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1482886_1 | A River Diverted, the Sea Rushes In | glacial origins in the Himalayas to its mouth at the Arabian Sea, the Indus and its tributaries support the world's largest system of irrigation canals. The region has fertile soils but little rain. The waters of the Indus basin sustain scores of millions of people in northwest India and literally underwrite the nation of Pakistan, population 145 million and growing. But the progressive blocking and consumption of those waters have also provided a stark example of the ecological havoc such projects can cause. ''It was just a race for the water, with no expert planning,'' said Sikander Brohi, a development expert at the Center for Information and Research of the Bhutto Institute in Karachi. When so much is squeezed from a finite resource, conflicts are inevitable. No one has fully measured the economic and environmental effects of half a century of water developments on the Indus, or shown what a different pattern of management may have achieved. By now, the pitfalls of large dams are notorious, and donor agencies like the World Bank have become more wary, at least requiring detailed environmental and social assessments. A few decades back, the engineers were less constrained. The largest single project on the Indus is the Tarbela Dam, in northern Pakistan, which was completed in 1976. As a report in 2000 by the World Commission on Dams put it, in damning understatement, ''the ecological impacts of the dam were not considered at the inception stage as the international agencies involved in water resources development had not realized this need at that time.'' Yet in parched regions like this, the pressure for new, perhaps dubious projects remains intense. Residents of Punjab Province in central Pakistan, who have enjoyed major benefits and suffered relatively few of the damages of past projects, are pressing for another major dam. Pakistan is forging ahead with a disputed new canal in Punjab that will divert still more water to bring new desert lands under cultivation. ''A lot of the engineers and politicians consider any flow of water into the sea to be a waste, and they consider the mangrove swamps of the delta to be a wasteland,'' said Mohammed Tahir Qureshi, coastal ecosystem director in Pakistan for IUCN/The World Conservation Union, a global scientific body. The division of Indus basin waters has been a source of friction between Pakistan and India, largely but not entirely salved by an international |
1484576_0 | Sinn Fein Leader Pledges Full Disarmament of the I.R.A. | The Irish Republican Army will disarm fully as part of the Northern Ireland peace settlement if the other parties to the accord fulfill their obligations, Gerry Adams, president of the guerrilla group's political arm, Sinn Fein, said today. Mr. Adams gave the pledge in a speech responding to complaints from Prime Minister Tony Blair that the I.R.A. had failed to make its commitments to nonviolence clear and unambiguous in a confidential statement it submitted to the British and Irish governments earlier this month. Dublin and London, co-sponsors of the 1998 peace agreement, are holding back a final blueprint addressing Sinn Fein demands until they have such assurances from the I.R.A. Last week, Mr. Blair said at a Downing Street news conference that the I.R.A.'s failure to convince doubters that it would dismantle its secret arsenal, halt its paramilitary activity and declare its decades-long war with Britain at an end had become the sole obstacle to a lasting peace in the province. Mr. Adams made his remarks in the Stormont, the seat of the Northern Ireland Assembly, which balances authority between the Roman Catholic minority and the Protestant majority and was being officially dissolved at midnight tonight to prepare for elections to the body on May 29. The assembly was suspended last October because of allegations of continuing I.R.A. paramilitary actions. Ireland's foreign minister, Brian Cowen, and Britain's Northern Ireland secretary, Paul Murphy, are to meet in Belfast on Monday to decide whether the vote can proceed under current conditions. Mr. Blair posed three questions in a bold effort to break the impasse blocking the revival of the power-sharing government. He asked the I.R.A. to say whether it would disarm completely; whether the completion of the accord meant the I.R.A.'s war with Britain was concluded; and whether the group would cease all paramilitary activity, including punishment beatings, single out enemies and purchasing arms. In response to the paramilitary question, Mr. Adams would say only that the I.R.A. statement was ''of completely peaceful intent'' and that ''its logic is that there should be no activities inconsistent with this.'' On weapons, the Sinn Fein leader was more direct. ''The I.R.A. has clearly stated its willingness to proceed with the implementation of a process to put arms beyond use at the earliest opportunity,'' he said. ''Obviously, this is not about putting some arms beyond use. It is about all arms.'' As for declaring an |
1484574_0 | 3 E-Mail Giants Will Join In an Effort to Reduce Spam | The three leading providers of e-mail accounts said yesterday that they had started to work together to develop ways to reduce the unwanted commercial messages, commonly known as spam, that are increasingly clogging their customers' mailboxes. The companies -- America Online, Microsoft and Yahoo -- are calling for technical changes in the way e-mail is passed around cyberspace to make it easier to determine who really sent it and what it is about. Each company has developed its own technologies to identify and discard spam, and they boast of these in their advertising. But even though these systems sidetrack several billion pieces a day, they miss so much more that spam has become a leading source of complaints from users. Many studies show that the quantities of spam have at least doubled in the last year so the companies have agreed to cooperate with rivals. ''We believe it will take broad industry efforts to really have an impact because spam is an industrywide problem,'' said Geoff Ralston, Yahoo's senior vice president for network services. The original e-mail standard -- developed for communication among a limited group of academics and engineers -- is trusting of users and makes it quite easy to falsify the name and address of the sender. ''We are talking about working on ways to change the dynamics of the e-mail system to make it easier to determine what is fraudulent,'' said Brian Arbogast, vice president for Microsoft's MSN and personal services unit. Once e-mail users can identify the sender of a message, the companies propose developing a list of e-mail marketers who agree to a set of standards for responsible practices. This will not prevent anyone with a connection to the Internet from sending e-mail messages. But users could choose to ignore mail from those not on the approved list. ''We can help senders differentiate themselves,'' Mr. Arbogast said. ''It will let people note that some messages are more trustworthy than others.'' Of course, there are a wide range of opinions as to what should constitute legitimate commercial e-mail. Many big marketers want to be able to find customers online just as they do through direct mail. Many privacy advocates suggest that e-mail should be used only by companies communicating with their existing customers. The three Internet companies said they had not begun to discuss what the standards should be or even who should set them. The |
1484634_4 | AMERICANS ARREST WOULD-BE LEADER OF IRAQ'S CAPITAL | Baghdad. The area was formerly known as Saddam City, but it has been renamed by clerics there to honor Ayatollah Muhammad Sadiq al-Sadr, a powerful Shiite leader who was assassinated by Mr. Hussein in 1999. Seven trucks carrying 45 tons of rice, flour, sugar, oil and other food staples arrived from the Iranian city of Karmashah, a day's drive away. Other convoys of trucks carrying aid traveled from Iran to the Shiite holy cities of Najaf and Karbala today, according to Masoud Ahmadpoor, 37, the head of Karmashah's Red Crescent youth committee. ''This is paid for by the Iranian people, who want to help their Iraqi brothers,'' he said. Mr. Shenshel said his administration in the district was ''taking care of water, sewage, health care and other things because we want to prove to the Americans that we can run our own country.'' ''This is just the nucleus of a government that will expand all over Iraq,'' he said, voicing the ambitions of the Shiite clergy who appointed him and who are working to establish rule by Islamic law. ''The only aid we want from the Americans is for them to leave and let us govern ourselves.'' Far from forcing the cleric-led administration to back down, Army officers responsible for the district have been meeting with members of the clergy to offer assistance. ''This is to prove to us that you are volunteers working with the coalition forces, and our people are going to recognize those who are carrying them as friends,'' Maj. Kelly Ward said on Saturday, referring to photo identification cards the Army had prepared for the armed guards of Sheik Kadhem al-Fartusi, head of the district's aid committee. Mr. Fartusi worried aloud that the cards would suggest that his group was working with United States forces, and he asked if Ayatollah Sadr's name could be added to the identification. ''We don't want to look like collaborators with the Americans,'' he said. The matter was left unresolved today. Mr. Zobeidi was arrested after the American military broadcast repeated warnings that it would not tolerate anyone who interfered with American control of the country. Although the military had initially cooperated with Mr. Zobeidi, he angered senior American commanders by hiring and firing city employees and insisting that he had the right to approve projects ranging from power generation to sewage. The United States Central Command in Qatar issued a |
1479416_4 | Before Power Plants, Glory Days at Indian Point; Where Neutrons Now Dance, a Grand Amusement Park Stood on the Hudson | any seismological, hydrological or meteorological tests to check the nuclear suitability of Indian Point was hardly surprising,'' Mr. Cantelon wrote in a paper about the company's nuclear history. ''The sudden push toward commercial nuclear power created situations without precedent.'' To Con Edison's engineers, he added, ''the way to understanding was through doing.'' What became known as Indian Point 1 powered up on Aug. 2, 1962, two years behind schedule, reaching full power on Jan. 25, 1963, after problems with its piping were repaired. So confident was Con Ed of this new technology that it planned to build six reactors here, and later it even set its sights on New York City, where it said its next nuclear reactor should be located to be most competitive with fossil fuel plants. Con Ed proposed a nuclear reactor in Ravenswood, Queens, across the East River from East 68th Street. That proposal, and later plans to build a nuclear plant on Davids Island, off New Rochelle, failed after a public outcry. Just as Indian Point 1 came online, public awareness of radiation hazards was growing, mainly as reports of radiation fallout from atomic and hydrogen bomb testing in the western deserts and the South Pacific increased. It did not help that Hollywood began picking up radiation as a theme for horror movies about mutated animals, insects and people. Still, Con Edison pressed on, though its plans for a nuclear plant farm were scaled down. It opened Indian Point 2 in 1974 and Indian Point 3 in 1976. Both reactors have troubled records, with frequent breakdowns and mishaps, though none that endangered the public, regulators say. It took the accident at Three Mile Island in 1979 to end development of nuclear plants; no plant has been opened in the nation since. That accident also threw a harsh light on Indian Point, with growing doubts that people could be evacuated in a similar emergency there. Later that year, Robert Ryan, a Nuclear Regulatory Commission staff member testifying in 1979 before a presidential commission investigating the Three Mile Island accident in Pennsylvania, called Indian Point ''one of the most inappropriate sites in existence'' for a nuclear plant. Looking back, those in Buchanan who knew Indian Point then and now get a little nostalgic about the park, even if they support the plant today. Many have strong feelings because the plant provided 90 percent of the village's tax |
1479319_1 | Bush Pledges to Help as Ulster Nears a Junction in Peace Path | decision on Thursday, the fifth anniversary of the signing of the accord, when they will receive a final blueprint for re-establishing the home-rule government that is the centerpiece of the effort to balance power between the Protestant majority and the Catholic minority. It is hoped that the document, distilled from 30 hours of meetings here led by Mr. Blair and Prime Minister Bertie Ahern of Ireland last month, will induce the Irish Republican Army to make a long-awaited move to give up its weapons and declare an end to its war with the British and the Protestant population of Ulster. Mr. Bush, Mr. Blair and Mr. Ahern met with the heads of Ulster's political parties this afternoon and issued a joint statement afterward addressing the urgency of a so-called act of completion. ''There is no place in Northern Ireland for paramilitary activity and capability,'' the three leaders said. The I.R.A. and several rival Protestant armed groups have pledged themselves to a political path and maintained cease-fires for six years now. But they have resisted giving up or destroying their secret arsenals, and the consequent loss of public confidence in the peace agreement's promise of a nonviolent future brought about the suspension of the government in October. The make or break proposal from Mr. Blair and Mr. Ahern on Thursday is aimed at getting the mothballed Northern Ireland Assembly up and running again. The largest Protestant party, the Ulster Unionists, has said it will not re-enter government with Sinn Fein, the political party of the I.R.A., in the absence of a credible disarmament move. Gerry Adams, the president of Sinn Fein, said this afternoon that Mr. Bush had not asked him directly about disarming but had instead expressed general support for the 1998 peace agreement. In his news conference with Mr. Blair, Mr. Bush gave the Northern Ireland peace plan heightened international visibility by noting that it carried lessons for resolving the conflict in the Middle East. It is a point that Mr. Blair has made repeatedly. ''It's not so many years ago that it would have been said that the peace process here was in far worse shape than the process out in the Middle East,'' Mr. Blair asserted today. ''So, to those who can sometimes say that the process in the Middle East is hopeless, I say we can look at Northern Ireland and take some hope from that.'' |
1477678_0 | 2 Hijackers Seize Havana Ferry and Sail for Florida | Two armed men commandeered a ferry today in Havana and set a course for Florida, the second time in two days that Cuban hijackers have taken hostages as they tried to flee to the United States. The F.B.I. said 15 to 20 people were aboard the 45-foot government-run ferry, which runs between Havana and Casablanca, across Havana Bay. The vessel was overtaken at 1:30 a.m. on Wednesday and followed by two Cuban Border Patrol vessels, the Foreign Ministry said. ''We're hearing from Cuban patrol that this ferry had been hijacked by two armed individuals,'' said Judy Orihuela, a spokeswoman for the Federal Bureau of Investigation in Miami. The Border Patrol headquarters in Havana notified the Coast Guard in Miami that the ferry was headed for Florida. It was drifting in international waters 60 miles from Key West, with Cuban patrol boats nearby. F.B.I. negotiators went to the scene on a Coast Guard helicopter, Ms. Orihuela said, adding, ''We're in a holding pattern.'' A spokeswoman for the Coast Guard said that it was monitoring the situation and that the ferry and its occupants were the responsibility of Cuba. The Foreign Ministry in Havana acknowledged in a statement that the ferry was under its jurisdiction. ''The vessel and those hijacked are Cuban, and that is why the concrete measures to be taken are Cuba's responsibility,'' the ministry said. The Cuban government said it was urging the hijackers to surrender. The men, with three guns, had demanded fuel and threatened to throw passengers overboard if their demands were not met. In an incident on Tuesday, a man saying he had grenades took over a Cubana de Aviación plane heading to Havana and after refueling in Havana directed it to Key West International Airport. The plane landed in Key West escorted by F-15 fighters from the Air Force and a Black Hawk helicopter. The man was taken into custody and found with fake grenades. The 31 other people on the plane, including six crew members and the man's wife and 3-year-old son, remain in the custody of immigration officials. That incident followed a hijacking of a Cuban plane on March 19 that was also diverted to Florida. In that incident, a Cuban DC-3 landed in Key West after having been commandeered by a group that wielded knives and an aircraft hatchet. Six men were arrested and charged with conspiracy to seize an aircraft, a |
