Feed a cold and starve a fever?

Feed a cold and starve a fever? interesting new research.

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - "Feed a cold, starve a fever" may be sound advice for the immune system, according to researchers from the Netherlands.

After noticing differences in immune system response after a meal in an unrelated study, Gijs Van Den Brink and associates from Academic Medical Center in Amsterdam, wondered if the immune system, in fact, responded differently to feeding and starving.

To answer the question, they measured immune cell production of IFN-gamma (a measure of virus-fighting prowess) and IL-4 (a marker of bacteria-killing power) during fasting and after a liquid meal containing as many calories as a Big Mac and fries.

Six hours after the meal, anti-virus IFN-gamma production rose 4.5-fold, the researchers reported. After overnight fasting, though, IFN-gamma production fell to 83% of its usual level.

In contrast, food intake resulted in only a 42% increase in IL-4 production, whereas fasting brought nearly a fourfold rise in bacteria-fighting IL-4 levels.

The authors concluded that significant calorie intake favored the type of immune response needed to fight cold viruses, whereas fasting boosted the kind of immune response required for fever-causing bacterial infections.

"It is important to realize that our findings are interesting but still very preliminary and have no implications yet for the people at home," Van Den Brink said. "It may serve as an example however that although everybody realizes that one should eat well, food may not get the attention it deserves from people in basic research.

Reuters Health Information Date Published: 5/23/01 Date Reviewed: 5/23/01

Girl Boy Rants

saw these interesting links from regan's journal:
A Short Rant on Girls, by Shiznito
A Short Rant on Men, by January

and a sobering link from january. the original content is from Pictures of the Year International.

in that core of shadow

Bloodspell -- I
from Mortal World, 1995
by Deborah Pope

We walked off the path
where the park was darkest,
the flinch of first winter
hastening the leaving
of people and light,
and you led me back
in the trees, kissed me
as I lifted my face to you,
your arms holding my arms
behind me, I could hardly see you,
felt only the rough
cold of your cheek,
your grip on my coat,

and there seemed nothing
to turn back for, nothing
I had not already gone
a long time without,
the way you turned
the headlights off
once when you left me late,
and I watched as you, fearless,
moved in that core of shadow,
driving only by feel
and a random mercy of moon.

alanna heiss

went to a gracious reception at the tribeca home of Alanna Heiss, director of PS1. usually, we just get a talk and a look at art, but she had a pianist playing old tunes, and a full buffet dinner waiting for us! yum! also lots of interesting artwork up, including a few avedon photos of herself and others (remember tina chow?) from the early 80s.

MOMAJA is just too awesome! if you live in manhattan, you are missing out if you're not a MOMAJA member. really. i just wish i could go with the group to berlin next month. really wanna go...

Heavy Fighting for Desert Base at Syria Border

Heavy Fighting for Desert Base at Syria Border
By DOUGLAS JEHL
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/04/11/international/worldspecial/11TOWN.html

WASHINGTON, April 10 — Out of sight of television cameras, some of the heaviest fighting in Iraq has been raging for nearly three weeks near the town of Qaim on the Syrian border, where American Green Berets and British commandos have been attacking units of Iraq's Special Republican Guard and Special Security Services, according to senior military and defense officials.

The Iraqi forces in the area, near the Euphrates River and alongside a rail line, have been defending a large compound that includes phosphate fertilizer and water treatment plants. American officials say the sheer tenacity of the Iraqi fighters has led them to suspect that they may be defending Scud missiles or other illicit weapons.

The Qaim area, nearly 200 miles northwest of Baghdad along the most direct route from the Iraqi capital to Syria, was a launching point for Iraqi ballistic missile attacks during the 1991 Persian Gulf war. It was also home to a plant used by Iraq in 1980's for uranium processing, and it has been identified since by American officials as a possible site for any effort to revive Iraq's nuclear weapons program.

The reported doggedness of the Iraqi resistance has prompted some speculation within the Bush administration that the Iraqi forces might be defending members of the Iraqi leadership trying to flee to Syria. But defense officials said it was more likely they were trying to shield weapons or weapons programs.

"They're protecting something, that's for sure," one senior American military official said. For now, he said, the main objective of the United States is "to keep their head down so they can't fire anything off."

Despite many days of attacks by the Army's Special Forces, including what one general called "unconventional warfare direct-action missions," along with repeated airstrikes, the Iraqi forces have not given up.

Pentagon officials said that contact had been made with one Iraqi commander in the Qaim area in an effort to negotiate a surrender, but that that attempt had broken down.

With ground access limited, the American command has made the compound the target of heavy air attacks but has refrained from destroying the buildings altogether, apparently out of concern about causing wider harm if the area was being used to house chemical or biological weapons or material for nuclear weapons.

The mystery of the fierceness of armed Iraqi resistance in the remote border town is among many uncertainties that senior American officials are weighing as they survey the battlefield in Iraq, where about one-third of the country still lies outside American control, according to senior Pentagon officials.

Perhaps chief among those worries, officials said today, is the location and intentions of Iraqi militias and security forces who were battling the United States in Baghdad and other cities but have now mostly fled.

"Have they run away for good, or are they operating more like the Al Qaeda model, to go away for awhile and then come back?" a senior defense official said.

On Wednesday, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld cited intelligence reports saying that some officials of the Iraqi government had fled to Syria and, in some cases, onward to third countries. Today, defense officials said there was no evidence that those believed to have fled included any senior Iraqi leaders.

At the Pentagon, officials would not say how many American and British soldiers had been involved in the battle in the Qaim area, and they declined to estimate the size of the Iraqi resistance.

But they described the fighting as an example of what they called the significant amount of unfinished business in the war. The American task in seizing the area is complicated by the fact that there remains no easy way soon to bring American armor or other heavy fighting forces to places like Qaim.

Allied forces to date have not pushed forcefully west of Baghdad, with only Special Operations units deployed in areas like Qaim and near the point in western Iraq known as H3, which is a base for American, British and Australian forces along the route in from Jordan.

Perhaps chief among the remaining challenges, officials say, may be the effort to oust members of the Iraqi regime from Tikrit, Saddam Hussein's hometown, seen as the most worrying remaining base for armed Iraqi opposition. Iraqi positions in and around Tikrit have been bombed heavily in recent days, but it is believed to be defended by the Special Republican Guard and other Iraqi security forces who are a more difficult target from the air.

"I think we are prepared to be very very wary of what they might have, and we are prepared for a big fight," Maj. Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, vice director of operations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said of Tikrit at a Pentagon briefing today.

Asked about the fighting in the Qaim area, Maj. Gen. Victor Renuart, director of operations for the Central Command, described the Iraqi defenders as including "a substantial presence of Iraqi Special Republican Guards paramilitary forces."

"We believe that those forces have been significantly reduced over the last week or two, and we believe we're in a position where we can begin to control that area more freely," General Renuart told reporters at the Central Command headquarters in Doha, Qatar.

But, he cautioned: "I can't put a time on that to you. We'll continue to work that. We continue to have some discussions with leaders in that area, and we believe we're making good progress."

The Qaim compound includes the site where Iraq extracted uranium for its nuclear weapons program in the 1980's, but it was destroyed by bombing during the 1991 war.

More recently, however, American intelligence officials and other experts have pointed to satellite photographs showing activity at the compound that raised questions about whether Iraq might have rebuilt a uranium extraction plant at the site, possibly even underground.

In an effort to repudiate American claims that it was stockpiling nuclear, chemical and biological weapons, Iraqi officials allowed Western reporters to visit one building in Qaim last September. Reporters were flown by helicopter to the site, and were accompanied by Hussam Muhammad Amin, head of the Iraqi National Monitoring Directorate, the office used for liaison with United Nations inspectors.

The inspectors searched a site in Qaim December, scouring a uranium mine that yielded the "yellowcake" uranium dioxide that Iraq tried to enrich in the 1980's and early 1990's for nuclear weapons. As with other searches by the United Nations teams in the months before the American invasion, that investigation uncovered no evidence of any banned weapons.

Carrier of SARS Made 7 Flights Before Treatment

Carrier of SARS Made 7 Flights Before Treatment
By KEITH BRADSHER
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/04/11/science/sciencespecial/11SARS.html

HONG KONG, April 10 — Health officials announced here tonight that a man infected with a new respiratory disease had flown from Hong Kong to Munich, Barcelona, Frankfurt, London, Munich again, Frankfurt again and then back to Hong Kong before entering a hospital.

The Hong Kong Department of Health appealed for passengers and air crews from all seven flights to consult medical professionals. A health department spokeswoman said it was not yet known whether the man, who is 48, had infected anyone else on the flights with the disease — severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS.

All the flights were on Lufthansa. The airline said in a statement tonight that it had disinfected all the planes and was contacting the air crews and passengers. It said the chances of anyone's having become infected during the flights were "very remote."

Airlines have been saying that the filters aboard modern planes do a good job of removing viruses from the air. But according to the health department here, at least 13 people have fallen ill with SARS so far after they shared a flight from Hong Kong to Beijing last month with an elderly man who had been infected with the disease while visiting his brother in a hospital here.

Tonight's appeal for the Lufthansa crews and passengers to come forward follows nearly a dozen such calls by health officials and by airlines operating flights in and out of Hong Kong. Travelers have continued to board planes while feeling ill despite strenuous warnings from the World Health Organization and national health agencies that they not do so.

In the case that was announced tonight, the man flew on Lufthansa Flight 731 on March 30 from Hong Kong to Munich, and traveled the next day on Flight 4316 to Barcelona, according to an itinerary that was released here by the health department. He developed symptoms while in Barcelona.

The man then traveled on Flight 4303 to Frankfurt on April 2 and on to London the same day on Flight 4520. He went to Munich the next day on Flight 4671, then headed for Frankfurt on April 4 on Flight 265. He connected with Flight 738 the same day back to Hong Kong, arriving on April 5.

The man checked into a hospital here on April 8 and was confirmed today to have SARS.

Doctors do not yet know how infectious, if at all, people are in the early stages of SARS. Increasingly, doctors suspect that some people may be able to transmit the disease before the symptoms become evident. But Hong Kong's health secretary, Dr. Yeoh Eng-kiong, warned tonight that doctors here had become infected from people who had not yet shown the full symptoms identified by the World Health Organization.

Dr. Yeoh suggested that even someone with just diarrhea could be infectious.

The sick man's nationality was a mystery tonight. The health department's statement did not specify it, while the airline's statement described the man as "Chinese." A Lufthansa official said the company had been told by the health department only that the man was Chinese. The department spokeswoman, in turn, said that the man seemed to be of Chinese descent but that the agency had been unable to determine his nationality.

"He travels a lot," the spokeswoman said. "We don't know his passport."

Hong Kong, which is a special administrative region of China, still issues separate passports from mainland China, a legacy of its days as a British crown colony. Officials here sometimes refer to people as Chinese if they are from Taiwan, which Beijing regards as a renegade province, or if they are people of any nationality who happen to be of Chinese descent.

The infected man's travels could not come at a worse time for Hong Kong, as countries have begun limiting the entry of people traveling from here or imposing quarantines on them.

Malaysia stopped issuing visas today to practically all holders of passports from Hong Kong and mainland China. Cathay Pacific Airways, Hong Kong's main airline, said tonight that it had suspended all flights to Kuala Lumpur, the Malaysian capital, because there were few passengers.

Regina Ip, Hong Kong's security secretary, met with Malaysia's consul general here to protest the decision. "There is no reason why the mobility of Hong Kong residents who do not have any close contact with infected persons should be restricted," she said afterward.

Singapore also imposed a 10-day quarantine on all foreign workers earning less than $24,000 a year who have recently been in a SARS-affected country or territory. Employers must pay costs of the quarantine. Singapore has been trying for years to lure high-income employees in financial services and other lucrative industries, while making it harder for lower-income workers to go there and do jobs that less-educated Singaporeans might otherwise do.

Hong Kong's economy depends heavily on its role as Asia's transportation hub, the place from which businesses can control and coordinate factories and other businesses spread across the continent. Hong Kong has the world's busiest container port for sea freight, the world's busiest airport for international cargo shipments and what was, until recently, Asia's busiest airport in terms of international air passenger departures.

But the availability of flights here is withering as many governments have warned citizens not to visit and many businesses have ordered their employees not to travel here.

Cathay Pacific has canceled a quarter of its daily flights here. Dragonair, an affiliated carrier that dominates the skies between Hong Kong and cities in mainland China, has stopped operating almost half its flights. Continental Airlines canceled its daily nonstop flight from Hong Kong to New York this week for lack of passengers.

The airport authority here said that a third of all flights originally scheduled to operate today had been canceled for various reasons.

Health officials have said that the virus causing SARS can probably survive no more than several hours outside the body, so that air and sea cargo shipments from Hong Kong, as well as mail, do not pose a risk to recipients.

A Beijing Doctor Questions Data on Illness

A Beijing Doctor Questions Data on Illness
By ELISABETH ROSENTHAL
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/04/10/science/10SARS.html

BEIJING, April 9 — A senior retired military physician said that China's health ministry was lying about the number of people hospitalized in Beijing with severe acute respiratory syndrome, noting that the number in military hospitals alone could be "up to 100."

In a statement released to news organizations and in a subsequent interview, Dr. Jiang Yanyong said he "couldn't believe what I was hearing" as he watched the minister announce last Thursday that there had been only 12 cases and 3 deaths in Beijing.

He said doctors at the military hospitals were "furious" about the statement, noting that on that day the military hospital designated to treat SARS cases, the People's Liberation Army No. 309 Hospital, already had 60 patients and 7 deaths from the disease.

"As a doctor who cares about people's lives and health, I have a responsibility to aid international and local efforts to prevent the spread of the disease," Dr. Jiang wrote in his statement.

Another doctor in the Chinese health system, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said there were also dozens of patients at Youan Hospital, a nonmilitary hospital in Beijing that has been designated as a referral center for the disease, known by its initials as SARS.

While the total number of cases is still not great, the fact that so many have gone unreported in Beijing underscores China's continuing lack of openness in confronting an outbreak that has left 1,279 people ill and killed 53 in this country. Worldwide, 2,750 have been infected and 103 have died.

In China, health statistics are often regarded as state secrets, particularly if they are negative. Chinese leaders are particularly reluctant to release bad news occurring in Beijing, the capital.

In fact, Dr. Jiang said that the first case of SARS in Beijing occurred in March, during the annual meeting of Parliament, the National People's Congress. Ten doctors and nurses at the Army's No. 302 hospital were infected after contact with that patient.

Hospital leaders in Beijing were called to the ministry of health for a meeting. But instead of instructing them to pass on a public health warning, Dr. Jiang said, the ministry told the doctors that they were "forbidden to publicize" that SARS had arrived in Beijing "in order to ensure stability" as Parliament convened.

The first cases appeared in southern China last November and, by January, doctors were aware that they were dealing with a new and potentially lethal disease. But until late March, they refused to share their data or to cooperate with international investigators, insisting that their local outbreak of an "atypical pneumonia" had nothing to do with SARS.

This week, Dr. David Heyman of the World Health Organization told a United States Senate committee that the international epidemic could possibly have been controlled if the Chinese had asked for help earlier.

The World Health Organization has asked all countries for daily updates of cases and deaths from the illness. China, belatedly, agreed to provide them as of April 1.

In Beijing today, a W.H.O. team in China investigating the outbreak praised what it called "extensive" and "reliable" data that has now been provided to them from Guangdong Province, where the outbreak was first spotted.

But they said that data from elsewhere in China seemed far less complete. Noting that the team was "very concerned about rumors we are hearing," the W.H.O country representative for China, Henk Bekedam, said, "We do not really know about Beijing and other provinces, and we have asked specifically about that."

The visiting W.H.O. team met for over an hour with Vice Premier Wu Yi, who promised to look into the rumors of unreported cases in Beijing, team members said. But they said that a possible explanation for the discrepancy was that China was not reporting cases until they were finally and fully confirmed to be SARS, while some of the patients in the wards might still officially be classified as suspected cases.

Officials from the World Health Organization say they have repeatedly pressed the Chinese about their data on the number of cases in Beijing and have been repeatedly told that the data was completely reliable.

Still, in private, team scientists have expressed nagging concerns. When Chinese officials were insisting that there was no SARS in Beijing, scientists wondered how a disease that could spread from Hong Kong to Canada, and from Vietnam to Singapore, could not travel from Guangzhou to Beijing. There are more than 20 flights a day between the two cities.

Since then, Beijing has been filled with rumors about wards full of patients. The W.H.O. team said today that it hoped to be able to conduct its own investigation.

During its weeklong stay in Guangdong Province, the team said it had free access to hospitals, laboratories and patients, affording it great confidence in the data now coming daily from there.

They said that in the last two months Guangdong had developed excellent systems for counting cases and greatly enhanced precautions to prevent the spread of the disease, resulting in a sharp drop in the number of new cases.

"We have been commending the Guangdong experience as a model for China, maybe the rest of the world," Dr. Bekedam said. No doctor has been infected there since March 25 and there have been only 53 new cases this month, giving scientists great hope that the spread of the disease can be controlled.

But the W.H.O. team has not been granted such access in Beijing. "We were given an open book in Guangdong, and hope to get the same for our week here," Dr. Bekedam said.

An unresolved question is whether it is possible to acquire SARS in Beijing: the Chinese health ministry says that all cases in Beijing were acquired elsewhere. Dr. Jiang confirmed that of the patients in the military system, "most of them are people from Beijing who traveled, especially to Guangdong."

In Hong Kong, SARS continued to spread, infecting 42 more people and killing 3, including an American. Malaysia became the first country to ban tourists from Hong Kong and mainland China for health reasons.

A Hong Kong Hospital Authority spokeswoman said tonight that a 51-year-old American man had been brought across the border from Shenzhen in mainland China. He man arrived unconscious at a Hong Kong hospital and was declared dead half an hour later.

The man's 6-year-old son was also hospitalized, and was in stable condition.

