The prisoners are probably being held outside the United States without access to the Red Cross or any oversight of their treatment, the human rights group said. In some cases, the United States will not even acknowledge the prisoners are in custody.
The report said the prisoners include the alleged architect of the Sept. 11 attacks, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, as well as Abu Zubaydah, who is believed to be a close aide to Osama bin Laden.
In refusing to disclose the prisoners' whereabouts or acknowledge the detentions, Human Rights Watch said, the U.S. government has violated international law, international treaties and the Geneva Convention. The group called on the government to bring all the prisoners "under the protection of the law."
"I think the U.S. demeans itself when it adopts the philosophy that the ends justify the means in the fight against terror," said Reed Brody, special counsel with Human Rights Watch.
CIA spokesman Mark Mansfield said the agency has not seen the report and declined to comment.

Arrested News
A second reporter for a national publication was held in contempt recently by a federal judge for refusing to reveal confidential sources before a grand jury investigating the leak of an undercover CIA officer's identity. U.S. District Judge Thomas F. Hogan ordered Time magazine reporter Matthew Cooper jailed for up to 18 months and the magazine fined $1,000 a day for refusing to comply with a grand jury subpoena seeking the testimony. Hogan suspended the jail time and fine pending the outcome of an appeal. The ruling was nearly identical to one issued last week by Hogan in the case of Judith Miller, a reporter for The New York Times who is also refusing to name her sources. Miller and Cooper, both represented by lawyer Floyd Abrams, are expected to join together in appealing their cases on First Amendment grounds.
The investigation concerns whether a crime was committed when someone leaked the identity of CIA officer Valerie Plame, whose name was published by syndicated columnist Robert Novak on July 14, 2003. The column appeared after Plame's husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, wrote a newspaper opinion column criticizing President Bush's claim that Iraq had sought uranium in Niger - a claim the CIA had asked Wilson to check out. Wilson has said he believes his wife's name was leaked as payback for his outspokenness.
Disclosure of the identity of an undercover intelligence officer can be a federal crime, if prosecutors can show the leak was intentional and the leaker knew about the officer's secret status.
Novak, who cited two senior administration officials as his sources, has refused to say whether he has testified or been subpoenaed. Prosecutors have interviewed President Bush, Vice President Cheney, Secretary of State Colin Powell and other current or former administration officials in the investigation. At least five reporters have been subpoenaed.
Abrams said he expected legal filings in the appeals of both Miller and Cooper to be completed by Nov. 10 before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, which would then likely schedule an oral argument. That means the CIA leak criminal investigation, which began in September 2003, could drag on into early 2005.
Meanwhile, President Bush's top political adviser, Karl Rove, spent more than two hours testifying before the same panel, which White House spokesman Scott McClellan said showed that Rove was ''doing his part to cooperate'' in the probe, as ordered by Bush.
Rove's attorney, Robert Luskin, said prosecutors have assured Rove he is not a target of the criminal investigation.'
John Kerry senior adviser Joe Lockhart issued a statement calling on Rove and other aides to ''come clean about their role in this insidious act. If the president sincerely wanted to get to the bottom of this potential crime, he'd stop the White House foot-dragging and fully cooperate with this investigation,''
Bush-Cheney campaign spokesman Steve Schmidt charged that Kerry's campaign ''is spreading rumors and working to politicize a legal investigation.''
In a widely quoted remark, Wilson said after a speech in 2003 that it might be ''fun to see Karl Rove frog-marched out of the White House in handcuffs.'' Wilson has accused Rove of spreading word of the Novak column to other reporters.

Moose High
It's a bird. It's a plane. No, it's a bull moose hanging by its antlers from an electrical power line in the middle of the Alaska wilderness.
In one of those only-in-Alaska stories reported in the Fairbanks Daily-Miner recently, a trophy-sized bull moose was accidentally strung up in a power line under construction to a gold mine southeast of Fairbanks. The moose apparently got its antlers tangled in electrical wire before workers farther down the line pulled the line tight about two weeks before the dangler was discovered, still alive.
The moose was suspended 50 feet in the air when workers, recognizing something was wrong, backtracked and found it. The moose was alive when it was lowered to the ground but was later killed when officials from the Alaska Department of Fish and Game decided against tranquilizing it to remove the wires because they were worried the moose, already stressed, would die and the meat would not be salvageable as a result of the drugs. 