1477678_3 | 2 Hijackers Seize Havana Ferry and Sail for Florida | Miami and other experts on Cuban affairs said there were other possible explanations for the hijackings. Some said Cuba's struggling economy and increasing domestic tensions were likely factors and might lead to an exodus from the island. The once-robust sugar industry was sharply scaled back last year in the face of cheaper competition, and the tourism industry, which generates most of the foreign exchange, faces a downturn as would-be visitors fear traveling during the war in Iraq, experts said. ''Conditions are such that you may see more people begin to leave,'' said Wayne S. Smith, chief of the United States Interests Section in Havana from 1979 to 1982. ''No matter where they turn, they just don't see very good prospects,'' said Mr. Smith, now a senior fellow at the Center for International Policy, another group in Washington. Some experts said the poor economy could deteriorate to a level similar to the hardships that followed the collapse of the Soviet Union, Cuba's patron. That decline set off an extensive exodus for Florida on rafts in 1994. President Fidel Castro allowed the exodus, which prompted President Bill Clinton to adopt the ''wet foot dry foot'' policy that permits Cubans who land in the United States to remain but sends back those picked up at sea. The policy gave Cubans more incentive to reach American soil, which increased the number of people seeking faster, more efficient ways to go to Florida, like planes or motorboats. ''We've long had a very liberal policy with respect to Cubans who make it to our shores, and I'm sure Cubans in Cuba are aware of that,'' said Cheryl Little, executive director of the Florida Immigrant Advocacy Center, a legal services organization in Miami. The new hijackings occur as Cuba increases pressure on people considered disloyal to the government. The Castro government recently cracked down on dissidents, arresting scores of journalists and political opponents on charges of conspiring with American diplomats. ''It comes at a time when there are heightened frictions between the Cuban regime and the United States,'' Mariela Ferretti, a spokeswoman for the Cuban American National Foundation in Miami, said of the hijackings. ''And it comes at a time when the United States has its attention focused on the conflict with Iraq. ''We have to consider the possibility that these people are being manipulated in order to provoke further friction between the United States and Cuba.'' |
1478930_0 | This French New Wave Finds Few U.S. Fans | Extreme big-wave surfing, a fairly new twist on an ancient sport, is possible wherever monstrous storm swells and lunatic surfers converge. This generally happens in only two places on earth: Hawaii and California. That is why jaws dropped from Maui to Monterey last month when the sponsors of a contest promising $60,000 for the rider of the surfing season's tallest wave received a late challenge from out of left field. Way left field. That is, France. Early last month, a French surfer, Fred Basse, and a handful of his countrymen tracked an immense low-pressure system as it swung east from Newfoundland and out over the Atlantic. This storm sent a 25-foot-plus swell marching ahead of it at 35 miles an hour toward the coast of Europe. It caught up with Mr. Basse and five fellow surfers on the sunny morning of March 10, as they waited with surfboards and personal watercraft at a relatively unknown reef two miles off the coast of St. Jean-de-Luz, in France's Basque country. Towed in by the watercraft, the Frenchmen successfully rode waves that towered from 60 to 80 feet. As the contest requires, they captured their triumph on film. ''Riding this wave, it was like going down a huge ski slope,'' Mr. Basse recalled. ''But with an avalanche behind you.'' That French new wave has instantly altered the geopolitical surfing landscape. Before this, most of the world's biggest known waves were ridden along the shores of Hawaii or California, mostly by Americans. Judges of the contest, the Billabong-Surfline XXL Global Big Wave Awards, must now consider a wave that they have never seen, ridden by surfers they have never heard of. And worst of all, in the midst of Franco-American wartime tensions, they also must deal with American accusations that the French wave is -- mon Dieu! -- too soft. To Bill Sharp, organizer of the competition, it was a controversy he never saw coming. ''I got an e-mail on March 11 and the header was: 'You're not going to believe this,' '' said Mr. Sharp in an interview in his office in Newport Beach. ''When I downloaded the images, I spat out my coffee.'' Down the road at Surfing magazine, a well-known big-wave surfer and editor, Evan Slater, saw the French photos. ''I kind of freaked out,'' Mr. Slater said. ''To the naked eye, those are, I think, among the biggest waves I've |
1478889_0 | Bush Visit Is Viewed as Hopeful Sign for Ulster Impasse | The visit of President Bush to Northern Ireland on Monday comes at the most critical moment for the province's peace plan since the accord was signed five years ago this week. Prime Minister Tony Blair and his Irish counterpart, Bertie Ahern, had already planned to mark the anniversary on Thursday by making public an emergency formula that they hope will break an impasse that has put self-government in Northern Ireland on hold. The Catholic-Protestant government was created by the so-called Good Friday Agreement of 1998. While Mr. Bush's principal concern will be his talks with Mr. Blair about the war in Iraq, his presence at Hillsborough Castle outside Belfast is expected to give added impetus to the new push for a resolution in Northern Ireland. Both sides in the long-term conflict welcomed his personal intervention. Gerry Adams, president of Sinn Fein, the political wing of the Irish Republican Army, said Mr. Bush's decision to come to Belfast was ''a strong signal of his support for the Good Friday Agreement and the Irish peace process.'' David Trimble, leader of Northern Ireland's biggest Protestant party, the Ulster Unionists, said Mr. Bush well understood ''questions of democracy and terrorism, so I would think that the president would come with a very clear view on this situation.'' Republicans, most of whom are Catholics, hope for a merger one day with the Republic of Ireland. Unionists, most of whom are Protestant, believe that Northern Ireland should remain part of the United Kingdom. The peace deal, agreed to on April 10, 1998, has put an end to the sectarian violence that resulted in the loss of more than 3,600 lives over three decades and succeeded in reducing the distrust throughout the province that kept the two communities almost entirely apart for a century. Mr. Blair, Mr. Bush's principal ally, has argued that the Northern Ireland peace accord carries lessons for the conflict in the Middle East, a focus area for British diplomacy. Mr. Bush's plan to visit Ulster was seen by Downing Street as validation of that point and a repayment for Mr. Blair's stalwart loyalty. London and Dublin hope that the plan to be announced at Hillsborough on Thursday, distilled from 30 hours of meetings last month between the two prime ministers and the leaders of Northern Ireland's political parties, will persuade the I.R.A. to make the dramatic move to disarm that analysts believe is |
1483923_1 | Taking Jesus as Spouse, and Living a Life in Prayer | Christ, a woman must have never married and must demonstrate a life of chastity and devotion to the church. There is no age requirement, although some dioceses prescribe a minimum age like 30. Consecrated virgins have no formal obligations besides daily prayer, but they typically engage in service to the church. There is no equivalent vocation for men. Loretta Matulich, a consecrated virgin from Oregon City, Ore., and president of the United States Association of Consecrated Virgins, said there were at least 100 consecrated virgins in the United States, up from about 20 in 1995. In just the last year, about 15 women around the nation were consecrated, and in the next six months, another 15 will be, Ms. Matulich said. Ms. Matulich said that although she was drawn to a religious life, becoming a nun was not her calling. ''I knew from childhood that I wanted to give my entire life to Jesus Christ in love,'' she said, ''but I also knew that I wanted to teach in the public schools and live and work with a variety of people from all walks of life.'' In Los Angeles in the 1950's, when Ms. Matulich considered the sisterhood, nuns did not teach in public schools or live and work outside Catholic institutions, she said. ''So I waited until God would show me where I fit,'' she said. ''I found the exact fit in consecrated virginity lived in the world.'' Awareness of the consecration has spread through word of mouth and articles, and many women say they are pleasantly surprised to learn of its existence. ''I lived for 21 years without any real contact with other consecrated virgins,'' said Ms. Matulich, who was consecrated in 1974 and formerly taught at a community college in Oregon City. She met only two until she attended an international conference of consecrated virgins in 1995 in Rome, which led to the start of her organization. ''I was prepared to go to my dying day without ever meeting another consecrated virgin,'' she said. About 1,400 consecrated virgins live in other countries, Ms. Matulich said. Why are there so few in the United States? ''In popular American culture, the word 'virginity' is not attractive,'' said Bishop Raymond L. Burke of the Diocese of La Crosse, Wis., the moderator of the United States Association of Consecrated Virgins. ''When I talk to groups about consecrated virgins living in the |
1480887_0 | Peace Snagged, I.R.A. Outlines Its Intentions | The Irish Republican Army, under pressure to disarm to save the Northern Ireland peace process, submitted a confidential statement to the British and Irish governments tonight outlining what it might do to break the stalemate. In a brief message to the media, the I.R.A. said the statement would address its six-year cease-fire, its future intentions, and its attitude toward weapons. The group, which has twice secretly destroyed an unspecified quantity of arms in front of international monitors, said it would discuss a ''third act of putting arms beyond use.'' Political sources in Belfast said the statement had already been given to the Irish and British governments, the sponsors of the peace agreement of 1998. ''We are studying it and will respond in due course,'' said a spokesman for Prime Minister Tony Blair. Dublin and London are urging the clandestine army to declare its 30-year-war with the British over, to disband and to give up its weapons in order to make the 1998 accord permanent. The Northern Ireland Assembly created by the agreement that balances power between the Catholic minority and the Protestant majority was suspended in October over allegations that the I.R.A. was spying on British ministers in Belfast and compiling target lists of police and corrections officers. Progress in putting the agreement into effect has continually stalled over the I.R.A.'s reluctance to give up its weapons, a demand that was not explicitly required by the accord but that has now become cause of debilitating distrust in the province, particularly among Protestants. Their argument is that Sinn Fein, the I.R.A.'s political party, cannot keep ministerial positions while representing an armed force. Last Thursday, the fifth anniversary of the signing of the accord, Mr. Blair and his Irish counterpart, Bertie Ahern, had to postpone the Belfast launch of a newly negotiated blueprint for breaking the impasse when they learned that a long-awaited declaration from the I.R.A. fell short of expectations. The blueprint document contained concessions to Sinn Fein that were intended to induce the I.R.A. to make a definitive declaration. But it became clear that the promised I.R.A. statement would not convince Protestant skeptics of the organization's commitment to peace. The hope had been to revive both the power-sharing government and scheduled elections to the assembly on May 29. Since Thursday, intense negotiations have involved the two governments, Irish-Americans who back Sinn Fein, and President Bush's envoy on Northern Ireland, Richard |
1480904_2 | Unions Recommend That Members Be Cautious | aware of special methods for disinfecting a plane on which an infected passenger had flown. ''Actually, I think we would follow the normal cleaning procedures,'' Mr. Brown said on Friday. Mr. Brown said he thought ''the antiseptics currently used on the planes are sufficient to kill the SARS bacteria'' based on guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Although Southwest does not travel on international routes, Mr. Brown said it was concerned about the SARS situation, since a passenger flying from Asia could transfer to one of its flights. He said employees had received copies of directives issued on April 1 from the C.D.C. In a fact sheet issued to security personnel and cleaning crews, the C.D.C. said cleaning crews could follow normal procedures under ordinary circumstances, simply wearing gloves and washing their hands after performing their jobs. If assigned to clean a plane on which someone suspected of having SARS had flown, the C.D.C. recommended that cleaners throw away gloves that become torn or dirty and refrain from using compressed air to clean the plane, since it could spread germs. The C.D.C. said cleaning crews did not have to wear masks or gowns. But the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers, in an April 3 letter to its members, recommended that cleaning crews working on flights that had arrived from Asia wear protective masks as well as wash their hands thoroughly. ''By taking even these simple precautions, you may be able to avoid a very serious illness,'' said S. R. Canale, president of Local 141 of the machinists' union, which represents airline ground personnel. The Association of Flight Attendants has called on the Federal Aviation Administration to require airlines to make masks and gloves available on all flights to and from Asia and within Asia. However, the decision has been left up to individual airlines. Many, including United, have said masks would be provided if crew or passengers requested them. Most airlines give planes a more thorough cleaning at night. At United, that involves cleaning and vacuuming the carpet; washing hard surfaces like doors and windows; wiping tray tables and arm rests; cleaning and disinfecting bathrooms; wiping overhead bins; and arranging the seat belts for the next day's passengers, Mr. Hopkins said. At United, a deeper cleaning of the plane takes place every 15 days, involving a thorough cleaning of carpets and upholstery and disinfecting of |
1482025_1 | The Latest Theory Is That Theory Doesn't Matter | proceedings. ''We want to be the Starship Enterprise of criticism and theory,'' he told the audience. But any thought that this would be a gleeful strategy session with an eye toward extending theory's global reach, or an impassioned debate over the merits of, say, Derrida and Lacan, was quickly dispelled. When John Comaroff, a professor of anthropology and sociology at Chicago who was serving as the event's moderator, turned the floor over to the panelists, for several moments no one said a word. Then a student in the audience spoke up. What good is criticism and theory, he asked, if ''we concede in fact how much more important the actions of Noam Chomsky are in the world than all the writings of critical theorists combined?'' After all, he said, Mr. Fish had recently published an essay in Critical Inquiry arguing that philosophy didn't matter at all. Behind a table at the front of the room, Mr. Fish shook his head. ''I think I'll let someone else answer the question,'' he said. So Sander L. Gilman, a professor of liberal arts and sciences at the University of Illinois at Chicago, replied instead. ''I would make the argument that most criticism -- and I would include Noam Chomsky in this -- is a poison pill,'' he said. ''I think one must be careful in assuming that intellectuals have some kind of insight. In fact, if the track record of intellectuals is any indication, not only have intellectuals been wrong almost all of the time, but they have been wrong in corrosive and destructive ways.'' Mr. Fish nodded approvingly. ''I like what that man said,'' he said. ''I wish to deny the effectiveness of intellectual work. And especially, I always wish to counsel people against the decision to go into the academy because they hope to be effective beyond it.'' During the remainder of the session, the only panelist to venture a defense of theory -- or mention a literary genre -- was Mr. Bhabha. ''There are a number of people around the table here and a number of people in the audience, in fact most of you here are evidence that intellectual work has its place and its uses,'' he insisted. ''Even a poem in its own oblique way is deeply telling of the lives of the world we exist in. You can have poems that are intimately linked with political oppositional |
1482041_0 | Facing U.S. Threat of Penalties, Cuba Issues a Defiant Statement | As the Bush administration considers several measures to penalize Cuba in response to its jailing of nonviolent dissidents, the Cuban authorities said today that they were ready to withstand the worst. Administration officials said this week that they might stop family remittances, which amount to as much as $1 billion a year, and end direct charter flights. Cuba's Foreign Ministry replied tartly in an eight-page statement today, saying the country had survived for 44 years despite the trade embargo and the collapse of its Soviet patron. The statement also discounted the impact of the remittances, saying the government provided for much of its people's needs. ''More than four decades of the revolution have shown our country is capable of confronting whatever threat and defeating any sinister plans,'' the statement read. ''The United States government has few remaining weapons in its arsenal of actions that it can carry out against Cuba,'' it continued. ''All possibilities are foreseen and will be confronted.'' A State Department official said that a wide range of policy changes were under review, but that nothing had been settled. Although the government listed a range of basic goods that a single dollar could buy, political analysts and researchers familiar with Cuba said its economy was especially vulnerable. The sugar industry has been cut back drastically, tourism has fallen and oil prices are up, they said, while basic goods are usually available only at higher prices on the black market. ''Without the remittances, the Cuban people will feel the financial crisis even worse,'' said Andy Gomez, a senior fellow at the Institute for Cuban and Cuban-American Studies at the University of Miami. ''Cubans with access to dollars have been able to survive already difficult conditions. Without that influx, it will only get worse.'' |
