SADDAM HUSSEIN EXECUTION

Insults, prayers in final minutes of tyrant

BY SUDARSAN RAGHAVANWashington Post Service
In the predawn hours Saturday, ousted President of Iraq Saddam Hussein stood calmly at the gallows, a thick yellow noose around his neck, ready to die with an orderliness that now eludes Iraq. Three executioners, men in black ski masks and leather jackets, stood behind him. Hussein said, ''Ya Allah,'' preparing himself for the platform he stood on to open up.
Suddenly, witnesses recalled, the room erupted in Shiite religious chants as the Shiite Muslims in the audience seized the moment they have long sought. One man yelled, ''Muqtada, Muqtada, Muqtada,'' unveiling his loyalty to radical anti-American cleric Muqtada al Sadr.
Hussein smiled, said the witnesses, and said sarcastically: ``Muqtada?''
In his final moments, shortly after the dawn call to prayer, Hussein came face to face with today's Iraq, which he had never met, having spent the past three years in American custody. Since his capture, the Shiites his government violently repressed have come to power. They were the last people Hussein saw before his death. ''Go to hell,'' a voice yelled in response to Hussein's remark, according to a grainy video tape taken by a cellphone that was flashed on television networks on Saturday night.
''Long live Mohammed Bakr Sadr,'' yelled another voice. Bakr Sadr is the uncle of Muqtada al Sadr and the founder of the Islamic Dawa Party, of which Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki is a senior leader.
Then, Munqith Faroun, who prosecuted Hussein, yelled: ``The man is facing execution. Please don't.''
The room quieted down.
According to accounts from five witnesses, as well as Iraqi and U.S. officials, as he neared death, Hussein wore ironed black pants, an ivory white shirt and a black, luxurious top coat. His shoes were polished to a shine. He dyed his hair black and trimmed his silver beard. He waited with dignity.
Hussein began to recite an Islamic prayer.
On Friday night, Maliki's office informed fourteen men that they might get a phone call, officials said. Since Tuesday, when Iraq's highest court upheld Hussein's death sentence, it was clear that his execution would arrive soon. The Maliki government had wanted to execute Hussein early Friday morning, said U.S. and Iraqi officials in interviews. But legal issues, security concerns and Iraq's political divide postponed the plan.
But by late Friday, Hussein's execution papers were signed. Muneer Haddad, a judge on Iraq's appeals court, received the call at 1:30 a.m. A voice said: ''Come to the Prime Minister's office at 3:30 in order to carry out the execution,'' recalled Haddad.
He arrived, along with Faroun, and joined the rest of the group. They included the acting Minister of Justice, national security officials, members of parliament, and several top Maliki advisors. Around 5 a.m., they stepped into two U.S. military helicopters, seven in each. They flew 15 minutes to an Iraqi army base overlooking the Tigris River in Baghdad's Khadimiya neighborhood, recalled Haddad. It once housed Hussein's former military intelligence service, where his opponents were executed.
Around the same time, U.S. military officials took Hussein from his prison cell at Camp Cropper, near the Baghdad airport, and flew him to the Green Zone, the fortified enclave that houses the U.S. Embassy and senior Iraqi officials. There, they handed Hussein over to the Iraqis, according to U.S. officials. The Iraqis then drove Hussein in an armored convoy to Khadimiya.
When the helicopters landed, Haddad, Faroun and the acting Justice Minister were rushed into a small, spare room with a desk, several chairs and a refrigerator. Ten minutes later, Hussein walked in.
He wore a wool hat and sat down on a chair before Haddad, who was behind the desk. Hussein's hands were locked in front of him with plastic handcuffs.
Hussein's hangmen arrived.
They took Hussein to a large room with no windows with a staircase that leads to a tall gallows with a large pit at the bottom.
''It was very cold,'' recalled Haddad. ``It had the stench of death.''
Haddad and Faroun walked with Hussein and his hangmen to the steps of the gallows. Then, one of the masked men, Haddad recalled, turned to Hussein and said:
``You have destroyed Iraq, impoverished its people and made us all like beggars while Iraq is one of the richest countries in the world.''
Hussein replied: ``I did not destroy Iraq. I made Iraq into a rich, powerful country.''
Faroun stepped in and ordered the hangman to back away.
Hussein carried a dark green Koran in his clasped hands, said witnesses. At the steps of the gallows, he turned to Faroun and asked him to give the book to the son of his co-defendant Awad Bandar. Bandar, like Hussein, was sentenced to death for the killings of 148 Shiite men and boys in the northern town of Dujail.
Hussein took his hat off. The hangmen uncuffed his hands, then placed them behind his back, and recuffed them. They also tied his feet together, said witnesses.
One Iraqi official asked him if he was afraid, recalled Haddad.
''I am not afraid. I have chosen this path,'' Hussein replied.
Then, the hangmen slowly helped him up the stairs.
The chief hangman offered Hussein a black hood and asked him to place it over his head, but he refused.
The man explained that his death would be more painful.
Saddam again refused, said witnesses.
So the hangman folded the hood and wrapped it around Hussein's neck.
''He was shivering, and his face was pale,'' said one witness who asked not to be identified because he feared for his safety. ``I think up to the moment when they put the rope around his neck, he was not believing what was happening.''
Faroun saw a different Hussein. ''He was holding tight. He was not scared,'' he said.
Hussein stepped onto the platform.
As Hussein recited his Islamic prayer for the second time, the chief hangman asked for silence. Then, the floor of the gallows was opened.
''He died in a tenth of a second,'' said Faroun. ``He did not move a leg or foot.''