DEP Charged
A charge of passing in a no-passing zone brought by New York City DEP officials against a county resident is expected to be reviewed Nov. 8 by a Hurley Town Justice, with the plaintiff's attorney joining a growing number of lawyers throughout the sprawling Watershed region by challenging the authority of the city police agency to issue tickets outside reservoir property. Prosecution of the case was taken over by the county District Attorney' Office after questions arose over jurisdiction of the police agency, which on Nov. 25, 2003, issued a ticket for passing another vehicle in a no-passing zone on state Route 28. A motion to dismiss the case, dealing with the question of whether the New York City DEP has jurisdiction off city property in Ulster County, deals with technical issues, and could end up being precedent-setting.
District Attorney Donald A. Williams said his office would not ordinarily become involved with traffic tickets, but that jurisdiction of the Department of Environmental Protection Police raises "complicated issues of law" affecting local residents.

Canadian Rx
            Canadians must stop Americans from using Internet pharmacies to raid its medicine chest or face a drug shortage, a coalition of Canadian groups representing seniors, pharmacies and patients has warned. The groups, claiming to represent 10 million Canadians, or about one-third the population, called on the Canadian government Monday to ban prescription drug exports. They argue that Canada cannot afford to address U.S. drug shortages and soaring prescription costs with its own stock, which are often considerably cheaper for Americans because of government price controls.
An estimated 65 million Americans, most elderly, don't have drug coverage or can't afford drugs in the United States. Internet pharmacies and Canadian doctors willing to write prescriptions for Americans send an estimated $1 billion a year in Canadian drugs south of the border.
But Canada's health department insists Americans don't pose a threat to the country's drug supply. For example, Health Minister Ujjal Dosanjh said recently that he believes Canada has a surplus of vaccine that could be provided to the United States, though probably not enough to meet the U.S. demand.
Canada regulates drug prices as part of its national health care system, while the market dictates pricing in the United States. Many popular medications for chronic conditions such as high blood pressure and high cholesterol can be bought in Canada at less than half the U.S. price.
Earlier this month, Illinois and Wisconsin started state-sponsored programs to help residents buy cheaper prescription drugs from both Europe and Canada. Several states, seeing the potential for huge savings in the costs of insuring employees, have Web sites designed to help citizens buy Canadian medications. Also, visitors to Canada can buy as much as three months of medication in Canada for personal use with a U.S. prescription.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration, and President Bush, opposes commercial prescription drug imports, arguing that it cannot vouch for their safety.
Chuck Cruden of the Manitoba Society of Seniors said Canadian doctors should be treating Canadians instead of selling their signatures to "co-sign" American prescriptions.
"The United States is the richest country in the world," Cruden said. "They are more than capable of solving this problem on their own. Canada is too small and our drug supply is too small to solve America's problem."

Dem Purges
Elections officials have rebuffed an attempt by a former GOP operative to purge about 17,000 Democrats from the voter rolls in the battleground state of Nevada, where the two presidential candidates are in a dead heat. A local registrar of voters there rejected a challenge filed by a former state Republican Party chairman that claimed the Democrats should be removed from the rolls because they were inactive voters. The registrar said such a challenge could only be made in single precincts, and then only if the challenger has personal knowledge that the questioned voters are inactive.
''I don't think pulling names off a database equates to personal knowledge,'' the registrar said after it was discovered that Republicans had been privately purging state voting records. Under state law, voters are placed on ''inactive status'' if they move and don't update their addresses within 30 days of receiving notice to do so. Their registrations are then canceled if they don't vote in two consecutive federal elections.
  Meanwhile, an Arizona consulting firm denied recently that a group it hired to register Republicans in Nevada deliberately tore up Democratic voter registration forms. Eric Russell, a former employee of Voters Outreach of America, said he witnessed a supervisor shred eight to 10 Democratic registration forms from prospective voters. Nathan Sproul, chief executive of Sproul & Associates, said his firm was contracted by the Republican National Committee to register voters, but he denied Russell's accusations that Democratic registration forms were destroyed.
A spokesman for the Nevada Secretary of State's office said it was investigating whether any state or federal laws were broken.

