December 9, 1996

    All Things Considered
    (entire program)



    • The Department of Energy is announcing a two-step plan to get rid of the nation's stockpile of plutonium waste. About 50 tons of the highly radioactive material have accumulated during the making of atomic bombs, weapons that are now being dismantled. Richard Harris reports on the government's plan to bury part of the waste and to combine the rest of it in fuel used by commercial nuclear plants. (4:30)

    • Linda and Noah give suggestions for disposing of plutonium from over the years. (1:00)

    • For the first time in Russian history, voters used a referendum election to decide their future. Andy Bowers reports that they used the referendum ballot to stop plans for a Cerhnobyl-style nuclear power plant. The Russian Atomic Energy Ministry had wanted to finish a plant in Kostroma, 250 miles northeast of Moscow. Residents turned it down by a nine-to-one margin. (3:00)

    • Linda talks to Ruth Faden, author of A History and Theory of Informal Consent, and director of the Bio-Ethics Institute at the Johns Hopkins University. She is in Washington, D.C. to participate in the conference at the U.S. Holocaust Museum on "The Nuremberg Code and Human Rights: the 50th Anniversary of the Doctors Trials." She co-authored a paper about the Nuremberg Code, (published in the Nov. 27, 1996 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association), which outlines permissible conditions for medical experiments on humans, as part of the final judgment by the Nuremberg Military Tribunal. She tells how the Code guidelines for voluntary informed consent had not been formally adopted by medical establishments until the start of the Nuremberg Trials of Nazis performing medical experiments on prisoners. Faden also tells why the Code has not been widely adopted since the Trials. (7:30)

    • Noah talks with Congressman Bill Richardson about how his promise of rice, a few jeeps and radios, and a health survey of rebel children, won the release of three Red Cross workers who had been held captive in Sudan for more than five weeks. The four jeeps, nine radios and five tons of rice came from the Red Cross stocks. (4:00)

    • It's been five years since the collapse of the Soviet Union but it will take many more years to undue much of the ecological damage done during Soviet rule. Case in point: one of the greatest environmental disasters in the world today is the drying up of the Aral Sea in central Asia. In the 1950s, when the Soviets decided to increase their cotton crop, two rivers that flowed into the Aral Sea were used to irrigate the cotton fields of Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan; the flow of water to the Aral Sea was reduced by ninety percent with disastrous results. Mike Shuster visits an Uzbek town that used to one of the Aral Sea's biggest ports -- now the sea is thirty miles away and the town of Mujnak is plagued by both massive unemployment and serious health problems brought on by the Aral's demise. (8:30)

    • Noah speaks with Elizabeth Marshall Thomas, author of Certain Poor Shepherds, a fictional account of the first Christmas and the travels of a dog and goat drawn by the star over Bethlehem. The question, "Do animals have a sense of divinity?" was raised, and Thomas, who also wrote "The Hidden Life of Dogs", says they do. (5:45)

    • Mary Leakey died today. She and her husband Louis Leakey spent most of their lives bringing the world closer to understanding the origins of humankind. Their fossil discoveries in Tanzania and Kenya indicated that human evolution began in East Africa much earlier than had been believed. (1:30)

    • The Supreme Court heard two cases today dealing with voting districts and their impact on minority voter rights and the prospects for minority candidates. One case was an appeal of a congressional map in Georgia drawn up by a three-judge panel after the Supreme Court declared an earlier plan unconstitutional. The other case relates to school board districts in Louisiana. Some opponents of districts designed to give minorities a boost argue that the re-election of a number of African-American members of Congress last month, despite their white-majority districts, proves special districts are not needed. Proponents argue that they were helped more by the advantages of incumbency, and needed minority-majority districts to get elected in the first place. Phillip Davis reports. (4:00)

    • Mickey Edwards says that as a child he use to wear a cap with a confederate flag on it -- he said he rationalized it by saying the war had been about a lot more than slavery. But that argument -- which some people in South Carolina use today to justify flying the confederate flag over their statehouse -- does not recognize that the flag has become a symbol of hate and violence. It's become the flag of the KKK and white supremacy and it should be brought down. (3:30)

    • Vicky O'Hara reports that the Clinton administration today received the highest Chinese military delegation ever to visit Washington, which is a strong sign that the administration means what it says about improving relations with Beijing. The delegation included the Chinese defense minister, who was the military commander during the 1989 Tiananmen massacre. (5:00)

    • News analyst Daniel Schorr says that the choices President Clinton has made for his new foreign policy team indicate that he is pursuing a new and more forceful brand of American foreign policy. (2:45)

    • Mandelit Delbarco reports that the plaintiffs have rested their case in the civil trial of OJ Simpson, accused of the "wrongful deaths" of his former wife, Nicole, and her friend Ronald Goldman. The final witness for the plaintiffs was Fred Goldman, father of victim Ron, who testified to the tremendous pain his son's death has caused him. Now, the defense will take over, and is expected to focus on demonstrating flaws in police work following the murders. (3:30)

    • Kathy Lohr reports that the FBI is offering a 500,000 dollar reward for information on last summer's bombing at the Olympic Games in Atlanta. In a news conference today, the agency was also scheduled to play tape of calls to 911. (3:30)

    • The federal government is looking at a new generation of safety technologies for the airline industry. The effort follows a year in which scores of people died in two highly publicized crashes of TWA and Valuejet planes. Steve Inskeep reports the new safety measures could save lives, but the cost will be high and industry executives are worried about having to bear the burden. (5:00)

    • Noah speaks with commercial fisherman Joseph Rendeiro, from Stonington, CT, about the 100 pounds of flounder that he inadvertently caught and then donated to a soup kitchen. By doing so, he defied a quota regulation that bars Connecticut fisherman from landing any more flounder this year. Rendeiro says he doesn't believe that any judge would punish him for feeding hungry people. (3:30)