News in-briefs

The discovery of a deep hole in an Ohio nuclear reactor has triggered new fears of nuclear danger. The hole was discovered during a scheduled refueling outage that began Feb. 16.

Boric acid-used in the primary coolant bath surrounding uranium rods in the core-had leaked and penetrated the six-inch-thick reactor vessel head. The vessel head is a massive 150-ton, 17-foot wide piece of carbon steel fastened to the reactor. The severity of the corrosion was such that only the 3/8-inch thick stainless steel liner stood between the reactor core and the metal shroud surrounding the whole apparatus.

Officials say it is the largest hole ever discovered in a U.S. nuclear plant reactor.

FirstEnergy and Federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission officials pointed out that the hole posed no danger to the public since the reactor is in a steel-reinforced concrete containment building. Even if the reactor had ruptured, nuclear material would have been unable to escape the housing.

A "dark brown-black-green water mass"-that's how officials are describing the appearance of the water in Florida Bay. Others are simply calling it a black blob.

At its peak in February, the black water covered an area of over 700 square miles north of the Florida Keys and west of the tip of the mainland. The huge, mysterious area of "black water" seems to be the result of a diatom, or a type of algae.

Officials think the black water is most likely an algal bloom, much like the infamous fish-fatal red tide. While blooms are not uncommon off the coast of Florida, an explosion of algae of this size is very rare.

The bloom has not proven deadly to marine animals, but anglers claim that many of the fish usually found in the region are strangely absent. They also report the water as appearing "snotty," "like sewage" and "nasty."



Israeli and American intelligence agencies recently concluded that PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat and Iran have forged an alliance. The alliance gives Palestinian resistance movements access to heavy weapons and millions of dollars in aid.

The partnership was arranged last May in Moscow while Arafat was visiting Russian President Vladimir Putin. The meeting occurred between two top Arafat aides and members of the Iranian government, according to senior Israeli government officials. The officials have declined to give out any other details or comment on how they obtained the information.

The link has been much debated since Israeli military forces seized an Iranian shipment of heavy weapons bound for Palestine. U.S. and Israeli officials do not feel this is simply a rogue incident but instead that it is part of a larger scheme carefully orchestrated between Iran and Palestine, though both deny any involvement.



President George W. Bush's recent move to impose tariffs on steel imports has angered the European Union. The Union recently drew up a list of items which it planned on taxing in retribution for the U.S. sanctions, including steel, textiles and citrus fruit.

Under World Trade Organization laws, member countries may impose tariffs of up to 100 percent on offending countries if they cannot provide legitimate justification for their taxes. Bush claims the import taxes are necessary to protect the struggling U.S. steel industry, but a Union official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, claimed that the American government would not be able to support their claims.

Rapid action is looking rather unlikely, however. The Union plans to go through the trade organization's much slower but more thorough dispute-resolution system. The trade group will meet in Geneva and conduct hearings on what sanctions the Union can impose. The process can take about 18 months.



In spite of the watered-down economic stimulus bill recently passed in Congress and the bitter partisan fighting among legislators, the economy is on the road to recovery. Many claim this is a result of a sharp increase in government spending which has helped blunt the harshness of the recession and bring about the economy's relatively quick recovery.

"You can reasonably argue that the recession, which seems to have ended, came to an end because of aggressive government spending," said Mark M. Zandi, chief economist at economy.com as reported on Yahoo News.

Some of the spending increases went for military purposes as well as domestic actions to fight terrorism. Much money, however, was delivered in the form of increased spending on highways, school construction, Medicaid, unemployment insurance and numerous municipal projects.

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