Cell Tumors?
A Swedish study suggests that people who use a cell phone for at least 10 years might increase their risk of developing a rare benign tumor along a nerve on the side of the head where they hold the phone. Although experiments have shown radiation from mobile phones can affect brain cells in a lab, more relevant studies on people have found no evidence that the phones pose a health risk. However, experts have said that because children's brains are developing, it may not be a good idea for youngsters to use the phones for long periods.
The new three-year study focused on 750 Swedes who had used cell phones for at least 10 years. In it, researchers questioned 150 patients already diagnosed with acoustic neuroma, a benign tumor on the auditory nerve that takes several years to grow before being diagnosed, and 600 who did not have it, about their cell phone use. All 750 subjects had been using cell phones for at least 10 years, nearly all early analog models that emit more electromagnetic radiation than the digital models now on the market. Digital phones emit radiation in pulses; the older analog varieties emit continuous waves. Since cell phones exploded in popularity in the late 1990s, most of those sold used digital technology.
The risk of developing a tumor was almost double for those who started to use phones before their diagnosis. In addition, the tumor risk was almost four times higher on the side of the head where the phone was held.
Acoustic neuroma tumors, which can affect hearing, occur in less than one adult per 100,000 people annually. The tumor pushes on the surface of the brain, but doesn't grow into the brain itself.
Previous studies, including one by Finnish scientists in 2002, found that electromagnetic radiation emitted by phones can affect brain tissue, but others have said that's not the case. The wireless industry has always maintained there is no link between mobile phones and cancer.
The Wireless Association in Washington, D.C., a trade group representing American cell phone manufacturers, urged more research.

TB/AIDS
The spread of HIV/AIDS is fueling a massive tuberculosis crisis that could see one billion people infected in the next 20 years, the U.N. has warned. A staggering 35 million people could also die of TB in that time if its growth continues unchecked, the World Health Organization said at the start of a two-day conference in the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa last month.
TB is the most common infection among - and the leading killer of - people living with HIV/AIDS. TB infects an estimated 8.7 million people a year and kills 2 million a year. It is spread by airborne bacteria that settle into the lungs and cause long-term infection. Many people who are infected do not become ill themselves but can spread it.
Of the estimated 25 million Africans now living with HIV, about eight million also harbor the bacillus that causes TB. Each year, 5-10 percent of these eight million co-infected people develop active TB and up to four million will develop the disease at some point in their lives, the WHO said.
The "deadly interaction" of TB and HIV threatens to evolve into a global public health crisis and called for urgent action to stop the co-epidemic, said Mario Raviglione, head of the WHO fight against TB. The danger is compounded by the appearance of drug-resistant TB strains.

Profile Problems
Authorities' targeting of people because of their racial background or religious affiliation is a deep-rooted problem in the United States, with nearly 32 million people reporting they've been racially profiled, a human rights group has said. The report by Amnesty International USA also said at least 87 million people ˜ one in three ˜ in the United States are at high risk of being victimized because they belong to a racial, ethnic or religious group whose members are commonly targeted by police for unlawful stops and searches.
Racial profiling is a growing problem as the government has expanded its war on terror, the report said. Police, immigration and airport security procedures are the areas where the problem has gotten worse since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, it said. Citizens and visitors of Middle Eastern and South Asian descent, and others who appear to be from these areas or members of the Muslim and Sikh faiths, have become more frequent subjects of racial profiling over the last three years. Such racial profiling is a distraction to law enforcement and therefore, undermines national security efforts, the report said. As police primarily focus on Arab, Muslim and South Asian males, it said, they are more likely to overlook terrorists who are white.
Aside from the ill-effects on victims ˜ depression and humiliation ˜ racial profiling reinforces residential segregation, creates fear and mistrust and engenders reluctance in reporting crimes and cooperating with police officers, Amnesty International USA said.
State laws continue to be insufficient in addressing the problem, according to the report. Twenty-seven states do not ban racial profiling, the report said. Also, 46 states don't ban religious profiling, 35 continue to allow pedestrian "stop and frisk" searches and only six of the 15 that ban these searches use a definition of racial profiling that can actually be enforced, the report said.