Frank Stanton, Broadcasting Pioneer, Dies at 98
By HOLCOMB B. NOBLE
Dr. Frank Stanton, a central figure in the development of television broadcasting in the United States and the industry’s most articulate and persuasive spokesman during his nearly three decades as president of CBS, died Sunday afternoon at his home in Boston, Elizabeth Allison, a longtime friend, said today.
Dr. Stanton was the right-hand man of William S. Paley, the legendary tycoon who built the Columbia Broadcasting System empire from a handful of struggling radio stations in 1928.
From 1946 to 1973, the two men operated as probably the greatest team in the history of broadcasting, making CBS, for a time, the most powerful communications company in the world, and the most prestigious. It was under Dr. Stanton and Paley that CBS, mixing entertainment programming with high-quality journalism and dashes of high culture, earned its reputation as “the Tiffany Network.”
As both a brilliant corporate builder and a technologically-minded executive, Dr. Stanton — everybody used the “doctor” — played a pivotal role in CBS’s rise. He did so despite a relationship with Paley that was often strained and an object of puzzlement to those around them.
In her 1990 biography of Paley , “In All His Glory,” Sally Bedell Smith wrote:
“Temperamentally, the two men were opposites: Paley, the man of boundless charm, superficially warm but essentially heartless and self-absorbed; Stanton, the self-contained Swiss whose business acumen, decency, and understated humor endeared him to his colleagues.
“Paley had a restless, readily satisfied curiosity while Stanton probed more deeply and was interested in a broader range of subjects,” Ms. Smith continued. “Paley acted from the gut; Stanton from the brain. Paley could be disorganized and unpredictable. Stanton was disciplined and systematic. Yet their relationship worked — largely due to Stanton’s forebearance and diligence.”
Dr. Stanton did not feel secure in the glamorous social whirl that Mr. Paley dominated. The two men did not socialize. Ms. Smith wrote that Mr. Paley had resented Dr. Stanton’s refusal to invite him to his home, calling his associate “a closed-off, cold man.”
Dr. Stanton was admired by politicians, businessmen and fellow broadcasters as a principled executive with high aspirations. The industry turned to him time and again to lead their battles against government involvement in radio and television programming.
Armed with statistics and an encyclopedic knowledge of his subject, Dr. Stanton would appear before Congress or talk on the phone to a president or a cabinet member, gracefully and persuasively making the industry’s case, usually successfully.
During the early days of television, when Mr. Paley clung to the idea that network radio would remain CBS’s meal-ticket, Dr. Stanton realized that the company’s prosperity would rest with television and diversification into areas like the long-playing phonograph, whose growth he guided after its development by Peter Goldmark.
In 1946, Dr. Stanton became CBS’s “man of the future,” charting its sometimes painful growth as a television network. He was clear about what direction the medium should take.
“Television, like radio,” Dr. Stanton said in 1948, “should be a medium for the majority of Americans, not for any small or special groups; therefore its programming should be largely patterned for what these majority audiences like and want.”
Frank Nicholas Stanton was born on March 20, 1908, in Muskegon, Mich., the oldest of two sons of Frank Cooper Stanton, a woodworking and mechanics teacher, and the former Helen Schmidt. After his family moved to Dayton, Ohio, when he was a boy, Frank learned electronics at his father’s workbench.
Young Frank majored in zoology and psychology at Ohio Wesleyan University, graduating in 1930 intending to become a doctor. But finding medical school too expensive, he accepted a scholarship to Ohio State to study psychology and earned a master’s degree in 1932. A year earlier, he married Ruth Stephenson, whom he had met at Sunday school when they were both 14.
While he pursued a doctorate, studying ways to measure mass radio audiences, he invented a kind of forerunner of the Nielsen audimeter. The device could be installed inside a radio receiver to register what programs listeners were tuning in. Paul Kersten, a CBS executive, was so impressed with the project that he ultimately offered Mr. Stanton a $55-a-week job in its two-man research department. The day after he received his doctorate, in 1935, Dr. Stanton and his wife climbed aboard their Model A Ford and headed for New York.
Dr. Stanton’s research into radio listeners’ habits was so sophisticated that CBS began using it to attract advertisers and audiences, to select programs and determine their content, and to persuade radio executives to switch their affiliates from NBC to CBS.
By 1938 Dr. Stanton had become CBS’s research director with a staff of 100. With the social scientist Paul F. Lazarsfeld, he invented a device called the program analyzer. It enabled CBS to track simultaneously the responses of 100 listeners to a specific radio program, gauging their likes and dislikes. CBS used the analyzer for a half-century.
Noticing that one CBS station was able to boost its ratings by broadcasting similar shows back-to-back, Dr. Stanton persuaded the network to adopt the practice. Block programming thus became an industry staple.
Dr. Stanton remained with the network during World War II while serving as a consultant to the Secretary of War, the Office of War Information and the Office of Facts and Figures. By 1945 he had become vice president and general manager of CBS.
He was offered the network presidency on William Paley’s return from Europe, where Paley had been an Army colonel in the Office of War Information. Mr. Paley ’s first choice for the job, Mr. Kersten, declined, citing poor health, but he recommended Dr. Stanton, and Mr. Paley invited Dr. Stanton out to his Long Island estate. After dinner, they took a walk in the rain, and Mr. Paley stunned his guest by casually saying, “By the way, Frank, I want you to run the company.” Mr. Paley told him he wanted to be free of the day-to-day problems of running CBS.
Dr. Stanton had been considering leaving CBS to become a partner in an opinion-research company with George Gallup and Elmo Roper, both of whom became giants in the field. But he accepted Mr. Paley’s offer and, in 1946, became president of CBS at the age of 38.
As president, Dr. Stanton reorganized CBS into separate divisions for radio, television and laboratories. Programming and entertainment was Mr. Paley’s domain, though Dr. Stanton was responsible for moving CBS’s biggest radio star of the 1940’s, Arthur Godfrey, into television and taking a chance on a hard-drinking comic named Jackie Gleason. One Stanton project was the critically acclaimed “Playhouse 90,” which Mr. Paley cancelled when its ratings tailed off.
“I think if there was anything I wanted to do with the company and I proposed it, there was a pretty good chance I could go ahead and do it,” Ms. Smith quoted Mr. Stanton as saying.
But his freedom was not complete. One person he could not control was Edward R. Murrow, CBS’s most celebrated broadcast journalist. Mr. Murrow was close with Mr. Paley, and, to Dr. Stanton’s resentment, he repeatedly went over Dr. Stanton’s head to discuss his plans or problems with Paley. Mr. Murrow regarded Dr. Stanton as a numbers cruncher who knew little about television news, and he tended to blame Dr. Stanton, not Mr. Paley, when management thwarted him.
When Mr. Murrow’s acclaimed weekly program, “See it Now,” began to lose sponsors, Mr. Paley stepped in and, with no objection from Dr. Stanton, cut the program to 8 to 10 broadcasts a year before taking it off the air entirely in 1958. Mr. Murrow’s diminishment seemed only to elevate Dr. Stanton’s standing as a force to be reckoned with at CBS News.
As network president Dr. Stanton focused intently on the powerful news division. He created an executive review board to keep news policy and editorializing separate. He combined the news and public-affairs departments. He increased the news department’s budget and eventually extended the 15-minute nightly news to 30 minutes. He created the weekly investigative and news-documentary “CBS Reports.”
In August of 1958, the network was plunged into scandal after a contestant on the immensely popular “The $64,000 Question” revealed that he and others had been fed answers. Congressional and law-enforcement investigations were opened. Mounting his own investigation (without consulting Mr. Paley, who was in Spain), Dr. Stanton pressured the executive responsible for the show to resign and canceled the network’s remaining quiz shows.
Dr. Stanton saw diversification as necessary to CBS’s growth. Under his watch, the network began acquiring companies, publishing magazines and books, producing Broadway shows, including the highly successful “My Fair Lady,” and buying the New York Yankees. (The Yankees fared poorly under CBS, and the team was sold to a group of investors led by George Steinbrenner.)
Dr. Stanton oversaw the development of the network’s most famous symbol, the CBS Eye, designed by William Golden. And he was chiefly responsible for shepherding CBS’s headquarters, the Manhattan skyscraper known as Black Rock, into existence. Dr. Stanton persuaded Mr. Paley to buy the land, at Sixth Avenue and 52nd Street, chose Eero Saarinen as the architect and fought with Mr. Paley over Saarinen’s austere International-style design, with its striking black exterior. Mr. Paley wanted the building to be pink. (When Mr. Saarinen died, his chief designer, Kevin Roche, completed the building, which opened to acclaim in 1964.)
In dealing with the government, Dr. Stanton could count on a long list of high-powered friends in Washington, including Harry S. Truman and Lyndon B. Johnson. Yet despite that influence, he and Paley, like other broadcasters, did not resist the anti-Communist hunts of the late 1940’s and early 50’s.
In 1950, to reassure advertisers and pressure groups, Dr. Stanton approved requiring CBS employees to take an oath of loyalty to the United States. The next year, with Mr. Paley’s approval, Dr. Stanton created a security office staffed by former F.B.I. agents to investigate the political leanings of its employees. Writers, directors and others were often blacklisted, with CBS’s approval.
In 1999, when the New York chapter of the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences gave him a lifetime achievement award for his efforts on behalf of the First Amendment, Dr. Stanton said blacklisting had been necessary to stave off pressure from advertisers and affiliates who were threatening to abandon CBS and possibly shut it down. He conceded, however, that the network’s response to the pressure may not have been the best one.
“I didn’t have the wisdom, nor did anyone else,” Mr. Stanton said. “The head of the law department was one of the fairest people I’ve ever known. When he said this was the course we should follow, we went along with it.”
With the 1960 Presidential election approaching, Dr. Stanton persuaded Congress to suspend the “equal time” provision in the Federal Communications Act. That made it possible for the networks to televise debates between the Democratic nominee, Sen. John F. Kennedy, and his Republican rival, Vice President Richard M. Nixon, without including candidates of smaller parties. The debates signaled the arrival of television as a dominant force in presidential politics.
Dr. Stanton bore much of the criticism when Washington objected to CBS News’s coverage of the war in Vietnam, though he denied a frequently told tale that President Johnson had telephoned him at home to curse him for broadcasting a report by Morley Safer showing Marines burning down peasant huts in Cam Ne.
In 1971 Dr. Stanton was threatened with jail over his defense of his news division. CBS had broadcast an hourlong investigative report called “The Selling of the Pentagon,” about a $30 million campaign by the Defense Department to improve its image, and the House Interstate and Foreign Commerce Committee demanded that he hand over material that had been cut from the program. It wanted to see if CBS had demonstrated bias by deliberately not using material that would have been favorable to the Pentagon.
Handed a subpoena for the material at his office, Dr. Stanton refused to comply and was called before the committee. He argued that the committee was infringing on the rights of free speech and freedom of the press under the First Amendment.
“If newsmen are told their notes, films and tapes will be subject to compulsory process so that the government can determine whether the news has been satisfactorily edited,” he said, “ the scope, nature, and vigor of their news reporting will be inevitably curtailed.”
The committee voted to cite him for contempt. But after an emotional floor debate, the full House rejected the committee’s citation.
When the Nixon administration began attacking the networks over their coverage of the war, it was usually Dr. Stanton who answered back. “Stanton was a firewall between the presidency and the reporters covering the White House,” said Robert Pierpoint, a former CBS White House correspondent.
For years as president, Dr. Stanton believed he would get the top job at CBS — chairman and chief executive — when Mr. Paley reached the age of 65 in 1966. Mr. Paley had promised him, after all. Indeed, Dr. Stanton was so convinced that he rejected an opportunity to become head of the University of California and turned down President Johnson’s offers to make him Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare or Undersecretary of State.
But Mr. Paley went back on his promise and continued as chairman past his retirement age, and the relationship between the two men was never the same. In 1967, Dr. Stanton signed a new contract, which required him to step down as president in 1971 to become vice chairman and to remain in that post until his retirement at 65 in 1973.
After his retirement, Dr. Stanton was chairman and chief operating officer of the American National Red Cross for six years. He served on the boards of the Rockefeller Foundation, the Carnegie Institution, the Stanford Research Institute and Lincoln Center. He was also the first non-Harvard graduate in the 20th century to serve on the board of Harvard University, and he spent much of the rest of his life in Cambridge, Mass.. working on projects for Harvard. He sat on the CBS board until he reached retirement age in 1978, then became a highly paid consultant until 1987, though he was seldom called on to consult.
For all his accomplishments as an architect of CBS, Dr. Stanton had left the network in disillusion, disappointment and sorrow, assessing it as “just another company with dirty carpets.”
When he retired in 1973, he left Black Rock quietly, refusing to allow Paley to give him a party. His parting words were quoted by Lillian Ross in The New Yorker: “I think I’ll make it home in time for the seven o’clock news.”
Mrs. Allison, who with her husband, Graham, helped care for Dr. Stanton in recent years, said that his wife, Ruth, had died about a decade ago and that there were no survivors.
She said that Dr. Stanton had directed that there be no memorial service and no donations in his memory, which she said reminded her of his attitude upon his departure from CBS.
“When he left, he just left,” Mrs. Allison said. “He was consistent, right to the end.”
John O’Neil contributed reporting.

Fore Shame

Did the Vatican steal Jesus' foreskin so people would shut up about the savior's penis?

