US voters face barrage of ballot initiatives

SAN FRANCISCO, Nov 6: US voters face a barrage of state and local ballot initiatives tomorrow, deciding issues ranging from gun control measures and drug laws to tax policy and school vouchers.

While national attention focuses on the Presidential race and media flock to cover tight Congressional contests, in some 200 separate state initiatives voters will directly decide a plethora of pocketbook issues as well as tricky legal and social questions that politicians are loathe to touch.

Among the most controversial measures today’s ballot is California’s Prop. 38, a major school-funding proposal that aims to lead the nation by setting up the most wide-ranging school voucher plan ever devised.

Despite a hard-fought and heavily financed campaign, boosted by millions of dollars from Tim Draper, the Silicon Valley venture capitalist sponsoring the measure, polls show the proposition likely to fail with voters leery of the plan to give each child 4,000 dollars a year for tuition at any qualifying private school.

Education initiatives are also on the ballot in Washington, where microsoft co-founder Paul Allen is backing a plan to expand the role of independent "charter schools," and in Michigan where voters are being asked to back a more limited school voucher plan.

The emotional issue of gun control will be on the ballot in Colorado, where voters must decide whether to require background checks for handgun purchases at gun shows.

The initiative, which has raised painful memories of the 1999 columbine high school shooting, has been leading at the polls and has widespread political backing, although gun control advocates say it is unconstitutional and have vowed to challenge it in court if it passes. A similar bill in oregon is also being closely watched.

A number of states will also consider changes to their drug policies tomorrow, with Colorado and Nevada voting on whether to join seven other states and the district of columbia in passing ballot measures legalising the personal use of Marijuana for medical reasons.

Alaska, meanwhile, is considering an even broader step under a ballot initiative that would legalise Marijuana for all adult personal use and regulate it like alcohol.

On another side of the drug debate, Californians are being asked whether to mandate treatment — not prison — for many nonviolent drug offences while Massachusetts, Oregon and Utah are considering whether to require police to produce more evidence before confiscating suspects’ property in drug cases.

Gay rights, which has been a persistent issue on state ballots in recent elections, appears again this year as Nebraska and Nevada weigh wether to join a growing list of states that explicitly ban same-sex marriage.

In Alabama, meanwhile, voters may finally put aside a legacy of America’s segregated past by becoming the last state in the union to drop a long-standing, but currently unenforced, ban on inter-racial marriage.

Physician-assisted suicide, a more modern hot-button issue, is on the ballot this year in maine, where the vote is seen as a bellwether in the debate over the issue. Similar measures won in oregon in 1994 but fell in defeat in Michigan in 1998.

"English-only" issues will also face voters this year, with Arizona considering whether to follow california by eliminating bilingual education in state schools. In Utah, meanwhile, a proposal declaring english the official state language has been hotly debated and is expected to pass, which would put Utah among some 25 states with "english-only" laws on the books. (REUTERS)

Fears in last anti-Taleban area of Afghanistan

FAIZABAD (AFGHANISTAN), Nov 6: Classes of boys and girls sit side by side in schools in this remote northeastern corner of Afghanistan, a sight that has disappeared in the 95 per cent of the country that is ruled by the Taliban movement.

Of all the fears expressed in this last enclave of organised opposition to the Taliban, the Islamic group’s radical view of women’s place in society - such as the ban on their public education - is the one most frequently heard.

"If the Taliban come the doors of the school will be closed and we will be at home," said Monira, a young woman teacher at a co-educational school in the old part of Faizabad, capital of impoverished Badakhshan province.

While in Taliban areas women have been largely confined to their homes - and none can have visible jobs like public education - the staff of Badakhshan schools are evenly split between men and women.

In the capital, 60 per cent of teachers are women, Qudrattallah Dur Khany, head of education in the province, said proudly of the system he has been part of for decades.

The battle that could determine whether this continues is under way about 100 km to the west around the city of Taloqan, which was the capital of the anti-Taliban alliance until its capture in September forced officials to Faizabad.

"One month ago there was a lot of concern because there was warm weather, which is good for fighting," said Fawzia Koofi, a representative of the UN Childrens Fund who is from Faizabad and makes no secret of her concern about a Taliban victory.

But instead of the rapid Taliban advance on the last pocket of resistance that many expected, their forces have spent the past month on the defensive. Ahmad Shah Masood, the military brains keeping President Burhanuddin Rabbani’s Government alive, has been pushing back into captured territory in a campaign he maintains will lead to the retaking of Taloqan.

Despite Masood’s genius for guerrilla warfare demonstrated against the soviets in the 1980s, those who have seen both sides of the lines are not convinced he has the military strength needed to retake a city that the Taliban have been reinforcing for weeks.

The arrival of occasional Russian-made aircraft at the corrugated-metal runway built by the Soviet Army - when it was fighting Masood - is a reminder that he now gets supplies from countries like Iran and Russia that oppose a Taliban victory.

