Reports of murder, intimidation, and looting of ethnic Pashtun communities in northern Afghanistan by militias comprised of rival ethnic groups are prompting renewed concerns about the country's future and calls for an expanded role for international peacekeepers. The fundamentalist Taleban that ruled Afghanistan until their defeat by U.S.-backed opposition forces, were primarily Pashtun - the country's largest ethnic group. 

Mohammed Azim, 46, eeks out a living as a wheat farmer in a small Pashtun village, about 40 kilometers east of Mazar-e-Sharif in Baghlan province. 

Through sheer determination, he has managed to keep himself and his family alive through more than two decades of war and three years of crippling drought. But what he faces now, he said, is becoming too much to bear. 

He said dozens of well-armed Northern Alliance soldiers - comprised mostly of ethnic Uzbeks and Hazaras - have been coming to his village two-to-three times a month since late November, when the Taleban were driven from the area. When he and the other villagers see them approaching, they hide in the bushes. He said, if they are caught, the soldiers beat them with the barrels of their Kalishnikovs until they hand over money and food. 

Mr. Azim points to a large hole in the wall of his mud-brick home where a door once stood. He said the soldiers took the door - as well as every windowpane in the house - when they came by several weeks ago. Mr. Azim said he is sure that once the soldiers find out he has spoken to Western journalists, they will come and beat him. 

In the Chimtal district, near Mazar city in Balkh province, ethnic Pashtun shopkeeper, Ahkmed, has a similar story of intimidation and violence by armed ethnic militias. 

He said, shortly after Taleban fighters abandoned the area in late November, truckloads of Tajiks, Uzbeks, and Hazaras showed up at his village. Mr. Ahkmed and many others fled to neighboring towns. When they returned three months later, he said, every house had been looted. He believes some 20 people - who stayed behind to defend their homes - were killed. 

Three ethnic factions - Tajik, Uzbek, and Hazara - largely make up the Northern Alliance, which, with U.S. military help, defeated the ultra-fundamentalist Taleban in November. 

Many Pashtuns in the north, like Mr. Azim, believe the various ethnic warlords who banded together to form the Northern Alliance are now encouraging their militias to seek revenge for atrocities the Taleban allegedly committed against Tajiks, Uzbeks, and Hazaras during the six years the Taleban ruled Afghanistan. 

Mr. Azim said the soldiers always accuse him and the other villagers of supporting the Taleban. "But we have never been a part of the Taleban movement," he insists. "We are just farmers who want to be left alone." 

Mohammed Azim and Ahkmed have not left their homes in northern Afghanistan. But many other Pashtuns are seeking sanctuary among their ethnic brethren in the south. The United Nations refugee agency, UNHCR, said as many as 40,000 Pashtuns trying to flee to southern Pakistan have been stranded on the border since February. 

Some of those are refugees from the drought and the U.S. bombings in Kandahar last November. But UNHCR believes many are Pashtuns from the northern provinces of Baghlan, Balkh, Kunduz and Takhar, where the interim government in the capital, Kabul, has little or no authority over the local warlords. 

UNHCR spokesman in Kabul Fernando del Mundo said the United Nations is working with the interim administration - which has called for an investigation of human rights abuses in Afghanistan - to try to ease the crisis. 

"The Afghan leader, Hamid Karzai, has called for the establishment of a commission that will look into these things, and also try to promote a dialogue between the ethnic minorities. We are sending staff, protection officers, who will try and monitor the situation there," Mr. del Mundo said. 

Pashtuns in the north say what they really need are international peacekeepers to reign in the warlords and their private armies. They want an immediate expansion of the mandate of the 4,500-member international security force, which is currently deployed only in Kabul. 

But many Western nations advocate building a national army, which will eventually be charged with disarming factional fighters. Peacekeepers have already trained 600 army recruits, and another 2,000 are to begin training under the U.S. military in May. 

A Pashtun farmer in Balkh province said that may be a solution for the future, but it does nothing to help solve the problem now. The farmer - who does not want to be identified because of safety concerns - said he fears there is a good chance that other ethnic groups will try to exclude northern Pashtuns from participating in the Loya Jirga - a series of Afghan tribal meetings, which will lead to the selection of a new, transitional government in June. If they succeed, he said, Afghanistan may start to disintegrate again. 

He said, "Right now, I'm remaining optimistic. But if they try to exclude us from the Loya Jirga, I guarantee that all Pashtuns will leave this place, and there will be major trouble ahead." 

President Bush wants more authority to negotiate overseas trade deals. Mr. Bush said Congress should give him that authority to help the U.S. economy recover from recession.
 
