Thursday, April 30, 1998
The University Daily Kansan
Section A·Page 9
Gore travels to Israel for its 50th anniversary
The Associated Press
WASHINGTON — With only limited hope of persuading Israel and the Palestinians to resume stalled peace negotiations, Vice President Al Gore went to the Middle East yesterday to attend Israel's 50th birthday celebrations and to hold talks with Israeli and Palestinian leaders. Gore also is to meet with leaders in Saudi Arabia and Egypt this weekend.
The timing of Gore's trip is important because it comes on the eve of talks in London brokered by the United States and Britain. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and British officials will hold separate meetings with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat.
In a hopeful sign, Arafat accepted an American proposal yesterday that Israel
withdraw in stages from 13 percent of the West Bank's disputed land. Israeli officials have said Netanyahu will offer no more than 11 percent.
The dispute about how much more land Israel will yield has produced a standoff in the West Bank. Arafat said at the weekend he would press ahead with a declaration of
Gore: Left for the Middle East to aid peace process.
Palestinian statehood if a peace settlement is not negotiated by May 4,1999,the deadline set in framework agreements signed in Oslo,Norway.
woman Hanan Ashraawi told reporters yesterday she saw little chance that Israel would live up to its side of a West Bank pullback deal even if one were worked out in London.
In Washington. Palestinian spokes-
"Even if Netanyahu finds it within himself to recognize that one or two or three percent is not the lincipin of Israeli security, we are confident that there will be all sorts of conditionality clauses and phrases that would provide Israel with the proper justification or rationalization for noncompliance," she said.
Mike McCurry, White House press secretary, discouraged expectation that Gore's trip would produce a breakthrough.
"My expectations were never that this would be a critical moment for decision-making in the process," McCurry said. "But it will lend, we hope, some moment."
tum to the thinking of those who believe now is the time for these parties to be very serious about bridging the gaps in their positions."
McCurry said the primary purpose of Gore's trip was to attend celebrations marking the 50th anniversary of the founding of the Jewish state.
Gore, traveling with his wife, Tipper, was scheduled to arrive in Israel to an official greeting this morning by Netanyahu. The Gores will attend Independence Day events in Jerusalem tonight.
Tomorrow Gore will meet with Netanyahu, hold a joint news conference and will attend a luncheon hosted by Netanyahu. The Gores will fly Friday night to the Red Sea port city of Jiddah, Saudi Arabia, where Gore expects to meet King Fahd on Saturday.
"It will lend, we hope, some momentum to the thinking of those who believe now is the time for these parties to be very serious about bridging the gaps in their positions."
Mike McCurry White House press secretary
Gore will fly Saturday to the West Bank to meet with Arafat, then to Cairo for a meeting Sunday with President Hosni Mubarak before returning to Washington on Monday.
Mammals may predate dinosaurs' extinction
The Associated Press
NEW YORK — Maybe you learned it in school: Mammals waited until the dinosaurs died out before they started diversifying into the variety of major groups seen today.
That's what the fossils say.
That's what the fossils say.
But a new study says it isn't so.
Most of the modern groups, or "orders," of mammals apparently began before the dinosaurs met their doom 65 million years ago, researchers conclude.
The work suggests at least five major lineages, which today include such creatures as rodents, elephants and armadillos, might have appeared more than 100 million years ago.
The results, based on analysis of genes, are presented in Thursday's issue of the journal Nature by S. Blair Hedges and a colleague at Pennsylvania State University. Hedges and coauthors published a similar study in 1996, but their new study includes many more genes.
They looked at 658 genes from 207 kinds of modern animals. They chose genes that accumulate changes over time, apparently at a constant rate, and used them like tiny clocks to estimate when various species arose.
Michael Novacek, curator of vertebrate paleontology at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, said he is skeptical of that approach.
"I think the fact that the fossil record doesn't support this is a serious issue," he said.
Troubles in Israel cast pall over celebrations
The Associated Press
JERUSALEM —To the piercing cry of a ram's horn and the ethereal strains of a biblical harp, Israel ushered in celebrations of its 50th birthday yesterday, marking its anguished rise from the ashes of the Holocaust.
In a twilight ceremony atop Mount Herzl — named for a Zionist visionary who did not live to see the founding of the Jewish state — a dozen torches symbolizing the 12 tribes of Israel were set ablaze.
"Long live the state of Israel!" Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said before red, green and blue fireworks lit the ancient stones of Jerusalem.
But in Israel — a nation not quite at war but hardly at peace — the mood was short of celebratory.
An array of woes — the breakdown of peace talks with the Palestinians, a sharp split between secular and religious Jews, increasing restiveness among the country's 1 million Arab citizens — left many Israelis feeling it was no time to throw a party.
But even amid the doubts and divisions, the anniversary brought heartfelt displays of homegrown pride.
From the rolling green hills of the Galilee to sun-baked towns of the Negev desert, thousands of blue-and-white Israeli flags hung from apartment balconies and fluttered from car windows.
"I feel happy and at home — that's enough for me," said Even Livni, 73, who emigrated from the former Yugoslavia in 1951.
Netanyahu, in an anniversary statement, called Israel a "modern miracle," citing a roll call of cultural, technical and economic accomplishments. Simple survival, of Israel as a state and the Jews as a people in the face of Nazi genocide, headed the list.
From birth, Israel has been besieged—and, critics say, sometimes belligerent and hostile.
Early wars against Arab neighbors were widely seen by Israelis as righteous ones. But later conflicts — the 1982 invasion of Lebanon and the 1987-93 Palestinian uprising — were much more morally ambiguous, profoundly shaking the sense of national purpose.
