Brazil Nightclub Fire: 232 Dead, Hundreds Injured

Flames raced through a crowded nightclub in southern Brazil early Sunday, killing more than 230 people as panicked partygoers gasped for breath in the smoke-filled air, stampeding toward a single exit partially blocked by those already dead. It appeared to be the world's deadliest nightclub fire in more than a decade.

Witnesses said a flare or firework lit by band members may have started the blaze.

Television images showed smoke pouring out of the Kiss nightclub as shirtless young men who had attended a university party joined firefighters using axes and sledgehammers to pound at windows and walls to free those trapped inside.

Guido Pedroso Melo, commander of the city's fire department, told the O Globo newspaper that firefighters had a hard time getting inside the club because "there was a barrier of bodies blocking the entrance."

Teenagers sprinted from the scene desperately seeking help. Others carried injured and burned friends away in their arms.

"There was so much smoke and fire, it was complete panic, and it took a long time for people to get out, there were so many dead," survivor Luana Santos Silva told the Globo TV network.

The fire spread so fast inside the packed club that firefighters and ambulances could do little to stop it, Silva said.

Another survivor, Michele Pereira, told the Folha de S. Paulo newspaper that she was near the stage when members of the band lit flares that started the conflagration.

Germano Roratto/AFP/Getty Images

"The band that was onstage began to use flares and, suddenly, they stopped the show and pointed them upward," she said. "At that point, the ceiling caught fire. It was really weak, but in a matter of seconds it spread."

Guitarist Rodrigo Martins told Radio Gaucha that the band, Gurizada Fandangueira, started playing at 2:15 a.m. "and we had played around five songs when I looked up and noticed the roof was burning"

"It might have happened because of the Sputnik, the machine we use to create a luminous effect with sparks. It's harmless, we never had any trouble with it.

"When the fire started, a guard passed us a fire extinguisher, the singer tried to use it but it wasn't working"

He confirmed that accordion player Danilo Jacques, 28, died, while the five other members made it out safely.

Police Maj. Cleberson Braida Bastianello said by telephone that officials counted 232 bodies that had been brought for identification to a gymnasium in Santa Maria, a major university city with about 250,000 residents at the southern tip of Brazil, near the borders with Argentina and Uruguay.

An earlier count put the number of dead at 245.

Federal Health Minister Alexandre Padhilha told a news conference that most of the 117 people treated in hospitals had been poisoned by gases they breathed during the fire. Only a few suffered serious burns, he said.

Brazil President Dilma Roussef arrived to visit the injured after cutting short her trip to a Latin American-European summit in Chile.

"It is a tragedy for all of us," Roussef said.

Most of the dead apparently suffocated, according to Dr. Paulo Afonso Beltrame, a professor at the medical school of the Federal University of Santa Maria who went to the city's Caridade Hospital to help victims.

Beltrame said he was told the club had been filled far beyond its capacity during a party for students at the university's agronomy department.

Survivors, police and firefighters gave the same account of a band member setting the ceiling's soundproofing ablaze, he said.

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Fourth Norwegian dead in Algeria hostage crisis: Statoil

OSLO: Norwegian oil and gas company Statoil on Saturday confirmed the death of a fourth Norwegian employee at the In Amenas gas plant hostage-taking in Algeria this month.

"Today Statoil received the sad news that one more of our dear and highly valued colleagues who has been missing since the terrorist attack at In Amenas in Algeria is now confirmed dead," the group said in a statement.

Statoil identified the man as 43-year-old Alf Vik and said that one other Norwegian working on the site at the time of the attack by Islamist militants on January 16 is still missing.

The Norwegian foreign ministry said on Friday it was "unlikely" the missing man would be found alive.

The updated toll comes after the company on Friday confirmed the death of three other Norwegian employees at the site, including the stepfather of a government minister.

The three victims were identified as Hans Bjone, 55, Thomas Snekkevik, 35, and Tore Bech, 58, who is married to International Development Minister Heikki Holmaas' mother.