 

George Bush

 "Job creation and business investment are still not what they should be. We want short-term recovery to become long-term expansion. And one of the best ways to encourage high-paying jobs and long-term growth is expanded trade," the president said. 

In his weekly radio address, president Bush said he wants Congress to help him expand that trade by giving him the authority to negotiate overseas business deals that would then be put to legislators for a simple yes-or-no vote without amendment.

 Trade authority passed the Republican-controlled House of Representatives five months ago. Mr. Bush said every day that Senate Democrats delay a vote is another day of missed opportunities to strengthen the U.S. economy.

 "The Senate should pass the pending trade legislation without delay. Trade promotion authority would give me the flexibility to negotiate with other countries to open their markets and get the best deals for American producers and workers," Mr. Bush said.

 The last five U.S. President had that authority. Former President Clinton was unable to get it renewed eight years ago. Since then, Mr. Bush said America has sacrificed its traditional leadership role in global trade.

 "For two decades, trade promotion authority was a bipartisan commitment. It was a commitment because it represented our national interest in expanded foreign markets. More than 150 trade agreements exist throughout the world. The European Union is party to 31 of them, and Mexico to 10. The United States is party to just three," Mr. Bush said. 

President Bush also wants Congress to extend the Andean Trade Preferences Act which gives four South American nations greater access to U.S. markets. Over the last ten years, Mr. Bush has said the legislation has created 140,000 jobs in South America while providing an alternative to producing illegal drugs.

South African Safety and Security Minister Steve Tshwete has died in a hospital in Pretoria after a short illness. Mr. Tshwete is remembered as a veteran of the anti-apartheid struggle, who played a key role in South Africa's transition to democracy.
 
 

AP
Steve Tshwete

 President Thabo Mbeki said the untimely death of Steve Tshwete has robbed South Africa of an outstanding freedom fighter and a committed leader in the reconstruction and development of the country. 

The president remembers his friend and staunch ally as - "a genuinely warm human being," who was among the first anti-apartheid leaders to reconcile with the people who had imprisoned, tortured and exiled him.

 Former President Nelson Mandela said South Africa is immensely poorer because of Mr. Tshwete's early and untimely death.

 The two men were imprisoned together on Robbin Island during the apartheid era. Mr. Mandela called Mr. Tshwete "a brave freedom fighter and an unstinting warrior for peace and reconciliation in the country he loved so much."

 The gruff-voiced former rugby player served as Mr. Mandela's minister of sport. He was a driving force behind the integration of the national sports teams.

 Under President Mbeki, he took over as minister of safety and security, responsible for the nation's police and crime-fighting efforts. It was considered a critical and difficult job in a country facing a massive crime problem, with a police force that, in many cases, lacks the trust of the people because of its apartheid history.

 Mr. Tshwete's friends and political adversaries alike remember him as blunt, principled and totally dedicated to the betterment of South Africa.

 President Mbeki has ordered flags around the country to be flown at half-mast until Mr. Tshwete's funeral, which has not yet been scheduled. 

Black immigration from Africa and the Caribbean to the United States is turning America's black population into a multi-ethnic, immigrant community. The change has led to increased tensions between native-born African Americans and foreign-born blacks who settle in the United States.

 In the 1950's and '60's, many African Americans considered themselves a united community, bound by a common skin color and a strong desire to end segregation, confront racism, and guarantee their civil rights. 

Marvin Dunn, who is African American, is the chairman of the psychology department at Florida International University. He said the portrayal of African-Americans as a unified community appears to be changing.

 "As the era of segregation [of whites and blacks] ended by the mid-1960's, here at least in south Florida, we found that other kinds of divisions were evolving between people that seemed to have nothing at all to do with skin color. Rather, the new divide had to do with ethnicity and national identity more so than race," Mr. Dunn said. 

The divisions are most prevalent in some of America's larger cities: Miami, New York, Boston, and Chicago, where black immigrants have been settling since the 1980's. William Frey is a demographer at the University of Michigan.

 "There's been a relatively dramatic increase in foreign-born populations in New York and some increase in some of the other east-coast cities. Some of the bigger countries you can identify [immigrants are natives of] are Caribbean places like Haiti, Jamaica, the Dominican Republic, Trinidad, and then some African places like Ghana and Nigeria," Mr. Frey said. 

He said that black immigrants make up only about eight percent of the America's approximately 33 million blacks. But in Miami, immigrants represent 48 percent of the black population, and one-third of blacks in New York City and Boston. 

Florida International's Marvin Dunn said that African American communities in those cities are changing radically, with the black population essentially divided between American-born blacks and foreign-born blacks. He said that Miami-area tensions between these two groups have been building since the 1980's. 

