LONDON (Reuters) - Plans to build a road tunnel under Stonehenge have been scrapped, the government said on Thursday, raising fears that nearby traffic could damage the ancient World Heritage Site.

After years of argument over how to ease congestion around the stone circle in Wiltshire, ministers said they had decided that a tunnel would cost too much.

Environmental campaigners, road groups, archaeologists and druids who worship at the site have argued for decades over how best to protect it from the thousands of cars that pass each day on two busy roads.

Built between 3,000 and 1,600 BC as a temple, burial ground, astronomical calendar or all three, the stone circle has been described as "Britain's pyramids."

Thousands of revelers and druids converge there on the summer solstice -- the longest day of the year in the northern hemisphere -- to watch the sun rise.

Transport Minister Tom Harris said he could not justify spending 540 million pounds on a 1.3 mile tunnel, adding: "(It) would not represent best use of taxpayers' money."

The Liberal Democrats said the decision not to divert traffic was made after a "decade of dither and delay" by the government and could damage Stonehenge.

"It puts a UNESCO World Heritage site at risk of damage from the ever-increasing volume of traffic," said the party's Arts and Culture spokesman Dan Rogerson.

English Heritage, the public body which looks after the site, said the decision not to build a tunnel was a "huge disappointment."

David Holmes, chairman of the RAC Foundation, a motoring charity, said: "The government has condemned Stonehenge to further environmental damage and the A303 (road) to chronic congestion."

But campaign group Save Stonehenge, which opposes the tunnel, welcomed the decision, saying: "Christmas has come early."

"No one with any sense wanted a tunnel, a flyover, a dual-carriageway, and two whacking great interchanges here," its spokesman Chris Woodford said. "It's just not acceptable to build 1950s-style motorways in places like this any more."

(Editing by Steve Addison)

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The solar wind, which whips off the sun and blows past Earth and through the solar system, is unleashed by powerful magnetic waves in electrically charged gas around the sun, scientists said on Thursday.

The mechanisms that cause the solar wind had baffled scientists for decades, but were revealed in observations by a Japanese satellite called Hinode orbiting Earth, the scientists said in research published in the journal Science.

"The magnificent thing about the success of Hinode is its unprecedented view of the dynamics of the sun," Jonathan Cirtain, a solar physicist at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, Alabama, who helped in the research, said in a telephone interview.

The research was conducted by Japanese, European and U.S. scientists.

The solar wind is a stream of electrically charged gas -- mostly hydrogen -- blown outward from the sun in all directions at a speed of about a million mph (1.6 million kph).

It buffets planetary atmospheres. On Earth, it can disrupt satellites, power grids and communications, under certain circumstances. Earth's magnetic field protects against the solar wind, creating a bubble around which the wind must flow.

Driving the solar wind are so-called Alfven waves -- strong magnetic waves -- that ripple through the plasma of the sun's atmosphere, or corona, transferring energy from the star's surface and into the solar wind, the researchers said.

The waves are named after Swedish physicist Hannes Alfven, whose prediction of their existence helped earn him a Nobel prize in physics 1970. He died in 1995.

Hinode (pronounced hin-OH-day and named for the Japanese word for "sunrise") showed that two mechanisms appear to power the solar wind, Cirtain said.

The first involves the way the sun's magnetic field undergoes rapid changes in its shape, the researchers said. As the magnetic field changes shape, it generates these Alfven waves along its length that accelerate the charged gas and blow it into space, they said.

'IMPOSSIBLE TO OBSERVE'

Another mechanism powering the solar wind involves the sun's chromosphere, the region sandwiched between the solar surface and its corona. Images from Hinode's Solar Optical Telescope found that the chromosphere is filled with Alfven waves, which when they leak into the corona are strong enough to trigger the solar wind.

"Until now, Alfven waves have been impossible to observe because of limited resolution of available instruments," Alexei Pevtsov, Hinode program scientist for NASA, said in a statement.

The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency leads the mission, with cooperation from NASA and the European Space Agency.

Hinode has three key pieces of equipment -- the largest optical telescope to observe the sun from orbit, an X-ray telescope and an ultraviolet imaging spectrograph, making continuous observations of the sun.