1482031_0 | Obstacles to Irish Peace | To the Editor: Re ''No Friends of the Irish'' (editorial, April 16), about the Irish Republican Army's refusal to give up its weapons: The I.R.A. is not the only obstacle to peace in Northern Ireland. There are formidable barriers on the Protestant side. First are several Protestant terrorist organizations that are still armed and have continued to murder and maim Catholics. There is also the deep reluctance of many Protestants to share their political and economic advantages. The unfortunate fact is that many in the Protestant majority are loath to extend equality to the Catholic minority. If the I.R.A. disarms, Protestants are likely to find another hook upon which to hang their obstructionism. GREGORY D. STOREY Roselle Park, N.J., April 16, 2003 |
1482139_0 | World Briefing | Europe: Northern Ireland: Symbolic Day But No Deal | The British and Irish governments waited without success to obtain a disarmament statement from the Irish Republican Army needed to break the stalemated Northern Ireland peace process and restore the suspended power-sharing government in Belfast created by the so-called Good Friday agreement five years ago. David Trimble, leader of the province's largest Protestant party, the Ulster Unionists, complained that a settlement was being held up by ''a couple of hundred hoods.'' London and Dublin are proposing a set of concessions on matters of interest to the Irish republican movement like the demilitarization of the North and the promise of no prosecution for I.R.A. members wanting to return from abroad, but they say the I.R.A. must first declare an end to its 30-year-war against the British and dismantle its arsenal of weapons. The proposal will likely be shelved next week if no I.R.A. pledge emerges. Warren Hoge (NYT) |
1480651_0 | In a General's Words: 'Setting the Conditions for a Stable and Free Iraq' | Following are excerpts from a news conference in Doha, Qatar, yesterday by Brig. Gen. Vincent K. Brooks about efforts to stabilize Iraq, as recorded by Federal News Service Inc. A full transcript is available at nytimes.com/iraq. . . . The regime is in disarray and no longer in control of Iraq, and the coalition remains focused on the objectives of the campaign. The attainment of objectives to date has not come without cost, and as always, we pause to remember those who have lost their lives, and we extend our condolences to their families. The operations of the last 24 hours have been characterized by simultaneous actions in all parts of the country. Some focused on removing any remaining chance of the regime returning to power, while others focused on setting the conditions for a stable and free Iraq. The situation in northern Iraq changed quickly yesterday as coalition forces, supported by Kurdish forces, moved into areas vacated by the Iraqi military. Significant increase in the number of Special Forces detachments in the area of Mosul in the north made it possible for us to meet with local leaders and set additional conditions for stability. There's a neighborhood watch system that's already gone into effect in Mosul, and the presence of coalition forces there contributes to the stability. At this point, a wholesale capitulation has occurred, and effective military forces have not been encountered in that area. Coalition Special Operations forces and the 173rd Airborne Brigade continued efforts to increase the number of oil field structures that are secured. They are receiving assistance from local oil experts as these facilities are assessed. Important actions also occurred in the west. In Al Qaim, coalition Special Operations forces continued their work in and around that area. They entered into a number of facilities, including searching a train station, and air defense headquarters, a phosphate plant, a cement factory, and a water treatment plant. Worthy of note, they found two drones at the phosphate plant, and at this point we don't have any additional information on that. Coalition Special Operations forces also entered Al Asad Airfield. This is a place that has been subjected to coalition attacks before. And what they found on the ground was 15 fighter aircraft, fixed-wing aircraft, hidden underneath the camouflage and in appeared to be undamaged condition. At a checkpoint in the west, coalition special operations forces stopped |
1480441_7 | Learning With Disabilities: An Answer to Autism; Nudging Toward Normal | the conviction, stamina and money for the fight. Like many such schools, the Alpine Learning Group was founded by parents; the first classes were held in 1988, with four children in a church basement. It now ranks among the most respected programs, along with the Princeton Child Development Institute and the Douglass Developmental Disabilities Center at Rutgers University. Its outreach program serves 14 children up to age 5. The school itself has 27 students, ages 3 to 21. Some of the younger children, like Ben, are candidates for mainstreaming, although others never master the necessary language, social and behavioral skills to get by in a regular classroom. The older students at Alpine are more impaired, being readied for jobs and some degree of self-sufficiency in group homes. Obviously, that is not what their parents hoped at the beginning. But untreated they might have been institutionalized, which over a lifetime is far more expensive than even this costly form of education. Last fall, Ben began at Alpine, working one on one from 9 a.m. to 2:45 p.m. with either Ms. Moon or another teacher, Danielle Spinnato. Formal lessons are interspersed with so-called incidental learning, like the scene at lunch. Four times a week, after school, Ben has two hours of therapy at home. Often Oliver is included and he helps guide Ben through make-believe birthday parties and board games. Applied behavioral analysis is a way of life, lived 24/7. Immersion is essential because learning to clap, wave or point can require hundreds of repetitions for an autistic child. Hand-washing and similar self-help skills are taught one step at a time: Pull up sleeves, turn on water, wet hands, get soap, rub hands together, rinse off soap, get paper towel, dry hands, throw towel away. Tantrums and other idiosyncratic behavior must be all but eradicated if a child is to attend a regular school, go to church or take a family vacation. This winter, Ben has worked on more than 40 academic, social and self-help programs, each with a defined objective, step-by-step teaching method and measurable goal. His programs, filed in a fat black binder, include ''requests preferred items from a peer,'' ''puts on a shirt,'' ''follows instructions from a distance,'' ''answers questions about the calendar,'' ''cuts using scissors'' and ''tolerates the presence of dogs.'' The give-and-take of natural conversation can be a struggle. When Ben drops a piece of paper on |
1480439_5 | Learning With Disabilities; A Mother's Journey | been another story entirely. ''HE'S lazy.'' ''He's spoiled.'' ''He's manipulative.'' ''Because of his disability, he looks for the easy way out.'' It's another day this winter and 16 adults are crammed into a small conference room adjacent to the main office in Ross's school. We are there -- seven people from the school, seven from the New York City Department of Education, myself and a lawyer -- to discuss changes to Ross's individualized education program, which spells out the accommodations to which he is entitled because of his disabilities. Under federal disability law, Ross is guaranteed an ''appropriate'' education in the ''least restrictive environment.'' He has been extensively -- exhaustively, actually -- tested by the city agency responsible for hearing-impaired children. They make recommendations about school placement and about modifications to his program. In addition, we are discussing his options for next year and which middle schools can best accommodate him. Ross has been struggling academically, and there are different opinions why. According to his teacher and the school principal, it is because of Ross's laziness and bad attitude. According to me and several learning specialists attending the meeting, it is because the demands on his reading and writing have increased, placing extra stress where he is weakest. The school's rigid attitude has not helped things, either, in my opinion. The truth lies somewhere in between. When Ross's teacher describes him as spoiled, I have to suppress a smile, thinking ''prince'' would be a more accurate description. As for the ''L'' word -- lazy -- I use it at least once a week (sometimes once a day) in reference to Ross. But let the school use it and I go berserk. There is no question that Ross's attitude (and mine) leave something to be desired at this point. We are both exhausted from dealing with ''the school thing,'' as Ross calls it. Ross has always been in a mainstream class. He went to a small nursery school affiliated with the Lutheran church where there were enough teachers to provide extra attention, and the philosophy was that everybody benefited from mainstreaming children with disabilities. When the time came to choose a kindergarten, we again leaned toward a religiously affiliated school. We looked at several and were initially greeted with enthusiasm. The reception cooled considerably when we mentioned Ross might have learning problems. I have since concluded that while most schools like |
1480697_0 | In the Heart of France, Anti-U.S. Mood Softens | Patrick Lebel watched the television images this week of a statue of Saddam Hussein toppled in Baghdad as joyous Iraqis danced about and he thought, as Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld did, of the Berlin Wall. ''It was purely symbolic, of course,'' said Mr. Lebel, 46, a heating systems technician, ''but I thought of 1989.'' Julien Vazzoleretto saw the same images, yet his reaction was equivocal. ''One tyrant less,'' said Mr. Vazzoleretto, 25, who is unemployed. ''But at what price?'' Even after the collapse of Mr. Hussein's rule, French disapproval of the war is overwhelming. Yet conversations with people in this industrial city along the Loire River show that they have not been left unmoved by the images from Baghdad this week. Many remain shocked by the bloodshed and destruction. Others said that in their circles of friends, rejection of the war was softening as British and American successes mounted. Many continue to mistrust American motives and to defend President Jacques Chirac, who opposed military action. They contend that the war, rather than drying the swamp in which terrorism grows, might distract from that task. Mending Relations All those interviewed said France and the United States must not let differences over the war translate into a permanent divide, though they acknowledged that mending the torn fabric would be arduous. Mr. Lebel staunchly opposed the war yet appreciated the removal of a tyrant. The words that came to his mind when asked about American motives were dark: ''hegemony,'' the ''imperial idea'' and ''guardian of the world,'' he said. ''If something threatens you, you have to eliminate it,'' he said. ''It is justified politically; humanly, less so.'' Mr. Lebel said he remained convinced that alternatives existed to war like ''the United Nations inspections, maybe freezing Saddam Hussein's assets.'' America is mistaken, he said, if it thinks a military response to terrorism suffices without attacking social and economic ills that fuel militancy. ''There has to be a political response,'' he said. ''Terrorism doesn't come from nowhere, it's not the Immaculate Conception.'' Yet he conceded that the British and American military success and the collapse of Mr. Hussein's government had already swayed some in France toward the American view, particularly conservatives, though sentiment could shift again if Iraq sinks into chaos. Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin warned against the virus of anti-Americanism this week; Mr. Chirac welcomed the collapse of Mr. Hussein. Nicolas Poschard, a |
1480275_6 | Overdoing Democracy | alike to the tyranny of the mass market. Our best hope, he concludes, is to delegate more power to impartial experts, insulated from the democratic fray. Today's independent central banks provide a possible template. Zakaria would like to see a chunk of federal fiscal policy handed to an equivalent of the Federal Reserve -- an autonomous I.R.S. that sets rather than merely collects taxes. A book so wide in its scope is bound to have its flaws. Zakaria follows Mancur Olson and others in embracing a cartoon version of British political development that Herbert Butterfield long ago dismissed as the ''Whig interpretation of history.'' There is also a strangely sketchy quality to Zakaria's political thought. After all, the aristocratic critique of democracy was not Tocqueville's invention. It is one of the central notions of classical political philosophy and history. In Book 3 of his Histories, for example, Herodotus set out the case against democracy in terms remarkably similar to Zakaria's: ''In a democracy, malpractices are bound to occur . . . corrupt dealings in government services lead . . . to close personal associations, the men responsible for them putting their heads together and mutually supporting one another. And so it goes on, until somebody or other comes forward as the people's champion and breaks up the cliques which are out for their own interests. This wins him the admiration of the mob, and as a result he soon finds himself entrusted with absolute power.'' Zakaria's critics will doubtless denounce him for looking backward. Indeed he is -- but not just to the 1950's, or even the 1850's. This is a book that looks back as far as 450 B.C. Whether, in our hyperdemocratic age, there is a market for such a classical defense of aristocratic rule must be doubtful. (Indeed, it would rather undermine Zakaria's own thesis if ''The Future of Freedom'' were to be a runaway best seller.) Yet it deserves a wide readership. Those who fear that while seeking to impose its will on far-flung countries the American republic may unwittingly follow Rome down the path to imperial perdition will read it with a mixture of admiration and unease. Niall Ferguson is the Herzog professor of financial history at the Stern School of Business, New York University. His latest book is ''Empire: The Rise and Demise of the British World Order and the Lessons for Global Power.'' |
1480296_6 | Learning With Disabilitied: Higher Expectations; The College Hunt | The condition ''makes it hard for me to finish anything,'' she says. ''It's very easy for me to get distracted.'' ''College I know is going to be much more of a challenge,'' she says. Specifically, she thinks she could use help on time management and likes the idea of a college where ''you can get advice when you need it.'' Another benefit: ''My parents won't be so scared.'' Specialty Colleges: Learning to Learn For some students, comprehensive programs are not enough. Jonathan Lasser, a high school senior from Cortlandt Manor, N.Y., who has attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder, applied to only one place, Landmark College, one of a small but growing number of colleges specializing in treating students with learning problems. ''I could get into another school,'' Jonathan says, ''but I really don't feel like wasting my parents' money.'' With the difficulty he has organizing his writing and managing his time, he fears he would do ''horribly'' at a conventional college. But the decision to attend Landmark was really made last summer after a three-week session there on what he describes as ''learning how to learn,'' developing skills in writing, studying and communications. ''I need to learn how to overcome my disability and to use it to my advantage,'' Jonathan says. ''In my three weeks there I got a taste of where I could be. It's amazing to watch your mind work.'' Cost can be a major barrier at such schools, since the tax dollars available to support intensive services dry up at high school graduation. Tuition, room and board at Landmark, which employs 130 professors for a student body of 375, cost $41,000 a year. Specialty schools also cannot help everyone, particularly students with significant disabilities that are not necessarily academic in nature. David L. Holmes, executive director of the Eden Institute of Princeton, N.J., which provides autism services, estimates that only 25 to 30 percent of autistic students go on to college, though many are academically gifted -- half of those who matriculate go on to do postgraduate work. Instead, he says, problems can lie in ''the quirkiness'' that accompanies the condition. That means that the key question is not academic support but a college's levels of flexibility and acceptance. ''For instance,'' Dr. Holmes says, ''would it be a problem to have a student who has to get up and leave the room occasionally because he becomes overwhelmed sensorily?'' Finding |
1480442_2 | Finding the Right College, and Getting In | Colleges are required to accommodate only legally documented disabilities, and most want recent evaluations. Beth Robinson of the College Board, which administers the SAT's, says students who seek accommodations on testing can use that process as a dry run, since most admissions offices want the same documents as the board. Take a trial run Colleges often offer summer classes open to younger students, and they can build confidence and give a clearer picture of how a student might perform in college, says Marshall Shumsky, a Houston consultant. Landmark College in Putney, Vt., which specializes in learning disabilities, offers special summer programs for high school students. Check services First, consider schools that meet your interests and desires in terms of size, location, cost and atmosphere. Then narrow down the list to those that offer appropriate support services (resources include ''Peterson's Colleges for Students With Learning Disabilities or Attention Deficit Disorder'' and ''The K&W Guide to Colleges for the Learning Disabled''). Experts suggest calling a college's office of disability -- anonymously -- to ask about services in general and then how specific problems might be handled. If the office seems unsure, uninformed or unenthusiastic, drop it. If a college merits a visit, educators recommend the acid test: ask to speak with current students with disabilities. Be open Perhaps the most delicate issue is whether to be candid about a disability. Students and parents have ''a very natural fear'' of discrimination, says Mr. Viall, whose organization was part of a lawsuit that ended the practice of flagging the standardized test scores of students who got extra time. But he and other experts seem unanimous in recommending disclosure. ''Bottom line is, if you want accommodation you have to disclose,'' he says. Dr. Block agrees, but she cautions about overemphasizing the problem. Although it's tempting to write an application essay stressing the obstacles you've faced, she suggests submitting a supplementary essay discussing those challenges and using the main one to show that you are more than your disability. Look in the mirror Being realistic is crucial. That doesn't mean avoiding challenges, just being clear about what help is needed for the best chance of success, says Robert H. Pasternak, who directs special education policy for the federal Department of Education. ''We should be encouraging people with learning disabilities to have high expectations,'' he says. ''If you don't have dreams, they can't come true.'' JOHN O'NEIL |
