U.S. spy plane lands in China after collision
By Bill Gertz
THE WASHINGTON TIMES

     A Chinese military jet crashed yesterday after colliding with a U.S.
Navy EP-3 spy plane over international waters, and the damaged U.S. aircraft
was forced to make an emergency landing in southern China
     The aerial incident occurred a week after another confrontation between
a Chinese warship and a U.S. Navy surveillance ship in the Yellow Sea
described by Navy officials as a "threatening" Chinese action against the
ship in international waters.
     China’s official Xinhua news agency quoted a Foreign Ministry spokesman
as saying the pilot of the downed F-8 interceptor jet was missing in the
South China Sea.
     Spokesman Zhu Bangzao also said the 24 U.S. military personnel that
were aboard the Navy four-engine plane are at a military airfield at
Lingshui on Hainan Island and have been provided with "proper arrangements."
     However, Mr. Zhu also stated China "reserves the right to further
negotiate" about their fate – suggesting the 22 Navy sailors, one Air Force
airman and a Marine are being detained. Three female sailors are among the
crew, a U.S. government official said.
     The U.S. Embassy in Beijing said today that a group of U.S. diplomats
had left for Hainan, but it could not say if they would see the crew. The
embassy did not say when the diplomats were expected to arrive.
     White House press secretary Ari Fleischer said the United States
expects China to return the EP-3 crew. "That is our expectation. That is the
standard practice. We would expect them to follow it," he said.
     State Department spokeswoman Michelle King said officials had been
assured the crew was "safe and well."
     The military spying incident comes at a time of growing tension between
the United States and China over Beijing’s recent arrest of two American
academics, plans for new U.S. arms sales to Taiwan, and a proposed U.S.
national missile defense opposed by the Chinese.
     "It looks like there has been a turn toward the hard line in Beijing,"
said one national security official. "The Chinese think [President] Bush is
trying to challenge them and they’re reacting."
     U.S. Pacific Command spokesman Air Force Lt. Col. Dewey Ford said the
aerial incident occurred about 9:15 a.m. local time Sunday (8:15 p.m. EST
Saturday) as the Navy aircraft, an electronic eavesdropping version of the
P-3 Orion, was being shadowed by two Chinese F-8 jets about 50 miles
southeast of Hainan Island.
     One of the F-8s touched the EP-3 and caused unspecified damage, Col.
Ford said. The American plane then issued a "mayday" distress call before
making an emergency landing on the island.
     Pentagon officials said the EP-3s were monitoring a Chinese military
exercise north of the island and that the close passes between U.S. and
Chinese aircraft have been occurring almost on a daily basis in recent
weeks.
     Xinhua stated in a dispatch from Beijing that the U.S. aircraft
"bumped" the Chinese fighter after it "suddenly turned" during the encounter
near Hainan.
     In Honolulu, Adm. Dennis Blair, commander of the U.S. Pacific command,
said the collision is part of a pattern of unsafe activities by the Chinese
military toward U.S. surveillance activities.
     "I must tell you that the intercepts by Chinese fighters over the past
couple of months have become more aggressive to the point that we felt they
were endangering the safety of the Chinese and American aircraft," Adm.
Blair told reporters at a news conference.
     "It’s not a normal practice to play bumper cars in the air," he said.
     Adm. Blair said the military is "waiting right now for the Chinese
government to give us the kind of cooperation that is expected of countries
in situations like this."
     "But as time goes on, it’s increasingly worse and it’s been 18 hours
that we don’t have a phone call yet from our crew. We’re talking about a
place that has telephones."
     As of last night, Adm. Blair said "we just don’t know" what happened to
the 24 service members.
     The admiral dismissed Chinese claims that the EP-3 was at fault. "It’s
pretty obvious who bumped who," he said.
     Sen. John W. Warner, Virginia Republican and chairman of the Senate
Armed Services Committee, said in an interview that the Chinese should