The dead man's family name was Salisbury, the spokeswoman said. The Associated Press reported that his first name was James and that he had been an English instructor at a polytechnic institute on the mainland.

The two other SARS patients who died today were an 86-year-old woman and a 35-year-old man. Both had other health problems, said Dr. Liu Shao-haei, a senior executive manager at the hospital authority.

Malaysia today temporarily halted the issuance of visas to tourists from mainland China and suspended its previous policy of allowing Hong Kong residents to enter without a visa for up to 30 days. Malaysia said that people traveling on business trips, or for their governments, would still be allowed in from both places.

The Hong Kong government strongly criticized the measure as unnecessary. Thailand is already requiring arrivals from SARS-affected countries to wear face masks.

Also, South African health officials today gave details of what they called Africa's first "probable" case of the disease.

The patient, officials said, was a 62-year-old man who had recently visited Hong Kong, where the disease is most prevalent. He was admitted to Pretoria Hospital on Monday suffering from respiratory problems. Medical tests have so far come back negative for SARS, officials said. But the results were not conclusive, and officials said they were awaiting more results next week.

Dr. Willi Seiling, who is treating the patient at Pretoria East Hospital, said the man was in critical condition, but progressing well.

"I am happy to say that the patient is doing much better than he was when he was admitted," Dr. Seiling said.

Richard Friedland, a senior official at Network Healthcare Holdings, which runs the hospital, said the patient was known to have had contact with 17 people, including 8 family members. All had tested negative for SARS.

Ex-F.B.I. Agent Is Accused of Passing Secrets to Lover

Ex-F.B.I. Agent Is Accused of Passing Secrets to Lover
By ERIC LICHTBLAU with BARBARA WHITAKER
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/04/10/national/10AGEN.html

WASHINGTON, April 9 — A Chinese-American woman in Southern California who worked as an informer for the F.B.I. took numerous top-secret documents from her bureau handler, who was also her longtime lover, and she passed secrets on to Chinese government, officials said today.

The woman and the agent were arrested this morning in Los Angeles in what could prove to be another major embarrassment for the Federal Bureau of Investigation when it is battling lingering questions about its ability to handle national security investigations.

The woman, Katrina Leung, 49, who was identified by the federal authorities as a double agent, was charged with obtaining a classified national security document for purposes of aiding a foreign nation.

The agent, James Smith, who was with the F.B.I. for nearly 30 years and is now retired, was charged with gross negligence for allowing Ms. Leung to obtain the documents.

"It is a sad day for the F.B.I," Robert S. Mueller III, director of the bureau, said.

Officials said that the F.B.I. had opened an internal investigation to determine the extent of the damage and that the inspector general of the Justice Department was conducting a separate investigation.

Among the thornier questions that investigators will have to examine, officials said, is whether Mr. Smith's intimate relationship with Ms. Leung — spanning nearly two decades — compromised the F.B.I.'s highly sensitive investigations in the late 1990's into allegations that Chinese officials tried to launder campaign contributions illegally to the 1996 presidential campaign of Bill Clinton and Al Gore.

Mr. Smith was the bureau's point man in the debriefing of Johnny Chung, a major player in the campaign finance investigation, after Mr. Chung agreed to cooperate with the authorities in 1998, a senior law enforcement official who spoke on condition of anonymity said.

Many of the other Chinese-American business and political leaders who came under scrutiny in the campaign finance investigation were also based in Southern California, and their cases were handled by the F.B.I.'s Los Angeles field office, where Mr. Smith worked as a supervisory agent in Chinese counter-intelligence.

Ms. Leung was identified by the federal authorities as owning a bookstore in Monterey Park and is well known as a Republic fund-raiser who is active in community groups around Los Angeles.
Officials said that Mr. Smith and Ms. Leung began having a sexual relationship soon after the agent recruited her to act as an informer on the Chinese government in the early 1980's. The F.B.I paid her some $1.7 million over a 20-year period in expenses and service fees to act as an informer.

The agent would routinely debrief Ms. Leung at her residence in Southern California, sometimes taking classified documents there and leaving them unattended, officials said. Ms. Leung would then sometimes surreptitiously photocopy the documents on a machine at her home.

Among the documents were secret logs and phone directories, memos on continuing classified investigations and a secret file that discussed Chinese fugitives.

A clandestine search of Ms. Leung's baggage at an airport on her way to China several years ago showed that she had photographs of other F.B.I. agents that were apparently taken at a bureau event that she attended with Mr. Smith.

When she returned to the United States, her luggage was searched again, and the photos were gone, suggesting that she had given them to someone in China during her trip there, officials said.

Ms. Leung admitted that she had passed intelligence culled from Mr. Smith on to her so-called handler in the Chinese government, code named Mao, officials said.
A second F.B.I agent in the San Francisco field office also admitted that he had an affair with Ms. Leung for as long as 10 years, beginning in the late 1980's, officials said. The second agent, whom officials did not identify, became aware around 1991 that Ms. Leung was having unauthorized contacts with national security officials in Beijing.

The second agent alerted Mr. Smith, who appeared troubled by the news and assured the San Francisco agent that he would take care of the problem, a law enforcement official said. But Mr. Smith continued to take classified documents to Ms. Leung's house, officials said.

Mr. Smith and the San Francisco agent apparently did not know that they were each intimate with Ms. Leung, the official said.

The San Francisco agent has not been charged with a crime, but he has been interviewed extensively by the F.B.I. and has admitted his relationship with Ms. Leung, officials said. They noted that the investigation was continuing and more criminal charges were possible.

In late 2001, soon after Mr. Mueller took over as F.B.I. chief, he became aware "through back channels" about the allegations involving Mr. Smith, law enforcement officials said.

Mr. Mueller moved in early 2002 to initiate a full review, creating a 40-member task force to investigate the case, officials said. He was also so upset with the bureau's apparent laxity in pursuing the case, even though allegations dated back at least a decade, that he demoted a senior counterintelligence official, Sheila Horan, from her post, officials said.

Justice Department officials, conscious of the political repercussions that the case may cause for the embattled bureau, moved quickly today to defend Mr. Mueller's handling of the episode.

"Mueller acted decisively," said a senior Justice Department official who spoke on condition of anonymity. "He was on top of this from the beginning."

Members of the intelligence committees from both houses of Congress were briefed on the case hurriedly today after the arrests of Mr. Smith and Ms. Leung, and the ranking members of the House Intelligence Committee said that while they considered the arrests to be "a matter of serious concern," they were satisfied with Mr. Mueller's handling of the case.

"The director has advised us of the corrective steps he has taken within the bureau as a result of this matter," Representatives Porter J. Goss, Republican of Florida, and Jane Harman, Democrat of California, said in a written statement. "We are satisfied that he has taken the right steps so far."

Nonetheless, the episode is likely to raise serious questions about the way the F.B.I. recruits and monitors so-called human assets in its intelligence operations and what safeguards it has to prevent illicit relationships between agents and informers they monitor.

That issue has already become a sore point for the bureau because of recent evidence that James Bulger, the fugitive Boston gangster known as Whitey, while acting as an F.B.I. informer was protected for years by his handlers and friends at the F.B.I., despite allegations of murder and racketeering against him.

Day to Day, but Making a Living

Day to Day, but Making a Living
By STEVEN GREENHOUSE
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/04/11/nyregion/11LABO.html

You've seen them or men like them: Gonzalo Javier and eight others standing on the sidewalk in front of a paint store in Woodside, Queens, waiting for a contractor to drive up and offer them a day's work.

But how many paint stores and how many Gonzalo Javiers are there around New York City?

In the first attempt to survey the informal system that provides workers for painting, landscaping, construction and housekeeping jobs, a study has found that 6,000 to 8,000 day laborers regularly congregate at 57 places in the metropolitan area. The study, which surveyed 290 day laborers last summer, also found that they earn, on average, $9.37 an hour in the spring and summer and $7.61 an hour during the slower winter months.

"These folks are in demand," said Prof. Edwin Meléndez, one of the study's two authors and director of the Community Development Research Center at New School University. "There are job opportunities out there, and American natives are not fulfilling the demand for a lot of this employment."

Gonzalo Javier is, in fact, a typical day laborer. He is an illegal immigrant from Colombia. In the survey, three-quarters of the laborers acknowledged that they were illegal immigrants, and more than 90 percent came from Latin America (roughly one-third from Mexico, one-third from Central America and one-third from South America).

Mr. Javier is working to send money to his wife and two children, now 5 and 7. "I am able to send them money every week, so I have a lot to be thankful for," he said recently, his eyes growing moist at the thought of not seeing his family in four years. "Sometimes I ask myself whether the sacrifice is worth it, but the economic situation is so bad back in Colombia that I have to stay."

The survey found that day laborers say they send, on average, $3,600 back to their families each year.

Woodside, where Mr. Javier waits for work, is one of the larger day laborer sites, the survey discovered. It stretches for a dozen blocks along Roosevelt Avenue, where as many as 300 immigrants gather for jobs that pay $8 to $12 an hour.

Other sites are smaller, like the corner of Hooper and Lee Streets in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, where about 20 women — Hispanics, Haitians and Eastern Europeans — go each morning hoping to land housekeeping jobs that pay $6 to $7 an hour.

Professor Meléndez, who teaches urban policy, detailed some of the difficulties day laborers face. "They take risks when they go to work with people they haven't met before," he said. "Sometimes they're abused in terms of not getting paid or getting pushed around by contractors."

But in some of its most surprising findings, the survey found that many day laborers earned considerably more than the minimum wage of $5.15 an hour, and that many said they liked the life they had chosen.

Jose Carmona, a Peruvian who has been a day laborer for nine years, echoed the summer survey's findings last week as he waited on Roosevelt Avenue. "In my opinion," he said, "you can make more money here than if you work in a factory or a supermarket. If I work in those places, I wouldn't earn enough to send money to Peru."

Some days Mr. Carmona earns $80 as a painter's helper, other days $120 as a master painter. If a contractor or homeowner picks him to work only three days in a week, he will probably earn more than $300 with no taxes withheld, far more than the $206, before taxes, that many immigrants earn in full-time minimum-wage jobs.

The survey found that monthly mean earnings for day laborers were $855 last May, with some workers saying they earn more than $1,500 in a good month. Fourteen percent of the laborers said they earned $7 or less an hour, 63 percent said they earned $7 to $10 an hour, and 23 percent made more than $10 an hour.

Mr. Carmona lives with his wife and three children just a few blocks from his day laborer site, and he sends $150 a month to his mother in Peru. "I don't feel exploited," he said. "It's a happy life. I get to see my kids a lot."

Manuel A., 57, an illegal immigrant from Mexico who declined to give his last name, said the life of a day laborer was not always so sweet. "A lot of the times the people don't pay you," he said, standing with 40 other immigrants on a recent frigid morning at the corner of Gramatan and Sidney Avenues in Mount Vernon, in Westchester County. "At the end of the day, they'll say, `We don't have any money,' or `We'll come back and pay you another day.' And when they come back another day to pick up workers, they hide from you."

Fifty percent of the day laborers surveyed said they had not been paid one or more times, and 60 percent said that at times they had been paid less than the agreed-upon wages.

To identify the places where day laborers wait for work, the study's authors asked for information from community groups, immigrant advocacy groups, churches and experts on immigration. In addition, when they found day laborers, they asked what other sites they used. The authors acknowledge that they may not have discovered every site in the metropolitan area and that new sites are always popping up.

To conduct the survey, 11 bilingual graduate students from the New School randomly chose 290 day laborers from 29 of the 57 sites for one-hour interviews, and the day laborers were paid $20 each for their time. A Ford Foundation grant helped finance the study.

While the survey found many places around the city and suburbs where day laborers congregate, even in affluent suburbs like Roslyn Heights on Long Island and Mamaroneck, in Westchester, this does not mean that the laborers are always welcomed. In 2000, two Mexican immigrants in Farmingville, on Long Island, were promised work but were instead taken to a basement and beaten. Other towns have been more welcoming. Glen Cove and Freeport, both in Nassau County, and Mount Kisco in Westchester provide indoor centers where the laborers can wait for contractors while sheltered from the elements.

"Communities generally feel ambivalence," said Nadia Marin-Molina, executive director of the Workplace Project, an immigrant advocacy group in Hempstead, on Long Island. "There are people who accept day laborers as part of the work force, and there are people who feel hostile about seeing immigrants in their communities."

The vast majority of day laborers are men. Only 5 percent of those surveyed were women, but that figure was still higher than the number surveyed by a similar survey, taken in 1999 in Los Angeles, which included no female day laborers. The Los Angeles study was conducted by Abel Valenzuela Jr., director of the Center for the Study of Urban Poverty at U.C.L.A., who was co-author of the New York study.

Most day laborers have not made it a career — 45 percent of those surveyed in New York said they had been day laborers for less than a year, and only 16 percent said they had been at it four years or longer.

They may not have many job options. One-third of the day laborers said they did not seek permanent jobs because they lacked legal papers, and one-third said that the reason was inadequate English.

But they do fill a need. One contractor in New Rochelle, N.Y., who uses day laborers, and who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said: "These guys are great. They work hard. A lot of white boys don't want to work hard. They drink, they smoke pot, they give you a hard time."

Arabs Shocked, Relieved at Baghdad's Fall

Arabs Shocked, Relieved at Baghdad's Fall
By NEIL MacFARQUHAR
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/04/09/international/worldspecial/09CND-ARAB.html

DAMASCUS, Syria, April 9 - It was a day of raw emotion across the Arab world, a historic day with elation, sadness, disbelief, anger and shock all blending as the government of Saddam Hussein seemed to come crashing down with barely a whimper. The moment was marked not as in previous decades by a coup and glorious anthems booming out of the radio, but by American troops, foreigners, pulling down a statue in a main Baghdad traffic circle.

Many felt that the first overthrow of a major Middle Eastern government in at least a generation would rank among other momentous changes in the region's history like the Arab's sudden, bitter defeat in the 1967 war with Israel, or perhaps the assassination of President Anwar el-Sadat of Egypt. This time, however, the memories would be etched more vividly because millions of Arabs watched events broadcast live from the legendary city of Baghdad.

Some, especially Iraqis in exile, were overjoyed that they might return home to a country freed from a brutal dictator. But there was also almost universal sadness and unease that it came at the hand of American troops. Audiences recoiled in horror when for a few brief moments one of the soldiers dismantling the statue of Mr. Hussein covered its face with a small American flag.

There was also utter disbelief at the absence of any Iraqi resistance in Baghdad, when just weeks ago the tiny port Um Qasr down south held out for days against a coalition onslaught.

``It is an earthquake, not just for Iraq, but for the whole region,'' said Qasem Jaafar, a political commentator on Al-Jazeera network, which interrupted its regular news programs to broadcast continuous live images of American soldiers rolling unimpeded through central Baghdad. ``We don't want to believe what happened, we don't want to believe what we saw. American tanks are creating changes in the Arab world.''

The American role undoubtedly inspired the most ambivalence, the fact that an uncertain future would be determined mostly by the same Americans held responsible for afflicting the Palestinians with a seemingly endless Israeli occupation.

``We are all betwixt and between, suspended between the hope for freedom and the danger of occupation,'' said Sayyid Abu Murtadah Al-Yasiri, 45, an Iraqi cleric who fled the southern city of Najaf 23 years ago after Mr. Hussein's goons murdered the grand ayatollah who was his religious mentor. ``We are happy to be rid of injustice, but we fear the Americans' intentions.''

Mr. Yasiri then began musing aloud about how he might travel home given that he no longer owned passport. Around him, in the Damascus suburb that has grown up around the shrine to the prophet Muhammad's granddaughter Zeinab, many Iraqi exiles were shouting excitedly about the same thing.

They swamped a reporter inquiring about their mood, quieting suddenly when a small, elderly woman shrouded in traditional black pushed her way through the crowd, shaking her finger in the air to emphasize her point. ``It's not over yet,'' she cried. ``We still don't know.''

The crowd guffawed at her concern, just as they jeered ``Saddam is gone'' at those who hesitated to attach their full names to their statements of happiness at his apparent demise. But one young man wearing a flowered Hawaiian shirt confessed that the fear would take years to recede. ``Even if we see him in his tomb, we will still be afraid.''

After all the bluster and bravado from Mr. Hussein and his officials about how they would make Iraq a graveyard for the Americans, there was much disbelief that Baghdad folded so easily. Arabs fantasized that the Iraqis would hold out just long enough to burnish some of the Arab honor tarnished by repeat ignominious defeats at the hands of Israel and others.

At the Abu Sayef Roasted Chicken Restaurant in Ruwaishad, Jordan, a no-stoplight town 50 miles from the Iraqi border, drivers and waiters sat around on plastic chairs spellbound by images from Baghdad.

For Mohamad Ma'abreh, 28, the worst part of watching was the embarrassment of an Arab nation apparently suffering yet another defeat.

``As an Arab, I find this tragic,'' he explained. ``I wish that all the Arab nations had stood by Iraq. ``Children, women, old men - so many of them were killed.''

Indeed, the images of dead or maimed Iraqis that dominated the coverage of the the past three weeks tempered much joy. ``I feel a little bit happy, but still you see all the civilians who have died and that is still in our hearts,'' said Yassin Mohammad Al-Alwi, a businessman in Rafha, a small Saudi Arabian town near Iraq.

Some felt pangs that Baghdad, the historic capital of the caliphs of Islam when it dominated the world before the 13th Century, had again fallen to foreign troops.

``When we talk about Arab civilization, we talk about Baghad because it was there that the Arab enlightenment started,'' said Adnan Abu-Odeh, a former adviser to the late King Hussein of Jordan. ``It makes us sad to see Baghdad under occupation because it reminds of us the time that the Mongols burned all the manuscripts and threw them into the Tigris and they destroyed the irrigation network.''

This being the Arab world, there were immediate and widespread suspicions of a conspiracy. The idea that the United States kept Mr. Hussein in power to cow the region and to sell a lot of weapons has long held some currency, especially since men like Donald H. Rumsfeld, the American secretary of defense, are on the record lauding him in the early 1980's.