1482741_4 | An Old Leopard Tries to Change Its Silk Pajamas | Wenner said. ''As long as he is having a great time doing it, what is the incentive?'' Many of the magazine's charms are by now anachronistic. The magazine's cartoons seem dated, but in a poll readers ranked them as the No. 1 reason they liked the magazine. The centerfold's ''turnoffs'' have remained remarkably unchanged over the years -- Miss June, for instance, has no time for ''egotistical, materialistic and superficial people'' -- but imagine the howls if those insights were dropped. ''Certain iconic parts of the magazine I will be slow to screw around with,'' Mr. Kaminsky said. Mr. Kaminsky, who said he was hired last fall as a ''change agent,'' brought in two other editors from Maxim, and wants to bring some of the lad magazine sensibility and energy to his current assignment. ''There have been more changes in the last three issues than there were in the last 10 years,'' he said, adding that Mr. Hefner was embracing change and ''has yet to play the owner card.'' The front section of the magazine, Playboy After Hours, had been somewhat disorganized and topically dated. Under Mr. Kaminsky, it has become a modern magazine section with well-turned infographics, quips and off-the-wall charts. The magazine's historical reliance on illustration -- a hallmark of Mr. Hefner -- has given way to a much more photographic approach because, as Mr. Kaminsky said, ''photographs are the way young guys process information.'' A discrete, recurring fashion section has been mandated and a new crop of photographers has been brought on board. Sarah Kozer, a bachelorette whom Joe Millionaire did not choose, comes in for even more exposure in the June issue than she received as part of the Fox reality television series, highlighting a source of C-list celebrities who can generate newsstand sales out of prurience or curiosity. But Mr. Kaminsky is determined to make Playboy a place where women who already have careers will appear. After all, Marilyn Monroe, Raquel Welch, Sharon Stone and Bo Derek sat for sessions with Playboy in the past. A celebrity wrangler has been retained, and Mr. Kaminsky wants the magazine to compete for cover shoots. Mr. Hefner is willing to re-examine the magazine's traditional premise that the vast majority of women who submit to being photographed for the cover of Playboy should expect to do the full monty. ''The simple truth of the matter is that the reader |
1482734_2 | As regulators become more stringent, data storage companies prepare for a wave of demand. | is up 64 percent over a year ago, the company says. Most new e-mail systems archive and duplicate every single piece of incoming mail, including spam and unread messages, even though all those functions are not specifically required by the new regulations. Companies would rather save it all, according to Mr. Lewis, than be sorry later when facing investigators. ''What they don't want is the 'missing minutes on the tape' situation,'' he said. ''They don't want to have to say, 'It looks like we have all our e-mail, except what you want.' '' Mr. Lewis said that with many current storage systems, there was little to prevent people with some computer knowledge from altering records stored in digital archives to hide their misdeeds. To thwart that, the Centera system establishes what EMC calls a digital fingerprint. Essentially, it is a long data set that represents the state of a group of records. To change even a single character will create a mismatch with the fingerprint and cause the server to reject the alteration. With many new storage systems, companies also include improved software for sifting through data. ''But that's more for their own reasons than any regulatory demand,'' said Nancy Marrone, senior analyst at the Enterprise Storage Group, a storage consulting company based in Milford, Mass. ''If you can access particular data, such as one user's e-mail, you don't have to turn over a whole tape that has somebody else's e-mail and that might contain something incriminating,'' she said. While not every company is likely to be thrilled with spending money to accumulate old e-mail, Theresa O'Neil, director of strategy for I.B.M. Tivoli Storage Software, said that the S.E.C. and other regulators might indirectly be doing them a favor by defining how they should handle old data. ''In one of my previous lives, I did data mining,'' she said. ''And sometimes policies about data are the hardest things to get set. In this case, the S.E.C. and the F.D.A. have set the policies for them. It's really taken the burden off companies.'' Another consolation, she added, is that improved storage systems might allow companies to use information that currently lies dormant. By way of an example, she said that a good searching system could allow customer service representatives to summon all e-mail related to a purchase while they deal with a customer's complaint. ''We hope that over time storage can |
1482783_2 | Turks Wonder Whether U.S. Will Share Some of the Spoils of Rebuilding | Turkish businesses a share of the spoils. In Turkey's case, the question is complicated by Parliament's refusal to allow tens of thousands of American troops to pour across the southeast of the largely Muslim country to open a second, northern front against Baghdad -- a decision that lost this NATO member much good will in Washington. ''How can we get a piece of the cake that everybody claims will be lying on the table while Turkey's situation is a bit uncomfortable,'' asked Ahmet Okcun, a former Turkish ambassador to Iraq who was appointed this week by the Turkish government to coordinate its drive to join the reconstruction. Turkey once viewed Iraq, its relatively unindustrialized southern neighbor, as a natural market and a gateway to the oil-rich Persian Gulf. Before the gulf war in 1991, Iraq was among Turkey's biggest trading partners. Under the United Nations oil-for-food program, which allowed Baghdad to export two million barrels of crude oil per day to pay for imports approved by the United Nations, oil from the northern fields around Kirkuk was exported through the Turkish port of Ceyhan, earning Turkish companies up to $400 million a year. But Iraq's postwar legal status is so uncertain that no one seems to know who owns its oil, no one is buying it and Turkey has run out of storage space for it, the government said. The situation has interrupted a long-running relationship. Before 1991, Turkish construction companies vied for contracts in Iraq, and food exporters did good business there. Okkes Leblebici said his business, the Lebsan Food Company, sold rice, olives, sugar and other basics to Iraq, earning some $200 million from 1983 to 1993. The company ceased dealings with Iraq in 1993, he said, because of bureaucratic and other problems that lowered profits. Regarding the market anew, he said he was still not convinced that Iraq would prove to be the bonanza that others seemed to envisage. ''You know that wars bring along a lot of uncertainties -- both politically and financially,'' he said. ''At the moment, we don't know with whom we would be dealing. Is it going to be the U.S., or another Iraqi administration? Unless the political uncertainties are cleared, and the prospects of the economic benefits emerge, it would not be possible to trade with Iraq.'' For construction contractors, too, the future in Iraq seems clouded. ''We still have good contacts |
1479863_2 | Gene Study Finds Cannibal Pattern | must have been exposed to some form of prion disease, the researchers say. They contend that that prion disease was probably spread by cannibalism. Besides the example of the Fore, there is ''strong evidence for widespread cannibalistic practices in many prehistoric populations,'' the researchers say. Frequent epidemics of prion disease caused by cannibalism in ancient populations would explain the existence of the protective genetic signature in people today, they conclude. About half of today's English population has the protective signature, which may be one among several reasons why so few people -- only 134 in a population of more than 50 million -- have contracted the human form of mad cow disease, Dr. Mead said. An alternative explanation for the protective signature could be that early human populations were exposed to prion disease by eating infectious animals. Dr. Mead said he could not rule out that explanation but added that cannibalism seemed more likely. The epidemic of kuru among the Fore showed how quickly the protective signature could be selected. Also, ''there is no animal prion disease that appears to cross the species barrier so easily and dramatically,'' he said. Dr. Mead, a neurologist, said he was studying the kuru epidemic among the Fore to learn the incubation time of the disease, a critical factor in predicting how large the cow-derived prion disease epidemic is likely to be in England. Because of the long latency time, some elderly Fore continue to come down with kuru. Dr. Mead's genetic evidence pointing to widespread cannibalism is likely to influence a longstanding debate among social scientists. The subject is controversial because many anthropologists, led by Dr. William Arens of the State University of New York at Stony Brook, say cannibalism is very rarely practiced, but is much more commonly cited as a slur against enemies. The few isolated occurrences in the archaeological record, Dr. Arens said, could have been instances of survival cannibalism, which occurs as an alternative to starvation. The genetic signature found by Dr. Mead and his colleagues occurs in the gene that makes the prion protein. An abnormal form of the prion protein can make the normal proteins abnormal too, the process that leads to the disease. The normal gene itself exists in two versions. People who inherit both versions, one from each parent, are protected against prion disease, whereas people who have two copies of either version are susceptible. |
1479860_0 | Northern Irish Peace Hopes Are Set Back | Hopes of a breakthrough in the deadlocked Northern Ireland peace process were dashed today when Prime Ministers Tony Blair of Britain and Bertie Ahern of Ireland had to cancel a joint appearance here because of last-minute objections by Sinn Fein, the political party of the Irish Republican Army. The two leaders had planned to announce a final plan for reviving the suspended power-sharing government in Northern Ireland. The new plan, drawn up in London and Dublin, was aimed at producing a long-awaited decision by the I.R.A. to disarm and renounce violence for good. But a Downing Street spokesman announced today that Mr. Blair and Mr. Ahern were abandoning their trip here. Continuing discussions between the governments and the party leaders had persuaded the two leaders that ''sufficient progress has not yet been made'' to let the meeting go ahead, he said. They would meet together this evening in London instead ''to pause, reflect and take stock,'' the spokesman added. |
1479914_3 | Kirkuk's Swift Collapse Leaves a City in Chaos | The first large departures had been observed around midnight, when the Special Forces saw a convoy of about 75 vehicles heading south. They refrained from bombing the convoy, the Special Forces major said, because they could not confirm that it did not include civilians. He said that even then the speed of the collapse surprised them all. American and Kurdish commanders were holding a meeting today in Koya in the Kurdish-controlled region of Iraq, talking about plans for the second day of fighting, when a Special Forces unit accompanying Kurds reported they had crossed the last ridge on the outskirts and were about to enter Kirkuk. From signs on the streets today, the Iraqis left in a hurry. In places they had dropped cartridge belts and helmets, even uniforms, apparently to flee in civilian clothes. Here and there were armored personnel carriers and tanks, doors open, undamaged, silent, the litter of an army in retreat. Some fighting vehicles were covered in long grass, an attempt at camouflage for a battle not joined. Almost everything seemed to have been left behind, even food. Near one military base, a donkey ate from a bunker, gorging itself on vegetables abandoned by the case. There were hints of what happened to loyalists who remained. At the Iskan prison, a small jail, three prison officials were dead on the street at the feet of gloating Kurds. The men had just been shot; one had a wound in the face that appeared to have been from a blow from an ax. A young Kurdish man pressed a sheet of paper into a visitor's hand, and said it was a list of the people the warden had killed in his jail. The list had 18 Kurdish names. ''Now he is dead,'' the man shouted. ''Ya! Ya! Ya!'' It did not take long for Kirkuk's civilians to realize the Iraqi government no longer had influence here. At the governor's office, a now familiar outburst of joy, seen in other cities, repeated itself. The city's square is dominated by a large statue of Mr. Hussein, dressed in robes, his right hand raised perhaps 25 feet in the air. As a contingent of American forces arrived, the crowd chanted, ''Down, down, Saddam!'' One man, using a green garden hose as a rope, scaled the statue and began striking the head with a shoe. Special Forces soldiers sat in sport utility |
1484783_1 | Slight Dip in Special Education Students Statewide | and New York City in particular, have long been criticized for placing too many students in special education classes, where many languish for years. Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg has pledged to move more disabled students into mainstream classes and provide them with a special new reading program, but the challenge is steep: in some city school districts, up to 17 percent of students are in special education. Most students are identified as needing special education between the third and fifth grades, said Lawrence C. Gloeckler, a deputy state education commissioner in charge of programs for the disabled. In data released yesterday, the State Education Department said that 51.1 percent of special education students statewide spent most of their time in regular classrooms in 2001, up from 49.5 percent in 2000 and 42.8 percent in 1996. Yet white and Asian students remain far more likely than blacks and Hispanics to spend most of the school day in mainstream classrooms. ''We should celebrate the progress but push relentlessly to close the achievement gap,'' said Richard P. Mills, the state education commissioner. The data also showed that more preschool students were taken out of special education last year, though fewer school-age students were. It also showed that disabled middle school students are scoring higher on standardized math and reading tests over all, while elementary school students are scoring higher in reading, but not math. But the number of black and Hispanic disabled students doing math at grade level decreased statewide. And New York City still has far more special education students performing at the lowest levels than the rest of the state. ''For New York City, things still look pretty terrible,'' said Eva S. Moskowitz, chairwoman of the City Council's education committee. ''They are trying to deal with it curriculumwise, but the mayor's special-ed plan does not deal with one of the most critical factors in our failure: that special education teachers are not being adequately prepared to teach our most challenging students.'' She said the number of special-education students failing standardized tests was likely to increase, because a new federal law requires almost all disabled students to take the tests. ''We are going to see a lot more schools on the failing list because of special education,'' she said. ''It's going to show up this problem and force the city to deal with it in a way it hasn't had to before.'' |
1484760_4 | Justices to Take Up Interstate Water Fight | was the dispute between New York and New Jersey over Ellis Island, in which New Jersey prevailed. As local residents, all the justices may have more than a passing interest in the new case. Of the court's nine members, five live in the Virginia suburbs: Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist and Justices John Paul Stevens, Antonin Scalia, Anthony M. Kennedy and Clarence Thomas. Three, Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen G. Breyer and David H. Souter, live in the District of Columbia. Only Justice Sandra Day O'Connor lives in Maryland. These were among the other developments at the court today: Abortion Regulations Without comment, the court turned down a challenge by a South Carolina abortion clinic to several of the state's licensing requirements for such clinics. Among other provisions, the Greenville Women's Clinic objected to a requirement that state health officials be given access to patients' individual records, as well as to a requirement that a member of the clergy be on call for consultation with patients. The United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, in Richmond, Va., rejected the clinic's challenge to the 1995 law that laid out the requirements. In its appeal, Greenville Women's Clinic v. Commissioner, No. 02-1235, the clinic argued that the access provision violated patients' right to privacy and that the clergy requirement was an unconstitutional endorsement of religion. In its response on the clergy issue, the state said it was ''quite sensible'' in light of ''the fact that to many female believers, the potential impact of the abortion transcends secular psychology and may well have ramifications for her 'immortal soul.' '' Ten Commandments Also without comment, the court refused to hear an appeal by the State of Kentucky of a ruling that the state's plan to erect a six-foot Ten Commandments monument on the State Capitol grounds in Frankfort lacked a valid secular purpose and was unconstitutional. Ten other states urged the justices to review the ruling, issued last October by the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, in Cincinnati. There has recently been a new wave of such Ten Commandments disputes around the country, but because every court to consider the cases has ruled against display of the monuments, there is as yet no conflict of the sort the Supreme Court ordinarily requires before taking up an issue. This case was Russ v. Adland, No. 02-1241. Supreme Court Roundup |
