text:
Bank set to downgrade economic growth forecasts AGAIN as inflation eats away at household spending power
The outlook for the UK economy looks set to take another dent tomorrow, with the Bank of England expected to forecast a grim combination of stagnant growth and persistent inflation.
Sir Mervyn King will present the Bank's quarterly Inflation Report after official figures today confirmed inflation remained at 2.7 per cent in January.
The Bank's monetary policy committee gave a clue to the report's forecasts last week when it warned that inflation was likely rise in the coming months and might remain above the 2 per cent target for another two years.
Price shock: Inflation remains above target but it is everyday essentials such as food and heating that is rising most quickly.
The attack from rising prices on UK
households' income and savings has squeezed spending power for the last
three or four years as salaries have been frozen and savings rates
Consumer prices index inflation has been at 2.7 per cent since October
but today's data revealed households have suffered faster rises among
essential items such as energy, food and rent.
The Office for National Statistics added that inflation as measured by
the retail prices index had accelerated to 3.3 per cent from 3.1 per
cent a month before.
And experts predict energy price hikes, rising food prices and tuition fees could push CPI above 3 per cent by the summer.
Inflation is
also being driven higher by the weaker pound, according to Howard Archer,
chief UK and European economist at IHS Global Insight.
He said: 'Once again the Bank of England will likely have the dismal
task of raising its consumer price inflation forecasts and cutting its
gross domestic product growth projections.'
The Bank is likely to admit it was overly optimistic in its November
report, when it said inflation would fall back towards target in the
second half of 2013.
Its forecast for 0.5 per cent growth in 2012 has already been proven
wrong after a worse-than-expected 0.3 per cent decline in fourth quarter
GDP left the economy unchanged overall last year.
The contraction - which left the UK on the brink of an unprecedented
triple-dip recession - is likely to see the Bank trim its forecasts for
2013. It downgraded its 2013 growth forecast to around 1 per cent in
November, but could bring this down yet again.
Graph shows CPI and RPI for the past two years - the rate of price rises has been stuck for four months.
Today's inflation figures from the ONS showed prices overall were actually 0.5 per cent lower in January than December - but the change between the months was the same as for the year before, so the annual rate of inflation remained constant.
Prices of clothing and footwear dropped by 5.4 per cent as retailers discounted item after Christmas. The fall was quicker than occurred last year and pushed the overall rate lower.
alcohol and tobacco prices rose 4.3 per cent over the month. The ONS
said this was because retailers reversed discounts on booze that had
been in place in the run up to Christmas.
A shortage of vegetables in the UK contributed to the food price rises as more produce was sourced overseas.
Stubbornly high inflation is
causing problems for policymakers as they also weigh up the risks to the
economic outlook.
The Bank held off from more money printing measures last week, keeping
its quantitative easing programme at £375 billion, while it also
kept interest rates at 0.5 per cent.
Vicky Redwood, chief UK economist at Capital Economics, said there could
be more QE in the pipeline after the MPC said it was prepared to 'look
through' the inflationary pressures.
She said: 'If the economy continues to struggle, above-target inflation should not be a barrier to further stimulus. What's more, we still expect inflation to fall back towards the end of this year as underlying price pressures fade further.'
The ONS also supplied analysis of the items that had had most impact on the rate of inflation over the past year.
The biggest contributors to inflation in January included everyday essentials such as home fuel bills, rents and food.
Prices in the 'housing and household services' category rose 3.5 per cent in the year to January with the rise split between higher rents for tenants and home fuel bills. This category contributed 0.5 of the overall 2.7 per cent rise in the CPI.
figures did not include the impact of price rises from energy suppliers
that were announced around the turn of the year. The hikes will push
inflation higher when households begin to receive bills for the winter
A similar upward contribution came from 'food and non-alcoholic beverages'.
Prices here rose 4.2 per cent over the year. Alcohol and tobacco prices roses even more quickly, at 8.5 per cent. The ONS said that food bills have been impacted in the past few month by low vegetable stocks, with a shortage of many items pushing prices up.
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text:
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subset: commoncrawl


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This chapter contains:
You can configure the client connection to your Oracle Database installation by following the procedures in "Configuring the Network Environment" in Oracle Database 2 Day DBA and the Oracle Database Installation Guide for your platform. This chapter explains how you can encrypt data as it travels through the network, and also provides guidelines that you can follow to secure the network connections for Oracle Database.
This section describes how you can tightens security for the client connection to ensure thorough protection. Encrypting network traffic is essential for securing communications with the database.
These guidelines are as follows:
Because authenticating client computers is problematic, typically, user authentication is performed instead. This approach avoids client system issues that include falsified IP addresses, compromised operating systems or applications, and falsified or stolen client system identities. Nevertheless, the following guidelines improve the security of client connections:
Enforce access controls effectively and authenticate clients stringently.
By default, Oracle allows operating system-authenticated logins only over secure connections, which precludes using Oracle Net and a shared server configuration. This default restriction prevents a remote user from impersonating another operating system user over a network connection.
Setting the initialization parameter
REMOTE_OS_AUTHENT to
TRUE forces the database to accept the client, operating-system user name received over a nonsecure connection and use it for account access. (To modify an initialization parameter, see "Modifying the Value of an Initialization Parameter".) Because clients, such as PCs, are not trusted to perform operating system authentication properly, it is poor security practice to use this feature.
The default setting,
REMOTE_OS_AUTHENT = FALSE, creates a more secure configuration that enforces proper, server-based authentication of users connecting to an Oracle database.
Setting this parameter to
FALSE does not mean that users cannot connect remotely. It means that the database will not trust that the client has already authenticated, and will apply its standard authentication processes.
Configure the connection to use encryption.
Oracle network encryption makes eavesdropping difficult. To learn how to configure encryption, see Oracle Database Advanced Security Administrator's Guide.
Set up strong authentication.
See Oracle Database Advanced Security Administrator's Guide for more information about using Kerberos and public key infrastructure (PKI).
Protecting the network and its traffic from inappropriate access or modification is the essence of network security. You should consider all paths the data travels, and assess the threats on each path and node. Then, take steps to lessen or eliminate those threats and the consequences of a security breach. In addition, monitor and audit to detect either increased threat levels or penetration attempts.
To manage network connections, you can use Oracle Net Manager. For an introduction to using Oracle Net Manager, see Oracle Database 2 Day DBA. See also Oracle Database Net Services Administrator's Guide.
The following practices improve network security:
Monitor listener activity.
You can monitor listener activity by using Oracle Enterprise Manager Database Control. In the Database Control home page, under General, click the link for your listener. The Listener page appears. This page provides detailed information, such as the category of alert generated, alert messages, when the alert was triggered, and so on. This page provides other information, such as performance statistics for the listener.
Prevent online administration by requiring the administrator to have the write privilege on the listener password and on the listener.ora file on the server:
Add or modify this line in the
listener.ora file:
RELOAD to reload the configuration.