Why were the streets of Baghdad so empty, many Arabs asked, if they were so happy to be liberated why weren't they like Berliners who turned out by the hundreds of thousands to bring down the wall? Some suggested the crowd tearing down the statue of Saddam were just American agents brought in for the day.

The sight of American soldiers roaming freely with nary an Iraqi soldier in sight fed the widespread belief that it was all a charade, a nefarious deal worked out long ago that Mr. Hussein could depart for some comfortable exile. Airwaves filled with reports that he had sought refuge in the Russian embassy, reports denied in Moscow.

There was little official reaction from Arab states, although a few senior officials weighed in with statements of concern that American and other alllied troops in Iraq were not doing enough to prevent the looting that plagued Basra and began to erupt in Baghdad.

Given that Mr. Rumsfeld again criticized the Syrian government under President Bashar Assad for aiding Iraq, there was much speculation that other Arab regimes were likely unnerved by the sudden disappearance of one of their own.

``Some of them are probably shaking,'' said Sawsan Shair, a columnist for Al-Ayam newspaper in the Gulf kingdom of Bahrain. ``Somebody like Bashar is probably locking his door right now.''

It is impossible to gauge the public mood in a place like Syria, where undoubtedly the ideal runs strong that a unified Arab world should prevail and that Israel lurks behind all the region's ills, including the attack on Iraq. But there were also at least hints that what was happening next door was not entirely unwelcome.

``Just concentrate on the statue,'' said one Syrian man, grinning. ``We have a lot of statues here.''

Emotional Torrent Greets G.I. Arrival in Central Baghdad

Emotional Torrent Greets G.I. Arrival in Central Baghdad
By JOHN F. BURNS
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/04/09/international/worldspecial/09CND-STREET.html

BAGHDAD, Iraq, April 9 — Saddam Hussein's rule collapsed in a matter of hours today across much of this capital city, as ordinary Iraqis took to the streets in the thousands to topple Mr. Hussein's statues, loot government ministries, interrogation centers and other buildings notorious for torture and killing, and to give a cheering, jubilant and often tearful welcome to advancing American troops.

After three weeks of battling their way north from Kuwait against tough resistance from Mr. Hussein's diehard loyalists, Army and Marine Corps units moving into the districts of eastern Baghdad where many of the city's five million people live finally got the kind of adulation from ordinary Iraqis that American advocates of a war to topple Mr. Hussein had predicted.

Amid the celebration, many of Mr. Hussein's troops and officials simply abandoned their posts and ran away.

Much of Baghdad became, in a moment, a showcase of unbridled enthusiasm for America, as much as it metamorphosed into a crucible of unbridled hatred and contempt for Mr. Hussein.

When the city awoke to find that the American capture of the government quarter in west Baghdad on Monday had been followed overnight by a deep American thrust into the city's eastern half, the fear ingrained in most Iraqis by nearly 24 years under Mr. Hussein's brutally repressive government evaporated, to be replaced by a bursting, irrepressible urge for freedom, and, among the looters, a carefree, joyous defiance of law that lapped over, at many major government buildings, to setting places afire.

American troops, but almost as much any Westerner caught up in the tide of people rushing into the streets, were met with scenes that summoned comparisons with Europe's liberation from the Nazis.

Iraqis on foot, on motorscooters, in cars and minivans and trucks, alone and in groups, children and adults and elderly, headed for any point on the map where American troops had taken up positions — at expressway junctions, outside the United Nations headquarters, at two hotels on the Tigris River where western newsmen had been sequestered by Mr. Hussein's government — and erupted with enthusiasm and gratitude.

Shouts to the American soldiers of "Thank you, mister, thank you," in English, of "Welcome, my friend, welcome," of "Good, good, good," and "Yes, yes, mister" mingled with cries of "Good, George Bush!" and "Down Saddam!"

A middle-aged man pushed through a crowd trying to topple a Saddam Hussein statue outside the Oil Ministry with a bouquet of paper flowers, and passed among American troops, distributing them one at a time, each with a kiss on the cheek.

A woman with two small children perched in the open roof of a car maneuvering to get close to a Marine Corps unit assisting in toppling a Saddam Hussein statue outside the Palestine and Sheraton Hotels, the quarters for foreign journalists, wept as she shouted, "Thank you, mister, thank you very much".

The American breakthrough came with stunning speed, only six days after United States troops gained their first foothold in Baghdad with the seizure of the city's international airport, and after many military experts had predicted it could take weeks, even months, to effectively besiege Mr. Hussein's forces and overcome them.

But American commanders in the city barely paused to soak up the celebrations before warning tonight that much hard work remained to be done in extending the pockets of American control in east and west Baghdad into areas that remained no-man's lands, or worse, pockets of active resistance by forces loyal to Mr. Hussein.

The American advances that began Tuesday night from the southeastern edges of a city plunged into pitch darkness by the failure of the city's electricity grid resulted by nightfall today in extending American control over a wide southeastern quadrant of the city, up to the Tigris's eastern bank.

To this could be added the American occupation of the government quarter on the river's west bank, an area of several square miles that includes many of the principal seats of Mr. Hussein's power, including his main palaces and many government ministries, after a fierce daylong battle on Monday.

How far American troops enlarged that western foothold in a day of light skirmishing today was not clear. But reporters who crossed one of the deserted midtown bridges across the Tigris into the western area of the city discovered quickly that Mr. Hussein's hold had not been wholly broken.

Crossing the 14th of July Bridge into the district of Atafiya, about five miles upriver from the Republican Palace compound that American troops seized on Friday, the reporters found themselves at least a mile north of the most advanced American positions on the west side of the river, in a neighborhood filled with angry, nervous-looking Fedayeen Saddam — the Martyrs for Saddam who have been among the most relentless enemies of the Americans in their 300-mile drive from Kuwait.

One reporter, lulled into a false sense of security by a day of Iraqis vilifying Mr. Hussein, approached a group of youths at an intersection to ask how they felt about the American military advances.

"Bush good?" the reporter asked, using the English phrase that had become the mantra of the city's eastern districts to overcome the temporary absence of an interpreter. The youths, quickly joined by older, more threatening-looking men with Kalashnikov rifles and shoulder-holstered rockets, responded with a hostility that could have been found almost anywhere in the city until the popular eruptions at dawn today.

"Bush down shoes!" the youths answered, one of them spitting on the ground, meaning that President Bush was good only for being trampled on. "America down shoes!"

But on the eastern side of the river, even in no-man's areas where the American troops had not yet reached, virtually every Iraqi whom reporters encountered among crowds that totaled in the tens of thousands, was suddenly a torch of burning enmity for Mr. Hussein.

One group of young men who marched out of Saddam City, an impoverished district home to perhaps two million Shiite Muslims, who have been perhaps the most repressed of all Mr. Hussein's victims, were asked as they dashed from one American armored vehicle to another with their handshakes and the cries of welcome why a visitor to Saddam City only a few days ago had heard only the quietest whispers of dissent, amid a torrent of adoration for Mr. Hussein.

"Because we were frightened," one young man said. "We were frightened of being killed."

A burly 39-year-old man named Qifa, assigned by Mr. Hussein's Information Ministry to keep watch on an American reporter, paused at midmorning, outside the inferno that had become the headquarters of Iraq's National Olympic Committee, to ask the reporter to take a grip of his hand.

The Olympic Committee building, on an expressway on Baghdad's eastern outskirts, has been one of the most widely feared places in Iraq, used by Mr. Hussein's older son, Uday, to torture and kill opponents of the regime and even sportsmen who failed to meet the younger Mr. Hussein's standards. Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of Iraqis are said to have died in the building's basements.

"Touch me, touch me, tell me that this is real, tell me that the nightmare is really over," the man said, tears running down his face.

A few moments earlier, another man, a 27-year-old student named Ra'ad, approached to voice the deep suspicions that have been sown among Iraqis by experience with previous uprisings against Mr. Hussein, which have surged for a day, sometimes for a week, only to be savagely repressed.

The most searing of these memories dates to 1991, when former President George Bush, after encouraging uprisings by the Shiite Muslims of southern Iraq and the Kurds of the north in the wake of the Persian Gulf war that drove Iraqi troops from Kuwait, allowed Mr. Hussein to strike back at the rebels without intervening militarily to halt the bloodshed.

"The question is, what happens tomorrow?" Ra'ad, a clothing salesman, said in faltering English. "To this moment, I cannot believe we got rid of Saddam Hussein. Where is he? Is he died? We don't know it. Is he going to come back and kill us all Iraqis, to use chemical weapons? We do not know it."

Anybody who paused to talk with cooler-headed people in the crowds quickly picked up reservations about how long the American troops would stay, how quickly and how meaningfully Iraqis would be allowed to begin governing themselves again, even about the risk that the Bush administration might take the American military triumph here as a signal to try to reconfigure power throughout the Middle East in ways that would benefit Israel.

One man, an Oil Ministry official, said flatly that any government, "Saddam Hussein or no," would be better than any imposed by the United States.

But of the main, overpowering message that Iraqis wanted transmitted to the world, there could not be any reasonable doubt: They had secretly yearned for years to be rid of Saddam Hussein, and today, some 8,700 days after Mr. Hussein seized power in 1979 in a palace coup within the ruling Baathist Party, they had got their wish — or at least enough of it that most seemed to believe that, this time, the 65-year-old Mr. Hussein and his two sons, Uday and Qusay, hated even more — if that's possible — for their violence than their father, were finally passing from the scene.

Iraqis' celebrations help justify the war

Point of View: Iraqis' celebrations help justify the war
By John Vinocur International Herald Tribune
Thursday, April 10, 2003
http://www.iht.com/articles/92749.html

PARIS American force brought Saddam's statue down, but it was the Arab street, cheering and throwing shoes at the carcass, that turned the dictator's symbolic fall into seeming legitimization of George Bush and Tony Blair's strike on Iraq.
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The extraordinary television pictures from Al Fardus square in central Baghdad went around the world live: young Arab men passing a sledgehammer from hand to hand at the massive marble base; then hanging a rope noose around Saddam-the-statue's neck.

An American flag covered Saddam's head, hoisted by a clambering U.S. Marine. An Arab brought an Iraqi flag to replace it. Then a cable was attached from a tank recovery vehicle to the statue, and it was hauled down in two tries. The crowd of young men pelted the collapsed hulk and danced alongside it until dust rose over their heads.
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Whatever the impact of the scenes of Iraqis raging at their vanished dictator, the war was not over, and many caveats remained. In Washington, an administration official who said the statue's fall created the images the coalition had been waiting for also talked of hard battles to come in northern Iraq and continuing fighting in the south.
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But doubt was disappearing, an irrefutable justification coming to hand. A war continuously challenged as illegitimate and unnecessary in the international community and the United States had undergone a profound change of course.
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"This is a moment of enormous, enormous symbolism, breathtaking," said Regeh Omaar, a BBC television correspondent, broadcasting from near the statue's base as it tumbled. After more than six years of reporting on Iraq, he said the event crystallized "all the years of hatred and rage" against Saddam Hussein.
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From the coalition's point of view, the moment justified its assertion that the war's character was about freedom and the force necessary to obtain it from a dictator accused of assembling an arsenal of weapons of mass destructions.
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The existence of those weapons has not been demonstrated, but the reaction of the Baghdad segment of the Arab street, the so-called essence of political sentiment in the Middle East, was on display for all of the Arab world and the rest of the globe.
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This almost instant de facto legitimization appeared enormously powerful. BBC reporters described both "a straitjacket coming off and the taste of freedom" seizing people in many parts of Baghdad, and then "fancy-footwork" to get on the right side of events in television broadcasts from other Arab capitals.
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At least superficially, it changed the tone of one of the elements of the rejectionist front of Russia, France and Germany that had tried to block the war. Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder of Germany spoke of "joyous signs" that the war could end soon.
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Schroeder, President Jacques Chirac of France and President Vladimir Putin of Russia are to meet Friday and Saturday in St. Petersburg, presumably with the intention of setting a unified position on how postwar Iraq should be administrated under United Nations leadership.
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The Americans have said they want the United Nations to play a "vital" role, but one that has been privately described in Washington as "neither dominant nor decisive." The desired measure of UN involvement is meant to be enough to help Blair in British domestic political terms and sufficient to bring many countries to participate in the reconstruction effort.
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All three of the participants at the St. Petersburg meeting have described the war as "illegitimate," with the suggestion that the allies should not control postwar events in Iraq beyond an initial "security" phase.
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The group's determination to confront the United States and Britain on Iraq's reconstruction appeared built on the assumption that the war would not achieve stunning validation. But the celebrations in the streets of Baghdad on Wednesday show that that leverage has now disappeared.

Muslims remaking old France

Muslims remaking old France
by Elaine Sciolino The New York Times
Thursday, April 10, 2003
http://www.iht.com/articles/92727.html

MARSEILLE To enter the rue du Bon Pasteur in the heart of this Mediterranean port is to leave France. Or rather. it is to leave a France still fixed in the imagination of many, a land where French is spoken and the traditions of a secular society are enforced.
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The rue du Bon Pasteur - the street of the Good Shepherd - is a haven that is owned, operated and populated by Arab Muslims. Arabic is spoken here. All the women cover their hair with scarves. Men in robes and sandals sit together in cafés where they reach out to Arabia via satellite television.

The Attaqwa mosque calls so many worshipers to Friday prayer that dozens of them are forced to lay out their prayer rugs on the street.
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The street reflects the political and social reality facing France. Demography has transformed the country, whose population is about 7 percent Arab and Muslim, the highest percentage in Western Europe. The figures are more striking in Marseille, where about 10 percent is Arab and about 17 percent Muslim.
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"We are no longer a France of baguettes and berets, but a France of 'Allah-hu Akbar' and mosques," said Mustapha Zergour, director of Radio Gazelle, a radio station geared to the Arab community.
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Complicating its troublesome place in society is that much of the Arab-Muslim community in France feels not only alienated from mainstream France but also split within itself - by ethnicity, history, religiosity, politics and class.
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have lived here since the colonization of Algeria in the 1830s, and many have been integrated into middle-class life for decades. But today, with the Arab population surging in recent decades, France faces twin identity crises - that of the nation itself and of its Muslims.
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These show themselves in many of the same symptoms that can be found among challenged minorities anywhere - in lawlessness and joblessness, in broken families and in the abuse of women impossibly trying to appease the demands of competing cultures.
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"I don't feel French, I have never felt French," said Jamila Laaliou, a 24-year-old woman who works at the Marche du Soleil, a covered food market by the mosque. "Here I feel safe, because everyone is Arab. But the France outside is a France of racism, and the racism has gotten worse since Sept. 11."
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Born in France of Moroccan parents, she said she obeyed the French law that required her to go bareheaded when she attended state-run schools. But the dress she now chooses shows the line she walks as a Muslim woman living in a Muslim community in a Western country. She wears what she calls a "half-veil," a black scarf tied behind her neck that is less than the full head covering that might provoke French sensibilities yet symbolizes her commitment to Islam and shields her from the advances of men.
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"If you dress with a veil, no one here bothers you," she said. "But the French, when they see a woman who wears the veil, they think 'terrorist.'"
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To help integrate Arabs and Muslims into French society, the government has embarked on an ambitious project to create an official Islam for France. France's Muslim population is in the process of electing representatives to a national Muslim council that will address issues such as education, dress and work. Similar councils have long existed for Catholics, Protestants and Jews.
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But the Arab-Muslim leadership in Marseille is so divided that a grand mosque like the ones in Paris and Lyon cannot be built because there is no agreement on what its purpose would be or who would head it.
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One of the city's main advocates for the grand mosque is Soheib Bencheikh, an Algerian cleric who is clean-shaven and wears a suit and tie. He wants a big, beautiful mosque that will teach what he calls "true Islam," not distorted "radicalism." Alongside will be a cultural center that he says will show "the beautiful face of Islam" with poetry readings, concerts and dance performances.
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In recent years, however, Marseille has witnessed a surge in fundamentalist clerics who preach a strict interpretation of the Koran that opposes activities like music and dancing. One increasingly popular movement is led by Mourad Zerfaoui, a bearded Algerian biologist who wears clerical garb when he preaches and lay clothes when he teaches.
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At the Islah mosque on a recent Friday, Zerfaoui alternated between Arabic and French to appeal to an increasingly young congregation that does not understand Arabic.
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In crime-ridden high-rise buildings in isolated areas, Zerfaoui's followers try to lure teenage boys toward the cause of conservative Islam.
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But the police say they are also seeing a new trend: crimes committed in the name of Islam. "It used to be the case that when one became a religious Muslim, one obeyed the law," said one investigator. "That's no longer the case."
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More often than not, however, it is poverty, not ideology, that breeds crime. The Bellevue Pyat high-rise slum in central Marseille, for example, which is inhabited almost exclusively by Muslims, is littered with garbage and concrete debris and infested with rats, roaches and scorpions. It is so dangerous, the police investigator said, that many officers refuse to enter the complex.
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In March, at the Edgard Quinet School, whose student body is 95 percent Muslim, three North African teenage boys tied the hands and feet of a 14-year-old girl from Algeria. They put her into a garbage pail and threw lit cigarette butts into it before they closed the lid.
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After Jean Pellegrini, the school's principal, filed a complaint with the police, the mother and brother of one of the boys demanded that he withdraw it.
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"The brother told me his mother was suffering and we had shamed the family," Pellegrini said. "I said, 'I understand the shame, but a young girl has been attacked.' When he tried to hit me and threatened to kill me, I called the police."

The great makeover

The great makeover
Thursday, April 10, 2003
Associated Press
http://totallyhk.scmp.com/thkarts/ZZZXA4RV6ED.html

MAYBE PEOPLE SHOULD have seen it coming. After all, they were already coping with the pigeon-breeding restrictions to cut down on their messy trails, the crackdown on hanging wet laundry from apartment windows and the tripling of fines for the venerable tradition of spitting on the street.

