The council, one of the more important reforms of the UN that Secretary-General Kofi Annan has been calling for, came out of the summit of world leaders last September.

Mr Annan had condemned the old Human Rights Commission, saying it had been discredited by human rights abusers joining it in order to protect themselves from criticism or in order to criticise another country.

Countries such as Sudan and Burma were able to be elected because of a system of bloc or regional voting. The new body will be elected by the entire General Assembly.

The US, one of four countries to oppose the new body, demanded that each country's vote be recorded. Israel, the Marshall Islands and Palau also voted against it.

US ambassador John Bolton said the council did not represent sufficient improvement on the old commission. He railed against compromises agreed to in order to get majority support for the council.

"We must not let history remember us as the architects of a council that was a compromise and merely the best we could do," Mr Bolton said.

But the president of the General Assembly, Sweden's Jan Eliasson, refused to reopen negotiations, fearing that would open a Pandora's box.

Countries such as Russia, Cuba, Pakistan and some Arab states were reported to have been ready to try to impose their own ideas on the council if it had been reopened for negotiation.

Mr Bolton said the United States objected to the dropping of a proposal to require two-thirds of the countries in the General Assembly to support a country in order for it to be elected to the council. Council members will instead be elected by a simple majority.

Countries subject to sanctions for human rights abuses or for supporting terrorism should be barred, he said, and there should not be a two-term limit on council membership.

Australia, in a joint statement with New Zealand and Canada, said they would have preferred a two-thirds requirement for membership, along with tougher provisions for preventing abusers of human rights being elected, but voted for the new body anyway. The three countries vowed not to vote for any country that abuses human rights. The first vote for the council will be in May.

Mr Bolton said the 47-member body, a reduction from the 53-member commission, was still too large and should be reduced to 30.

Though the new body was not everything that Mr Annan wanted, he welcomed its establishment, but cautioned: "The true test of the council's credibility will be the use that member states make of it."

Surprisingly, Cuba voted for the new council, but said it had serious reservations, including whether the new body would be able to investigate United States abuses of prisoners at the Abu Ghraib prison or other detention centres.

Brinkema did not immediately respond to the motion for reconsideration that prosecutors filed Wednesday evening. But she had indicated earlier she had time available Thursday to hear such a motion if it were filed.

The jury has been sent home until Monday to give prosecutors time for their next step.

Brinkema barred prosecutors from submitting any witnesses or exhibits about aviation security. Prosecutors responded in their motion that this evidence "goes to the very core of our theory of the case."

At the very least, the prosecutors argued, they should be allowed to present a newly designated aviation security witness who had no contact with Carla J. Martin, the Transportation Security Administration lawyer responsible for the government's misconduct. This would "allow us to present our complete theory of the case, albeit in imperfect form."

"The public has a strong interest in seeing and hearing it (aviation security evidence), and the court should not eliminate it from the case, particularly not ... where other remedies are available," they wrote Brinkema.

Brinkema ruled Tuesday that Martin violated federal rules when she sent trial transcripts to seven aviation witnesses, coached them on how to deflect defense attacks and lied to defense lawyers to prevent them from interviewing witnesses they wanted to call. The judge said Martin's actions and other government missteps had left the aviation evidence "irremediably contaminated."

Martin has been placed on administrative leave from her
TSA job, agency spokeswoman Yolanda Clark said Thursday.

The only person charged in this country in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, Moussaoui pleaded guilty in April to conspiring with al-Qaida to fly airplanes into U.S. buildings. But he denies any involvement in 9/11, saying he was training for a possible future attack.

This trial is to decide whether he is executed or spends life behind bars.

Prosecutors said the excluded evidence "is one of the two essential and interconnected components of our case."

The prosecution's case is based on offensive and defensive measures they argue the government would have taken if Moussaoui had not lied to FBI agents about his terrorist connections when arrested in Minnesota three weeks before al-Qaida flew jetliners into New York's World Trade Center, the Pentagon and a Pennsylvania field on 9/11.

They say offensive steps by the FBI to locate 9/11 hijackers in advance and defensive airport security measures by federal aviation officials would have combined to prevent at least one death that day. To get a death penalty, prosecutors must show beyond a reasonable doubt that an action of Moussaoui's - his lies, in this case - led directly to at least one 9/11 death.

As a compromise, prosecutors offered to drop arguments that the Federal Aviation Administration would have barred small knives, like those used by the hijackers, from planes and would have altered its terrorist screening profiles to catch the attackers.

Instead, they would call one witness, whom they did not identify, who worked at the FAA in August 2001 and could discuss the government's use of "no-fly" lists to bar named terrorists from planes and how those lists evolved. They said Martin had no contact with this witness.

