Casper Star-Tribune from Casper, Wyoming • 1

Secondary ready for war, Dl ILxDUL WYOMING'S STATEWIDE NEWSPAPER FOUNDED IN 1891 I L- arpan plans te crime 8L no significant iu .,1 i laiuiMwiipilp 4 4 changes Agency facing criticism from current, former employees By CHRIS TOLLEFSON Washington, D.C. bureau WASHINGTON In her first full day on the job as director of the federal Office of Surface Mining, former Wyoming Secretary of State Kathy Karpan promised agency employees that she plans no significant policy changes in the agency's administration of federal coal mining regulations. Karpan addressed a gathering of the agency's Washington staff this week, telling them that the massive budget cuts and layoffs that the OSM has endured in the last four years are over. She added that despite of those fiscal problems, the agency has done a good job of administering the nation's coal reclama Where technology battles crime By BILL LUCKETT Star-Tribune staff writer CASPER What goes on behind the doors of the Wyoming State Crime Lab in Cheyenne can make or break a criminal prosecution. Last May, in the Department of Criminal Investigation's Firearms and Tool Marks Unit, Senior Analyst Bob Christensen stood at one end of an 8.5-foot-long tank full of water, holding a pistol.

Christensen fired the weapon into the tank. The bullet quickly decelerated in the water, leaving a trail of bubbles, and came to rest harmlessly at the bottom of the tank. The tank, which measures 3 feet wide and 3.5 feet deep, has a slanted bottom and is capable of absorbing up to 2,000 footpounds of muzzle energy, Christensen said. He said that means someone can fire a bullet from almost any handgun and a large number of rifles without damaging the tank, which helps authorities match weapons to bullets from crime scenes. Christensen then retrieved the round with a fishnet and attached it to a high-powered microscope.

The microscope has an identical hookup for a bullet that police have taken from a crime scene. If both bullets were fired from the same weapon, they will have identical marks on them, Christensen said. "There are defects on the inside of the barrel that will mark that bullet in a particular way," he explained. Using the microscope, Christensen can compare markings on his "known test" bullet to those on the "question" bullet. The water can alter the fronts of soft or hollow-point bullets, he said, but the rears of bullets fired into the tank are ripe for comparison.

The art of examining bullets, known as ballistics, goes back to the 1920s, "and nobody's ever seen two barrels that are exactly the same since," Christensen said. Since its inception in 1973, tha crime lab has pioneered the sciences of total human identi-Please see LAB, A8 at 0 tion standards. "I think we've accomplished what could be accomplished under very trying circumstances," Karpan said. "There were some deficiencies in terms of management structure, but (hose have been addressed." But only days after the 20th anniversary of the OSM's authorizing legislation, Karpan contended with the Tuesday release of a report culled from the agency's own employees that purports to detail years of regulatory failures and internal mismanagement in the OSM's enforcement of the 1977 Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act. According to Jeff Ruch, executive director of Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER), among those failures is the OSM's inability to force coal companies in the West including Wyo-Please see OSM, A8 senators on the floor.

Several Senators say that permitting laptops in the Senate chamber would ruin the decorum of the world's most deliberative (and deliberate) body, and allow aides and lobbyists to bombard senators with messages throughout a debate. "I'm not against computers, but I think they have their place and it's not everywhere," said Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif. "When you're speaking on the Senate floor, you should be speaking from a lifetime of experience, not from what you punch up on a computer." As computer technology invades House and Senate offices, with lawmakers racing to out-design one another's home pages, the soul-searching over laptops underscores the tension the stately, slow-moving Senate faces in coming to grips with cyberspace and the realm of electronic democracy. Allowing senators to boot up Please see LAPTOP, A8 SM Enzi wants to trade briefcase for laptop Senate rules bar mechanical devices 9.

i 1 A 'A "I 4 1 4 A 'i formally cleared for children or adolescents. But that could be about to change. The drug company that makes Prozac, Eli Lilly, recently submitted data on the drug to the Food and Drug Administration in an effort to have it approved for children. The agency has asked for more information. Companies making similar new antidepressants, most of which regulate mood by atjust-ing the brain chemical serotonin, are gathering information and conducting pediatric studies in hopes of getting federal approval for use of their drugs in children.