The existence of the solar wind was first theorized about a half century ago. It existence was confirmed in the 1970s.

(Editing by Julie Steenhuysen and David Wiessler)

FBI's Gun Ban Listing Swells

Thousands Added To File Marked 'Mental Defective'

Since the Virginia Tech shootings last spring, the FBI has more than doubled the number of people nationwide who are prohibited from buying guns because of mental health problems, the Justice Department said yesterday.

Justice officials said the FBI's "Mental Defective File" has ballooned from 175,000 names in June to nearly 400,000, primarily because of additions from California. The names are listed in a subset of a database that gun dealers are supposed to check before completing sales.

Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey, in Utah for a speech, urged states that do not submit mental health data for the FBI's gun sales checklist to do so. (By Steve C Wilson -- Associated Press) TOOLBOX Resize Text   Save/Share + Digg Newsvine del.icio.us Stumble It! Reddit Facebook Print This E-mail This COMMENT washingtonpost.com readers have posted 81 comments about this item. View All Comments »   Comments are closed for this article.  Discussion Policy Discussion Policy CLOSE Comments that include profanity or personal attacks or other inappropriate comments or material will be removed from the site. Additionally, entries that are unsigned or contain "signatures" by someone other than the actual author will be removed. Finally, we will take steps to block users who violate any of our posting standards, terms of use or privacy policies or any other policies governing this site. Please review the full rules governing commentaries and discussions. You are fully responsible for the content that you post. Who's Blogging » Links to this article

The surge in names underscores the size of the gap in FBI records that allowed Seung Hui Cho to purchase the handguns he used in April to kill 32 people and himself at the Virginia Tech campus in Blacksburg.

A Virginia state court found Cho to be dangerously mentally ill in 2005 and ordered him to receive outpatient treatment. But because Cho was not ordered into hospital treatment, the court's order was never provided to the FBI and incorporated in its database. Two gun dealers checked the list before selling Cho the 9mm Glock 19 and the Walther .22-caliber pistol he used in the shootings.

For nearly four decades, federal law has prohibited gun sales to people judged to be "mentally defective," but enforcement has been haphazard. A 1995 Supreme Court ruling barred the federal government from forcing states to provide the data, and 18 states -- including Delaware and West Virginia -- provide no mental health-related information to the FBI at all. Both Virginia and Maryland do provide the data.

Paul Helmke, president of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, a group favoring tighter firearms controls, said the most optimistic estimates suggest that even the FBI's expanded list is missing 4 of 5 Americans who have been ruled mentally dangerous to themselves or others.

"If people realized how weak our system is in terms of background checks for people who are dangerously mentally ill, they would be shocked," Helmke said. "It's clear that there could be another Virginia Tech killer buying a gun today, and there's nothing that can be done about it."

The vast majority of the individuals who were added to the FBI's list were identified by California, which provided more than 200,000 names in October, the Justice Department said. Ohio provided more than 7,000 new names, and the number of states reporting mental health data to the FBI this year grew from 23 to 32, officials said.

"Instant background checks are essential to keeping guns out of the wrong hands, while still protecting the privacy of our citizens," Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey said in a speech announcing the numbers in Park City, Utah. "But as we learned in the tragedy at Virginia Tech, the checks must be accurate and complete to be effective. We're making progress, and I hope that even more states will submit this information."

The Virginia Tech deaths, which resulted from the deadliest college campus shooting incident in U.S. history, have prompted a push by federal and state lawmakers to improve voluntary reporting by the states of those covered by the ban.

House Democrats reached an agreement earlier this year with the National Rifle Association on legislation meant to encourage states to submit timely background-check data to the FBI, by offering monetary awards and threatening penalties.

"Our position has always been that those who have been adjudicated as mentally defective or a danger to themselves or to others or suicidal should not have access to firearms" and should be added to the FBI's list, NRA spokesman Andrew Arulanandam said.

The measure passed easily in the House, but it has stalled in the Senate because of a hold by Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.). He has said he opposes the legislation because he thinks its implementation would cost too much and because it lacks a mechanism to challenge inclusion on the list. He was joined by some veterans' groups, which argued that former soldiers might be denied gun-owning rights without due process.