Use SSL when administering the listener by making the TCPS protocol the first entry in the address list, as follows:
LISTENER= (DESCRIPTION= (ADDRESS_LIST= (ADDRESS= (PROTOCOL=tcps) (HOST = shobeen.us.example.com) (PORT = 8281)))
To administer the listener remotely, define the listener in the
listener.ora file on the client computer. For example, to access listener USER281 remotely, use the following configuration:
user281 = (DESCRIPTION = (ADDRESS = (PROTOCOL = tcps) (HOST = shobeen.us.example.com) (PORT = 8281)) ) )
For more information about the parameters in
listener.ora, see Oracle Database Net Services Reference.
Do not set the listener password.
Ensure that the password has not been set in the
listener.ora file. The local operating system authentication will secure the listener administration. The remote listener administration is disabled when the password has not been set. This prevents brute force attacks of the listener password.
Remember that the listener password has been deprecated in this release, and will not be supported in the next release of Oracle Database.
When a host has multiple IP addresses associated with multiple NIC cards, configure the listener to the specific IP address.
This enables the listener to monitor all the IP addresses. You can restrict the listener to monitor a specific IP address. Oracle recommends that you specify the specific IP addresses on these types of computers, rather than enabling the listener to monitor all IP addresses. Restricting the listener to specific IP addresses helps to prevent an intruder from stealing a TCP end point from the listener process.
Restrict the privileges of the listener, so that it cannot read or write files in the database or the Oracle server address space.
This restriction prevents external procedure agents spawned by the listener (or procedures executed by an agent) from inheriting the ability to perform read or write operations. The owner of this separate listener process should not be the owner that installed Oracle Database or executes the Oracle Database instance (such as
ORACLE, the default owner).
For more information about configuring external procedures in the listener, see Oracle Database Net Services Administrator's Guide.
Use encryption to secure the data in flight.
See "Protecting Data on the Network by Using Network Encryption" to learn about how to protect Oracle data over the network. Oracle Database Advanced Security Administrator's Guide describes network encryption in detail.
Appropriately placed and configured firewalls can prevent outside access to your databases.
Keep the database server behind a firewall. Oracle Database network infrastructure, Oracle Net (formerly known as Net8 and SQL*Net), provides support for a variety of firewalls from various vendors. Supported proxy-enabled firewalls include Gauntlet from Network Associates and Raptor from Axent. Supported packet-filtering firewalls include PIX Firewall from Cisco, and supported stateful inspection firewalls (more sophisticated packet-filtered firewalls) include Firewall-1 from CheckPoint.
Ensure that the firewall is placed outside the network to be protected.
Configure the firewall to accept only those protocols, applications, or client/server sources that you know are safe.
Use a product such as Oracle Connection Manager to multiplex multiple-client, network sessions through a single network connection to the database. It can filter using the source, destination, and host name. This product enables you to ensure that connections are accepted only from physically secure terminals or from application Web servers with known IP addresses. (Filtering using the IP address alone is not enough for authentication, because it can be falsified.)
Prevent unauthorized administration of the Oracle listener.
For more information about the listener, see Oracle Database Net Services Administrator's Guide.
Use the Oracle Net valid node checking security feature to allow or deny access to Oracle server processes from network clients with specified IP addresses. To use this feature, set the following
sqlnet.ora configuration file parameters:
tcp.validnode_checking = YES tcp.excluded_nodes = {list of IP addresses} tcp.invited_nodes = {list of IP addresses}
tcp.validnode_checking parameter enables the feature. The
tcp.excluded_nodes and
tcp.invited_nodes parameters deny and enable specific client IP addresses from making connections to the Oracle listener. This helps to prevent potential Denial of Service attacks.
You can use Oracle Net Manager to configure these parameters. See Oracle Database Net Services Administrator's Guide for more information.
If possible, use Oracle Advanced Security to encrypt network traffic among clients, databases, and application servers. For an introduction to Oracle network encryption, see "Protecting Data on the Network by Using Network Encryption". For detailed information about network encryption, see Oracle Database Advanced Security Administrator's Guide.
Secure the host operating system (the system on which Oracle Database resides).
Secure the host operating system by disabling all unnecessary operating system services. Both UNIX and Windows platforms provide a variety of operating system services, most of which are not necessary for typical deployments. These services include FTP, TFTP, TELNET, and so forth. Be sure to close both the UDP and TCP ports for each service that is being disabled. Disabling one type of port and not the other does not make the operating system more secure.
In addition to protecting information by encrypting it at the database level, you must protect it as it travels across the network.
This section contains:
See Also:Oracle Database Advanced Security Administrator's Guide for detailed information about network encryption
Network encryption refers to encrypting data as it travels across the network between the client and server. The reason you should encrypt data at the network level, and not just the database level, is because data can be exposed on the network level. For example, an intruder can use a network packet sniffer to capture information as it travels on the network, and then spool it to a file for malicious use. Encrypting data on the network prevents this sort of activity.
To encrypt data on the network, you need the following components:
An encryption seed. The encryption seed is a random string of up to 256 characters. It generates the cryptographic keys that encrypts data as it travels across the network.
An encryption algorithm. You can specify any of the supported algorithm types: AES, RC4, DES, or 3DES.
Whether the settings apply to a client or server. You must configure the server and each client to which it connects.
How the client or server should processes the encrypted data. The settings you select (you have four options) must complement both server and client.
A mechanism for configuring the encryption. You can use Oracle Net Manager to configure the encryption. Alternatively, you can edit the
sqlnet.ora configuration file. Both Oracle Net Manager and the
sqlnet.ora file are available in a default Oracle Database installation.
You can configure network encryption by using either Oracle Net Manager or by editing the
sqlnet.ora file. This guide explains how to use Oracle Net Manager to configure network encryption.
To configure network encryption:
On the server computer, start Oracle Net Manager.
UNIX: From
$ORACLE_HOME/bin, enter the following at the command line:
Windows: From the Start menu, click All Programs. Then, click Oracle - HOME_NAME, Configuration and Migration Tools, and then Net Manager
From the Oracle Net Configuration navigation tree, expand Local, and then select Profile.
From the list, select Oracle Advanced Security.
Under Oracle Advanced Security, select the Encryption tab.
The Encryption settings pane appears.
Enter the following settings:
Encryption: From the list, select SERVER to configure the network encryption for the server. (For the client computer, you select CLIENT.)
Encryption Type: Select from the following values to specify the actions of the server (or client) when negotiating encryption and integrity:
accepted: Service will be active if the other side of the connection specifies either required or requested, and there is a compatible algorithm available on the receiving database; it will otherwise be inactive.
rejected: Service must not be active, and the connection will fail if the other side requires any of the methods in this list.
requested: Service will be active if the other side of the connection specifies either accepted, required, or requested, and there is a compatible algorithm available on the other side. Otherwise, the service is inactive.
required: Service must be active, and the connection will fail if the other side specifies rejected, or if there is no compatible algorithm on the other side.
Encryption Seed: Enter a random string of up to 256 characters. Oracle Database uses the encryption seed to generate cryptographic keys. This is required when either encryption or integrity is enabled.
If you choose to use special characters such as a comma [,] or a right parenthesis [)] as a part of the Encryption Seed parameter, enclose the value within single quotation marks.
Available Methods: Select one or more of the following algorithms, and use the move button (>) to move them to the Selected Methods list. The order in which they appear in the Selected Methods list determines the preferred order for negotiation. That is, the first algorithm listed is selected first, and so on.
