Post-gazette.com Monday, April 21, 2003 By Byron Spice, Post-Gazette Science Editor

Something odd was happening as the Boeing 737 made its approach to Chicago's Midway Airport. A cockpit instrument called the course deviation indicator, or CDI, showed the plane was on course, but the pilots, peering through the night sky at the lights below, thought they were too far south. An air traffic controller radioed the same concern.

Then the CDI's vertical needle suddenly swung to the left, showing the plane north of its course. After the captain made a scheduled turn to align the plane with the runway, the CDI needle again indicated the plane was on course. But then the needle swung again, showing the plane too far south.

By this time, the runway was in view and the pilots could see they were too high and too far north to land.

The apparent cause of these electronic gremlins was discovered as the plane circled around for another approach and the captain asked the passengers to make sure they had turned off all electronic devices.

The flight attendants reported that a woman passenger had been talking on her cell phone. When she turned it off, the instruments immediately settled down and the plane landed safely.

This incident, which the captain reported last year to NASA's Aviation Safety Reporting System, is just one example of how portable electronic devices -- everything from cell phones to Game Boys -- can interfere with the electronic navigation and communication systems aboard a modern airliner.

No one has yet blamed an aircraft accident on a malfunctioning laptop computer or an overactive pager, but the profusion of cell phones, laptops, CD/DVD players, game systems and personal digital assistants, or PDAs, that passengers now carry onboard is raising concern about electronic interference with avionic equipment..

"I don't have a sense [electronic interference] is increasing, but I sure see the potential there," said Kent Horton, general manager of avionics engineering for Delta Airlines.

It's not just the sheer number of devices being carried onboard, but their changing capabilties. A particular worry are wireless technologies, which go by such names as Bluetooth, Wi-Fi and a new one called ultrawideband. They allow laptops and PDAs to communicate with each other or connect with the Internet.

"They're so new we don't know a lot about these things," Horton said.

The wireless technologies operate at very low power but, like cell phones, are designed as transmitters, increasing the likelihood of interference. The Federal Aviation Administration has asked the Radio Technical Commission for Aeronautics, a private, not-for-profit group that advises the agency, to convene a special committee this summer to evaluate the new technology and determine whether it poses a threat to safety.

Cell phone use already is prohibited aboard planes and the FAA recommends that use of all portable electronic devices be limited below altitudes of 10,000 feet. But technological changes are making it more difficult to enforce those rules.

"As wireless devices become embedded into other devices, such as laptops, and the antennas for other devices become less conspicuous, it places a greater challenge on our flight crews to identify potential interference sources," said Timothy W. Shaver, program leader for flight avionics engineering at United Airlines.

None of this suggests that a crisis is at hand, emphasized Granger Morgan, head of the Department of Engineering and Public Policy at Carnegie Mellon University.

"Air travel is getting safer and safer," Morgan said. "We've got most of the big things under control." Attention to portable electronic devices, however, could help prevent a small threat from becoming something more. "At the most fundamental level, we need to increase the level of vigilance across the board."

Electronic interference alone might not be a major threat, but combined with other factors, such as bad weather or pilot fatigue, could contribute to accidents, said Bill Strauss, an avionics engineer at the Naval Air Warfare Center in Patuxent River, Md.

It's more than just a safety threat, noted Strauss, who is working toward a doctorate at Carnegie Mellon. Incidents of interference end up costing airlines money, as planes get pulled from service and technicians look in vain for something wrong.

Enforcing restrictions on portable electronic devices can trigger confrontations between passengers and crew.

An airliner was forced to taxi back to the gate at the airport in Caracas, Venezuela, early last year when a passenger refused to turn off his cell phone, at one point slipping into a lavatory to continue a conversation. Last summer, the crew of an MD-80 landing in Atlanta summoned the state police to board the plane after landing when a doctor became abusive when asked to turn off his CD player as the plane descended. And, on a flight from Miami to Chicago O'Hare, a passenger wouldn't turn off her cell phone until the captain came into the cabin to talk with her; after the plane landed, she went into the cockpit and gave the captain an earful.

"She just kept stating that it was very upsetting to her that she was reprimanded for not turning off her cell phone," a flight attendant said in a report filed for NASA's ASRS database.

