Today in the morning the Russian aviation recommenced bombing of mountains settlements in Botlikh region of Dagestan, where Islam commanders from Chechnya fortified their positions. The artillery bombardment of their positions is still continued. The Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs informs about mined possible ways of commanders� retreat. According to Interfax agency, the commander of the troops Shamil Basaev declared the start of �a new military campaign within the next 60 hours.� No details are mentioned. The commanders of Russian forces in Dagestan announced that they did not consider Basaev�s word serious. According to the Russian Immigration Service, the region, where the military actions take place, has been left by ten thousand refugees.
India has the possibilities to produce a neutron bomb, the chairman of the Commission on Atomic Energy of India Rajagopala Chidambaram announced today. According to Mr. Chidambaram, any nuclear weapon of any capacity may be produced in India. In the last year, having blown the first H-bomb, India declared the moratorium on nuclear tests. Another Indian representative, the director of the Nuclear Researches Centre Anil Kakodar recently stated that the moratorium on tests did not mean stoppage of works in nuclear weapons field.
It is impossible to deprive North Korea of food aid. This was announced today by the executive director of the World Food Program Katrin Bertini. According to Mrs. Bertini, the rejection to help North Korea would mean a death sentence to millions of families living there. Pyongyang is going to test a ballistic rocket. In response to this USA, Japan and South Korea are threatening with economic sanctions. According to experts of the Program, one-third part of the population of PDRK (about 8 million people) needs the urgent food help.
Aug 16
(Radio �Liberty�)
Experts of Hamburg Institute of Economic Researches suppose that oil prices will continue to grow in the world�s market. They state that now, from 1985, oil prices have come to the maximum level and are more than US$ 20 per barrel. In comparison with February 1999, when a price of one barrel was not higher than US$ 10, the price growth is 50%. The absolute record (US$ 35 per barrel) was achieved during the Persian Gulf war. �The present growth of prices was caused by the last agreement concluded the organisation of countries-oil exporters (OPEC), which for the first time and successfully agreed on restrictions of oil production,� one of the experts said.
Aug 16
(�RosBusinessConsulting�)
By Paul Goble
Washington, August 13
(RFE/RL)
An international journalism watchdog organization has identified 20 countries as enemies of the Internet because of their extraordinary efforts to block access to this new means of communication.
In a statement released this week, the Paris-based Reporters sans Frontiers said that these countries not only force subscribers to use a state-controlled Internet Service Provider, but actively work to limit access to this medium by censoring websites or taking actions against users.
Among the very worst, this group said, were the communist regimes in China, Cuba, North Korea, and Vietnam, the post-Soviet states of Azerbaijan, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan, and the authoritarian regimes in Burma, Iran, Iraq, Libya, Saudi Arabia, Sierra Leone, Sudan, Syria, and Tunisia.
China is typical of the approach of the four communist countries. Alarmed by the growth of Internet use, Beijing has stepped up its monitoring of all those with access. It has closed some 300 cybercafes in Shanghai alone and sent one computer user to jail for two years after he provided the e-mail addresses of 300,000 Chinese to a dissident website.
The post-Soviet states vary more widely, the French group said, but most of them seek to limit access either by maintaining tight control over providers, as in Belarus and Tajikistan, or ensuring that access is so expensive, as in Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, that few people can take advantage of it.
The very worst of these seven countries, the report said, is Turkmenistan, which remains a virtual Internet �black hole.�
And the other authoritarian countries diverge more widely still in their techniques, if not their commitment to keeping their populations from going on-line. Libya, for example, bans all access to the Internet. Syria prohibits individuals from using it. Burma requires, under penalty of imprisonment, that all computer owners register with the state.
Iran censors the Internet in the same way that it does other media. The authorities have installed filters blocking access to sites covering such topics as Israel, sexuality, or criticism of the Islamic republic. And Iraq denies the population it controls all access to the Internet. Baghdad officials are permitted to go on-line, but only via servers located in Jordan.
The efforts of all these states to control Internet access, the Reporters sans Frontiers report concludes, in fact highlights the growing importance of the Internet and the threat it poses to all governments who seek to deny their people access to information.
But this growth in the Internet, the report continues, should not lead to complacency on the part of those concerned about human freedom. That is because the Internet is now a �two-edged sword:� It provides people with more information, but it also gives governments yet another means of monitoring their citizens.
And because of that, Reporters sans Frontiers concludes its report with an appeal for the governments of these 20 countries to abolish state monopolies on Internet access, end registration requirements for computers, abolish censorship via the use of filters, protect the confidentiality of e-mail, and end the persecution of Internet users.
