News Digest
Energy department attacks profiling
■ Secretary Bill Richardson clarified the
Wen-Ho Lee case is not an example of
discrimination but said cases do exist.
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
WASHINGTON - Energy Secretary Bill
Richardson wants an internal investiga
tion into whether any government or con
tractor employees working for the Energy
Department have been victims of racial
profiling.
Richardson, who planned to
announce the new actions Monday, said in
an interview he remains convinced that
the high-profile case of former weapons
scientist Wen Ho Lee, a native of Taiwan,
did not involve racial profiling.
But he said there are “enough
instances throughout the complex” to
raise suspicion that such discrimination
has gone on within the department and its
vast contractor system, and “I want to
eliminate once and for all any future suspi
cions.”
Richardson did not give any specific
cases.
“I will not tolerate even hints of racial
profiling,” he said. “We have made
progress addressing concerns of racial
profiling, but more needs to be done.”
The actions outlined by Richardson
include:
■ directing the Energy Department's
inspector general to investigate whether
there has been any racial profiling of
DOE’s federal or contractor work force,
especially in activities involving security;
■ revising contracts to stipulate that
safeguards against racial profiling be
included in all contractors’ work force
diversity plans; and
■ ordering that failure by a contractor
to deal with racial profiling be considered
a factor when determining contract fees.
Richardson said he wants to make cer
tain there are financial penalties against
contractors if they are found to have taken
punitive actions or singled out a worker
based solely on race or ethnic background.
Earlier this year, an independent task
force concluded there is a widespread
belief among Asian-American scientists at
government weapons laboratories - espe
cially the Los Alamos, N.M., facility where
Lee worked - that they are being singled
out by security officials because of their
race.
Among other things, the task force
found that some scientists at U.S. labs
believe their supervisors didn't want
Asian-Americans on certain projects, fear
ing unwanted counterintelligence atten
tion.
This became particularly evident in
the security crackdown following Lee’s
arrest in March 1999 and the turmoil over
alleged theft of secrets by China, the scien
tists said.
The three nuclear weapons labs are
under the Energy Department but man
aged by private contractors - Sandia by a
subsidiary of Lockheed Martin Co., and
Los Alamos and Lawrence Livermore by
the University of California.
Lee, 60, who had worked at Los Alamos
since the 1970s, was the target of an FBI
espionage investigation for three years
before he was fired. He later was accused
of mishandling nuclear secrets - but not
espionage - and jailed for nine months
before being released in September as part
of a plea bargain. The government
dropped all but one of its 59 charges
against him.
Lee's lawyers had argued in court that
Lee, an American citizen who was bom in
Taiwan, became the target of the FBI
investigation because of his Chinese her
itage. Both Richardson and Attorney
General Janet Reno have denied Lee was
singled out because of his race.
Shortly before the plea bargain was
reached, the judge hearing the case direct
ed the government to turn over numerous
documents that Lee's lawyers had sought
on racial profiling, including instances at
the Energy Department.
Some civil rights lawyers have argued
that these documents should be released
despite Lee's plea bargain agreement.
Efforts to gain their release are still being
considered.
Public supporters
urge on Kostunica
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
BELGRADE, Yugoslavia - Remnants of Slobodan Milosevic’s
regime crumbled Monday after Yugoslavia’s prime minister and the
country's most powerful police chief resigned. Early elections were set
for the Serbian parliament, a last bastion of the old order.
Riding the wave of public support that brought him to power,
President Vojislav Kostunica moved swiftly to drive out remaining
Milosevic stalwarts. The government in Serbia, the main Yugoslav
republic, is expected to be dissolved today.
Just two days after formally taking office, Kostunica was putting
his supporters in charge of the country’s most important institutions,
including the police, judiciary, banks and state-run companies.
A key Kostunica aide, Zoran Djindjic, signaled the new govern
ment's desire for closer ties to Washington after an election campaign
in which the opposition sought to distance itself from the United
States because of public anger over last year's NATO bombing cam
paign.
"Without a strategic partnership with America, there is no solu
tion for die Serbian national interests,” Djindjic said.
Milosevic, who has been holed up at one of the president’s official
residences in a Belgrade suburb, remained out of public view Monday.
But two of his key allies, federal Prime Minister Momir Bulatovic
and Serbian Interior Minister Vlajko Stojiljkovic - who controlled
about 100,000 policemen - both stepped down.
All major Serbian parties agreed to early parliamentary elections
in December - a move that could spell the end of Milosevic support
ers’ control of the republic’s government and legislature. Given the
current support for Kostunica, his allies are likely to win a strong
majority in the new parliament
Serbia is home to more than 90 percent ofYugoslavs and whoever
rules it holds the balance of authority in the country, which includes
one other republic, Montenegro. If die current Serbian government
and the parliament remain in place, they could block many pro
democracy reforms pushed by Kostunica on the federal level.
