Thursday, September 16. 1999
The University Daily Kansan
Section A · Page 9
Nation/World
European Union votes in newest Commission
Parliament warns of executive monitor to protect promises
But despite giving its strong backing, Parliament warned it will monitor the EU executive closely to ensure it does not stray from its promises.
The Associated Press
STRASBOURG, France—The European Union closed a dark chapter of fraud scandals and financial wrongdoing by approving a new executive Commission yesterday. The incoming team promised a new era of openness and transparency.
Commission President Romano Prodi said he will strive during the next five years to bring his administration closer to the Union's citizens, and to cooperate fully with the EU Parliament that voted his team into office.
an overwhelming majority of EU deputies voted in favor of the new Commission - of 591 voters in the 626-member assembly, 414 backed Prodi's team. A total of 142 voted against, and 35 abstained.
Parliament has shown it is determined to play a stronger role in EU affairs since the outgoing commissioners resigned en masse last March after a report uncovered widespread mismanagement in their offices.
Socialist leader Enrique Baron Crespo
said regaining the confidence of EU citizens should now be the main goal of the Commission and the Parliament.
"We have to ensure that we can take the same road together to find the trust that we had before from the citizens," Baron Crespo said. The Socialists have 180 members in Parliament.
Prodi pledged to take into account any legislation put forward by the Parliament. He also promised to consider any complaints the Parliament may have against his commissioners in the future.
Until the institutional crisis erupted, the Parliament's voice had gone largely unheard in EU affairs.
Earlier this month, Prodi's 19 commissioners sat through grueling parliamentary hearings during which they took questions on their moral integrity and political responsibility.
The Parliament has limited powers. For example, it has the power to bring down the Commission but cannot reject individual commissioners.
The commissioners recently published a list of their assets and of their professional activities outside the Commission.
The executive body runs the EU's day-to-day business and proposes Union policy, although most of its decisions need the approval of the 15 member nations.
Prodi has said economic growth, employment and the EU's future expansion will top his Commission's agenda. Ten eastern European countries, Cyprus and Malta have applied for EU membership. These countries are expected to join the Union during the next decade.
NASA to help with new air scooter
The Associated Press
SANTA CLARA, Calif.— It almost sounds too futuristic to be true, but NASA and a Silicon Valley engineer are developing a one-person air scooter that can buzz far above gridlocked streets.
dream is becoming a reality."
"It's an exciting time for all of us involved in this monumental project," said Michael Moshier, an aerospace engineer and former Navy combat pilot who founded Millennium Jet Inc. "We have all been dreaming of such a vehicle for many years, and now the
Moshier has spent more than three years and close to $1 million on his personal flying machine, which can be seen on the company's Web site at www.solotrek.com. For now, it looks like something out of a Jetsons cartoon. But officials at NASA Ames Research Center in Mountain View, Calif., said there's nothing funny about the SoloTrek Exo-Skeletor Flying Vehicle. Plans call for it to go up to 80 mph, climb as high as 10,000 feet and get about 20 miles per gallon of regular gasoline.
"We are genuinely interested in the long-term possibilities for enabling personal vertical flight," said NASA's Aeromechanics branch chief Bill Warmbrodt.
As part of an agreement that was to be formally announced today, NASA will provide engineering, technology and testing, while Millennium Jet will build and eventually market the craft.
To fly a SoloTrek, the pilot stands on two footrests, leans on a sliding backrest and grips handles that control the tilt and speed of Hula Hoop-sized air ducts blowing air at about 45 mph.
Africa finds itself losing battle to AIDS
The Associated Press
LUSAKA, Zambia — AIDS, not war, has turned Africa into a killing field and will wipe out enough adults to create 13 million orphans in the next 18 months, the United Nations children's agency said yesterday.
Such cataclysmic statements at the 11th international AIDS in Africa conference were aimed at prodding African governments — which spend more on defense than on health — to act against the scourge of the continent.
Africa is home to two-thirds of the world's 31 million HIV-infected people. Last year, AIDS killed 2 million Africans, outstripping deaths from armed conflicts on the continent 10-1, said the UNICEF children's fund.
In 15 years, AIDS has killed 11 million
"By any measure, the HIV-AIDS pandemic is the most terrible undeclared war in the world, with the whole of sub-Saharan Africa a killing field," UNICEF executive director Carol Bellamy said on the conference's third day.
Africans, more than 80 percent of the world's AIDS deaths.
Ninety percent of the world's AIDS orphans live in Africa, and most suffer alarmingly higher rates of malnutrition, stunting and illiteracy, UNICEF said. They often die of neglect and are victimized by the stigma surrounding the disease.
The number of child-headed households in rising sharply the UNICEF report said
In many southern African nations up to 25 percent of adults are infected with the AIDS virus — the highest prevalence in the world. In Zambia alone, 90,000 AIDS orphans have been left to fend for themselves on the streets.
Lack of AIDS education is part of the problem, the group said.
More than a quarter of adolescent women south of the Sahara — the group most at risk from infection with the HIV virus that causes AIDS — were unaware of any effective way of avoiding the disease, research has shown. In southern Africa, more than 30 percent of young women thought a healthy-looking person could not be a carrier.
The threat has been worsened, Bellamy said, by the lack of commitment from political leaders to fight AIDS.
The United States spends $880 million fighting about 40,000 new AIDS cases a year. All of Africa spends about $150 million fighting 4 million new cases a year, and only one-tenth of the expenditure comes from governments, Bellamy said.