National Desk
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.

WASHINGTON
BUSH OUTLINES $7.1 BILLION STRATEGY TO PREPARE FOR FLU PANDEMIC
President Bush outlined a $7.1 billion strategy yesterday to prepare for a possible worldwide super-flu outbreak, aiming to overhaul the vaccine industry so eventually every American could be inoculated within six months of a pandemic’s beginning.
Such a huge change would take years to implement – Mr. Bush’s goal is 2010 – and his plan drew immediate fire from critics who said it wouldn’t provide enough protection in the meantime. States, too, got an unpleasant surprise, ordered to purchase millions of doses of an anti-flu drug with their own money.
The long-awaited strategy also stresses expanded attempts to detect and contain the next super-flu before it reaches America, with particular attention to parts of Asia that are influenza incubators – a global focus that flu specialists have insisted the government adopt.
“Early detection is our first line of defense,” Mr. Bush said in a speech at the National Institutes of Health. He called on other countries to admit when superflu strains occur within their borders. “No nation can afford to ignore this threat,” he said.
– Associated Press
SENATORS TELL PARK SERVICE TO BACK OFF NEW MANAGEMENT GUIDELINES
Republican senators joined Democrats in telling the National Park Service yesterday to back off proposed new guidelines that could allow Segway scooters and more cell phones, noise and air pollution in the national parks.
Instead, members of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources’ national parks subcommittee urged Park Service officials to undertake more modest changes to their overall plan for managing the 388-park system.
– Associated Press
CIA HOLDS TERROR SUSPECTS IN SECRET PRISONS
The CIA has been hiding and interrogating some of its most important Al Qaeda captives at a Soviet-era compound in Eastern Europe, according to American and foreign officials familiar with the arrangement. The secret facility is part of a covert prison system set up by the CIA nearly four years ago that at various times has included sites in eight countries, including Thailand, Afghanistan, and several democracies in Eastern Europe, as well as a small center at the Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba, according to current and former intelligence officials and diplomats from three continents.
The hidden global internment network is a central element in the CIA’s unconventional war on terrorism. It depends on the cooperation of foreign intelligence services, and on keeping even basic information about the system secret from the public, foreign officials and nearly all members of Congress charged with overseeing the CIA’s covert actions.
– The Washington Post
RATE COMMISSION APPROVES 2-CENT POSTAGE RATE INCREASE
A 2-cent boost in the price of a postage stamp was approved yesterday by the independent Postal Rate Commission. Under the recommendation, which now goes to the Postal Service’s Board of Governors for final action, the cost of a first-class stamp will go to 39 cents from 37 cents and the postcard rate will rise a penny to 24 cents. The Postal Service requested the increase last April. It is expected to go into effect in January.
The increase is needed so the Postal Service office can make a $3.1 billion escrow payment required by Congress. A bill that would eliminate that payment and make other changes in postal operations was approved by the House but has not yet passed the Senate. The White House has expressed reservations about the bill.
– Associated Press
SOUTH
MICE SING LIKE BIRDS IN THE PRESENCE OF POTENTIAL MATES
ST. LOUIS – Male mice can carry a tune, say Washington University researchers. Scientists have known for decades that male lab mice produce high-frequency sounds – undetectable by human ears – when they pick up the scent of a female mouse. This high-pitched babble is presumably for courtship, although scientists are not certain. But it turns out those sounds are more complex and interesting than previously thought.
“It soon became … apparent that these vocalizations were not random twitterings but songs,” researcher Timothy Holy said. “There was a pattern to them. They sounded a lot like bird songs.”
– Associated Press
AMERICAN MILITARY
COURT-MARTIAL RECOMMENDED FOR SERGEANT ACCUSED OF ‘FRAGGING’
CAMP ARIFJAN, Kuwait – An American soldier could face the death penalty after an Army probe recommended yesterday he be court-martialed in the Iraq war’s first case of alleged “fragging,” slang for the murder of superior officers.
Staff Sergeant Alberto B. Martinez of Troy, N.Y., had a “personal vendetta” against one of two higher-ranked officers who died in an explosion June 7 on an American base near Tikrit, north of Baghdad, military investigator Colonel Patrick Reinert said at the end of a two-day hearing in Kuwait.
Colonel Reinert said he found “reasonable cause” to believe that Sergeant Martinez, 37, planted and detonated an anti-personnel mine in the window of a room used by Captain Philip Esposito, 30, of Suffern, N.Y., and Lieutenant Louis E. Allen, 34 of Milford, Pa., in a former palace of Saddam Hussein’s.
The commander of the Multi-National Force Iraq, Lieutenant General John Vines, will decide whether there will be a court-martial and where it would be held
– Associated Press
PENTAGON: TOP AL QAEDA OPERATIVE ESCAPED
FORT BLISS, Texas – A man once considered a top Al Qaeda operative escaped from a U.S.-run detention facility in Afghanistan and cannot testify against the soldier who allegedly mistreated him, a defense lawyer involved in a prison abuse case said Tuesday. Omar al-Farouq was one of Osama bin Laden’s top lieutenants in Southeast Asia until Indonesian authorities captured him in the summer of 2002 and turned him over to America.
– Associated Press
HEALTH
RELATIVES, RELIGION, AND A DROP OF RED WILL SEE YOU TO 100
People with strong family ties and religious faith are much more likely to live beyond their 100th birthday than the rest of us, according to new research. Demographers who studied clusters of centenarians in Japan, Italy, and America found that most shared five habits in common. The other factors were drinking wine and eating in moderation, not smoking, and having a clear division of labor between husband and wife so that stress was equally shared.
The population with the longest life expectancy are the inhabitants of the Japanese island of Okinawa. In central Sardinia, 91 of 17,865 people born between 1880 and 1900 lived beyond their 100th birthday, twice the average Italian rate. A study of Seventh-Day Adventists carried out in California, funded by the National Institutes of Health, found that the average Adventist lived between four and 10 years longer than other Californians. Researchers put the difference mainly down to a combination of diet and faith.
– The Daily Telegraph