1 ! , ! 1;t • , FRIDAY, DECEMBER 1, 2000 Justices bar random traffic stops to check for drugs by David G. Savage Los Angeles Times November 28, 2000 WASHINGTON - The Supreme Court called a halt Tuesday to nar cotics roadblocks, ruling that police may not routinely stop all motorists in hopes of finding a few drug crimi nals. In a 6-3 opinion, the court stressed that the Fourth Amendment forbids police from searching persons with out some specific reason to believe that they did something wrong. While police have broad authority to stop motorists for traffic violations, they do not have a general authority to stop cars "to detect evidence of ordinary criminal wrongdoing," wrote Justice Sandra Day O'Connor for the court. Tuesday's ruling is the third this year that breathes new life into the Fourth Amendment. It comes as a mild surprise because, until recently, the justices had sided regularly with law enforcement in the war on drugs. Earlier this year, the court ruled After 10 chaotic years, Somalia builds a government from scratch by Karl Vick The Washington Post November 28, 2000 MOGADISHU, Somalia - After 10 years of anarchy, Somalia is prepar ing to govern itself once again. A pro visional government has taken up quarters in a pair of Mogadishu ho tels, the corridors of power graced with potted plants and chambermaids bearing fresh sheets and towels. The executive branch wakes up ev ery morning in the Hotel Ramadan. one of the few public structures to survive the years of firefights in Mogadishu's battered streets. Legis lators greet the day up the road at the Laf-Weyn Palace. Parliament con venes on white plastic chairs out in the annex. "Everything has to be started from scratch," said Abdiqassim Salad Hassan, the president appointed by a transitional national assembly that gathered itself from the rubble of the nation over four months this summer. "The judiciary will be next." Establishing a government any where is no easy thing, as the United States is now demonstrating. But in Somalia, a country unique in mod ern history for going a full decade without a central government, the un dertaking takes on aspects of the mi raculous. For 10 years, the capital of this country wrapped around Africa's Horn has defied every attempt at im posing order - including the United States' readiness to help create what President George Bush briefly called the New World Order. In 1993, un ruly Mogadishu helped bury that am bition when the street fighters of a local faction killed 18 U.S. troops in a firefight and dragged the body of one through the streets. By 1995, after U.S. troops and then U.N. forces had withdrawn. Somalia was left to its warlords. Drawing on clan loyalties and abandoned arse Study: Listening registers differently in men by Robert Lee Hotz Los Angeles Times November 28, 2000 Confirming what many women have long suspected, new brain re search released Tuesday shows that men give only half a mind to what they hear, listening with just one side of their brains while women use both. This latest insight into the oldest of humanity's differences - gender - doesn't say who is a better listener. But, using a brain-scanning tech nique called functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI), the work does highlight the differences in neural activity between men and women listening to someone read aloud. Conducted by researchers at the Indiana University School of Medi cine, the new study is the latest ad dition to a growing catalog of re search suggesting that the mental that police may not stop and search a pedestrian based entirely on a vague and anonymous tip phoned to police headquarters. The justices said the Fourth Amendment requires more specific evidence of wrongdoing. The justices also ruled that police may not squeeze or feel a traveler's bags in a random search for illegal drugs. In that ruling in the case of Bond vs. United States, the justices threw out drug evidence against a bus passenger who was arrested after an officer felt a brick of methamphet amine in his satchel. The court said a traveler's hand bags are private and off limits to searches, except when an officer has a specific reason to look for drugs. Narcotics roadblocks are rare, but the Indianapolis case tested whether or not they could be used nationwide. In August 1998, city police there set up six checkpoints to stop cars. Their intention was to cut the flow of illegal drugs in and out of the city. When a motorist was stopped, an officer asked to see his or her driver's license. At the same time, a second nals, local militias continued what has now been a decade of battles that have destroyed civil order, contrib uted to famines and led to the deaths of hundreds of thou sands of people "There are several sick states on the continent of Africa," said Babafemi Badejo, of the U.N. political office re sponsible for moni toring Somalia from the