Reported and Edited by Linda Moulton Howe
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April 16, 2000 Washington, D. C. - This past week, President Bill Clinton declared a large section of the Sequoia National Forest in California to be a "national monument" in order to permanently preserve the giant redwood trees. The President used his executive authority under the 1906 Antiquities Act which allows U. S. Presidents to safeguard objects of historic or scientific interest without going to Congress.
April 2, 2000 Santa Fe, New Mexico - The New Mexico legislature is in session and in February 2000 State Representative J. Andrew Kissner (Las Cruces, Dona Ana County) was successful in having a once-secret experimental microwave radar station at El Vado in Rio Arriba County north of Los Alamos added to the New Mexico State Historical Register. The importance of the El Vado radar site is underscored by the fact that its construction was specifically authorized by President Harry S. Truman himself.
March 16, 2000 Scott, Arkansas - The mystery of unexplained fires about 25 miles southeast of Little Rock, Arkansas might actually be related to a fiery bolide that apparently came down and evaporated north of Austin around 8:30 PM CST, March 9th. I interviewed one eyewitness from Cabot, Arkansas today who wishes to remain anonymous, but told me, "It was 8:25 p.m. We were on Stagecoach Road and Highway 38 outside Old Austin. We started driving down the road heading home and I looked over at my husband and right there to his left, I could see out of nowhere running parallel with us on the road was what we thought at first was a small airplane on fire."
February 27, 2000 Laurel, Maryland - A human machine is orbiting an asteroid for the first time in known human history. It's a NASA satellite called NEAR for Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous. NEAR moved into orbit around an asteroid called 433 Eros on February 14th. At first the NEAR satellite was photographing at a range of 210 miles. But this past week on February 23rd, NEAR moved into about 130 miles from Eros. The satellite will keep getting closer to the asteroid over the next 12 months until its mission is completed in February 2001.
"I guess it's the equivalent of striking oil. It was enormously exciting. It was unbelievable."
- Tasios Melis, Ph.D.
Plant and Microbial Biology
University of California, Berkeley
February 25, 2000 Berkeley, California - The journal, Plant Physiology, reported in February 2000 that for the first time scientists at the University of California, Berkeley and National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) in Golden, Colorado, have been able to trigger a metabolic switch in algae to turn sunlight into large quantities of hydrogen gas. A joint patent on this new hydrogen production technique from plant photosynthesis has been filed by the two institutions.
February 16, 2000 Baltimore, Maryland - It looks a bit like a 25 mile long, five mile wide potato. In one photo, it even resembles a Dutch shoe. Called 433 Eros, it's made out of iron and magnesium-bearing silicates and is now the focus of a NASA satellite called NEAR, Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous. NEAR moved into orbit around Eros on February 14 and will stay there for the next year. Eros is one of the biggest asteroids in our Solar System circling between the earth and Mars. It's almost twice the size of Manhattan, measuring about 25 miles long and nearly five miles wide.
January 30, 2000 Philadelphia, Pennsylvania - First an Ohio town banned cell phone use by drivers. Now, the borough of Conshohocken west of Philadelphia has become the second community in Pennsylvania to prohibit motor vehicle drivers from using cell phones while driving. Pennsylvania's governor is even considering a legislative proposal to ban cell phone use by drivers throughout the state. Recently a 2-year-old girl was killed in a collision caused by a driver dialing a cell phone. Another child was recently killed by a distracted cell phone user. Conshohocken Police Chief James Dougherty added, "We've had problems with people driving through town talking on cell phones where they've almost hit people. They're not paying attention."