In Virginia, Gov. Timothy M. Kaine (D) tightened state rules in May by ordering agencies to block gun sales to those involuntarily committed for inpatient or outpatient mental health treatment; previously only those committed to hospitals could not buy a gun. Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley (D) also issued a new gun-purchase regulation, which requires buyers to sign a waiver that releases mental health records to state police.

Mukasey highlighted the expanded FBI list during his first public speech after being narrowly confirmed by the Senate three weeks ago. He also told the National Association of Attorneys General that Washington will continue federal assistance for communities struggling against rising rates of violent crime.

Aides to the retired federal judge say his priority is to repair relations with Congress and to rebuild the department in the aftermath of controversies that beset his predecessor, Alberto R. Gonzales.

"I don't think you are going to see any big new initiatives, at least not right away," one Justice official said this week.

 

CHICAGO (Reuters) - The U.S. Episcopal Church faces major tumult this week when an entire California diocese with more than 9,000 members decides whether to secede in an unprecedented protest over gay issues.

The Episcopal Diocese of San Joaquin, based in Fresno and consisting of nearly 50 churches in 14 counties, would be the first diocese to bolt from the U.S. branch of the 77-million-member global Anglican Communion if Saturday's final vote passes.

The U.S. church and Anglicanism generally have been in upheaval since 2003 when the Episcopal Church consecrated Gene Robinson of New Hampshire as the first bishop known to be in an openly gay relationship in more than four centuries of church history.

Dissent over that as well as the blessing of same-sex unions practiced in some congregations has caused a number of defections by traditionalists in the U.S. church.

The 2.4 million-member U.S. church says that out of 7,600 congregations 32 have left, meaning that a majority of members of those congregations have departed and the churches are now considered closed. Another 23 have voted to leave, meaning that significant number of members have said they want to leave.

None of the church's 110 dioceses, however, has taken the final step to depart so far. Dioceses in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and Fort Worth, Texas, have also taken preliminary votes to leave, but their final decisions are a year away.

Bishop John-David Schofield, head of the San Joaquin Diocese, says leaving the U.S. church is "a sensible way forward" and one that could later be reversed if "circumstances change and the Episcopal Church repents."

In the meantime his diocese has received what he calls a "welcome" invitation to realign itself, should the vote be affirmative, with the Anglican Church of the Southern Cone of South America headed by conservative Archbishop Gregory Venables of Argentina.

That, he said, will allow members to remain part of the global Anglican church.

'REMAIN EPISCOPAL'

A year ago the San Joaquin Diocese's preliminary vote to leave the Episcopal Church was overwhelming. The process requires two votes year apart.

But a secession would not be unanimous. An organization called "Remain Episcopal" is opposing it and says its members will remain in place as the duly recognized Episcopal Church even if the bishop, some clergy and other congregants leave.

Katharine Jefferts Schori, presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church, urged Schofield in a letter earlier this week not to pull his flock out, saying "the church will never change if dissenters withdraw from the table."

She also made it clear what would happen if he did: A process that could eventually allow her to "depose" the bishop, declare the diocese vacant and allow those who want to remain to form a new church leadership.

The Episcopal Church also says it has control over all property and once a congregation leaves it has to find another place to worship. That contention has been challenged in several court cases, including one in Virginia where property dating back to Colonial times and worth millions of dollars is in dispute.

A spokeswoman for the San Joaquin Diocese said the property issue had yet to be addressed. (Editing by Andrew Stern and Jackie Frank)

Categories: Bioethicists | Harvard Centennial Medal recipients | University of Chicago alumni | University of Chicago faculty

ROCHESTER, New Hampshire (Reuters) - Police arrested a man who seized several hostages at Democratic presidential contender Hillary Clinton's New Hampshire campaign office on Friday after a tense six-hour standoff.

Live television showed a man emerging from Clinton's campaign office in Rochester, New Hampshire in white shirt and red tie with silver duct tape wrapped around his waist over what he had earlier told police were explosives.

The man, identified by media as Leeland Eisenberg, was arrested after unwrapping the tape and putting his hands in the air.