Serbia’s president and parliament are elected separately from fed
eral posts and were not involved in the contentious federal vote Sept.
24. Serbian President Milan Milutinovic and other Serbian govern
ment leaders were elected in 1998 to four-year terms.
Still, Milosevic’s hard-line allies in the Serbian parliament were
trying to keep die current legislature in place until the new elections,
despite calls for its immediate dissolution.
“This is a highway robbery,” said Vojislav Seselj, Serbia’s ultra
nationalist deputy prime minister who has been allied with Milosevic.
“You will not get our blessing for a coup,” referring to alleged, forceful
removal of Milosevic’s cronies from all major state institutions.
Serbian Health Minister Milovan Bojic, considered by many to be
the most reviled of Milosevic’s supporters, also resigned Monday, the
Tanjug news agency reported.
As the vestiges of the old regime were being cleared away, the
European Union lifted economic sanctions against Yugoslavia and
offered it $2 billion in aid to help rebuild the country, as well as lifting
key anti-Milosevic sanctions.
The decision marked a turning point in Yugoslavia’s relations with
the rest of Europe and was seen as a first step toward integrating the
country into the European mainstream.
Still, obstacles remained for the Kostunica camp. Yugoslavia’s
defense minister attempted Monday to rally opponents of the new
government, issuing a last-ditch appeal to Milosevic’s shaken sup
porters not to abandon the ousted leader.
TODAY TOMORROW
Partly cloudy * Partly sunny
high 66, low 46 high 68, low 49
Spencer Platt/Newsmakers
Nobel Prize winner Dr. Eric Kandel, Columbia University Professor, smiles as his wife Denise adjusts his red bowtie during a press
conference Monday in New York Qty after being awarded the 2000 Nobel Prize for Medicine, which he shares with two others.
Nobel recognizes brain work
I The prize for medicine was (liven for medications work, especially antipsychotic drugs
r 3 used against schizophrenia.
advancements that may help scientists find The Nobei committee said carisson s work
treatments for Alzheimer's and Parkinson's. iSSSSStaSSto
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS action of serotonin, another chemical messenger.
--- “The discoveries of Arvid Carlsson have had great
STOCKHOLM, Sweden - TWo Americans and a importance for the treatment of depression, which is
Swede won the Nobel Prize in medicine Monday for one of our most common diseases,” the citation said,
discoveries about how brain cells communicate - Greengard was honored for showing how brain
research that laid the groundwork for Prozac and cells react to the arrival of dopamine and other chem
other drugs for depression and Parkinson's disease. ical messengers.
Arvid Carlsson, Paul Greengard and Eric Kandel “We worked on this for many years without corn
will share the $915,000 prize for pioneering work that petition,” Greengard joked Monday, “because people
could lead to new treatments for schizophrenia, thought we were insane.”
Alzheimer’s disease, addiction and other mental dis- Kandel’s work focused on the biology of learning
orders. and memory. It demonstrated that changes at
"Hie payoffs are potentially enormous,” said Dr. synapses - the places where chemical messengers
Stephen Hyman, director of the National Institute of pass between brain cells - are crucial in forming
Mental Health. memories.
Carlsson, 77, is with the University of Goteborg in Tim Bliss, head of neuroscience at the National
Sweden. Greengard, 74, is with Rockefeller University Institute for Medical Research in London, said
in New York, and Kandel, 70, is an Austrian-bom U.S. Kandel’s work - ongoing since the 1960s - could lead
citizen and a professor at Columbia University in to new treatments for Alzheimer’s and other condi
NewYork. dons involving memory loss.
The awards illuminated a key type of communi- “It’s a very major piece of work and he’s been an
cation — called “slow synaptic transmission” — in outstanding leader in the field for many years,” Bliss
which chemical messengers carry signals from one said. “He identified the physical embodiment of
brain cell to another. The work has been crucial for learning and memory in the brain.”
understanding how the brain works and how dis- Kandel himself cautioned that “there’s an enor
eases can arise when the system goes wrong. mous distance between the kind of work I do and a
The three winners worked largely independently. clinical payoff.”
Carlsson was honored for work in the late 1950s Last year’s winner of the Nobel prize for medicine
that showed a substance called dopamine is a key was Dr. Guenter Blobel, 64, a German native and U.S.
messenger between brain cells. He realized the impli- citizen who discovered how proteins find their right
cation for Parkinson’s disease, which was later shown ful places in cells - a process that goes awry in dis
to result from a dopamine deficiency in part of the eases like cystic fibrosis and plays a key role in the
brain. manufacture of some medicines.