According to preliminary estimates by the Algerian authorities, 37 foreign hostages and 29 kidnappers died in the Islamist attack against the gas field and in the military operation that followed.

The hostage-takers were demanding the release of Islamist prisoners and an end to France's intervention in Mali.

- AFP/jc

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Gun control advocates march on Washington

People hold pictures of shooting victims during the March on Washington for Gun Control on Saturday in Washington.

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

• NEW: "I consider myself one of the lucky ones," a Virginia Tech survivor tells the crowd


• NEW: "How about this? Keep the Bad guy from even getting a gun!" a placard says


• Demonstrators want a ban on assault-style rifles and high-capacity magazines


• An opposing demonstrator wants more armed personnel in schools

Washington (CNN) -- Thousands of demonstrators rallied Saturday in Washington to demand tougher gun control laws, many describing themselves as first-time capital marchers who've had enough of gun violence.

On a cold day, a vanguard led a blocks-long procession with a big blue banner, declaring "March on Washington for Gun Control: When we stand together, we stand a chance."

The demonstrators want reinstatement of the federal ban on the sale of military-style semi-automatic rifles such as the one used in the recent Newtown, Connecticut, school shooting that left 20 children and six adults dead, plus the gunman and his mother. The protestors also want a ban on the sale of high-capacity ammunition magazines and universal background checks.

Many marchers just carried black-and-white placards bearing the names of victims of gun violence, such as Veronica Soto, a Newtown teacher who was killed in the Sandy Hook Elementary massacre.

Co-organizer Molly Smith highlighted how many demonstrators were ordinary citizens, the organization of whom was assisted by a webpage and Facebook page.

"It's been a remarkable learning experience," Smith told CNN, "the realization that we're citizens and this is an active citizenship, and being a citizen isn't just sitting around and gassing about it."

The march was the first major demonstration since the Newtown mass shooting last month, and it comes two days after Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-California, introduced a bill that would ban some assault rifles, semi-automatic weapons and high-capacity magazines.

U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan told an assembly of marchers, after they reached their rallying area midway between the White House and the Capitol, that Saturday's demonstration wasn't about the Second Amendment.

"This is about gun responsibility; this is about gun safety; this is about fewer dead Americans, fewer dead children," Duncan told the crowd.

Opinion: In gun control debate, logic goes out the window

He recalled that as the former chief of Chicago Public Schools, he oversaw a system in a city where a student was killed by gun violence every two weeks.

"Far too many of our children are growing up in climates where they are scared," Duncan said. "That has to change."

He added, "This march is a starting point. It's not an ending point. We must act, we must act, we must act."

U.S. Rep. Eleanor Holmes Norton, D-District of Columbia, asked residents of Newtown, Connecticut, to make themselves known in the crowd.

'We came to stand with you and bear witness with you until we vindicate your children and those who died with them," Norton said.

She urged the assembly to press for gun reform.

The demonstrators started chanting: "Yes, we can! Yes, we can! Yes, we can!"

Without mentioning the National Rifle Association, Norton made a reference to the powerful gun lobby, saying, "It comes down to us because we are immune to their lobbying.

NRA chief: Obama makes 'mockery' of American freedoms

"Only an outraged public can end the gun violence that has enveloped our country," she added. "We the people who did not act before, we the people this time will step forward.

"And this time we will not step back."

Colin Goddard survived being shot four times during the Virginia Tech massacre in 2007, the deadliest shooting in U.S. history, one that left 33 people dead, including the gunman, who took his own life.

Goddard, one of the rally speakers, said he was shot above the knee, twice in the hip and once in the shoulder.

"I consider myself one of the lucky ones," he told the gathering.

Then, speaking of subsequent school shootings across the nation, he added: "I kept seeing what happened to me happen to other people."

Goddard now works for the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence as assistant director for victims advocacy and federal litigation.

One marcher, Lori Bennett, said she wants to make a difference.