This, though, reached another level entirely: dozens of unsmiling paramilitary People's Armed Police, down on their knees in full dress uniform, resolutely deploying putty knives to scrape chewing gum off the pavement of Beijing's Tiananmen Square. To those who watched the spent Juicy Fruit being cleared from the epicentre of Chinese nationhood, it was clear something major was afoot - an official push to change habits formed in the alleys of old Beijing decades, even centuries before the Communist Party became the law of the land.

Turning vanity into policy, China's younger, more image-conscious leadership is determined to drag Beijing's 13 million people through finishing school before 2008, when the Olympic Games arrive and the world comes calling. It may have taken the atypical pneumonia outbreak for Hong Kong to get serious about cleaning up its act, but in the capital, it is more about creating a new image before the eyes of the world. Printed in state-controlled newspapers, grumbled about in street conversations and trumpeted on the sides of buses, word is rapidly spreading: act like representatives of a 21st-century China or face the consequences.

"Our living standards are rising. Shouldn't our civility rise, too?" says Liu Jinyuan, who drives a maroon taxi that charges about 1.60 yuan (HK$1.50) per kilometre - an upper-tier cab. Cheaper, more dilapidated taxis are being elbowed out by the government, a big change in a city where many earn less than a few hundred yuan a month.

Campaigns to control urbanites' peccadilloes are nothing new. Singapore has done it for years, targeting everything from gum use to toilet flushing. In New York, former Mayor Rudolph Giuliani bore down on graffiti, squeegee men and pavement hotdog stands. But rarely has it been tackled so comprehensively, in a city changing faster than anyone imagined. Beijing is an earthy town, brimming with peculiar customs passed down among its laobaixing, or "hundred old names", the city's rank and file. The city's quirks lend it character - and also, officials worry, backwardness.

During Beijing's sweaty summers, men have for generations rolled up their shirts to cool ample bellies. Now, such a practice has been targeted by at least one newspaper with a shame campaign. Public toilet odours are the stuff of jokes. In winter, pedestrians often slip and fall on dollar-sized puddles of iced saliva.

Old-world charm? Not to China's new party leadership, which wants to appear as if it's maintaining a level of progress that befits a nation on the rise. "Any city in the world has these kinds of weird customs - some of them need to be changed; some of them need to be dropped," says Yue Shengyang, a Peking University professor who studies how the capital is changing.

Laundry in the street and lumps of chewing gum on the pavement form no part of Beijing's new cleaner image. Photos: AP

Beijing is the front door of China for many foreigners whose investments are coveted to keep China's economy expanding. And it wouldn't do for potential investors to wander a landscape of hawking citizens, gum-encrusted plazas and laundry-festooned apartment blocks.

"Beijing is all so modern now, and attitudes must be modern," says Yu Changjiang, the director of Beijing's Tourism Administration. "People need to go back to their countries and say, 'Beijing is beautiful and Beijing and its people are clean'. And then more people will come."

Jia Qinglin, a new member of the Communist Party's Politburo Standing Committee, said recently that Beijing must "establish a new image of civility". He identified five problem areas: language, behaviour, service, etiquette and the environment. "For Beijing," Jia said, "nothing concerning the construction of spiritual civilisation is trivial. The purpose is to guide the public so that they can completely do away with the bad manners that tarnish the capital's image and rid themselves of undesirable personal habits."

That was the point of the one million yuan chewing-gum initiative in October, when nearly 1,000 people worked for several days to remove 600,000 wads of chewing gum from Tiananmen. Now, gum spitters face a fine of up to 50 yuan and people who buy it near the square are being issued little government-distributed pouches for use after chewing. Shop clerks tell customers: "Please spit the gum into the bag." That's hardly all. On October 1, national day, a broad sanitary regulation took effect. Want a skewer of roasted pig's liver, stinky tofu or squid? They're about 13 cents more expensive these days because they must be inspected by city health officials, who affix a tiny permit to the end of each stick.

Furthermore, beware if your English is less than perfect. You might run foul of city tourism authorities, who are targeting "Chinglish" - signs like the one near the Temple of Heaven touting tender cuts of "boast beef", or the inexplicable "flexible blast liner" available at a local dai pai dong.

Raising ducks, geese, rabbits or livestock in urban areas? It's illegal now. Throwing dirty water or fruit peel in the street? No more. Spitting? That'll cost you 50 yuan, up from five jiao in the 1980s, although it's rarely enforced and mucous still blankets the streets. Practicing law? Now, all lawyers must wear a robe and neckerchief to court.

Every new restaurant must have a toilet. Breakfast carts, a source of both delectable street fare and upset stomachs, are now overseen by health authorities. Barbers and slaughterhouses are being inspected for cleanliness. Another tradition - posting and painting slogans on streets and buildings, for everything from noodle-making lessons to car repair ads - is now punishable by fines, and telephone numbers or e-mail addresses on the ads can be cut off.

While there's been grousing about having so many new rules, those who enforce them say it all makes sense when you're building a new Beijing brimming with glass-and-steel skyscrapers and preparing for the Olympics, a symbol of national pride as well as healthy living. A cleaner, more civilised capital, they predict, is within spitting distance.

"We're China's flagship city; people not only look at us but look to us," says Jin Dapeng, director of the city's Hygiene Department. "If you're cleaner and healthier, you love life more. And you're going to be more diligent in modernising China." Hong Kong, perhaps, might take note.

demure bride or woman warrior?

Office politics
Peoples Republic of Desire
Wednesday, April 9, 2003
By Annie Wang, SCMP
http://totallyhk.scmp.com/thkarts/anniewang/ZZZAY2RV6ED.html

THE DEPRESSED ECONOMY is making everyone at Lulu's workplace nervous. A new policy has been introduced, requiring workers to evaluate each other's performance regularly. Suddenly, the atmosphere in the office has changed from friendly to antagonistic.

Everyone pays attention to what time others start work and leave the office and with whom they talk or don't talk.

Office politics don't bother Lulu. She tries to stay above it. She is a high-calibre editor, a quick writer and a first-class interviewer. After the magazine's editor is forced to retire at 49, the rumour mill purports she might be promoted as the new editor. She also feels confident that she is the best choice. But to her disappointment, it turns out that Jenny, who is junior to Lulu, finally gets named as editor-in-chief.

Everyone in the office speaks privately in support of Lulu, saying the owner's decision is unfair. The truth is nobody likes Jenny.

She is relatively new, but arrogant. She only talks to those who she thinks are useful, and is cold to her subordinates.

One of the colleagues, Little Ma, tells Lulu, ''Do you know how Jenny got the job? I've heard she is the owner's mistress.''

''I can't believe it. I'll go and ask her!'' Lulu says in anger.

''Are you out of your mind? She is your boss now. She can hire you or fire you. You just can't march into her office and ask her this type of question. If you dislike her, bide your time, a little sabotage here and there, and give her a hard time, but not so she notices,'' Little Ma says.

''I can't do things like that. I have to find out why and hear it from her own mouth,'' Lulu says, and rushes off to Jenny's big corner office with glass windows facing Beijing's Avenue of Eternal Peace.

Jenny looks at Lulu: ''You come in without even knocking! What's so urgent?''

Lulu asks directly, ''Is it true that you and the owner are lovers?''

Jenny doesn't show any surprise or irritation with such a provocative question. She answers calmly: ''We're good friends. I know what you are thinking. You can say I got the editor position because of my connection, but it doesn't matter. Nowadays, corporate culture demands emphasis on end results. How you get these results is not the priority.''

''But you're married. Does your husband know?'' Lulu asks Jenny, who replies: ''He's broad-minded and understanding.''

Jenny's audacity makes Lulu think of the Chinese saying sizhu bupa reshui tang, or dead pigs aren't afraid of boiling water.

''Why did you tell me this? I'd rather you cover it up. It seems to me that you don't really care if your co-workers know about this scandal,'' Lulu says.

Jenny smiles again. ''I can't really seal their lips, can I? Gossip is their right. After all, maybe it's not too bad for them to know, so they won't mess with me. If they don't like me or care for my work style, they can take a hike. One thing China doesn't lack is people.''

Lulu listens with growing disbelief and anger. ''Jenny, I guess with the owner's support, you have a free hand. In that case, I quit.''

''No. I didn't mean you,'' Jenny immediately replies. ''You can't quit. I really like you. I plan to give you a 40 per cent raise. Lulu, don't go sour on me. I'm your friend. Unlike others, you're a real treasure. I'll do whatever I can to keep you.'' Jenny softens her tone. Bossy and sympathetic at the same time, she certainly knows the rule of carrots and sticks.

Before Lulu can respond, Jenny adds: ''Lulu, don't rush your decision. Take a few days to think clearly and then come back to me in three days with your decision. I really think you'll like working with me!'' Jenny smiles like a boss. Lulu sees that smile, and immediately thinks of a crocodile.

Lulu nods, ready to leave.

''Wait.'' Jenny stops Lulu. ''Now as a true friend, I want to give you some womanly advice.''

''What?'' Lulu almost feels like crying. This is so humiliating.

''You're smart and beautiful. You could easily win the world if you wanted to.''

''Win the world? How?''

''Make use of what you have to get what you don't. Remember, you won't always be this young.'' Jenny sounds like a mother.

''I guess I can never be as talented as you are,'' Lulu says, and leaves Jenny's office, muttering ''you bitch'' under her breath. She is not in Jenny's league when it comes to office politics. Should she accept Jenny's condescending offer of the 40 per cent raise or should she just quit? If she quits, who is going to support her and her poor family? She doesn't have a husband to help her.

She looks up at the sky, ''Old heavenly grandfather, tell me, should I quit and make husband-searching my full-time job or should I get the book How To Succeed In The Dirty Games Of Office Politics?

To be a demure bride or a woman warrior?

worst cases fail to materialize

War Largely Going as Planned, Pentagon Says
By BRIAN KNOWLTON,
International Herald Tribune
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/04/09/international/worldspecial/09CND-STRA.html

WASHINGTON, April 9 — War plans are often said to go out the window when the first shot is fired. But not, it seems, this time.

An astonishingly potent and efficient force has rolled rapidly from the Kuwait border to the very heart of Baghdad — all largely according to plan, Pentagon officials say, in vindicated tones.

And while there have been many big surprises so far, most deal with worst-case predictions, some by the plan's detractors, that have failed to materialize.

Oil wells were not set ablaze in large numbers, dams were not dynamited, bridges generally not sabotaged.

Chemical weapons have not, so far, been used against coalition troops.

Terrorists have not struck, except for isolated suicide attacks in Iraq.

Urban street fighting has been bloody but seems likely to end far sooner than most had dared hope.

Coalition casualties have been almost unprecedently low.

The inability to open a northern front through Turkey did not cripple, or even visibly slow, the United States-led assault.

Turkish troops have not poured into northern Iraq to clash with Kurds.

Unrest in the Muslim world has mostly been contained.

Refugees have not appeared in nearly the numbers anticipated (up to 1.5 million, a United Nations report had predicted.)

Why so many failed forecasts?

Even an optimistic Pentagon finds it useful to prepare the public for "difficult times." Even the best intelligence has a hard time predicting fighting spirit in a closed state. Media commentators and professional analysts sometimes favor worst-case scenarios as the more dramatic.

But the tremendously quick and potent coalition attack probably explains why other anticipated problems — oil-well sabotage, for example, and an outpouring of refugees — have not materialized.

The war force has accomplished things never seen. The combined and closely coordinated application of air, land, and naval forces with such enormous potency "is unsurpassed in the world, unprecedented in history," said Philip Anderson, a retired Marine Corps colonel.

Special forces, infiltrated well before hostilities began, prepared the way, identified targets, and helped seize oil fields to prevent them being ignited in a predicted environmental disaster.

The coalition's overpowering race to Baghdad gave Iraqi forces scant time to deploy or to regroup and, coupled with overwhelming air dominance, has helped keep coalition casualties astonishingly low and Iraqi casualties lower than expected.

Michael O'Hanlon, a Brookings Institution military and security specialist, who months ago performed a modeling analysis of the war's projected outcome, said, "I thought it would be tougher — I definitely thought it would be tougher."

He had estimated coalition losses at 100 to 5,000. Mr. O'Hanlon finds it "quite surprising" to see losses hovering near the lowest extreme of his estimate.

In street fighting, he said, even a technologically superior military force does well to suffer only 1 casualty for 10 enemy losses. Yet, on the first dramatic American foray into Baghdad, the force reported one death to 2,000 or 3,000 Iraqi.

Bernard Reich, a professor at George Washington University who specializes in Middle East politics and terrorism, agreed, calling the numbers "incredibly small."

He works with personnel of a United States naval hospital ship sent from its Baltimore port to the war region, and they report that "they're not nearly as busy as they were expected to be," though they have tended not only to coalition casualties but to Iraqis. A second hospital ship remains, unneeded, in San Diego.

The rapid coalition movement and corresponding loss of Iraqi control might also explain Baghdad's failure to use much-feared chemical weapons.

Ibrahim al-Marashi of the Monterrey Institute for International Studies has done a study on the command and control of Iraqi unconventional arms. His expectation: "that chemical weapons would be deployed, that Saddam would use it as a last-ditch attempt for survival."

But with allied forces in the heart of Baghdad, the weapons have not been used.

Mr. Marashi suggested several factors: "His command and control structure broke down; perhaps the order was given but the special security organization didn't want to implement it, probably thinking about their future in post-Saddam Iraq" or, perhaps, he "didn't really have these chemical munitions."

Another possibility: that the Iraqi leader had painted himself into a box by repeatedly denying he had such weapons.

"They were always sort of last-chance weapons," said Gideon Rose, managing editor of Foreign Affairs magazine. "In some ways, the best-case scenario for us would have been for him to try to use them and for them not to work that well," Mr. Rose said. "That would've proved our case."

Mr. Anderson, the former marine colonel, had a simpler explanation, that Mr. Hussein "was afraid to employ chemical weapons" for fear of outsized retribution.

Fears of Turkish-Kurdish clashes in northern Iraq have not materialized, though tensions remain high around the oilfields of Kirkuk.

"We've been working very, very hard diplomatically to keep the Turkish forces at home and the Kurds under control," said Robert Ebel, director of the energy program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, in Washington. Clashes between the two would be "a disaster," he said.

Predictions that refugees might pour into Kurdish areas or cross into Iran — based partly on the humanitarian refugee crises following the Persian Gulf War of 1991 — have proved exaggerated.

"I don't think anybody right now knows enough about the humanitarian need inside Iraq," said Hugh Parmer, president of the American Refugee Committee, but "the refugee problem is not nearly as big as we thought." His group has teams in Ankara and Kuwait City, waiting to enter Iraq.

A few hundred thousand Kurds have fled homes to move in with relatives, live in government buildings or camp in the open. But contrary to fears, "there have been no, or virtually no, crossings of borders to Iran," Mr. Parmer said.

People pouring out of Baghdad could yet represent "a potential humanitarian crisis," he said, but a quick end to war would ease the problem.

Mr. Parmer said that many Iraqis had "hunkered down instead of fleeing." This could be in part because of reassurances from the Americans that "if you sit tight, we're going to come in and we're going to take care of you." Too, he said, Iraqi authorities might have prevented some people from leaving.

Another notable absence in this war: the terrorist attacks and violence in Arab streets that some had predicted.

"I was never hugely worried with the terrorism angle," said Mr. Rose, who worked on the National Security Council during the Clinton administration. "I've been surprised by the almost complete absence of attacks."

"Despite administration claims, Saddam's ties to terror are quite weak or loose," he said. "He does not have a strong foreign operational network."

Mr. O'Hanlon of the Brookings Institution concurred: "The Iraqis are not that good at this kind of terror."

To be remembered

"To be remembered..."
from Unicorn (1980)
by Whitin Badger

To be remembered is to be in light
And air immortalized, in tone and touch
Distilled; and held in subtle auras such
As smiling, the falling snow, the circling flight
Of birds, the haunting distance in the bars
Of color which the crystal prism frees,
The turning wind, the silence under trees,
A sense of angels in the wake of stars.
Worlds wear away, but you are always you,
And having loved you I am not alone
And cannot mind just how or when or where
The shadow falls. For this of love is true:
Once held within the hand, forever known,
Once entered in the heart, forever there.

Key Section of City Is Taken in a Street-by-Street Fight

Key Section of City Is Taken in a Street-by-Street Fight
By JOHN F. BURNS
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/04/09/international/worldspecial/09BAGH.html

BAGHDAD, Iraq, April 8 — The battle for the heart of Baghdad began before dawn within the sprawling gardens of Saddam Hussein's Republican Palace and tapered off by early afternoon with the Americans in control of an area running perhaps two miles along the Tigris's western embankment and a mile or more back from the river.

American tanks moving out of the northern end of the presidential compound into the city's open streets fired repeatedly in the direction of the Information Ministry and the Iraqi broadcasting headquarters, and came under heavy rocket, machine-gun and mortar fire in return.

Progress was halting, but the sector under American control by evening included many of the buildings considered to have been at the heart of Saddam Hussein's power: several of his palaces, at least six ministries, the main Baghdad railway station, the Al Rashid hotel, the Parliament building, the government's main conference center, and the principal government broadcasting headquarters, beside the Information Ministry near the river.

Iraqi state television fell silent and the daily statement from the Iraqi information minister describing all the advances claimed by American forces as fantasy and lies changed to a vow to "pummel the invaders." There were clear signs that Mr. Hussein's grip on power was crumbling.

Until the breakout by the Americans today, it had been possible to believe, if only just, that the Iraqi minister, Muhammad Said al-Sahhaf, might not be whistling Dixie, in his accustomed way, when he predicted that the Americans would be slaughtered in a huge Iraqi counterattack.

Today, his credibility disintegrated entirely.

One of Mr. Sahhaf's top officials, a man who has frequently sought to intimidate Western reporters, was seen in the parking lot of the Palestine Hotel in tears, embracing another official as if for courage.