By David Farley Posted Tuesday, Dec. 19, 2006, at 12:32 PM ET SLATE MAGAZINE
In 1983, as the residents of Calcata, a small town 30 miles north of Rome, prepared for their annual procession honoring a holy relic, a shocking announcement from the parish priest put a damper on festivities. "This year, the holy relic will not be exposed to the devotion of the faithful. It has vanished. Sacrilegious thieves have taken it from my home." Not since the Middle Ages, when lopped-off body parts of divine do-gooders were bought, sold, and traded, has relic theft been big news. But the mysterious disappearance of Calcata's beloved curio is different.
This wasn't just the residuum of any holy human—nor was it just any body part. It was the foreskin of Jesus Christ, the snipped-off tip of the savior's penis, the only piece of his body he supposedly left on earth.
Just what the holy foreskin was doing in the priest's house—in a shoebox at the back of his wardrobe, no less—and why and how it disappeared has been debated ever since the relic vanished. Some suspect the village priest sold it for a heavenly sum; others say it was stolen by thieves and ended up on the relics black market; some even suggest Satanists or neo-Nazis are responsible. But the most likely culprit is an unlikely one: the Vatican.
And why not? Protestant doubt ("They couldn't let Christ's body go without keeping a piece," John Calvin quipped) and the scientific revolution, which changed our thinking from superstitious to skeptical, have taken their toll on a relic that once rested high atop the pious pecking order of blessed body parts. It's understandable that the 20th-century church began feeling a bit bashful about the idea of its flock fawning over the 2,000-year-old tip of the redeemer's manhood. Still, when I arrived in Calcata six months ago, the idea of a Vatican theft of Jesus' foreskin sounded more like a ganja-induced brainstorming session with Dan Brown and Danielle Steele. But some transplanted bohemians, a deathbed confession, and a little historical context have convinced me otherwise.
Even before its disappearance, the relic had a strange history. It was discovered in Calcata in 1557, and a series of miracles soon followed (freak storms, perfumed mists engulfing the village). The church gave the finding a seal of approval by offering a 10-year indulgence to those who came to venerate. Lines of pilgrims stretched from the church doors to beyond the walls of the fortress town. Nuns and monks from nearby villages and monasteries made candlelit processions. Calcata was a must-see destination on the pilgrimage map.
That is, until 1900. Facing increasing criticism after the "rediscovery" of a holy foreskin in France, the Vatican decreed that anyone who wrote about or spoke the name of the holy foreskin would face excommunication. And 54 years later, when a monk wanted to include Calcata in a pilgrimage tour guide, Vatican officials didn't just reject the proposal (after much debate). They upped the punishment: Now, anyone uttering its name would face the harshest form of excommunication—"infamous and to be avoided"—even as they concluded that Calcata's holy foreskin was more legit than other claimants'.
But that wasn't the end of the holy foreskin. In the late 1960s, government officials, worried that crumbling cliffs and threatening earthquakes might doom the village, decided to build a new town. Hippies discovered the newly abandoned town, which was awaiting a government wrecking crew, and squatted in, then legally purchased, the vacated buildings. Some of the bohemian transplants were intrigued by Calcata's relic, which was now only shown to the public during the village's annual New Year's Day procession (even though the Vatican II reforms removed the Day of the Holy Circumcision from the church calendar). The new residents began writing about the quirky event and relic for newspapers in and around Rome, and Calcata's scandalous prepuce was isolated no more. And the church took notice.
Was this the reason Dario Magnoni, the local priest, brought the relic from the church to his home? Who knows. Magnoni refuses to speak about the relic, citing the 1954 threat of excommunication. Magnoni's predecessor, Mario Mastrocola, didn't want to talk about the relic, either, but when asked if he was surprised to hear it had been stolen, he shook his head. When pressed, he said, "The relic would not have been taken away from Calcata if I were still the priest there."
Mastrocola's ambiguous words—while not directly incriminating anyone—hinted at underhanded church dealings (interview requests with the Vatican went unanswered). And later, I found myself sitting in a wine cellar halfway up the hill between the old and new villages of Calcata. Capellone, the cellar's owner and a lifelong Calcatese, told me about his close relationship with a former local bishop, Roberto Massimiliani. Ailing in bed, the bishop told Capellone that when he was gone, so too would be the relic. Bishop Massimiliani passed away soon after, in 1975. Eight years after that, the relic disappeared. "To me, it almost felt like a confession," said Capellone. "Like he needed to tell someone before he died."
Could the "sacrilegious thieves" Magnoni mentioned in his 1983 announcement about the relic's disappearance actually have been Vatican emissaries? The thought of masked, black-clad Vatican agents on a mission to steal Jesus' foreskin does sound alluring. But for residents like Capellone, who swear the Vatican now has the relic, the thief could be Magnoni himself. Some locals claim they saw him go to Rome the day before he made the announcement, generating speculation that the Vatican asked for it and Magnoni not only failed to stand up to them, he delivered the relic himself.
Sold, stolen, or delivered to the Vatican—or even all three—the holy foreskin of Calcata is probably gone for good, even as some residents persist in the hope that it will return. And the church is certainly breathing a sigh of relief. While most of the other copies of the relic were destroyed during the Reformation and the French Revolution, Calcata's holy foreskin lived long past its expiration date, like a dinosaur surviving the meteoric blast of the scientific revolution.
But if it had survived, it would have been only a matter of time before someone wanted to clone it. And that could have given the Second Coming an entirely new meaning.

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Luke 2:21 details Jesus' circumcision on his eighth day. According to the Infancy Gospels—which some have claimed are "lost" or removed chapters of the Bible, while others have said they're apocryphal—Jesus was circumcised in a cave. Afterward, Mary's midwife, an old Jewish woman, took the foreskin and put it in an alabaster jar filled with aromatic nard, a fragrant ointment known for its preservative qualities. The old woman handed the jar to her son, who was in the perfume business, and said, "Guard well this jar of aromatic nard and do not sell it, even when they offer you 300 denarii." Well, he must have been hard up for cash, because somehow, according to this legend (which was retold by French historian Patrice Boussel in his 1971 book Des Reliques et de Leur Bon Usage), Mary Magdalene ended up with the jar and then apparently passed it on to St. John the Baptist. The rest is history.

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During the Middle Ages, the holy foreskin achieved a Holy Grail-level of fame. About a dozen monasteries and towns claimed to possess it, each insisting theirs came from Charlemagne—who received the relic from an angel while praying at the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem. The holy foreskin that ended up in Calcata, the only papal-approved version of the relic, was said to have been given by Charlemagne to Pope Innocent III upon the French king's coronation in Rome on Dec. 25, 800. The Pope placed the relic in Rome's Sancta Sanctorum (where it resided with the heads of Sts. Peter and Paul) until 1527, when a German soldier—part of the booty-hungry army that sacked the city—swept in to the relic-laden room, grabbing a bejeweled reliquary, tucking it under his arm, and making a mad dash northward. He got as far as Calcata before being caught and imprisoned in the village, where he stashed the relic in his cell. Thirty years later, in 1557, its discovery set off a series of climatic miracles in the village.

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Depending on what you read, there were eight, 12, 14, or even 18 different holy foreskins in various European towns during the Middle Ages. Coulombs, a French village near Chartres, had one. Chartres also had a famous foreskin, as did the French towns of Charroux, Metz, Conques, Langres, Anvers, Fécamp, and Puy-en-Velay. Auvergne even had two. And the French weren't the only ones obsessed with all things holy and foreskin. There were also pious penises in Hildesheim in Germany and Antwerp in Belgium. Santiago de Compostela, the famed pilgrimage town in the far northwestern corner of Spain, had one too. Not to be outdone, Rome's San Giovanni in Laterano also had a copy of the holy foreskin; this is the one that ended up in Calcata.

MEASURING SAN FRANCISCO TREES' IMPACT -

Robert HollisSunday, December 24, 2006
San Francisco is not the most tree-friendly city in the nation.
Indeed, before humans arrived, much of the peninsula on which the city now stands was covered by sand dunes, low chaparral and a handful of native tree and shrub species such as coastal live oak and toyon. The terrain at the time was akin to what the Marin Headlands looks like today.
But in the intervening two-plus centuries, in addition to building thousands of structures, roads and public spaces, San Franciscans have cultivated tens of thousands of trees that have reshaped the urban environment.
Based on work done by the USDA Center for Urban Forest Research at UC Davis, with help by volunteers from the Friends of the Urban Forest, here are highlights of the benefits of San Francisco's treescape today:
-- There are about 700,000 trees growing citywide, with about 100,000 of them being so-called street trees. The city cares for roughly 18.5 percent while property owners husband the rest.
As even the most casual observer can see, the trees are unequally spread throughout the neighborhoods. The greatest concentrations of trees occur in Golden Gate Park and the Presidio.
-- There are about 115 species of street trees in the city. Almost all are non-native "exotics" brought in from elsewhere.
-- The trees provide environmental benefits. They remove about 2,200 tons of carbon dioxide (a greenhouse gas) annually; they intercept about 13 million cubic feet of rainwater, or about 97 million gallons, every year that would otherwise run off into the bay and ocean; and they reduce heating and cooling costs through shade and as windbreaks.
Street trees boost property values by about 1 percent and their presence often result in faster home and apartment sales, according to the study and real estate professionals.

