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The plan, likely to provoke a new profusion of private-sector packaging of government information, caps a nearly decade-long effort by the Census Bureau to wean the public and media from relying on government demographers to crunch the numbers and divine the bottom line from a mass of raw data.
Given the potential for distorting information - and the increased costs to news organizations and academic researchers that historically relied on the Census Bureau to parse the numbers - the bureau's plans have drawn relatively little opposition.
Critics fret about whether the quality and veracity of government data could be compromised by marketers who may enhance the materials to tailor it for business clients. Others express concerns about using the Internet as a venue for the dissemination of federal statistics without a national policy for cyberspace information storage and retrieval.
"What the Census Bureau is doing is just the tip of a much bigger iceberg," said Gary Bass, executive director of OMB Watch, a Washington-based organization that monitors public access to government records. "The government doesn't have a plan for regulating its data. (Federal officials) can't, or shouldn't, be putting it out there willy-nilly because what they are releasing affects us all."
But if information experts worry about policy implications, savvy entrepreneurs are only too eager to gobble up the bounty of information, repackage it and sell it at a profit.
Most of the particles will burn up more than 60 miles above the Earth, posing no danger to earthbound observers. The hundreds of satellites orbiting above the atmosphere, however, will be sandblasted by the thousands of particles hurtling through space.
The Leonid meteors, so named because they seem to emanate from the constellation Leo, will make their annual November appearance in the predawn hours tomorrow and Wednesday. The meteors will appear in a moonless sky that will afford watchers in dark areas nearly ideal viewing conditions, if the weather cooperates.
The view from the United States, however, won't compare to that in northeastern China, Mongolia and Japan - areas where scientists are expecting thousands of meteors to pass overhead.
"Unless Mother Nature has a surprise in store for us, in perfect conditions we might see on the order of one per minute if we're lucky. If we were in Japan or China, it will be about a hundred times that, or more," Jet Propulsion Laboratory astronomer Donald Yeomans said.
The Leonid meteors are the product of Comet Tempel-Tuttle, which orbits the sun once every 33 years. Every November, the Earth's orbit intersects Comet Tempel-Tuttle's orbit, passing through debris thrown off by the comet. In most years, this results in an average Leonid shower of about 15 or 20 meteors per hour.
But every 33 years, the comet makes a particularly close pass by Earth. The result is an often spectacular meteor storm of thousands of meteors per hour. This year affords such an opportunity for viewers in East Asia.
The particles, many less than the diameter of a human hair and moving toward the Earth at speeds of up to 45 miles per second, can damage the electronics of delicate instruments or punch holes in solar panels.
The threat to satellites, while minimal, is being taken seriously by the owners and operators of these multimillion-dollar instruments.
Operators such as the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, Intelsat, the Aerospace Corp. and the U.S. Air Force will angle solar panels on satellites to be edge-on to the particles; they will power-down sensitive electronics to avoid the possibility of an electrical short; and satellites will be rotated away from the storm to protect sensitive equipment.
Sharon Sobukwe, a member of the organization in Philadelphia, said Ture died of prostate cancer. She learned of his death from Amadou Ly, an AAPRP member and one of Ture's closest friends, who was with him when he died.
The Rev. Jesse Jackson said he visited with Ture three times at his home in Guinea during a trip to Africa last week.
"In many ways he was at peace with himself," Jackson said in a telephone interview from Washington. "He wanted for his last days to be in Guinea and in West Africa. ... He wanted to be amongst the people of Africa.
"He was one of our generation who was determined to give his life to transforming America and Africa," Jackson added. "He was committed to ending racial apartheid in our country. He helped to briose walls down."
Ture was diagnosed with prostate cancer in 1996. A self-described socialist, he was treated in Cuba and received financial help for his treatment from Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan.
As the young Carmichael, he was among the most fiery and visible leaders of black militancy in the United States in the 1960s, first as head of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and then as prime minister of the Black Panther Party.
He cut his ties with the American groups over the issue of allying with white radicals and moved to Guinea in West Africa in 1969. There, with a new name taken from the African leaders Kwame Nkrumah and Ahmed Sekou Toure, he organized the All-African People's Revolutionary Party.