AES256: Advanced Encryption Standard (AES). AES was approved by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) to replace Data Encryption Standard (DES). AES256 enables you to encrypt a block size of 256 bits.
RC4_256: Rivest Cipher 4 (RC4), which is the most commonly used stream cipher that protects protocols such as Secure Sockets Layer (SSL). RC4_256 enables you to encrypt up to 256 bits of data.
AES192: Enables you to use AES to encrypt a block size of 192 bits.
3DES168: Triple Data Encryption Standard (TDES) with a three-key option. 3DES168 enables you to encrypt up to 168 bits of data.
AES128: Enables you to use AES to encrypt a block size of 128 bits.
RC4_128: Enables you to use RC4 to encrypt up to 128 bits of data.
3DES112: Enables you to use Triple DES with a two-key (112 bit) option.
DES: Data Encryption Standard (DES) 56-bit key. Note that National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) no longer recommends DES.
RC4_40: Enables you to use RC4 to encrypt up to 40 bits of data. (Not recommended.)
DES40: Enables you to use DES to encrypt up to 40 bits of data. (Not recommended.)
From the File menu, select Save Network Configuration, and then select Exit to exit Oracle Net Manager.
Repeat these steps for each client computer that connects to the server.
See Also:
Table 5-1 lists initialization parameters that you can set to better secure user accounts.
Table 5-1 Initialization Parameters Used for Network Security
|Initialization Parameter
|Default Setting
Specifies a prefix that Oracle Database uses to identify users attempting to connect to the database. Oracle Database concatenates the value of this parameter to the beginning of the user operating system account name and password. When a user attempts a connection request, Oracle Database compares the prefixed username with user names in the database.
No default setting
Specifies a network name that resolves to an address or address list of Oracle Net remote listeners (that is, listeners that are not running on the same computer as this instance). The address or address list is specified in the
Specifies whether remote clients will be authenticated with the value of the
Specifies whether operating system roles are allowed for remote clients. The default value,
To modify an initialization parameter, see "Modifying the Value of an Initialization Parameter". For detailed information about initialization parameters, see Oracle Database Reference andOracle Database Administrator's Guide.
Welcome to Oracle Database 2 Day + Security Guide. This guide is for anyone who wants to perform common day-to-day security tasks with Oracle Database.
This preface contains:
Oracle Database 2 Day + Security Guide expands on the security knowledge that you learned in Oracle Database 2 Day DBA to manage security in Oracle Database. The information in this guide applies to all platforms. For platform-specific information, see the installation guide, configuration guide, and platform guide for your platform.
This guide is intended for the following users:
Oracle database administrators who want to acquire database security administrative skills
Database administrators who have some security administrative knowledge but are new to Oracle Database
This guide is not an exhaustive discussion about security. For detailed information about security, see the Oracle Database Security documentation set. This guide does not provide information about security for Oracle E-Business Suite applications. For information about security in the Oracle E-Business Suite applications, see the documentation for those products.
For information about Oracle's commitment to accessibility, visit the Oracle Accessibility Program website at
Access to Oracle Support
Oracle customers have access to electronic support through My Oracle Support. For information, visit
http://www.oracle.com/pls/topic/lookup?ctx=acc&id=info or visit
http://www.oracle.com/pls/topic/lookup?ctx=acc&id=trs if you are hearing impaired.
For more information, use the following resources:
Oracle Database Documentation
For more security-related information, see the following documents in the Oracle Database documentation set:
Many of the examples in this guide use the sample schemas of the seed database, which is installed by default when you install Oracle. See Oracle Database Sample Schemas for information about how these schemas were created and how you can use them.
Oracle Technology Network (OTN)
You can download free release notes, installation documentation, updated versions of this guide, white papers, or other collateral from the Oracle Technology Network (OTN). Visit
For security-specific information on OTN, visit
For the latest version of the Oracle documentation, including this guide, visit
Oracle Documentation Search Engine
To access the database documentation search engine directly, visit
My Oracle Support (formerly OracleMetaLink)
You can find information about security patches, certifications, and the support knowledge base by visiting My Oracle Support at
The following text conventions are used in this document:
|Boldface type indicates graphical user interface elements associated with an action, or terms defined in text or the glossary.
|Italic type indicates book titles, emphasis, or placeholder variables for which you supply particular values.
|Monospace type indicates commands within a paragraph, URLs, code in examples, text that appears on the screen, or text that you enter.
This chapter contains:
Guidelines for Securing Operating System Access to Oracle Database
Initialization Parameters Used for Installation and Configuration Security
After you install Oracle Database, you should secure the database installation and configuration. The methods in this chapter describe commonly used ways to do this, all of which involve restricting permissions to specific areas of the database files.
Oracle Database is available on several operating systems. Consult the following guides for detailed platform-specific information about Oracle Database:
Oracle Database Administrator's Reference for Linux and UNIX-Based Operating Systems
Oracle Database Installation Guide for your platform
When you create a new database, Oracle Database provides the following default security settings:
Enables default auditing settings. See "Using Default Auditing for Security-Relevant SQL Statements and Privileges" for detailed information.
Creates stronger enforcements for new or changed passwords. "Requirements for Creating Passwords" describes the new password requirements.
Removes the CREATE EXTERNAL JOB privilege from the PUBLIC role. For greater security, grant the
CREATE EXTERNAL JOB privilege only to
SYS, database administrators, and those trusted users who need it.
Sets security-related initialization and profile parameter settings. Table 2-1 lists the modified parameter settings.
Table 2-1 Default Security Settings for Initialization and Profile Parameters
|10g Default
|11g Default
Note:If your applications use the default password security settings from Oracle Database 10g Release 2 (10.2), then you can revert to these settings until you modify them to use the Release 11g password security settings. To do so, run the
undopwd.sql script.
After you have modified your applications to conform to the Release 11g password security settings, you can manually update your database to use the password security configuration that suits your business needs, or you can run the
This section describes how you can secure the data dictionary. The data dictionary is a set of database tables that provide information about the database, such as schema definitions or default values.
This section contains:
The Oracle data dictionary is a set of database tables that provides information about the database. A data dictionary has the following contents:
The names of Oracle Database users
Privileges and roles granted to each user
The definitions of all schema objects in the database (tables, views, indexes, clusters, synonyms, sequences, procedures, functions, packages, triggers, and so on)
The amount of space allocated for, and is currently used by, the schema objects
Default values for columns
Integrity constraint information
Auditing information, such as who has accessed or updated various schema objects
Other general database information
The data dictionary tables and views for a given database are stored in the
SYSTEM tablespace for that database. All the data dictionary tables and views for a given database are owned by the user
SYS. Connecting to the database with the
SYSDBA privilege gives full access to the data dictionary. Oracle strongly recommends limiting access to the
SYSDBA privilege to only those operations necessary such as patching and other administrative operations. The data dictionary is central to every Oracle database.
You can view the contents of the data dictionary by querying data dictionary views, which are described in Oracle Database Reference. Be aware that not all objects in the data dictionary are exposed to users. A subset of data dictionary objects, such as those beginning with
USER_% are exposed as read only to all database users.
Example 2-1 shows how you can find a list of database views specific to the data dictionary by querying the
DICTIONARY view.