Please Let It Be Whale Vomit, Not Just Sea Junk
By COREY KILGANNON
MONTAUK, N.Y. — In this season of strange presents from relatives, Dorothy Ferreira got a doozy the other day from her 82-year-old sister in Waterloo, Iowa. It was ugly. It weighed four pounds. There was no receipt in the box.
Inside she found what looked like a gnarled, funky candle but could actually be a huge hunk of petrified whale vomit worth as much as $18,000.
“I called my sister and asked her, ‘What the heck did you send me?’ ” recalled Ms. Ferreira, 67, who has lived here on the eastern tip of Long Island since 1982. “She said: ‘I don’t know, but I found it on the beach in Montauk 50 years ago and just kept it around. You’re the one who lives by the ocean; ask someone out there what it is.’ ”
So Ms. Ferreira called the Town of East Hampton’s department of natural resources, which dispatched an old salt from Montauk named Walter Galcik.
Mr. Galcik, 80, concluded that the mysterious gift might be ambergris, the storied substance created in the intestines of a sperm whale and spewed into the ocean. Also called “whale’s pearl” or “floating gold,” ambergris is a rare and often valuable ingredient in fine perfumes.
“He told me, ‘Don’t let this out of your sight,’ ” Ms. Ferreira said.
She was soon summoned to show the thing at a town board meeting, after which a story in The Independent, a local newspaper, declared Ms. Ferreira the proud new owner of “heirloom whale barf.” Friends and neighbors flocked to her tchotchke-filled cottage overlooking Fort Pond Bay, the very shores where her sister, Ruth Carpenter, said she found the object in the mid-1950s.
Childless and never married, Ms. Ferreira bounced from job to job, most recently as a short-order cook at a local deli, and now lives on her Social Security income.
“If it really does have value, I’m not silly, of course I’d want to sell it,” Ms. Ferreira said as she looked out past her lace curtains and picket fence at the whitecaps on the bay. “This could be my retirement.”
After researching ambergris on the Internet, Ms. Ferreira’s neighbor, Joe Luiksic, advised, “Put it on eBay.” But endangered species legislation has made buying or selling the stuff illegal since the 1970s; a couple who found a large lump of ambergris valued at almost $300,000 on an Australian beach in January has had legal problems selling it.
“If I get locked up, will you bail me out?” Ms. Ferreira asked her friends.
Ambergris begins as a waxlike substance secreted in the intestines of some sperm whales, perhaps to protect the whale from the hard, indigestible “beaks” of giant squid it feeds upon. The whales expel the blobs, dark and foul-smelling, to float the ocean. After much seasoning by waves, wind, salt and sun, they may wash up as solid, fragrant chunks.
Because ambergris varies widely in color, shape and texture, identification falls to those who have handled it before, a group that in a post-whaling age is very small. Ms. Ferreira says she has yet to find an ambergris expert.
“A hundred years ago, you would have no problem finding someone who could identify this,” said James G. Mead, curator of marine mammals at the Smithsonian Institution, who said he hears of new ambergris surfacing somewhere in the world maybe once every five or six years. “More often, you have people who think they’ve found it and they can retire, only to find out it’s a big hunk of floor wax.”
Adrienne Beuse, an ambergris dealer in New Zealand, said in a telephone interview that good-quality ambergris can be sold for up to $10 per gram, adding that for the finest grades, “the sky’s the limit.”
At $10 per gram, Ms. Ferreira’s chunk, according to a neighbor’s kitchen scale, would have a value of $18,000. “The only way to positively identify ambergris is to have experience handling and smelling it, and very few people in the world have that,” Ms. Beuse said. “Certainly, if she has it, it’s like winning a mini-lottery.”
Larry Penny, 71, director of East Hampton’s natural resources department, said he had no way of making a definite determination, because “we don’t keep a certified whale-vomit expert on staff.”
Mr. Penny, whose great-great-uncle was skipper of a whaling ship out of Sag Harbor, said he grew up searching the beach for ambergris.
“The older folks would always tell us, ‘Keep your eyes open for that whale vomit because it’ll pay your way through college,’ ” he recalled. “We used to bring home anything that we thought looked like it, but it never turned out to be ambergris. The average person today could trip over it on the beach and never know what it was.”
Ambergris has been a valued commodity for centuries, used in perfume because of its strangely alluring aroma as well as its ability to retain other fine-fragrance ingredients and “fix” a scent so it does not evaporate quickly. Its name is derived from the French “ambre gris,” or gray amber. During the Renaissance, ambergris was molded, dried, decorated and worn as jewelry. It has been an aphrodisiac, a restorative balm, and a spice for food and wine. Arabs used it as heart and brain medicine. The Chinese called it lung sien hiang, or “dragon’s spittle fragrance.” It has been the object of high-seas treachery and caused countries to enact maritime possession laws and laws banning whale hunting. Madame du Barry supposedly washed herself with it to make herself irresistible to Louis XV.
In “Paradise Regained,” Milton describes Satan tempting Christ with meat pastries steamed in ambergris. In “Moby-Dick,” Melville called it the “essence found in the inglorious bowels of a sick whale.” Old newspapers show clippings every few years describing some whaling crew coming upon a hunk, or some vacationing family finding it on the beach and either cashing in — or discovering it was just ocean detritus.
“We always heard about it, but I don’t remember finding any,” recalled Encie Babcock, 95, of Sag Harbor, whose great-uncle Henry Babcock was captain of a whaling ship in the 1800s.
Mrs. Carpenter, Ms. Ferreira’s sister, said she was about 30 years old, beachcombing with her dog in front of the family house, when she spied the object and “and just liked the way it looked, so I kept it.” After moving with her husband to Iowa, Mrs. Carpenter kept the waxy hunk in a box in her bedroom closet.
“Anytime we had houseguests, I’d take it out and ask them if they knew what it was,” she said. “Of course they didn’t. This is Iowa.” She sent it to her sister, Mrs. Carpenter said, because “I’m not feeling too good, and I don’t have much time left.”

Comet dust yields surprises about universe
By Sandi DoughtonSeattle Times staff reporter
University of Washington astronomer Don Brownlee expected surprises from the pinch of comet dust collected by the Stardust spacecraft.
But he didn't foresee such a shake-up.
The tiny specks have changed ideas about the birth of our solar system and offered hints about the origin of life on Earth.
"We're learning incredible things," said Brownlee, principal investigator for the $212 million NASA mission.
Since the capsule parachuted to the Utah desert in January, nearly 200 researchers have employed some of the world's most powerful scientific tools to probe the particles. Their findings are laid out in seven reports in today's issue of the journal Science.
Among them is the discovery of organic molecules, very similar to the amino acids that are the building blocks of proteins. The compounds contain a biologically useful form of nitrogen, which would have been important to early microbes.
"The fact that we see these suggests that the presence of amino acids is not an insane idea ... though we haven't detected them yet," said Scott Sandford of NASA's Ames Research Center in California.
The comet dust also contains bits of organic material similar to tar or soot, Sandford said.
The organic molecules bolster the theory that a rain of comet dust may have delivered the basic ingredients of life to the early Earth. The fact that comet dust contains several types of organic molecules is especially intriguing, Sandford said.
"It makes the story more powerful, because you would presume that getting life started would be easier if you have a wide variety of things around you."
During its seven-year, 2.9 billion-mile voyage, the Stardust spacecraft flew within 150 miles of Comet Wild 2 (pronounced Vilt). Dust surrounding the comet's nucleus was captured in a low-density material called aerogel, like "collecting BBs by shooting them into Styrofoam," Sandford said. The mission marks the first time extraterrestrial material has been brought to Earth since the Apollo moon landings.
The second particle Brownlee and his colleagues pried from the aerogel rocked existing theories of comet birth.
Less than one-fifth the diameter of a human hair, the particle was made up of unusual minerals that were created at blistering temperatures — higher than 2,000 degrees F. But that contradicts the standard view that comets formed on the fringes of the solar system, where temperatures average around minus 400 degrees.
"It was stunning," Brownlee said. "People's jaws dropped."
The finding means material from the hot, innermost reaches of the early solar system was somehow propelled to the frigid netherlands beyond Pluto.
"It's like the solar system partly turned itself inside out," Brownlee said.
Scientists dubbed the super-high-temperature particle Inti, after the Incan sun god. So far, it is the only one of its type they have found, though most of the 10,000 particles collected still have not been examined. Bits of Inti have been distributed to other labs. Brownlee keeps his portion of the precious speck in a sealed clean room, inside a Petri dish taped to the table so an earthquake won't knock it to the floor.
Though they weren't forged in such a fiery furnace, crystalline mineral grains in the comet dust also support the notion that there was a lot of mixing in the cloud of dust that coalesced into the solar system about 4.6 billion years ago.
Many experts had expected comets to be composed primarily of interstellar dust, minuscule bits of matter that float through space and originate from stars that have exploded and died. But instead, the comet dust is chock-full of crystals that came from the inner portion of the young solar system.
"It looks like about 10 percent of the material came from the inner disc," Brownlee said. "No one has ever suggested anything like that in the past."
Comets are fascinating to astronomers because they are believed to be remnants of the early solar system, virtually unchanged since their creation.
"They've pretty much been in a deep freeze since they were made," Sandford said.
Working with the dust has been challenging. The largest particles are one-hundredth of an inch across. The smallest are one micron — a millionth of a meter.
Brownlee equips his lab with anti-static devices, and won't handle the particles if the humidity drops below 40 percent. In a dry, electrically charged atmosphere, the dust grains can simply fly into space.
"It's an odd little world dealing with things this small," he said.
To extract embedded particles from the aerogel, scientists have devised ingenious methods that include using glass needles to chip out tiny "keystones" smaller than a gnat. Tiny, two-pronged "pickle-forks" are used to spear the keystones and extract them from bigger chunks of aerogel.
Electron microscopes that can see individual atoms and particle accelerators the size of football fields have been used to scrutinize the dust and figure out its makeup.
"People will continue to study these particles for decades to come," Sandford said. "Just like people are still studying the moon rocks."