For the rest of his life, both overseas and in appearances before largely black audiences at U.S. colleges, he continued preaching black power and championing socialism while condemning America, capitalism and Zionism.
Born in Trinidad on June 29, 1941, and raised there and in New York, Ture described himself as a pliant acceptor of white dominion while growing up.
He recalled in a 1967 interview in the London Observer that as a boy in the Trinidad capital of Port-of-Spain, he and his black schoolmates "went to the movies and yelled for Tarzan to beat the hell out of Africa."
"I'm angry because I didn't rebel," he said.
At age 11, his parents brought him to New York, where the bright youngster attended the academically elite Bronx High School of Science and moved in a liberal, middle-class white circle that he later reviled as phony.
In 1960, he enrolled at Howard, the predominantly black university in Washington, D.C., where he received a degree in philosophy and plunged into the civil rights revolution.
In a time when black college students were being beaten and arrested for daring to sit at whites-only Southern lunch counters, Carmichael joined the first freedom rides - bus trips aimed at desegregating public transportation - and suffered the first of what was to be about three dozen jailings when he reached Mississippi.
As an SNCC field organizer there later, he led a perilous voter registration effort that raised black enrollment from 70 to 2,600 in Lowndes County, 300 more than the white registration.
In June 1966, three weeks before his 25th birthday, he was elected national chair of the SNCC and shortly afterward raised the cry of "black power" as he led a freedom march in Mississippi.
Responding to those who called the slogan racist and inflammatory, he wrote that by black power he meant political and economic empowerment. "We want control of the institutions of the communities where we live and we want to stop the exploitation of nonwhite people around the world," he said in the New York Review of Books.
He also took an anti-America message to Cuba and North Vietnam and critics said his speeches at home, and those of his successor, H. Rap Brown, had effectively removed the word "nonviolent" from the SNCC's name.
In 1968, he left the SNCC for the Black Panthers, but broke with that urban-guerrilla movement the following year because it favored working with radical whites. He said history showed such alliances had "led to complete subversion of the blacks by the whites."
From Guinea, where he had moved with his then-wife, South African-born singer and political activist Miriam Makeba, he declared himself a Pan Africanist with a goal of forming "one cohesive force to wage an unrelenting armed struggle against the white Western empire for the liberation of our people."
He long hoped to see a single, socialist state for all of Africa, which would give Africans there and abroad - he rejected the term "African-American" - pride and power.
Although he denied being anti-Semitic, his condemnations of Israel and Zionism, particularly before U.S. campus audiences in the early 1990s, led the Anti-Defamation League to say, "He remains a disturbing, polarizing figure."
Asked at one campus lecture to comment about black-on-black violence, he said: "All we got to do is show (blacks) who the enemy is. At least they're ready to shoot."
Ture is survived by his wife, his mother, three sisters and two sons.
Services in the United States, Africa, Britain and the Caribbean will be organized by the AAPRP, the group said.
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A senior adviser to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Arafat's comments were a "declaration of war on the peace process." David Bar-Illan told The Associated Press that Netanyahu "views such statements with the utmost severity," and would bring them up when his Cabinet meets later this week.
The escalation of rhetoric came as U.S. envoy Dennis Ross sought to jump-start the latest Mideast peace accord.
In the West Bank, a Jewish settler was slightly injured in a drive-by shooting close to Palestinian-held territory. Shlomo Dror, a spokesperson for Israel's liaison unit to the Palestinians, blamed the shooting on Palestinian militants bent on derailing the peace process.
"There are some Palestinians there who want to stop this process," Dror told The Associated Press. He said the Israeli army was searching the area.
Soldiers and protesters also clashed when a group of Palestinians tried to prevent a bulldozer from beginning work on a bypass road for Jewish settlers. The road will require the confiscation of 40 acres of Arab land in al-Khader, near Bethlehem.
About 30 soldiers beat back 20 protesters, who responded with a hail of stones. Soldiers shot rubber bullets and tear gas canisters into the crowd. Two Palestinians were treated for tear gas inhalation, including Palestinian lawmaker Salah Tamari, and one Israeli soldier was injured.
