Around the Nation

Report: Human rights efforts blocked

The report says U.S. actions particularly have been hurtful on three issues now on the front line of the global human rights campaign: child soldiers, land mines and an international criminal court.

The administration practice of ignoring human rights in some areas and adopting a "selective" commitment based on economic convenience or strategic interests in others now poses "a growing threat" to human rights in key parts of the world, most vividly in China and Central Africa, charges "Human Rights Watch World Report 1998."

"U.S. arrogance suggests that in Washington's view, human rights standards should be embraced only if they codify what the U.S. government already does, not what the United States ought to achieve," concludes the report, issued to mark Human Rights Day on Wednesday.

The State Department yesterday had no response to specific charges in the report but spokesperson James Rubin disputed its tone and conclusions, saying: "I think that if you look around the world and you ask the people of the world which nation they look to as to be the beacon for human rights, democracy, and freedom, there's no question the answer will be the United States."

Mars may have had life in the past

All of this is "a shot in the arm for the possibility of finding evidence of life" on the Red Planet, said one researcher.

"The body of evidence returned by Pathfinder are suggestive that conditions had been conducive for the formation of life early in Mars' history," said Matt Golombek, a Pathfinder mission scientist and lead author of a research report in the journal Science.

Golombek said several lines of evidence have produced a strong consensus among scientists that Pathfinder landed July 4 on a Martian plain that was sculpted by liquid water sometime in the past and that such water proves the planet once was a warmer, more life-friendly place.

Although Pathfinder and its faithful

wheeled rover, Sojourner, found no definite evidence of life, the report in Science said the spacecraft studies "appear consistent with a water-rich planet that may be more Earthlike than previously recognized, with a warmer and wetter past in which liquid water was stable and the atmosphere was thicker."

Resistance to seatbelts is common

Old habits are hard to break and besides, he says, safety belts are uncomfortable. Then comes the clincher: A seat belt could become a death trap.

Fourteen years after New York passed the first mandatory state seat-belt law, more than a third of Americans still ride unrestrained.

12-05-97