Forget the conspiratorial fog. The only real mystery about Diana's death is the workings of fate.
WEB-EXCLUSIVE COMMENTARY
By Christopher Dickey
Newsweek
Dec. 13, 2006 - Three people were responsible for the death of Princess Diana in the hot dark hours after midnight on Aug. 31, 1997, and all of them were killed that evening: Henri Paul, who drove the Mercedes that crashed beneath the Place de l’Alma near the Seine River in Paris; Dodi Fayed, who was riding in the back seat, and Diana herself, who was sitting beside him.
A massive three-year investigation of conspiracy theories surrounding those deaths, to be issued in London tomorrow by Lord Stevens, may not put the case so bluntly. But the British press has reported that Lord Stevens will conclude, as the French police did very quickly after the fact, that Diana’s death was an accident. Reports that the CIA was bugging Diana’s communications (flatly dismissed as “rubbish” by an agency spokesman) and that the U.S. National Security Agency has files mentioning Diana’s name (which is hardly surprising) do not change the basic narrative at all.
This is a story I have followed for a long time. I was in Paris that night. I arrived at the Place de l’Alma shortly after the bodies of the men and the dying Diana had been taken away, and I watched as the smashed car was pulled from the tunnel. A few hours later, at the hospital, I was on the phone with an American satellite network at the moment that a French doctor announced formally and definitively that Diana had died. I conveyed that message to the world, and because I became, in that instant, the voice of Diana’s death, I have been asked often since then what “really” happened. The Stevens investigators themselves contacted me briefly a few months ago, looking for one person I interviewed the week after Diana’s death who claimed to be a witness.
Nothing presented by any source has ever caused me seriously to doubt the police conclusions. But how did such an accident happen? Diana’s death is no less a tragedy for being inadvertent, and to my mind it is even sadder because it was so pointless; the only real mystery is about the workings of fate. At least five decisions were made by Diana and Dodi and Henri Paul on Aug. 30, 1997 that cost them their lives. None of those decisions were especially momentous in itself, yet taken together they led ineluctably to the tragedy we all remember from that night.
First, let’s clear away some of conspiratorial fog surrounding this case. Central to the thesis that Diana was murdered is the myth that the princess and Dodi were in love, that they were going to be engaged and, by some accounts, that she—mother of a future king of England—was already pregnant with the child of this Muslim paramour. Dodi’s father, Mohamed Al Fayed, has built an extravagant memorial to their romance in Harrod’s, the department store he owns in London. Dodi’s father has also hired many lawyers and private investigators to pursue the conspiratorial truth as he believes it: that Diana was killed in a plot carried out by the British intelligence services at the behest of royal racists.
But Diana was not pregnant, and her butler, Paul Burrell, says that she was not in love with Dodi. The younger Fayed might have intended to pop the question, but according to Burrell, the princess never intended to say yes. Did she fear dying in a prearranged car crash? Her correspondence says she did. But that obsession, which even her brother thought related to “mental problems,” preceded her dates with Dodi. If there was no serious Diana-Dodi romance, then the core motive for conspiracy evanesces like rain on a summer sidewalk.
Then there are questions of basic practicalities. If you are a professional killer (and my quarter century covering guerrilla wars and terrorism has put me in touch with a few), then you want to keep the plot as simple as possible and base it on reliable information about the target’s movements. The Diana conspiracies depend on the assumption that the route Diana would travel that night was knowable, and indeed known. But this was no motorcade. In fact, the itinerary was made up on the spur of the moment.
Again, let’s step back for a second and look at the context. Dodi and Diana had visited Paris earlier in the summer and had a very relaxing time. They were able to dine at Lucas Carton, an exquisite restaurant in the middle of town, unmolested and almost unnoticed. But when they returned on Aug. 30, their world had been changed by the publication of a grainy out-of-focus picture showing the two kissing, however briefly, out in the Mediterranean. The photographer reportedly had earned a fortune approaching a million dollars for that shot. So even though there are laws against paparazzi harassment in France, all bets were off: the fines were much lower than the potential rewards. And the pack was on Diana's trail from the moment she landed in a private plane at Le Bourget airport.
This should have been predictable and predicted, but Diana and Dodi and the bodyguards his father employed—including Henri Paul, who was the deputy chief of security at the Fayed-owned Ritz Hotel in Paris—appear to have been blindsided by the onslaught of photographers chasing them as relentlessly as hounds after a fox. They spent much of the day holed up at the Ritz on Place Vendome. They went to Dodi's apartment at the top of the Champs Elysées (which looked out on the Arc de Triomphe through thick windows with the greenish cast of bulletproofing), and they decided they'd go to dinner at Benoit, on a narrow street in downtown Paris near Les Halles. Dodi asked his stepuncle, Saudi diplomat Hassan Yassin, to go with them, but Yassin, who was staying at the Ritz, declined.
So, Dodi and Diana headed downtown toward the restaurant with a professional chauffeur and bodyguards. But before they got there the pack had closed in again. Without warning—in a fit of pique, perhaps, or of panic—they changed their minds and went back to the Ritz. You can see the irritation on both their faces in the famous security videos as they entered through the hotel’s revolving door. Diana had put her safety and her privacy in Dodi’s hands. Now he was going to get his father’s people to sort things out. This was the first unpredictable—and fatal—decision of the evening.
Henri Paul had been with Diana and Dodi much of the day but had finally gone off the clock when they went to Dodi's apartment. Paul had a drinking problem which he was trying to get under control, but there's no question he'd been under a lot of stress. He was the No. 2 security man at the Ritz, and since the No. 1 guy had left, Paul was running the show. But he was not going to get the top job and knew it. His future was a question mark. Paul may have received some money from the French services, presumably to keep them up to speed on the dignitaries at the Ritz, many of whom are politically important, but he wouldn't be much use to them if he lost his job. And his main income still came from Fayed. So he had to ingratiate himself as much as he could with Dodi and Dodi’s father and, of course, Diana. Not an easy job considering the paparazzi madness.
When Paul got off work, we are not sure exactly where he went. His apartment would have been a grim refuge. Not far from the Ritz on Rue des Petits Champs, it was a small place near the top of a creaking stairwell, just below the common toilet of immigrant workers on the top floor. When I visited it a few days after the crash, the hallway in front of Paul’s door stank of urine. It was quite a contrast with the “palace” where he worked.
Wherever Paul was, he probably thought he could relax. Repeated blood tests since the crash, including the most recent verifying his DNA, establish that he had several drinks that night. His blood alcohol level was three times the legal limit in France. And then, suddenly, he was called back to the Ritz to deal with the paparazzi situation. Chalk that up as fatal, unpredictable decision No. 2.
Paul drove up to the front door in his own car, a tiny Austin Mini with an automatic transmission. Whether he was drunk by that point, and if so, how drunk, is not known. Several people said he did not seem to be impaired, but that would have been hard to tell—especially as he wasn’t the center of attention.
A plan was hatched to escape the paparazzi by sending decoy cars driving away from the front of the hotel while Diana and Dodi would leave from the service entrance on Rue Cambon. As arrangements were made, and Diana and Dodi at last got something to eat, Paul is reported to have had at least two glasses of Ricard, a 90-proof pastis that looks much like grapefruit juice when it is mixed with a little water. (The less water, the yellower the color.) Tests would later show that Henri Paul also had Prozac and Tiapridal—prescribed by his doctor to counter alcohol dependency—in his bloodstream.
The car that pulled up to the back of the hotel was a heavy Mercedes S280 sedan with a stick shift. Henri Paul got behind the wheel. It’s not clear who decided that Paul should drive, but this would count as a third unanticipated, and fatal, decision. The Ritz has maintained since the week after the accident that Paul had been trained to drive such cars, but that misses the point. We all know that if you're used to driving one kind of car—in Paul’s case a tiny Mini with an automatic transmission—and you get in a new one that is twice as big and heavy and configured differently, you're going to have some reflex problems. A few Ricards will, of course, make those reflexes much worse.
So now they are ready to roll. Bodyguard Trevor Rees-Jones is riding shotgun. He puts on his seatbelt, but no one else does—and this is a fourth fatal decision. Dodi sits behind Paul, Diana behind Rees-Jones. They drive down narrow Rue Cambon, which is one-way, then turn onto Rue de Rivoli, which is also one-way, and it’s clear the plan already has fallen apart. As the Mercedes rolls into Place de la Concorde, the pack of photographers on motorcycles and scooters is closing in again.
From Concorde, it is a straight shot up the Champs Elysées to Dodi's apartment at the Arc de Triomphe, a landmark you can see quite clearly from the bottom of the avenue. At a brisk walk, the journey takes about 20 minutes, in the Metro, less than five. If they’d taken that direct route up the Champs, it’s a good guess they’d all be alive today. But at that hour on a Saturday night, even in late summer when the rest of Paris is pretty empty, traffic on the city’s most famous avenue can bog down as movie theaters let out. Someone in the car—Dodi? Diana? Henri Paul?—decided to take another route to outrun the photographers who were on motorcycles and scooters. This was the final, fatal decision that could not have been predicted by anyone outside the car.
Henri Paul continued around the Place de la Concorde, turned right onto the Cours la Reine and put the pedal to the metal. The Mercedes roared down the four-lane tree-lined road near the Seine River at upwards of 80mph.
The Cours la Reine looks wide open, but it's in fact a very treacherous little highway with a couple of nasty surprises. (If you are looking at a map, you need to know its name changes several times as well.) As you approach the tunnel under Place de l’Alma, a side road allows traffic to come directly onto the main drag. In Paris, cars entering from the right have the right of way, even when they’re coming from a little side road onto a major thoroughfare, so there's always a danger someone will pull out suddenly without looking. Furthermore, as the road dipped down into the tunnel, there was a distinct bump that would cause a light car at high speed to lift up off its wheels and even a heavy car like the Mercedes that Henri Paul was driving would rise up disconcertingly on its shocks. Then you were in the tunnel.
We do not know precisely what a small, cheap, slow old Fiat Uno was doing there that night, but it's a good guess that it pulled in off the side road and Paul, focused on the paparazzi fading into the distance behind him, never saw it until he was almost on top of it. When he did, he overcorrected to miss it—perfectly natural in such an unfamiliar car, especially since he was drunk. He clipped the Fiat's tail light and slammed into one of the exposed pillars in the middle of the tunnel. The Mercedes spun around at speed. Paul and Dodi were thrown all over the inside of the car and killed instantly. (In unpublishable photographs, Dodi's body looks like a broken rag doll.) Trevor Rees-Jones, despite his seatbelt and airbags, had his face shredded by the windshield. Diana, when the car came to rest, was seated in the well behind the right front, clearly in shock but breathing and with no conspicuous external injury.
From this point on, we can second-guess the procedures and competence of the emergency crews that arrived on the scene. But Diana had a torn vein leading into her heart. The fates, and the actions of the people in the car, had already decided that three people would die. (Rees-Jones was saved by his seatbelt.)
The great missing link in this narrative, of course, is the driver of the Fiat Uno, who appears never to have been found. Why did he or she never come forward? The answer is not hard to find. Having narrowly escaped death and driven on from the scene of the crash (a crime), and having no idea who was in the Mercedes, the driver would have woken up the next morning to discover that Princess Diana had been killed in front of his eyes and all the photographers who were on the scene were arrested in connection with her death. To come forward would be to invite prosecution—and, in any case, it was weeks later before the driver would know his or her make of car had been identified by the police as being in the tunnel. If the driver was trying to hide something else—lack of a license, a late-August tryst, whatever—there'd be even less reason to ’fess up.
Three years ago, I went over all this with Dodi’s father, Mohamed Al Fayed, first at a dinner with mutual friends and then in a telephone interview. He explained his well-known belief in a conspiracy by the royal family to eliminate Princess Diana. “She was being followed up by M.I.6 and M.I.5 [the British foreign and domestic security services],” said Fayed. “All her actions everywhere. This is why they know when she’s going to be with Dodi, when she’s going to announce [the] engagement, when she’s going to pick up the ring. Everything was planned, you know.” An alleged British agent named James Andanson supposedly tracked the couple in Paris, lying in wait with a tiny Fiat Uno to make them crash in the tunnel. (Andanson was cleared by the French police, but years later was found burned to death in another car. Officially, the Fiat Uno involved in the crash was never found.)
And the choice of routes that night? So many different ones could have been taken. Indeed, it would have been natural to exit the Cours la Reine before the tunnel to go up to Dodi’s apartment via the Avenue d’Iena or the Avenue Marceau. Fayed insisted that Henri Paul was really working for M.I.6, and he was killed at the wheel that night while following orders, but of course didn’t know that he was intended to die. Fayed wouldn’t countenance any discussion of Henri Paul’s inebriation: “If you believe that this was a drunken driver then forget about the interview,” he told me.
Alright, Mr. Fayed. But perhaps you wonder, too, why Dodi and Diana, knowing the Ritz was surrounded by paparazzi, didn’t just spend the night there. After all, it’s the family hotel. “One of the security called me and told me it’s havoc outside on Place Vendome,” said Fayed. “I called Dodi personally. I say, ‘Please.’ I begged him: ‘Don’t go out. Just stay there. You’re in a beautiful suite. You don’t need to move tonight.’ I say ‘Please.’ He told [me], ‘No, I want to give her everything ... I will see. Maybe I will stay in the hotel.’ Twenty minutes later the hotel calls me [and] says Dodi was killed, you know, and Diana is in hospital.”
Dodi Fayed listened to someone else. To Henri Paul, perhaps. Or to Diana. Or to the bodyguards or, most likely, to his own judgment. And the rest is tragedy.