safety of Nairobi. "But perhaps this is the first one that en tered full coma." Today this country of perhaps 8 million lacks almost every trapping of state. Its currency is printed by whoever feels like it. Passports can be had for $3O at a local market ("What would you like your place of birth to be?" a hawker asks). And there is still Mogadishu, where foreign visitors must pay $2OO a day for the constant com pany of a half-dozen young men with AK -47s as a hedge against kidnapping or worse. What Somalia does have is a pro found public appetite for a return to governance. Long defined by civil war, the country is preoccupied by its consequences. Somalia ranks dead last in the worldwide U.N. survey of human development. When a hand ful of athletes made their way to the Sydney Olympic Games, the TV pool broadcast of the opening ceremony announced them by saying, "One in divide between the sexes is more complex and more rooted in the fun damental biology of the brain than many scientists had once suspected. "As scientists, we're figuring out what normal is, and more and more often it seems that normal for men may be different than normal for women," said Indiana radiologist Dr. Micheal Phillips, co-author of the study. The findings were presented Tuesday at the annual meeting of the Radiological Society of North America in Chicago. The research also has been submitted to the jour nal Radiology. Understanding whether or not dif ferences in mental capacity or in tellectual ability can be attributed to gender has long confounded scien tists, parents, equal-rights activists and educators. To be sure, men's and women's brains are more alike than not, but they are definitely not the same - in size, sense or sensibilities. WORLD Sr NATION officer with a drug-sniffing dog circled the vehicle. If the first officer or the dog detected anything suspi cious, the vehicle was pulled aside and searched. Over four months, police said they stopped 1,161 motorists and made 104 arrests. Fifty-five of the arrests were for drug offenses and 49 were for other reasons. When several detained motorists complained about the stops, the American Civil Liberties Union sued the city, contending that the stops were unconstitutional. The U.S. court of appeals in Chi cago agreed on a 2-1 vote that the roadblocks violated the Fourth Amendment. But in the spring, the Supreme Court said it would hear the city's appeal. Lawyers for the city admitted that their purpose was to catch drug criminals, not to enforce traffic safety. They also had two good precedents on their side. In 1989, the Supreme Court had upheld sobriety road blocks, ruling that the need to catch four Somali children fails to reach the age of 5." "We are welcoming the honorable Government worker Abadir Hassan holds up the Somali flag on a "battle wagon" at the Marina military base, where a new Somali army is being trained. government," said Asia Ali Yusuf, 44, who has camped almost 11 years in an office of the party headquar ters built by Mohamed Siad Bane, the country's longtime dictator. That government - overthrown in 1991 - was the last Somalia knew. Living amid smoke from cooking fires in the corridor, and with the memories of a son and grandson killed in the years of fighting, Yusuf hopes the new government "will open schools.... We will get jobs. We Only now, however, are reliable studies of metabolic and structural brain organization offering scientists hard evidence of how men and women may differ mentally, often in ways that buck conventional preju dices. A growing library of medical scans captures the signs of mental activity in living brains. Men and women show significant differences in certain brain areas that are linked to how people think and experience emotions, mathematical reasoning, spatial relations, perceptual speed and even sense color and sound. Whatever they are doing, women seem to activate more neurons than Some of those differences appear to evolve throughout a lifetime. The brains of aging men and women have significant structural and func tional differences, recent research reveals. Men's brains are larger but are more damaged by the aging pro drunken drivers outweighed the pri vacy of innocent motorists. And in 1976, the court had upheld the government's power to stop motorists at an immigration checkpoint near San Diego. Near the borders, officials may use extra authority to search for ille gal immigrants and smugglers, the court said. On Tuesday, the justices refused to extend those precedents. "We cannot sanction stops justified only by the generalized and ever present possibility that interrogation and inspection may reveal that any given motorist has committed some crime," O'Connor said in her opinion in the case (City of Indianapolis vs. Edmond, 99-1030). Her opinion was joined by Justices John Paul Stevens, David H. Souter, Anthony M. Kennedy, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen G. Breyer. In dissent, Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist said the roadblocks "effec tively serve a weighty interest with only minimal intrusion on the privacy" of motorists. Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas agreed. will work as before." Days after President Hassan was welcomed to Mogadishu on Aug. 30 by a crowd estimated at 100,000, he took a seat in the U.N. General Assembly during the Millennium Summit. His flight to New York was paid by members of the Arab League, which has provided most of the government's scant initial funding. Additional support - including $2O million promised by the United Na tions - is much on the mind of senior officials here. Speaking to an American journalist, Hassan made a point of apologizing for the deaths of the U.S. soldiers killed in the U.S. interven tion here. "It is not in the heritage of the Somali people to kill guests," he said. But foreign analysts warned that foreign help for the new government will come only if the place is safe. In the last year, seven aid workers have been killed in Somalia, according to the office of U.N. Secre tary General Kofi Annan. "I think security's going to be the major yardstick," said David Stephen, Annan's representative to Somalia. In other words, what about the war lords? "Faction leaders," as the militia commanders prefer to be called, have occupied the hollow core of Somalia's political life for a decade. Every pre vious peace conference - there were 12 - centered on the warlords, and failed. When Somali business leaders organized a 13th conference in the neighboring country of Djibouti last spring, the warlords were invited, but cess; women's brains seem to work more efficiently and appear to age more successfully. In the new Indiana study, research ers used the brain scanner to study 10 men and 10 women - all healthy - as they listened to a John Grisham thriller read aloud. The fMRI scan ner highlights activity in the brain by measuring high-speed changes in neural blood flow. The radiologists were hoping to de velop a simple test to identify critical language areas in those about to un dergo brain surgery, to help surgeons avoid damaging certain areas during an operation. Instead, they found what appears to be yet another tell tale difference in neural activity be tween women and men. As they listened, a majority of the men showed exclusive activity on the left side of the brain, in the temporal lobe, which is associated with listen ing and speech. The majority of women showed activity in the tem Ford recall by Fnuik Swoboda The Washington Post November 28, 2000 It isn't always easy getting things right the first time. People under stand that, especially car buyers. But Tuesday Ford Motor Co. an nounced the fifth recall since the summer on the new Escape. SUV and its corporate twin, the Mazda Tribute. First there were leaky fuel lines, then incorrect wheel hubs. It seems the Pord people put four-wheel - drive hubs on the rear of two-wheel drive vehicles. The wrong hub could potentially affect steering control. That was folloWed by problems With the cruise control. It could make the throttle stick. And then <=. there Van the problem with the steering wheel. It had the potential to come off in your bands. In addition, Mazda had a problem all its own. it had to recall the Trib ute handbook to change the instruc tions on anchoring child-restraint systems. Tuesday's recall involved the windshield wipers, which Ford said might be damaged or defective. Ford owns 33 percent of Mazda, and the Escape and the Tribute are both manufactured at a Ford assem bly plant in Kansas City, Mo. The two vehicles represent both compa nies' entry into the U.S. market for compact sport-utility vehicles, a market that includes the Toyota Rav4 and the Honda CRV, Since its introduction late this summer, Ford has bragged about the safety of the Escape, a vehicle that offers just about every safety device currently available. So it's no sur- only as part of a convocation in tended to reflect the full sweep of Somali society: clan elders, educated expatriates, religious leaders and women The warlords declined. And when the nascent government emerged promising elections after three years, its bylaws indirectly disqualified fac tion leaders from holding office - by requiring, for instance, that govern ment ministers hold a college degree. "This is .. cosmetic politics, this is not reality," said Mohamed Qanyareh, who along with other fac tion leaders has threatened to collapse the fledgling effort. "Where, where is that government? In two hotels? I have my hotel here." Qanyareh spread his arms to take in his militia compound. Nearby were two heavy trucks mounted with anti aircraft guns, known as "battle wag ons," plus a pair of "technicals," or Toyota pickups carrying heavy ma chine guns. Antennas bristled from a