For many Israelis, the continuing clash
with the Palestinians puts the greatest damper on anniversary festivities. Palestinians regard Israel's creation as "al naqba" — the catastrophe — heralding a half century of struggle and statelessness.
"You have to remember that at the same time (as Israel's independence), we embarked on our disaster," said Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat.
While Israel celebrates, Palestinians are shut out in the most literal sense: passage from the West Bank and Gaza Strip has been blocked for all but emergency medical cases until Saturday night, the end of the holiday weekend.
In a country where security is a constant worry, festivities were under tight guard: roadblocks, snipers, bomb-dispalous squads and thousands of soldiers at sensitive sites.
Israel's birthday — like those of many people in middle age — has brought painful self-examination.
Historians are re-evaluating founding myths. An anniversary television series, sympathetic to Palestinian aspirations even while depicting Arab terrorism, sparked angry debate.
Despite such soul-searching, there is still deen satisfaction in things Israeli.
This country took Hebrew — a language "torn from sleep in the Bible," as poet Yehuda Amichal put it — and made it a modern tongue, expanding its vocabulary fifteenfold.
Street scenes are a vibrant mix of blackhatted Orthodox, gun-toting soldiers, immigrants from Ethiopia and Russia and young professionals hurrying to high-tech jobs.
Israeli have developed a national character all their own: informal and brusque to the point of rudeness, but also warm, sharp-witted and spontaneous.
Not surprisingly, the celebrations themselves are showcasing that character in all its contentiousness.
Squabbles have erupted about everything from a stripease-style gala dance number to the historical emphasis of commemorative events. The chief organizer's job changed hands four times.
Report says accidental nuclear war possible
Even the dress rehearsal for tonight's extravaganza featured a messy emblematic moment: the country's most famous pop diva, Rita, got stuck in a stalled lift delivering her to the stage for her big entrance.
Paper's authors admit scenario not likely intended as a warning
WASHINGTON — A doomsday scenario, written by an anti-nuclear physicians group and published in the New England Journal of Medicine, reads more like a Hollywood script than a scientific paper.
The Associated Press
The first nuclear missiles would come from a rogue Russian submarine making an unauthorized launch. After the first missile broke the surface of the Barents Sea, 6.8 million Americans would have just 30 minutes before a "giant firestorm" turned them to dust. Then all-out nuclear war could break out, erasing billions from Earth.
"There's an assumption of a crew-wide collusion and cooperation." Bruce Blair, one of the paper's authors, acknowledged yesterday. "It would require a conspiracy of some magnitude to pull this off."
The crew not only would have to breach command-and-control protocol, but also would have to gain access to top secret launching codes.
Most experts believe a more plausible scenario for an accidental post-Cold War nuclear confrontation would involve defending against a false warning indicating Russian or U.S. missiles were in the air.
But both the Clinton and Yeltsin administrations have assured the world repeatedly that plenty of safeguards exist.
"We believe there is good command and control of both the U.S. and Russian deployed nuclear weapons that would preclude an accidental launch," said P.J. Crowley, a White House spokesman.
Physicians for Social Responsibility argues in its report that nuclear accidents could happen because Russia and the United States maintain several thousand strategic warheads each, many on high alert. The weapons' targets were symbolically removed in 1994.
The physicians and other health care groups, saying medical facilities would be
overwhelmed by an atomic blast, have been lobbying since the 1960s for elimination of nuclear weapons.
Most of the five-page paper lobbies against atomic arms, making it more of an opinion piece than scientific evaluation, acknowledged Gregory Curtman, a deputy editor of the journal. But Curfman said the paper was reviewed by peers and was published because doctors have an interest in the topic.
"The scenarios we felt were pretty speculative and it contains elements of opinion," he said. "But we decided that if there were one of these accidents, there would be serious health implications to discuss."
Dr. Christine Cassel, a paper co-author, said that after the Cold War, "The public lost interest in the possibility of nuclear war. But the threat, the risk, did not stop. It just changed."
In 1989, Cassel played herself in "The Package," a movie about the possibility of a nuclear holocaust.
"The saga of the Mir space station bears witness to the problems of aging Russian technical systems." the paper notes.
According to the paper's scenario, a Delta-IV sub patrolling the Barents Sea north of Russia launches 16 missiles, each armed with four 100-kilton nuclear warheads — each warhead eight times the strength of Hiroshima.
Assuming a 25 percent failure rate, a dozen missiles would hit eight U.S. cities at night — Washington, New York, Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Pittsburgh, San Francisco and Seattle — killing nearly everyone at ground zero, or 6.8 million people.
"There may be a rare survivor, but essentially everyone dies," said Dr. Ira Helfand, a co-author who estimated another 6 million to 12 million would die of radiation sickness in the following month.
"This could lead to all-out nuclear war," he added. The report said billions could die worldwide.
The bombing would create "a giant firestorm with hurricane-force winds" and boiling air temperatures, followed by deadly epidemics of illness and infectious diseases among refugees, the report said.
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FRIENDS OF THE THEATRE (FROTH) ANNOUNCES AUDITIONS or the fabulous FROTH FOLLIES
A Variety Show, Talent Contest and Benefit for The University Theatre
The first place winner will receive a walk-on role in his/her choice of 90210, Melrose Place, or Seventh Heaven provided courtesy of Spelling Television Productions.
Auditions will be held 1:00 p.m.--5:00 p.m. Saturday and Sunday, May 9 & 10, 1998 Crafton-Preyer Theatre. Murphy Hall
Call (785) 663-1500 by May 9 to sign up for an audition.
FROTH FOLLIES WILL TAKE PLACE ON FRIDAY, JUNE 5, 1998 8:00 p CRAFTON-PREYER THEATRE MURPHY HALL
ALL ARE WELCOME TO AUDITION!