1484883_0 | World Briefing | Europe: Northern Ireland: Elections In Doubt | Politicians began their first day of campaigning for May 29 elections to the Northern Ireland Assembly while representatives of the British and Irish governments met in Belfast to discuss whether to postpone the vote until the rival Catholic and Protestant parties could agree on a plan to get the body up and running again. The assembly was suspended in October over allegations of continuing Irish Republican Army paramilitary activity, and Protestant leaders say they will not resume participation in the power-sharing legislature unless the I.R.A. renounces violence. London and Dublin welcomed a new nonviolence pledge from Gerry Adams, president of Sinn Fein, the I.R.A.'s political wing, but said they still needed clearer assurance that paramilitary activity was ended. Warren Hoge (NYT) |
1484876_0 | Dams of Folly | To the Editor: The Indus River basin certainly presents a grim picture of the economic, ecological and social disasters created downstream by large dams built on a river (''A River Diverted, the Sea Rushes In,'' April 22). The same folly is being repeated in countless other basins where large new dams are still being built to address highly controversial flood-control, hydropower and irrigation goals. Unfortunately, most of the world's large rivers are shared by two or more nations that mostly view the waters flowing through or along their lands as a resource to be exploited. Getting nations to develop the potential of the shared rivers in an enlightened and cooperative manner is a challenge that the international community urgently needs to address. DR. ARUN P. ELHANCE New York |
1484836_0 | Whiff of Spam Leaves Web Sites Offline | Scores of Web sites were taken off the Internet over the weekend because of new pressures on a commercial Internet service provider to stop unwanted marketing e-mail, or spam, and the companies that use it. Most of the Web sites that were shut down had no relation to the company accused of sending spam other than having the same Internet service provider for their Web site. But in the escalating spam battles, some anti-spam groups seem to care little about collateral damage. On Sunday afternoon, 89 Web sites operated by US Moneywerx, a Bryan, Tex., company that operates Web sites for small businesses, were disconnected. They were cut off because Server Beach, the San Antonio company that actually houses US Moneywerx's server computer, reacted to complaints by the public and an anti-spam group who said that a site that had US Moneywerx as its host was sending spam. Richard Yoo, the president of Server Beach, said he evaluated information provided by the group called the Spam Prevention Early Warning System that runs a Web site called Spews.org. That site added to its list of spammers a small Los Angeles company called NetGlobalMarketing, which was a client of US Moneywerx. Many Internet service providers block e-mail not only from sites identified on the Spews.org list but from any company that provides Web services for those companies. Executives of NetGlobalMarketing were quoted in an article in The New York Times last week on the efforts by e-mail companies to block spam. The article quoted company executives saying that all of the e-mail messages they send are to people who have requested e-mail offers. Nonetheless, the company has received thousands of angry and threatening e-mails and telephone messages over the last week. And personal information about company executives has been placed on anti-spam Web sites. ''I am not a spammer, and we do not spam,'' said Alyx Sachs, the company's co-founder. ''I run a marketing company, and we use e-mail the way we use radio or print.'' Don Wood, president of Childwatch of North America, an organization that tries to prevent abduction of children, said he sometimes hired NetGlobalMarketing to send e-mails to parents inviting them to events where their children can be photographed and fingerprinted. Ms. Sachs said the company does work for dozens of well-established companies, including some in the travel, insurance and entertainment industries. But, she said, they do not |
1484807_0 | Crack Down on Spam | No one with an e-mail account needs to be told that unwanted commercial messages, better known as spam, are a bad problem that is getting worse. America Online reports that 70 percent of the e-mail its users receive is now junk, and that the quantity has doubled just since the beginning of this year. Much of the increase is being fueled by Internet marketing companies, which charge as little as $500 to send out a million e-mail messages. Internet service providers have taken steps to clamp down on spam, but the tools at their disposal are limited. Congress needs to help. The minutes recipients spend wading through unwanted messages add up quickly in a nation with over 160 million Internet users. The extra Internet traffic generated by spam also adds to the cost of Internet bandwidth, an expense borne by those who receive the unwanted messages, not those who send them. Internet providers have tools for blocking spam, but their value is limited. Many filtering programs require e-mail users to block specific senders, which is time-consuming and ineffective, given the enormous number of spammers who are blasting away. Senders of spam are also cannily working to defeat filtering software. One technique is to misspell words, like ''Viagra'' or ''pornography,'' that set off the filters. A bill introduced by Senators Conrad Burns, a Montana Republican, and Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat, would require that unsolicited marketing e-mail have valid return e-mail addresses, making it easier for recipients to remove themselves from mass e-mail lists or for Internet service providers and states to sue spammers. Senator Charles Schumer, Democrat of New York, is introducing a bill that would require the Federal Trade Commission to maintain a no-spam list, like the no-call lists for telemarketing phone calls, and impose stiff penalties on marketers who repeatedly sent spam to people who had opted out. If these bills were put up for a popular vote, they would be passed handily. But the direct marketing industry has been lobbying hard for its right to keep sending spam. People should tell their Congressional representatives how strongly they feel about fighting spam -- one e-mail note per person, please. |
1484740_3 | Brain Surgery, Without Knife or Blood, Gains Favor | board, said radiosurgery had created a ''real revolution'' in the treatment of conditions like brain metastasis and deep-seated tumors. ''As few as four years ago, when a person got cancer that spread to the brain, that was the kiss of death,'' said Dr. Lunsford, who heads the department of neurosurgery at the University of Pittsburgh, the first center in North America to use a Gamma Knife. ''Most metastatic patients died of progression of cancer in the brain.'' Open surgery is often not an option in patients with multiple metastases because of the risks of cutting into several areas of the brain, or when a tumor is too deep or the patient too frail to undergo a craniotomy. Dr. Lunsford said that radiosurgery could be used to control brain tumors and their debilitating symptoms in more than 60 percent of the estimated 150,000 patients with metastatic cancer each year. He estimated that fewer than 10 percent of these patients receive radiosurgery. Several obstacles to treatment exist, including cost, training bias, resistance to radiosurgery and the belief ''that brain disease is hopeless,'' Dr. Lunsford said. But Dr. Raymond Sawaya, chairman of the neurosurgery department at the M. D. Anderson Cancer Center at the University of Texas, says the lack of long-term research is why more patients with brain metastasis are not treated. ''A lot of people are stating in their papers that radiosurgery is the equivalent to surgery, but the answer is not out there,'' he said. Studies are, at best, about 15 years old, not long enough to determine chances of recurrence or long-term damage. For now, though, only about 10 percent of patients with metastatic brain cancer live longer than two years. The research on radiosurgically treating acoustic neuromas, which affect 2,700 people a year, is more solid since this was the first disorder to be treated with the Gamma Knife more than 30 years ago. Studies show that radiosurgery is at least as successful as traditional surgery, and it avoids the risks of open surgery, including a 1 in 200 risk of dying, Dr. Lunsford said. Otologists, ear surgeons who perform traditional acoustic neuroma surgery, are among the loudest critics of radiosurgery. They claim that because the tumor is left inside with radiosurgery, there will be more recurrences of acoustic neuromas. To date, the best studies show rates of recurrences are similar. Radiosurgery is showing promise for treating meningiomas, |
1484873_0 | Saying No to Hormone Therapy | To the Editor: Re ''Options for Protecting Bones After Menopause'' (April 22): Until last summer, women of a certain age were unable to go to a physician without being made to feel guilty if they were not on hormone replacement therapy. We were told to do everything possible to stave off bone loss and protect ourselves against complete loss of mental cognition. We were also told that without H.R.T., we were at greater risk of heart attacks. Then last summer, we were told that most of that information was false. Now we are being barraged by advertisements to take medication to prevent bone loss. I believe it is not truly necessary for anyone to take a medication for many years on the chance that it may prevent a disease that the individual may or may not ever develop. JOYCE ROSENTHAL Hauppauge, N.Y. |
1483292_0 | World Briefing | Europe: Northern Ireland: Sinn Fein Is Resolute | Gerry Adams, president of Sinn Fein, the political wing of the Irish Republican Army, stood firm on the impasse blocking progress in the Northern Ireland peace accord, saying a statement on disarmament from the I.R.A. that the British and Irish governments have found vague and noncommittal was in fact clear and convincing. ''There is no lack of clarity in this statement,'' Mr. Adams told supporters in Belfast. The two governments are holding back a series of proposals addressing Sinn Fein concerns because the ''act of completion'' that the I.R.A. was supposed to produce in return falls short of a renunciation of armed struggle. London and Dublin are seeking the I.R.A. pledge in their effort to renew the power-sharing Protestant-Roman Catholic government that was suspended in October. Warren Hoge (NYT) |
1483165_1 | Cultivating a Partnership | by China,'' where demand is expected to rise by 28 million tons this year, according to UBS Warburg. In agribusiness, Brazil's soy exporters have more than doubled shipments to China in the last three years and expect to sell five million tons of beans there this year. Exporters of paper and cellulose, orange juice and sugar are also looking hungrily at China. The coffee industry is mesmerized by the fact that espresso -- costing $5 in Beijing's trendiest cafes -- is a new fad among China's growing urban middle classes, expected to swell by 150 million people in the next three years. Brazil's left-leaning president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who is less than enthusiastic about the Free Trade Area of the Americas agreement now being negotiated with the United States, is training his sights very publicly on China. ''Brazil's new foreign policy has defined China as a fundamental partner,'' Mr. da Silva told Brazil's business elite recently at the opening of ''China -- the Xi'an Warriors and Treasures of the Forbidden City,'' the largest exhibit about China ever staged here. ''This partnership,'' he said, ''has an economic and, more specifically, a trade dimension.'' The exhibit's organizers said its sheer dimensions -- nearly 500 pieces, including 11 life-size terra-cotta warriors from Xi'an Province -- make it a symbol of the new, cozier relations. Brazil will stage a return exhibit next year in a pavilion inside the Forbidden City, the first country to receive such an invitation from the Beijing government. ''It might be exaggerated to compare this to the Nixon visit to Beijing, but it certainly marks a new, important moment in our bilateral relations,'' said Edmar Cid Ferreira, president of São Paulo-based Banco Santos and an organizer of the exhibit. ''The Lula government is certainly going to play the Chinese card as much as it can.'' Brazilian business can only hope so. Brazil was courted assiduously by the Chinese in the years following the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre, when Beijing was seeking out ''nonideological'' business partners. Six of the seven members of the Communist Party's recently retired Politburo visited Brazil, and President Jiang Zemin came twice. ''No other country was visited by so many high-level Chinese officials,'' said Jaime Spitzcovsky, a China-watcher in São Paulo. But Brazil, mired in its own economic problems at the time, failed to seize opportunities. The country does not, for example, have a significant |
1483165_3 | Cultivating a Partnership | role in China's Three Gorges Dam project, despite several visits by Chinese delegations to Brazil's giant Itaipu hydroelectric plant over the past decade. Still, top executives here say Brazil has not missed the train. ''Brazil's profile is attractive to China,'' said Carlo Lovatelli, president of Brazil's association of vegetable oil exporters. ''Our trade accounts are complementary, and Brazil's political neutrality is a competitive advantage.'' Mr. Lovatelli expects Brazilian soy exports to China to top 5 million tons this year, up from 1.8 million in 2000, and the industry also wants to export more soybean oil. China imported 64 million tons of Brazilian soy oil in 2000, but only 17 million in 2001, causing pessimism among Brazilian exporters. But last year, exports boomed again, to more than 300 million tons, because China's 6,000-plus small, antiquated crushing plants cannot keep pace with growing demand. Short on water, and with much of its fertile land dedicated to rice growing, China will be increasingly dependent on soy imports for the foreseeable future, Mr. Lovatelli said. ''We have to develop this relationship with a lot of care, because we are not the only ones interested in China,'' he said. ''There's a lot of competition to occupy this space, and the Chinese know that and are playing their cards very well.'' On the other hand, Brazil's combative stance in the World Trade Organization -- it has gone head to head with Canada over airplanes, and challenged the United States on steel and the European Union over sugar and instant coffee -- has won it friends in China. ''Apart from it being a huge market for us, I get the feeling China is going to be a partner in quite a few strategic issues,'' said Henrique Rzezinski, vice president for international business at Embraer. But others see China's entry into the trade organization as a two-edged sword. Its labor force is so inexpensive that it even undercuts Brazil's. ''China is now in the W.T.O. and is competing on terms that are difficult to beat,'' said Carlos Alberto Rossi, chairman of the São Paulo law firm Trench, Rossi and Watanabe. The firm recently opened an office in China's business capital, Shanghai, in association with Chicago's Baker & McKenzie, and are expecting a flood of work dealing with joint ventures, trademark protection and trade deals and disputes. ''There's increasing interest from our clients, but also increased uncertainty,'' he said. |
1483109_2 | Mount Maker: Ready for an Earthquake | The isolators are only about four inches tall and rest unobtrusively between the object's pedestal or case and the floor. Each is custom-designed for the artwork, takes a month or more to build and can cost up to $4,000, not including labor. Each isolator has three levels, with the bottom level bolted to the floor and the upper two resting on ball-bearing rails. The upper levels allow the object to move perpendicularly; for example, one level lets it move in a north-south direction and the other, east-west. The levels work simultaneously, which allows 360 degrees of lateral movement or, more accurately, nonmovement because the aim is for the pedestal and object to stand still as the building shakes around them. The typical base isolator at the Getty allows 12 inches of displacement, with ramps and springs pulling it back toward the center at the same time. The idea had its genesis with Jerry Podany, the head of antiquities conservation at the Getty. Mr. Podany, who has worked at the museum since 1978, said that he began thinking seriously about seismic protection in the early 1980's. ''We started looking at damage in other countries, and one day it was like, 'Oh, we have this serious problem,' '' he said. The museum began working with outside engineers, who built the earlier isolators. A decade later, the staff had learned enough to design and build their own, Mr. Podany said, though engineers still consult on every design. Mr. Podany advises museums around the world on seismic stability, and was contacted by the Metropolitan Museum of Art after the ''Adam'' disaster. The mount makers work at the museum in a basement-type room with 15-foot ceilings to accommodate the larger objects, which are brought in on forklifts. They build all their seismic isolators using a digitally calibrated mill and lathe. But given the enormity of moving all the antiquities to the Villa by its planned opening in 2005, they will soon start contracting out some of the work, including production of a new isolator that rests between the object and the pedestal, rather than between the pedestal and the floor. Mr. Lowry and Mr. Farrar will continue designing the isolators and attaching the objects to them when they are completed. ''When you're dealing with an ancient pot or statue, you don't want to have outside people working on that,'' Mr. Lowry said. BEHIND THE SCENES |