You can protect the data dictionary by setting the
O7_DICTIONARY_ACCESSIBILITY initialization parameter to
FALSE. This parameter prevents users who have the
ANY system privilege from using those privileges on the data dictionary, that is, on objects in the
SYS schema.
Oracle Database provides highly granular privileges. One such privilege, commonly referred to as the
ANY privilege, is typically granted to only application owners and individual database administrators. For example, you could grant the
DROP ANY TABLE privilege to an application owner. You can protect the Oracle data dictionary from accidental or malicious use of the
ANY privilege by turning on or off the
07_DICTIONARY_ACCESSIBILITY initialization parameter.
To enable data dictionary protection:
Start Oracle Enterprise Manager Database Control (Database Control).
See Oracle Database 2 Day DBA for instructions about how to start Database Control.
Log in as
SYS and connect with the
SYSDBA privilege.
User Name: Enter the name of a user who has administrative privileges. In this case, you enter
Password: Enter the
SYS user's password.
Connect As: From the list, select SYSDBA.
The Oracle Enterprise Manager Database Home page (Database Home page) appears.
Click Server to display the Server subpage.
In the Database Configuration section, click Initialization Parameters.
The Initialization Parameters page appears.
In the list, search for
In the Name field, enter
O7_ (the letter
O), and then click Go. You can enter the first few characters of a parameter name. In this case,
O7_ displays the
O7_DICTIONARY_ACCESSIBILTY parameter.
Depending on the parameter, you may have to modify the value from the SPFile subpage. Click the SPFile tab to display the SPFile subpage.
Set the value for
O7_DICTIONARY_ACCESSIBILTY to
Click Apply.
Restart the Oracle Database instance.
Click the Database Instance link.
Click Home to display the Database Control home page.
Under General, click Shutdown.
In the Startup/Shutdown Credentials page, enter your credentials.
See Oracle Database 2 Day DBA for more information.
After the shutdown completes, click Startup.
You can secure access to Oracle Database on the operating system level by following these guidelines:
Limit the privileges of the operating system accounts (administrative, root-privileged, or DBA) on the Oracle Database host (physical computer). Only grant the user the least number of privileges needed to perform his or her tasks.
Restrict the ability to modify the default file and directory permissions for the Oracle Database home (installation) directory or its contents. Even privileged operating system users and the Oracle owner should not modify these permissions, unless instructed otherwise by Oracle.
Restrict symbolic links. Ensure that when you provide a path or file to the database, neither the file nor any part of the path is modifiable by an untrusted user. The file and all components of the path should be owned by the database administrator or some trusted account, such as root.
This recommendation applies to all types of files: data files, log files, trace files, external tables, BFILEs, and so on.
Many Oracle Database products use run-time facilities such as Oracle Java Virtual Machine (OJVM). Do not assign all permissions to a database run-time facility. Instead, grant specific permissions to the explicit document root file paths for facilities that might run files and packages outside the database.
Here is an example of a vulnerable run-time call, in which an individual file (in bold typeface) is specified:
call dbms_java.grant_permission('wsmith',
The following example is a better (more secure) run-time call, because by specifying a directory path (in bold typeface), it protects all files within the directory.
call dbms_java.grant_permission('wsmith',
Table 2-2 lists initialization parameters that you can set to better secure your Oracle Database installation and configuration.
Table 2-2 Initialization Parameters Used for Installation and Configuration Security
|Initialization Parameter
|Default Setting
Controls the display of the product version information, such as the release number, in a client connection. An intruder could use the database release number to find information about security vulnerabilities that may be present in the database software. You can enable or disable the detailed product version display by setting this parameter.
See Oracle Database Security Guide for more information about this and similar parameters. Oracle Database Reference describes this parameter in detail.
Controls restrictions on
See Also:Oracle Database Reference for more information about initialization parameters
This section explains how to use Database Control to modify the value of an initialization parameter. To find detailed information about the initialization parameters available, see Oracle Database Reference.
To modify the value of an initialization parameter:
Start Database Control.
Log in as user
SYS with the
SYSDBA privilege.
User Name:
Password: Enter your password.
Connect As:
Click Server to display the Server subpage.
In the Database Configuration section, click Initialization Parameters.
The Initialization Parameters page appears.
In the Name field, enter the name of the parameter to change, and then click Go.
You can enter the first few letters of the parameter, for example,
SEC_RETURN if you are searching for the
SEC_RETURN_SERVER_RELEASE_NUMBER parameter. Alternatively, you can scroll down the list of parameters to find the parameter you want to change.
Depending on the parameter, you might have to modify the value from the SPFile subpage. Click the SPFile tab to display the SPFile subpage.
In the Value field, either enter the new value or if a list is presented, select from the list.
Click Apply.
If the parameter is static, restart the Oracle Database instance.
To find out if an initialization parameter is static, check its description in Oracle Database Reference. If the Modifiable setting in its summary table shows No, then you must restart the database instance.
Click the Database Instance link.
Click Home to display the Database Control home page.
Under General, click Shutdown.
In the Startup/Shutdown Credentials page, enter your credentials.
See Oracle Database 2 Day DBA for more information.
After the shutdown completes, click Startup.


text:
| You
are in the MOST Phase I website (1994-2003).
The MOST Phase II website is available at: www.unesco.org/shs/most.
Discussion Paper No. 42
Prepared for the
World Conference on Science
Budapest, Hungary, 26 June-1 July 1999
|This document develops and articulates issues of relevance to the Forum II "Science in Society: Towards a New Contract" of the World Conference on Science, held in Budapest, Hungary, 26 June-1 July 1999. These issues deal particularly with the topics and themes to be explored and discussed during several afternoon thematic meetings on 28 June 1999: "Setting priorities in a new socio-economic context"; "Towards a new social contract between for science"; "Science, industry and knowledge as public good", "Science and democracy" and "Science for development". Its purpose is to contribute to the debate on these issues.
Table of Contents1 - Transformations *
2 - From a new socio-economic context to a new economic model for science *
3 - New relations with industry *
4 - A first assessment *
4.2 - Proprietary science and development issues *
4.3 - The crisis in basic research: short-term policies and restricting knowledge *
4.4 - Efficient in the short term, but... *
4.5 - Towards the creation of a new job market in science *
5.2 - Keeping the basic principles of knowledge openness and research
for the long term *
5.3 - The need for new governance structures *
5.4 - Science and Democracy *
In the rich countries, slower economic growth and limited increase in the budgets of central governments have placed severe constraints on public spending on long-term science. Some of the key challenges facing the international community for the 21st century relate to: the decline of national security motivations for fundamental research; the increasingly widespread participation of the private sector in scientific research; the urgent need for enhanced relations between scientists and lay people.
Some issues are also crucial for both developing countries and the transition economies. For the first time in history a scientific revolution is mostly driven by the private sector. There is no doubt that such a privatisation of scientific knowledge (knowledge as a market good vs. as a common good) can exacerbate the gap between developed and developing countries. Privatising knowledge has undesirable effects, because it obstructs the international dissemination of socially important inventions, especially where developing countries are concerned. There is thus an urgent need for devising appropriate science policies and intellectual property rights regimes that give adequate consideration to knowledge dissemination and use by developing countries. A big challenge for the next century is to avoid that the issue of proprietary science becomes a real threat for open science. This is a challenge for both developed and developing countries.