"My two older children, of course, are very aware of what's going on and I said, 'I'm going down there, you know, for you, for us, and to make a difference," she said. "Without sounding corny, but I mean, it's just piggybacking on the sentiment of the politicians that are in favor of all this change.

"People as a country, like, we can't keep waiting for all the politicians to make a move," she added.

A small opposing demonstration was held across the street from the gun control advocates' staging area near the Capitol. One gun rights advocate said he thinks people in schools should be armed -- a viewpoint he developed after the Newtown shooting.

"I could not figure out why government employees have armed guards, banks have armed guards to protect the money, but the government, for some reason, thought we don't need armed guards to protect our children," Dick Heller said. "Maybe they're less worthy. I don't know. I don't know what their thinking was. All I can't understand is why didn't they protect their children like the government protects itself?"

The gun control march organizers are also calling on Congress and state legislatures to prohibit the sale of bullets that shatter inside the body and to require gun-safety training for all firearms purchasers.

Among the other placards that demonstrators raised above their heads were: "More guns? More violence" and, in a reference to NRA CEO Wayne LaPierre (who has said "the only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun"): "Hey LaPierre. How about this? Keep the Bad guy from even getting a gun!"

CNN's Emily Schmidt contributed from Washington. Michael Martinez wrote and reported this account from Los Angeles. CNN's Laura Koran also contributed.

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Hackers take over gov't website

This screenshot shows the website of the U.S. Sentencing Commission after it was hijacked by the hacker-activist group Anonymous, early Saturday, Jan. 26, 2013, to avenge the death of Aaron Swartz, an Internet activist who committed suicide. The website of the commission, an independent agency of the judicial branch, was replaced with a message warning that when Swartz killed himself two weeks ago "a line was crossed." / AP Photo

Last Updated 12:47 p.m. ET

WASHINGTON The hacker-activist group Anonymous says it hijacked the website of the U.S. Sentencing Commission to avenge the death of Aaron Swartz, an Internet activist who committed suicide.

The website of the commission, an independent agency of the judicial branch, was taken over early Saturday and replaced with a message warning that when Swartz killed himself two weeks ago "a line was crossed."

The message read in part:

Citizens of the world,
Anonymous has observed for some time now the trajectory of justice in the United States with growing concern. We have marked the departure of this system from the noble ideals in which it was born and enshrined. We have seen the erosion of due process, the dilution of constitutional rights, the usurpation of the rightful authority of courts by the "discretion" or prosecutors. We have seen how the law is wielded less and less to uphold justice, and more and more to exercise control, authority and power in the interests of oppression or personal gain."

The hackers say they've infiltrated several government computer systems and copied secret information that they now threaten to make public.

Family and friends of Swartz, who helped create Reddit and RSS, say he killed himself after he was hounded by federal prosecutors.

Officials say he helped post millions of court documents for free online and that he illegally downloaded millions of academic articles from an online clearinghouse.

By mid-morning Saturday the website was offline.

The FBI's Richard McFeely, executive assistant director of the Criminal, Cyber, Response, and Services Branch, said in a statement that "we were aware as soon as it happened and are handling it as a criminal investigation. We are always concerned when someone illegally accesses another person's or government agency's network."

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Anonymous Hijacks Federal Website Over Reddit Co-Founder's Suicide

Jan 26, 2013 12:27pm

(AP Photo)

Activists from the hacker collective known as Anonymous assumed control over the homepage of a federal judicial agency this morning.

In a manifesto left on the defaced page, the group demanded reform to the American justice system and what the activists said are threats to the free flow of information.

The lengthy essay largely mirrors previous demands from Anonymous, but this time the group also cited the recent suicide of Reddit co-founder and activist Aaron Swartz as has having “crossed a line” for their organization. Swartz was facing up to 35 years in prison on computer fraud charges.

Prosecutors said he had stolen thousands of digital scientific and academic journal articles from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology with the goal of disseminating them for free.