In the streets for miles around the hotel, the only armed men to be seen were clumps of exhausted, distracted-looking militiamen, slumped in battered armchairs, rifles set aside, drawing heavily on cigarettes.

If there is to be a last-ditch fight by the Republican Guard, Mr. Hussein's vaunted troops, or by fanatical irregular forces, the men in black tank suits who are the most feared of the Iraqi leader's enforcers, they were nowhere to be seen.

It was not clear if Mr. Hussein himself was alive. His personal fate remained uncertain as Iraqi rescue teams worked through the day to dig into the rubble of several upscale homes in the Mansur district of west Baghdad that were obliterated by an American bombing attack on Monday afternoon that United States commanders said was intended to kill the Iraqi leader.

Rescue workers pulling at the rubble in a crater 60 feet deep told reporters that they believed as many as 14 people had been killed in the attack, but responded with blank stares and agitated gestures when they were asked if the victims might have included Mr. Hussein.

As dusk fell, the area held by the Americans fell silent, suggesting that Iraqi resistance — fought relentlessly but ultimately hopelessly with rockets, machine guns and other light arms — had died away.

The American advance was secured in street-by-street battles with tanks and other armored vehicles; a foothold in Saddam Hussein's main presidential compound on the Tigris River was transformed into a bastion of several square miles.

Dogs ran wild in every neighborhood, perhaps abandoned by their owners as they fled for the countryside. Whipping winds toward the late afternoon added to the air of desolation, pulling at mounting piles of garbage on sidewalks and sending some of the refuse rolling like tumbleweed down the empty streets. Gas stations, with long waits only days ago, were virtually abandoned, too.

Hospitals were islands of frantic activity, as cars and pickup trucks joined ambulances in rushing injured civilians to casualty units that were overwhelmed.

The toll on Iraqis appeared to have been severe. Senior officials at the Palestine Hotel on the river's eastern bank, where most international journalists are lodged, were seen clutching each other in distress. Whether that was from concern about their personal safety or about the pounding being taken by Iraqi forces could not be known.

The American advance was supported by a lone A-10 Warthog tankbuster plane that dived repeatedly through clouds of black smoke from oil fires lighted around the city in the last two weeks in a bid to hinder American bombing.

The plane appeared to be loosing heavy volleys of large-caliber cannon rounds at Iraqi positions ahead of and around the tanks. Bursts of fire and smoke exploded in the battle zone, and some fires continued burning for hours.

Later, an A-10 was shot down near Baghdad's international airport by an Iraqi surface-to-air missile, Central Command announced. The pilot bailed out and was quickly recovered. It was not clear if this was the same plane.

Independent estimates of casualties among American and Iraqi troops, or of damage to buildings in the area, were unavailable because all four bridges in the center of the city leading from the Tigris's eastern bank were blocked by the fighting, and all city telephones in Baghdad went out under American bombing last week.

The American gains in western Baghdad were matched by similar American progress in the southeast of the city, where marines supported by Apache helicopters seized control of Al Rashid military base, about three miles from the point where the eastern bank of the Tigris faces the Republican Palace on the west.

Coupled with American advances into northern Baghdad, the advances appeared to place American commanders in a position to mount a pincers movement that could give them control of both sides of the river in central Baghdad far sooner than some commanders had predicted, presenting the Iraqis with the loss of the core of their capital city barely three weeks after the war began.

At least three, and possibly all four, of the central bridges connecting the relatively open terrain of the government quarter in western Baghdad to the densely-populated business and residential districts of eastern Baghdad, home to many of this city's 4.5 million people, appeared to be under effective American control.

American tanks advanced part-way across the bridges to a point where they could fire at will at any Iraqis approaching the bridges from the eastern end, where what is left of Mr. Hussein's once-consuming power now resides.

Iraqi casualties appeared to be heavy. Reporters visiting only one of the city's major hospitals, the Kindi in eastern Baghdad, were told by doctors that the battle for control of the government quarter had brought in 200 to 300 civilian casualties, among them 35 dead.

On a bloodied gurney inside, a 50-year-old man who gave his name as Talib said he had been selling cigarettes from a hand cart in Al Alawi Square, near the city's main bus station about a mile from the Tigris, when he was hit by shrapnel from an American tank round. Left alone by doctors who appeared to have judged his injuries not to be life-threatening, the man let out repeated roars of pain, saying he had been hit in the back. "Is this Bush's promised `liberation'?" he shouted.

Daubing the white tiles of the wall beside him with his blood, he added: "No this is a red liberation, a liberation written in blood. Bush said he would disarm Saddam, and look how he's doing it now — killing us, one by one. Please ask him, how do you liberate people by killing them?"

One man in a green hospital smock, apparently despairing at the sight of newly arriving dead and wounded, threw a punch at a French photographer, striking her only lightly but unbalancing himself and falling to the ground. Other medical staff members hurriedly urged the journalists to leave, fearing, they said, that more serious injury could be done to them if they lingered.

The heavy bombing on Monday aimed at killing Mr. Hussein had a profound psychological effect on the city. Workers gathered around the wreckage of a restaurant adjoining the crater left by the bomb, the Sa'ah, on 14th of Ramadan Street, seemed at a loss when asked who had been killed in the bombing. The restaurant was a favorite of the Iraqi political elite, with its black marbled facade and fast-food kebabs.

This morning, the official Iraqi television failed to broadcast a regular news bulletin, and showed instead only old footage of Mr. Hussein receiving popular adulation at rallies.

Shortly after 11 a.m., amid the rage of battle around the broadcast center, television screens went blank, and the government radio went off the air.

Iraqi drivers for some senior officials said they had fled the Palestine and an adjoining hotel and headed out into the Iraqi hinterland by the one exit road apparently not yet blocked by American forces: north-eastward toward the Iranian border.

The growing dominance of American forces became clear toward evening when two F-18 Hornets came high out of the milky sun of the late afternoon, launching missile after missile at a 15-storey building on the Tigris River's eastern bank that has served as a sniper's nest for Iraqi fighters firing at American tanks on the opposite bank.

Their target, caramel yellow with black trim, and arched upper windows that served perfectly all day as a launch pad for the rockets and machine-gun and mortar fire the Iraqis rained on the Americans, was the Board of Youth and Sports, a totemic stronghold of Mr. Hussein's older son, Uday.

That made the attack deeply symbolic, since Uday, 38, has used his father's power to proclaim himself the czar of Iraqi sports — with the malevolent twist that several of the sports buildings he controls, according to Iraqis and countless Western human rights reports, have been used as centers for torturing all who vex the younger Mr. Hussein.

Those unfortunates, Iraqis say, have ranged from losing members of the national soccer team to anyone who whispers criticism of Mr. Hussein the father or Mr. Hussein, the firstborn son.

How Iraqis will respond when the Iraqi ruler and his sons are finally toppled will be central to the judgments history makes of the war, and perhaps a foretaste came on the fifth or sixth run of one of the F-18's.

A missile was fired from low altitude and struck a bulls-eye on the building's southern facade, at about the 10th floor, setting off a fireball leaping into the sky, followed by a plume of thick black smoke.

An Iraqi man of about 30, wearing a track suit and watching from a window on an upper floor of the Sheraton Hotel a mile down the river to the south, leaned out to shout something to two reporters for American publications who had made of their own 12th-floor balcony a grandstand seat.

Thumbs up, grinning, the man punched the air, triumphant.

Only in afterthought, perhaps concerned that he might have been overheard by other Iraqis, or perhaps that he might be identified from reports the Americans would write, did he retract — with a scatological outburst about America, but still with the same broad grin.

Until today, American airstrikes had come mostly like thunderbolts, bombs and missiles invisible until impact, the aircraft delivering the bombs so high, so fast, or so enveloped by night that they were phantoms to the people of Baghdad.

No longer. For 30 minutes, the American planes soared and banked and dived, disappearing at one moment into skies turned inky black by the burning oil trenches around Baghdad that have been lit in an attempt to foil American air attacks, returning the next lower, faster, gunmetal gray in the evening sun.

The Human Side of War

The Human Side of War
By JIM DWYER
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/04/09/international/worldspecial/09AIRB.html

HILLA, April 8 — At times, this war has felt like an abstraction for the American side, a near industrial exercise involving coordinated airstrikes against a specific grid on the map, followed by artillery strikes aimed with computer guidance systems, followed by tanks and then by infantry.

Today, while some of the killing was done from the air and with artillery, two Iraqi soldiers on a roadside were in grenade-throwing range, hiding in the bushes as they made what would turn out to be their final strike.

The Iraqi attack came as American forces moved to seize the last of three cities in a religious triangle here — including Najaf and Karbala — where Shiite Muslims have generally opposed the government of Saddam Hussein, a Sunni Muslim.

The tanks rolled first toward this town, about 50 miles south of Baghdad, where Iraqi authorities say dozens of civilians have been killed in recent days in American attacks.

They were followed by infantry trucks carrying about 120 soldiers from the Third Brigade of the 101st Airborne Division. The soldiers got off the vehicles to check a grain warehouse at the side of the road. Sgt. Chuck Shy, a mechanic who had volunteered to help drive the troops into combat, hopped down.

"All I could see was a muzzle flash from the bushes," he said.

He remembers diving to the ground, returning fire, a loud explosion, a bright flash. A grenade had been hurled from those bushes. It landed 10 feet from Sergeant Shy, then burst into uncountable bits of shrapnel. A few pieces tore into his face. Stunned, he hustled to the other side of the truck.

"I'm a soldier, but I'm a mechanic," he said. "I mean, we're trained for this, but I clean my gun once a week, that's about it."

The blast echoed down the convoy. Eight or nine vehicles to the rear, Sgt. Maj. Iuniasolua Savusa heard the explosion and rushed toward it, ordering the soldiers to take up combat positions along the shoulders of the road. He reached Sergeant Shy's truck.

"I asked, `Where did the grenade come from?' " Sergeant Major Savusa said.

"I told him, `It came from the bushes,' " Sergeant Shy recalled.

The sergeant major reached onto the front seat of a truck to get a grenade from another soldier. Sergeant Major Savusa worked methodically. As shots rang from the foliage a few yards away, he unpeeled the top of the protective canister, pulled the safety pin, and lobbed the grenade into the bushes.

"He threw it overhand, and that was the end of the firing from the bushes," Sergeant Shy said. "He came down here like John Wayne."

Afterward, three or four other Iraqis retreated, firing as they went, according to the Americans. "I swear I could hear the bullets going past," Lt. Eldred Ramtahall said.

Brig. Gen. Benjamin C. Freakley, deputy commander of the 101st Airborne Division, strode up to the fighting, yelling at the soldiers to spread out so that a single grenade could not kill a dozen soldiers at a time.

A voice answered: "Sir, are you crazy? You don't belong up here."

General Freakley answered: "That's all right. But right now you need to disperse. You O.K., boys?"

Another voice answered. "Sir, I don't think I've ever been more scared."

The general answered, "You'll be fine. Just fight through it."

About 10 or 15 feet away, the body of one of the two slain Iraqi soldiers lay face down in the dust, fingers partially clenched. His uniform was dark olive, almost black; the boots were new; his hair looked to have been freshly trimmed in a military cut; he seemed to have a sturdy, muscular build.

"That was a suicide mission, to take on so many soldiers at this close distance, when the soldiers have so much more than you," Sergeant Major Savusa said.

General Freakley suggested that the Iraqis might have been frightened from their hiding spot when the infantry soldiers left the trucks and started walking around just a few feet away.

On the other side of the road, the campsite for the Iraqi team was still fresh. Blankets were placed neatly on the ground, a tea set was stacked up and half-eaten pita bread was left on a plate. A T-shirt, apparently field-laundered, swung from a tree limb for drying.

When the fighting had quieted, the general called to Staff Sgt. James Massey and Pvt. Rob Maher to retrieve blankets from the Iraqi camp, to wrap the bodies.

The dead men had fine watches. One wore a wedding band. The blankets were of good quality, it seemed to Private Maher. "The way I look at it, he's just a soldier, doing our job," he said.

Sergeant Massey answered: "True. And the job is dog eat dog."

They carried the blankets to the bodies. The air heaved and spun with humidity. In the trenches, the American soldiers fidgeted, sipped water, watched for more fire from the warehouse. A breeze passed, and set swaying the ferns on the side of the road where the Iraqis had hidden, and where they now lay still.

Former Captives Recall Horror of Hussein's Prisons

Former Captives Recall Horror of Hussein's Prisons
By CRAIG S. SMITH
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/04/09/international/worldspecial/09BASR.html

BASRA, Iraq, April 8 — In an empty interrogation room deep in the prison that was long this city's epicenter of fear, a man explained the purpose of two thick black electrical cables that snaked through a high barred window.

"Here," he said, holding a cable to each ear, "and here," he added, holding them to his groin.

As the war slowly dismantles Saddam Hussein's elaborate bureaucracy of terror, the citizens of Iraq's second-largest city are beginning to glimpse the methods that gave him such effective control over a largely restive, resentful population in southern Iraq.

With British forces in control here for the second day, secret files that accumulated over the years in inaccessible offices are spilling from government buildings destroyed by American bombs. People are also seeing the small, cramped cells of prisons like the State Security Branch of Iraq's General Military Intelligence Service in Basra.

Behind the sand-colored concrete building on Al Aroussa Street stand a series of cellblocks where hundreds of prisoners were processed, some held in an open red-wire cage with a channel down the center of the cement floor where their excrement could be periodically hosed away.

Others were forced to lie on the floor of a dim corridor for weeks at a time with their hands chained behind their backs to a metal rail a few inches above the ground, according to survivors.

There were closet-sized isolation cells and larger communal cells where dozens of people lived for months crowded together.

As Basra began to return to normal today, despite continued looting throughout the city, hundreds of residents gathered at the now-smoldering state security building.

"Thousands of people died here," said Ali Abu Hanief, a tall black-haired man with a thick mustache and dark stubble on his deeply cleft chin. Mr. Hanief spent a year in the building's warren of underground cells, now dark and empty.

Many people picking through the piles of paper blowing around the building today said the cells were occupied until just before the war. Some people arrived hoping to find long-missing relatives still imprisoned there. They left disappointed.

"Everyone of us has a friend or relative who came here," said Mr. Hanief, dressed in a long gray robe. He said many never returned.

"Please tell the Americans to try to free them or at least tell us where they are," he said.

But few are likely to be found. Mr. Hanief and others said they believed many of the people who entered were executed and sent to anonymous graves outside of town.

Several people asserted that there were many such secret prisons across the country. During an uprising in Basra after the 1991 gulf war, they said, local rebels discovered a hidden prison filled with inmates, some of whom had been there for more than 10 years.

Friends and relatives of the missing swarmed over the state security building, its cellblocks and its grounds today, poring over scattered files in search of clues.

A man who had visited the building on Monday led a reporter to a room where he said he had seen photographs of tortured bodies, but was disappointed to discover nothing but smoking ash where stacks of files had been the day before.

Someone had apparently set fire to the room during the night, perhaps to destroy evidence.

A document found on the grounds showed that of the 16 officers on duty at the prison in January 2000, the 7 most senior were surnamed Tikriti, meaning they shared the same ancestral home as Saddam Hussein, around Tikrit, a town 100 miles north of Baghdad.

Bits of burned files and sheaves of paper collected around the nearby cells revealed a security network obsessed with Iran and the potential for a Shiite Islamic revolution in southern Iraq. Iraq's ruling Sunni Muslim minority has long feared an Iranian-inspired religious movement that could ignite the country's Shiite majority. Many of the files were from the period following Shiite-led uprisings in Basra in 1991 and 1999.

Many of the documents showed that people turned in their neighbors or even family members, though it is not clear whether they did so under duress or for some favor or through loyalty to the party.

A March 1999 document, handwritten by a confessor or informant on Military Intelligence letterhead, listed people known to have had Islamist leanings.

"Yatim Abdel Gabbar, a milk seller, lives in the house behind our house and he was always enthusiastic about starting an Islamic revolution," the handwritten document reads. The author also informed on an uncle, saying, "Once I talked to him about this issue and he was very enthusiastic about conducting destructive activities."

Mr. Hanief said he was arrested in 1993 because he was suspected of having traveled to the Iranian border. At first he was held in an isolation cell. Then he was told he was going to visit a Colonel Mahdi.

He said the colonel slowly got drunk with two subordinates before turning to the business of beating Mr. Hanief from midnight to about dawn.

His torture, which continued for a month, included whippings and being forced to stand naked outside in the cold winter air.

Later, Mr. Hanief was transferred to a dark cell in the basement of the main building, where he spent the next year. He said there were thousands of prisoners kept underground.

A brief visit down the dark steps to the underground prison revealed rows of small, barred cells, the air close with smoke from a recent American airstrike.

Daoud Salman, a 48-year-old man with wild graying hair, said he, too, had spent a year in an underground cell after spending a month with Colonel Mahdi. He said the colonel used him to practice martial-arts kicks before sending him for whippings and electric shocks to his ears, navel and genitals.

After his release in 1995, Mr. Salman said he was told he would have to inform on other suspected Communists. Instead, Mr. Salman said he fled and moved from place to place until he thought the authorities had forgotten his case and he could settle down.

Ahmed Eid al-Zaharah, 30, lay down in the main cellblock's corridor to demonstrate how prisoners were shackled to a metal bar that ran the length of the corridor close to the ground. He said he had to lie in that position, his hands chained behind him, for 15 days, surviving on a daily bit of bread and sips of water administered by the guards.

He said he was then transferred to a 200-square-foot cell that he shared with 30 people.

Many people spent time in prison for possessing religious books, but Mr. Zaharah's infraction was more philosophical: owning a copy of Aristotle's writings.

Asian Officials Say SARS May Be Here to Stay

Asian Officials Say SARS May Be Here to Stay
By KEITH BRADSHER with LAWRENCE K. ALTMAN
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/04/09/science/sciencespecial/09INFE.html

HONG KONG, April 8 — Health officials in Hong Kong and Singapore warned their citizens today that the agent that causes a mysterious respiratory disease has spread so far in their communities and abroad that it will be hard to bring under control any time soon, if ever.

