Seattle Police Chief Norm Stamper’s decision to leave office has not dampened demands for an investigation into the performance of the city, as well as Seattle Mayor Paul Schell, in planning for and handling World Trade Organization protests last week. Meanwhile, hundreds of people are expected to pack the downtown library tomorrow to tell the Seattle City Council just what went wrong during the World Trade Organization protests.

And former South African President Nelson Mandela and his wife, Graça Machel, will arrive in Seattle this morning to kick off a tightly controlled three-day visit. The trip, arranged as a fundraiser for Mandela and Machel’s charitable foundations, will be filled with gatherings of schoolchildren and business people, community leaders and college students. The general public will not have much opportunity to see Mandela, however. What limited events are public are sold out.

This news from Sierra Leone: Despite a ceasefire and the arrival of U.N. peacekeepers in Sierra Leone, the security situation has deteriorated markedly in recent weeks, with renewed rebel fighting and serious violations of human rights and humanitarian law, this according to a U.N. report. Attacks on civilians have frequently involved rape, abduction and harassment, and more than 2,000 children registered as missing since a rebel incursion in January in western areas of the country remain unaccounted for, this according to Kofi Annan.

And this news from Chechnya: A leading Russian general in Chechnya has denied that Moscow’s leave-or-die warning to residents of the capital Grozny is aimed at civilians. The commander of Russian troops in the Caucasus said the threat was aimed at bandits and not the tens of thousands of civilians hiding in the city. But the United Nations Refugee Agency has warned that there is a very real risk that thousands of Chechen civilians could die if Russia continues its assault on the breakaway republic.

And this news from Northern Ireland: Sinn Féin President Gerry Adams has made a formal complaint to the British and Irish governments, following the alleged discovery of a bugging device in his car. Adams said it was a “highly sophisticated” listening and tracking device found in a car which he and the Education Minister Martin McGuinness used during the Mitchell review and to travel in meetings with the IRA.

This news from Detroit: The top suspect in a string of schoolgirl rapes was arrested last week for stalking a child, only to be released and watched by authorities until DNA evidence linked him to some of the crimes. The 27-year-old man was freed on Thursday. He was arrested again late yesterday after DNA tests connected him to three of the crimes.

And from San Francisco, attorneys for biotechnology giant Hoffmann-La Roche promised to appeal a judge’s ruling that one of its patents used in DNA analysis was questionably obtained and is invalid. U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker yesterday upheld a challenge by Promega Corporation, which argued that scientists got the important patent in 1990 by misrepresenting their experiments and falsely claiming advances over previous discoveries. Those scientists worked for Cetus Corporation, which sold rights to the patent and a DNA replication process to Hoffmann-La Roche of Switzerland for $300 million in 1991.

This news from Ohio: The federal government hasn’t kept its promise to pay for expanded health screenings of uranium workers in Ohio, Kentucky and Tennessee, this according to The Columbus Dispatch. The latest federal budget has included $7 million for the programs, but Congress removed the funds. As a result, thousands of people exposed to highly radioactive materials aren’t getting medical checkups that could save their lives. More than 300 current workers at the Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant in Piketon are awaiting screening.

From Tokyo, the doomsday cult that released deadly nerve gas into Tokyo subways is still capable of terrorism, this according to Japanese police. Aum Shinrikyo plans to regroup around a former spokesperson, Fumihiro Joyu, who will be freed from prison at the end of the year.

And relatives of a prisoner who died in an Oklahoma cell criticized a Justice Department report that concludes officers lied about the case, but affirms that the prisoner committed suicide. The report by the department’s inspector general was issued yesterday.