Clinton, a New York senator and former first lady, was not in New Hampshire and canceled a speaking date in Virginia immediately after news of the incident broke.

At least three people had been taken hostage.

A woman campaign volunteer emerged from the building hours earlier and was quickly escorted to safety, witnesses said. A second was released soon after. A man in his 20s was escorted to safely after the hostage-taker was seized by police.

Heavily armed police in black protective vests and helmets patrolled the area near the office in the state that helps kick off the 2008 White House race. Others restrained crowds behind yellow police tape as news helicopters hovered overhead.

The first political caucus in Iowa on January 3 and the first primary in New Hampshire on January 8 begin the state-by-state battle for the Democratic and Republican party nominations in the 2008 race for the White House.

The Rochester campaign offices of Democrats Barack Obama and John Edwards, who are competing with Clinton, were evacuated along with nearby businesses. Schools in the area locked their doors during the four-hour standoff.

(Additional reporting by Scott Malone in Boston. Writing by Jason Szep, editing by Todd Eastham)

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Striking screenwriters resumed contract talks with major film and TV studios on Monday for the first time since trading pens for picket signs three weeks ago in the worst Hollywood labor clash in two decades.

The 12,000-member Writers Guild of America (WGA) and the studios' Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers returned to the bargaining table at about 10 a.m. at an undisclosed, neutral location in Los Angeles, a studio spokesman confirmed.

But in a departure from the public rancor that has marked the labor talks since the first session back in July, the two sides adhered to a strict media blackout.

They adjourned for the day about eight hours later without a word on how much, if any, progress was made. The talks were expected to resume on Tuesday morning.

The WGA also renewed picketing outside about nine studios around town after a five-day break in observance of the Thanksgiving holiday.

The renewed talks offered the biggest glimmer of hope for resolving the dispute, which has centered on the question of how much money film and TV writers should earn when their work is distributed via the Internet.

The last major Hollywood strike, a 1988 walkout by the WGA, dragged on for 22 weeks and cost the entertainment industry at least $500 million. Economists have said that figure could double if the current strike lasts as long.

"Both sides realized that unless they sit down and start talking to each other, this situation is going to get a lot worse," said longtime media lawyer Howard Fabrick, a veteran of numerous Hollywood labor talks.

The parties reported some progress in their last 12-hour session on November 4 and could probably clinch a deal with another week's worth of serious bargaining, Fabrick said. But he said negotiators would need some time to regain that momentum.

"When you have that cooling-off period, both sides rethink things that they've said and positions they've taken," he said. "It's not starting over again from scratch, but it's not starting off from where you left off, either."

PREVIOUS PACT EXPIRED

The writers' previous three-year contract with the major film and TV studios expired on November 1, and the WGA launched its strike four days later even as the two sides were still negotiating.

When studio executives asked the writers to put their walkout on hold while negotiations continued, and union leaders refused, the producers left the bargaining table.

The strike immediately threw the TV industry into disarray, as several late-night talk shows, including those hosted by Jay Leno and David Letterman, were forced into reruns. Work has since halted on dozens of prime-time comedies and dramas, idling hundreds of non-writing staffers.

One industry expert estimated last week that 10,000 people directly employed on TV series could be jobless by month's end as projected losses in production spending on those shows reached $21 million a day.

The movie industry also is feeling the squeeze, with studios postponing production on at least four feature films because striking writers were not available to finish work on their scripts in time.

The WGA and the producers agreed to renew talks after coming under mounting pressure to seek a settlement, including back-channel overtures from California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and some of Hollywood's leading talent agents.

A new survey of nearly 1,000 Daily Variety subscribers found public opinion heavily favoring the writers, with more than two-thirds of those polled saying the WGA presented its views more forcefully and clearly than the studios.

But 44 percent of the respondents believed the strike ultimately would be settled "in favor of the companies," while just 20 percent felt the writers would come out on top. Thirty-seven percent thought it would be settled in a way that is "mostly fair" to both sides.

(Editing by Arthur Spiegelman and Philip Barbara)

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Republican presidential hopeful Rudy Giuliani, viewed with suspicion by some in his party for his support of abortion and gay rights, vowed on Friday to put conservatives on the Supreme Court if elected.