Read More: Aaron Swartz’ Death Fuels MIT Probe, White House Petition to Oust Prosecutor

Anonymous says Swartz was “killed because he was forced into playing a game he could not win — a twisted and distorted perversion of justice — a game where the only winning move was not to play.”

“There must be a return to proportionality of punishment with respect to actual harm caused,” it reads, also mentioning recent arrests of Anonymous associates by the FBI.

In their statement, the hackers say they targeted the homepage of the Federal Sentencing Commission for “symbolic” reasons.

The group claimed that if their demands were not met they would release a trove of embarrassing internal Justice Department documents to media outlets. Anonymous named the files after Supreme Court justices and provided hyperlinks to them from the defaced page.

As of press time the commission’s site had been taken offline but an earlier attempt by CNN to follow the files’ links yielded dead-ends, mostly offline sites.

The file names use an “.aes256″ suffix, denoting a common encryption protocol. The same system was used to encrypt the Wikileaks Afghan war documents before their release.

SHOWS: Good Morning America World News

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Libya PM says 'exaggeration' over Benghazi threat alert

DAVOS: Libyan Prime Minister Ali Zeidan said Friday that Western nations had exaggerated by urging their citizens to leave the city of Benghazi due to a specific and imminent threat to Westerners.

Britain, France, Germany, The Netherlands and Australia have all urged their citizens to leave the city due to the threat, linked to France's military intervention against Islamist rebels in neighbouring Mali.

"I think that there was exaggeration on behalf of some countries, who took some preventive measures and we can understand that," Zeidan told a panel at the World Economic Forum in the Swiss ski resort of Davos.

"But the reality is that these people of foreign nationality live very peacefully in Libya and there are security measures to protect them," he said.

Earlier, officials in Tripoli said the country had not been informed of the evacuation order or given information about the threat.

"There has been no formal notice to us from any other country of its intention to evacuate its citizens from the city of Benghazi," an interior ministry source was quoted as saying by Lana news agency.

"The Libyan deputy interior minister for security, Omar al-Khadrawi, contacted the British embassy in Tripoli to seek clarification on the statement released by the British Foreign Office but no response has been received," ministry spokesman Mejdi al-Arfi said, also quoted by Lana.

Deputy Interior Minister Abdullah Massud expressed "astonishment" at the warnings on Thursday, and said his government would demand an explanation.

"If Britain was afraid of threats to its citizens, it could have pulled them out quietly without causing all the commotion and excitement," Massud was reported to have said on Friday.

"The British Foreign Office statement sparked growing concerns by various diplomatic missions and foreign companies in Benghazi and led them to seriously consider leaving the city," Lana quoted him as saying.

Benghazi was the cradle of the uprising that ousted Moamer Kadhafi in 2011 and also the city where a US ambassador was killed in an attack last September.

The initial alert from London came after British Prime Minister David Cameron warned that last week's deadly attack on a gas complex in Algeria was only one part of what would be a "long struggle against murderous terrorists" around the world.

- AFP/jc

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Two Casey Anthony convictions tossed

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

• An appeals court invalidates two of Casey Anthony's convictions, upholds two others


• She was convicted of 4 counts of giving false information during a missing person investigation


• Charges arose from statements Anthony made in 2008 after her daughter, Caylee, disappeared


• Anthony's attorney said his client wants to "keep fighting"

(CNN) -- One of the most infamous Americans in recent years took two big steps Friday toward clearing her name, and she's vowed to "keep fighting."

Florida's 5th District Court of Appeal threw out two of Casey Anthony's four convictions of "providing false information to a law enforcement officer during a missing person investigation," agreeing with her argument that the multiple convictions violated the ban on double jeopardy.

But the appeals judges upheld the other two convictions. According to the court filing, they rejected Anthony's claim that the trial court should have granted her motion to suppress statements made to law enforcement officers before they told her her Miranda rights. And they rejected her argument that the state statute she was convicted of violating is unconstitutionally vague.

Anthony's lawyer, Cheney Mason, said when he called his client to share the ruling, she said, "We keep fighting."

