UC-Berkeley clerical workers strike

BERKELEY, Calif. — Picket lines greeted… UC-Berkeley clerical workers strike

BERKELEY, Calif. — Picket lines greeted students at the University of California-Berkeley Monday for the first day of fall classes, as lecturers and clerical employees went on strike to press for more pay.

The union representing about 2,300 clerical workers is being joined on the picket lines by an estimated 600 lecturers who are responsible for teaching nearly a quarter of the classes at the university.

Boisterous groups of picketers were assembled before 8 a.m. at the two main entrances to campus. They asked students to stay away from their classes through Wednesday to support the job action.

The clerical workers are asking the university for a 15 percent wage increase over two years. The union accused the university system of “stonewalling” in a recent round of contract negotiations by offering a “take-it-or-leave-it” offer of 2.5 percent over two years.

In addition to more job stability and the addition of a neutral party in labor negotiations, the lecturers are striking for better pay.

Carol Hyman, a UC-Berkeley spokeswoman, said managers and supervisors have been able to keep up with most clerical tasks on campus.

The load has been minimized in large part because of the fact that most students registered for courses and paid their fees last week, before the official start of classes, Hyman said.

Most importantly, Hyman said, classes are meeting. She said students attending classes taught by striking lecturers are being notified of the job action before being sent on their way, “so it’s not like the students are just floating out there with nowhere to go.”

-Knight Ridder Newspapers

Russian space flight set to take off — with or without pop star

MOSCOW — Officials at Russia’s space agency said Monday that an upcoming mission to the International Space Station would blast off as scheduled, with or without American pop star Lance Bass.

Bass, 23, a singer with the boy band ‘N Sync, signed up to join a Russian Soyuz crew on its Oct. 28 flight to the space station. But an agency spokesman said Monday that Bass’ group of backers, which includes MTV and Radio Shack, missed Friday’s deadline to pay $20 million for the trip.

“We realize Lance Bass might not find enough money to go,” said Konstantin Kreidenko, a spokesman for the Russian Aviation and Space agency. “We are in constant talks with the American side, but our patience isn’t limitless. Except for their promises, we’ve received nothing from them. Nothing at all.

“This mission does not depend at all on Lance Bass. We are going anyway.”

The singer recently completed training at the Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center outside Moscow.

“The training part went in a satisfactory manner, but the final results will be seen in a preflight test that he will have to pass,” Kreidenko said. “There was never any question of removing Mr. Lance because he wasn’t up to it. In Russian circuses, even bears can be taught to ride a bicycle.”

Bass’ sponsors, which include television and film companies that are interested in producing a series, a documentary or a feature film about the singer’s trip, could not immediately be reached for comment. But one of his backers, David Krieff, a Los Angeles producer, said recently that the final payment was merely being slowed by bureaucracy. The deal, he said, was “100 percent going forward.”

But with just two months before launch, time could be getting short.

“We have to make a new spacesuit for him, and we need to make a special chair that exactly fits his dimensions,” Kreidenko said. “The work involved can’t be done in a day.”

If the trip comes off, Bass would be the youngest person ever to go into space and the world’s third “space tourist.”

-Mark McDonald

Knight Ridder Newspapers

Cheney urges swift action against Iraq despite lack of ties to al Qaeda

WASHINGTON — Vice President Dick Cheney on Monday presented the Bush administration’s most forceful case yet for a pre-emptive strike against Iraq, urging swift action to head off the danger that Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein will attack first.

Cheney told a group of veterans that he has “no doubt” that Saddam is preparing to use weapons of mass destruction against the United States. He dismissed war critics as victims of “wishful thinking or willful blindness.”

“We will not simply look away, hope for the best and leave the matter for some future administration to resolve,” Cheney said in a speech at a Veterans of Foreign Wars convention in Nashville, Tenn. “The risks of inaction are far greater than the risks of action.”

With painful memories from Sept. 11 still strong, 77 percent of Americans say they support military strikes against any country that harbors terrorists associated with Osama bin Laden and his al Qaeda network. About 57 percent consider Iraq an enemy in the war on terrorism.

“The American people felt gravely wounded by 9-11 and the urge to take steps to prevent something like that from ever happening again is extremely strong,” said Evans Witt, president of Princeton Survey Research, a polling firm that surveyed 2,003 adults between Aug. 5 and Aug. 18. “People think of things through that prism. 9-11 is the context of all discussion of Iraq.”

Experts say scant evidence ties Iraq to al Qaeda.

“I am not aware of any demonstrated link between Iraq and al Qaeda,” said Jonathan Tucker, a former U.N. weapons inspector in Iraq who is now with the Monterey Institute of International Studies, a research organization. “There’s no link between Sept. 11 and Iraq that has been well documented.”

Opponents of military action, including several prominent Republicans with impressive foreign policy credentials, increasingly are warning against pre-emptive strikes against Iraq. They urge Bush to take time to rally support from Congress and allies overseas first.

Over the weekend, former Secretary of State James Baker joined former National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft in urging Bush to seek another round of U.N. weapons inspections in Iraq before going to war. Both men were confidants of Bush’s father, former President George Bush, during the 1991 Persian Gulf War.

Monday, Cheney bluntly rejected the possibility of trying to restart U.N. weapons inspections in Iraq. “A return of inspectors would provide no assurance whatsoever of his compliance with U.N. resolutions,” Cheney said.

U.N. inspections ended four years ago when Saddam forced the inspectors to leave Iraq.

“Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction; there is no doubt that he is amassing them to use against our friends, against our allies and against us,” Cheney said.

-Ron Hutcheson

Knight Ridder Newspapers