"We don't know whether it is worth us proceeding at all, candidly, under the ruling you made today," Assistant U.S. Attorney Rob Spencer said in an unusually blunt assessment during a conference call Tuesday. Spencer added that continuing under these conditions would "waste the jury's time and the court's time, and we're all mindful of the expense of this proceeding."

If Brinkema refuses to budge, it's not clear what appeals remain open. Defense attorney Edward MacMahon said the government can't appeal Brinkema's ruling to the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond now that the trial is under way.

Carl Tobias, a law professor at the University of Richmond, said prosecutors might ask the appeals court for a rarely used common law relief order called a writ of mandamus, but such orders are granted only in extraordinary circumstances.

The budget awaits Gov. Chris Gregoire's signature.

Ken Schwilk of Olympia, who attended legislative hearings on the subject, said Tuesday that he and other veterans were pleased "to see that the issue is being addressed at some level by the state Legislature. We hope to be able to work as activists ourselves with the military affairs people. We plan to try to set up some meetings with them to talk about some of the concerns we have as this moves forward."

Depleted uranium was used for munitions in the Gulf War and to improve the armor on some Abrams tanks. Gases given off by the firing of the ammunition have been said to create a mist or fog of radioactive material that can be inhaled and absorbed into the body, where bone, lymph, liver and other tissues store it, and some activists fear it could be the "Agent Orange" of this generation.

"I think everyone is trying to understand the issue," said Col. Ron Weaver, the joint chief of staff to the general who commands the state Military Department, which is heading up the study and has no evidence yet of exposure to the materials by any state Guard troops.

"We're going to meet in the near future; we'll go about and request that someone do the study. We haven't decided how we're going to do that or where," Weaver said.

Part of the agency's internal discussion is how to make a registry part of the study, Weaver said. He had testified in favor of waiting until studies in Louisiana and Connecticut were finished before launching into work in Washington.

Roger Kluck, a lobbyist with Friends Committee on Washington Public Policy, a Quaker group, said activists are working with lawmakers to ask the Military Department to consult independent health experts for any study or report they produce.

"Certainly the Europeans have done some good stuff. We're just hoping the consultant and the process are set up to bring in as much information as possible," Kluck said, noting that the state Department of Health and the University of Washington have personnel with expertise. He said they also want to see the hearings by a joint legislative committee on veterans and military affairs, which is scheduled to receive the depleted uranium report by Oct. 1.

Democratic Reps. Brendan Williams of Olympia and Rosa Franklin of Tacoma sponsored companion bills in the House and Senate that called for the study and creation of a task force and registry, but both measures died in committee. Activists later worked through budget committees and even enlisted the help of the governor's husband, Mike Gregoire, to secure the funding by means of the budget proviso.

"This appropriation is a tribute to the hard work of local veterans' activists like Jerry Muchmore and Ken Schwilk. They deserve thanks for bringing attention to health issues surrounding depleted uranium use in war," Williams said this week by e-mail.

Other bill signed

Gov. Chris Gregoire signed into law a bill that protects
advocate-helpers for victims of sexual assault from divulging in court the communications they have with victims.

House Bill 2454 passed unanimously in the Senate and by
96-2 in the House. Olympia Democratic Rep. Brendan Williams sponsored it, calling it one of his session's top priorities.

"This will strengthen the privilege between sexual-assault advocates and victims," said Christi Hurt of the Washington Coalition of Sexual Assault Programs based in Olympia. She attended Tuesday's bill signing.

Victims' statements had been sheltered previously, but Hurt said the new law goes further to ensure a safe, confidential and supportive environment for those traumatized by sexual assaults.

Feingold introduced censure legislation Monday in the Senate but not a single Democrat has embraced it. Several have said they want to see the results of a Senate Intelligence Committee investigation before supporting any punitive legislation.

Republicans dismissed the proposal Tuesday as being more about Feingold's 2008 presidential aspirations than Bush's actions. On and off the Senate floor, they have dared Democrats to vote for the resolution.

''I'm amazed at Democrats ... cowering with this president's numbers so low,'' Feingold said.

The latest AP-Ipsos poll on Bush, conducted last week, found just 37 percent of the 1,000 people surveyed approving his overall performance, the lowest of his presidency.

Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., tried to hold a vote Monday on Feingold's resolution but was blocked by Democrats. He said Tuesday that Feingold should withdraw the resolution because it has no support.

''If the Democrats continue to say no to voting on their own censure resolution, then they ought to drop it and focus on our foreign policy in a positive way,'' Frist said in a statement.

Feingold's resolution condemns Bush's ''unlawful authorization of wiretaps of Americans within the United States without obtaining the court orders required'' by the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

The only president ever censured by the Senate was Andrew Jackson, in 1834, for removing the nation's money from a private bank in defiance of the Whig-controlled Senate.