But the numbers do not favour Masood. Neutral observers believe his forces are outnumbered five to one in the Taloqan area. While he has scoured the area for new troops, the Taliban have 95 per cent of Afghanistan as a recruiting ground - not counting the large number they raise among their fellow pushtun tribesmen inside neighbouring Pakistan.

Pakistan, despite official denials, is assumed to have poured in the arms that took the Taliban from an obscure militia of religious students to rulers of almost all Afghanistan in six years.

It remains the sole country in the world to staff an embassy in Kabul recognising the Taleban, while Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates are the only other countries to recognise the movement.

The military balance is clearly reflected in goals of the opposing sides.

The Taliban sense victory is within reach they are issuing calls for the other side to surrender. Their opponents, still recognised as the Government by almost all the world, appear to be hanging on in hope that something other than Masood’s weapons can stave off the Taliban.

"It is the position of the (anti-Taliban) islamic state of Afghanistan to approve any initiatives that bring peace to Afghanistan," Rabbani said at his Faizabad headquarters, taken over from the provincial Governor after the loss of Taloqan.

"They have always announced this proposal in order to have a dialogue not only with the Taleban but also with the Pakistani authorities."

Rabbani does not expect the Taleban to take up the offer, instead calling for international pressure on Pakistan and the Taliban to force them into negotiations. Alternatively, he hopes for a rebellion inside Taleban-ruled territory.

In an interview with Reuters television, what he did not predict was a military victory that would recapture all the territory his Government has lost and put him back in the national capital, Kabul. Outside aid may keep masood in the field, but any substantial advance is unlikely.

Faizabad, after the scare officials had a month ago when there was speculation they might head over the border into Tajikistan, is probably safe until next spring, when warm weather means full warfare can resume.

But for Faizabad and the rest of the anti-Taleban area -chronically hungry even in the best of times — it will be a hard winter. After 21 years of war, some residents inevitably do not share Rabbani’s pledge to fight the Taliban indefinitely.

The Taliban have also helped their cause by avoiding the excesses of earlier conquests. Aid workers questioning civilians caught in the battle for Taloqan have not found evidence of the sort of massacres that spread fear in past years. (REUTERS)

20pc of Hong Kong deaths linked to pollution: Survey

HONG KONG, Nov 6: One in five of all deaths in Hong Kong may be related to pollution-linked illness brought on by the territory’s poor air quality, a survey published Monday claims.

Green group the friends of the earth says rates of cancer and respiratory illness in Hong Kong have soared in the past 20 years because of worsening pollution.

Cancer deaths among men have risen from 110 per 100,000 in 1970 to 275 three years ago, the group says, quoting World Health Organisation figures.

The number of people visiting Hong Kong hospitals for respiratory illnesses soared from 2,000 per 100,000 people in 1985 to nearly 8,500 in 1997, statistics from the territory’s department of health show.

Friends of the earth believes the rise in deaths and cases of respiratory illness is linked to the increase in separate breathable particles in the air.

It estimates the cost of pollution-related health problems could be at least two per cent of Hong Kong’s Gross Domestic Product each year.

Hong Kong is regularly blanketed in smog caused by a combination of diesel engine pollution and industrial pollution blown into the territory from mainland China, much of it from Hong Kong factories which have relocated across the border.

A series of initiatives were announced by chief executive Tung Chee-Hwa last year to try to tackle the problem - including the phasing out of diesel-run taxis and minibuses - but they are expected to take years to yield results.

The friends of the earth survey warns Hong Kong’s efforts to deal with its pollution problem were tied to the problems of mainland China.

Quoting World Bank figures, its says 8 per cent of China’s Gross Domestic Product is eaten up by pollution-related costs and that figure is expected to reach 13 per cent by 2020. (DPA)

El Nino linked to global warming

LONDON, Nov 6: Rises in world temperatures have coincided with changes in the El Nino climatic phenomenon in the Western pacific, according to a report in the current issue of nature, the British Scientific Journal.

In the late 19th century, El Lino events returned roughly every 10-15 years, but in the early 20th century this gradually changed to a strong pulse of about three years, at the same time as the average temperature in the Western pacific increased slightly but noticibly.

Then around 1976 the rhythm changed again, to a roughly four-yearly cycle that still persists, parallel with another jump in average temperature, according to research conducted by Julia Cole of the University of Colorado in the United States.

El Nino can wreak havoc from Australia to Africa to the U.S., and despite its approximate regularity, it is still not possible to predict exactly when it will manifest itself, nor how ferociously.

The phenomenon has a significant impact on food production, so better understanding of their cycles is vital.

Cole and her co-workers showed that the length of the El Nino cycle seems to change with the average climate of the region where it starts - the tropical pacific ocean.

They studied the growth record of corals from Maiana Atoll in the tropical pacific ocean - the region where interactions between the ocean and atmosphere trigger El Nino events.

Chemical analysis of the corals provides a detailed record of temperature changes in this region, extending back for about 155 years. The researchers found that the length of the cycle changes with the "normal", average climate of this region. (DPA)

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