Lay Districting...
The Supreme Court handed Democrats recently, ordering a lower court to reconsider a Texas redistricting plan that could give Republicans six more seats and a firmer hold on their majority in the House. The decision won't affect next month's elections, though any GOP gains on Nov. 2 could be wiped out later if the plan ultimately is deemed unconstitutional.
States must redraw boundaries every 10 years to reflect population shifts found during the census. Five appeals over the Texas boundary-drawing pose an interesting question: Can political leaders of a Legislature force district drawing more frequently than once a decade, to make more seats winnable for members of their party?
Democratic legislators twice staged walkouts from the Texas Legislature to protest district-drawing that benefited Republican candidates. And House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Texas, was admonished recently by the House ethics committee for getting too involved.
In a brief order, justices threw out a victory for Texas Republican legislators, and ordered a three-judge federal panel in Texas to reconsider the issue. The court said that the Texas map should be viewed again, in light of that decision.
Texas lawmakers failed to pass new maps for the state's 32 House seats in 2001, after the census numbers were in, so a federal court drew up a plan. Republicans took control of the Legislature after 2002 elections and started working on another map early in 2003. Democrats in the state House and Senate staged quorum-breaking walkouts in an attempt to kill GOP-led bills, but the Republicans ultimately prevailed.
The Texas delegation is now even at 16-16. But because of the redrawn districts Republicans could hold up to 22 seats after the election.
DeLay had pressed state lawmakers to redraw districts. Democrats complained and the bipartisan House ethics committee determined earlier this month that DeLay, the No. 2 House Republican, raised "serious concerns" by contacting the Federal Aviation Administration last year to help locate Democratic lawmakers who fled to Oklahoma in an effort to thwart passage of the DeLay-engineered redistricting plan.

E-Voting...
A computer crash that forced a pre-election test of electronic voting machines to be postponed was trumpeted by critics as proof of the balloting technology's unreliability. The incident in Palm Beach County - which is infamous for its hanging and pregnant chads during the 2000 presidential election - did not directly involve the touch-screen terminals on which nearly one in three U.S. voters will cast ballots on Election Day. But critics of the ATM-like machines said it proved how fickle any computer-based voting system can be and highlighted the need for touch-screens to produce paper records.
The recent public dry run had to be postponed a week because excessive heat caused a computer server that tabulates data from the touch-screen machines to crash. An Achille's heel of electronic voting equipment, just like any machines whose circuits get hot with colliding electrons, is its inability to tolerate extreme conditions, many experts say.
Critics of paperless voting systems used in 15 Florida counties said the incident demonstrates their pleas for a system that includes printers on every touch-screen and produces paper records of every ballot cast. According to technical standards for electronic voting systems, updated in 2002, voting machines must be able to tolerate storage temperatures ranging from minus 4 to 140 degrees Fahrenheit. They must be able to operate in "natural" conditions and temperatures ranging from 50 to 95 degrees.
Mechanical problems during California's March primary caused nearly half of all touch-screens in San Diego County to malfunction, causing hundreds of precincts to open late. Heat-related troubles have flared up in other counties. In the July primary, numerous machines in one elementary school in Decatur, Ga., failed throughout the day, when temperatures exceeded 90 degrees, according to a report by poll monitors.
An executive at Sequoia Voting Systems, which provides Palm Beach County's touch-screens but not the county office server that crashed, called critics' fears overblown.

