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Court to hear Gore’s appeal by Jackie Hallifax Associated Press TALLAHASSEE, Fla.—The Flori da Supreme Court agreed Tuesday to hear A1 Gore’s appeal of a ruling that up held Geoige W. Bush’s statewide vic tory in the contested presidential race. Court spokesman Craig Waters said the justices wanted written papers submitted by noon Wfednesday, and would hear arguments Thursday morning in the case that could ultimately settle the race for the White House. The unusually condensed schedule reflected the national uigency of the case. Gore is appealing a ruling by Circuit Judge N. Sanders Sauls that rejected Gore’s request for a manual recount in two counties and to overturn Bush’s cer tified victory in the state that stands to pick the next president. Whters said the justices had allotted an hour for oral arguments, 30 minutes for each side. On a technical point of what issues would be argued, he said the lawyers would be “dealing with whether the court should hear the case and the issues of the case as well.” Joseph Lieberman, Gore’s vice pres idential candidate, stood Tuesday in Wash ington with supportive Democratic law makers as he said the Florida Supreme Court would be “the final arbiter” of the election dispute. Gore’s appeal was one of two elec tion-related cases at Florida’s highest court. The other, returned on Monday from the U.S. Supreme Court, request ed clarification of the reasoning behind a state Supreme Court ruling last month that approved partial manual recounts beyond a deadline fixed in state law for the end of vote counting in the presi dential election. The Bush and Gore legal teams al ready were operating under a 3 p.m. Tues day deadline for submitting written ar guments in that case. No timetable for oral arguments has yet been set in that case. Waters told reporters he had no in formation on whether the two cases would be combined. The developments came the day af ter Circuit Judge N. Sanders Sauls re jected Gore’s request to reverse Bush’s certified 537-vote victory and also re fused his request to order a partial manual recount. Gore lawyer Ron Klajn said Tuesday the proceeding before the Florida Supreme Court is “the most important step in this process”—and probably the last one. Another Gore attorney, W. Dexter Douglass, said the vice president was pre pared to appeal Sauls’ decision on virtu ally every point, including his ruling that recounts cannot be conducted in select ed counties. To win an appeal, Gore need ed to show a reasonable probability that recounts would tip the election to him and that county boards abused their discretion. “It was a totally appealable order on every point,” Douglass said. The Gore team would be ready to file its legal aiguments within hours of the Florida Supreme Court setting a schedule for the submission of aiguments in the case, he added. Congress’ two Democratic leaders, Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle and House Minority Leader Dick Gephardt, released a statement saying they believe the appeal was in keeping with Florida law and American democ racy. In the Florida Legislature, Senate President John McKay and House Speak er Tom Feeney, both Republicans, said in a joint statement that they had filed a motion to participate in the appeal be fore the Supreme Court. They said they wanted to tell the jus tices that the Legislature’s authority to pick electors stems from the U.S. Con stitution and cannot be overridden by the state Supreme Court. Handing Bush a key legal victory, Sauls said he concluded Gore had not shown there was a “reasonable proba bility” that the results of the election would have been changed. Reading aloud to a packed courtroom and nationwide television audience, Sauls came down on Bush’s side of the case on point after point. He refused to sweep aside Bush’s 537-vote certified victory and begin courthouse counts of what Gore said were missed votes that had been rejected by machines in heavily De mocratic counties. “The evidence does not establish any illegality, dishonesty, gross negli gence, improper influence, coercion or fraud in the balloting and counting processes” in the Florida counties where Gore sought hand recounts, Sauls said. Furthermore, county canvassing boards in Palm Beach, Miami-Dade and Nassau counties all had acted within their discretion in tabulating votes, Sauls said, and there was “no authority under Flori da law” for certifying an incomplete man ual recount or for submitting returns af ter a deadline fixed by the state Supreme Court. That was a vindication of the actions of Secretary of State Katherine Harris, a GOP partisan who certified Bush the winner. And Sauls said that while