One of the main goals of the World Conference on Sciences (WCS) Forum
II is to evaluate such transformations in order to derive potential consequences
and policy implications. Because science is a domain which is at the intersection
between issues of competitiveness and economic development on the one hand,
and issues related to the very foundation of the human nature, on the other,
such assessments must be carried out with reference to economics, social
equity and ethics.
The current context is characterized by very tight state budget restrictions, in which the increasing cost of science is a crucial issue. The price of the scientific personnel and the costs of increasingly sophisticated laboratory facilities have been rising faster than the prices of the general run of equipment and structures used in the goods producing sectors. In the absence of other changes, this trend would suffice to absorb an increasing fraction of national income and public expenditures in the budget for science. From now on, in some cases, industry will step in, as with the link-up between Craig Venter and Perkin Ellmer in the area of human genome sequencing. The huge concentration of resources this link-up involves pushes publicly-funded research in the United States and Europe several steps backward.
But industry will enter selectively in the few scientific areas in which expected private returns are high and quite immediate. In most areas, private firms have switched their priorities and have abandoned a large portion of basic research to focus on short-term research and development (R & D) in areas where they can make money quickly. The focus on daily movements of stock prices encourages policies which can produce short-term financial results, to the detriment of long-term projects which would improve a firm's competitive position.
This new situation means that science is to pay much more attention to the needs of the market. The linear model has been criticised for being far too simplistic and for putting a big distance between science and the market. But, as argued by P. A. David (1998), the innovation policies which have gradually developed in the OECD countries are just as simplistic. The new requirement of being "close to market rationale" has turned the linear model on its head and replaced the innocent notion of scientific progress by an equally naive vision of market forces. Like the old linear model, the new approach claims that the driving forces flow in one direction only. However, now the source is the market, which encourages private innovation, which in turn means looking for inventions that will make money. Ultimately, it determines which areas of basic science are economically relevant (David, 1998). Exercises in "technology foresight" became the main instrument in taming scientific activity, and subjecting it to market requirements.
This new model, where science is almost completely at the beck and call
of the market, induces university researchers to take the same attitude
towards intellectual property as private firms. A turning-point in this
was the 1980 Bayh-Dole Act in the United States, which allows universities
to patent findings that have been publicly-financed. Thus, public research
is being privatised and the area of open science continues to shrink. Such
institutional changes, found in most OECD countries, in turn, strengthen
the new model by giving universities the means to boost their finances
and show they can "play ball."
Such shifts, of course, offer new opportunities for academic research.
Basic public research can benefit greatly from improved ties with industry.
But universities must adapt to the laws of the market. They are applying
for a lot more patents and more knowledge is being held back, which might
seem to be a movement away from open science. Argument has arisen about
whether the necessary adjustment of academic research to market forces
has gone too far (Stephan, 1996). Some experts fear that too close an association
between universities and industry will undermine the commitment of universities
to basic, curiosity-driven research and erode the principle of full disclosure
of research findings which has improved the quality of research and cumulative
and collective scientific advance. As Cohen, Florida and Goe (1994) point
out: "Largely to obtain industry funding, universities have weakened
their long-held commitment to the free flow of information and the full
public disclosure of research findings. Yet the costs associated with the
weakening of these traditional academic norms appears to be offset, at
least to some extent, by the benefits of more effective mechanisms for
advancing commercial technology."
Biomedical research is a good example of the passage from the public to the private domain. In the previous situation, the government funded basic research and required full and speedy dissemination of findings. Biomedical discoveries were not patented and were freely used to develop diagnostic products and medicines. The trend towards privatizing basic research has led to a tremendous number of private rights, especially patents, being established over basic knowledge.
This is an ambivalent phenomenon: on one side, this is good news for the tax payer! Any new commitment of the private sector to undertake research previously funded on a public base relieves the tax payer of the burden. And moreover privatisation has the potential to accelerate the pace of innovation. On the other side, some analysts are convinced that this will lead to innovation being stifled almost automatically and to under-use of knowledge produced, in a scenario known as "the tragedy of anti-commons."
In the case of biomedical research, major public institutions and universities have set up arrangements for technology transfer which provide for patenting discoveries and granting production licences. Applying for a patent seems to be considered a right by state-funded researchers, these days. But it creates many obstacles. For example, as Heller and Eisenberg (1998) have shown, one obstacle is caused by breaking up the knowledge, through granting rights to fragments of it before the commercial application has been identified. Previously, a patent concerned the genes involved in the product, such as a therapeutic protein or a diagnostic test. The proliferation of patents on fragments of knowledge, many held by different parties, greatly complicates the co-ordination required for development of a product. If it is too difficult or expensive to acquire all the licences needed, the product will simply not be elaborated.
The argument developed here is not only an ethical one. This is also pure economics: too many private rights will require costly transactions to bundle licenses together before a firm can have an effective right to develop the product. In such a situation, the risk of under-using knowledge and simply abandoning socially desirable fields of discoveries is high. In this perspective, economics and ethics are going hand with hand each one providing a rationale for regulating property rights.
4.2 - Proprietary science and development issues
The current general tendency of innovation and technical progress is ambivalent. Such an ambivalence is particularly striking from the point of view of developing countries.
On the one hand, the current technological breakthroughs have the potential to provide a great impetus to development and economic growth in many areas. For instance, the new wave of inventions in biological sciences has a great potential to improve agricultural production at the small-holder level in developing countries (the application of biological sciences could lead to plants that are more drought-resistant, more salt-tolerant, more resistant to pests without use of pesticides, etc..).
On the other hand, however, the current technological breakthroughs are, for the first time, driven by proprietary science (by that we mean, for example, enormous biotechnology investments by the private sector) and, of course the private sector would not invest capital on such a large scale if there was no possibility of recouping it with the protection of intellectual property.
The basic rationale for creating intellectual property rights is not disputable; almost everyone accepts that without proper legal protection for innovative ideas, the private sector would not invest in the research needed to produce them, as it would lack the means to secure profits on its investment. But there are cases in which the tendency towards the "privatization of knowledge" is going too far, impeding dramatically the international dissemination of useful knowledge. Writing the international rules in such a way that those who benefit from them are those who are already the most economically powerful is not in the best interests of those who are largely excluded. Indeed, the current rules on intellectual property rights may in fact be hindering the technological development of developing countries. See for example the current discussions between the World Trade Organization (WTO) and the African Intellectual Property Organization, to oblige the latter's members to "protect" plant varieties, which would mean to sign away the right of millions of small farmers to save and exchange crop seed. While such a legislation is in conformity with a provision in the WTO that obliges such plant varieties to be protected, it will create severe problems for developing countries. In such cases, strengthening intellectual property rights and extending exclusive rights to basic or generic knowledge obstructs progress in general and clashes directly with the great opportunities for all, provided by the new technological revolution.
Another problem concerns the fact that private companies may abandon some fields of research when the expected profitability diminishes, even if the expected social return remains very high. Let us give a few examples:
The growing power of the market over science affects both the principle of disclosure (open science) and the content of research programmes and the kind of knowledge produced.
