SEATTLE - There are a billion hungry people in the world. Fifteen thousand children-the equivalent of five times the victims of the World Trade Center bombings-die each day of hunger. Yet it doesn't have to be this way. We can end hunger-if we make a commitment to doing so. The new one-hour documentary Silent Killer: The Unfinished Campaign Against Hunger shows how it can be done. Shot on location in the United States, South Africa, Kenya, Rome, Mexico and Brazil, Silent Killer examines both the problem of hunger and solutions. The documentary and its companion Web site (www.SilentKillerFilm.org) will provide viewers with inspiration and information to become part of the effort to end hunger.

Produced by Hana Jindrova and John de Graaf (Affluenza, Escape from Affluenza), in association with KCTS/Seattle Public Television, Silent Killer will air on several California public television stations as follows:

KTEH/ San Jose: Sunday, October 16 at 5:00 p.m. (please confirm).

KOCE/ Huntington Beach: Sunday, October 23 at 4:00 p.m.

KQED/ San Francisco: Wednesday, November 2 at 11:00 p.m., repeating on

KQED Encore (Digital Channel 189), Thursday, November 3 at 10:00 p.m.

KVCR/ San Bernardino: Thanksgiving evening, Thursday, November 24 at 8 p.m.

KVIE/ Sacramento: Airdate and time to be announced.

KCSM/ San Mateo: Airdate and time to be announced.

(For all other stations, please check local listings).

Narrated by National Public Radio's Scott Simon, the film begins in South Africa's Kalahari Desert, where razor-thin Bushmen use the Hoodia cactus to fend off hunger. But now, a drug firm has patented the Hoodia's appetite-suppressant properties and is using it to make a diet product for obese Americans and Europeans. Hoodia is a metaphor for a world where some people die from too much food, but millions more die from too little.

We discover how serious the problem is in Kenya as we meet Jane Ininda, a scientist who is trying to make agriculture more productive in her country, while her own brother, Salesio, barely survives the drought, poor soils and pests that constantly threaten his crops. Through powerful stories, we come to understand the dimensions of the hunger crisis.

At the World Food Summit in Rome, we learn how activists have been working to end hunger since President John Kennedy declared war on it in 1963. But today, America's commitment to food security is less clear. In fact, world financial commitments to hunger research are now in decline.

But Silent Killer does not leave viewers feeling helpless. A visit to Brazil finds a nation energized by a new campaign called FOME ZERO-Zero Hunger. In the huge city of Belo Horizonte, we meet a remarkable leader and see how, under the programs she supervises, the right to food is guaranteed to all. In the countryside, we are introduced to the Landless Peasants' Movement, which is giving hope to millions of hungry Brazilians.

Can we end hunger, or will it always be with us? Why should we try? What will it take? What are we doing now? Can biotechnology play a role, and if so, how? Is hunger just a problem of distribution, or do we still need to produce more and better crops? These are the questions considered in this exquisitely photographed documentary.

EXPERTS featured in Silent Killer: The Unfinished Campaign Against Hunger and available for press interviews include:

David Beckmann - President, Bread for the World. Since 1991, Reverend David Beckmann has served as president of Bread for the World, a Christian group that lobbies the U.S. government for policy changes to end hunger in the United States and around the world.

Per Pinstrup-Andersen - World Food Prize Laureate 2001. A native of Denmark, Per Pinstrup-Andersen is the H.E. Babcock Professor of Food, Nutrition and Public Policy at Cornell University. He also serves as the chairman of the Science Council of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research.

Chris Barrett - Development Economist, Cornell University. Dr. Barrett is a professor of applied economics and management at Cornell University. His focus is on rural communities, primarily in Africa, concentrating on the dynamics of poverty, food security and hunger.

Walter Falcon - Development Economist, Stanford University. Dr. Falcon is the Farnsworth Professor of International Agricultural Policy at Stanford University (emeritus), co-director of the Center for Environmental Science and Policy, and former director of the Stanford Institute for International Studies.

PROGRAM TIE-INS: October 16 is the 25th observance of World Food Day-a worldwide event designed to create awareness, understanding and year-round action to alleviate hunger. (See www.worldfooddayusa.org.) In addition, October 24 is the 60th anniversary of the founding of the United Nations and its first agency, the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).