the record shows “voter error and/or less than to tal accuracy in regard” to the results in Palm Beach and Miami counties, these problems “cannot support or affect any recounting.” Gore asked for a ruling overturning Bush’s slim lead and a manual recount of about 14,000 ballots in Palm Beach and Miami-Dade counties. The vice pres ident also sought to change the official vote certification in Nassau County, al though only 51 votes were involved there. The Bush team aigued there was no reason for the recount and said the Texas governor had been certified properly on the basis of tallies submitted by the can vassing boards in all 67 Florida counties. On other legal fronts: — Florida Gov. Jeb Bush filed court papers Monday to move to Tallahassee federal court a voters’ challenge to 1,500 overseas military ballots that were count ed. Government lawyers took action af ter Leon County Circuit Judge L. Ralph Smith on Monday ordered local officials in 10 counties to provide absentee bal lot records and told state officials to answer questions about the ballot deadlines. —A federal judge in Pensacola will hear arguments in a GOP effort to in crease Bush’s vote margin by counting overseas ballots that were rejected for lack of a postmark and other problems, mostly those from military voters. — The federal appeals court in At lanta heard oral arguments Tuesday in a pair of related cases from Bush supporters who want the court to throw out any election results that included hand re counts. Greenspan indicates interest rates might have to be lowered by Martin Crutsinger Associated Press WASHINGTON — Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, expressing concerns about potential threats to the slowing U.S. economy, sent a strong sig nal Tuesday that the central bank stands ready to cut interest rates if necessary to ward off a recession. Greenspan’s comments triggered a huge rally on Whll Street as investors took comfort that the central bank was grow ing concerned about the threats to the overall economy from a sharp sell-off in stock prices. The Dow Jones industrial average, which had been up about 180 points before Greenspan started speaking, shot higher and was up more than 300 points at midday. Greenspan’s concerns about the slow ing economy followed remarks in recent days by Geoige W. Bush and his running mate, Dick Cheney, that recent signs of economic weakness pointed up the need for the Republicans’ $ 1.3 trillion tax cut. In his speech on economic dangers, Greenspan specifically mentioned the sharp plunge in stock prices and the pos sibility that this could cause a cutback in consumer and business spending. He al so said rising tensions in the Middle East could cause oil prices to surge unex pectedly. Greenspan’s remarks, delivered to a banking conference in New York, were the firmest signal yet that the central bank is switching its chief concern from fight ing inflation by raising interest rates to worrying that its credit tightening has gone too far and could prompt an out right recession. “In periods of transition from un sustainable to more modest rates of growth, an economy is obviously at in creased risk of untoward events that would be readily absorbed in a period of boom,” Greenspan said. The Fed has raised interest rates six times, beginning in June 1999, in an ef fort to slow the booming economy to a more sustainable pace in order to keep inflation in check. Responding to those rate increases, economic growth slowed abruptly to an annual rate of just 2.4 percent in the summer, less than half the sizzling 5.6 percent pace of the spring. That slowdown dampened corporate Greenspan seepages American students still lagging behind Asians, Europeans by Anjetta McQueen Associated Press WASHINGTON —America’s eighth graders still are largely outperformed by children in industrialized Asian and European nations, scoring only at av erage levels on the latest round of in ternational math and science tests. Despite more than four years of ef forts to improve American student per ‘ formance in science and math, a report released Tuesday shows little im provement for the middle-schoolers from the first set of uniform tests in 1995. U.S. educators generally blamed a lack of follow-through on improvement plans developed after the 1995 tests, which also included fourth- and 12th graders. The earlier tests showed not only that U.S. students made average scores but seemed to do worse as they grew older. The latest tests, conducted in 1999, covered only eighth-graders. “It’s not surprising that in four years we haven’t seen real changes,” said V Christopher Cross of the Council on Basic Education, a nonprofit advocacy group in Washington. “We’ve gotten the message. We