"The air rage potential right now is probably a worse scenario than any interference events we are aware of," Strauss said.

Some people seem particularly skeptical about the in-flight ban on cell phone use, suggesting it's an airline effort to force passengers to use extra-cost phones located in the seatbacks.

In fact, the prohibition is a Federal Communications Commission rule. An activated cell phone, even when not being used for conversation, sends signals to the nearest base station. High in the air, a cell phone can "light up" base stations in a wide swath beneath the airplane's path and cause headaches for the cell network.

Even without the FCC rule, the FAA and airlines would want to restrict "intentional emitters" such as cell phones. But devices such as laptops, CD players, and the insulin pumps used by diabetics also can emit radio signals, though they are not designed to do so. Dropping a laptop, for instance, can damage it in ways that cause it to emit excessive amounts of electromagnetic radiation.

About 60 percent of all interference caused by portable electronics has been linked in reports to either cell phone or laptop use. But proving a cause-and-effect relationship is daunting.

"A lot of people in the field call it 'black magic,'" Strauss said.

The numbers of possible sources and possible interference paths are virtually impossible to count. Most airliners have 12 to 15 different antennas for various systems, Delta's Horton said, and radio emissions that escape through windows or around doors can reach one or more of these antennas, depending on the device's frequency, power and location.

Strauss said the devices also can cause interference within the plane, infiltrating electronic control boxes or the plane's wiring. A worn bit of electrical insulation, a missing shield, or a grounding wire mistakenly left disconnected may leave aircraft electronics vulnerable.

Even having what appears to be the culprit device in hand doesn't help. Horton said the airline has confiscated cell phones and other items suspected of causing in-flight interference, but has never been able to duplicate the interference.

Other factors no doubt are at work, Horton said. For instance, a passenger's low-power device might not affect voice communications when the plane is near a ground station, where the signals are strongest, but might interfere when the plane is far away from the station and receiving weaker signals.

Strauss suspects that more than one device may be causing interference in some cases. Several low-power devices operating in the passenger cabin can have additive effects, resulting in emissions stronger than any single device could generate, he explained. Turning one of those devices off might alleviate the interference and cause cockpit instruments to return to normal, but trying to recreate the effect using only that one device would be impossible.

Delta has done extensive measurements on the ground of "path loss," noting how a radio emitter might affect various antennas from various locations within different aircraft.

Up to now, though, there haven't been measurements during commercial flights. Strauss and Morgan have obtained a small FAA grant to perform what they say are the first in-flight measurements of the radiofrequency environment. Carrying a spectrum analyzer and an antenna aboard commercial airliners, Strauss will attempt to record the types and amounts of electrical emissions that occur at various points during the flights.

His own analysis of ASRS reports of interference incidents from 1995 through 2001 has convinced Strauss that a lot of cell phones are being switched on during landing approaches. Passengers may be eager to call people on the ground to let them know they have arrived, he reasoned, and may not realize that the cell phone can cause interference when it's turned on, not just when a call is being made or received.

Some of the solutions may simply be procedural, like the rule limiting the use of electronics at altitudes below 10,000 feet. The FAA says the number of interference incidents dropped dramatically when that recommendation was made in 1996.

In addition to direct observation by flight attendants, it may be possible to monitor electronics use by equipping planes with radiofrequency detectors. Handheld detectors could help the crew identify individual devices, particularly those generating excessive radiation, Morgan and Strauss suggest.

Greater cooperation between the FCC and FAA, they added, might result in wireless devices being designed with an override capability so that a centrally transmitted control signal could disable the devices during critical phases of flight.

Byron Spice can be reached at bspice@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1578.

By Michael Radu <a href=frontpagemag.com>FrontPageMagazine.com | April 21, 2003

Recently, following a pattern understood by all but American liberals, Fidel Castro again did something he always does in response to U.S. efforts to improve relations with Cuba. He answered renewed congressional efforts to weaken the embargo by cracking down on the opposition. In the past, when then-President Jimmy Carter tried to improve ties, we wound up with the Mariel exodus and the emptying of Cuba's jails through migration to the U.S.; when Bill Clinton tried to improve relations, it ended up with American citizens being blown out of the skies  by Castro's fighter planes and yet another mass send-off to Florida. This time, when a combination of greedy Republicans from farm states and leftist Democrats tried to weaken the embargo in the name of free trade, Castro answered by jailing 79 dissidents for sentences totaling over 2,000 years.