CREDITS: Silent Killer was produced by Hana Jindrova and John de Graaf in association with KCTS/Seattle Public Television and is narrated by NPR's Scott Simon. Writer: John de Graaf. Photographers/Editors: Diana Wilmar and David Fox. Composer: Michael Bade. Executive Producer: Enrique Cerna, KCTS. Funding was provided by The Rockefeller Foundation.

DISTRIBUTOR: Silent Killer is presented nationally by KCTS/Seattle Public Television and is distributed by the National Educational Telecommunications Association (NETA).

WEB SITE: See www.SilentKillerFilm.org for more information about the film, including a full transcript, in-depth interviews with film characters and experts on hunger, a guide for teachers, a list of hunger facts and myths, a detailed "Take Action" section and additional resources. Color images from the film are posted on the site for press use, along with an online press kit.

Ten years ago, on January 25, 1995, Russian early-warning radars detected a scientific rocket launched from Norway. Details of what followed have never been officially disclosed, but the detection apparently generated an alarm that made its way to the Russian political leadership. The nuclear forces' command-and-control system worked exactly as it was supposed to, stopping the alert without launching an attack, but the accident vividly demonstrated the dangers inherent in the launchon-warning posture of nuclear forces.

The Soviet Union and the United States are the only nuclear states to have implemented launch-on-warning, a combination of early-warning systems to detect a missile attack and command-and-control systems that can launch a retaliatory strike while the aggressor's missiles are in flight. The United States and Russia have preserved this capability as an option for using their strategic nuclear weapons.

The dangers of this rapid-response nuclear posture are widely recognized, but the United States and Russia have nevertheless failed to address this issue. Reducing the level of readiness, known as de-alerting, has not come to the forefront of the U.S.-Russian agenda. One of the reasons for this is their reluctance to enter into new arms control agreements, which are thought to be necessary for a coordinated action in this area. Careful examination of the arguments for de-alerting, though, suggests that there are a number of steps that the United States and Russia could and should take unilaterally.

Discussion of launch-on-warning dangers usually concentrates on the decline of Russian early-warning and command-and-control systems. As a result, most de-alerting measures proposed on the U.S. side are seen primarily as a way to create incentives for Russia to reciprocate. But this perspective overestimates Russia's reliance on the launch-on-warning posture and underestimates the dangers associated with that of the United States.

History shows that the Soviet strategic forces could never rely on radars and satellites to get a timely and accurate assessment of an incoming attack. As a result, the Soviet military never displayed high enough confidence in its early-warning system to make a launch decision based solely on the information provided by the early-warning system.

The United States, on the other hand, built a highly capable and sophisticated earlywarning system. It provides global coverage and very high probability of detection of a missile launch, which allows the United States to have a very high degree of confidence in the system. Paradoxically, this confidence potentially makes a catastrophic technical malfunction more dangerous than in the Russian case, since operators might be less likely to question the data provided by the system.

Although it is difficult to quantify the two systems' vulnerability to a possible technical malfunction, the less sophisticated Russian system does not necessarily pose a substantially greater risk of a catastrophic accident than its U.S. counterpart. This means that efforts to reduce the readiness level of the U.S. forces would bring benefits regardless of reciprocity.

Concerns about the deterioration of the Russian early-warning system are well founded. With the breakup of the Soviet Union most radars were left outside of the Russian territory, and many are not operational. The system's space-based tier is hardly better off. Russia is currently operating only three early-warning satellites, while a complete constellation would require ten satellites. Russia would need at least five satellites to provide minimum coverage of the U.S. territory.

Although the Russian system's decline is indeed serious, it does not necessarily increase the dangers associated with launch-on-warning. A loss of early-warning capability would pose a dire risk only if it were sudden and unexpected or discovered at the time of an attack. But this is not the case in Russia, where deterioration of the early-warning network has been gradual and well understood.

Since the early-warning system is an essential element of a launch-on-warning posture, it is understandable that a number of proposals that aim at reducing the risks of accidental launch suggest helping Russia to repair or upgrade its system. Instead of reducing the risk, however, upgrades would most likely increase risk by introducing new elements into the already complex system and increasing confidence in its performance.

Instead of trying to help Russia repair its early-warning system, efforts should be directed at helping Russia change the command-and-control procedures to accommodate the loss of early-warning capability. These changes would almost certainly result in a shift away from the launch-on-warning posture, reducing the risk of an accidental launch.