Anthony could appeal the remaining two convictions to the Florida Supreme Court next.

The four charges arose from statements Anthony made on July 16, 2008, to Orange County Detective Yuri Melich, who was investigating the disappearance of Anthony's 2-year-old daughter, Caylee.

Anthony gained notoriety after her mother, Cindy Anthony, called police to arrest her daughter the day before, when she thought Casey had stolen the family car and some money.

During the call, Cindy Anthony told police she was concerned that her granddaughter might be missing, and said, "I found my daughter's car today, and it smelled like there's been a dead body in the damn car."

When questioned, Casey Anthony admitted to police that she hadn't seen Caylee for more than 30 days, and on July 16, she was arrested on suspicion of child neglect, filing false official statements and obstructing a criminal investigation. At that time, she made the statements to Melich, which led to her convictions.

In December 2008, a utility worker found remains in a wooded area near the Anthony home, and about a week later, authorities announced they were Caylee's.

After nearly three years of legal maneuvers, Anthony's capital murder trial began on May 24, 2011.

Prosecutors alleged that she killed Caylee by using chloroform and covering her nose and mouth with duct tape, and that she put her body in the trunk of her car before dumping it in the woods.

Defense attorney Jose Baez argued that Caylee drowned in the Anthony family pool on June 16, 2008, and that Casey Anthony and her father, George, covered up the death.

On July 5, 2011, a jury found Anthony not guilty of first-degree murder, aggravated child abuse and aggravated manslaughter of a child, while convicting her on the four "false information" counts.

Anthony was sentenced to four years in jail, to be served consecutively, including time served. She was released 10 days after her sentencing, on July 17. Even though she exited shortly after midnight, about 1,000 people jeered her as police guards and Baez escorted her to a waiting SUV and drove away quickly.

Anthony still faces a defamation lawsuit from Zenaida Fernandez-Gonzalez, of nearby Kissimmee, Florida.

During Anthony's disputed July 16, 2008, statements to Melich, she said the last time she had seen her daughter was when she dropped Caylee off at Gonzalez's apartment.

Gonzalez filed suit in September 2008, claiming that Anthony ruined her reputation.

Last April, a judge ruled that the suit needed to go to trial by jury and denied Gonzalez's request for a summary judgment.

In Session correspondent Jean Casarez reported for this story, and Mark Morgenstein wrote it in Atlanta.

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Court: Obama appointments are unconstitutional

President Barack Obama violated the Constitution when he bypassed the Senate to fill vacancies on a labor relations panel, a federal appeals court panel ruled Friday.

A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit said that Obama did not have the power to make three recess appointments last year to the National Labor Relations Board.

The unanimous decision is an embarrassing setback for the president, who made the appointments after Senate Republicans spent months blocking his choices for an agency they contended was biased in favor of unions.

The ruling also throws into question Obama's recess appointment of Richard Cordray to head the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Cordray's appointment, also made under the recess circumstance, has been challenged in a separate case.

Obama claims he acted properly in the case of the NLRB appointments because the Senate was away for the holidays on a 20-day recess. But the three-judge panel ruled that the Senate technically stayed in session when it was gaveled in and out every few days for so-called "pro forma" sessions.

GOP lawmakers used the tactic - as Democrats have in the past as well - to specifically to prevent the president from using his recess power. GOP lawmakers contend the labor board has been too pro-union in its decisions. They had also vigorously opposed the nomination of Cordray.

The Obama administration is expected to appeal the decision to the U.S. Supreme Court, but if it stands, it means hundreds of decisions issued by the board over more than a year are invalid. It also would leave the five-member labor board with just one validly appointed member, effectively shutting it down. The board is allowed to issue decisions only when it has at least three sitting members.

On Jan. 4, 2012, Obama appointed Deputy Labor Secretary Sharon Block, union lawyer Richard Griffin and NLRB counsel Terence Flynn to fill vacancies on the NLRB, giving it a full contingent for the first time in more than a year. Block and Griffin are Democrats, while Flynn is a Republican. Flynn stepped down from the board last year.