Moreover, it specially urges that Burma, China, Cuba, Kazakhstan, Saudi Arabia and Tajikistan ratify the UN International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and that these and the other governments live up to its provisions.
The most significant of the covenant�s provisions, the French group argues, is that �everyone shall have the right to receive and impart information and ideas of all kinds, regardless of frontiers.�
By Alessandro RAIMONDI
(THE GLOBE)
Few years ago a disquieting movie starred by Gregory Peck and Laurence Olivier dramatically conveyed attention towards a problem that up to that moment could only be considered science fiction. �Brazil�s boys� (the title of that film, or something similar) was about a cloning experiment conducted by a criminal nazi doctor to duplicate Adolph Hitler in due time.
At that time I think the public heard for the first time of words such as �genetic cloning� or �mother cell�, and even discomforted by the possible challenge it discarded it as a utopian dream.
Yet 25 years or so later such a utopian stuff risks to become a nightmare for the world-to-be. Genetics studies have advanced so much as to arise the interest of big business into the matter. Tests such as the one that has created Dolly, the first-ever-cloned-animal, have opened tremendous possibilities to the pharmaceutical industry of advanced countries such as the US or the UK.
Dolly, in fact, was born in Britain while from America have come news of possible cloned humans! Not by chance, of course, but following a path that has been deeply rooted into R&D practice.
In other words a geneticist such as Richard Seed of Harvard University has astonished the world with his outstanding declaration �I�ll clone my wife�! Mind you, he wasn�t joking, he meant it. Sure, it�s not that easy, but experts say it�s already technically possible to duplicate a human being...
Genetics has covered giant steps in recent years: a lady has become mother for the first time at 62 in Italy, and an in-vitro children generation is being formed in the West, but what�s being aimed right now seems to be too daring and somewhat off balance. Professor Seed�s announcement has just been duplicated �allow me the use of such verb � by that of scientists at �Geron� (California) and �ACT� (Massachussetts), who expect the year 2001 to be the one that will see the advent of the �homo clonatus�, or as the media dubbed it, the Xerox baby, with a clear allusion to the duplicating faculty of the famous brand of photocopy machines.
Believe it or not, liking it or else, the future is now and we have to cope with it, even if we have to engage with ethical and religious aspects so complicated.
Europeans, as I believe most of other human beings are, are puzzled at best, there�s not a clear tendency yet: to have a photocopy baby it�s still considered as remote as vacationing on the Moon. Yet the uneasiness over the issue is palpable and reactions are starting to be picked up. Of course, much of them are being formed on the basis of acquired information � irksome indeed � but others are just casted out of sensations often influenced by religious belief or traditional thinking.
The issue lays indeed on the use of the cloning practice. According to �Geron� and �ACT�, the two American private companies engaged in cloning studies and experiments, their researchers �have cloned the first human embryos for therapeutical purposes�. The reader will excuse me for possible inaccuracy I may run into, but I�m still a unique piece, the original version of myself, unduplicated yet and as such still bearing all imperfections of mine.
Back to serious stuff, those cloned human embryos should be used to extract mother cells to fight devastating diseases such as Parkinson�s disease and diabetes, to mention only a few. Point is, argue those against the cloning practice, that there�s no scientific demarcation between �therapeutic cloning� and �reproductive cloning� so that developments obtained in the former may be immediately transferred to the latter �et voila les joeux sont faites�, another baby Hitler could be... produced.
Out of jest but above all being nor with detractors neither with supporters of cloning, it has to be said that once the cloning tecnique of human embryos to obtain staminal cells will be improved, those embryos can be inserted in a woman�s uterus to let her generate a baby.
The debate has just started but rather focusing on ethics than on scientific openings: is it correct � some suggest � to go on with unnatural practices such as human cloning, which may be considered a way to eliminate �different� individuals, when in nature diversity is such an invaluable advantage?
It seems that each single person oneness is a tabou not to be challenged, but nowadays genetics knowledge poses serious doubts on the survival of such a unique prerogative. Disciplined and meticulous studies on the matter, have brought the conclusion that not only immature cells taken from an embryo can be artificially developed, as believed up to now. Indeed even adult cells, much less flexible than those taken from embryos, can be used, once inserted into a mother cell, to create a replica being, as the Dolly experiment proved.
The absence of a legislation �ad hoc� in all interested countries doesn�t help in planning next moves. In such a vacuum nevertheless the US government has prohibited, to start with, the use of public funds to finance researches on human cloning. Will Europe follow?
All Over the Globe is published by IPA House.
© 1998 IPA House. All Rights Reserved.