First, less "open" practices, such as patents and the habit of secrecy, are appearing in some areas of state-funded basic research. There are many signs of such a shift. Leaving aside the frequent lapses and rule-bending which have always been part of open science, what is important today is establishing new norms of behaviour entailing significant restrictions on the disclosure and distribution of scientific knowledge. This is a consequence of the effort to move basic scientific research closer to the market. These new policies have, thus, considerable potential to increase the exclusivity of academic research results and to reduce the distribution of knowledge. The institution of open science is an incentive system that differs markedly from commercial incentive systems in its implications for knowledge distribution. The institutions of commercial research and the way it is organised inevitably clash with the principles of "open" research.
Second, growing links between universities and industry can modify the nature of university research, which is also coming under pressure from demands for short-term work and immediate commercial applications. Three US economists looked at patents granted to US universities and found that the research done was less and less important and less general, suggesting a trend to more applied research (Henderson, Jaffe and Trajtenberg, 1998). Stronger university-industry ties are likely to push university research towards shorter term, less risky activity.
What should be quite clear is that the future is not predictable. The function of a university is not carved in stone and the way it changes depends very much on how institutions are regarded in each country. Some universities will become a straight offshoot of industry, while others will retain a degree of independence, as places where independent, long term research is still carried out, even though they forge strong links with industry. But those that bind themselves too closely to industry will undergo a change: "For example, it turns out that when compared with faculty that did not have as much industrial support, those with 65% or more industrial support tend to carry out research that is more often secret, that is more often oriented toward commercial interests, and that is less academically productive. Surprise, surprise!" (Kurland, 1997, 761).
4.4 - Efficient in the short term, but...
How efficient is the new world of privatised science? It depends whether the assessment is for the short, or the long term.
Efficiency definitely increases in the short term. In a firm, it means a tighter choice of projects, dropping the most doubtful ones, incorporating R & D into the product development division and establishing stricter cost controls, all of which automatically leads to a more efficient short-term allocation of resources. The growing tendency to farm out research is part of this trend. The cosiness between industry and universities encourages the latter to adopt more effective ways to market their "products."
Prediction is harder when it comes to the long term. The switch towards short-term research projects involving little risk and very quick returns can be extremely harmful to long-term growth, which is greatly influenced by science and basic research. In theory, short-term research, aiming at small differentiation between products, turns up fewer positive "externalities" than research which aims to come up with basic knowledge which has broad applications and leads to further developments. The risk of under-using discoveries, due to the obstacles caused by multiple rights of ownership, is already evident in some sectors (see below). The "closing off" of knowledge the narrower dissemination of it also harms the accumulation and progress of knowledge and innovation, as well as co-operation between parties involved.
4.5 - Towards the creation of a new job market in science
This new situation, where science is increasingly market-dependent, needs a job market for scientists to help scientific firms cope with the constant adjustments they have to make to keep abreast of the market. A popular book (Gibbons et al., 1994) deals with this question and recommends more flexibility in assembling, reshuffling and quickly disbanding research teams. This, the book notes, contrasts with the earlier model based on rigid, hierarchical elements, such as a central research laboratory, a specialised scientific institution or a university department based on a strictly defined scientific field. The old model, the authors say, is quite out of date and efforts to justify keeping it alive are very backward-looking. Attributes of the new model are worded attractively, while those of the old model are often oversimplified and sound less attractive (Kazancigil, 1998). This attempt to come up with a new model aims especially to make the scientific jobs market work more like the general labour market, as it features in neo-liberal style employment policies. As Gibbons et al. suggest:
There is, thus, a need for constructing a new social contract taking into consideration the key features of the scientific enterprise (openness, long-term research, equity issues), while recognizing the importance of increasing the collaboration with industry, as well as the need for joint research agendas between the natural and social sciences acting as equal partners (the interaction between the natural sciences and technology, and the society cannot be optimized unless social sciences participate in the game, on their own rights, with adequate resources). Such a social contract also needs to specify certain new targets (to take precedence over the objective of reinforcing military power). It should allow to build, above all, richer relations between scientists and lay people as well as between rich and developing countries.
In a path-breaking paper, J. Lubchenco (1998) speaks in favour of the building of a new social contract for science oriented towards the production of scientific knowledge to understand and manage the biosphere. Arguments she provides about the consequences of human domination of Earth are so convincing that no one could dispute the point made in that paper: we need more science and technology in a broad spectrum of areas as well as through interdisciplinary research, to cope with most of the environmental challenges of the new century. It is, however, important to note that environment should not be the only issue for the new social contract; development matters equally. This is important to consider, because most of the policy discussions in international fora increase the perception of at least a tension between the environmental challenge and the development issue; environmental challenges are often being perceived as an obsession for rich countries, whereas the priority of developing countries is to struggle against poverty. Now, the point is that science and technology are unique in offering the possibility to reconcile and make compatible the need for environmental strategies and the need for economic development in the global world. This is to be the substance of a new social contract for science: managing in an integrative manner both issues, avoiding that environmental objectives be detrimental to economic development. In other words, socio-economic sustainability should be considered on an equal footing with environmental sustainability. In this problématique, the unsustainable consumption patterns of the North is a central issue to be tackled.
5.2 - Keeping the basic principles of knowledge openness and research for the long term
On openness
It is important to recognize that a major part of basic scientific research is carried out under an open principle new knowledge is disseminated largely and quickly. Distributing scientific information is one means of increasing the efficiency of scientific investigation since it can serve to reduce duplicative or wasteful lines of research and to increase the probability of new fruitful combinations of ideas and projects. Economists explain that the principle of open science provides private incentives to generate public goods and has demonstrated its effectiveness as an incentive system (Dasgupta and David, 1994). Thus, standards of conduct regarding disclosure and investigation of the efficacy of the distribution of knowledge become the first priority in attempting to ensure that public expenditures on science generate value for the tax payer (David, Foray and Steinmueller, 1996).
But the new context, where proprietary science and intensive privatization of knowledge clash directly with the conditions for knowledge dissemination and access, make it very difficult to meet such a challenge.
We are living in an economic world in which the present value of future benefits are very low. Real rates of interest have been at historically high levels since the early 1990s, reflecting a social preference for current consumption instead of investment for the future. Science, like other activities oriented towards long term-achievements thus has difficulty in getting a large basis for investment.
In such a context (in which the present value of future benefits are very low ), the use of cost-benefits (c/b) analysis cannot provide a relevant basis for decision-making (Steinmueller, 1995): since long-term benefits are worth little to the present generation, there is little basis for investment. C/b analysis is, therefore, highly opportunistic: past generations cannot revoke their bequests and future generations cannot protest against our failure to provide for their welfare.
There is, thus, a need for new approaches such as the one based on inter-generational equity: future generations have the right to demand a knowledge legacy, just as we currently benefit from knowledge produced by past generations. Bequest results from a substitution of current consumption by an accumulation of resources to be passed on to future generations. Our current ability to produce and consume reflects past contributions to the current stock of scientific knowledge. The issues addressed by Steinmueller (1995) are of great importance: Should our contributions to future generations be smaller, the same or larger than past generations (partially inadvertent) contributions to our own age? What kinds of allocation mechanisms can guarantee the respect of such rights? How to warrant those social functions dealing with the generation and preservation of diversity, the maintenance of access rights to critical knowledge and data (such as human genome data), the service of non-solvent markets?