Even the communist, Portuguese José Saramago, Nobel laureate in Literature and supporter of any leftist cause this side of the Milky Way, declared in an interview with Spain's El Pais that "This is my limit." ("Saramago critica ejecuciones en Cuba," AP, April 14). This reminds one of the late 1960s, when Castro's Stalin-like purges of intellectuals forced Jean-Paul Sartre, another lifelong fellow traveler, to reach his limit with Fidel. And Miguel Vivanco of Human Rights Watch, whose goal seems to be indirectly helping the Marxist-Leninist terrorists/drug traffickers of Colombia's Revolutionary Armed Forces (FARC) by blasting every effort of that country's democratic government to fight FARC, also seems to have seen the light. He criticized the UN Human Rights Commission's proposed resolution condemning Castro's persecution of dissidents and demanding that they be released as "weak . . . a slap on the wrist."

Those conversions, along with the fact that the UN resolution was submitted by Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Uruguay and Peru, are the good news from a UN organization now improbably chaired by Libya. Costa Rica aside, the Latin sponsors have paid heavy prices in fighting and defeating Marxist-Leninist insurgencies over the past few decades. They know what communism is, does, and may lead to.

There is another, less symbolic but darker side to the issue. Argentine president Eduardo Duhalde, a lame duck but nonetheless representative of his people's feelings, declared that Argentina will abstain from voting on the Resolution, calling the timing of the vote "inopportune" given the "unilateral war [in Iraq] that has violated human rights." Brazil will also abstain and in Mexico some 50 leftist intellectuals and the majority in the Mexican Congress have asked President Vicente Fox to abstain as well. They could not bring themselves to support Havana, but, again using Iraq as a pretext, claimed that abstention is the best way to deal with Castro. As Mexico's human rights ombudsman stated, regretfully, "only poor countries are condemned" and thus, in his logic, condemning Cuba is unfair - in effect asking for some kind of proportional condemnation, regardless of  realities.

Ultimately it comes down to fundamental differences among the Latin countries. The politics of most of the larger of them vis-à-vis the United States are adolescent, based on the desire to demonstrate independence from Washington. Nowhere is this more evident than in Mexico. To support the U.S. position on any matter, from the treatment of rocks on Mars to dissidents in Cuba, is politically dangerous, opening a leader to accusations from the intellectual elites of being a "gringo puppet." These elites have a disproportionate, and usually nocive impact on politics. In Brazil those sentiments are enhanced by most Brazilians' emotional belief that their country, by virtue of its size and relative economic power, is entitled to a leading role that Washington unfairly challenges.

It was the very same adolescent politics that led the left-of-center governments of Brazil, Ecuador, and Venezuela to recently refuse to do the obvious, common-sense thing: to declare as terrorists the three irregular forces-FARC, the smaller, also communist National Liberation Army (ELN), and the anti-communists of the United Self-Defense of Colombia (AUC)-that are trying to destroy or avoid the democratic government of neighboring Colombia. They refused to do so despite the fact that FARC at least, and certainly soon enough the AUC, which is hunting them, operates across the borders in Panama, Ecuador, Brazil, and especially Venezuela, whose government is openly supportive of the insurgents.

In the case of Mexico, which has a seat in the UN Security Council (likely to the chagrin of President Fox), not supporting the U.S. approach to the Iraq issue was not a foreign policy or national interest issue, but one of national identity. Supporting the United States is a "sell out to the gringos." Teenagers of the world, unite!

