Mr Pohm exhorts his pupils to revise for half an hour three times a week, puts in a plugfor his book – two hundred pages of come-backs and double entendres – and the class is dismissed.Dr Albrecht Bender, a patent lawyer who has just spent DM590 on his quantum leap to a new consciousness, is satisfied with the day’s work “It has been a very useful course,” he says. “Now I must concentrate on the practical side of what I’ve learnt. I will revise, work slowly, and maybe, in three months’ time, I will be ready to incorporate some of this into my personality.”. CHINA HAS tightened its grip on the north-western province of Xinjiang, transferring a team of crack troops to a city rocked by riots in 1997 and arresting hundreds of suspected “terrorists” and religious militants. Some 1,000 troops were transferred to Yining city, the capital of Xinjiang’s Yili region, last month, the Xinjiang Legal Daily said yesterday.
Xinjiang, home to Turkish-speaking Uighurs, has been rocked by rioting since the mid-Nineties. Muslim Uighur militants have agitated for an independent East Turkestan in Xinjiang, which borders Afghanistan, Pakistan and three former Soviet republics.Yesterday, Amnesty International accused Peking of stepping up persecution of Uighurs (Reuters). ASTRONOMERS WATCHED the skies anxiously yesterday ascosmonauts on board the Russian Mir space station tried, but failed, to unveil a mirror 25m(83ft) across to reflect sunlight on to darkened parts of the Earth

An early hitch saw the mirror catch on a radio aerial.

The plastic parasol, covered with aluminium, began to unfold in the early afternoon, but then jammed again, stopping the test for the day.
The mirror is designed to work like an artificial moon. It was meant to reflect a beam of sunlight about 8km (5 miles) across on to several regions in Russia and other former Soviet republics before reaching Germany and the Czech Republic. It would not have been visible in Britain.It is designed as a prototype for much larger models that could illuminate northern parts of the Earth.Russian Mission Control said the experiment might go ahead today if they could resolve the problem.The Space Regatta Consortium, principally backed by the Russian company Energia, has funded the experiment. The designers suggested that a series of mirrors – or one giant mirror – could harness sunlight to overcome darkness and boost agriculture by lengthening the day.However, that poses the huge problem of controlling the mirrors’ angle while the Earth and the Sun are moving. Tiny variations would mean huge differences in what part of Earth was illuminated.The experiment had triggered an avalanche of dramatic reports, many of which described the mirror as a “second moon” that would glare from the skies. However a spokeswoman called the idea “ridiculous rumours”.Astronomers were less happy.

“This could get so bright that it’s impossible to miss,” said John Kelly Beatty, senior editor at Sky & Telescope magazine.Astronomers believe that such bright light will seriously impede observations from ground-based telescopes.David Williams, president of the Royal Astronomical Society in Britain and professor of astronomy at University College London, said: “A lot of money – taxpayers’ money – has been spent on building new telescopes in remote locations. This could ruin all those plans.”Astronomers fear that theRussians financing the experiment will ignore their objections and push ahead with plans to put up more mirrors, all beaming sunlight on to points on Earth in the middle of the night.”This situation is different from many big space projects which are funded by countries or internationally,” said Professor Williams.. SERBIA’S PARLIAMENT last night voted overwhelmingly to send a delegation to the Kosovo peace talks at Rambouillet near Paris, but made it clear that there would be fierce resistance to Nato plans to station troops in the province to police any settlement. The 227 to 3 majority averts the threat of Nato air strikes, and clears the way for negotiations to start as scheduled tomorrow between Belgrade and the political and military representatives of the ethnic Albanians who constitute 90 per cent of Kosovo’s population.
But discussions on the draft agreement drawn up by Western mediators will be anything but plain sailing. Last night Serbian government officials said that Kosovo must remain part of Serbia – despite the fact that the plan, to all intents and purposes, removes the province from Belgrade’s control.An even greater obstacle could be the deployment of the 20,000 to 30,000 Nato force, final details of which are being worked out in national capitals and at the alliance’s Brussels headquarters. As President Bill Clinton confirmed that Washington was “seriously considering” dispatching troops, and France announced it would provide 5,000 men.Mirko Marjanovic, the Serbian Prime Minister, vowed that if Nato entered Kosovo, it would have to fight its way in.

“We will defend ourselves with all available means,” Mr Marjanovic warned. Those sentiments were echoed by Vojislav Seselj, the leader of the ultranationalist Radical party and an ally of the Yugoslav President, Slobodan Milosevic.Mr Milosevic is unlikely to go to Rambouillet, not least for fear of being served with a warrant for alleged war crimes in Bosnia and Kosovo. But if yesterday’s TV coverage of the parliamentary session Belgrade – when criticism of him was censored from the broadcast – is any indication, he will be very much in charge of his delegates, albeit from afar.Seeking to overcome deep misgivings in Congress over a further commitment of American troops, Mr Clinton insisted that the fighting must be halted when it could still be contained at an “acceptable cost”. Otherwise, “and unless we defuse the ethnic hatred in that region, Kosovo can embroil us in a much larger conflict”.The Pentagon wants to limit the US contingent to 2,000, but the European allies would prefer double that figure, to guarantee the credibility of the intervention. It would be under the command of Lieutenant-General Sir Michael Jackson, the British commander of the Allied Rapid Reaction Corps. But to reassure US public opinion, officials point out that ultimate control of the operation would be in the hands of General Wesley Clark, the American supreme commander of allied forces in Europe.. A BLUE refrigerated police truck stood outside the morgue at Pristina hospital yesterday, its rear doors backed up against the building to prevent anyone looking inside.

The vehicle was being watched by a Land Cruiser full of monitors from the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) and an armed Serbian policeman, who told us to clear off as soon as we arrived. It was easy to see why the relatives of the 45 ethnic Albanians killed in the Racak massacre three weeks ago had chosen to wait in a smoke- filled office in Stimlje, 18 miles away, for news of what was happening to the remains. The story they had to tell demonstrated not only the hostility and indifference of the Serbian authorities to Kosovo’s Albanian majority, but the gulf that will have to be bridged at the peace talks due to start tomorrow in France.
Mahmut Mahmuti, the 75-year-old hoxha (imam) of the mosque at Racak, a short distance from the town, said he had been summoned twice on Wednesday to see the police commander at Stimlje. The previous day villagers had gone up to Pristina in an unsuccessful attempt to confront the authorities and get back the 40 bodies taken away shortly after the massacre; now, said the commander, 29 of them had been brought to Stimlje in a police truck, ready for burial.”I objected,” said Mr Mahmuti, twisting his hands, with two fingers missing from the left, on his walking stick. “I said we didn’t want to bury the victims separately, but all at the same time and place.”Sylejman Halili, 67, a village head man, said the Serbian judge in the case, Danica Marinkovic, had told them that relatives would have to identify the dead at Stimlje police station.