1483501_0 | Memo to Spammers: Don't Tread on Me! | To the Editor: Your April 22 front-page article ''Internet Is Losing Ground in Battle Against Spam'' is a reminder of the Boulder Pledge against spam, which I proposed at the 1996 Conference on World Affairs at the University of Colorado. It reads: ''Under no circumstances will I ever purchase anything offered to me as the result of an unsolicited e-mail message. Nor will I forward chain letters, petitions, mass mailings, or virus warnings to large numbers of others. This is my contribution to the survival of the online community.'' Obviously the pledge has not had the desired effect, although you can even get it on a T-shirt. ROGER EBERT Chicago, April 23, 2003 |
1483394_0 | Blair Says Ulster Peace Hinges on I.R.A. | Prime Minister Tony Blair issued a public challenge to the Irish Republican Army today, saying its refusal to make a clean break with its violent past was the sole remaining obstacle to lasting peace in Northern Ireland. Mr. Blair told a Downing Street news conference that breaking a current stalemate was ''frustratingly close'' and that the time had come when the I.R.A. must give up its arms, halt its paramilitary activities and declare its long war with Britain ended. Britain and Ireland, the two sponsors of the Northern Ireland peace settlement, had expected the I.R.A. to deliver a statement renouncing violence two weeks ago in return for a proposal the two governments had drawn up addressing critical areas of concern to Sinn Fein, the I.R.A.'s political wing. But the language of the I.R.A. pledge fell far short of expectations, and Mr. Blair and his Irish counterpart, Bertie Ahern, had to call off a trip to Belfast planned to announce a breakthrough on April 10, the five-year anniversary of the so-called Good Friday Agreement. Just two days before, President Bush, in Belfast for a summit meeting with Mr. Blair, had given the peace plan a hearty endorsement in the belief that an I.R.A. weapons promise had finally been secured. Today Mr. Blair reported no progress in getting the I.R.A. to reconsider, despite intensive talks, and he posed three ''fundamental'' questions for the group to answer if it expected to gain the necessary public confidence in its commitment to ''exclusively peaceful means'' that the agreement calls for. The first, he said, was whether the I.R.A.'s vague assertion that its ''strategies and disciplines will not be inconsistent with the Good Friday Agreement'' meant an end to ''targeting, procurement of weapons, so-called punishment beatings and so forth.'' ''Secondly,'' he said, ''when they say that they are committed to putting arms beyond use through the decommissioning commission, does that mean all arms, so that the process is complete?'' The Belfast-based commission is in charge of supervising disarmament of paramilitary groups, and the I.R.A. has already destroyed two batches of weapons under its auspices. ''And thirdly,'' Mr. Blair said, does their claim to support the agreement mean ''the complete and final closure of the conflict?'' ''I don't think those questions are very difficult questions,'' Mr. Blair said of today's confrontational tactic. ''I think they are questions that are susceptible of clear answers, and, because this whole |
1483472_1 | The News from Home, Sealed With a Click | link. It has bolstered morale in the field and at home, lending a bit of electronic normalcy to the chaos. But what has been less well chronicled is that the improvements in wartime communications work only if family members at home have access to an online connection. Ms. Carmichael, a nurse, is one of many who do not. According to a recent study by the Pew Internet and American Life Project, 42 percent of Americans do not use the Internet. That group includes a disproportionate number of members of minorities, rural Americans, Southerners, those without a college education, and those with a family income of less than $30,000 a year -- some of the same groups with high representation in the military. Ms. Carmichael said she had to rely on Mr. Pierce to send messages to the Persian Gulf because she could not afford an Internet connection. ''I'm trying to get it, but it's an issue of money,'' she said. ''I was worried when I wanted to talk to him and see how he was doing. It was aggravating. I would have rather just done it on my own.'' While many military families do not have the convenience of Internet access at home, they have found ways to get e-mail to loved ones overseas. Some go to friends' or relatives' houses. Others live near or on military bases that offer use of PC's. All branches of the armed forces have family assistance centers at bases throughout the United States and wherever troops are permanently stationed. The center at Little Rock Air Force Base in Arkansas, home to the 463rd Airlift Group, which is deployed in Iraq, has a lounge where children can watch videotapes while a parent uses a computer. Master Sgt. Donovan Potter, a spokesman for the base, said computers were heavily used there when the center opened two and a half years ago, but that usage had declined as family members found other ways to gain access to the Internet. A few private companies have made their computer services available. Kinko's, for example, offers 30 minutes' free computer use to relatives of soldiers stationed overseas. And some soldiers' family members, like Katherine Juarez of Norfolk, Va., use computers at public libraries. Six days a week, Ms. Juarez, 20, spends an hour at the Pretlow Branch of the Norfolk Public Library. She is one of ''a huge volume of |
1483431_3 | U.S., Angry at French Stance on War, Considers Punishment | spokesman, said that Mr. Powell had taken a call today from his French counterpart, Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin, and that the two had spoken in part about Mr. Powell's blunt ''yes'' on the Charlie Rose program. ''They kind of laughed about some of the exaggerated press reporting of what 'yes' means,'' Mr. Boucher said. ''I think some of the papers have described 'yes' as 'war.' '' But Mr. Boucher did not back off on the essential position that France must be made to pay for its actions. ''There's obviously an effect on the relationship, on how we look at things, how we evaluate things, and how we look at things we might want to do in going forward,'' Mr. Boucher told reporters, adding that the consequences for France would be more than ''philosophical.'' Administration officials said they were annoyed but not surprised that the French this week proposed suspending -- but not lifting -- penalties against Iraq that had been imposed on Saddam Hussein's government. On Tuesday at the United Nations, the French said they were willing to agree to immediately suspend the penalties, but not to lift them permanently until they could verify that Iraq had disarmed. In effect, the French position puts more pressure on American-led military teams to find biological and chemical weapons in Iraq, and would require that a United Nations weapons inspections team return to Iraq to validate any finding. The White House is adamantly opposed to the return of United Nations weapons inspectors to Iraq, at least for the immediate future, because officials say they would get in the way of the military teams there now. The Bush administration is insisting that the penalties, an economic hardship on Iraqis, be lifted immediately. Bush administration officials say the original reasons that the United Nations imposed the penalties -- to try to force Mr. Hussein to give up his unconventional weapons -- have now disappeared, making them irrelevant. The French argue that the weapons could still be there, in enemy hands, and so still pose a potential threat. ''Where are they?'' the French diplomat said. ''And who controls them?'' Therefore, the French argument goes, the penalties should not be lifted until the weapons are found and verified by a United Nations inspection team. The French say that will help convince skeptical Arabs that the United States did not plant the weapons in Iraq. AFTEREFFECTS: RETALIATION |
1481307_2 | Peaches Coaxed From the Sand | in April does not give much time to develop sweetness and aroma. To come up with improved varieties, Mr. Bacon and his predecessors at Sun World's breeding program made tens of thousands of crosses over 15 years. No artificial genetic modifications were involved, but because early peaches ripen before their seeds are mature, the breeders employed a technique called ''embryo rescue,'' pampering the tiny seeds in test tubes and adding nutrients until they grew large enough to germinate and be planted. ''They're like preemies,'' said Mr. Bacon, as he walked down a row of shoulder-high three-year-old seedlings that he was evaluating, tapping data into his laptop computer. ''I select trees that bloom hard, fast and early,'' he said. For fruits, ''the overriding criteria are production, size, firmness and color -- the big four -- and then, of course, flavor,'' he added, laughing. Sun World patented two varieties with the ungainly names of Supechthirteen and Supechfifteen, and planted 21 acres in Oasis, of which seven are four years old and bearing their first substantial crop this year. Other than a single one-acre plot, it is the only commercial peach planting in the hot low deserts of California. The next morning I visited the Oasis orchard, where the trees, light green with a new flush of growth, looked lush and healthy. Just after dawn, workers started harvesting, and I noted with amusement that the crew packed the fruits right in the orchard, on a stand usually used for peppers, as the nearest commercial peach packing house was hundreds of miles away. Only Supechthirteen was ripe. I didn't expect much, since the variety was selected chiefly for extreme earliness -- the harvest started April 4. But the first fruit I sampled, a specimen so ripe that a bird had already pecked it, tasted pretty good, with ample juice and decent peachy flavor. Others examples, however, ranged down the scale to tart and watery. The harvest of Supechfifteen, supposed to be larger and tastier, and the main focus of Sun World's efforts, was still a few days off. At the company's Coachella office, nearby, David Marguleas, a senior vice president, explained that both desert Supech varieties that I saw, and four others from the San Joaquin Valley, 200 miles north, would be sold under the brand name Amber Crest from early April to early June. Increasingly, he said, marketers of peaches, nectarines and plums |
1481326_0 | No Friends of the Irish | Five years ago the Good Friday agreement brought a promise of peace and justice to Northern Ireland's long-suffering people. That promise is now threatened by the Irish Republican Army's stubborn refusal to declare a final end to armed combat, give up its weapons and commit itself exclusively to peaceful political persuasion. The I.R.A.'s destructive intransigence has delayed a package of further reforms that Britain, Northern Ireland's ruling authority, was prepared to announce last week, and that President Bush's recent Belfast visit was meant to support. It also sharpens political tensions in the province ahead of elections expected there next month. London and Washington, along with the Irish Republic, must keep trying to persuade the I.R.A. to change its mind. The Good Friday accord ended decades of institutionalized discrimination against Northern Ireland's large Roman Catholic minority. The agreement restored self-government, provided for a power-sharing cabinet and set the stage for a long overdue reform of the province's disproportionately Protestant and notoriously abusive police force. The agreement also allowed Irish republicanism's political wing, Sinn Fein, to enter government and pursue its goals of Catholic civil rights, British troop withdrawals and, eventually, a united Ireland. The clear understanding, though not spelled out in the agreement, was that over time, republicanism's armed wing, the I.R.A., would give up its arms and eventually disband. That still has not happened. Republicans say they have unmet needs, like further British troop withdrawals. London was ready to move on this and other issues if the I.R.A. had agreed to disarmament and permanent peace. New Northern Ireland elections are expected at the end of May. The British and Irish governments had hoped these could be preceded by a package deal that would include an I.R.A. declaration and an announcement of the next round of reforms. If that had happened, power sharing could have been revived and the Good Friday agreement fulfilled. Now, the voting will probably strengthen extremists on both sides and slow movement toward the peace and prosperity that people of all denominations want. The I.R.A. must stop standing in the way. |
1481383_2 | Testing Fad Is Farce For the Disabled | amounts of useless paperwork, the federal government will soon mandate even more standardized tests for these students. When I asked Dr. James Rowley, a physician and the parent of a 9-year-old at Wing Lake, what officials were thinking, he replied, ''I'm not sure they were thinking.'' This bureaucratic adventure began with the Individuals With Disabilities Education Act of 1997 and the altruistic-sounding goal of testing every child, no matter how disabled. The Washington brain trust gave states five years to create a test. But how to develop one test for so many children who are so severely disabled in such different ways? You can't, really. So what Michigan came up with -- and state officials say it is a national model -- are broad test categories like ''interacting with print'' and ''participating in solitary physical activities.'' It then becomes the job of the teacher, who knows the child best, to take that broad category and develop a specific test challenge for each child. So Mr. Hooton, knowing that his student Eric can walk down a hall with verbal prompts, has Eric walk down a hall, gives him verbal prompts and scores him 3, ''meets criterion.'' And he knows that Paul, who is autistic and becomes distracted, can walk down a hall with physical assistance. So he has Paul walk down a hall, gives him physical assistance and scores him 3, ''meets criterion.'' And he knows the best that Megan can do is sit in a wheelchair, and so Mr. Hooton wheels her down the hall and scores her 3. It takes most of March for the teachers to administer the tests. Then they send all that paperwork to Lansing, wait a few months, and get back the exact information they sent. Participating in solitary physical activities. Eric 3, Paul 3, Megan 3. Useless? ''I can't say I'm getting anything out of it,'' Mr. Hooton said. ''Parents don't either.'' When I asked Peggy Dutcher, Michigan's director of special education testing, what the point was, she said, ''It's the first time we've ever had a statewide assessment for all special education students.'' But aren't teachers and parents just getting back information that they already know? ''Reaction has been very positive,'' Ms. Dutcher said. ''People are loving this. They're thrilled.'' Those bureaucrats in their cocoons. People at Wing Lake did not sound thrilled to me. Ms. Gersh, the principal said: ''We all just |
1478155_0 | Cuba Arrests 8 in Hijacking of Havana Ferry | Cuban security forces arrested at least eight armed men who hijacked a passenger ferry west of Havana and tried to reach the United States, the Cuban government said today. Nearly 50 hostages, including some children, aboard the ferry were freed. The boat ran out of fuel in international waters and was commandeered by Cuban security forces late Thursday, the government said. ''They rescued these hostages and freed the boat without firing a shot,'' said Eduardo Vidal, a Cuban diplomat in Mexico City. ''Neither the civilian authorities nor the military tried to take the boat by force.'' The government said the hijackers had been armed and had threatened female passengers at knifepoint before surrendering to end a failed effort to reach Florida. Cuban security men boarded the craft, which normally shuttles between Havana and some of its suburbs along the coast, after two women jumped overboard, the government said. It said that a passenger tackled one of the hijackers and that the other hijackers threw down their weapons and leaped off the ship. The incident was the third of its kind involving a Cuban vessel in less than three weeks. On Tuesday a hijacker carrying a fake hand grenade forced a Cuban domestic airliner with 31 people on board to fly to Key West, Fla. A Cuban citizen, Adelmis Wilson González, has been charged with air piracy in the case and was denied bond on Thursday. A second commercial flight carrying 37 people was hijacked by six men brandishing knives and flown to Florida on March 19. The six were arrested on charges of conspiracy to seize an aircraft. They remain in jail. The incidents have taken place as Cuba's government has imposed a crackdown on dissent. Today, convening what the State Department in Washington described as ''a kangaroo court'' closed to outsiders, it is holding some 80 of its political opponents -- including writers, independent labor leaders and democracy activists -- for trials that could lead to long prison sentences. Those facing prison for their opposition to the government include two of Cuba's best-known independent journalists, Raúl Rivero and Ricardo González. The crackdown has heightened tensions between the United States and Cuba, and in the atmosphere of crisis, some Cubans are trying to leave the island by any means possible. In an unusual statement read on Cuban television on Wednesday night, the ranking United States diplomat in Havana, James Cason, |
1478215_0 | Fear of Reprisal | |