Trust And Do Not Verify

One reason de-alerting measures have not yet been implemented is that most of them are thought to require intrusive verification procedures. Indeed, measures like removal of nuclear warheads from missiles or limiting strategic submarine patrol areas, proposed by many, would be very difficult to implement in a transparent and verifiable manner.

Transparency, however, is not required to achieve the main goal of de-alerting-reduction of the risk associated with the launch-on-warning postures. The benefits of de-alerting do not depend on the ability to verify them. For example, submarines that are out of range of their targets cannot take part in a launch-on-warning strike regardless of whether the other side is able to verify their locations. Of course, without verification the opponent would have to assume that these submarines are in full readiness, but there is nothing wrong with that as long as we do not consider de-alerting a substitute for disarmament.

In fact, transparency makes de-alerting not only harder to implement but potentially dangerous. If measures that reduce the readiness level are visible and verifiable, an attempt to bring missiles back into operation could create instability in a crisis situation, when countries could find themselves in a rush to re-alert their forces. The dangers associated with this kind of instability could well outweigh any benefits of de-alerting.

Ideally, de-alerting measures should be designed in a way that would make them undetectable. That way, each side could reap the benefits-missiles not being available for launch-on-warning-while avoiding the instabilities associated with re-alerting.

Unilateral Solutions

The greatest challenge to de-alerting is not devising technical proposals but finding ways to convince the United States and Russia to implement them. This would be very difficult, for the United States and Russia have grown wary recently of negotiated agreements that would impose limits on their strategic forces. However, de-alerting seems ideally suited for unilateral non-binding declarations that might work now.

Russia and the United States could begin with a public commitment to de-alert a portion of their strategic arsenals. Of course, there will be plenty of questions about the value of a commitment that is neither enforceable nor verifiable. But this value would be quite real if both sides follow through and change their practices and procedures to exclude at least part of their forces from the launch-on-warning arrangements. The risk of a catastrophic accident will be reduced and these practices could then be extended to the whole force, further reducing the risk.

Making practical steps toward reducing the danger of accidental launch will not be easy. But de-alerting is one of those few arms control issues that still enjoy fairly strong political and public support. This support certainly creates an opportunity for action.

May 2005 opened with a bleak couple of weeks for the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). Delegates from 189 countries struggled to settle on an agenda for the seventh 5-year review of the Treaty, North Korea announced a new extraction of plutonium from its reactor to make nuclear weapons, and Iran stood firm against European attempts to dissuade it from pursuing a nuclear energy program that could be diverted for weapons-making. Yet CISAC's George Bunn, in an interview with BBC's "The World," cautioned against despair.

As the first general counsel to the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, Bunn has watched the NPT weather many diplomatic storms since it entered into force in 1970. Far from a failure, the treaty prevented nuclear weapons from becoming a commonplace in nations' defense programs, he said.

"I think that if there were no NPT, there would be something like 35 to 40 countries with nuclear weapons," Bunn explained. "When you think that at the time of our negotiations in the 60s, Sweden and Switzerland both had programs to explore the possibility of making nuclear weapons"--ambitions that the NPT helped dissuade--the treaty has provided incalculable benefits to world security. "If Sweden and Switzerland had nuclear weapons, think how many other countries would have them," he added.

Today the treaty's main weakness is its focus on states' possession of nuclear weapons, at a time when terrorists' ambitions to acquire the weapons is a major concern. At the treaty's outset, "terrorism wasn't perceived by us as a threat. The treaty hardly deals with the threat of terrorism," Bunn said.

The radio interview with George Bunn and his son Matthew Bunn, also a nuclear arms expert, is available at the link below. (Windows Media Player is required.)

In light of recent events, Her Excellency Vaira Vike-Freiberga has cancelled her visit to Stanford in order to attend the funeral of Pope John Paul II.

Her Excellency was a former professor of psychology specialising in the relationship between thought and language. In 1998, Ms Vike-Freiberga returned to her native Latvia after she received an invitation she couldn't refuse - to head the new Latvian Institute, established to raise the profile of Latvia and the Latvians around the world. In a meteoric rise in her new career as a politician, Ms Vike-Freiberga was elected president within a year. She is now on her second, four-year term as head of state.