Remarks of Senator Barack Obama

2006 Global Summit on AIDS and the Church

Saddleback Church Campus Lake Forest, California

I want to start by saying how blessed I feel to be a part of today and how grateful I am for your church and your pastor, my friend Rick Warren. Ever since Rick and Kay visited Africa to see the pain and suffering wrought by AIDS, the Warrens and this church have proved each day that faith is not just something you have, it's something you do. Their decision to devote their time, their money, and their purpose-driven lives to the greatest health crisis in human history is not one that's always reported on the news or splashed across the front pages, but it is quietly becoming one of the most influential forces in the struggle against HIV and AIDS. The resources of governments may be vast, and the good works of philanthropists may be abundant, but we should never underestimate how powerful the passion of people of faith can be in eradicating this disease. One of those passionate individuals is the man we just heard from - my friend and colleague, Sam Brownback. Now, Sam and I may not agree on every issue, but I could not be more impressed with his efforts on issues like AIDS, the crisis in the Congo, the genocide in Darfur and sexual trafficking - issues that touch some of the world's most vulnerable people. I am proud to work with him on many of these issues, and I'm proud to be by his side today. I took my own trip to Africa a few months ago. As I'm sure Rick and Kay would agree, it's an experience that stays with you for quite some time. I visited an HIV/AIDS hospital in South Africa that was filled to capacity with people who walked hours - even days - just for the chance to seek help. I met courageous patients who refused to give up for themselves or their families. And I came across AIDS activists who meet resistance from their own government but keep on fighting anyway. But of all that I heard, I encountered few stories as heartbreaking as the one recently told by Laurie Goering, a Chicago Tribune reporter based in Johannesburg who had covered our trip for her newspaper. Three years ago, Laurie hired a woman named Hlengiwe Leocardia Mchunu as her nanny. Leo, as she is known, grew up as one of nine children in a small South African village. All through her life, she worked hard to raise her two kids and save every last penny she earned, and by the time Leo was hired as Laurie's nanny, she had almost finished paying off the mortgage on her home. She had even hoped to use the extra money from her new job to open a refuge for local children who had been orphaned by AIDS. Then one day, Leo received a phone call that her eldest brother had fallen ill. At first he told everyone it was diabetes, but later, in the hospital, admitted to the family it was AIDS. He died a few days later. His wife succumbed to the disease as well. And Leo took in their three children. Six months later, Leo got another phone call. Her younger brother had also become sick with AIDS. She cared for him and nursed him as she did her first brother, but he soon died as well. Leo's pregnant sister was next. And then another brother. And then another brother. She paid for their caskets and their funerals. She took in their children and paid for their schooling. She ran out of money, and she borrowed what she could. She ran out again, and she borrowed even more. And still, the phone calls continued. All across her tiny village, Leo watched more siblings and cousins and nieces and nephews test positive for HIV. She saw neighbors lose their families. She saw a grandmother house sixteen orphaned grandchildren under her roof. And she saw some children go hungry because there was no one to care for them at all.You know, AIDS is a story often told by numbers. 40 million infected with HIV. Nearly 4.5 million this year alone. 12 million orphans in Africa. 8,000 deaths and 6,000 new infections every single day. In some places, 90% of those with HIV do not know they have it. And we just learned that AIDS is set to become the 3rd leading cause of death worldwide in the coming years. They are staggering, these numbers, and they help us understand the magnitude of this pandemic. But when repeated by themselves, statistics can also numb - they can hide the individual stories and tragedies and hopes of the Leos who live the daily drama of this disease. On this World AIDS day, these are the stories that the world needs to hear. They are the stories that touch our souls - and that call us to action. I cannot begin to imagine what it would be like if Leo's family was my own. If I had to answer those phone calls - if I had to attend those funerals. All I know is that no matter how or why my family became sick, I would be called to care for them and comfort them and do what I could to help find a cure. I know every one of you would do the same if it were your family. Here's the thing - my faith tells me that Leo's family is my family.We are all sick because of AIDS - and we are all tested by this crisis. It is a test not only of our willingness to respond, but of our ability to look past the artificial divisions and debates that have often shaped that response. When you go to places like Africa and you see this problem up close, you realize that it's not a question of either treatment or prevention - or even what kind of prevention - it is all of the above. It is not an issue of either science or values - it is both. Yes, there must be more money spent on this disease. But there must also be a change in hearts and minds; in cultures and attitudes. Neither philanthropist nor scientist; neither government nor church, can solve this problem on their own - AIDS must be an all-hands-on-deck effort. Let's talk about what these efforts involve. First, if we hope to win this fight, we must stop new infections - we must do what we can to prevent people from contracting HIV in the first place. Now, too often, the issue of prevention has been framed in either/or terms. For some, the only way to prevent the disease is for men and women to change their sexual behavior - in particular, to abstain from sexual activity outside of marriage. For others, such a prescription is unrealistic; they argue that we need to provide people with the tools they need to protect themselves from the virus, regardless of their sexual practices - in particular, by increasing the use of condoms, as well as by developing new methods, like microbicides, that women can initiate themselves to prevent transmission during sex. And in the debate surrounding how we should tackle the scourge of AIDS, we often see each side questioning the other's motives, and thereby impeding progress.For me, this is a false argument. Let me say this - I don't think we can deny that there is a moral and spiritual component to prevention - that in too many places all over the world where AIDS is prevalent - including our own country, by the way - the relationship between men and women, between sexuality and spirituality, has broken down, and needs to be repaired. It was striking to see this as I traveled through South Africa and Kenya. Again and again, I heard stories of men and women contracting HIV because sex was no longer part of a sacred covenant, but a mechanical physical act; because men had visited prostitutes and brought the disease home to their wives, or young girls had been subjected to rape and abuse.These are issues of prevention we cannot walk away from. When a husband thinks it's acceptable to hide his infidelity from his wife, it's not only a sin, it's a potential death sentence. And when rape is still seen as a woman's fault and a woman's shame, but promiscuity is a man's prerogative, it is a problem of the heart that no government can solve. It is, however, a place where local ministries and churches like Saddleback can, and have, made a real difference - by providing people with a moral framework to make better choices.Having said that, I also believe that we cannot ignore that abstinence and fidelity may too often be the ideal and not the reality - that we are dealing with flesh and blood men and women and not abstractions - and that if condoms and potentially microbicides can prevent millions of deaths, they should be made more widely available. I know that there are those who, out of sincere religious conviction, oppose such measures. And with these folks, I must respectfully but unequivocally disagree. I do not accept the notion that those who make mistakes in their lives should be given an effective death sentence. Nor am I willing to stand by and allow those who are entirely innocent - wives who, because of the culture they live in, often have no power to refuse sex with their husbands, or children who are born with the infection as a consequence of their parent's behavior -suffer when condoms or other measures would have kept them from harm. Another area where we can make significant progress in prevention is by removing the stigma that goes along with getting tested for HIV-AIDS. The idea that in some places, nine in ten people with HIV have no idea they're infected is more than frightening - it's a ticking time bomb waiting to go off. So we need to show people that just as there is no shame in going to the doctor for a blood test or a CAT scan or a mammogram, there is no shame in going for an HIV test. Because while there was once a time when a positive result gave little hope, today the earlier you know, the faster you can get help. My wife