1478260_0 | GENESOFT WINS APPROVAL FOR PNEUMONIA-FIGHTING DRUG | GeneSoft Pharmaceuticals, a biotechnology company, said the Food and Drug Administration approved its first product, an antibiotic called Factive, for treatment of pneumonia and chronic bronchitis. The drug, which is expected to be available late this year, could help doctors cope with bacteria that are becoming increasingly resistant to older antibiotics. GeneSoft, based in South San Francisco, Calif., said it believed that Factive, which it licensed from LG Life Sciences of South Korea, is the first drug developed by a Korean company to be approved by the F.D.A. COMPANY NEWS |
1478163_2 | History's pagans might have approved of President Bush's Iraq policy, an author suggests. | calls a pagan ethos. Mr. Kaplan, a correspondent for The Atlantic Monthly with years of reporting experience from some of the world's most violent war zones, made the case for conducting United States foreign policy according to such an ethos in his book ''Warrior Politics: Why Leadership Demands a Pagan Ethos'' (Random House, 2002). Mr. Kaplan was not invoking the pantheistic spiritualities espoused by Wiccans and other contemporary adherents of nature religions. Rather, he was writing of the lessons to be drawn from the harsh world of the Peloponnesian Wars between Sparta and Athens as recounted by Thucydides, the Punic Wars between Rome and Carthage as recounted by Livy, or the era of the Warring States in China in Sun Tzu's ''The Art of War.'' To these ancient pagans, Mr. Kaplan adds more modern figures like Machiavelli, Hobbes and Churchill. Some reviewers were less than impressed by Mr. Kaplan's hodgepodge of history and philosophy, but at bottom ''Warrior Politics'' is really about contemporary foreign policy. It is a brief for a cold-eyed, hardheaded, self-interested American realism freed from the constraints of a Judeo-Christian morality of good intentions. ''Christianity is about the moral conquest of the world,'' Mr. Kaplan writes, ''while Greek tragedy is about the clash of irreconcilable elements. As Machiavelli cruelly but accurately puts it, progress often comes from hurting others.'' In Mr. Kaplan's view, a world tottering on the edge of anarchy and chaos demands a kind of stealth American empire that does not speak its name but wields its power to protect democratic values, although not necessarily by democratic means. There is much in his book that accurately describes the spirit now presiding over United States foreign policy. Asked yesterday how he would rate the administration's Iraq policy by the standard of his pagan ethos, Mr. Kaplan said, ''Over all, pretty good.'' He said, however, that there was not necessarily a contradiction between pagan means and Christian ends. Indeed, while ''Warrior Politics'' repeatedly emphasizes ''the distinction between pagan and Judeo-Christian values,'' it also detects a ''considerable overlap.'' In fact, the Iraq war, Mr. Kaplan said, was ''a classic case of using pagan realpolitik toward ends that are compatible with Judeo-Christian morality.'' But can one separate means and ends this way -- and justify the former by the latter? That idea may sit more comfortably with Mr. Kaplan's pagan ethos than with any ethos advocated by evangelicals like |
1477080_0 | Legacy of Lead at Menopause | Women in menopause are at greater risk of high blood pressure if they have even low levels of lead in their blood, a new study reports. The problem is mainly a result of lead that has built up in the skeleton over a lifetime, and is then released as menopause causes bones to break down and lose minerals, said Dr. Denis Nash, the main researcher. Although the threat comes in part from lead in the environment, he said, lead exposure is generally on the decline. ''Maybe you could call it the legacy of lead,'' said Dr. Nash, who did the research at the University of Maryland School of Medicine but now works for the New York City Health Department. The report is based on information generated in a long-term government health study. The researchers looked at the histories of 2,165 women, ages 40 to 59, from 1988 to 1994. The researchers said that they found a consistent association between lead in the blood and high blood pressure, and that the higher the lead level, the greater the risk. Moreover, they said, ''the most important and troubling implication of these findings'' is that a lead level well below that considered safe for adults appeared to increase blood pressure. The levels were even below the current federal limits suggested for children. Many women begin receiving treatment for bone loss when they reach menopause. It is possible, Dr. Nash said, that stabilizing the skeleton stops the lead from entering the blood and causing a risk. Previous studies have also shown a link between lead exposure and high blood pressure in men. VITAL SIGNS: CAUSE AND EFFECT |
1477098_0 | Weather Satellites Can Be Better Used | Weather satellites could be even more effective forecasting and charting climate change if the agencies that run them keep up with the latest technology, an expert panel has reported. Too often, the panel said, no efficient pathway exists to move sensors from experimental satellites to operating weather satellites. In addition, the panel said, information from research satellites often has no way to reach people working on practical weather and climate prediction. The report was issued by the National Research Council, an arm of the National Academy of Sciences. Although great advances in forecasting and understanding climate have been made since the first weather satellite was launched in 1960, practical applications have not been realized, the study said. Benefits of better prediction could be huge, the panel said, noting that up to 40 percent of the nation's $10 trillion economy is affected by weather and climate each year. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration is largely responsible for developing technology and methods for earth observation, the council said. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration uses the work to build and operate weather satellites. The panel recommended that the two agencies set up a joint office to evaluate proposals for earth science missions and plan to put the results to practical use as soon as possible. A NASA administrator, Dr. Ghassem Asrar, said, ''We agree with the N.R.C.'s emphasis on better communication.'' The Aqua satellite is one project that was successfully planned to serve both basic and applied science needs, a panel member, Dr. Paul D. Try, said in an interview. |
1480089_1 | U.S. Envoy Puts Peace-Plan Onus on I.R.A. | would call a halt to its operations, including recruitment, training, intelligence gathering, arms procurement and punishment attacks, and carry out a visible act of destroying its weapons. On seeing the language of the intended I.R.A. statement, however, both governments were taken aback at its lack of clarity and commitment. ''If there isn't clarity, there isn't confidence, and if there isn't confidence, there isn't a deal,'' Mr. Blair said. Mr. Haass, who was in Belfast on Tuesday for President Bush's Iraq war summit meeting with Mr. Blair, returned to the province on Friday to offer direct American involvement in the emergency negotiations. Mr. Bush had committed his prestige to the Anglo-Irish effort, endorsing it and urging the province's political leaders to accept it and put an end to paramilitarism in the province. Tonight, Mr. Haass said, ''I essentially urged Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness to use their influence to try and persuade the I.R.A. to say and do things that would mark an historic transformation in the situation.'' He said he had also told the Sinn Fein leaders that they had to start communicating with all the residents of Northern Ireland, not just their own hardened constituencies. Mr. Haass's statement departed from the usual custom in the politics of Northern Ireland of avoiding assigning responsibility for breakdowns in peace negotiations to one side or the other. Sinn Fein also found itself coming under direct criticism from Mark Durkan, the leader of the other Catholic party in the province, the Social, Democratic and Labor Party. ''I have listened to everything that Sinn Fein representatives have said, not just in recent days but over months and years,'' he said. ''Going by much of that, there is now no republican reason for the I.R.A. to exist.'' He also said he was impatient with I.R.A. intransigence, which he argued gave Protestant politicians the excuse they needed for not cooperating with their Catholic counterparts. The Northern Ireland Assembly, which operates on a formula dividing power between the Catholic minority and the Protestant majority, was suspended in October when Protestant leaders threatened to close it down because of disclosures of I.R.A. spy activities. David Trimble, leader of the largest Protestant party, the Ulster Unionists, says he will not go back into a government with Sinn Fein until the I.R.A. makes it clear that it is getting rid of its arms and giving up its war against Britain. |
1481848_0 | One Airline's 5 Weeks With a Medical Threat | On March 15, the captain of a Northwest Airlines 747 called the airline's chief doctor to find out if he had heard anything about a mysterious illness that had been discovered in Asia. That same day, an advisory from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention arrived in Northwest's safety and environmental department in Eagan, Minn., with the first description of the illness that has come to be known as severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS. The two events kicked off efforts by the airline and the unions representing its flight crews and ground workers to keep on top of the disease, which international aviation officials say could cause more damage to the airline industry than the war in Iraq. In the weeks since SARS was first identified, Northwest has begun asking passengers boarding flights in cities like Hong Kong, Beijing and Toronto whether they have shown SARS-like symptoms or been in contact with SARS patients. It has formed a crisis team that receives daily updates on the spread of disease. And it has instituted procedures such as wiping down ticket counters every three hours in cities with SARS cases and allowing employees to wear masks and gloves if they feel a need. Northwest's unions, however, are pressing for more information and greater protection. Northwest is particularly vulnerable to the impact of the illness, since it is one of the two major United States airlines serving Asia. (The other, United, declined to discuss its procedures for dealing with SARS.) Northwest is the largest United States carrier to Japan, which is its main hub for flights to the rest of Asia, including Hong Kong, where SARS has caused great concern. Northwest does not serve Hong Kong directly from the United States. Northwest is applying longstanding procedures for health emergencies to deal with SARS, said Kenneth J. Hylander, the airline's vice president for safety and engineering. ''When you're running a major multinational corporation, you have processes and procedures to deal with any number of crises that might come up at any time,'' he said. ''You drill and practice to those procedures. A flight attendant isn't going to do anything different in terms of isolating a passenger, whether it's SARS or a heart attack.'' The airline says it has had only one suspected case of SARS among its passengers or employees, when an 11-month-old baby showed symptoms aboard a flight to Minneapolis from |
1482221_2 | Helen Overcomes Bad Men and Bad Press | those days,'' Ms. Kern said. ''Helen had been stolen before she ever met Paris, and there had been no major war to reclaim her. Her brothers simply went and got her.'' Adam Shapiro, the executive producer of the series, said that the network's advertising tag line -- ''Desire Is War'' -- ''can refer to Helen's desire for freedom, for Paris or to Agamemnon's desire for empire, and all the men's desires for Helen.'' Menelaus (James Callis) has genuine feeling for Helen, but he is weak and bullied by his brother. Paris (Matthew Marsden) is still the ardent, ''beautiful prince'' described in Homer, although Mr. Marsden was pleased to find his character strongly contrasted with the Spartans, ''who see women as trophies, not as people.'' Mr. Marsden says he returned to the Greek and Roman myths that had fascinated him as a child to research his role. ''I read and reread endless stories and watched films,'' he says. ''Yet I never really saw this approached as a love story. It's the original Romeo and Juliet.'' But with a lot more than a balcony to scale between scenes. ''That goat I had to chase up Mount Ida -- it was like an Olympic sprinter,'' said Mr. Marsden, who had trained with Army Rangers for his part in ''Black Hawk Down.'' ''It was like the Ben Johnson of goats! I couldn't get near it.'' For the British actor Rufus Sewell, who plays Agamemnon, the first day of work held a different sort of challenge. His first scene, set on a clifftop with 200 extras dressed as soldiers, called for Agamemnon to fulfill a divine order to sacrifice his daughter. Unlike the mythical Iphigenia, the 6-year-old actress panicked at the sight of ''200 men with spears and me standing there in black armor and a beard,'' said Mr. Sewell. Of course that cast of hundreds, in full battle dress, is part of the appeal of epic films -- an appeal that seems to be making a comeback. ''Attila,'' produced by Mr. Shapiro for USA in 2001, was the network's highest rated mini-series. And last summer, as the cast and crew worked on ''Helen of Troy'' in Malta, Warner Brothers announced a big-screen epic, ''Troy,'' to star Brad Pitt as Achilles and Eric Bana as Hector. ''Troy'' goes before cameras this week in London and later in Morocco. Though the story is said to focus |
1482624_0 | April 13-19: INTERNATIONAL; MOST WANTED | Nearly 18 years after Palestinian terrorists commandeered the cruise liner Achille Lauro in the Mediterranean and killed a disabled American passenger, the mastermind of the attack, Abu Abbas, was captured in Baghdad by American Special Forces. Mr. Abbas had been living there openly for two years, another link, administration officials said, between Saddam Hussein's regime and terrorism. Mr. Hussein's half-brother Barzan Ibrahim al-Tikriti was also captured in Baghdad. He was among the 55 Iraqis most wanted by the United States. David Johnston |
1482619_1 | Helping Graduates Outwit Hard Times | numbers higher than they should be.'' Not just Ms. Steinfeld but her whole 24-person staff has one big piece of advice for job seekers: don't abandon hope. During the second half of the 90's, she explained, it was a cinch for N.Y.U. graduates to find jobs. All that many students had to do was circulate their resumes online or contact hiring directors online. That often led to interviews online and, presto, the job offers flowed in. ''Now,'' Ms. Steinfeld said, ''just don't think a good job will fall in your lap. You just can't sit in your pajamas and shop online for jobs. You need face-to-face contact, you need to network, all that good, old-fashioned stuff.'' Ms. Steinfeld, who has been N.Y.U.'s career services director for 13 years, has developed lots of experience giving job advice, partly because her office holds 13,000 one-on-one counseling sessions with students each year. In light of today's slumping economy, one piece of advice she gives is that students should broaden their horizons. ''A student who majored in economics and was thinking of landing a great job at a major investment bank now might have to be willing to work in banking doing research and analysis,'' she said, ''Or maybe in another sector, maybe for a large insurance company doing risk analysis, or maybe for a nonprofit researching economic trends or maybe for the U.S. Department of Labor.'' She often advises students that they can no longer hold out for their dream job right out of college. ''We are not telling students to give up on your dream job,'' she explained. ''We are saying that with the current political and economic environment, you need to get a job where you can develop your skills, make contacts and position yourself for when things get better so you can move up in your organization to a position that is a better fit or perhaps move to another organization.'' While she said hiring was weak in financial services, information technology and consulting, she pointed to several fields doing a lot of hiring: insurance, health care, consumer products, nursing, education and military contractors. ''The sales sector is another area where there's hiring,'' she said. ''Companies are always interested in people who can sell and bring in profits.'' An annual survey of last year's graduates done by her office found that the mean salary for nursing majors was $56,000; for |
1482347_4 | A British Raid (Minus Cannon Fire) | and drove them back to the car they had left downriver. The next day, they finished the row. Most memorable, however, was another Concklin-Fernandez raid. The two were heading back downriver, in the dark. ''We were moving very rapidly,'' Mr. Concklin said. Suddenly, they hit a buoy. Their oars went overboard; they nearly did, too. They retrieved the oars and continued. But, Mr. Fernandez said, ''After the buoy incident, we switched to days.'' There have been pleasanter raids, like the most recent one. The rowers began with three rowers in one boat, tooled around a bit, and then switched to two in each boat. Steadily, they rowed up the river, weeks ahead of summer boating crowds. ''It's nice to be the only ones out here,'' Mr. Fernandez said. They passed marshes and islands; Mr. Stratton noted Ayers Point, where in the 1770's David Bushnell built the Turtle, America's first submarine. In less than an hour, they pulled their boats, Freshnet and Apogee, ashore at the foot of Main Street. ''Well done,'' Mr. Monahan said to his fellow raiders. Then they all headed up the street for coffee. The British had behaved less sociably. At dawn on April 8, they informed local residents that they would come to destroy shipping. If nobody resisted, they would not harm people or homes. Nobody did resist, and the British kept their word. They simply burned every ship in Essex, except for two, which they took as prizes and another which--according to local legend--they spared when its captain gave a Masonic sign to Captain Coote. By 10 a.m., the British left. The trip back was difficult. One prize ship ran aground; the other simply hindered progress, so both were burned. Area militia, now alerted, began lining the riverbanks, firing cannons. Finally, the British laid low and waited for darkness. Then they drifted silently to their ships. As for the modern-day raiders, when they finished their coffee, they walked down to their boats, shoved off, and rowed back. ''We moved right along,'' Mr. Monahan said. Nobody had fired on them, of course. In fact, nobody paid any attention at all, which was usually the case. The town will not mark the raid until May 3, when it will have its annual Burning of the Ships parade. To the rowers, that event is, well, wimpy, because it occurs on land. ''And it's warm then,'' Mr. Persson said. |