In Chile, the most rational and pragmatic country in Latin America and certainly the most successful in economic, free-market terms, the story is the same, and equally depressing. President Lagos, a Socialist leading a coalition with the Christian Democrats, had never behaved as a socialist in either economic or political terms until Iraq, when he had Chile withhold support for the United States in the Security Council. Why? Because of anti-Americanism. It does not cost much, it is popular-especially in a country where hating capitalism and the United States is still popular among elites and the small (3 percent in the last elections) but organizationally effective Communist Party. Likewise with enthusiastically supporting whatever Havana does. Furthermore, Santiago, like Ciudad de Mexico, Brasilia, and Buenos Aires, still has difficulty understanding that Washington is less tolerant of adolescent games now than prior to 9/11. When President Bush stated that "those who are not with us are against us" in the war on terror, most Latins did not take it seriously. They may well have to now.

Ultimately, abstaining on or voting against a largely meaningless UN criticism of Cuba is itself irrelevant. However, a combined accumulation of Latin American positions suggests that when it comes to choosing between the obvious violations of freedom by one of their own (Havana) and supporting anything proposed by the United States, most Latin American governments will choose opposing Washington.

Understanding this, now let's consider both Castro's recent summary execution of thee ferryboat hijackers and the broader issue of how these Latin American attitudes toward U.S. global positions will affect their U.S. relations.

On the first issue, there is only one thing to say: a hijacker is a hijacker, period. As for capital punishment, it remains what it always was - a matter of political culture. Latins are fast to condemn US executions, especially when they involve their own citizens, but have little or nothing to say when Castro sentences people to death.

As to the price Latin America will pay, some sort of price for their recent behavior? Mexico is clearly doing its best to diminish, if not destroy, whatever support there was in Congress for the legalization of millions of its nationals living illegally in the United States. Chile was a legitimate applicant for NAFTA membership and possessed all the right social, economic, and political credentials, but it has how raised questions about its belonging there. Instead of facing Congressional opposition only from U.S. Democrats opposed to free trade, it will also now face opposition from Republicans, whether they are for or against free markets. Washington must make clear that being "anti-gringo" just on principle cannot continue in the age of international terrorism. Behavior should cost in terms of how many benefits one can expect to continue from Washington. Opposing the United States on matters of American security should have a cost in that regard, and Washington should impose it. Mexico, Chile, Brazil, and Argentina should be convinced that the cost is real and immediate.

Michael Radu is Senior Fellow and Co - Chair, Center on Terrorism and Counterterrorism, at the Foreign Policy Research Institute in Philadelphia.

Salon.com Books

This season's intellectual pinup, Fareed Zakaria, author of "The Future of Freedom," explains why the romantic myth of freedom could harm Iraq -- and why power elites aren't so bad.

By Michelle Goldberg

April 21, 2003  |  Since Sept. 11, hawks in the Bush administration have presented themselves as evangelists for democracy. The absence of democracy, in the neoconservative analysis, creates the climate of desperation and frustration that breeds extremism. Democracy's introduction into the Middle East, via regime change in Iraq, would bring a bracing new spirit of liberty to the region, undermining the stagnant authoritarianism of Iraq's neighbors.

Yet were it implanted tomorrow, democracy in most of the Middle East would bring to power the very totalitarian theocrats who most menace us. Indeed, argues Fareed Zakaria in his incisive new book "The Future of Freedom: Illiberal Democracy at Home and Abroad," democracy isn't necessarily the opposite of tyranny. From Venezuela to Kazakhstan, the last decade has seen a rise in elected autocrats, challenging American bromides that posit universal suffrage as the answer for all the world's ills.

The book and its 39-year-old author, the editor of Newsweek International, is getting an extraordinary amount of attention. In New York magazine, Marion Maneker gives him the movie star treatment, writing, "Dimple-chinned, with expressive eyebrows and a thick head of black hair, Fareed Zakaria could easily be the Indian reincarnation of Cary Grant." He may be the first of a new, post Sept. 11 breed -- the policy wonk as sex symbol.

For all the buzz he's generating, Zakaria's ideas about democracy's failures aren't that new -- in much of the foreign-policy establishment, they've become a kind of conventional wisdom, popularized by writers like Robert Kaplan and Amy Chua. It's clear to anyone who's been paying attention, after all, that the heartening triumph of democracy around the world in the last decade has coincided with brutal outbreaks of ethnic nationalism, civil war and genocide.

