Where Did I Come From? “Tracking ancestors who entered the country through Ellis Island used to mean
poring through endless reels of microfilm.

Now, it can be as simple as a few clicks of a computer mouse.

On Tuesday, Ellis Island officials and the Mormon church introduced a new database containing arrival
records for the 22 million immigrants who entered the port of New York from 1892 to 1924. The database, which includes 70 percent of all U.S. arrivals recorded during that
period, will be available to Ellis Island visitors and on the Internet.” Wired A search of the Ellis Island website of the National park Service indicates that, despite publicity promising a Y2K opening, the American Family Immigration History Center is “Coming Soon in 2001: AFIHC

American Family Immigration History Center: New family history research facility that contains the ships’ passenger records on the over 22 million
people who entered through the Port of New York and Ellis Island from 1892-1924, the peak years of immigrant processing at Ellis Island. Visitors will
be able to access 11 fields of digitized information, as well as obtain reproductions of original ship manifests and photos of ships of passage. For more
information please contact the Statue of Liberty – Ellis Island Foundation, Inc., at (212) 883-1986.”

China Incident
Brings Out
Schizophrenia in
U.S. Say
Europeans. “The recent standoff with
China is just the latest in a
series of events that
highlight a schism within the
Bush administration over its
approach to international
relations. And Europeans are
worried…” about the disarray within the Bush administration, the U.S. tendency to act more and more unilaterally without concensus with European allies, and the increasing foreign policy focus on the Pacific and away from Europe. Utne Reader Meanwhile, the U.S. press is falling all over Li’l George‘s supposed combination of humility and resolve. “The national news media can’t make up its mind if George W.
Bush is Gary Cooper, John Wayne or a reincarnation of John F.
Kennedy in the Cuban missile crisis.” The Consortium

Annals of Overreaching Intellectual Property Rights: Owning the Future: PB&J Patent Punch-up: “Hold on to your lunchboxes, Technology Review readers. This legal squabble pits J. M. Smucker, beloved maker of jam, against tiny, Gaylord, MI-based
Albie’s Foods. For reasons that elude me, Smucker’s lawyers decided to try to enforce the firm’s exclusive rights to—I’m not making this up—its patented
version of a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.” Technology Review

Net Access: Socket to Me. “Imagine surfing the Internet by simply plugging your computer into the wall outlet.

That’s the idea behind power line communications, which use low voltage electrical lines to transmit
voice and data signals.

Proponents say the technology beats the socks off other broadband methods by offering transmission
rates up to five times faster than cable modems for about half the price. Fast, cheap, ubiquitous
Internet. It’s a geek’s wet dream.

But before you start the heavy breathing, consider this: Although the technology has been hyped since
the late ’90s and companies from Argentina to Israel have been racing to get it up and running, the
future of powerline seems murky at best. And if you’re an American, your possibilities of ever getting broadband access through
the outlet next to the john are next to zero.” Wired

Narco News site being sued by prominent Mexican banker it accuses of being drug trafficker.

Narco News (was) launched a year ago to cover the war on drugs
in Latin America. For the past year, Giordano’s been producing Narco News from
“somewhere in a country called América,” as he signs his dispatches, taking on
powerful icons ranging from the New York Times and the Associated Press to the
governments of the United States and Mexico.

Among the icons with whom Giordano has tangled is Hernández, the principal
owner of Banco Nacional de Mexico, more commonly known as Banamex, which
Hernández bought from the Mexican government in 1991. Last August, Hernández
and Banamex sued Giordano, the Narco News Bulletin, and Mexican journalist
Mario Menéndez Rodríguez, accusing them of libel, slander, and “interference with
prospective economic advantage.”

The reason: Giordano and Menéndez, both in interviews last year with the Village
Voice and WBAI Radio and in a public appearance at Columbia University,
charged that Hernández is a drug trafficker whose profits helped to finance the
purchase of Banamex. Giordano also published those charges in Narco News. Boston Phoenix

Lone Guns Set Sites on Spam: “A self-appointed global army has taken on the mass Internet mailings that
annoy users and crash systems. It is a demanding and risky hobby.” LA Times

Emerging Disease News: States Regroup on West Nile Disease: “It is spring, and an epidemiologist’s thoughts turn
to the West Nile virus – the germ that arrived in this
country two years ago, imperiling lives and causing alarm along the
East Coast.” I had been wondering whether concerns about WNV would re-emerge this spring. The article has links to other coverage of West Nile worry.

Despite Appearances, Whitman Says She and Bush Agree on Environment: ‘(In) a recent interview in her office, she argued that she had felt
nothing at all after learning of the president’s reversal.

“It had nothing to do with me personally,” she said. Conceding that she “had
been in a different place” at first, she said she had come to accept the
president’s view that such regulation would be too costly to the economy and to
consumers.

“He was right, all things considered,” Mrs. Whitman said. “We’re in an energy
crisis, no two ways about it.”

She never considered resigning, she said.” The lady doth protest too much?? New York Times