release the crew and aircraft.
     The Chinese military appears "very unprofessional" in the eyes of
military personnel worldwide unless it explains the incident, the senator
said.
     "This is a tragic military accident that could have been avoided if
Chinese pilots had respected the laws of international airspace," Mr. Warner
said.
     Mr. Zhu, the Foreign Ministry spokesman, said the plane "intruded into
China’s airspace and made an emergency landing."
     China has protested the incident to the U.S. government, Mr. Zhu said.
     Pentagon officials said the Chinese have stepped up recent intercepts
of the EP-3s, which are based at Kadena Air Base in Japan.
     The encounters have included some intercepts by F-8s armed with
air-to-air missiles and some without missiles. "They’ve been flying within
20 feet of the EP-3s," said one official.
     "This was a routine surveillance mission and one of the two F-8s bumped
our aircraft," Col. Ford said.
     "We are working through the embassy in Beijing and the Chinese Embassy
in Washington to make arrangements for the return of the aircraft and crew,"
Col. Ford said. The crew is safe, but none of the names of those on the EP-3
have been released.
     The EP-3 is equipped with sophisticated electronic eavesdropping
equipment and its capture by China’s military would be an intelligence
boost, a defense official said.
     Asked about the incident yesterday, Sen. John McCain, Arizona
Republican and a member of the Armed Services Committee, said if the U.S.
plane was in international airspace, "I think this could have . . . some
serious repercussions."
     On NBC’s "Meet the Press," the Arizona senator said it is crucial that
the EP-3 "not be inspected or entered by any Chinese" because of the
sensitive nature of the intelligence equipment aboard. "We need assurance
from the Chinese" on that, he added.
     Mr. McCain said he hopes the Chinese will "help us repair that plane
and get it off that island very quickly."
     At the State Department, a spokeswoman said U.S. ambassador to China
Adm. Joseph Prueher met with China’s vice foreign minister yesterday in an
effort to resolve the matter.
     "We’ve been in touch with the Chinese since last night and throughout
the day, both in Washington and China," said Miss King, the State Department
spokeswoman.
     Mr. Prueher, a retired admiral, met with the Chinese vice foreign
minister, who was not identified, last night in Beijing "in an initial
meeting to resolve the situation," she said.
     Mr. Bush was notified of the incident Saturday night and received an
update report yesterday morning, a White House spokesman said. The president
is spending the weekend at the Camp David retreat in western Maryland and
was informed of the events by National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice.
     The EP-3 incident came a week after a March 24 encounter in the Yellow
Sea, near the Korean Peninsula, in which a Chinese frigate closed to within
100 yards of the unarmed surveillance ship USS Bowditch as it conducted
ocean survey operations in the region, Navy officials said.
     According to the officials, the Chinese ship, the Jianghu III-class
frigate Huangshi, "made aggressive and provocative maneuvers" toward the
survey ship.
     The Chinese ship also aimed its gunfire control radar, but not its gun,
at the Bowditch and told the the ship by radio it was not allowed to operate
inside the 200-mile coastal zone China considers its "Economic Exclusion
Zone."
     The ship was operating in international waters outside the
internationally recognized 12-mile territorial limit.
     The Navy ship was forced to flee the area and a Chinese reconnaissance
aircraft also shadowed it, the officials said.
     Intelligence officials said the ship was monitoring sea exercises of
China’s Xia-class ballistic missile submarine, which was operating in the
area at the time of the incident.
     Both the South China Sea and Yellow Sea encounters came despite a 1998
U.S.-China agreement aimed at preventing such incidents at sea. They also
are raising questions among defense officials about China’s growing military
power and aggressiveness in the region.
     . This article is based in part on wire service reports.