Michelle and I were able to take the test on our trip to Africa, after the Center for Disease Control informed us that by getting a simple 15 minute test, we may have encouraged as many as half-a-million Kenyans to get tested as well. Rick Warren has also taken the test. Sam Brownback and I took it today. And I encourage others in public life to do the same. We've got to spread the word to as many people as possible. It's time for us to set an example for others to follow.Of course, even as we work diligently to slow the rate of new infection, we also have a responsibility to treat the 40 million people who are already living with HIV. In some ways, this should be the easy part. Because we know what works. We know how to save people's lives. We know the medicine is out there and we know that wealthy countries can afford to do more. That's why it was so frustrating for me to go to South Africa, and see the pain, and see the suffering, and then hear that the country's Minister of Health had promoted the use of beet root, sweet potato, and lemon juice as the best way to cure HIV. Thankfully, the South African government eventually repudiated this, but it's impossible to overestimate how important it is for political leaders like this to set a good example for their people. We should never forget that God granted us the power to reason so that we would do His work here on Earth - so that we would use science to cure disease, and heal the sick, and save lives. And one of the miracles to come out of the AIDS pandemic is that scientists have discovered medicine that can give people with HIV a new chance at life. We are called to give them that chance. We have made progress - in South Africa, treatment provided to pregnant women has drastically reduced the incidents of infants born with the infection. But despite such progress, only one in every five people with HIV around the world is receiving antiretroviral drug treatment. One in every five. We must do better. We should work with drug companies to reduce the costs of generic anti-retroviral drugs, and work with developing nations to help them build the health infrastructure that's necessary to get sick people treated - this means more money for hospitals and medical equipment, and more training for nurses and doctors.We need a renewed emphasis on nutrition. Right now we're finding out that there are people who are on the drugs, who are getting treatment, who are still dying because they don't have any food to eat. This is inexcusable - especially in countries that have sufficient food supplies. So we must help get them that nutrition, and this is another place where religious organizations that have always provided food to the hungry can help a great deal.And even as we focus on the enormous crisis in Africa, we need to remember that the problem is not in Africa alone. In the last few years, we have seen an alarming rise in infection rates in the Middle East, Southeast Asia, the former Soviet Union, Eastern Europe, and the Caribbean. And on this World AIDS day, we cannot forget the crisis occurring in our own backyard. Right here in the United States, AIDS is now the leading cause of death for African American women aged 25-34, and we are also seeing many poorer and rural communities fail to get the resources they need to deal with their vulnerable populations - a problem that unfortunately some in Congress are trying to address by taking money away from larger cities that are still facing enormous problems of their own. Now let me say this - I think that President Bush and this past Congress should be applauded for the resources they have contributed to the fight against HIV and AIDS. Through our country's emergency plan for AIDS relief, the United States will have contributed more than $15 billion over five years to combat HIV-AIDS overseas. And the Global Fund, with money from the United States and other countries, has done some heroic work to fight this disease. As I traveled throughout Africa this summer, I was proud of the tangible impact that all this money was having, often through coordinated efforts with the Centers for Disease Control, the State Department, foreign governments, and non-governmental organizations. So our first priority in Congress should be to reauthorize this program when it expires in 2008. Our second priority should be to reassess what's worked and what hasn't so that we're not wasting one dollar that could be saving someone's life.But our third priority should be to actually boost our contribution to this effort. With all that is left to be done in this struggle - with all the other areas of the world that need our help - it's time for us to add at least an additional $1 billion a year in new money over the next five years to strengthen and expand the program to places like Southeast Asia, India, and Eastern Europe, where the pandemic will soon reach crisis proportions.Of course, given all the strains that have been placed on the U.S. budget, and given the extraordinary needs that we face here at home, it may be hard to find the money. But I believe we must try. I believe it will prove to be a wise investment. The list of reasons for us to care about AIDS is long. In an interconnected, globalized world, the ability of pandemics to spread to other countries and continents has never been easier or faster than it is today. There are also security implications, as countries whose populations and economies have been ravaged by AIDS become fertile breeding grounds for civil strife and even terror. But the reason for us to step up our efforts can't simply be instrumental. There are more fundamental reasons to care. Reasons related to our own humanity. Reasons of the soul. Like no other illness, AIDS tests our ability to put ourselves in someone else's shoes - to empathize with the plight of our fellow man. While most would agree that the AIDS orphan or the transfusion victim or the wronged wife contracted the disease through no fault of their own, it has too often been easy for some to point to the unfaithful husband or the promiscuous youth or the gay man and say "This is your fault. You have sinned." I don't think that's a satisfactory response. My faith reminds me that we all are sinners. My faith also tells me that - as Pastor Rick has said - it is not a sin to be sick. My Bible tells me that when God sent his only Son to Earth, it was to heal the sick and comfort the weary; to feed the hungry and clothe the naked; to befriend the outcast and redeem those who strayed from righteousness. Living His example is the hardest kind of faith - but it is surely the most rewarding. It is a way of life that can not only light our way as people of faith, but guide us to a new and better politics as Americans. For in the end, we must realize that the AIDS orphan in Africa presents us with the same challenge as the gang member in South Central, or the Katrina victim in New Orleans, or the uninsured mother in North Dakota. We can turn away from these Americans, and blame their problems on themselves, and embrace a politics that's punitive and petty, divisive and small. Or we can embrace another tradition of politics - a tradition that has stretched from the days of our founding to the glory of the civil rights movement, a tradition based on the simple idea that we have a stake in one another - and that what binds us together is greater than what drives us apart, and that if enough people believe in the truth of that proposition and act on it, then we might not solve every problem, but we can get something meaningful done for the people with whom we share this Earth. Let me close by returning to the story of Leo, that South African woman burdened by so much death and despair. Sometime after the death of her fifth sibling, she decided that she wasn't just going to stand idly by. She decided to call the town's first public meeting about the AIDS crisis - something that no one had even talked about, let alone met about. 200 people showed up. Some had walked for miles to get there, a few with their grandchildren on their back.One by one, they stood up and broke their silence, and they told their stories. Stories of tragedy, and stories of hope. And when they were done, Leo rose and said, "I don't know whether we will win this war, but I'm looking for people who will stand up and face the reality. The time for sitting silently has come to an end." Everything did not suddenly get better after that meeting, but some things did. Despite all the children she had to raise and all the sick relatives she still had to care for, Leo still decided to open the AIDS orphanage she had dreamed about so long ago. She began building a daycare center that would house one hundred orphans. And she started plans on a youth center and a soup kitchen. I hear that part of the story and I think, if this woman who has so little, and has lost so much, can do so much good - if she can still make a way out of no way - then what are we waiting for? Corinthians says that we are all of one spirit, and that "if one part suffers, every part suffers with it." But it also says, "if one part is honored, every part rejoices with it." On this World AIDS day, it is the stories of overcoming, and not just illness, that the world needs to hear. Yes, the stories of sadness call us to suffer with the sick. But stories like Leo's also call us to honor her example, rejoice in the hope that it brings, and work to help her find that brighter future. Thank you, and God Bless you.

