In2-MeC

Prague, Czech Republic
23 November 2004

Revision Marches to Social Agenda

By Scott Gold Times Staff Writer

SPRING, Texas-�Outside the Spring Church of Christ, a large roadside sign says a lot about the prevailing sensibility in this cordial town. It reads: "Support New Testament Morality. "

This is the home and powerbase of Terri Leo, a state Board of Education member representing 2. 5 million people in East Texas.

At the urging of Leo and several other members-�who describe themselves as Christian conservatives-�the board this month approved new health textbooks for high school and middle school students after publishers said they would tweak references to marriage and sexuality.

One agreed to define marriage as a "lifelong union between a husband and a wife. " Another deleted words that were attacked by conservatives as "stealth" references to gay relationships; "partners," for example, was changed to "husbands and wives. " A passage explaining that adolescence brings the onset of "attraction to others" became "attraction to the opposite sex. "

Leo said she pushed for the changes to combat the influence of "liberal New York publishers" who by "censoring" the definition of marriage were legitimizing same-sex unions.

Some education advocates have criticized the board's decision.

"This was never about defining marriage," said Samantha Smoot, president of the Texas Freedom Network, an Austin-based nonprofit that opposes what it calls religious "extremism. " "It was an effort to get anti-gay propaganda in the books. "

Gilbert Sewall, director of the New York-based American Textbook Council-�an independent organization that reviews textbooks�-also criticized the Texas-approved books' promotion of abstinence-only sex education.

Such programs are "naive and confused," said Sewall, who described himself as an "educational conservative. "

Research, much of it conducted by the federal government, has raised a host of questions about the effectiveness of abstinence programs in preventing disease and pregnancy. Teenage girls who are taught in the programs do wait longer before having sex, many experts believe, but are less likely to use protection when they do-�causing them to contract sexually transmitted diseases at the same rates as those who have sex earlier.

"I have very little use for this religion-driven curriculum," Sewall said. "This confuses sex and moral education. "

Texas is the second-largest buyer of textbooks in the nation, after California. Books purchased here wind up in classrooms across the nation, because publishers are loath to create new editions for smaller states.

As a result, five social conservatives on the 15-member Texas board, frequently joined by five more moderate Republicans, have enormous clout�-and often control the content used to teach millions of children.

Publishers have no choice but to heed many of the group's wishes, said Don McLeroy, a dentist, Sunday school teacher and Texas Board of Education member.

"They've got to sell books," he said. "It's business. "

Conservatives' efforts over the years to edit textbooks are legendary here. In a nod to those who believe God created the Earth 6,000 years ago, a sentence saying the ice age took place "millions of years ago" was changed to "in the distant past. " Descriptions of environmentalism have been attacked as antithetical to free-enterprise ideals; a passage describing the cruelty of slavery was derided as "overkill. "

The pace of such efforts to alter curriculum is expected to increase because Christian conservatives are "emboldened" by the Republican gains on election day, Leo said.

The board's stance on the health texts, some observers said, speaks to a critical factor in the GOP's recent success: a recognition by evangelical conservatives that all politics is local.

The political ascendance of Christian conservatives in the 1980s and 1990s was fueled by their coordinated effort to win seats on school boards, city councils and other local bodies. A leader of the Christian Coalition said at the time that he would be willing to train an evangelical to run for dogcatcher.

Conservative forces began targeting the Texas Board of Education in the 1990s. Some, including Leo, ran for election unopposed.

Success at the local level has been used as a springboard to national power, said Robert Simonds, president of California-based Citizens for Excellence in Education; the group, which helped train the first wave of Christian conservative candidates, recently has lobbied for the withdrawal of Christians from the "secularist" public school system.

"It's like an athlete," Simonds said. "If you want to be a top-level baseball or football player, first you have to learn to run. So we ran.

"The secular world has jumped on it, but only after seeing so much success in Christian education and the like. "

But Evan Wolfson, director of Freedom to Marry-�a New York group that seeks marriage rights for gays and lesbians-�said that the conservatives' drive to control local and state political boards might not look smart in the long run if their agendas were seen as mean-spirited.

"It does not help our kids to use them as pawns for divisive social agendas," he said. "It might be astute in the short term, but not in any meaningful sense for our kids or our country. "

5 Killed, 3 Hurt in Wisconsin Hunting Dispute

By JOSHUA FREED, Associated Press Writer

BIRCHWOOD, Wis. --A deer hunter shot and killed five people and wounded three others in northwestern Wisconsin following a dispute about a tree stand during the hunt's opening weekend, authorities said.

The 36-year-old alleged gunman was arrested Sunday afternoon, Sawyer County sheriff's officials said. Jake Hodgkinson, a deputy at the county jail, identified the suspect as Chai Vang but would give no additional details.

Paul Schnell, a spokesman for the St. Paul, Minn. , police department, said the man was from St. Paul.

The incident began when two hunters were returning to their rural cabin on private land in Sawyer County when they saw the suspect in one of their hunting platforms in a tree, County Chief Deputy Tim Zeigle said. A confrontation and shooting followed.

It's not known who shot first, Zeigle said.

Both hunters were wounded and one of them radioed to the cabin a quarter mile away. Other hunters responded and were shot. About 20 shots were fired, but it's unclear who shot them, he said.