The former army officer heads a nationalist and anti-neoliberal coalition between his new Peruvian Nationalist Party and the ten-year-old center-left Union for Peru party. Humala, a mestizo, was never part of Lima's white ruling elite which has traditionally run the major institutions of the country. He is often derided for being an upstart "cholo" (indigenous), which sheds light on the colonial racism still inherent within Peruvian society. So much of Humala's support comes from the impoverished non-white majority who has suffered from the "neoliberal reforms" of the unpopular sitting president Alejandro Toledo.

Humala has met with Evo Morales, Bolivia's recently-elected indigenous president. Like Morales, Humala supports the commercialization and expanded international marketing of coca leaf products while at the same time being strongly against the cocaine trade. He also favors greater control by Peru over the exploitation of its natural resources. In the case of its large natural gas fields, he would demand that the government receive at least 49 percent of the profits and has made similar proposals for Peru's mining industry. He has also promised to hold a national referendum on the recently-signed free trade deal with the United States, which is widely believed to favor U.S. corporate interests over those of Peru.

This type of talk has not only scared Peruvian elites and multinational business interests, but has also drawn the ire of influential policy wonks of the neoliberal "Washington Consensus," who fear of another country going to a left-talking "anti-imperialist" populist candidate-especially after the spectacular December victory of Morales in neighboring Bolivia. Yet unlike Bolivia's Morales, Humala is a relative newcomer to politics, which has lead some people to fear that if elected he could turn out to be a disappointment in the mold of Ecuador's discredited Lucio Gutiérrez, another army officer who sold himself as a populist during elections. Regardless, even "liberals" and academics have joined the right-wing chorus in Washington of professing a preference for an electoral victory by right-wing candidate Lourdes Flores Nano over Humala. Washington was unified. Humala had to go.

Humala has also met with Venezuela's President Hugo Chávez. Both were military officers who led failed military uprisings against their respective presidents – Chávez in 1992 and Humala in 2000. But unlike Chavez's Venezuela, Peru has no major oil deposits.

On Feb. 15, Humala was accused of a series of war crimes. The charges included forced disappearance, torture and attempted murder that are alleged to have taken place when he commanded a jungle counterinsurgency base in 1992 at the height of the bloody civil war with the extremist Maoist Shining Path and Guevarist MRTA that engulfed Peru through much of the 1980s and 1990s. It is a charge that Humala vehemently denies, but it is a charge that has stuck and rapidly knocked him down to second place in the polls.

The "non-governmental organization" (NGO) that led the charge against Humala was the National Coordinator for Human Rights, the umbrella organization for several human rights groups commonly known as the "Coordinadora." Whether or not the Coordinadora's charges are true or fabricated, nobody in the press has investigated its history or who backs it. Is the Coordinadora merely a disinterested and neutral human rights organization doing its job, or was this denunciation the result of another more nefarious hidden agenda?

To anyone following Latin America recently, it should come as no surprise that the accuser, the Coordinadora is an "NGO" that has been funded by the U.S. government for years.

Although it is not mentioned in the Coordinadora's "official history" written by the Washington, D.C. based nonprofit called the Washington Office on Latin America, it has been funded by both the Agency for International Development (USAID) and the smaller National Endowment for Democracy (NED) on and off for more than a decade. While both USAID and NED are civilian entities, they are largely controlled by the State Department and are indispensable instruments of U.S. foreign policy.

Does U.S. funding of a foreign "NGOs" affect their behavior? Andrew Natsios, USAID's former head, stated unequivocally in a widely distributed 2003 speech that even foreign USAID-funded contractors and NGO's "are an arm of the U.S. government." And the role of the much smaller NED was made clear when Allen Weinstein, one of its founders stated in a 1991 Washington Post article that, "a lot of what we do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA."

During some of the years that USAID funded the Coordinadora, the money passed through the USAID's Office of Transition Initiatives (OTI) in Lima. USAID's OTI offices – just as their name indicates – are devoted to "political transitions" and are temporarily located only in countries where the U.S. government has an interest in either "regime change" or in politically and economically shoring up its allies.

OTI offices exist or have existed in several Latin American and the Caribbean countries, including Bolivia, Colombia, Venezuela, Peru and Haiti. Not surprisingly, the biggest OTI office worldwide is in Iraq. In both Venezuela and Haiti over the last few years, USAID's OTI has contributed far more money to "NGOs" working for the U.S.'s political and economic interests than the more notorious yet much smaller meddler, the NED.

According to an email from the USAID's press officer, USAID has given the Coordinadora some $762,750.00. But Francisco Soberón, the Coordinadora's director, told Upside Down World that such grants have "happened in the past-but right now for us at the Coordinadora there is nothing at all." But he later said that "some [of the] other organizations that are members of the Coordinadora have received or are presently receiving" funding. One of these, APRODEH, received at least $53,246.39 from USAID. One-year-old Freedom of Information Act requests to USAID to determine the exact amounts of all of the grants have not yet been answered.

