The Augusta Chronicle (Georgia)

                      July 29, 2003 Tuesday, ALL EDITIONS

SECTION NEWS, Pg. A02

LENGTH 696 words

HEADLINE THE NATION PENTAGON PLAN OKS BETTING ON TERRORISM

DATELINE WASHINGTON

BODY

   The Pentagon is creating a commodity-market style trading plan in which
investors would be able to bet on political and economic events in the Middle
East, such as the chance of assassinations and terrorist acts.

   Two Democratic senators demanded Monday the project be stopped before
investors begin registering this week.

   "The idea of a federal betting parlor on atrocities and terrorism is
ridiculous and it's grotesque," said Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore.

   The Pentagon office overseeing the program, called the Policy Analysis 
Market, said it was part of a research effort "to investigate the broadest
possible set of new ways to prevent terrorist attacks." It said there would be a
re-evaluation before more money was committed.

   The market would work this way. Investors would buy and sell futures
contracts - essentially a series of predictions about what they believe might
happen in the Mideast. The holder of a futures contract that came true would
collect the proceeds of investors who put money into the market but predicted
wrong.

   A graphic on the market's Web page showed hypothetical futures contracts in
which investors could trade on the likelihood that Palestinian leader Yasser
Arafat would be assassinated or Jordanian King Abdullah II would be overthrown.

   Rice's answers face scrutiny

   WASHINGTON - The congressional report on pre-Sept. 11 intelligence calls into
question answers that National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice gave the public
last year about the White House's knowledge of terrorism threats.

   Ms. Rice told the public in May 2002 that a pre-Sept. 11 intelligence
briefing for the president on terrorism contained only a general warning of
threats and largely historical information, not specific plots.

   Last week, though, the authors of the congressional report stated the
briefing given to the president a month before the suicide hijackings included
recent intelligence that al-Qaida was planning to send operatives into the
United States to use explosives.

   Hanging was likely suicide

   BELLE GLADE, Fla. - An inquest into the hanging of a black man revealed
Monday that the bed sheet used as a noose came from his own house, and his
family agreed that meant his death was likely a suicide and not a lynching.

   Circuit Judge Harold Cohen convened the rare coroner's inquest into the May
28 death of 32-year-old Feraris "Ray" Golden to determine whether he committed
suicide, as police said, or was lynched, as had been rumored.

   After a day of testimony, Judge Cohen recessed the hearing until this
afternoon. Court officials said he could issue his findings next week.

   In other news

   NEW YORK CITY IS opening the nation's first public high school for gays,
bisexuals and transgender students. Harvey Milk High School is named after San
Francisco's first openly gay city supervisor, who was assassinated in 1978.

   VANCE HARTKE, A U.S. Democratic senator from Indiana for 18 years and briefly
an anti-war candidate for president in 1972, died of heart failure Sunday. He
was 84.

   MOST AMERICANS SUPPORT the space shuttle despite two accidents that claimed
the lives of all astronauts aboard, but enthusiasm for civilians on board the
shuttle is declining, an Associated Press poll found.

   AN ALABAMA WOMAN has become the first person in the nation this year to die
from the West Nile virus, state health officials said Monday. The woman, who was
in her 80s and lived in Talladega County, became ill and died this month after
being bitten by an infected mosquito.

   A TRACTOR-TRAILER SLAMMED into a farm workers' van Monday in Rocky Mount,
N.C., injuring 18 migrants, four seriously. The van was carrying 13 men and five
women to a job at a melon farm.

   DEMOCRATS NOMINATED Gov. Bill Richardson of New Mexico to be the chairman of
the 2004 presidential convention, a reflection of their desire to keep the party
's Hispanics from voting Republican.

   ERIK BRAUNN, THE Iron Butterfly guitarist who played one of rock's most
recognizable riffs in the 17-minute anthem In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida, died of cardiac
arrest Friday at 52. The band released the psychedelic In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida in
1968.

   - Edited from wire reports by Glynn Moore