SmithKline Beecham is analyzing results from two large studies of its drug, Paxil, on adolescents. Bristol Myers Squibb Co. is doing a trial of Serzone and American Home Products Corp. is testing Effexor. FDA approval is, in fact, not Please tee DRUGS, A6 FRED YATESStat-Trlbunt Senior Analyst Bob Christensen fires a round Into a tank of water In the crime lab's Firearms and Tool Marks Unit.

Bubbles in the water mark the bullet's path. By ERIC SCHMITT The New York Times WASHINGTON When Sen. Michael Enzi, asked permission three months ago to bring his laptop computer on the Senate floor to take notes, it seemed like a simple request. "I can carry five or six briefcases worth of information in my computer, find it there easily and use it for debate," said Enzi, an accountant by training who uses his laptop the way most people use a yellow notepad. But Enzi, a first-term Republican, is learning that nothing is simple when it comes to tinkering with the traditions of the U.S.

Senate, whose chamber still has original 19th-century wooden desks, inkwells and spittoons. Ruining decorum? Enzi's proposal has stirred angst in the august Senate, whose rules bar any mechanical devices that could distract LENNOX McUNDONAP train Trestle collapses KINGMAN, about early because people were Fourteen and three evening, said said 153 were The Southwest mph, derailed crossed the passenger cars crossing One of the cars was left stream bed, northeast of of Las Vegas. A flash scoured away trestle, causing over, said Jim Antidepressant use for young patients soars FDA considers approval for children Amtrak derails supporting bridge after heavy rain Ariz. (AP) An Amtrak train carrying 300 passengers over a bridge derailed Saturday when a trestle collapsed, apparently of flash flooding. More than 150 injured.

people were admitted to hospitals, were in critical condition Saturday Amtrak spokesman Cliff Black. He treated. Chief, traveling at about 90 as the third of its four engines 5-to-7-foot-high bridge, leaving seven behind it zigzagged but upright after the bridge train's double-decker passenger straddling the 30-foot-wide wash, or in a desolate desert area 13 miles Kingman and 80 miles southeast flood in a normally dry stream bed the ground around supports for the it to collapse when the train went Sabourin, a spokesman for Burlington Northern-Santa Fe, the railroad that owns the track. An additional passenger car and six mail cars that had not yet crossed the bridge derailed but remained standing. Tho grouch It takes someone from Wyoming to spur them into the 21st century.

Indox ACROSS THE STATE B14 CALENDAR A2 CLASSIFIED F114 CROSSWORDS, ANSWERS F10.F12 FOCUS CI. 3-4 FORUM E2 LANDERS, BROMPTON C8 LETTERS EjM MARKETS B45 MOVIES 06 OBITUARIES 83 OPINION Et SPORTS Dl WEATHER A2 WEDDINGS C67 By BARBARA STRAUCII The New York Times The Long Island girl is nearly 15 years old and she has been taking Prozac since she was 5. Before Prozac, she was a mess. She could not be left alone, even for minutes. Strangers terrified her, and she was obsessed by thoughts that her parents were dying or burglars were breaking into her house.

Conventional therapy failed, said the girl's mother, who spoke on the condition that she and her daughter not be identified. But after taking Prozac, the girl was transformed. Today, she is in her school's honors program. In the decade the girl has taken Prozac now in its 10th year on the market and the most popular antidepressant ever in the United States the drug was never approved for children. No antidepressant has ever been An Amtrai: train carrying about 300 passengers sits twisted along the track after derailing early Saturday morning near Kingman, Ariz.

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