Battlefield Earth: Film Dogged by Links to Scientology Founder: “Controversy has swirled around the film because it is based

on the 1982 novel by L. Ron Hubbard, who founded the

Church of Scientology, and because the film was the pet

project of Mr. Travolta, who has made no secret of his

dedication to Scientology. Could this be a sneaky attempt to

lure unsuspecting moviegoers into Scientology?” [New York Times]

Battlefield Earth: Earth Capitulates in 9 Minutes to Mean Entrepreneurs From Space. “It may be a bit

early to make such

judgments, but

Battlefield Earth may well turn out to be the worst movie

of this century.” [New York Times review by the discerning Elvis Mitchell]

Non-partisan group urges caution on death penalty

A newly formed group including both supporters and opponents of the death penalty, the National Committee to

Prevent Wrongful Executions, is encouraging restraint in the use of the death penalty and urging other states to consider adopting an Illinois-style moratorium on executions.

Schizophrenic Yale law professor won’t stand trial in fiancée’s slaying. This is indeed a very tragic one, but unfortunately discouraging relapses are not uncommon in dealing with major mental illness: He was once celebrated for succeeding as a Yale Law School graduate and faculty member despite his schizophrenia, but at some point he stopped taking his medication and began to deteriorate. His fiancee stayed home from work that day to try and help, but the prospect of a crisis intervention apparently drove him to murder her, thinking she was ‘”a nonhuman impostor” conspiring to

hospitalize him for torture, experimentation and death’, according to psychiatric reports. Even the prosecution’s psychiatric expert conceded the merits of his insanity plea. [Nando Times]

Microsoft asks Slashdot to remove posts revealing copyrighted material. After Microsoft reportedly reneged on a commitment to publish its proprietary extensions to the open source Kerberos security technology (which authenticates logins to Unix systems), a public message on Slashdot by some open source types including one of the co-developers of the Kerberos standard accused Microsoft of abusing the protocol and preventing the interoperability of its “branded” systems with other Unix systems. They published Microsoft’s data specification as well as ways to circumvent its control….Later in the day, Slashdot went down as a result of a distributed denial-of-service attack.

Stay away from the seals: Seals pose influenza threat. For the first time, an animal reservoir of the influenza B virus has been discovered. After an ailing seal found on the Dutch coast was diagnosed with the flu in 1999, up to 2% of seals in the area were found to be infected. Animal reservoirs of viruses that infect humans pose a potentially devastating threat because they (a) allow viruses to resurface after hiatuses when human resistance has faded, and (b) also allow viruses to mutate into more virulent strains unimpeded. (Mutation into a more deadly strain in a human population would usually, in contrast, be self-limiting, because the infection would kill its hosts so rapidly that it could not spread far; notice how many of the terrifying recently-emergent diseases appear to have jumped from animal reservoirs.) The ‘A’ type of the influenza virus is harbored in birds and mammals (“swine flu”) and the cyclical emergence of new virulent A strains has been responsible for serious flu epidemics worldwide. In contrast, the influenza B virus was thought to be exclusively human. Stored seal blood samples showed no signs of infection prior to 1995 but, since that date, 2% of the samples showed evidence of the virus. The viral “footprint” for all infected seals indicates a 1995 strain. Scientists speculate that someone coughed or sneezed in the face of a stranded seal encountered on a beach somewhere in 1995 and the virus made the jump to the new species. [BBC]

Cruelty to detainees and prisoners is becoming institutionalized

across the USA, Amnesty International said today, on the eve of the US

Government’s first appearance before the UN Committee against Torture in Geneva.

“Since the United States ratified the Convention against Torture in October 1994, its increasingly punitive approach towards offenders

has continued to lead to practices which facilitate torture or other forms of ill-treatment prohibited under international law.”

Bill got away with it, and now Rudy seems to be making out like a bandit as well. Slate runs down the new rules for adultery in politics.

Nike Cuts Off Funds for 3 Universities (Michigan, Oregon and Brown) which have recently joined The Workers’ Rights Consortium, which attempts to persuade colleges to be more aggressive in monitoring pay and working conditions in overseas “sweatshops” including Nike’s factories. Millions of dollars for outfitting athletic teams and renovating sports facilities at the three schools have been withdrawn. Nike supports a different organization, the Fair Labor Association, which claims to monitor overseas working conditions but involves industry representatives in policy making and, unlike the WRC, does not support a “fair living wage” standard and does not advocate unannounced spot checks of factories.