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Apparently, the assumption was to build the school first and worry about potential problems later.As the first murmurs of serious trouble began to emerge, the school board simply went into denial. Most city planners are supremely careful, particularly since an underground methane explosion destroyed a clothing store in the Fairfax area without warning in 1985.But such cautionary episodes did not stop the school board paying $60m for the site of the Belmont complex in 1996 without commissioning a single survey. How shameless? Well, it doesn’t take a genius to work out that a disused oil exploration site might be a toxic gas hazard, especially in LA, where petroleum was once keenly sought and where the ground is seething with gaseous nasties. If it ever opens, it will also be one of the biggest schools in the country, with room for 5,000 students in a densely populated but desperately underserved part of the city.
That “if”, though, is a big one.

Three years after the city school district snapped up the vacant site and threw itself into construction, Belmont has found it is sitting on a potentially lethal cocktail of carcinogens, poison gases and explosive methane. To call it a health hazard is an understatement – chances are, anyone attending school there would die in a fireball long before they contracted cancer.Welcome to a city scandal of mind-boggling proportions, where money appears to have been tossed around without any of the most basic questions being asked,where officials have ignored the recommendations of their own experts, and where petty intrigue has ridden roughshod over common sense.Welcome, in other words, to southern Californian politics at its most shameless. In 1989, after a school shooting, the state banned assault weapons by make rather than category.That allowed manufacturers to modify their designs slightly and keep selling.. ALTHOUGH FAR from completion, the Belmont Learning Complex on the outskirts of downtown Los Angeles is already the most expensive school to be built in the United States – $170m in public funds committed so far and the meter still ticking. But in California, Democrats now control both legislative houses and the governorship. “It is time to use the power of the legislature to say with one loud voice that we should all move beyond Columbine.” April’s shootings at Columbine High School in Littleton, which left 14 students and a teacher dead, have prompted calls for tougher gun control across the country.The Republican majority in Congress, heavily lobbied by the National Rifle Association, paralysed efforts to introduce tougher federal measures. The state legislature approved a Bill on Monday making it illegal to buy or sell a gun with characteristics of semi-automatic weapons, such as accessories making such guns easier to conceal and use, or detachable parts, folding stocks and vertical hand-grips or magazines with more than 10 rounds.
The Bill is expected to be signed into law by California’s Democratic Governor, Gray Davis, next Monday in a ceremony at a high-rise office block in downtown San Francisco where a gunman, Gian Luigi Ferri, killed eight people and injured six others in 1993 before shooting himself.”The time is now to ban assault weapons,” the state assembly speaker, Antonio Villaraigosa, said before the vote.

WITH EMOTIONS still high over April’s school shootings in Littleton, Colorado, the state of California is introducing some of the toughest gun control legislation in the United States to outlaw almost all categories of assault weapons. Far from exulting, he reiterated the need for US regulators and producers to keep each other “at arm’s length”.. He said he was setting up regional monitoring centres to that end.Although he was upbeat on the safety and benefits of biotechnology, his mention of “unforeseen adverse effects” was a signal departure for the US administration, which has steered clear of suggesting that biotechnological advances might not be safe.Mr Glickman was speaking after the World Trade Organisation had announced the penalties that the US would be permitted to levy on the EU in retaliation for its ban on US beef. The purpose of the review, he said, would be to “ensure that … our scientists have the best information and tools to ensure our regulatory capabilities continue to evolve along with advances in the new technology”.The Agriculture Secretary also pledged “to strengthen biotechnology guidelines to ensure we can stay on top of any unforeseen adverse effects after initial market approval”. Speaking to an audience at the US National Press Club in Washington, he said: “Biotechnology companies must understand and respect the role of the arm’s length regulator, the farmer and the consumer.”
Mr Glickman called for an independent scientific review of his department’s procedures for approving biotechnology products. His remarks are seen as acknowledging a growing concern in the American public about the safety of GM food.

THE US Agriculture Secretary, Dan Glickman, appealed to corporations pioneering genetically modified (GM) products yesterday to show more sensitivity towards the worries of farmers and consumers. It has made our President very strong.”It has certainly weakened Mr Khamenei. The Supreme Leader, speaking to 10,000 demonstrating students in Tehran, was met with shouts of derision from the crowd who yelled: “Either Islam and the law – or another revolution”.”This bitter incident,” Mr Khamenei said of the police attack, “hurt my heart.” The students could scarcely hear him.. And the students of Tehran objected.”They were peaceful and no one expected this response from the authorities,” a Tehran businessman said yesterday after prowling through the ruins of one university block. “But the police made a big mistake – to attack students like this and at night! Both the president and the guide [Supreme Leader] were obliged to say `we support the students’ But it is positive for Mr Khatami.