Controversial legacy of former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet
General Pinochet stabilized Chile's economy, but is best known for his repressive rule and alleged human rights violations.
By Jen Ross Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor SANTIAGO, CHILE - Gen. Augusto Pinochet, who overthrew Chile's democratically elected Communist government in a 1973 coup and ruled for 17 years, died Sunday without ever having been condemned for the human rights abuses committed during his rule.
The date - December 10, the UN's International Human Rights Day - could not have been more symbolic for the passing of a man who best symbolized the international struggle to end impunity for human rights abusers in Latin America.
"It's no consolation to anyone that Pinochet has been subjected to a long legal battle, given that it has never resulted in a condemnation. That's what his victims will lament most about his death," says Sergio Laurenti, executive director of the Chilean wing of Amnesty International.
A paradoxical and symbolic regional figure, Pinochet is one of the most recognized emblems of Latin America's Dirty Wars against leftists during the 1070s and '80s.
Pinochet's rise
In 1970, Chile became the first country in Latin America to elect a socialist leader. President Salvador Allende quickly moved to nationalize foreign-owned industries and rectify Chile's gross economic disparities. But by 1972, internal dissent, failing production, and covert international attempts to undermine Mr. Allende's government combined to create an atmosphere of high political tension that many Chileans feared would crescendo into class warfare or civil war.
On Sept. 11th, 1973, two weeks after being appointed commander-in-chief of Chile's Army, Pinochet led a military junta of four officers who sent war planes to bomb the presidential palace, La Moneda. Once Pinochet's treason and the forces against him became clear, Allende committed suicide.
Pinochet imposed a curfew and ordered mass arrests in an effort to root out opposition. Declaring himself president in 1974, he eliminated Congress, political parties, freedom of speech, habeas corpus, and trade unions. At least 27,000 people were tortured while in detention, and an estimated 3,200 Chileans were killed or disappeared during his 17-year-rule.
Political scientists say that, although many dictators elsewhere in Latin America were responsible for more deaths, Pinochet is the most notorious because of what he embodies.
"He overthrew Latin America's first democratically elected Marxist leader, who himself was a symbol," says Robert Funk, a political science professor at Santiago's Diego Portales University.
In 1998, Pinochet narrowly lost a referendum on his rule, giving way to a democratic government in 1990, led by center-left president Patricio Aylwin.
Passions he stirs
Although it has been 33 years since the military coup staged by Augusto Pinochet, and more than 16 years since the end of his rule, he still stirs passions on both sides.
Car horns honked here in celebration on Sunday, while tens of thousands of his opponents gathered in plazas across the country to cheer and celebrate his passing.
Meanwhile, more than 1,000 supporters gathered to mourn the man and express their outrage at the international media. With photos of Pinochet taped to their bodies, and waving flags or hand-painted signs, they came to Chile's Military Hospital to express their gratitude for the deceased strongman.
Pinochet still boasts a decidedly committed following who remember him as a savior.
According to opinion polls, somewhere between 20 and 30 percent of the population was still professing their support for Pinochet and his military regime as recently as one year ago, says Claudio Fuentes, director of the Latin American Faculty of Social Sciences, an independent think tank based in Santiago.
Others say there's an element of nostalgia involved. "But more important, what there is in Chile, as there is in the rest of Latin America, is a fetish for authority," says Mr. Funk. "That respect that we see for Pinochet now is in many ways the support for someone who had a strong hand and made things run in a more orderly fashion."
Credited with stimulating economic growth
Though condemned for its brutality, his regime is credited with stimulating economic growth.
"Pinochet, of course, became known for the economic reforms that he championed, which became perhaps the first case of neoliberal reform, not only in Latin America but in the world, and which were then copied by governments such as [US President Ronald Reagan and [British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher]," says Funk.
During his 17 years in power, Pinochet controlled inflation, united the country with highways, and helped Chile's economy grow steadily. He is credited for heralding an economic miracle for this developing nation, whose economy is now considered the most stable in the region.
"He led a series of social, economic, and political reforms that changed the face of our country," says supporter and history teacher Mauricio Schiapacasse. "When he took power, 40 percent of the population had sewers; when he left, 90 percent did. He created a private health-care system that focused on the poorest sectors. He took 150,000 families out of shantytowns and gave them property. And he achieved an economic growth rate of 10 percent. So many people are thankful for that and will never forget him."
Mr. Schiapacasse says Pinochet's legacy has been distorted outside of Chile by a deliberate campaign of disinformation financed by international leftists, including the more than 500,000 Chileans exiled during the dictatorship.
"We have to recognize that these human rights problems existed, but at some point they've come to eclipse the image of what he did for our country," says retired Gen. Luis Cortes Villa, Director of the nonprofit Pinochet Foundation, which is dedicated to giving out scholarships and preserving the positive side of his legacy.
Symbol for human rights violations
But for most of the world, Pinochet's legacy is synonymous with human rights abuses. Pinochet had long been seen as an untouchable in Chile, but in 1998, Spanish judge Baltasar Garzón mounted an offensive, using international instruments barring crimes against humanity to argue for Pinochet's extradition from London.
The former dictator spent more than a year under house arrest until he was deemed too ill and returned to Chile for judgment. But as the world looked on, in 2002, Chilean courts finally declared Pinochet mentally unfit to stand trial.
Since then, Pinochet has been formally charged six times for various crimes, but was twice exonerated for dementia.
In late November, Pinochet was placed under house arrest on kidnapping charges stemming from the Caravan of Death case, in which Pinochet is accused of having sent soldiers to round up and kill opponents shortly after his military coup in 1973. The families of his victims had also filed more than three hundred civil suits against him.
While he has never been found guilty by the courts, some of his detractors have taken comfort in the fact that his popularity has suffered enormously in recent years as a result of these trials.
And Pinochet himself recently issued a sort of mea culpa. To mark his 91st birthday on Nov. 25, Pinochet issued a statement in which he took "political responsibility" for everything that took place under his rule, although he said he had believed it was in Chile's best interests. He also alluded to his failing health, saying: "Today, close to the end of my days, I want to make clear that I hold no rancor toward anyone."
The government has not yet said how it will remember Pinochet, and whether it will hold a funeral with full honors, as is the custom for former heads of state and military commanders.
For many Chileans, his death marks the end of an era and what they believe will herald a period of reconciliation for Chile's polarized political classes.

Signs of recent water boost theory of life on Mars
By MARK CARREAUCopyright 2006

Houston Chronicle Possible water found on Mars
Photographs from an unmanned NASA craft suggest that underground water occasionally rises and flows across Mars' frigid terrain, further raising the prospect that the Red Planet hosts conditions suitable for life, scientists announced Wednesday.
Bright streaks, appearing within the past seven years in two gullylike areas in the southern hemisphere of the planet, triggered the scientific excitement. Previous photos suggested water flow that had taken place hundreds of millions of years ago rather than anything that scientists could conceive of happening during their lives.
"Liquid water is of high interest to folks interested in looking for life in our solar system and beyond," said Kenneth Edgett, a scientist at Malin Space Science Systems in San Diego, which operates the camera aboard the 10-year-old Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft.
"The big questions are how does this happen, and does it point to a habitat on Mars," Michael Meyer, NASA's lead scientist for Mars exploration, told a Washington news briefing.
A space legacyGlobal Surveyor, launched in 1996, was the centerpiece of a $330 million mission that appears to have ended abruptly in early November, when flight controllers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory lost contact with the spacecraft.
The missing spacecraft, which took the photos while in Mars' orbit, may have left an important legacy.
The findings from its photographs, to be published in the journal Science on Friday after months of analysis, help address a mystery that surfaced in the photos transmitted to Earth in the early 1970s by the American Mariner 9 spacecraft.
Cameras carried by the probe, the first to orbit another planet, revealed a dusty realm with a rugged rocky terrain that included winding, dry river beds. With follow-up missions, scientists concluded Mars may appear as it did billions of years ago.
Scientists think the planet formed along with the rest of the solar system about 4.5 billion years ago. In an ancient era, it was warmer with an atmosphere thick enough to allow water to flow and pool on the surface.
Today, the Martian atmosphere is so thin that water in liquid form would rapidly evaporate. Just why the planet changed is a mystery. The water may have evaporated into space or soaked underground.
Mike Malin, whose company built and operates Global Surveyor's camera, says the new images suggest that at least some of the water retreated below the surface.
When it rises to the surface, the water freezes. Gradually, the pressure of more underground water forces the ice to burst free and carry soil and rocks along in what amounts to a mudslide, he said.
Like a 'flash flood'Global Surveyor's cameras have sent about 240,000 images to Earth.
Edgett's analysis found two sets of "before and after" photographs of sloping gully formations in craters in the Terra Sirenum and Centauri Montes regions of southern Mars.
Something had happened to increase the brightness of the soil at the two sites, one event between 1999 and 2005, the other between 2001 and 2005.
Though the changes might be explained by frost, mineral deposits or modest landslides, Malin said, the bright streaks most closely resemble what would be left by a sudden flow of water. The streaks include dark spots and a fingerlike feature where the fluid flowed around and branched out.
Malin said the water rushing into the gully "would be like being out in the desert during a flash flood."
The atmosphere on Mars is so thin, however, that the rushing water would be boiling away as it flowed.
Space agency experts are attempting to re-establish contact with Global Surveyor. They fear, though, that the spacecraft may have experienced a crippling problem with one of its power-generating solar panels.
NASA plans to continue its study of the gullies with the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. The probe, which began studying the planet last month, is equipped with more powerful cameras and instruments that can better characterize the chemical properties of the bright spots.
mark.carreau@chron.com