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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

  • Responses Available From Supporters of WTO Protests Wecomed by Clinton

    Speaking at a news conference this afternoon, President Clinton said that he is not concerned about the massive protests planned for the World Trade Organization global summit when it convenes in Seattle in late November. The following policy analysts who support those protests are available for comment: SARAH ANDERSON “It’s great that he’s welcoming protesters…

  • Coup in Pakistan and Nuclear Test Ban

    GORDON S. CLARK The executive director of the grassroots American organization Peace Action, Clark said Wednesday: “The military coup in Pakistan dramatically underscores the need for the nuclear test ban treaty. Will we be more secure or less secure with countries like Pakistan developing nuclear weapons? Because that is exactly what is going to happen…

  • Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty: Hope or Sham?

    TED TAYLOR Former deputy director of the Defense Atomic Support Agency in the Pentagon, an architect for decades of the U.S. nuclear program and now an independent consultant on nuclear issues and critic of U.S. nuclear policy, Taylor said: “I’m strongly in favor of the treaty, but not the Clinton administration interpretation of what it…

  • MCI-Sprint Merger

    JAMES LOVE Director of the Consumer Project on Technology, Love said: “The merger is an attempt to avoid competition. Sprint plays an important role in servicing resellers in the long distance market, smaller companies that buy bandwidth from the big three. For twenty years, you’ve had these three major players. Prices have gone down because…

  • Health Care: More Uninsured

    QUENTIN YOUNG, M.D. The national coordinator of Physicians for a National Health Program, which today released an analysis of Census data figures, Young said: “The number of uninsured climbed by 833,000 to 44.3 million in 1998, according to data released by the Census Bureau. Though the Census Bureau claimed that children’s health coverage had not…

  • Budget Battle?

    DEAN BAKER “The public debate over the budget has almost completely missed the real issues,” said Baker, an economist at the Preamble Center. “The debate has been portrayed as a dispute over whether to spend the surplus on social programs or whether to pay it out in tax cuts. In reality, the projected surplus is…

  • Russian Scandal

    As congressional hearings on the Russian financial scandal continue, the following analysts are available for interviews: JANINE WEDEL Author of Collision and Collusion: The Strange Case of Western Aid to Eastern Europe and associate professor at the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs at the University of Pittsburgh, Wedel said: “As more becomes known…

  • Hurricanes and Climate Change

    ROSS GELBSPAN Author of The Heat Is On: The Climate Crisis, the Cover-Up, the Prescription, Gelbspan said: “The ferocity of Hurricane Floyd — like Hurricane Mitch, which last year killed 9,000 people in Central America — is part of a pattern of extreme weather which results directly from early-stage global warming. Warmer surface waters fuel…

  • Just Back From East Timor

    Despite Indonesia’s agreement to an international force in East Timor, the violence there continues. The following people, most of whom were UN-accredited observers for the late August vote, have recently returned from East Timor and are available for interviews: BARBARA NASH A UN-accredited observer with the International Federation for East Timor, Nash just returned on…

  • East Timor and Economic Summit

    KRISTIN SUNDELL A UN-accredited observer with the International Federation for East Timor and national field organizer with the East Timor Action Network, Sundell recently returned from East Timor. She is in contact with others who are just returning and have witnessed the brutality there. More Information AMY GOODMAN and ALLAN NAIRN Goodman and Nairn have…

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