bunker-like building that was a So mali army headquarters before Qanyareh made it his home, five miles outside Mogadishu. "This area is safer than living in the city, because the city has not had sanitation in 10 years," said Qanyareh, who, like other militia leaders, also keeps a home in Nairobi. He made a sour face. "Very danger ous, living in the city." s and women's brains poral lobe on both sides of the brain, although predominantly on the left. "Our research suggests language processing is different between men and women, but it doesn't necessar ily mean performance is going to be different," said Indiana radiologist and co-author Dr. Joseph T. Lurito. "We don't know if the difference is because of the way we're raised, or if it's hard-wired in the brain." The Indiana finding follows an in fluential 1995 study by Yale Univer sity brain researchers Sally and Bennett Shaywitz, who discovered that females appear to draw on both sides of their brains when they read, rhyme or engage in other verbal tasks. In contrast, males draw only on brain regions in the left hemi sphere. Whatever the biological reason for this difference, it may account for the fact that girls usually speak sooner than boys, learn to read more easily and have fewer learning dis issues sth 2 SUVs prise that both Ford and Mazda were a bit defensive Tuesday about the latest recall on vehicles that have only been in production since mid summer. "It's important to note that in the initial four recalls very few units were actually in customer hands," said Ford spokesman Michael Vaughn. "The Escape is a totally new vehicle, and sometimes when you launch a totally new product there are minor production glitches." Mazda spokesman Steve Gehring said, "Tribute demand is outpacing supply, but safety is our top prior ity, and that's why we're performing this inspection." The latest recall involves 51,022 Escapes and 24,000 Tributes. Of those. 27,516 Escapes and 12,500 Tributes have been sold. But coming off a summer that saw Ford become enmeshed in the recall of millions of Firestone tires used as original equipment on its Explorer models, the string of recalls on one of the company's newest products is clearly something Ford doesn't rel ish. Tires weren't Ford's only recall problems this year. This spring. the company announced that it would pay for head gaskets that failed on nearly 1 million 3.8 liter V-6 engines built during the early half of the 19905. Then, this summer, the com pany was forced to recall 350,000 of its new Focus compact cars for a safety fix. Vaughn noted that all the recalls of the Escape and Tribute were vol untary and initiated by Ford. "Safety is paramount, and that's why we take action early," he said. Other Somalis agree, but kicking the wherewithal to live like the warlords, they have abandoned them in droves, said Somali and foreign analysts and other people interviewed here. The public consent that is most fundamen tal to government appears to he present in Mogadishu, where citizens watched satellite TV reports of the Djibouti negotiations tor months. "The only thing the clan (the people) wants no V, is a go\ eminent. - said Ali (man. a co-owner of Horn Afrik, a private TV and radio station that has come to embody a significant component of the democratic trend here. What Stephen, the U.N. represen tative, calls "a different mood, a more subtle politics" has been evident in the eight months since Horn Afrik started Mogadishu's first daily talk show: In that time, only one caller has tele phoned in to denounce another clan. More typical was the call from Ayam Mohamed, from south Mogadishu. At 17, she was too young to remember "the good things my par ents tell me about government," but she could name what she expected: peace, dispute settlement. education, health, employment. "People have moved past brand loyalty to ask what (warlords) have for them." she said. "The people are actually dictating the game." orders, several experts suggest. Women often also recover their speech abilities more quickly than men after strokes that damage lan guage areas in the left hemisphere of the brain, suggesting the) can more readily draw on other portions of their brains to compensate. Some of these gender differences in adults may themselves be no more than the end physical result of pow erful social conditioning about sexual roles that begins in infancy. Through out development, the neurons that make up the brain are remarkably sensitive to such outside influences, some researchers suggest. At the same time, the biochemis try of gender itself also influences how many genes are activated or are regulated, altering the course of neu ral development. Indeed, the human brain begins as an essentially female structure until it is altered by the on rush of the male hormone testoster one during early development.
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