"We [researchers] found that for the most part, that black Americans were not welcoming when Haitians arrived in the early 1980s, complaining about Haitians taking their jobs, or claiming they were bringing AIDS into the community, etc. On the other hand, there's a certain 'look-down-the-nose' attitude that one gets from certain Caribbean blacks towards African Americans that I think is offensive [to American blacks] and understandably so - that is the view that African Americans are violent, don't want to work, are lazy. Some of the things you hear from white racists you hear from blacks who are not African Americans," Mr. Dunn said. Gary Pierre-Pierre is the editor of The Haitian Times newspaper in New York City. His parents left Haiti when he was eight years old. He has vivid memories of his arrival. 

Gary Pierre-Pierre

 "Your parents said, 'Don't play with these black kids. They'll be a bad influence on you,'" he explained.

 Mr. Pierre-Pierre said his parents and other first generation Haitians somehow thought they were better than the black Americans who lived in the same poor neighborhoods.

 "You [as a Haitian immigrant] were living among the underclass. You were part of the underclass - although you may think of yourself as some middleclass, petty bourgeois with a lot of education. Well, that's back in Haiti. In New York and New Jersey, you were a poor immigrant as far as the status quo was concerned," Mr. Pierre-Pierre said. 

And where do things stand today between Haitians and black Americans in New York and New Jersey? "At school, there still are a lot of problems. I just read that in Asbury Park, New Jersey, there were problems with black American and Haitian kids fighting," Mr. Pierre-Pierre said.

 Marvin Dunn of Florida International University reports similar clashes in south Florida high schools. "So it's not a healthy situation. But I tell you, as these things go in south Florida, so may they go in the country. The entire nation is being impacted by immigrant groups coming in, particularly immigrant groups of color, into communities - and ethnic clashes, even within the same race groups, are becoming more common across the country," he said. 

According to Professor Dunn, the tension between immigrants and native blacks can be "hurtful, emotionally and psychologically." But he said those tensions are a classic part of the immigrant story - arriving groups face hostility until they become assimilated into American society. And according to Haitian Times Editor Gary Pierre-Pierre, it takes time, but he's confident it will work itself out. 

Scientists already know how to make injured or severed nerve cells, neurons, regenerate and resume carrying messages from the brain to other parts of the body. But, as Johns Hopkins researcher Ronald Schnaar explains, not all nerve cells respond to such treatment.
 
 

Ronald Schnaar

Professor Schnarr who led the research on new nerve regeneration techniques said we can best understand the nervous system if we think of the electrical wiring of a house. Insulated copper wires carry electricity to a light bulb or a radio, for example. If the wire is cut, the light goes out and the radio stops playing.

 "The nerve cells have a cell body and then they have a long extension, axons, which connect to other nerve cells. The axon carries electrical impulses between nerve cells, or between nerve cells and target cells like muscles, and that's how the nervous system works. Those axons must be able to send electrical signals quickly from place to place. To do this, they are wrapped in insulation, called myelin. If the myelin is lost, their ability to signal is lost," he said.

 Nerve cells, like other cells of the body, are capable of regeneration. Professor Schnaar said that in many parts the body, damaged axons can and do regrow and re-establish contact with each other. But in the central nervous system, which is an extension of the brain into the spinal cord, the healing process goes awry when an axon is cut or injured. The damaged myelin around the axon, in effect, orders the nerve cell not to regenerate. Professor Schnaar and his colleagues now believe they can reverse this anti-healing biochemical signal. 

"Let's take the same analogy. If you were to cut the wire leading from your fuse box to your lamp, your light will go out. If that wire had the ability to grow back into your lamp, the light would go back on. But the insulation that's sitting there is actually stopping the wire from regrowing. That's what this is about," Professor Schnaar explained.

 When the insulation, the myelin, breaks down in the peripheral nerves, such as those controlling our fingers, it is quickly removed by cells called macrophages that go in and just gobble up all that debris, leaving the way clear for the nerve cells and their myelin sheaths to regenerate. In the densely-packed central nervous system, however, this process of trash removal and regeneration is very slow. 

"But the field has come a long way in the last decade and there is now hope that through understanding all the different ways in which axons are inhibited from regenerating, we can combine technologies and find ways to enhance nerve regeneration in the future. We have demonstrated that particular molecules on the nerve cell surface, called gangliosides, are involved in signals that the nerve cells receive that limit their ability to regenerate," he said. 

Professor Schnaar has demonstrated in the test tube that it is possible to remove these blocking molecules, thus restoring the ability of the nerve cells to communicate with each other and start growing again. 

"It's worked in the laboratory. The challenge that we are now facing is to test whether it will work in animals," Professor Schnarr said. 

