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News Releases

  • Global Conference Getting Underway: AIDS and Drugs

    The 13th International Conference on AIDS will be held in Durban, South Africa from July 9 to 14. The following analysts are available for interviews: ROBERT WEISSMAN Co-director of Essential Action, Weissman said today: “While Africa is experiencing an epidemic that ranks among the worst in world history, the multinational drug companies — which produce the drugs that can treat and extend the lives of those with HIV/AIDS — are focusing not on the humanitarian tragedy but on their bottom lines. There’s plenty of blame to go around for the HIV/AIDS epidemic, but certainly high up on the list are…

  • Interviews Available: Israeli-Palestinian Summit, Clashes in Northern Ireland

    SIMONA SHARONI Co-chair of the Consortium on Peace Research, Education and Development, Sharoni — a long-time professor of conflict resolution and peace studies — has traveled with students to Northern Ireland and the Mideast several times. Some of her students are currently international observers in Northern Ireland. She said today: “There are a few striking similarities between the situation in Israel/Palestine and the North of Ireland, and the prospects for long-lasting peace in both regions. In both cases, albeit for different reasons, the United States has positioned itself as a key player. Yet, the Clinton administration and the State Department…

  • Interviews Available: Nazi Link to German Scandal, Elian and the Cuba Embargo, Sunday’s Mexican Election

    MARTIN A. LEE Former German Chancellor Helmut Kohl is scheduled to testify before a parliamentary inquiry on Thursday. In the Los Angeles Times on June 25, free-lance investigative journalist Martin A. Lee exposed the Nazi link to the current slush fund and influence-peddling scandal in Germany involving Kohl. Lee traces the roots of the corruption scandal to Kohl’s close relationship with Fritz Ries, an influential German industrialist who made a fortune during the Third Reich from expropriating “Aryanized” Jewish property and from slave labor in factories near Auschwitz. After the war, Ries became Kohl’s principal patron within the West German…

  • Interviews Available: Genome and Philip Morris / Nabisco

    JONATHAN KING Professor of molecular biology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, King is on the board of the Council for Responsible Genetics. He said today: “The determination of human gene sequences represents the outcome of 50 years of public investment in basic biomedical research. The publicly released gene sequence data provide important inputs into understanding the biological basis of human health and disease…. Our genes were inherited from our parents through their parents and previous generations; their sequences are not inventions of corporate or any other scientists. The patenting of human genes by Celera, Human Genome Sciences and other…

  • Death Penalty

    Gary Graham is scheduled to be executed at 7 P.M. Eastern Time. The following analysts and critics of the death penalty are available for interviews: WILLIAM HARRELL Executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Texas, Harrell said today: “We are outraged by the board’s failure to halt this execution. The judicial system has failed us, the Board of Pardons and Paroles has failed us and the governor has failed us. This is the greatest proof that the time for a moratorium on executions in Texas is now.” The president of the board of the ACLU of Texas, Greg…

  • “Prosperity and Progress”?

    Inequalities, Health-Care Coverage, Estate Tax CHARLES ANDREWS The author of the forthcoming From Capitalism to Equality, Andrews said today: “Before we celebrate the economy’s alleged prosperity and progress, we should tally the exhaustion it is causing. The average husband-and-wife family works six hours today for every five hours worked in 1979. The percentage of employees who work 49 hours a week or more rose from 13 percent in 1976 to 20 percent today. If there is a bit of prosperity today in our role as consumers, the deeper truth is that today’s economy consumes people’s lives.” SARA NICHOLS National spokesperson…

  • Interviews Available: Father’s Day

    WILL GLENNON Glennon is author of Fathering: Strengthening Connection with Your Children No Matter Where They Are, for which he interviewed 180 fathers, aged 15 to 87, almost all of whom cried during their interviews. He said today: “Fathers need to get deeply engaged in the upbringing of their children. Fathers don’t want to be isolated, children don’t want them to be disconnected and mothers don’t want them to be absent — physically or emotionally. But we have patterns of how we raise our children which keep fathers distant, cost them emotionally, cause pain in their relationships, making boys more…

  • Arafat’s Visit to U.S.