Learning Curve?
The Bush administration has promoted its education law with a video that comes across as a news story but fails to make clear the reporter involved was paid with taxpayer money. The government used a similar approach this year in promoting the new Medicare law and drew a rebuke from the investigative arm of Congress, which found the videos amounted to propaganda in violation of federal law.
The Education Department also has paid for rankings of newspaper coverage of the No Child Left Behind law, a centerpiece of the president's domestic agenda. Points are awarded for stories that say President Bush and the Republican Party are strong on education, among other factors. The news ratings also rank individual reporters on how they cover the law, based on the points system set up by Ketchum, a public relations firm hired by the government.
The video and documents emerged through a Freedom of Information Act request by People for the American Way, a citizen's group that contends the department is spending public money on a political agenda. The group sought details on a $700,000 contract Ketchum received in 2003 from the Education Department.
One service the company provided was a video news release geared for television stations. The video includes a news story that features Education Secretary Rod Paige and promotes tutoring now offered under law. The story ends with the voice of a woman saying, ''In Washington, I'm Karen Ryan reporting.'' It does not identify the government as the source of the report. It also fails to make clear the person purporting to be a reporter was someone hired for the promotional video. Those are the same features - including the voice of Karen Ryan - that were prominent in videos the Health and Human Services Department used to promote the Medicare law and were judged covert propaganda by the Government Accountability Office in May.
The Education Department says the video was clearly marked as being a product of the agency when it was given to TV stations.

Special Drilling
Over the last four years, the Bush administration and Vice President Dick Cheney's office have backed a series of measures favoring a drilling technique developed by Halliburton Co., Cheney's former employer. The technology, known as hydraulic fracturing, boosts gas and oil production and generates $1.5 billion a year for the company, about one-fifth of its energy-related revenue. In recent years, Halliburton and other oil and gas firms have been fighting efforts to regulate the procedure under a statute that protects drinking water supplies. The 2001 national energy policy report, written under the direction of the vice president's office, cited the value of hydraulic fracturing but didn't mention concerns raised by staff members at the Environmental Protection Agency. Since then, the administration has taken steps to keep the practice from being regulated under the Safe Drinking Water Act, which Halliburton has said would hurt its business and add needless costs and bureaucratic delays. An EPA study concluded in June that there was no evidence that hydraulic fracturing posed a threat to drinking water. However, some EPA employees complained about the study internally before its completion, and others have strongly criticized it publicly since its release. One of them, an environmental engineer and 30-year EPA veteran in Denver, recently sought whistle-blower protection in an 18-page statement sent to the agency's inspector general and members of Congress. The statement alleges that the study's findings were premature, may endanger public health and were approved by an industry-dominated review panel that included a current Halliburton employee.
Halliburton, where Cheney was chief executive from 1995 to 2000, is the leader among three large companies providing most fracturing services to oil and gas drilling operations around the world. Fracturing affords access to hard-to-reach energy deposits by forcing pressurized fluids deep into the earth, creating underground fissures that permit oil and gas to flow toward surface wells.
Cheney, who left Halliburton in August 2000 to run for vice president, has said he has severed all ties to the company. Since he took office in January 2001, Cheney has received $398,548 in deferred compensation, and he will continue to receive annual payments through 2005. He also has 433,333 options to purchase Halliburton stock, according to financial disclosure records filed in May 2004. But his staff has pointed to an insurance policy that guarantees that the vice president will receive the deferred compensation no matter how Halliburton does ˜ and to his commitment to donate any profits from the stock options to charity.

Avian Flu!
The entire Pacific Rim faces an outbreak of unprecedented proportions as it grapples with avian influenza, which the World Health Organization warns could develop into a pandemic unless detection and prevention methods are improved.
Health officials raised alarm bells recently over bird flu, which WHO officials said had claimed 28 lives in southeast Asia this year. They argued that increased collaboration between countries and more study was needed to combat the virus, which resurfaced in July in Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, Vietnam and China and dampened Asian demand for grain. The WHO has said the virulent virus was circulating more widely in the region than originally believed - particularly worrisome because humans lack immunity to it. A huge flow of people, goods and foods around Asia and lax animal husbandry practices have been cited as prime concerns.
Although avian flu is very infectious in birds, it does not spread easily among humans. There is a danger, however, that an avian virus mixes with a human one and forms a new disease. Malaysia, which detected three new cases in a northern state this month, said it had strengthened infectious disease surveillance and drawn up a rapid response plan.
It suggested countries around the region adopt a common framework to prepare for a potential national pandemic, a representative said. Singapore suggested wider use of vaccinations, an option Thailand is strongly considering.
"The outbreak of Asian influenza in the region is potentially more dangerous than SARS and we should not ignore a pandemic arising from this," the Singapore representative said, referring to the deadly flu-like Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome.
Thailand was the world's fourth-largest chicken exporter until the disease halted exports to Japan and Europe.