Speaking to the Federalist Society, a conservative group that places a heavy emphasis on states' rights, the former New York mayor said he would model his nominations after Supreme Court Justices Samuel Alito and Antonin Scalia, two of the most conservative judges on the highest U.S. court.

"We're seeking to find judges who understand the very, very important concept that judges exist to interpret the law, not amend the law," he told the group. "We believe in the rule of the law, not in the rule of judges."

"Our constitutional principles instruct us that we have to recognize the limitations on power as a way protecting our liberty," said Giuliani, who served as a senior official in the Reagan administration's Justice Department.

He emphasized that the next president would likely appoint some 200 judges to federal courts. He said he would try to convince the U.S. Congress to change its long-standing rules that allow a single U.S. senator to block confirmation of a judicial nominee, a practice that has been used to stymie some of President George W. Bush's nominees.

But he would face a hard time doing that because the Senate is currently controlled by the Democrats and many political analysts believe they might be able to increase their numbers in the November 4, 2008, election since they have fewer seats to defend.

"The next president is going to have to call on the Senate to change its rules and ask the Senate to really take seriously what advice and consent means," he said, referring to the Senate's constitutional duty to give input on nominees.

"What advice and consent means is that someone, if sent there by the president, should get an up or down vote within a reasonable period of time."

Giuliani departs from many in the Federalist Society with his support for abortion rights, gay rights and gun control. Thus, many conservatives have been wary of backing him and some have considered finding a third-party candidate.

With his more moderate positions, Giuliani has led in national opinion polls but has lagged in surveys in the conservative early primary voting states of Iowa and New Hampshire.

(Editing by David Alexander and Eric Walsh)

(To read more about the U.S. political campaign, visit Reuters "Tales from the Trail: 2008" online at http://blogs.reuters.com/category/events/trail08/)

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton on Friday defended her husband, former President Bill Clinton, for defending her on the campaign trail in Iowa.

With Hillary Clinton's campaign having hit a rough patch lately based on a rocky performance at a October 30 debate with her rivals, the Clinton camp sent Bill Clinton out to Iowa to try to rally support for her in the early voting state.

The former president took on the task with gusto. In one speech, he cited a survey by a Canadian pollster that said many people in France, Germany, Britain, Italy and Canada preferred Hillary Clinton to be the next U.S. president.

"In every country, without question, if you take out the undecided, she had the absolute majority," Clinton said, according to Politico.com. "They like her, they respect her."

The statement was quickly pounced on by the Republican National Committee, which said it sounded similar to a comment in 2004 by Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry, who said some foreign leaders wanted him to defeat George W. Bush.

"It is deja vu all over again," said RNC spokesman Danny Diaz. "First the Kerrys, now the Clintons."

Then Clinton defended his wife over perennial Republican criticism of her role, when she was first lady, in the failed 1993 attempt to overhaul the U.S. health care system.

"She has taken the rap for some of the problems we had with health care last time that were far more my fault than hers," said Bill.

New York Sen. Clinton was asked about her husband in a conference call with reporters on Friday arranged to announce that she had received the endorsement of Ohio Gov. Ted Stickland, an important development in a critical battleground state in the November 2008 election.

Was she comfortable with Bill's role in the campaign? she was asked.

"Absolutely," Clinton said. "I am so happy to have his help in this campaign. He obviously counsels and advises me every single day."

THRILLED BY HIS SUPPORT

"I'm thrilled to have his support and look forward to being able to call at him in every capacity I can imagine," she said.

Arianna Huffington, editor of the liberal blog, Huffingtonpost.com, was not impressed by the former president's efforts recently.

"He's becoming a liability," she told MSNBC. "Send him to Africa."

Iowa on January 3 holds the first of the state-by-state battles to choose the Democratic and Republican candidates who will vie for the U.S. presidential election on November 4, 2008.

A win in Iowa can generate momentum for the next state contest in New Hampshire, and beyond, and Clinton is locked in a three-way battle with Illinois Sen. Barack Obama and former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards.

(Additional reporting by Jeremy Pelofsky)