The dead included a teenage boy and a woman, Zeigle said. A father and son were among them, he said. Some of the victims were shot more than once.

All five, from the Rice Lake area, were dead when officers arrived to the area in southwestern Sawyer County, he said. Authorities found two bodies near each other and the others were scattered over 100 yards.

"It's absolutely nuts. Why? Over sitting in a tree stand?" asked Zeigle.

Zeigle said the suspect was "chasing after them and killing them," with a SKS 7. 62 mm semiautomatic rifle, a common hunting weapon. Wisconsin's statewide deer gun hunting season started Saturday and lasts for nine days.

Two young people who stayed in the cabin emerged safely after the shootings.

The suspect, who did not have a compass, got lost in the woods and two hunters, not knowing about the shootings, helped him find his way out, Zeigle said. When he emerged, a Department of Natural Resources officer recognized the deer license on his back, given to police by a victim, Zeigle said.

The man was out of bullets and was arrested, Zeigle said.

One of the injured hunters was in critical condition at St. Joseph's Hospital. Another was listed in serious condition and the third was in fair condition, both at Lakeview Medical Center.

Hunter Bill Wagner, 72, of Oshkosh, was about two miles away near Deer Lake with a party of about 20 other hunters. After they got word of the shooting, he and others went to round up the rest of the party. He said they heard sirens, planes and helicopters and noticed the surrounding roads blocked off.

"When you're hunting you don't expect somebody to try to shoot you and murder you," he said. "You have no idea who is coming up to you. "

It took about three hours to round up the other hunters, who were up to four miles apart, Wagner said. "We're all old, dyed-in-wool hunters," he said. "We wouldn't go home because of this but we will keep it in our minds. We're not forgetting it. "

Saudi Arabia Is Braced for Locusts

Abdul Wahab Bashir, Arab News

JEDDAH, 20 November 2004-�Saudi Arabia is braced for a possible invasion of locusts that over the past months have been invading swaths of Northwest and West Africa and have over the past days crossed into Egypt and southern Israel. Officials at the Ministry of Agriculture said the possibility of locusts reaching the Kingdom is high while the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) said most of the swarms in northern Egypt were expected to move toward the Red Sea.

�The possibility of the locusts crossing into Saudi Arabia, especially along coastal areas, is high now that the swarms have reached Egypt and with the favorable weather conditions adding to the risk,� said Ghazi Hawari, director of the National Locust Research and Combating Center, an affiliate of the Saudi Ministry of Agriculture.

The locusts first appeared on the coast of Egypt from Libya and then moved southward in the Red Sea trench to traditional winter breeding areas on the coast. FAO has warned a few swarms could cross the Red Sea and reach the coastal plains north of Jeddah.

The locust infestation this year was described as �one of the most severe in a decade�, by FAO which warned that the swarms which also visited Lebanon, Cyprus and the Greek island of Crete could have the situation develop into a plague unless urgent control measures were taken. Such measures have successfully prevented widespread damage to food crops, it added.

Mauritania, Morocco and Algeria in Northwest Africa as well as Cape Verde islands, northern Mali and Niger were all affected. Mauritania has been the worst-hit country, with up to half of all cereal crops consumed by the insects. FAO has urged these countries to prepare themselves for another upsurge in locust numbers next year.

The stakes in the locust war are enormously higher today than they were in the past since the Saudi government has invested heavily in developing a modern agro-industry, not only in the traditional oases, but also in new areas of the desert made fertile through pivot irrigation.

The authorities said they have taken the necessary measures to meet any eventuality adding they have received early warnings from FAO and acted accordingly. Deputy Minister of Agriculture Abdul Aziz Al-Shitri said the Kingdom has made the necessary arrangements to face a possible flow of locusts into the country from Egypt.

He said early ground teams have been dispatched to monitor the situation along the Kingdom�s border areas, with workers operating round the clock even during Eid holidays that have been canceled to allow for a close monitoring of the situation.

Locusts can eat their own body weight in food, two to three ounces, each day. A single square mile swarm can contain from between 100 million to 200 million locusts, which can eat 220 tons to 720 tons of food every day. This is a quantity enough for 200,000 humans.

A single swarm of locusts can be small, extending over a hundred of square meters, or huge, composed of billions of the insects. In one day, they can fly 100 kilometers in the general direction of prevailing winds. They may breed in one country and attack in another.

In the past Saudi Arabia usually had desert locusts invading from East Africa with the anti-locust activity mainly concentrated along the Red Sea coast. The locust season usually runs from November through May. Most of the Saudi coastal areas are about 300 kilometers (190 miles) from the African shoreline and the port city of Jeddah is 200 kilometers (125 miles) away.

The southwest tip of the Arabian Peninsula is less than 50 kilometers (30 miles) from Djibouti. Locusts are known to hold the flight endurance record for insects, a confirmed distance of 2,500 kilometers (1,600 miles) from the Canary Islands to the British Isles. Riding the air currents from Africa they have no trouble reaching Saudi Arabia.

Hawari said the Kingdom maintains nationwide locust surveillance through a network of scores of offices run by the Ministry of Agriculture. FAO officials said they were confident the Kingdom could deal with any dangerous upsurge within its borders. It is self-sufficient in locust control and uses modern techniques, quickly mobilizing helicopters and ground control teams. �

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