It quoted a State Department official as saying that the computer contained code-word information, sensitive intelligence information and plans.The Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright, asked the head of diplomatic security, David Carpenter, to make a thorough review of security, as the State Department has had a number of embarrassing security breaches.Last year, FBI agents discovered a Russian spy lurking outside the department and then an eavesdropping device in a conference room he had been monitoring. In 1998, a man strolled into the executive secretary’s office, near Ms Albright’s office, helped himself to a sheaf of classified briefing materials and walked out. He was never identified and the materials were not recovered.. The Israeli Prime Minister is on a collision course with his country’s highest judicial body, the Supreme Court, over the fate of a group of Lebanese men who have been held as hostages by Israel for up to 15 years, some without charge or trial. The Israeli Prime Minister is on a collision course with his country’s highest judicial body, the Supreme Court, over the fate of a group of Lebanese men who have been held as hostages by Israel for up to 15 years, some without charge or trial.
Ehud Barak has called a cabinet meeting for today to discuss whether to circumvent the ruling last week that Israel had no right to hold the hostages in order to pressure Lebanon over missing Israeli servicemen.Thirteen Lebanese were to have been freed yesterday, but their release was postponed for the second time in less than a week. The glitch appears to have been caused by a last-minute appeal to the court by an Israeli right-wing group to block the release.

It failed.To the horror of human rights activists, Mr Barak revealed yesterday that he was leaning towards supporting a new law that would allow the Israeli government, rather than the judiciary, to determine what happens to such prisoners.The men have been held by Israel in flagrant violation of international law. Israel makes no secret of the fact that the men are kept as human currency to be used in negotiations over missing Israeli servicemen.An Israeli government official said the Lebanese would finally be freed by tomorrow. However today’s cabinet meeting could lead to more delays.Mr Barak’s office said yesterday the possible new legislation would allow the executive branch to detain enemy fighters “for the purpose of redeeming Israeli prisoners of war”. In fact, there is little evidence that the Lebanese hostages were enemy fighters. They mostly comprise young Shia Muslims who were still in their teens when they were abducted in Lebanon by militias or Israeli troops.Initially, Mr Barak indicated he would abide by the ruling. But the outcry against it – combined, no doubt, with Mr Barak’s falling ratings – has led him to reconsider.The odds are that any new law would eventually be struck down by the Supreme Court.But none of this bodes well for the next hurdle facing human rights organisations – the fight to get Israel to assume responsibility for the 160 Lebanese prisoners held by the Israeli-controlled South Lebanon Army within the walls of the notorious Khiam prison inside Israel’s occupation zone.Yesterday’s developments follow Wednesday’s decision by the Supreme Court which stated that the Israeli military had no grounds to continue holding the Lebanese in so-called “administrative detention” as they do not constitute a threat to national security.Although the judgement was in response to a petition from only eight of the men, the government decided that it applied to all but two being held in Israel – Mustafa Dirani, a former official with the Amal militia, and Sheikh Abdel Karim Obeid, a Hizbollah cleric.Israel regards the latter two as powerful cards – and is highly unlikely to heed a demand from Amnesty that they, too, should be freed because their detention is also unlawful..

Five African nations and India reached a consensus on Monday on the controversial issue of trade in elephant ivory after managing to convince Kenya that no sales would take place until an effective monitoring system was put into effect to prevent poaching. Five African nations and India reached a consensus on Monday on the controversial issue of trade in elephant ivory after managing to convince Kenya that no sales would take place until an effective monitoring system was put into effect to prevent poaching.
The consensus agreement will permit South Africa, Namibia, Botswana and Zimbabwe to trade in live elephants and their hides.The agreement was reached shortly before debate on the contentious issue was to have begun at a conference on international trade in endangered species.”We welcome this as a consensus decision. We are pleased that they recognize it is premature to trade in ivory because the monitoring systems are not yet in place to detect any increase in poaching,” said Ginette Hemley of the World Wildlife Fund.The vote that would have followed pitted Kenya and India, who wanted all trade in ivory, hide and live animals banned, against the four southern African nations, who wanted to be able to conduct limited and controlled sales of ivory.Karen Steuer, director of the International Fund for Animal Welfare, said the consensus was good for Africans and elephants. She the IFAW will provide assistance to countries with elephant populations living outside protected areas and reserves to build up their ability to protect the animals from poachers.At the 10th conference of the U.N.

Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species in 1997, Zimbabwe, Namibia and Botswana obtained the right to a one-off sale of stockpiled ivory which Kenya claimed had given the impression to poachers that trade had resumed on a broad scale.”Ultimately the responsibility of elephant conservation rests with the elephant range states,” said James Martin-Jones, an elephant expert with the WWF. “This is a major step forward.”The four southern African nations had argued that selling ivory from culled animals and those that died natural deaths would pay for the upkeep of the large herds in the region.But Kenya, whose elephant herd was decimated by poaching in the 1980s after game hunting was banned, said that despite the 1997 CITES agreement, no effective system had been put in place to monitor the effects of poaching. It has taken Kenya a decade to raise its elephant population to 29,000, small by comparison with the 110,000-strong herd in Botswana.The sale of elephant hide was agreed to because it takes much longer for poachers to skin a dead elephant than it does from them to simply hack off the elephant’s tusks.Nehemiah Rotich, the head of the Kenya Wildlife Service, said the proliferation of small arms from conflicts in neighboring countries makes it difficult to curb poaching of Kenya’s elephants.”Kenya has quite often being reported to be weak in terms of conservation,” Rotich told reporters after the consensus was announced. “Let me make it clear, the Kenya Wildlife service is a very strong organization in terms of enforcement.”A report by a CITES committee released earlier Monday said the one-off sale of southern African ivory had been a success. But Paula Kahumbu of the Kenya Wildlife Service, speaking for the Kenyan delegation, charged that the report was based on inadequate data.Botswana’s head of delegation Garyland Kombani said the monitoring system developed by CITES has to be operational by October 2001.”Keeping the ivory trade door open is very important to us.

We decided not to ask for a quota until the next CITES meeting,” he said, adding that earning money from ivory sales and ploughing it back into elephant conservation was a more valid approach than monitoring.A statement from the U.N. Enviroment Program, which is hosting the conference that ends Thursday, said African elephant range states will continue discussions among themselves to seek a continent-wide strategy on elephant conservation.Rotich said the issue of the ivory trade is guaranteed to loom large at the next CITES conference and that despite the consensus, it was clear the southern African states would want to begin trading in ivory two years from now.. Some of the squatters who have taken over hundreds of white-owned farms across Zimbabwe shot and killed a farmer Tuesday, a farm union official said. Some of the squatters who have taken over hundreds of white-owned farms across Zimbabwe shot and killed a farmer Tuesday, a farm union official said.
Cattle rancher Martin Olds was the second farmer slain by squatters who began taking over white-owned tracts of land in February.The occupiers opened fire on Olds about 6:30 a.m.