Yet Zakaria's book goes further than others, scanning the history of Western culture and identifying a series of fallacious assumptions about the roots of liberty that threaten not just fledgling Third World republics, but America as well: "Western democracy remains the model for the rest of the world, but is it possible that like a supernova, at the moment of its blinding glory in distant universes, Western democracy is hollowing out at the core?"

Freedom, Zakaria argues, comes not from politicians' slavish obeisance to the whims of The People, divined hourly by pollsters. It comes from an intricate architecture of liberty that includes an independent judiciary, constitutional guarantees of minority rights, a free press, autonomous universities and strong civic institutions.

In America, all of these institutions have been under consistent attack for the last 40 years from populists of the left and right seeking to strip power from loathed elites and return it to the masses. "The deregulation of democracy has ... gone too far," Zakaria writes.

Much of what Zakaria writes will anger liberals. He criticizes 1970s reforms that opened up the closed workings of Congress to the public, arguing, "The purpose of these changes was to make Congress more open and responsive. And so it has become -- to money, lobbyists, and special interests." The World Trade Organization is opposed by anti-globalization activists in part because of its secretive, unresponsive nature, but Zakaria argues that's precisely why it works.

<a href=www.thecarconnection.com>The Car Connection by Joseph Szczesny       4/20/2003.   Gasoline prices continued to drift downward last week on the heels of the capture of Baghdad by U.S. forces, but could reach a plateau for the next few weeks as American forces try to get Iraq's oil back on the market.

The U.S. military has said that Iraqi oil fields around Kirkuk could start shipping oil in four weeks. But the shipments could get tied up in another round of diplomatic wrangling in the United Nations. The Bush administration made it plain last week that it was eager for the Iraq fields to swing back into production to produce revenue need to pay for both relief and rebuilding efforts inside Iraq.

The wrangling over the oil for food program, however, goes right to the heart of the question of who will hold political authority in a post-war, post Saddam Iraq. President Bush and his advisers have been reluctant to offer the U.N. a larger role and a voice in rebuilding the war-torn country but the administration could find it difficult to sell the oil without U.N. approval.

Saudi Arabia, Iraq's southern neighbor, has adopted the position that the U.S. cannot ship the oil without clear authorization from the U.N. because it doesn't have legal title to the petroleum. Without a clarification of the title to the oil, many larger oil companies will probably be reluctant to bid for it, some experts say. Meanwhile, ministers from OPEC are scheduled to meet this week amid complaints from some members, such as Iran and Indonesia, that there is too much oil on the market and production should be cut to prevent any big decline in the price of crude. Before trading halted in New York and London for the Easter holiday weekend, prices actually had started to creep upwards again on concerns about OPEC actions and on the fear that political turmoil will keep parts of Nigeria's production shut down for a while longer.

The International Energy Agency in Paris, the energy watchdog for 26 industrialized nations, has urged OPEC to be cautious in any supply cut. The prices charged for crude are still too high for firms to rebuild low stocks, the IEA. With prices for crude still hovering above $29 per barrel, refiners and wholesaler are reluctant to take delivery of more oil because they fear they would not be able to recover their costs if the price of oil suddenly fell.

Motorist relief

Motorists around the United States, however, are beginning to see some relief from the relatively high prices that prevailed for through March and into early April.

The average price for regular self-serve unleaded gasoline in Southern California is $2.128, down about four cents from record highs set in late March, according to AAA. San Francisco Bay Area motorists were paying an average of $2.14, equal to the March price. Since hitting a record high of $2.18 per gallon on March 21 a similar, slow decline has occurred in nearly all Southern Californian cities, AAA said.

"While average city prices have begun to drop moderately in the region, they are still all above the $2 per gallon mark," said Auto Club spokesperson Carol Thorp. Nationally, prices are down 12 cents since the March AAA survey and are now averaging $1.595 per gallon. Georgia continues the lowest state average at $1.411, down 11.8 cents from last month, AAA reported.

“Over the past couple of weeks imports from Venezuela, Canada and Europe have increased and that has take the edge off of any supply worries. Imports combined with lower wholesale gasoline prices have sent pump prices lower," Thorp noted.  