just haven’t taken it to the classroom level. “What would be really upsetting is that in another four years we would see tilings looking exactly the same,” Cross said. The 1999 test of eighth-graders did show U.S. students scored a few points above the average score of all nations. Education Secretary Richard Riley credited U.S. educators with efforts to boost learning. “There is a new mood about education in America ... every thing I’ve seen tells me the American people are rising to the challenge.” The testing, oiganized by the In ternational Association for the Evalu ation of Education Achievement and conducted by individual education au thorities, showed that in 1999 math and science testing, a dozen nations out of 38 participating in the study outper Students seepages World economy booms, but poor countries suffer «' by Harry Dunphy Associated Press WASHINGTON-Globaleco nomic activity is accelerating at record levels, but many of the world’s poor est countries are hurt by trade barri ers the United States and other wealthy nations impose on their exports, the World Bank said Tuesday. While the outlook for contin ued economic growth is good, the re port said, sharp changes in oil prices remain a major uncertainty as does whether the U.S. economy continues to expand or crashes to a hard land ing. Fragility of financial systems in East Asia also is a concern, the bank said. Global Economic Prospects and the Developing Countries 2001, the bank’s annual update on these nations, said their economic growth is expected to register 5.3 percent in 2000,5 per cent in 2001 and ease to 4.8 percent in 2002. The report warns that many of the world’s poorest nations, especial ly those tom by conflict in Africa, are not keeping pace. “What this report emphasizes convincingly is that prospects for growth are better than drey have been in around 30 years,” said Nick Stem, the World Bank's chief econ ‘We all have to work to try to create the environment where poor people par ticipate more fully in economic growth.’ Nick Stemll omist. He said many developing coun tries have improved their economic policies over the past 10 years, tamed inflation, opened up to trade, em phasized internal reforms and im proved education of their workers. “We all have to work to try to create the environment where poor people participate more folly in eco nomic growth,” Stem said. Tire 158-page report said that “world economic activity during 2000 is proceeding at the fastest pace in over a decade with developing coun try output expected to exceed 5 per cent. “World trade volumes are ex pected to rise by a record 12.5 per cent this year,” the report said, the highest rate of gro wth since before the 1970s oil shocks. “We think this is a cyclical high and expect a moderate slowdown over . the next two years to single digit lev els,” said Hans Timer, one of the re port’s authors. He said some tensions were build ing up that posed a risk to the favor able economic outlook, among them whether the price of oil would go up or down, the potential for future volatility in financial markets and the huge U.S trade deficit Both Stem and Timer said high trade barriers the industrialized coun tries imposed on farm and food prod ucts, along with the agricultural sub sidies, contribute to the poor performance of developing countries’ exports of these commodities. “There is a certain hypocrisy about lectures from advanced countries to developing countries on the impor tance of (trade) liberalization and join ting the global economy while at the same time they erect barriers against their goods,” Stem said. Panel tells Congress biotech corn is likely to cause allergic reactions by Philip Brasher Associated Press WASHINGTON - A panel of sci entists told the government Tuesday that there is a “medium likelihood” an unapproved variety of biotech corn will cause alleigic reactions in people and urged further study of the crop. The panel advising the Environ mental Protection Agency said so lit tle of the com is in the food supply that there is a “low probability” that con sumers could have developed allergies to it. The com, known as StarLink, was withdrawn from the market after it was disclosed this fall that it had been used in making taco shells and possibly oth er products. EFA had approved the com only for animal feed and industrial uses because of unresolved questions about whether it can cause allergic re actions. The corn’s developer, Aventis CropScience, has asked the EPA to tem porarily approve the com for food use to avoid further disruptions in food pro cessing and grain handling. “Both the panel’s recommenda tions and the public comments that were submitted will be used to guide the EPA during the