Ross met with Israeli officials and with negotiators from both sides. Palestinian officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the three-way meeting produced a loose timetable for implementation this week.
Committees dealing with economics, a Palestinian safe passage route and seaport are to begin meeting today and tomorrow. On Wednesday, the sides open critical final status talks. Thursday, the Palestinians will be shown Israel's withdrawal maps and by the end of Friday, Israel will have pulled its troops from an initial 2 percent of land.
At least 16 people have died during the past two days, when the military opened fire on students who repeatedly tried to march to the Parliament.
Hundreds more were injured in the worst violence in Jakarta since riots that led to the ouster of former President Suharto in May.
The riots battered the world's fourth-most populous nation, which was hit hard by Asia's financial meltdown and is still fighting its worst economic crisis in decades.
Yesterday, troops and armored personnel carriers guarded the presidential palace and other key sites. There were no fresh reports of mob rioting, and shopkeepers swept up broken glass from smashed windows.
Warning of the possibility of more unrest, Australia urged its citizens not to travel to Indonesia. Many foreign embassies told their citizens to stay off the streets.
With inflation and unemployment soaring, protesters have demanded the ouster of Suharto's successor and former protege, President B.J. Habibie. Ignoring demands that he quit, Habibie appeared on national television to urge calm.
He accused protesters of wanting to overthrow his 6-month-old government and "endanger the unity of the nation and the people.''
Suharto, who now lives as a virtual recluse in Jakarta, criticized Habibie, saying the government should apologize for the students' deaths and listen to protesters' demands.
"I resigned from my position to avoid bloodshed. Why does the government now cause bloodshed?'' Suharto's half-brother, Probosutedjo, quoted him as saying.
The commente reported by the official Antara news agency.
Amnesty International also urged Habibie on Saturday to order his security forces to show restraint in dealing with the anti-government protesters.
In some parts of the capital, riot police fired warning shots and tear gas into crowds.
Military helicopters swooped above the chaos and armored personnel carriers were deployed. Black smoke towered over a shopping area near one luxury hotel only a few hundred yards from the heavily guarded state palace.
At an emergency Cabinet meeting there, Habibie ordered his military chief, Gen. Wiranto, to restore order -even though critics hold him responsible for the student deaths.
As night fell, rioting raged in some areas. Buildings burned in several areas on Saturday, including Jakarta's Chinatown, badly hit by rioting in May, when 1,200 people were killed.
The Chinese minority, which is prominent in business, is often targeted during times of civil unrest in Indonesia.
After a series of gunbattles Friday, troops finally allowed the students to assemble outside the gates of Parliament on Saturday - even though the special parliament session that was the focus of their protest had ended a day earlier.
Students demanded to be let inside the empty legislature. Rows of heavily armed soldiers and lines of razor wire barred them from moving closer.
Tensions had eased after Friday's carnage, when thousands of marines, regarded as more disciplined, fairer and not as corrupt as other sections of the military, replaced many army and police units on the streets.
Most of the students were killed by plastic bullets in a series of assaults Friday night. Security chiefs deny claims that their personnel fired live ammunition.
At least three security personnel were among the dead.
Thousands of anti-government students attended funerals of slain protesters Saturday, and pledged to maintain their fight for democratic change.
About 5,000 students gathered at a cemetery for the burial of Sigit Prasetyo, a 20-year-old student who was shot Friday. They watched as his casket, draped in a red and white Indonesian flag and a traditional Islamic funeral cloth, was lowered into damp red earth.
Despite the carnage and damage of the past few days, Habibie has said he will press ahead with reforms passed by the People's Consultative Assembly.
The 1,000-member special assembly was convened by Habibie to reform Indonesia's system of government while maintaining a political role for the military.
Critics and students said it fell short of promised democratic change, even though it backed a plan to hold parliamentary elections in May or June and agreed to name Suharto in an anti-corruption decree. It also refused their demand to ban the military from politics.
11-16-98
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