Obama also appointed Cordray on the same day.

The court's decision is a victory for Republicans and business groups that have been attacking the labor board for issuing a series of decisions and rules that make it easier for the nation's labor unions to organize new members.

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Mars Rover Celebrates Milestone on Red Planet

It was never supposed to last this long. When the Mars rover Opportunity settled on the Martian surface nine years ago today, mission managers at NASA said they would be pleased if it lasted for 90 days.

Instead, it's been 3,201 days, and still counting. The rover has driven 22.03 miles, mostly at a snail's pace, from one crater to another, stopping for months at a time in the frigid Martian winters. The six motorized wheels, rated to turn 2.5 million times, have lasted 70 million, and are all still working.

"Opportunity is still in very good health, especially considering what it's gone through," said John Callas, manager of NASA's Mars Exploration Rover project. The surface of Mars is a pretty tough place; there can be temperature fluctuations of a hundred degrees each day. That's pretty hard on the hardware."

Video: '7 Minutes of Terror: A Landing on Mars

When Opportunity and its twin rover, Spirit, reached Mars in January 2004, there was a fair bit of sniping that NASA, with all that 90-day talk, was playing down expectations. It escalated when Steve Squyres of Cornell University, the principal investigator for the missions, said things like, "We're on Sol 300 of a 90-Sol mission." (A Sol is a day on Mars, and lasts 24 hours, 39 minutes.) Callas and others have insisted that the prediction was based on engineering, not a nod to public relations.

"There was an expectation that airfall dust would accumulate on the rover, so that its solar panels would be able to gather less electricity," said Callas. "We saw that on Pathfinder," a small rover that landed on Mars in 1997." The cold climate was also expected to be hard on the rovers' batteries, and changes in temperature from night to day would probably pop a circuit or two.

Instead, the temperatures weren't quite as tough as engineers had expected, and the rovers proved tougher. They did become filthy as the red Martian dust settled on them, reducing the sunlight on the solar panels -- but every now and then a healthy gust came along, surprising everyone on Earth by cleaning the ships off.

Click Here for Pictures: Postcards From Mars

Spirit, in hilly territory on the other side of the planet, finally got stuck in crusty soil in 2009, and its radio went silent the next year. But Opportunity, though it's had some close calls, is -- well, you remember those commercials about the Energizer bunny.

So what do you do with an aging rover on a faraway planet? You keep using it. In its first weeks, NASA said Opportunity found chemical proof that there had once been standing water on the surface of Mars -- good news if you're looking for signs that the planet could once have been friendly to life. Since then, it's been sent to other places, with rocks and soil that are probably older, and with clay that may have been left by ancient rivers.

About 20 NASA staff members still work full-time on Opportunity at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. Another 60 split their time between Opportunity and other projects, such as the Curiosity rover that landed last August. About 100 scientists, doing research on Mars, pop in and out.

In a few months, Callas said, Opportunity will head to an area nicknamed Cape Tribulation. The clay there could be rich in the minerals suggestive of past life.

They haven't done much to mark the ninth anniversary or the 3,200th Martian day, just a get-together earlier this week during a previously scheduled science conference. After that, Callas said, it was back to work.

"It's like keeping your car going," he said, "without ever having a chance to change the oil."

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Neanderthal cloning? Pure fantasy

A display of a reconstruction of a Neanderthal man and boy at the Museum for Prehistory in Eyzies-de-Tayac, France.

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

• Arthur Caplan: It would be unethical to try and clone a Neanderthal baby


• Caplan: Downsides include a good chance of producing a baby that is seriously deformed


• He says the future belongs to what we can do to genetically engineer and control microbes


• Caplan: Microbes can make clean fuel, suck up carbon dioxide, clean fat out of arteries

Editor's note: Arthur Caplan is the Drs. William F and Virginia Connolly Mitty professor and director of the Division of Bioethics at New York University Langone Medical Center.