scientific evalua tion of StarLink,” said Stephen John son, EPA’s deputy assistant adminis trator. The panel urged the government to investigate complaints of people who have reported illnesses they think are related to the com. About three dozen such complaints have been received by the government. Seven to 14 mer it further study because they appear to involve alleigic reactions of some kind and “represent a real opportunity” to determine whether StarLink is an al lergen, the panel said. An Aventis spokeswoman had no immediate comment on the report. EPA regulates use of the biotech com because it was genetically modi fied to produce its own pesticide. A pesticidal protein, known as Cry9C, in the com breaks down rela tively slowly in the human digestive system, raising concerns that it could cause allergic reactions in people who have been sensitized to it. Critics of the biotech industry have urged the EPA to deny the food-use ap proval, saying it would unfairly relieve Aventis of financial and legal respon sibility for the com. “It looks like science is going to win out over expediency,” said Re becca Goldburg, a scientist with Envi ronmental Defense, an advocacy group. “It would be inappropriate to leap to retroactively approve StarLink com for the convenience of Aventis. Clear ly, a much better course is to develop the proper methodology and informa tion in order to make a real determi nation about the safety of StarLink.” News Briefs ■ Clinton creates nature preserve to protect coral reefs WASHINGTON (AP) — President Clinton created the largest U.S. na ture preserve Monday — 84 million acres underwater around the north western Hawaiian Islands — to help save the coral reefs and wildlife that in habit the area. The Pacific Ocean reserve, at 99,500 square nautical miles as large as Florida and Georgia combined, contains nearly 70 percent of the United States’ coral reefs, as well as pristine remote islands, atolls and submerged lagoons. It was de scribed by Clinton as “a special place where the sea is a living rainbow. ” ■ Netanyahu returns to Israel as possible challenger to Barak JERUSALEM (AP) — Former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu returned to Israeli politics with typical timing and flair, saying he will decide soon about challenging the nation’s current leader, Ehud Barak, who trounced him in elec tions only a year and a half ago. In that period, the fortunes of the two rivals have reversed, with polls showing that if elections were held today, Ne tanyahu would be the big winner. Barak has reluctantly agreed to ear ly elections under pressure from his re bellious parliament. No date has been set, but party leaders are aiming for May. ■ Endeavour crew unfurls solar wing on space station SPACE CENTER, Houston (AP) — NASA officials breathed a collective sigh of relief after feverishly working to create a plan that successfully unfurled the second of the international space sta tion’s giant solar wings. Eneigies were then turned to Tues day’s planned spacewalk, during which astronauts Joe Tanner and Carlos Norie ga were to continue installing space station Alpha’s electricity-producing so lar panels. Tanner and Noriega will make elec trical connections so that power from the newly installed solar wings can be distributed to the rest of the station. ■ Peace gestures emerge in Kashmir amid violence SRINAGAR, India (AP) — The first week of India’s unilateral cease-fire started and ended with lethal bombings and left a total of 25 people dead. In blood-laced Kashmir, that’s called a lull in violence. Add in a series of peace gestures, and some see a faint chance of ending an 11-year-old‘insurgency in J the Himalayan valley. “The situation is easing up. I see a ray of hope,” Abdul Gani Bhat, the chair man of Kashmir’s main separatist al liance, the All Parties Hurriyat Confer ence, told The Associated Press. “I think this process is becoming a comprehen sive one.” ■ Russian nuclear power plant reports radiation leak MOSCOW (AP) — Workers at a Russ ian nuclear power plant detected higher than normal radiation levels Tuesday in soil on the plant’s territory, a spokesman for Russia’s state nuclear power compa ny said. The radiation appeared to have come from a leaking water pipe attached to the cooling system of two reactors at the Novovoronezh plant, about 300 miles south of Moscow. The reactors have been out of service for a decade. Rosenergoatom spokesman Kon stantin Romburger couldn’t say how high the radiation level was, but he said it did n’t pose a danger to surrounding areas. Still, authorities sealed off the area with barbed wire and posted signs about the radiation risk while a com mission studied the cause of the leak, he said.