<a href=quote.bloomberg.com>Bloomberg By Nesa Subrahmaniyan and Wing-Gar Cheng

Singapore, April 21 -- Crude oil fell as much as 1.6 percent in New York on speculation the U.S. will seek an early resumption of Iraqi oil exports, adding to concern about a glut as northern hemisphere weather warms up and cuts demand.

The U.S., which invaded Iraq to topple its leader Saddam Hussein, is seeking an end to United Nations sanctions on the Middle East producer's oil exports to help fund its recovery from the war. The U.S. last week awarded Bechtel Group Inc. a $680 million contract to rebuild roads, bridges and other facilities, the largest part of a $1.1 billion reconstruction project.

Iraq ``needs the money for construction and that is a very, very strong incentive to get it started early,'' said Anthony Nunan, manager of the international petroleum business at Mitsubishi Corp. in Tokyo.

Crude oil for May delivery fell as much as 49 cents to $30.06 a barrel in after-hours electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. It traded 16 cents lower at $30.39 a barrel at 11:40 a.m. Singapore time.

On Thursday, oil rose $1.37, or 4.7 percent, to $30.55 a barrel, its biggest gain in three weeks, after members of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries said the group should cut output at a meeting scheduled for Thursday, to accommodate any resumption in Iraqi shipments. The exchange was closed Friday for the Easter holiday.

The U.S. will ask the UN to lift its sanctions on Iraq in phases, keeping supervision of oil sales as it gradually transfers other parts of the country's economy to a new interim authority, the New York Times reported on Saturday. The step-by-step approach is designed to avoid confrontation with France and Russia, which opposed the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.

Northern Fields

Iraq will be able to start pumping oil from its northern fields in weeks because of limited damage to installations, the U.S. military has said. U.S. Army engineers believe that storage tanks in the area around Kirkuk as well as the region's main export terminal in Turkey are full, the Wall Street Journal said.

The U.S. still has obstacles to overcome before it persuades the UN to endorse any resumption of Iraqi oil exports. On Friday, Russia said the UN should verify that Iraq is free of weapons of mass destruction before it cancels sanctions against the country, rather than ``automatically'' lifting them.

UN sanctions on Iraq should be lifted only by the UN Security Council under conditions set by UN resolutions, Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov said in a statement.

The only big problem is the battle between the UN and the U.S.,'' Mitsubishi's Nunan said. Who has the authority to sell? The U.S. doesn't want to cede its authority to the UN, and that's the big problem.''

Iraq Exports

Oil exports from Iraq, OPEC's third-largest producer in February, have been suspended since March 20 when the U.S. and U.K. invaded the country to remove the regime of Saddam Hussein.

``Iraq may export 1.5 million barrels a day of crude oil to start off and then rising to 2 million barrels within the next three months,'' said Hiromune Fujisawa, oil futures trader at Nihon Unicom Corp. in Tokyo.

OPEC, which pumps a third of the world's oil, lowered its forecast for global demand because of SARS, or severe acute respiratory syndrome. In a monthly report released on Friday it reduced its projection for worldwide consumption of oil to 77.35 million barrels a day, 80,000 barrels down from its forecast last month.

The outbreak of SARS is reducing travel and tourism and is feared to undermine economic growth in the affected regions,'' OPEC said. In addition, the war in Iraq has had an adverse effect on air travel. The resulting decline in aviation fuel consumption is expected to continue through the second quarter of 2003.''

OPEC Output

OPEC output rose to a 1 1/2-year high in March as members made up for disruptions caused by the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq. OPEC's benchmark oil price index has dropped 12 percent during the past month, to $26.25 on Thursday.

A successful accord to reduce output could have the desired effect of preventing OPEC's benchmark price from falling below the group's target of $22 to $28 a barrel, traders said.

``Traders expect prices to rise once there is less oil in the market after OPEC cut output,'' Nihon's Fujisawa said.

Iran, Algeria, Qatar and Indonesia have all called for a cut in OPEC output. Venezuela estimates overproduction at about 2 million barrels a day and may need to reduce production by 11 percent, said Luis Vierma, deputy minister at the Oil Ministry, quoted by Venpres news agency on its Web site. Last Updated: April 21, 2003 00:02 EDT