"Singaporeans must be psychologically prepared for the problem to stay with us for some time," said Lee Hsien Loong, Singapore's deputy prime minister.

Hong Kong and Singapore officials began emphasizing new measures to slow the spread of the disease, but refrained from suggestions that they might be able to get rid of the disease completely.

The World Health Organization, however, remained cautiously optimistic that the disease, severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS, could be kept in check.

Dr. Leung Pak-yin, Hong Kong's deputy director of health, said that residents should be concerned that the illness could be spread through contaminated objects, particularly if their apartment buildings developed large numbers of cases.

"We believe that every citizen could become a carrier of the virus," especially if people do not follow practices like hand washing and the wearing of face masks, he said.

The cause of SARS is unknown, but officials are almost certain that it is a virus, and they strongly suspect that the culprit is a previously unknown member of the coronavirus family.

Epidemiologists have traced most SARS cases to close person-to-person contact. That finding initially led officials to believe that they could break the SARS chain by isolating patients and their contacts and by requiring health workers to use standard infection control measures in caring for patients. Such measures, including frequent hand washing and wearing masks, gloves, gowns and goggles, have worked in most places.

But in recent days epidemiologists have been unable to trace a number of SARS outbreaks in hotels, hospitals and apartment complexes in Hong Kong, Singapore and China to such person-to-person spread. Because of that, many health officials have become increasingly suspicious that the disease can be spread through contaminated objects like door knobs, water and sewage, as well as by person-to-person contact. Hong Kong officials also have theorized that insects like cockroaches could spread the disease, perhaps by tracking contaminated sewage from apartment to apartment.

Hong Kong University researchers have found evidence suggesting that many people may come in contact with the virus and only become mildly ill and not meet the case definition. Also, officials are now suspicious that some people may be able to spread the disease even if they are only mildly ill with SARS.

If it can be spread by insects or objects or healthy human carriers, containing its spread would be much more difficult. The fear is that in a short time SARS could become another on the long list of diseases that are a fixture in many areas.

Still, two top W.H.O. officials expressed cautious optimism that SARS could be stopped before that happens.

Dr. David L. Heymann, executive director in charge of communicable diseases for W.H.O., said that his United Nations agency "was hopeful that SARS can be contained, we haven't given up hope."

A W.H.O. team has just concluded a visit to Guangdong Province in China, which is adjacent to Hong Kong and is where the epidemic apparently began last November. W.H.O. expects to learn a considerable amount from the team's research.

The team found that the Chinese kept "really meticulous records," Dr. Heymann said, adding, "So there's a lot to learn because as the cases went on, the death rate apparently was lower, meaning either the doctors learned to handle the disease better or something else happened."

He also said that W.H.O. has two additional teams of scientists on standby to go to China to help with the epidemiology and infection control.

Dr. Klaus Stöhr, the scientific director of the W.H.O. team investigating SARS, said, "There is still a good chance we can contain it, provided that there is nothing ongoing in China that is similar to what is going on in Hong Kong."

Experts think that SARS is largely spread through droplets exhaled by dry coughs. There are two distinct ways in which coughing can spread viral diseases: droplet or airborne transmission. In droplet transmission, the infective material is coughed or sneezed out of a patient's airway surrounded by a bit of moisture. The particles are too large to travel more than about three feet, and so relatively close, face-to-face contact is required for transmission to take place through the air. But the viruses may also persist on inanimate objects, and people can become infected from touching contaminated surfaces. Masks, gloves and frequent hand washing can sharply reduce droplet transmission.

By contrast, airborne viruses travel much farther than three feet and can hang in the air and infect other people for a long time after a coughing or sneezing patient has left the room. Airborne transmission is far more efficient than droplet transmission, and it is the way that diseases like influenza and measles spread. Experts doubt that SARS is airborne, because if it were, there would be even faster spread and many more cases.

To help determine whether seemingly healthy people can spread the SARS agent, Hong Kong is conducting a number of studies involving the hundreds of people in isolation here because they had contact with a SARS patient.

In 10 percent of one study involving 200 people, scientists have found evidence of the new coronavirus in their feces. But the virus is in an immature form and is unable to cause infection unless other parts of the virus are present, Dr. Stöhr said.

"So we do not know what the finding means," Dr. Stöhr said.

He said that similar studies are being conducted in Ontario, where more than 180 SARS cases, including 10 deaths, have occurred.

Mr. Lee and Tung Chee-hwa, Hong Kong's chief executive, each warned of serious harm to their cities' economies because of the outbreak, which has particularly hurt the airline, hotel, retailing and restaurant industries. "This SARS has now a profound long-term impact on our economy and it is a very serious matter," Mr. Tung said at a news conference this evening.

Hong Kong reported 45 new cases today, including 18 health care workers, as well as the deaths of two elderly men who were infected with SARS but had other health problems as well. Figures for new cases over the last several days have included 30 cases at the Ngau Tau Kok apartment complex, which had not previously been affected, Dr. Leung said.

The disease has already infected close to 300 people in the nearby Amoy Gardens apartment complex, and it appears that people from the Ngau Tau Kok complex had been visiting Amoy Gardens, Dr. Leung added.

30 infected at public estate

30 infected at public estate
As Amoy Gardens residents prepare to return home, Sars cases at Lower Ngau Tau Kok Estate have raised fears of another major outbreak
by STELLA LEE, Chief Reporter SCMP
http://hongkong.scmp.com/hknews/ZZZMAKFL6ED.html

Thirty people on a Kowloon Bay housing estate near the infected Amoy Gardens complex have been struck down by Sars, sparking fears of a second outbreak similar to that which led to the quarantining of an entire apartment block.
Details of the outbreak on the Lower Ngau Tau Kok Estate emerged as residents of Block E of Amoy Gardens expressed fears that their homes remained unsafe. The isolation order on the building came to an end at midnight tonight.

According to the Health Department, 30 residents of Lower Ngau Tau Kok Estate have contracted Sars since late March. More than 10,000 people live on the public estate, including many elderly people.

Kwun Tong District Councillor Chan Kok-wah criticised the Health Department for leaving it until yesterday to tell residents about the fresh outbreak.

"If they had informed them to take precautionary measures earlier, there wouldn't have been so many cases," Mr Chan said.

Many Amoy Gardens tenants have parents who live in Lower Ngau Tau Kok Estate and returned to live with them when Block B became infected. Mr Chan said he suspected this was behind the new outbreak. "I'm worried that it will become a second Amoy Gardens if the cases increase at a multiplying rate. I don't think the government could cope if the disease is widely spread in this community [Lower Ngau Tau Kok Estate] of 10,000 people," Mr Chan said.

While Deputy Director of Health Leung Pak-yin said he believed the cases at the public estate were related to its proximity to Amoy Gardens, he said the figures did not suggest the potential for a serious outbreak. The cases were in eight different blocks and were not as concentrated as at Block E of Amoy Gardens. He said he did not see the need to immediately remove the residents of the public estate, but the situation would be monitored closely.

Mr Leung said he would investigate whether residents had been notified of the cases belatedly. It was official practice to inform the management of housing blocks if there were cases of Sars, he added.

Mr Leung said it was strongly believed that the Amoy Gardens outbreak was related to environmental factors. It is understood that officials blame the sewerage system for the spread of the disease in Block E.

Five more Amoy Gardens' residents were yesterday confirmed to have contracted Sars, bringing the total to 283.

About 240 residents of Block E were isolated on Monday last week and taken to quarantine camps the next day to allow health officials to conduct thorough investigations at the block.

Government workers were yesterday disinfecting all 264 units in Block E. Where possible, a member of each household was on hand to monitor the process.

Tenant Keith Chu said the 15-minute clean-up mainly involved the disinfecting of drains and pipes - not every corner of the house as he had expected.

Mr Chu said that while he was eager to return home, he was worried that the block remained unsafe. "Many people moved out before the isolation order was imposed. It's very unfair to us. We had to be isolated and prove that we were healthy before going home. What about the other people?" Mr Chu said.

Another quarantined resident, Mac Leung, said he felt unsafe returning home because the reason behind the spread of the virus at Block E had not been identified and resolved.

Mr Leung, who has been isolated at Lei Yue Mun Park and Holiday Village, said he was also extremely unhappy that residents were being forced to undergo health checks before being allowed back home."We cannot leave until we're proved to be healthy. We were not told of any conditions attached to the isolation order at the beginning," he said.

The Health Department revealed on Monday that medical test results suggested that 16 of the isolated residents carried the virus - despite showing no symptoms of the disease.

It said these people needed to stay in isolation longer.

Chairman of the Amoy Gardens Owners Joint Committee, Wilson Yip Hing-kwok, said a welcoming ceremony would be held for residents tomorrow morning.

New Fusion Method Offers Hope of New Energy Source

New Fusion Method Offers Hope of New Energy Source
By KENNETH CHANG
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/04/08/science/physical/08FUSI.html

PHILADELPHIA, April 7 — With a blast of X-rays compressing a capsule of hydrogen to conditions approaching those at the center of the Sun, scientists from Sandia National Laboratories reported today that they had achieved thermonuclear fusion, in essence detonating a tiny hydrogen bomb.

Such controlled explosions would not be large enough to be dangerous and might offer an alternative way of generating electricity by harnessing fusion, the process that powers the Sun. Fusion combines hydrogen atoms into helium, producing bountiful energy as a byproduct.

"It's the first observation of fusion for a pulsed power source," said Dr. Ramon J. Leeper, manager of the target physics department at Sandia, in Albuquerque, who presented the findings at a meeting of the American Physical Society here.

Fusion power would be safer than fission, the current method used in nuclear power plants, because fusion does not produce long-lived radioactive waste.

Most fusion efforts have tried to use magnetic fields to compress hydrogen to temperatures hot enough for fusion to occur continuously, as it does in the Sun. But sustaining a dense hot cloud of hydrogen gas has proved trickier than scientists thought when they started fusion experiments 50 years ago. Even proponents say decades of research and expensive reactors are needed before a commercial power plant is possible. Dr. Jeff Quintenz, director of the Pulsed Power Sciences Center at Sandia, likened the approach to burning coal in a furnace.

The Sandia experiments, by comparison, could lead to something more like an internal combustion engine, in which power is generated through a series of explosions. "Squirt in a little bit of fuel, explode it," Dr. Quintenz said. "Squirt in a little bit of fuel, explode it."

That approach is potentially simpler, eliminating the need to confine hot hydrogen gas. But designing a machine that could detonate controlled thermonuclear explosions in quick succession — and survive them — is an engineering challenge that scientists have only begun to think about.

Earlier, scientists at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California set off fusion explosions by shining intense lasers on hydrogen capsules. Livermore plans to further that research in a new National Ignition Facility. Other scientists are looking to implode hydrogen with beams of heavy elements like xenon or cesium.

The Sandia apparatus, the Z accelerator, was originally built to study nuclear weapons explosions without actual nuclear tests. In the mid-90's, the Z accelerator put out an impressive 20 trillion watts of X-rays. But that was far short of what is needed to induce fusion, and Sandia officials considered turning it off.

Improvements have raised the peak X-ray power by a factor of 10, to more than 200 trillion watts. It has been considered a dark-horse candidate for practical fusion. "We are solidly in the fusion regime," Dr. Quintenz said. "We're in the game."

For a few billionths of a second, the power of the X-rays crashing into the hydrogen capsule far exceeds the output of all the world's power plants.

Most of the 104-foot-wide machine, which resembles a large wagon wheel, stores a large amount of electrical energy, enough to power 100 houses for two minutes, and unleashing it quickly, which sets off a Rube Goldberg chain of events that leads to fusion. At the center of the machine are 360 vertical tungsten wires that form a cylindrical cage one and a half inches across. Inside the cage is a plastic foam cylinder. Encased in the foam is a BB-size plastic capsule that holds deuterium, a heavy form of hydrogen.

The burst of 20 million amperes of current vaporizes the tungsten wires and generates a magnetic field that accelerates the tungsten vapor toward the center of the cylinder. The vapor slams into the plastic foam, creating a supersonic shock wave. The shock wave generates X-rays that heat the deuterium to more than 20 million degrees Fahrenheit and squeeze it tightly.

In experiments last year, the Sandia researchers first detected telltale neutrons produced by the fusion reactions. They confirmed their findings last month. At present, the thermonuclear explosions are minuscule pops, enough to power a 40-watt light bulb for a mere one ten-thousandth of a second. "This is a first step on a long road," Dr. Leeper said.

A $60 million upgrade to the Z accelerator planned for 2005 will increase the maximum current by a third. Sandia scientists hope for a larger, more powerful machine later. "The physics looks encouraging," said Dr. Dale M. Meade of the Princeton University Plasma Physics Laboratory.

Eventually, to generate electricity, the Sandia scientists envision surrounding the fusion chamber with a liquid that heats up by absorbing the neutrons generated by the fusion reaction. The hot liquid would boil water to turn a turbine.

The Z machine can fire one shot a day. A power plant using the technology would have to include a robotic system that could replace the burned-out tungsten wires, foam and hydrogen capsule every few seconds. Dr. Quintenz said the future plant might be able to produce pulses of energy one trillion times as large as that coming from the Z machine.

Each approach has advantages and disadvantages. Lasers, which can be precisely focused, win the most attention. The $4 billion National Ignition Facility will fire 192 lasers at one target. Lasers, however, are relatively inefficient. Scientists looking to use heavy elements hope to take advantage of existing technology from particle physics accelerators, using magnets to guide charged particles. The Z machine is relatively energy-efficient and straightforward. "It's a simple technology, really, and it's robust," Dr. Leeper said.

Traditional magnetic-confinement fusion is also moving forward. An international group may build a $5 billion experimental reactor.

"It's premature to judge which is the winner," said Dr. Stewart C. Prager, a fusion scientist at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. "We definitely need more physics."

Why Wine Costs What It Does

Why Wine Costs What It Does
By AMANDA HESSER
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/04/09/dining/09PRIC.html

LAST year, when Paul Hobbs, a California winemaker, was about to release his 1999 Beckstoffer cabernet sauvignon, lots of things were going through his mind. He had investments to pay off and a reputation to build on the wine, but he was also facing a market that had softened tremendously. It was up to Mr. Hobbs to determine a retail price that would let him pay off some debts and draw the attention of serious wine drinkers, yet be low enough that he could actually sell the wine, not just this year but for vintages to come.

Mr. Hobbs thought long and hard and decided: $135.

Why does one bottle of fermented grape juice cost $135, and another just $15? Americans consumed 14.9 million cases of California cabernet in 2001, according to a study by Impact, a trade publication that tracks the wine industry, and customers in a wine store, faced with walls of bottles that range in price from the low end to the high, confront the question every time they shop.

"It's definitely more art than science," said Mannie Berk, the owner of the Rare Wine Company, an importer in Sonoma, Calif. "It's finding the right point in the market where you're priced appropriately in relation to other wines that are similar in stature and style and level, where both merchants and consumers will be eager to buy the wine."

Price also plays into the perception of value, said Vic Motto, a senior partner at Motto Kryla Fisher, a wine industry consulting company in St. Helena, Calif. "If I made the best wine in the world and charged $1 for it," he said, "no one would believe it was the best. They'd say it's a great bottle of $1 wine."

But there is much more to the cost of a bottle than the wine inside. To begin with, the retail price on the shelf is generally twice what the winery sold the wine for. That means a $100 wine was $50 when it left the winery and had $50 tagged on by the distributor and the retailer. Mr. Hobbs's 1999 Beckstoffer left his winery at $67.50.

Wineries, of course, also like a profit. A $100 wine that cost $50 when it left its maker may have cost as little as $25 to produce. For wines in the $7 to $10 range, the margin is far less, because the makers make money on volume. Mr. Hobbs said his margin is around 40 percent on his most expensive wines, meaning that the Beckstoffer cost about $48 to produce. But coming up with a precise number is hard because overhead like electricity and staff costs are devoted to all the wines a winery produces.

Christian Miller, director of research at Motto Kryla, said: "Probably the most important ingredient in changing the price from $20 to $60 to $100 wine is scarcity. Almost all the high-priced wines around the world are produced in small amounts. It's the oldest economic rule of all. When you have a very small supply, with all things being equal, you can charge a high price."

On Mr. Hobbs's Web site, www.paulhobbs.com, buyers may purchase a maximum of six bottles of the Beckstoffer, whose production came to about 800 cases in 1999. There are exceptions to Mr. Miller's scarcity rule — Opus One and Silver Oak Cellars, for example, produce thousands of cases, not hundreds — but they are few.

Mr. Miller added: "The thing you're paying for as you move up would be prestige, scarcity and to some extent intensity of flavor."

For that, the winery must invest in high-quality grapes, French oak barrels, skilled winemakers, even fine packaging. "It's pretty much to send a consistent message," Mr. Hobbs said. That message? I look expensive; I am expensive; I am worth every penny.

First, the grapes. "The very best grapes grow in very few places," Mr. Motto explained. "You can grow very good $15-a-bottle grapes all over."

Mr. Hobbs's Beckstoffer cabernet sauvignon is a single vineyard wine from a vineyard with a prestigious history. It was once owned by André Tchelistcheff, the legendary oenologist, who produced some of the Napa Valley's first great cabernets, and some of its grapes were supposedly used in the esteemed Georges de Latour Private Reserve from Beaulieu Vineyard.

Grapes are no small item. According to Bob Holder, a wine industry accountant at G & J Seiberlich in St. Helena, they can vary from $1,000 a ton at the low end up to $10,000 a ton from the very best land. (Last year, cabernet sauvignon commanded an average of $4,021 a ton in the Napa Valley. Mr. Hobbs declined to say how much his grapes cost.) A ton of grapes yields about 700 bottles of wine, and so can add anywhere from roughly $1.40 to $14 to the production cost of a single bottle.