IT’S ‘WAR,’ AS ISRAELIS SEIZE 5 ARAFAT GUARDS
Monday,April 2,2001

By URI DAN

 INNOCENT VICTIM:
A mourner at yesterday’s funeral holds a poster of shooting victim Shalhevet
Pas.
– Reuters

JERUSALEM – Palestinian leaders declared "open war against Ariel Sharon’s
government" yesterday after Israel snatched five members of Yasser Arafat’s
elite security unit.
"Sharon plays with fire," said Palestinian security chief Mohammed Dahlan
about the Israeli prime minister. "We insist that our soldiers be released."

The five members of Force 17, plus a civilian, were taken prisoner by
Israeli commandos on the West Bank over the weekend in what Israel said was
a response to a wave of terrorism sponsored by the unit.

"All of the systems of the Palestinian Authority are contaminated by
terror," Army Chief of Staff Shaul Mofaz told Israeli television.

"We are facing very hard days. This confrontation is the most difficult
since we signed the agreement with Arafat in September 1993," he said. "It’s
going to be a long confrontation. The struggle will not be easy."

Yasser Abed-Rabo, Arafat’s spokesman, said, "We are in an open war with
Ariel Sharon’s government."

The raid occurred on an already tense weekend that saw the funeral of a
young Israeli girl killed by an Arab sniper and the death of a Palestinian
boy shot two weeks ago by an Israeli sniper.

More than 1,000 mourners turned out for the funeral in Hebron yesterday for
10-month-old Shalhevet Pas.

"Never before have we had to accompany a little girl less than a year old
who fell in war in this holy place," said Rabbi Dov Lior, one of the 400
Jewish settlers in Hebron who live separated from the town’s 120,000 Arabs.

"The government of Israel has a duty to avenge her blood and the blood of
every one of us and her brothers whose blood was shed by evil doers," he
said at the funeral.

The baby’s father, Yitzhak Pas, who was wounded in the attack that killed
his baby, attended the funeral in a wheelchair.

Several of the mourners broke away from the funeral procession and threw
stones at Palestinian-occupied buildings. They were restrained by hundreds
of Israeli soldiers.

The troops then fired at Palestinians, who started shooting at mourners
gathered in a nearby plaza.

Shortly after the funeral, Israeli forces exchanged fire with Palestinians
near Nablus in the West Bank. Shots also were traded in Bethlehem near
Rachel’s Tomb, an army spokesman said.

Also yesterday, 11-year-old Palestinian Lo’ai Tamimi died from a gunshot
wound to the head reportedly inflicted by an Israeli sniper during a
stone-throwing clash with Israeli troops near Ramallah.

An army spokesman said soldiers fire only when fired upon and never aim at
unarmed children.

A caller to Washington Journal questioned Russert on his favoring of Bush in
the election,  even though Russert has a background several years ago to the
left.  Russert then either lied or just tried to distort his out of touch
sense of reality by saying he was neutral.  What a joke.  Russert,  if you
don’t see yourself as blatantly to the right in your work,  you are more
stupid than I thought.  And that is quite likely.  If you are as true to
your God as you are to your own idiotic opinion of being fair and honest,
you are in big trouble.  Buy yourself a new mirror.  And if you are that
stupid you are more of a liar than I thought.  I gave you more credit for
just distorting,  like Clinton,  while trying not to lie.  Russet,  you
better start thinking about the future of that 15 year old son.  The fatman,
Rush Limbaugh,  doesn’t care about the future as God spared the world from
any more circus sized uneducated fatmen in the future.  Matthews is too
greedy to see what his son is sure to see.  You better buy a new mirror or
your son will understand the word hypocrite a lot more personally than you
will want.
—

 Gary Lantz

                                                                      (p1 of 4)

GEORGE W. BUSH’S BIORHYTHMS FOR APRIL, 2001

Please visit <A
HREF="http://www.patriot.net/users/bmcgin/bush0401.txt">
www.patriot.net/users/bmcgin/bush0401.txt </A>

   You can create reports just like this, for ANYONE!  All you need
   is the person’s date of birth and my Biorhythm software.

   To learn more about Biorhythms and to download the free version
   of the software, please go to

       http://www.patriot.net/users/bmcgin/biorhythms.html

Please visit <A
HREF="http://www.patriot.net/users/bmcgin/biorhythms.html">
www.patriot.net/users/bmcgin/biorhythms.html</A>

                * * * BIORHYTHM MONTHLY SCHEDULE REPORT * * *

– press space for next page —
  Arrow keys: Up and Down to move. Right to follow a link; Left to go back.
 H)elp O)ptions P)rint G)o M)ain screen Q)uit /=search [delete]=history list

>The heat-trapping property of these gases is UNDISPUTED.

Gasses in the atmosphere do not trap heat. The atmosphere has a finite
temperature, when energy is absorbed energy is liberated at the same time.

>Global temperatures are rising.

Still being investigated. While there simply are not enough long term data to
prove that temperatures are rising now, it is correct to say that temperatures
have risen and fallen and risen and fallen since sometime in the last Ice Age.

>Energy from the sun heats this planet’s surface.

The earth is "heated" by the sun and the atmosphere. The earth gets about twice
the heat from the atmosphere as from the sun.

>This planet radiates energy back into space.

Earth radiates energy back into the atmosphere, since the atmosphere has a
finite temperature it does radiate some energy into space.

>The Greenhouse Gases trap some of the outgoing energy.
>The Greenhouse Gases retain heat like the glass panels of a greenhouse.

How?
A greenhouse retains heat by suppressing convection the atmosphere facilitates
convection, also it has nothing to do with the glass, the glass provides the
light for photosynthesis.