Watch Our Trout!
A fish known for its voracious appetite and ability to wreak havoc on freshwater ecosystems was found in Chicago's Burnham Harbor, alarming biologists across the nation about potential changes to world fisheries ahead. An angler caught the 18-inch fish and immediately thought it looked peculiar, so he posted a picture of it on the Internet. Scientists recognized it as a northern snakehead, a native of China, Korea and Russia. Officials said they would scan the harbor near Lake Michigan with electronic equipment to verify whether other northern snakeheads are present. If so, they are concerned the fish could multiply and gobble up native fish.
The northern snakehead can grow to more than 3 feet long and has large teeth and a voracious appetite for other fish. It is usually imported for food or aquariums. Scientists call it a "frankenfish" for its ability to survive in oxygen-depleted water, move from pond to pond and devour other fish. Chicago imposed a ban on northern snakeheads two years ago after an angler discovered one in Maryland. The fish have also been spotted in Philadelphia and Wisconsin.
Have they heard, yet, about our trout?

Rising CO2
An unexplained jump in greenhouse gases since 2002 might herald a catastrophic acceleration of global warming if it becomes a trend, scientists said in recent weeks. But they said the two-year leap might be an anomaly linked, for instance, to forest fires in Siberia or a freak hot summer in Europe in 2003 rather than a portent of runaway climate change linked to human disruption of the climate system.
"There have been two years where the rise of carbon dioxide has been faster than average," said Richard Betts, Manager for Ecosystems and Climate Impacts at Britain's Hadley Center. "We shouldn't get alarmist about this ... If it lasted for more than about five years you'd start to get worried," he added.
Carbon dioxide levels, the main gas blamed for blanketing the planet and pushing up temperatures since the Industrial Revolution, have risen by more than two parts per million (ppm) in the past two years against a recent rate of about 1.5 ppm. Scientists said the figures were confirmed at sites including Mauna Loa, Hawaii, west Ireland and the Norwegian Arctic island of Svalbard, about 800 miles from the North Pole. The rise was less in the southern hemisphere.
The rise in the past two years is quicker than mapped out in U.N. projections to the year 2100 based on increased human use of fossil fuels like coal, oil or gas. Higher temperatures could trigger everything from desertification to rising sea levels. A background fear is that extra human emissions, by cars, factories and power plants, may be blunting the planet's ability to absorb CO2. In the worst case, that could lead to a runaway warming.
U.N. scientists project that average temperatures will rise by 3 to 11 F by 2100 because of human impact on the climate. Temperatures have already risen since the Industrial Revolution in tandem with a 30 percent rise in CO2 levels. The U.N.'s Kyoto protocol, likely to come into force in coming months with Russian help after a U.S. pullout in 2001, obliges developed nations to cut their carbon dioxide emissions by 5.2 percent below 1990 levels by 2008-12.

New Arms Race?
Great Britain's Tony Blairt has given an agreement in principle to the Pentagon to station interceptor missiles on British soil. The confidential deal goes far beyond the official position that Britain is providing enhanced radar provision for the US national missile defence programme.                         The siting of the interceptors on British soil would represent the most significant new military US presence in this country since the withdrawal of cruise missiles 13 years ago.  If re-elected, President Bush has pledged to spend around $10bn  a year on realising Ronald Reagan's dream of erecting a missile shield to protect the West from long-range attack.
Sixteen interceptor missiles are being positioned in bases in Alaska and California this year. The intended location of the remaining 24 is a closely guarded secret, although it is known that the Pentagon wants to site some in Europe.
Critics of ballistic missile defence argue that it will lead to a new arms race as nuclear-armed states build faster, more powerful missiles to evade the defensive systems.
            Meanwhile, President Vladimir Putin of Russia has made his opposition to the new arms in no uncertain terms,
Stay tuned...