(CNN) -- So now we know -- there won't be a Neanderthal moving into your neighborhood.

Despite a lot of frenzied attention to the intentionally provocative suggestion by a renowned Harvard scientist that new genetic technology makes it possible to splice together a complete set of Neanderthal genes, find an adventurous surrogate mother and use cloning to gin up a Neanderthal baby -- it ain't gonna happen anytime soon.

Nor should it. But there are plenty of other things in the works involving genetic engineering that do merit serious ethical discussion at the national and international levels.

Arthur Caplan

Some thought that the Harvard scientist, George Church, was getting ready to put out an ad seeking volunteer surrogate moms to bear a 35,000-year-old, long-extinct Neanderthal baby. Church had to walk his comments back and note that he was just speculating, not incubating.

Still cloning carries so much mystery and Hollywood glamour thanks to movies such as "Jurassic Park," "The Boys From Brazil" and "Never Let Me Go" that a two-day eruption of the pros and cons of making Neanderthals ensued. That was not necessary. It would be unethical to try and clone a Neanderthal baby.

Why? Because there is no obvious reason to do so. There is no pressing need or remarkable benefit to undertaking such a project. At best it might shed some light on the biology and behavior of a distant ancestor. At worst it would be nothing more than the ultimate reality television show exploitation: An "Octomom"-like surrogate raises a caveman child -- tune in next week to see what her new boyfriend thinks when she tells him that there is a tiny addition in her life and he carries a small club and a tiny piece of flint to sleep with him.

The downsides of trying to clone a Neanderthal include a good chance of killing it, producing a baby that is seriously deformed, producing a baby that lacks immunity to infectious diseases and foods that we have gotten used to, an inability to know what environment to create to permit the child to flourish and a complete lack of understanding of what sort of behavior is "normal" or "appropriate" for such a long-extinct cousin hominid of ours.

When weighed against the risks and the harm that most likely would be done, it would take a mighty big guarantee of benefit to justify this cloning experiment. I am willing to venture that the possible benefit will never, ever reach the point where this list of horrible likely downsides could be overcome.

Even justifying trying to resurrect a woolly mammoth, or a mastodon, or the dodo bird or any other extinct animal gets ethically thorny. How many failures would be acceptable to get one viable mastodon? Where would the animal live? What would we feed it? Who would protect it from poachers, gawkers and treasure hunters? It is not so simple to take a long dead species, make enough of them so they don't die of isolation and lack of social stimulation and then find an environment that is close enough and safe enough compared with that which they once roamed.

In any event the most interesting aspects of genetic engineering do not involve making humans or Neanderthals or mammoths. They involve ginning up microbes to do things that we really need doing such as making clean fuel, sucking up carbon dioxide, cleaning fat out of our arteries, giving us a lot more immunity to nasty bacteria and viruses and helping us make plastics and chemicals more efficiently and cheaply.

In trying to make these kinds of microbes, you can kill all you want without fear of ethical condemnation. And if the new bug does not like the environment in which it has to exist to live well, that will be just too darn bad.

The ethical challenge of this kind of synthetic biology is that it can be used by bad guys for bad purposes. Biological weapons can be ginned up and microbes created that only infect people with certain genes that commonly associate with racial or ethnic groups.

Rather than worry about what will happen to real estate values should a new crop of "Flintstones" move in down the street, our public officials, religious groups and ethicists need to get serious about how much regulation the genetic engineering of microbes needs, how can we detect what terrorists might try to use, what sort of controls do we need to prevent accidents and who is going to pay if a bug turns out to cause more harm than good.

We love to think that the key to tomorrow lies in what humanity can be designed or empowered to do. Thus, the fascination with human cloning. In reality, at least for a long time to come, the future belongs to what we can do to design and control microbes. That is admittedly duller, but it is far better to follow a story that is true than one such as Neanderthal cloning that is pure, speculative fantasy.

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The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Arthur Caplan.

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