Soberón denied that the Coordinadora has received funding from NED, but the NED's own website lists it under their list of grantees and former grantees. However, there is no indication of how much it received or when. At the time of this writing, telephone requests to NED's press officer Jane Riley Richardson for information on the exact amount of funding have not been answered. Neither have a series of FOIA requests to NED been responded to. However, if Venezuela and Haiti are any guides, NED funding of the Coordinadora has probably been considerably less than that of USAID.

What has been the Coordinadora's role vis a vis the U.S. Embassy? According to a declassified State Department response to the Freedom of Information Act, as early as 1993, Coordinadora officers were debriefing the U.S. embassy in Lima about their trips to the conflictive areas of Peru where insurgents were still active. Given the U.S. government's assistance to the Peruvian government during the counterinsurgency war, such debriefings could have been considered as spying.

Is the U.S. getting anything out of this funding? The Coordinadora's Soberón responds with an emphatic "no," adding that "we do not accept conditions from anyone." But with the denunciation of Humala and his resultant drop in the polls, it looks like the U.S. may have gotten a lot for its money.

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice just last month called for "a united front" against Venezuela, continuing a long-term policy of trying to isolate the country. But Washington has been spitting into the wind. Venezuela's influence in the hemisphere has continued to rise while the U.S. has succeeded only in isolating itself more than at any time in at least half a century. It might be worth asking why.

First, Venezuela is a democracy - despite the best efforts of the Bush team to use President Hugo Chavez's close relations with Cuba's Fidel Castro as evidence to the contrary. Its elections are transparent and have been certified by observers from the Organization of American States, the Carter Center and the European Union. Freedom of speech, of the press, of assembly and of association prevail, at least as compared with the rest of the hemisphere.

In fact, most of the media remains controlled by the opposition, which attacks the government endlessly on all the major TV channels. It is the most vigorous and partisan opposition media in the hemisphere, one that has not been censored under Chavez.

Like all of Latin America, Venezuela has governance problems: a weak state, limited rule of law, corruption and incompetent government. But no reputable human rights organization has alleged that Venezuela under Chavez has deteriorated with regard to civil liberties, human rights or democracy, as compared with prior governments. Nor does the country compare unfavorably on these criteria with its neighbors in the region. In Peru, the government has shut down opposition TV stations; in Colombia, union organizers are murdered with impunity.

From a Latin American point of view, Venezuelans should have the right to choose their own president - even one who sometimes insults the American president - without interference from the United States. And Chavez's anger at Washington, from Latin Americans' point of view, appears justified. U.S. government documents released under our Freedom of Information Act indicate that Washington not only supported but was involved in the military coup that temporarily overthrew Venezuela's elected government in April 2002. Here in Washington, there is a "Monty Python" attitude toward the coup: "Let's not argue about who killed who." But in Latin America, a military coup against a democratically elected government is still considered a serious crime. To top it off, Washington continued to finance efforts to recall Chavez and, having failed miserably, still regularly presents him as a threat to democracy in the region.

With oil at nearly $60 a barrel, Venezuela has used its windfall proceeds to win friends in the hemisphere, providing low-cost financing for oil to Caribbean nations. When Argentina needed loans so that it could say goodbye to the International Monetary Fund, Venezuela committed $2.4 billion. Venezuela bought $300 million in bonds from Ecuador. Washington has historically had enormous influence over economic policy in Latin America through its control over the major sources of credit, including the IMF, the World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank. Venezuela's role as a new "lender of last resort" has reduced that influence.

Chavez's opposition to the "Washington consensus" on economic policy has fallen on sympathetic ears in a region that - since 1980 - has suffered its worst long-term economic failure in a century. Over the last 25 years, income per person in Latin America has grown by a meager 10%, according to the IMF. This compares with 82% from 1960 to 1980, before most of Washington's economic reforms were adopted. And Venezuela's government has kept its promise to share the oil wealth with the poor. The majority of the country now has access to free healthcare and subsidized food, and education spending has increased substantially.

Meanwhile in the U.S., while Vila Isabel was winning the Rio Carnaval, Connecticut became the eighth American state to participate in the program by which Citgo Petroleum Corp. provides discounted heating oil for poor people. Citgo is owned by the Venezuelan government. In the contest for the hearts and minds of the hemisphere, Venezuela is clearly winning.

Cox Arena at San Diego State University was cleared while police tried to determine if there was an explosive device in the hot dog stand, college spokesman Jack Beresford said.

He said it was not immediately clear how many people were inside the building at the time but that the teams had not yet arrived.

"A bomb-sniffing dog noticed something in a hot dog cart," Beresford said. "They got a hit on something that was in the cart itself.