It is well known that the market is not the appropriate institution to solve such questions and that it is a responsibility of the public institutions to facilitate this inter-generational and inter-spatial distribution of resources.
5.3 - The need for new governance structures
On international co-operation
The global science system has been strained by the rising costs of maintaining the capability to do basic science, which have pressed against tightening national budgets. Given this trend as well as the new context of slower growth of public budget and given the inherent limitations of industry funding and charity mechanisms, there is an urgent need for generating new mechanisms for funding science and, in more general terms, for implementing more effective governance structures.
The issue of improving international co-ordination and co-operation must be considered here. This is particularly important in the case of certain kinds of research, requiring large facilities (experimental research in the field of high energy particle physics) or large programmes (human genome project). The size of certain large facilities has made it simply unfeasible for many nations to maintain research activity or to run sensibly university training for their own graduate students in a growing number of fields except by entering into co-operative arrangements for the construction and operation of large scientific facilities.
In fact, there is much less basic research and big science collaboration than might be expected given the presumed benefits of and incentives for co-operation, although there is substantial and growing international collaboration among industrial firms. International co-operation requiring substantial and/or reliable funding have not grown in scale commensurate with the increasing costs of research, the international nature of emerging science and technology-rich issues, the spread of scientific competence, or the growing ease of communications.
International co-ordination must involve developing countries. Until now, scientific priorities were not decided through international co-ordination and major conflicts on the final use of the products of science occurred. In February of this year, the U.N. Conference on Biosafety held in Cartagena (Colombia) failed to reach an agreement on international rules to regulate the huge trade in genetically modified foods and crops. This conference was characterized by a sharp polarization between industrialized and developing countries over the Biosafety Protocol. The U.S.A. joined by other top grain-exporting countries, rejected calls by other nations for stricter controls on such foods and crops.
The time is gone when developing countries were content with financial compensation. They now request to contribute to the writing of the rules.
On the use of information and communication technologies (ICTs)
The extensive use of ICTs in the conduct of science as a collective enterprise should also be considered here. In economic terms, they have helped reduce research costs by making collectively available experimental data, much of which is extraordinarily expensive to gather (e.g. space missions) or which represents a unique resource for studying dynamic systems (e.g. satellite and oceanic observation). Collective use of this data is leading to new institutional configurations while at the same time, on the more interpersonal level, new communication infrastructures are being set up to support direct electronic exchanges amongst researchers. In short, science can now be considered as a test-bed for addressing some of the most complex technical, economic, social and organizational issues of teleworking. Despite the enormous potential of ICTs for facilitating and enhancing scientific investigation, it is important to note that there are great differences among disciplines and national research communities in the actual use of these technologies. While the growing use of ICTs is creating considerably larger stocks of scientific knowledge, much of this knowledge may remain inaccessible to other researchers, even if they were granted free and unlimited access to this scientific information. A clear distinction is generally made in academic circles between information and knowledge; this often becomes blurred in talk about the emergence of the information society, and the new tools it is developing for knowledge management. It is also recognized that the potential of ICTs supporting remote access to large scale facilities has not yet been exploited to define more efficient patterns of scientific specialization for each country respectively.
Democracy within the global scientific community
The opportunities for constructive change in the global scientific community appear to be very large, despite growing financial pressures and some diminution of the public commitment to the scientific enterprise. The growth of international co-operative arrangements in science and the increasing use of information and communication technologies will increase linkages within research networks and reduce the distance between researchers. There seems little doubt that this process will lead to a growing interest in reforms aimed at increasing the integration of resource allocation, research planning and scientific information distribution. Perhaps the most significant international challenge is the improvement in the global cohesion of the scientific community, in ascertaining that the division of labour among researchers reflects their ability to contribute to the scientific enterprise rather than the wealth or dominance of their country. The aim of policies in this area should, in the first instance, be to avoid increasing the disparities and disadvantages that are already present. In the second instance, the aim is to develop realistic and practical policies for lessening disadvantages, particularly where these disadvantages interfere with the transmission and use of scientific information.
Important policy issues deal with the questions: how can access and participation be broadened to include researchers from countries that are outside the main coalitions of the scientific power? What methods can be adopted to improve the international distribution of scientific information and reduce the barriers to the participation of researchers in global scientific networks? A dilemma in this area is the policy of making major scientific equipment and research programmes available to scientists from countries which do not help to pay for such resources. Should these countries pay an access fee or should the best possible balance be struck between the supply of equipment and the supply of expertise, regardless of the cost? The argument is between those who favour a small charge, which could lead to under-use of the resources, and those who want to maximise the social benefit by giving free access (David, 1997). The interest of the global community of nations and of scientists would be that the latter practice prevail.
Towards richer relations between scientists and lay people
In a recent paper, M. Callon (1997) identifies three steps in the progressive involvement of societies into the scientific debate. At the first stage, there is a strong separation between scientists and citizens. At this stage, knowledge is universal and general (scientists do not recognize the value of local know-how as a source for learning); the dynamics of science is characterized by internal agreements and conflicts among scientists. At the second stage, a space for public debate is built and groups of citizens can be involved in some decision processes (energy policy, environment, health); local knowledge is recognized as valuable for elaborating scientific knowledge. The problems here lie in the representativeness issue; that is, who is going to speak in the name of society? The third stage is characterized by an active participation of citizens in the production of knowledge (as in the process of collecting clinical data). By participating in the collective action of production and dissemination of the knowledge concerning it, the group of lay people (for instance the parents of children suffering from a rare genetic disease) does not experience its relationship with specialists in a mode of trust or mistrust since it is on an equal footing with them. Nor does it, as in the second stage, merely re-affirm a threatened identity; rather, it participates in the construction of the scientific knowledge.
Such an evolution towards the three stages is clearly shaped (accelerated, impeded) by the level of development of countries, by the existence of a strong democratic tradition and also by the perception of the government of science as a "way to political power". It is also clear that the third stage seems to be limited to few scientific domains such as some kinds of medical investigations requiring decentralized and permanent collection of data about disease. Richer relations between scientists and lay people can develop by promoting such evolutions towards stage 2 and, in a few cases, by reaching the stage of collective action (between scientists and non scientists) to produce the scientific knowledge.
More generally, there is a need to make the policy-making and resource-allocation processes, as well as research choices of scientific communities much more transparent. The public at large should be better informed about and allowed to participate in the "politics" of science. Certain recent initiatives, such as the "Consensus Conferences", consultations of citizens, including through popular referenda, on some issues where public health is involved (such as biotechnologies and the dissemination of genetically modified organisms), constitute models to be generalized.
About the authorsDominique Foray is Research Director at the Centre National de Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) and professor at Université Paris Dauphine and Forum Engelberg.
Ali Kazancigil is Director of the Division of Social Sciences, Policy and Research, and Executive Secretary of the Management of Social Transformations (MOST) Programme, UNESCO, Paris.
The opinions expressed in this publication are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of UNESCO.