The work helped lead to development of a drug, The winners of the prizes for physics and chem
L-dopa, to compensate for the missing dopamine. istry will be announced today, with the economics
The drug is now standard treatment prize on Wednesday and the peace prize on Friday.
Carisson s research also shed light on how other No date has been set for the literature prize.
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FBI targets child hackers
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
WASHINGTON - Thou shalt not van
dalize Web pages.
Thou shalt not shut down Web sites.
Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s
MP3s.
FBI agents are spreading a new gospel to
parents and teachers, hoping they’ll better
educate youths that vandalism in cyber
space can be economically costly and just as
criminal as mailbox bashing and graffiti
spraying.
The Justice Department and the
Information Technology Association of
America, a trade group, has launched the
Cybercitizen Partnership to encourage edu
cators and parents to talk to children in
ways that equate computer crimes with old
fashioned wrongdoing.
The nascent effort includes a series of
seminars around the country for teachers,
classroom materials and guides and a Web
site to help parents talk to children.
"In a democracy in general, we can’t
have the police everywhere,” said Michael
Vatis, director of the FBI’s National
Infrastructure Protection Center. The center
guards against computer attacks by terror
ists, foreign agents and teen hackers.
"One of the most important ways of
reducing crime is trying to teach ethics and
morality to our kids. That same principle
needs to apply to the cyber world," he said.
Vatis and other FBI agents attended a
kickoff seminar, titled the National
Conference on Cyber Ethics, last weekend
at Marymount University in Arlington, Va.
Part of the challenge: Many teens still
consider computer mischief harmless. A
recent survey found that 48 percent of stu
dents in elementary and middle school
don't consider hacking illegal.
The Associated Press
■Pennsylvania
Police: Jewish school fire
may be a hate crime
HARRISBURG - An arson
blaze gutted two stories of a
building at a synagogue on Yom
Kippur, the holiest day of the »
Jewish year.
The fire began around 4 a.m.
Monday in the Beth El Temple’s
three-story school building. No
one was injured.
Brian Denning, an agent
with the Bureau of Alcohol,
Tobacco and Firearms, ruled
out an accidental fire. The build
ing, which was under construc
tion, had no electrical system
and no heat-producing sources.
Fire Chief Donald Konkle
said there are no suspects, and
the department is "considering
the possibility that this was a
hate crime.”
The fire on Yom Kippur, the
Jewish Day of Atonement, came
amid new hostilities between
Israelis and Palestinians. The
violence has claimed 88 lives in
the past two weeks.
■Florida
Shuttle launch delayed
because of high winds
CAPE CANAVERAL - With
gusts exceeding 50 mph at the
pad, NASA bumped the launch
of space shuttle Discovery to
today despite forecasts calling
for more blustery weather.
It was the second delay in
five days for NASA’s 100th space
shuttle flight, an ambitious
space-station construction mis
sion. Last week's postponement
was caused by a sluggish valve
and suspect bolts.
The space agency called off
Monday night’s launch attempt
11 hours in advance.
High wind prevented tech
nicians from moving a vent
hood into position over the
external fuel tank, part of the
preparation for filling the tank.
The wind limit is 48 mph, and
gusts reached more than 51
mph, said NASA spokesman
Bruce Buckingham.
■ Washington, D.C.
North Korean official
to meet with Clinton
The highest North Korean
official to visit Washington in a
half century of limited contacts
plans a historic meeting with
President Clinton today.
He visits amid signs the State
Department soon may remove
the communist country from its
list of state sponsors of terror
ism.
Clinton will hold a mid
morning meeting with the first
vice chairman of the country’s
National Defense Commission,
Cho Myong Nok. He is
described as the right-hand
man to North Korean leader
Kim Jong II.
The Clinton administration
has been making a concerted
effort to get North Korea on a
peaceful path after long years in
which Pyongyang was widely
regarded as the greatest threat
to peace in Asia.
■China
Milosevic's son found,
sent on plane to Russia
BEIJING - China refused to
let Slobodan Milosevic’s son into
the country Monday. It's the latest
sign that Beijing, a one-time
Milosevic supporter, has turned
away from the ousted Yugoslav
leader.
Marko Milosevic, traveling on
a diplomatic passport, arrived at
Beijing's Capital Airport from
Russia.
Officials there stopped him
and quickly put him back on the
Aeroflot flight to Moscow,
Russian reporters said.
Aeroflot could not be reached
for comment but China’s Foreign
Ministry confirmed that
Milosevic was not in the country.
"This person absolutely has not
entered the country through
Beijing or other places in China,”
the ministry said.
The Aeroflot plane later
arrived back at Moscow's inter
national airport, but Milosevic
did not appear in the arrivals
area. The Russian Foreign
Ministry and Yugoslav Embassy
in Moscow had no word on his
whereabouts.