And if you want to buy your own land, get in line. Vineyard prices have soared over the years. In the 1980's, Far Niente, a respected winery in Napa, bought a property for $18,000 an acre. A vineyard it bought five years ago cost $100,000 an acre, which is now the average. A vineyard with a top pedigree could run to $300,000 an acre.

Expensive wines like Mr. Hobbs's also require more labor, both in the fields and in the winemaking. Grapes may be placed in small tubs after they are picked, so that none are crushed. The wine may be racked by hand and tasted daily. And by pruning heavily to concentrate the flavor in the best grapes, winemakers get lower yields.

Mr. Hobbs said he got just 3.2 tons of grapes per acre from Beckstoffer in 1999; a typical yield is more like 5 tons. High-end winemakers often use only the "free-run juice," or juice that bleeds from the grape with minimal pressure. The maker of a $15 wine is likely to press all the juice he can out of his grapes. And in that juice will be more tannins and more solids, which will result in a coarser wine.

Once a wine is made, it must be aged in oak barrels, which can cost from $300 for American oak to $750 for French. A wine to be sold for $15 might be aged in less expensive barrels, which are used for a few years. But a winery like Far Niente, whose cabernet sauvignon retails for $100, buys French oak barrels and replaces them every year. A barrel holds 280 or so bottles, so French oak can add more than $2 to every bottle. Last year, Far Niente briefly considered replacing only 70 percent of its new oak and using the other 30 percent twice, saving $400,000. The owners decided against it.

A $100 bottle of wine also tends to be aged longer in both the barrel and the bottle. "You have to sit on the money," Mr. Holder, of G & J Seiberlich, said. "With reds you might pay for and own several vintages before you start selling." Mr. Hobbs, for instance, has not released his 2000 Beckstoffer, which, for three years, has done nothing but cost him money.

Distinctive packaging helps sell a wine, too. A $100 wine will often be bottled in thicker, more expensive glass with a tall punt, or indentation at the bottom. Bottles can cost 50 cents to $2. A Beckstoffer bottle, which costs $1.25, is significantly heavier than a standard bottle, and the punt seems so high that it could cover an egg without breaking the shell.

"Entry-level corks," Mr. Holder said, "are probably a dime apiece, and an expensive one might be 50 cents, and a very expensive cork might be as much as 75 cents to $1." Mr. Hobbs's Beckstoffer corks, extra long and smooth, cost 75 cents.

Some winemakers also spend thousands, up to $100,000, on package and label designs, and then 20 to 30 cents to produce each one. Mr. Hobbs's labels cost about 25 cents, and he packs Beckstoffer in a wood box that holds just 6 bottles, as opposed to the standard 12. He pays $11 for the box. His alternative is a sturdy cardboard box, which holds 12 bottles and costs $5 to $7. (Standard flimsy boxes often come free with bottles.)

Someone producing a $100 bottle of wine rarely benefits from economies of scale. A restaurant, for instance, might order just six bottles, while a discounter like Costco might take a whole truckload of $10 wines.

Once the wine has left the winery, a small winery can do little to make it succeed. According to Eileen Fredrikson, a partner at Gomberg, Fredrikson, a consulting company in Woodside, Calif., it must depend on its distributors to create a market for its brand. It can hope for a good rating by a critic, but that is not worth betting on.

"Third-party endorsement is important for any consumer product," said Larry Maguire, the president of Far Niente and a partner in Nickel & Nickel, a new winery in Oakville, Calif. "Just ask a show that's closing on Broadway."

But if you are lucky, Mr. Hobbs said, the small but vocal number of true wine fanatics will talk up your wine, revving the hype. "Those guys drive the market," he said.

Last July, for instance, three months before Blankiet Estate's 1999 Paradise Hills Proprietary Red was released, its price began soaring on WineCommune.com, an auction Web site. The vineyard the wine comes from was developed by David Abreu, and the wine was made by Helen Turley, both celebrated winemakers. With such a pedigree, said Michael Stajer, president of WineCommune.com, the wine first appeared at $270 a bottle, and soon began climbing. "In August," he said, "it reaches $450, and in September, a month before it's released, it sells well at $500." The wine's retail price was supposed to have been $90.

A hidden but significant marketing expense is the cost of wines provided for samples or donated to charity events. "It's not unusual to give away somewhere from 500 to 1,000 cases of cabernet," Mr. Maguire said, referring to Far Niente's $100 cabernet. Last year, the winery gave away about 600 cases, roughly $360,000 worth.

"The average business is out of business before the winery starts making money," Mr. Motto said. "It takes 15 years on average for a winery to be economically working well. In that period of time, eight restaurants have opened and closed."

Ms. Fredrikson added, "That is why they say the way to make a small fortune in the wine business is to start with a large one."

All over California, that is the norm. Groth, Niebaum-Coppola, Harlan and Harrison were all begun by people who were already well off.

Far Niente is just now unveiling Nickel & Nickel. The winemakers bought established vineyards at $100,000 an acre, paid Napa County some $300,000 in fees to build on the property and have invested $20 million in constructing the winery itself. They are producing just 8,000 cases of wine a year. While most businesses typically have a capital investment of $1 for every dollar of annual sales revenue, in the wine business the capital investment can be $4 to $8 for every dollar of sales revenue.

Wineries may not be so profitable, but they can be long lasting. As Mr. Motto pointed out, Thomas Jefferson's favorite wineries were Château Margaux and Château Latour, which are still flourishing.

"At Nickel & Nickel," Mr. Maguire said, "there's not a price we can put on these wines that will make them profitable now." So while the winery's Oakville neighbors are Opus One, Harlan Estate and Dalla Valle, Nickel has played its new wines conservatively. Mr. Maguire says it has a zinfandel that could be sold alongside a Turley zinfandel that retails for $65, but has been put on the market at $45.

And yet a winemaker should not undersell his wine. "There's a perception among consumers that you need to be at a certain price to be taken seriously," Andrew F. Bell, president of Wine Symphony, a New York importer, said. "So if you're making a cabernet that's on the shelf for $20, it can't possibly be good."

Quality and perception are hard to separate. "You can get a really great bottle of wine for $40," Mr. Motto said. "Beyond that, it's something that depends on how discriminating you are, how important it is to your life, how much you can afford."

And just when a winery thinks it has settled on a good price, the weather changes. Mr. Hobbs has not yet set the price for his 2000 and 2001 vintages. The 2000 was less than stellar. He is considering pricing it so it would retail for about $100. The 2001, on the other hand, was a tremendous year. Look for it at about $150.

A lot of labor went into that price. But it is up to you whether it is worth it.

snow in april

can you believe its snowing again? in april!!

'Chemical Ali' Found Dead, British Officer Says

'Chemical Ali' Found Dead, British Officer Says
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Filed at 9:15 a.m. ET
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-War-Chemical-Ali.html

BASRA, Iraq (AP) -- Ali Hassan al-Majid, one of the most brutal members of President Saddam Hussein's inner circle, was apparently killed by an airstrike on his house in Basra, British officials said Monday. He had been dubbed ``Chemical Ali'' by opponents for ordering a 1988 poison gas attack that killed thousands of Kurds.

Maj. Andrew Jackson of the 3rd Battalion Parachute Regiment told The Associated Press that his superiors had reported the death of the man who was Saddam's first cousin, entrusted with defending southern Iraq against invading coalition forces.

Al-Majid apparently was killed on Saturday when two coalition aircraft used laser-guided munitions to attack his house in Basra. Jackson said a body that was thought to be his was found along with that of his bodyguard and the head of Iraqi intelligence services in Basra.

``We have some strong indications that he was killed in the raid,'' said British Defense Secretary Geoff Hoon. ``I cannot yet absolutely confirm the fact that he (al-Majid) is dead, but that would certainly my best judgment of the situation.''

U.S. Brig. Gen. Vincent Brooks, at a daily briefing in Qatar, said he did not have any confirmed reports on whether al-Majid was dead.

Brooks said the coalition had seen evidence of Iraqi leaders in their homes recently and ``we believe that Ali Hassan al-Majid -- 'Chemical Ali'' -- may have been in a home.

``Where we have the opportunity, we may direct an attack against that,'' he said.

Jackson said the apparent discovery of al-Majid's body was one of the reasons the British decided to move infantry into Basra, because they hoped that resistance in the southern Iraqi city might crumble with the top leadership gone.

``The regime is finished. It is over, and liberation is here,'' said Group Capt. Al Lockwood, spokesman for British forces in the Gulf. ``The leadership is now gone in southern Iraq.''

Believed to be in his fifties, al-Majid led a 1988 campaign against rebellious Kurds in northern Iraq in which whole villages were wiped out. An estimated 100,000 Kurds, mostly civilians, were killed.

Al-Majid also has been linked to the bloody crackdown on Shiites in southern Iraq after their uprising following the 1991 Gulf War. Prior to that, he served as governor of Kuwait during Iraq's seven-month occupation of its neighbor in 1990-1991 -- an invasion that led to the Gulf War.

Human rights groups had called for al-Majid's arrest on war crimes charges when he toured Arab capitals last January seeking to rally support against mounting U.S. pressure on Saddam's regime.

``Al-Majid is Saddam Hussein's hatchet man,'' Kenneth Roth, head of Human Rights Watch in New York, said at the time. ``He has been involved in some of Iraq's worst crimes, including genocide and crimes against humanity.''

Hazem al-Youssefi, Cairo representative of the opposition Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, described al-Majid as a standout in a regime of criminals.

Al-Majid was a warrant officer and motorcycle messenger in the army before Saddam's Baath party led a coup in 1968. He was promoted to general and served as defense minister from 1991-95, as well as a regional party leader.

In 1988, as the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war was winding down, he commanded a scorched-earth campaign to wipe out a Kurdish rebellion in northern Iraq. Later, he boasted about the attacks, including the March 16, 1988, poison gas strike on the village of Halabja, where an estimated 5,000 people died.

During April 1991 peace talks in Baghdad, the Kurdish delegation leader, Jalal Talabani, told al-Majid that more than 200,000 Kurds lost their lives in the Iraqi campaign. Al-Majid replied that the figure was exaggerated and the dead were not more than 100,000, according to Arab press reports.

After Iraq's 1991 Shiite Muslim uprising was crushed, Iraqi opposition groups released a video they said had been smuggled out of southern Iraq. In the video, which was shown on several Arab TV networks, al-Majid was seen executing captured rebels with pistol shots to the head and kicking others in the face as they sat on the ground.

He was no less brutal with his own family.

His nephew and Saddam's son-in-law, Lt. Gen. Hussein Kamel, was in charge for many years of Iraq's clandestine weapons programs before defecting in 1995 to Jordan with his brother, Saddam Kamel, who was married to Saddam's other daughter.

Both brothers were lured back to Iraq in February 1996 and killed on their uncle's orders, together with several other family members.

Syria and Lebanon ignored international calls to arrest al-Majid when he visited in January. He dropped scheduled stops in Jordan and Egypt -- both U.S. allies. Egypt refused to receive him and the Jordanian government denied a visit was ever planned.

--------

Associated Press writer Maamoun Youssef contributed to this report from Cairo, Egypt.

in the wasted hollow of her hand

Athanasia
from Poems (1881)
by Oscar Wilde (1854–1900)

To that gaunt House of Art which lacks for naught
Of all the great things men have saved from Time,
The withered body of a girl was brought
Dead ere the world's glad youth had touched its prime,
And seen by lonely Arabs lying hid
In the dim womb of some black pyramid.

But when they had unloosed the linen band
Which swathed the Egyptian's body, - lo! was found
Closed in the wasted hollow of her hand
A little seed, which sown in English ground
Did wondrous snow of starry blossoms bear
And spread rich odours through our spring-tide air.

With such strange arts this flower did allure
That all forgotten was the asphodel,
And the brown bee, the lily's paramour,
Forsook the cup where he was wont to dwell,
For not a thing of earth it seemed to be,
But stolen from some heavenly Arcady.

In vain the sad narcissus, wan and white
At its own beauty, hung across the stream,
The purple dragon-fly had no delight
With its gold dust to make his wings a-gleam,
Ah! no delight the jasmine-bloom to kiss,
Or brush the rain-pearls from the eucharis.

For love of it the passionate nightingale
Forgot the hills of Thrace, the cruel king,
And the pale dove no longer cared to sail
Through the wet woods at time of blossoming,
But round this flower of Egypt sought to float,
With silvered wing and amethystine throat.

While the hot sun blazed in his tower of blue
A cooling wind crept from the land of snows,
And the warm south with tender tears of dew
Drenched its white leaves when Hesperos up-rose
Amid those sea-green meadows of the sky
On which the scarlet bars of sunset lie.

But when o'er wastes of lily-haunted field
The tired birds had stayed their amorous tune,
And broad and glittering like an argent shield
High in the sapphire heavens hung the moon,
Did no strange dream or evil memory make
Each tremulous petal of its blossoms shake?

Ah no! to this bright flower a thousand years
Seemed but the lingering of a summer's day,
It never knew the tide of cankering fears
Which turn a boy's gold hair to withered grey,
The dread desire of death it never knew,
Or how all folk that they were born must rue.

For we to death with pipe and dancing go,
Nor would we pass the ivory gate again,
As some sad river wearied of its flow
Through the dull plains, the haunts of common men,
Leaps lover-like into the terrible sea!
And counts it gain to die so gloriously.

We mar our lordly strength in barren strife
With the world's legions led by clamorous care,
It never feels decay but gathers life
From the pure sunlight and the supreme air,
We live beneath Time's wasting sovereignty,
It is the child of all eternity.

Sound of Guns Heralds Ground War in Baghdad

Sound of Guns Heralds Ground War in Baghdad
By JOHN F. BURNS
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/04/07/international/worldspecial/07BAGH.html

BAGHDAD, Iraq, April 6 — After being subjected to two weeks of relentless bombing that has destroyed many of the power centers of President Saddam Hussein's government, the Iraqi capital found itself today deep into the ground battle that promises to be the decisive phase of America's war to topple the Iraqi leader.

From the heart of the capital, a new cacophony of battle signaled the shift from a war fought primarily from the air to one where the outcome will depend increasingly on American ground troops.

The earth-shaking devastation of bombs and missiles was mostly stilled on Sunday, overtaken by the more distant sounds of artillery and rocket fire, by the staccato of machine-gun and rifle bursts, and by the scream of American jets flying what appeared to be low-level ground support missions.

Most of the fighting appeared to be concentrated away to the southwest of the city, in the area of what, until its capture by American troops on Friday, was Saddam International Airport.

Now symbolically stripped of the Iraqi leader's name by the Americans, the airport has become a magnetic point on the personal compass of almost everybody in this city of 4.5 million people, whether the hard core of loyalists to Mr. Hussein or the increasingly venturous Iraqis, numerous if not yet demonstrably a majority, who have begun to shake off decades of fear and to whisper hauntingly that they wait anxiously for the end.

The government has up to now held to its official line, even since the capture of the airport three days ago: the Americans, the information minister has repeated with a cherubic air at daily news conferences, have fallen into the Iraqi trap by advancing to the gates of the city.

But for those listening for shifts, for the minor notes that rise even as the major ones pound out the familiar theme, there have been hints of a wavering certainty.

Today, the minister, Muhammad Said al-Sahhaf, was no longer contending, as he did on Saturday, that the Americans had been routed from the airport by an Iraqi counterattack, and divided into isolated pockets where they were surrendering en masse. Instead, he told a news conference, the Republican Guards were "tightening the noose around the U.S. enemy in the area surrounding the airport," having killed 50 American soldiers and destroyed six American tanks.

This appeared to be a subtle but important shift, an acknowledgment that American forces really are close by and ready to fight. As for the citizens of Baghdad, the question being posed by many is this: when will American tanks and infantry try to storm the city, not as they did for a few hours early Saturday, but in earnest, with intent to seize the city's heart, to haul down the Iraqi flag that still flutters atop the Republican Palace.

To Mr. Hussein's die-hard supporters, the very notion that the Iraqi ruler's days might be numbered remains unthinkable, or at least inadmissible. But today the information minister's talk of the "scoundrels" and "villains" and "criminals" who have invaded Iraq was in a lesser key, subordinated to more pressing, more practical concerns. Iraqis, he said, should be on the lookout everywhere for the enemy, and "should not ignore" sightings of American units, or fail to report them to the Iraqi military.

From the official Iraqi standpoint, Mr. Sahhaf has made himself the media star of the war, if anybody other than Mr. Hussein would dare claim that distinction for himself.

A sort of Iraqi Donald H. Rumsfeld with the rhetorical flourishes of Soviet-era Moscow, he likes to muse on stage, developing his thrusts, amusing himself with his caustic wit at the Americans' expense.

But he was in a distinctly more sober mood today. In a statement read on state television, he said Iraqis should not be prey to "rumors," especially of a kind that suggested that American forces were gaining the upper hand.

The allies, he said, "might attempt to release rumors, believing that they can cause confusion, and tell lies, asserting that there is a landing here and there."

At about the time this statement was being broadcast, Iraqis who had filled up at a Baghdad gas station were reporting that drivers arriving from points west and northwest of the city were telling of seeing American paratroopers descending from the sky alongside the access roads that American commanders, in Qatar, were saying they were seizing so as to tighten the encirclement of Baghdad. There was no way of knowing if these sighting were merely the work of the imaginations of the drivers.

Mr. Sahhaf had other words of advice, and warning. Iraqi fighters, he said, should refrain from firing their guns in Baghdad "for no reason," as many appear to have done through the prolonged heavy bombing, conducted from an altitude that made the endless rattle of antiaircraft guns and automatic rifle seem more like a reaffirmation of vulnerability than an act of meaningful defense.

But if this sounded like an appeal for conserving ammunition, there was an intriguing, slightly menacing, counterpoint. With the enemy in Baghdad, he said, it was the duty now for "anybody who wants to do so to use his weapon," and anybody who failed to do so would be considered "cursed." Violators, he said, would not be treated leniently.