>Over the last 100 years,  this planet’s surface temperature has
>increased  0.5  to  1.0  degrees  F

There are no acurate data for the temperature 100 years ago.

But enough!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

If Kyoto is based on the VERY BAD science presented by gryb then good riddance
to it.

—————
…remembering on both sides that civility is not a sign of weakness, and
sincerity is always subject to proof.  JFK.

AMERICANS SAYING
‘HILL, NO’ TO ’04 PREZ RUN
Saturday,March 31,2001

By FREDRIC U. DICKER

—————————————————————————-
—-

 LOSING SUPPORT:
Sen. Hillary Clinton, here with Public Advocate Mark Green early this month,
is losing the public’s support for a White House run, says a new poll.
– M. Altaffer

EXCLUSIVE

ALBANY – American voters have a message for Hillary: Don’t even think about
it.

A new poll yesterday showed a sharp drop recently in national support for a
possible run for the White House by the former first lady turned New York
senator.

The survey, from the Marist College Institute of Public Opinion in
Poughkeepsie, found just 30 percent of Americans believe Mrs. Clinton
"should run for president some day" – while 61 percent do not.

The poll, of 1,018 voters from March 22 to 26, represented a sharp
turnaround from a January Marist poll that found a plurality of Americans –
46 percent – saying Mrs. Clinton should run for president, while 44 percent
said she should not.

"We’re seeing some damage here in Hillary’s national numbers as a result of
all the controversies," said Marist polling director Dr. Lee Miringoff.

"There’s little doubt that as the Bill Clinton stuff became Hillary Clinton
stuff with the pardons and the like, that that didn’t work to her
advantage."

Since the last Marist poll, the senator and former President Clinton have
been at the center of controversy over his last-minute pardons, their taking
of furniture and other gifts from the White House and the high rents they
are paying for office space in New York City.

The anti-Clinton about-face occurred among Democrats, Republicans and
independents and took place in all regions of the country.

Forty-eight percent of Democrats said Mrs. Clinton should run for president
while 42 percent were opposed.

In January, a whopping 64 percent of Democrats wanted Mrs. Clinton to run,
while just 25 percent were opposed.

Clinton spokeswoman Karen Dunn said, "Senator Clinton is focused on the
people of New York and on the numbers that really matter to them – how much
we save for Medicare and Social Security, how many new teachers in our
classrooms, and how many children need health insurance."

Clinton has said she intends to serve her full six-year term, which runs
through 2006.

The poll also found a sharp drop in the number of Americans who believed
Mrs. Clinton will be a good senator for New York.

Forty-four percent of those surveyed said she would be a good senator – down
from 59 percent in January.

The latest survey found 36 percent of voters saying Mrs. Clinton would not
be a good senator, compared to 24 percent two months ago.

PROJECT:
Destroy the Earth and beam up to the Moon.
…by Global Military and Ecological Debacle

George W Bush’s official e-mail address is :

presid…@whitehouse.gov

Lets try and get as many people as possible to e-mail him to tell him why
his short-sighted decision is wrong, and how important it is that the US
acts responsibly towards the environment.

is a real American

Crumbling Military Facilities Need Billions
NewsMax.com Wires
Friday, March 30, 2001
WASHINGTON (UPI) – U.S. military facilities in Europe need $2 billion worth
of work, and their computer networks and communications infrastructure are
dangerously inadequate and in need of replacement, according to the head of
the U.S. European Command, Gen. Joseph Ralston.
Ralston’s main concern is military housing, he told the House Armed Services
Committee Thursday. Almost 70 percent of military personnel and their
families in Europe live in substandard housing that needs $600 million worth
of work just to bring it up to minimal standards. "We have in excess of a $2
billion backlog in terms of military real property maintenance," Ralston
said.

He said the Pentagon has told him it would funnel an additional $600 million
into his construction account over the next five years, which should be
enough to address the barracks problem.

Ralston said another major problem resided in his computer systems. The
wires are old, corroded by weather and built to meet World War II-era
requirements.

"In the event of a major crisis in [the Middle East], nearly all of our
mission-essential communications could be pre-empted by the surge in
bandwidth requirements from U.S. Central Command," Ralston said.

"Realistically, this infrastructure needs to be replaced with modern
high-bandwidth capability – preferably, within the next five to seven
years – a significant investment, but one that we can’t afford not to make."

Copyright 2001 by United Press International. All rights reserved.