The frontiers and boundaries on maps published in this series do not imply official endorsement or acceptance by UNESCO or the United Nations.
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Regional News Briefs
Police identify victims of 2 fatal shootings
Milwaukee police on Monday identified the victims of two separate fatal shootings this month.
■ Earl W. Potts, 54, of Milwaukee was shot and killed about 7:30 p.m. Friday in the 1500 block of W. Orchard St., a police spokesman said. No arrests have been made, and the circumstances of the shooting remain under investigation.
■ Lamar A. Nash, 35, of Milwaukee was shot just before 10 p.m. March 10 and died of his wounds Friday, according to police. The shooting occurred in the 5100 block of N. 39th St. No suspects are in custody.
7 suspects arrested
in weekend OWI patrol
The Milwaukee County sheriff's office arrested seven drunken-driving suspects, including two repeat offenders who were driving the wrong way, during Operation Drive Sober over the weekend.
One of the people accused of driving the wrong way was Charles Hawes Jr., 50, of Oconomowoc, who was driving west in the eastbound lanes of Clybourn St. near 16th St. in Milwaukee about 1:20 a.m. Sunday, a sheriff's office news release says.
A preliminary breath test showed Hawes' blood-alcohol level at 0.14 — well over the 0.08 considered proof of intoxication in Wisconsin. Deputies also found cans of beer in a cooler in the front seat. Hawes has eight prior drunken-driving convictions, dating back to 1982, officials said.
The Milwaukee County district attorney's office says charges prior to 1989 cannot be considered in charging, the news release states, so this incident will be charged as a seventh offense. The sheriff's office also is seeking a felony charge of second-degree recklessly endangering safety.
Hawes was the second person arrested last weekend on accusations of wrong-way driving. A deputy stopped a vehicle driven by Sherman Russell about 10:30 p.m. Saturday when the vehicle was seen traveling north in the southbound lanes of Swan Blvd. in Wauwatosa, officials said.
Russell, 56, of Milwaukee, had a preliminary breath test of 0.19 and was arrested on suspicion of third-offense drunken driving and second-degree recklessly endangering safety.
Man wounded
in south side shooting
A 26-year-old man was wounded Monday in a shooting on Milwaukee's south side that investigators believe was drug-related.
The shooting was reported shortly after 2 p.m. in the parking lot of an apartment building in the 2400 block of S. 43rd St., according to Milwaukee police.
The man was taken to a hospital with injuries that are not life-threatening, and no suspects were in custody, police said.
Man admits stopping young girls in Mequon
Mequon police say a 19-year-old man arrested Monday on suspicion of impersonating a peace officer is the same man who displayed a badge after twice stopping two girls walking to a park.
Investigators also will seek charges of carrying a concealed weapon and possession of a controlled substance against the West Bend man, according to a news release from Mequon police.
According to the release, the man admitted pulling up to the girls, ages 10 and 11, in a vehicle March 10 in the 3900 block of Freistadt Road.
The man asked the girls their ages and where they went to school before displaying a badge.
The man left, but drove past the park entrance a couple of times before entering the park, stopping the girls again and asking them more questions.
He eventually left the area without incident.
The man has been a reserve officer/explorer for other law enforcement agencies in Ozaukee and Washington counties, and there was no information that he intended to harm the girls, according to the release.
Manitowoc woman
dies in single-car crash
A 22-year-old Manitowoc woman was fatally injured Monday in a one-car crash in Manitowoc County, the sheriff's office said.
Shortly after midnight the woman lost control of a 1999 Chevy Malibu that was northbound on state Highway 42 just south of Newtonburg Road in the Town of Newton, according to a sheriff's office news release.
The vehicle traveled over the right shoulder and overturned before striking a flower bed in a yard.
3 Dane County crash victims identified
The Dane County medical examiner's office on Monday identified three people who died after two traffic crashes in the county last weekend.
Michael Dykstra, 51, of Fall River, was killed in a crash on Saturday that occurred around 7:30 p.m. on Highway 73 and Highway TT in York. The autopsy showed he died of injuries from the crash, which is still under investigation.
Three others were injured and authorities say alcohol was a factor.
Two men killed in a single-vehicle crash on Highway 19 at Walter Drive in Westport were identified as passenger Joseph Douglas Dickenson, 28, of La Crosse and driver Sebastian Creswell, 26, of Tyler, Texas.
The crash, in which the car missed a curve and struck a mailbox and large tree, occurred around 1:45 a.m. Saturday. Dickenson was pronounced dead at the scene from crash injuries, an autopsy showed. Creswell was flown to a hospital, where he died several hours later. Authorities said alcohol may be a factor.
Railroad museum declines $1 million offer
A rare World War II locomotive is expected to return to the National Railroad Museum in Ashwaubenon this summer, despite a $1 million offer for it to remain in Great Britain, the Green Bay Press-Gazette reports.
The British-made steam engine, a gift from Great Britain to the U.S., was given to the museum in 1964 and has been on loan for the past two years at a museum in England.
A $1 million check sent from a British businessman to the National Railroad Museum's former board president was returned.
The green locomotive is named after President Dwight Eisenhower, who used a locomotive, tender and two rail cars as a mobile command headquarters in England during the planning for the 1944 D-Day invasion.
Sex offender accused
of groping Madison man
A 43-year-old convicted sex offender was arrested after he allegedly groped a man inside a mall restroom, Madison police said Monday.
The victim, a 21-year-old Madison man, told police he had a casual conversation with the 43-year-old man before both entered the restroom at the East Towne Mall about 12:30 p.m. Saturday, according to a police incident report.
Once they were inside, the suspect inappropriately grabbed the 21-year-old, telling him that he had just gotten "out of the pen," reports stated. The victim broke free and called Madison police.
The man faces a tentative charge of second-degree sexual assault, police said.
From staff and wire reports


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"We don't know what's going to happen," he told Sharon Osbourne.
He wasn't joking. One surprise guest turned out to be Lady Gaga, who teased her appearance just hours before the free show, which was streamed live by AOL.
"Give it up for this wonderful man who's inspired people for generations," Gaga said while taking the stage in a blue dress and Dolly Parton-esque hair. "Wonderful Crazy Night is a beautiful record. And thank you so much for the Elton John AIDS Foundation. We all appreciate it so much, E."
John, 68, told Osbourne the concert was his husband's idea – a way of giving back to the city of West Hollywood, who he said had been "so amazing" to the couple, who host their annual Oscars bash in the neighborhood.
"And so we're doing it to a) say thank you to them; b) because it's a cool thing to do," John told Osbourne.
Gaga's appearance alongside John came one day before she could join him in the ranks of Oscar-winning pop stars (and soon after the pair announced they were collaborating on Gaga's next album").
The Born This Way singer is nominated for Best Original Song at the Academy Awards, for "'Til It Happens to You," which she wrote with Diane Warren for the documentary The Hunting Ground, about sexual assaults on school campuses.
Reporting by PATRICK GOMEZ


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His use of large quantities of garlic, hot sauce, or booze seems to cause the most audience excitement - as if they are shocking or naughty substances. That has grown tiresome.
She should try taping a show in the South. His audience would only be shocked if he *didn't* include garlic, hot sauce, or booze.


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