The animal experiments will mark the turning point from basic science to eventual human trials. Professor Curtis Fred Brewer of the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, who has collaborated with Professor Schnaar on the nerve regeneration studies, said he is excited about the next stage of research.

 "The significance is the potential ability to take these basic science observations of the myelin binding protein and to translate that somehow into nerve regeneration. I think the first steps for any significant clinical progress in this area is to understand some of the molecular properties of the components that regulate nerve growth. Certainly, Dr. Schnaar's work in this area is providing very important new leads that are very exciting," Professor Brewer said. 

Ultimately, the scientists hope that they can take what is being learned in Ronald Schnaar's laboratory and develop new drugs that control nerve growth, repair spinal cord injuries and one day permit full recovery for paralyzed accident victims. 

AP
Jacqueline Kennedy (1961 photo)

The 1961 inauguration of President John Fitzgerald Kennedy, accompanied by his young wife Jacqueline, is an image familiar to many Americans, played countless times on newsreels.

 "[Designer] Oleg Cassini designed this simple light colored coat," explained Elizabeth Parr, Exhibitions Director at the Corcoran Gallery of Art. "He wanted her to stand out and felt it was a very cold day that most of the women would be wearing either dark winter colors or big furs. And he wanted her to portray an image of vitality and youthfulness and said that she would be 'young and vibrant among the bears."
 
 

AP
Jacqueline Kennedy lifts the skirt of her inaugural gala gown as she and her husband, President-elect John F. Kennedy, leave their Georgetown home

 "I think both she and President Kennedy understood the importance of image, particularly in a time when television was becoming a much more important factor in the lives of everyday Americans," she noted. 

Jacqueline Kennedy: The White House Years features more than seventy original gowns, dresses, suits and accessories from the collection of the John F. Kennedy Library and Museum in Boston. But Elizabeth Parr says the exhibition is not only about high couture or Mrs. Kennedy's wardrobe. She says the clothes are just one aspect of many items including documents, letters and photographs that reflect the First Lady's accomplishments, her years in the White House, and her world travels.

 "There's a draft of a speech which focuses on her trip to India and Pakistan. When she went on State trips with her husband or on her own, she was very concerned about the culture and the customs of he countries she was visiting," explained Ms. Parr. "She tried to assemble a wardrobe that would reflect in some ways the culture of that country. And it was a very triumphant trip for her." 

Also included in the Jacqueline Kennedy exhibit are documents and film footage relating to her restoration of the White House. This became her first major project as First Lady. Mrs. Kennedy believed that the White House was beginning to lose some of its historic relevance, as she explained in this 1961 television broadcast.

 "It just seemed to me such a shame when we came here to find hardly anything of the past in the house hardly anything before 1902," Mrs. Kennedy said. 

INTERVIEWER: "Did you make these changes according to your own personal tastes and desires?"

 "No. I have a committee which has museum experts and government people and private citizens on it," responded Mrs. Kennedy. " And everything we do is subject to approval by the Fine Arts committee."

INTERVIEWER: "What happens when the next President's wife comes into the White House?"

 "If they don't want it, in the past they could sell it, throw it out, do anything they wanted. But then a law was passed whereby everything that's given to or bought by the White House becomes part of its permanent collection," explained Mrs. Kennedy. "So if a future First Family doesn't want it, it goes to the Smithsonian where it will be taken care of and displayed."

 During their years in the White House, the President's and Mrs. Kennedy's passion for the arts was also made evident in the number of artists, poets, authors, and other cultural giants that were regularly included at state dinners. In 1962, at a banquet for distinguished American writers, educators and scientists, the guest list included 49 Nobel Prize winners. 

Jacqueline Kennedy: The White House Years exhibit has proven to be one of the most popular attractions in Washington this spring. Visitor Carol Luttrell of Charlotte, North Carolina says looking at the dresses brought her back to another time.

 "I look at those styles and think of events that we have pictures of in the family, in the 1960s....to see dresses that I remember, from the prom, weddings that were in the 1960s,and to see her clothes and to realize we were all copying her, and I didn't remember the connection," she said. 

Jeffrey Simkins, also of Charlotte, says he is fascinated by the Kennedys, even though he wasn't yet born when they were in the White House.

 "What I found myself thinking when I went through the exhibit was what a fascinating person she was...what a really 'qualified' First Lady she was. I just thought we haven't had a first lady like this in my lifetime," Mr. Simkins said. 

Curators of the Jacqueline Kennedy: The White House Years exhibit say they are often asked about one particular outfit Mrs. Kennedy wore, which is not included in the display. It's the pink suit she wore in Dallas, Texas on November 23, 1963, the day President Kennedy was killed by an assassin's bullet. The blood-spattered suit remains in the National Archives, inaccessible.