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A FEDERAL appeal court in the US on 15 May overturned a temporary injunction
halting work on the Mount Graham Observatory in Arizona because it threatens
endangered red squirrels which live only on the mountain (This Week, 7 April).

However, the legal battles are far from over. The judge who halted construction
can issue a permanent ban, after a final hearing set for 16 July. The University
of Arizona hopes to begin construction of the telescope after a Congressional
hearing set for 26 June, but an official of the Sierra Club, a leading conservation
body in the US, says: ‘I think we’re going to win (the case before the district
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The US General Accounting Office is also investigating the controversy.
The squirrels inhabit the top of the mountain, the proposed site of the
observatory.