Later in the day, Mr. Hussein himself weighed in, in the form of a message to Iraqi fighters read on television. The smiling Iraqi leader was shown in his field marshal's uniform presiding at a meeting with senior officials that was said to have taken place today.

In a film broadcast on Friday that showed Mr. Hussein, or a double, strolling about some of Baghdad's western neighborhoods, the message was of a leader on top of his game, full of beaming, hand-slapping, climb-on-the-car-hood geniality.

But the statement read on his behalf today suggested an awareness that the Iraqi Army was not getting its job done. First, the statement said that anybody who destroyed an allied tank, armored personnel carrier or artillery gun would be awarded 15 million Iraqi dinars, about $5,000. Second, any Iraqi fighter losing touch with his unit during battle "let him join a unit of the same kind that he is able to join."

To some Iraqis, this sounded like a warning against giving up when units are decimated by American firepower, as American commanders have reported Iraqi soldiers and paramilitaries doing in droves. Reporters traveling with American units pushing north to Baghdad have described roadsides littered with abandoned combat boots and uniforms, and large numbers of young men in civilian clothes waving white strips of cloth.

In the effort to show Iraqi defenses as holding, and even prevailing, the Information Ministry organized a press tour of a sole, burned-out American M1A1 Abrams tank that had been abandoned on an expressway during the probing reconnaissance that a unit of the Third Infantry Division conducted on Saturday.

The tank, presumably, was one of the six that Mr. Sahhaf claimed as trophies of Iraq's counterattack on the American forces near the airport. An Iraqi officer, Brig. Muhammad Jassim, told reporters that the tank was one of five American tanks destroyed in the battle, the other four having been towed away by the Iraqis to make way for traffic.

The American account acknowledged the loss of one tank.

The Iraqis at the site of the abandoned tank gave another version, one that made the American probe not so much a tour de force as a debacle. Senior army officers joined with officials of the ruling Baath Party in clambering atop the tank and chanting devotions to Mr. Hussein.

"God is great, and to him we owe thanks," someone had scribbled in Arabic on the blackened hulk. Soldiers were produced to describe the withering fire that had been trained on the Americans, and to affirm that all Iraqis were ready to die for their leader.

The lone tank hardly made the triumphal point Iraqi officials intended, especially when Western newsmen were conducted to the scene along a highway littered with the tangled, burned-out wreckage of at least 30 Iraqi tanks, armored carriers, army trucks, artillery guns and pick-up trucks of the kind favored by the Fedayeen Saddam.

What the tour also showed was that large areas of Baghdad are being turned into a military camp. Tanks, armored cars and artillery guns could be seen posted near bridges, in civilian neighborhoods and alongside the expressways, at places where no major defenses were visible only days ago. Soldiers and paramilitaries were visible digging bunkers. Some flashed victory signs at the Westerners as they drove by.

Fear Reigns as Dangerous Mystery Illness Spreads

Fear Reigns as Dangerous Mystery Illness Spreads
By DENISE GRADY
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/04/07/science/sciencespecial/07SARS.html

Last November in Foshan, a small industrial city in southern China's Guangdong province, a businessman became desperately ill with an unusual type of pneumonia. Doctors could not identify the germ that was making him sick. Ominously, although pneumonia is not usually very contagious, the four health workers who treated him also fell gravely ill with the same disease.

Now, scientists say, the Foshan businessman appears to have had the earliest known case of SARS, or severe acute respiratory syndrome, which has since become an international epidemic. As of Saturday, 2,416 people in 20 countries were reported to have the disease, and 89 had died. An overwhelming majority of cases were in mainland China, with 1,220, and Hong Kong, with 800.

The cause of the disease is unknown, but scientists suspect it is a new coronavirus, from a family of highly changeable viruses that until now have been known to cause only minor illnesses in people, like colds and diarrhea.

SARS was brewing in Guangdong province for months, but was not disclosed by the Chinese government until February, when it began reporting cases to the World Health Organization. The businessman's case was made known just last week, when Chinese officials finally agreed to open their case books and hospitals to international experts. The businessman recovered, but Chinese officials have not discussed what happened to those who took care of him, nor have they said where or how he might have contracted the disease.

The rest of the world did not know about SARS until March 15, when the W.H.O. issued an alert, calling the disease a ``worldwide health threat.'' Since then, fear of SARS has led many countries and corporations to halt tourism and business travel to China, Hong Kong, Vietnam and Singapore, and is expected to cost the region billions of dollars. And a single traveler from Hong Kong to a Toronto suburb is believed responsible for an outbreak in Ontario that has already claimed eight lives.

Efforts to control the disease in Hong Kong appeared to be making headway last week, but the progress may have been short-lived, as cases jumped sharply over the weekend. There were 42 new cases reported yesterday, in addition to 39 on Saturday and 27 on Friday - a total of 108. The new cases included doctors and nurses. Two women aged 68 and 71 died, bringing the number of deaths in Hong Kong to 22.

Health experts say it is too soon to tell whether SARS will turn into a global wildfire, or cool down. But scientists insist the disease must be treated as an urgent public health threat. What worries epidemiologists is that SARS can spread rapidly through the air, via coughing and sneezing, and its death rate of 3 to 4 percent is significant, particularly when healthy people are among those who have died.

In the United States, there were 115 suspected cases, in people who had traveled to the affected areas or had been exposed to travelers. No one had died. So far, experts say, most Americans do not have to worry about catching the disease, but scientists warn that a pandemic is still possible.

Public anxiety about SARS appears to be increasing, with a hotline at the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta receiving more than 1,000 calls a day late last week. The nervousness took other forms as well. cobi3Mcoei, the largest maker of disposable masks, said sales had ``significantly increased'' because of SARS.

People of all ages have caught SARS. The illness typically starts like any other acute respiratory infection: with a fever, chills, headache, malaise and dry cough. Chest X-rays tend to show what doctors call ``atypical pneumonia'' in a lower lobe of a lung. In the following days, a victim may develop difficulty breathing as the pneumonia spreads to another lobe.

About five to seven days after onset, the symptoms improve in about 80 to 90 percent of patients and worsen in the remainder. Many of the sickest patients require intensive care, even to the point of being connected to a respirator. Why some people improve and others die is not known. So far, it appears that people most susceptible to severe symptoms are 40 or older and those who have had a chronic disease in the past. Aside from regular nursing care and help in breathing, there is no effective treatment, and recovery seems to depend on a patient's own immune system.

Economically, a Potent Impact

SARS may have spread at jet speed with air travelers, but fear of the respiratory disease is traveling even faster, hurting businesses and economies around the globe.

The disease's economic consequences are still modest in North America and Europe. But SARS is clearly slowing growth in east Asia, which, at least until the last three weeks, had been one of the few regions in the world with briskly expanding economies.

On Wednesday, Morgan Stanley cited SARS in lowering its forecast for economic growth in Asia, aside from Japan, to 4.5 percent this year, from 5.1 percent. The lower estimate reflected an analysis that the disease would cut about $15 billion in business this year, mainly from less tourism and lower retail sales.

Andy Xie, a Morgan Stanley economist, cautioned in a report that the actual economic effect could be considerably greater. ``We believe this medical crisis is the gravest since the 1998 Asian crisis,'' he warned, referring to a drop in the value of Thailand's currency that set off a series of devastating financial crises across southeast Asia.

Airlines and hotel chains have been hurt the most by the SARS outbreak. The resulting losses are hurting even strong travel companies, like cobiCathay Pacificcoei, Hong Kong's main airline. The disease may have been the final blow for some already troubled businesses, like cobiAir Canadacoei, which filed for bankruptcy on Tuesday.

``We anticipated war, we didn't anticipate this,'' said Vivian Deuschl, a spokeswoman for the Ritz Carlton Hotel Company, a cobiMarriottcoei subsidiary.

The harm is not confined to the travel industry. Business has plunged at stores and restaurants in heavily affected cities like Hong Kong, Singapore and Toronto, as well as in locations inaccurately perceived as affected, like the Chinatowns in New York and San Francisco. Electronics companies have struggled to stay in touch with their operations in China, one of the world's largest producers of computers and wireless local area networks.

Hardest hit have been retailers in Hong Kong. Customers have simply stopped coming into the store of Peter Chan, who sells bronze and ceramic Buddhas across the street from the Man Mo Temple, where clouds of incense billowed last week as Taoists prayed for an end to the disease.

``I have been working in this field for more than 20 years and I have never seen such a bad situation before, not even after 9/11,'' Mr. Chan said.

One big worry is that, as hospitals - in Hong Kong in particular - become flooded with SARS patients, the quality of medical care over all will decline. The State Department said that part of its reason for offering free tickets out for nonessential diplomats and diplomatic families was ``concerns over our ability to obtain suitable medical care.''

Adding up all these disparate effects has proved a guessing game for economists. A few, like Stephen Roach at Morgan Stanley, say that SARS could make the difference in tipping the world into a recession if the war in Iraq also becomes prolonged.

A Suspect From the Ranks of Minor Illnesses

No one is certain what causes SARS, but a microbe known as a coronavirus is the chief suspect, most likely a new strain that originated in Guangdong province.

Coronaviruses take their name from their appearance under the electron microscope: a circular, crownlike shape with protruding spikes. Until now, these viruses were thought to produce only minor illnesses in people, like colds, diarrhea and other intestinal disorders. In cats, dogs, chickens, pigs and cattle, coronaviruses cause severe and often fatal illness.

All coronaviruses have an extraordinary ability to capture stray bits of genetic material from related viruses and weave them into their own genomes, a feat biologists call recombination. Such natural recombination favors the creation of new viruses, and in theory could turn a benign microbe into a biological time bomb.

For a virus already inclined to transform into new identities, there could be no better environment than southern China. The region is known to be one of the world's great incubators of new viruses, particularly influenza. Though coronaviruses are not related to influenza, scientists said that coronaviruses could easily take advantage of the same conditions that make the region the birthplace of new flu strains.

Southern China is populated by millions of farmers living on small plots of land in close quarters with pigs, ducks, chickens and other livestock - ideal for passing microbes back and forth between species and for viruses to swap genetic material.

Gene swapping is not the only way a new coronavirus could emerge. Another possibility is that an earlier version of the virus, one that did not cause severe illness in people, underwent a genetic mutation making it more virulent. It is also possible that an animal virus ``jumped'' to humans. Such jumps are known to occur, sometimes with severe consequences.

Coronaviruses became the chief suspect in SARS when scientists used a device called a gene chip, or microarray, to scan tissue samples from disease victims. The chip is a glass slide containing bits of genetic material from about 1,000 viruses. If the tissue sample contains genetic material from any of them, it will stick to the corresponding bit on the slide.

When tissue samples from SARS victims were scanned, the slides indicated matches with coronaviruses not only from humans, but also ones that normally infect turkeys and cows - suggesting a strain that has never been seen before.

Epidemic Aided by an Official Silence

In November and December, outbreaks of the mysterious disease cropped up repeatedly in cities in Guangdong province, including Zhongshan and Guangzhou. By January, local doctors were investigating what they believed was a new kind of ``atypical pneumonia.'' But the Chinese government and its state-controlled press said nothing of the evolving panic in Guangdong and for months, little information seeped to the outside world.

Finally, on Feb. 9, the World Health Organization received its first report from China. Before the end of the month, cases had popped up in Hong Kong and Hanoi, and in March, one infected traveler from Hong Kong caused an outbreak that led to 7 deaths and included more than 150 suspected and probable cases. By early March, the disease had begun to spread swiftly among hospital workers in Hong Kong and Hanoi.

By mid-March, it was clear that a highly contagious disease was poised to begin seeding around the world. Officials at the W.H.O. realized they had to take drastic action, even though that action might have devastating economic consequences in Asia and elsewhere.

``Hong Kong is an international airline hub,'' said Dr. David Heymann, the organization's executive director of communicable diseases. ``We had to let other countries know that this was coming. And we had to let passengers know what the disease was as well, so that if they got it they could tell their doctors and get themselves isolated.''

On March 15, the W.H.O. took the highly unusual step of issuing the global health alert, describing the new disease and where it had been found.

``It was a pretty radical decision, and I didn't sleep that night because I knew that what we were doing was going to have a lot of different repercussions,'' Dr. Heymann said.

Last week, after months of international pressure, a team from the W.H.O. was finally permitted to go to Guangdong. But until the past two weeks, health officials in China were not only unwilling to share their data, but denied that the four-month-long pneumonia outbreak affecting Guangdong had anything to do with SARS.

Chinese doctors have the longest and deepest experience in dealing with the new pneumonia, and their lack of cooperation greatly hampered the investigation into a developing worldwide health crisis.

On Friday, the head of China's Centers for Disease Control and Prevention offered an apology for at least some of its prior inaction: ``Today, we apologize here to all of you that our health departments did not have enough close cooperation with the media,'' Li Liming told Chinese reporters.

Still, he did not explain why, for most of the epidemic, Chinese reporters were explicitly banned from reporting about it. Also, while Chinese newspapers began publishing articles on SARS this week, there were still strict limits on what could be covered. For example, the reports did not mention Dr. Li's apology.

Such signs of ambivalence have left many scientists and citizens skeptical that the Chinese are being completely candid even as they release daily updates of new cases to the W.H.O., starting last week. While doctors say there are more than 50 people with SARS being treated at Beijing's main infectious disease hospital, yesterday's statistics from China acknowledge only 19 confirmed cases and 4 deaths in Beijing.

The most recent death was a Geneva-based official of the United Nations International Labor Organization, Pekka Aro, 53, who traveled to China after spending a week in Bangkok in mid-March. Mr. Aro, whom health officials in Beijing said had no known exposure to anyone with the disease, arrived in Beijing on March 23 aboard a Thai Airlines flight and took ill on March 28. He was hospitalized on Wednesday at Ditan Hospital, an infectious disease hospital in Beijing, because doctors at the international clinic he visited suspected SARS.

He died there on Saturday of respiratory failure. Doctors in China insist that he had acquired SARS before arriving in China. China's Ministry of Health still says that there is no evidence that the disease can be acquired in Beijing.

What is clear, though, is that Chinese doctors knew a lot about SARS long before it had a name or had left China's borders, and chose not to share that information for many months. After the initial spate of outbreaks, doctors fully understood that they were dealing with a new and potentially fatal disease that spread far more easily than ordinary atypical pneumonias.

One lung specialist from Guangzhou wrote to friends in January that he would have to cancel all conference plans because he was so consumed with controlling the mystery pneumonia.

On Feb. 3, at the Zhongshan Number 3 Hospital, a 10-year-old boy - later nicknamed the ``poison emperor'' - came to the emergency department with pneumonia.

Two weeks later, six health care workers had been infected and two - a doctor and an ambulance driver - were dead, a doctor at the hospital said.

Around the same time a severely ill man in his 40's from the suburbs of Guangzhou came for help to Zhongshan Number 2 Hospital. By the middle of the month, the hospital had an entire ward filled with doctors and nurses as patients, most infected by this one man.

Experts at the W.H.O. now believe that many, if not most, of SARS cases may be attributable to a small number of people who passed on the disease with great efficiency - so-called superspreaders.

Many hospitals in Guangdong developed strict infection control procedures, including quarantines and use by medical personnel of gowns, gloves, shoe covers and masks for any contact with pneumonia patients. With such efforts, doctors said, new cases have slowly declined and SARS wards are emptying.

But China did not share its knowledge with the rest of the world. And sick patients continued to travel.

One of those, a 64-year-old doctor who worked at Zhongshan Number 2 Hospital, left China for Hong Kong in late February. He apparently was a superspreader and helped to ignite the outbreak that is raging there. He died in March, but before he did, he is believed to have infected eight people on his floor at Hong Kong's Metropole Hotel and, health officials now believe, far more at other locations as well.

By mid-March, with SARS circling the globe, China could no longer suppress its data.

Two weeks ago, China began cooperating with a W.H.O. team that is now working in Guangzhou. Just last week, the Ministry of Health began producing the daily reports of new cases and deaths. Suddenly, after months of taboo, the state-controlled media is discussing SARS and ways to prevent it. But it will take some time to win the confidence back among foreign businesses, tourists and the ordinary Chinese as well.

Leaping the Pacific To Land in Canada

The disease came to Canada in March by way of Sui-chu Kwan, an elderly immigrant, who was returning from Hong Kong to her home in Scarborough, a Toronto suburb. She had apparently contracted the disease while staying on the ninth floor of the Metropole Hotel in Hong Kong, the epicenter of a large outbreak. Sui-chi Kwan died at home on March 5, then of unknown causes.

Then a week later her son, Chi Kwai Tse, 44, was stricken with the disease and died at Scarborough Grace Hospital, which became the epicenter of SARS in Toronto. His wife also died. Two other offspring of Sui-chu Kwan, a daughter and a son, also got sick but later recovered. This family is the origin of SARS in Toronto, and they passed the disease to other patients and health care workers.

Ontario health officials are hopeful that the disease has been contained, and so far all 160 probable and suspected SARS cases in Canada have been related to the original cluster. Eight people have died so far, at least five of whom were in their 70's, and all had previous health problems. Six more people are in critical condition.

Still, local health officials have become increasingly optimistic, and on Friday were happy to report that there were only three new cases in Toronto, an apparently slowing of the disease. Throughout Canada, there were 187 suspect and probable cases as of Friday, up from 178 on Thursday.

About 3,000 people have been put in isolation in Canada, the vast majority in the Toronto area. Among those in quarantine was Dr. Mark Loeb, an infectious disease specialist and medical microbioloigst and epidemiologist at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ont.

Dr. Loeb was quarantined for 10 days because he had been exposed to a health-care worker who came down with SARS. In an interview, he said he did not expect to fall ill himself, but had taken the possibility seriously enough to send his wife and children off to stay with relatives before he would even return to his home.

And, he admitted, ``I take my temperature about seven times a day. Not that I'm anxious, but when you're in quarantine there are only so many things you can do.''