    The following analysts are available for interviews about the U.S. visit by Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat scheduled to begin on Wednesday: NASEER ARURI Professor of political science at the University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth, former board member of Amnesty International and author of The Obstruction of Peace: The U.S., Israel, and the Palestinians, Aruri said today: “The approach of Syria’s Hafez Assad toward Israel was based on equality, land for peace, an international framework, and normalization with Israel after it fully withdraws from occupied territory. By contrast, Arafat’s approach — despite lip service to the contrary — is open-ended. It would…

  • Study Finds Conservative Think Tanks Predominant

    Brookings Leads; Left-of-Center Think Tanks Decrease WASHINGTON — A study released today found that conservative think tanks and the centrist Brookings Institution dominated much of the national media debate last year. Of the 25 leading think tanks studied, Brookings had the most citations (2,883), twice as many media mentions as the next-ranked conservative/libertarian Cato Institute (1,428 cites). The conservative Heritage Foundation, which had rivaled Brookings in prominence a few years ago, has fallen to third place (1,419 cites), while the conservative American Enterprise Institute (1,263 cites) is the fourth most cited think tank in the U.S. media. These four think…

  • Analysts Available on Microsoft Decision

    The following analysts are available to comment on the Microsoft decision: NORMAN HAWKER Hawker is a law professor at Western Michigan University specializing in antitrust issues. JUDY SLOAN Sloan is a professor at Southwestern University Law School in Los Angeles. ROBERT LANDE Lande is senior research scholar at the American Antitrust Institute and professor of law at the University of Baltimore. More Information For more information, contact at the Institute for Public Accuracy: Sam Husseini, (202) 347-0020; David Zupan, (541) 484-9167 More Information More Information

  • Albright and Congo: Analysts

    As part of what the Clinton administration calls the “month of Africa,” Secretary of State Madeleine Albright will be presiding over a UN Security Council meeting today about the civil war in Congo (formerly Zaire). The following analysts are available for interviews: ADAM HOCHSCHILD Author of the widely acclaimed “King Leopold’s Ghost: A Story of…

  • Iowa Caucuses: What’s Democracy Got to Do With It?

    BETTY AHRENS Program director for the Iowa Citizen Action Network, Ahrens said: “There’s really a wealth primary, we’ve already determined who the favorites are — largely based on how much money they’ve raised. The caucuses enable participants to introduce resolutions to the party platforms; they are debated and voted on. We have developed a resolution…

  • The Real Martin Luther King

    While Martin Luther King Jr. will be widely commemorated next Monday for his work in the civil rights movement, the following analysts are available to discuss King’s work — including aspects that are often overlooked. In his “Beyond Vietnam” speech delivered a year to the day before he was killed, King called the United States…

  • Perspectives on Africa and AIDS

    Initiating what the Clinton administration calls “the month of Africa,” Vice President Al Gore spoke about AIDS in Africa at the UN Security Council on Monday. The following analysts are available for interviews on U.S. policy toward Africa and on AIDS drugs: DEBORAH TOLER A policy analyst with the Institute for Public Accuracy, Toler is…

  • AOL-Time Warner Merger

    In the largest corporate merger in history, America Online and Time Warner announced a $350 billion deal today. The following analysts are available for interviews: ROBERT McCHESNEY Professor at the Institute of Communications Research at the University of Illinois and author of “Rich Media, Poor Democracy: Communication Politics in Dubious Times,” McChesney, who participated in…

  • Gore And Bradley: Health Care Plans — Or Scams?

    Vice President Al Gore and former Senator Bill Bradley repeatedly sparred in last night’s debate over health care — but some analysts are criticizing both politicians’ policy prescriptions as serving the interests of insurance companies. STEFFIE WOOLHANDLER, M.D. Director of the Center for National Health Program Studies at Harvard, Dr. Woolhandler said: “In 1993 Clinton’s…

  • Foreign Policy Issues: Russia, Syria-Israel, Latin America, India-Pakistan

    JANINE WEDEL Author of “Collision and Collusion: The Strange Case of Western Aid to Eastern Europe,” Wedel is associate professor at the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs at the University of Pittsburgh and currently a fellow at the National Institute of Justice. She said Monday: “One of the very first things that the…

  • Y2K Dangers?

    MARY BETH BRANGAN Brangan is U.S. co-coordinator for the World Atomic Safety Holiday Campaign, an international network of 50 groups. She said: “It’s absurd that while major oil pipelines are being shut down as a precaution, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission is relaxing normal safety rules in order to keep the reactors running during the…

  • Y2K Hopes And Fears: Interviews Available

    LLOYD J. DUMAS Author of “Lethal Arrogance: Human Fallibility and Dangerous Technologies” and professor of political economy at the University of Texas at Dallas, Dumas can assess potential Y2K technical problems as well as the millennial activities of religious cults. JOHN J. SIMON Albert Einstein has just been named Time magazine’s “Person of the Century.”…

  • Russian Elections and Chechnya

    DAVID KOTZ Co-author of “Revolution from Above: The Demise of the Soviet System” and professor of economics at the University of Massachusetts, Kotz said Tuesday: “The war in Chechnya revived the political fortunes of pro-Yeltsin parties in the election to Russia’s relatively powerless Duma, as Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’s ‘strong hand’ proved popular with voters.…

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