1482626_0 | April 13-19: INTERNATIONAL; BRITISH SKELETONS IN IRELAND | For years human rights organizations and leaders of the republican movement in Northern Ireland charged that members of Britain's security forces assisted Protestant guerrillas in killing Catholics in the 1980's. Now a report from Sir John Stevens, the head of Scotland Yard, says they're right. It details a 14-year investigation into the 1989 murder of Patrick Finucane, a civil rights lawyer, and 25 other victims. The inquiry, still unfinished, was ''willfully obstructed and misled'' by police and military intelligence officials, Sir John said. Warren Hoge |
1482319_1 | When Imagination Took Flight | reserved for the wealthy or those on generous expense accounts. Throughout the plane's operational life, the cost of a ticket never dropped below $9,000. A far larger and much more economical version built by Boeing never got beyond a wooden mockup. Congress wasn't prepared to pay the price for development at a time when the Vietnam War was consuming our society. So the Concorde became the solo state-of-the-art example of commercial passenger flight at its zenith, arriving on Long Island with all the majesty of an ocean liner during the Golden Era of steamships. In the beginning, no one thought Concorde would be the end of the line of supersonic transportation. Planners thought nearby Kennedy would be a host to a family of SST's by the 21st century, putting travelers scant hours from anywhere on the globe. But as the Columbia shuttle tragedy proved, and the fuel tank fire that claimed an earlier Concorde, technology ages out with dangerous results. Bits of rudder continue to shed from Concordes on a regular basis, and upgrades were putting the SST operators deeper in debt at a time when airline revenue is declining. The retirement of the Concorde and the Columbia catastrophe remain in stark technological contrast to the prowess of American military technology exhibited in Iraq. We have used our extraordinary skill in technology development to reinvent warfare. Never before in the history of mankind has such care been exercised to avoid the deaths of noncombatants through the use of precise munitions. Stealth aircraft, remote-controlled aircraft and a squadron of other aviation advances will punctuate the history of this conflict and set new future standards. As we observe the centennial milestone of the Wrights' first flight, is this the sole direction of our advances in aviation? Do we as a nation no longer have any interest in creating advances in commercial aviation, pioneering space flight and lunar exploration? Do the Concorde and the shuttle reflect the high-water mark of aviation's peaceful application? Are these amazing vehicles to be left to museums as symbols not of what we can achieve but of where humanity decided to stop? The Cradle of Aviation has in its collection a half-scale model of the Concorde. It was taken down from its perch as an advertisement at Times Square and donated to the institution by British Airways. Our intent is to erect it as an icon inspiring a |
1482494_0 | The Travel Industry Changes Its Vacation Plans; Undercrowding in China | Double-decker 747's are flying into Shanghai with a dozen or so passengers. Hotels are lucky to fill a third of their rooms. The tourists and conventioneers who usually fill the streets, shops and high-end restaurants of Shanghai this time of year are staying home. Despite China's concerted efforts to present the country as safe, SARS is walloping the Chinese tourist industry more than any event since the Tiananmen Square crackdown nearly 14 years ago. The visitor drought seems to be likely to persist for weeks, significantly reducing overseas arrivals through much of the peak travel season. Tour operators say they hope that the limited number of infected people in China so far, along with the Beijing government's belated efforts to speak more openly about SARS will persuade people to return. But many hotels and tour groups are not even promoting themselves for fear of alienating potential visitors who are now more concerned about protecting their health than about finding bargains. ''People do not want to see China advertised right now -- it's just not prudent or smart to be out there,'' said Tina Liu, marketing manager for the Grand Hyatt Hotel in Shanghai. ''The good news is that the government is more open now, but we can't be sure when people will come back.'' Ms. Liu said the Grand Hyatt now has an occupancy rate of about 30 percent. Last year in mid-April, the peak tourist season, the hotel was nearly full. A few China tour groups are promoting discounted air and hotel fares for some popular destinations. Tourism executives say they also hope that visitors will realize that not all China is infected. For example, the main cities along one popular tour route -- down the Yangtze River to view the Three Gorges before a huge dam begins to flood the upper section of the river in June -- have no reported SARS cases. ''Some people might hesitate to go to the south,'' said Fang Ming, general manager of CTrip.com, an online travel agency, ''but the eastern part of China, including Shanghai, is really not affected.'' Mainland China, where tourism generates less than 2 percent of gross domestic product, has been hurt much less than Hong Kong, where tourism contributes about 6 percent to annual economic output. Hotel occupancy is in the single digits, and the flagship carrier, Cathay Pacific, has cut flights drastically. JOSEPH KAHN |
1484219_3 | Ode to Joi(sey) | ''The way Princeton is set up is that it is a university that acknowledges that poetry is another way of making sense of how the world functions,'' he said. ''People who do this, they believe, are useful people to have around. One is meant to be teaching away, but also contributing something to the general intellectual community.'' Mr. Dunn, who used to live in Port Republic, a remote town in the interior of South Jersey, now divides his time between Ocean City and his wife's hometown, Frostburg, Md. But it is the time he has spent at the Jersey Shore that inspired a whimsical series of poems in his first post-Pulitzer volume, ''Local Visitations'' (Norton, $21.95). In them, he imagines some of his favorite writers in New Jersey, with such poems as ''Melville at Barnegat Light,'' ''Mary Shelley in Brigantine,'' ''Harriet Beecher Stowe in Sweetwater'' and ''Stendhal in Sea Isle City.'' ''He liked the ocean but hated the beach,'' reads ''Dostoyevsky in Wildwood.'' ''Everywhere, though, women in bikinis, women in shorts so short you could follow a leg to some hidden center of a rumored universe.'' Except for ''Twain in Atlantic City,'' it is unlikely that any of Mr. Dunn's 20 South Jersey ''Visitations'' even remotely took place. But there was a purpose nonetheless. ''It was fun to try to populate my area with these people,'' Mr. Dunn said. ''But more seriously, it was a way of using their sensibilities as a lens for me, to see where I live. ''I think of mindscape more than landscape historically,'' he said. ''I think much more about psychological space than I do of place, so this was an effort, but a good one for me to do.'' Mr. Muldoon hears a different muse. ''I write to make sense of where I am, wherever that might be,'' he said, noting that an inordinate number of his more recent poems are set in either Ireland or New Jersey. ''That involves the place and the personality and all that goes into it, the histories that are combining there and the languages combining. So much of that comes together in one place, and the place I am in most now is New Jersey.'' While neither Mr. Dunn nor Mr. Muldoon spent his youth in New Jersey, Mr. Williams did, primarily in Newark. Though he says growing up in the state's largest city did not directly influence |
1484110_4 | SARS Puts a New Face Flying in Asia | in travel.) Mr. Boyd said he had no idea what percentage of passengers or crew members were choosing to wear masks and emphasized that their use is optional. He also stressed that offering masks is just one aspect of a ''multilevel approach'' the airline and health authorities are taking to protect passengers. Other measures include asking passengers boarding planes in Singapore about their health and whether they have been in close contact with anyone with SARS, stepping up procedures to clean all hard surfaces on aircraft between flights with a disinfectant recommended by the World Health Organization, and asking passengers arriving in Singapore about their symptoms and recent travels and taking the temperatures of those from some destinations. Mr. Boyd also said that Singapore Airlines aircraft are equipped with air filters that trap dust and bacteria and prevent them from recirculating. Cathay Pacific Airways, which is based in Hong Kong, also began offering masks to passengers and crews the first week in April -- not because many employees or customers were asking for them, but ''in response to public perception,'' said Mary Jersin-Shammas, a spokeswoman for the airline. Most crew members are not using masks, she added, ''unless they are attending a passenger suspected of having SARS.'' Among the American companies with the most service to Asia, United Airlines is making masks available to passengers and employees who ask for them at ticket counters in Taipei, Hong Kong, Beijing, Shanghai and Tokyo. Chris Nardella, a United spokeswoman, said in mid-April that the airline did not know how many passengers were requesting masks. Northwest Airlines, which also flies to Asia, is not handing out masks, said Mary Stanik, a spokeswoman for the airline, since the C.D.C. was not recommending it. But if a passenger seems to have symptoms during a flight, they would be given one. Also passengers boarding in the affected regions are being asked if they have any symptoms and if they have been in contact with anyone who does. ''If they say yes to the symptoms but no to contact they are advised to postpone travel,'' Ms. Stanik said. ''If they say no to the symptoms and yes to contact, they are allowed to board unless they appear sick.'' Anyone who answers yes to both questions would be directed to local health officials, she added. American Airlines, which flies to Tokyo from several American cities, is not giving |
1484282_0 | High Cost of Spam | To the Editor: One thing not mentioned in ''Internet Is Losing Ground in Battle Against Spam'' (front page, April 22) is the monetary cost to consumers and businesses. Spam uses bandwidth. An Internet service provider must pass along the cost of this bandwidth to its customers. In addition, spammers will often use poorly secured mail servers to relay spam. The organization owning such a server may discover that its bandwidth costs have suddenly skyrocketed. MICHAEL GRICE Madison, Wis., April 24, 2003 |
1484144_4 | Commercial Property/Westchester; A Grand View, and Metro-North Too | and Mr. Lyons also own a small boat club at the north end of the property. In addition to the new three-story building, which is expected to be completed by the end of the year, the partners are continuing to renovate parts of the old factory. Combined, the two projects are expected to add 75,000 square feet of office space at the site this year. One inhibitor to waterfront development, said Mr. Wright of the Regional Plan Association, was what he called ''well-intentioned environmental laws'' that require unrealistically pristine cleanups and leave uncertain the legal liability of developers and their lenders. These so-called brownfield issues were not much of a problem at the site, despite its manufacturing history, Mr. Lyons said. Old fuel tanks are a common source of pollution as they rust and leak over time. But here the tanks were above ground and protected in vaults, he said The design intention for the new building is that it appear to be the offices of the factory complex, Mr. Thompson said. ''It needs to look as if it was designed in 1900,'' he said, ''not a century later.'' The new building is being designed to green standards, he said, which means maximizing energy efficiency and using recycled materials. Because so much of the facade will be enclosed by glass windows (with old-style sashes that can be opened) the glass chosen is one that admits light but reflects solar heat rays. In addition, the core of the building that contains the utilities has been compacted in the center, so that daylight can reach all the working spaces of the structure. The architect for the project is Walter Sedovic of Irvington. The developers are exploring recycling some of the cypress planking taken out of the old buildings into wood blocks that could be used as flooring in the new building or in the continuing renovation of the old ones. But they have been forced to order old-looking new brick for the outer walls of the new building. ''We tried to use recycled brick, but there was just not enough of it from the renovation operation,'' Mr. Lyons said. Mr. Thompson said he expected to sign either a single tenant for the entire new building or tenants for each of the three floors before the building was completed. He said prime candidates were financial industry companies interested in following concerns like Morgan |
1484438_0 | Punish France? Stop the Pettiness | To the Editor: How petty we are (''U.S., Angry at French Stance on War, Considers Punishment,'' news article, April 24)! The French, the Russians, the Germans and the Chinese were only reflecting what much of the world was saying: that we should give inspections more time and adhere to international law. To punish the French feels a lot like what a tyrant would do: not let his ''subjects'' disagree. The proposed punishment exemplifies the very reason for the strong disagreement: that the United States can do whatever it likes, even when there are good arguments against such action. I, for one, am proud that my father was French. G. L. LEBLANC Rogue River, Ore., April 24, 2003 |
1484028_2 | Don't Eat This Page | circumvent them, the barons of business were as much the beneficiaries of the F.D.A.'s influence as were the American people; commercial success depends, after all, on public confidence. ''The laying down of the scientific standard came first,'' Hilts writes, ''and the creation of the modern pharmaceutical industry followed. A scientific standard, administered by some body outside industry itself, was the essential ingredient. Companies could create real drugs, which would gain the federal seal of approval.'' Not only were the drugs real, but they were increasingly safe, as were the products created by the growing food industry. But the path was rarely smooth; from time to time, it would take a tragedy to force protective legislation. In 1937, for example, the Masengill Company, to satisfy the demand for a liquid form of sulfanilamide, an early antibiotic, dissolved the drug in diethylene glycol, a sweet liquid, to make it more palatable, and shipped out several untested batches totaling 240 gallons. Diethylene glycol is highly toxic. When 107 people died, the outburst of public and Congressional outrage revived legislation, first drafted in 1933, to replace and amplify the hodgepodge of controls that had grown up over the previous three decades. With the large number of deaths and the probability that far more were unreported, a stronger bill, demanding that companies must prove safety and effectiveness before their products could be sold, was introduced. On June 15, 1938, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed into law the landmark Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act, the first legislation in the world requiring testing before market. But the rules for testing were not so stringent as they would later become in response to another drug-induced calamity, in 1961. Over the objections of Dr. Frances Kelsey, a newly appointed F.D.A. pharmacologist, Richardson-Merrell Inc.- going so far as threatening to force the reassignment of Kelsey -- enlisted 1,200 doctors to carry out ''clinical trials'' of Thalidomide, a German drug, on their private patients. Thalidomide had been shown to cause significant neurological symptoms in its users. Even when it was disclosed to have caused arm and leg deformities in the newborns of European women who had taken it during pregnancy, the agency's commissioner was slow to recall pills already in the hands of unwary patients. The result of the international disaster was a law that significantly toughened the 1938 regulations. Kelsey was awarded a medal by President John F. Kennedy, and |
1481173_0 | Keeping the Bears Healthy | To the Editor: ''Bears' Healthy Genes'' (March 25) reports good news that inbreeding is not likely to threaten Yellowstone grizzly bears for several generations. But the paper cited in the article also says that for Yellowstone grizzlies: *Inbreeding will occur unless genetic connections are established with other populations. *Stresses on the bears will probably increase and exacerbate any inbreeding effects. *Managers are encouraged to increase the size and range of this population. Much difficult habitat restoration will be required to assure the long-term viability of these grizzlies. The Yellowstone ecosystem is too small to contain a truly viable population of grizzlies, and by itself this isolated population can never be ''safe'' or ''recovered.'' Efforts to end ''threatened species'' protection for the Yellowstone grizzlies are premature and incompatible with sound management of this national treasure. DR. LEE H. METZGAR Missoula, Mont. The writer is a retired wildlife biologist who works to support grizzly bear recovery. |
1481084_0 | Spam: The Next Frontier In Booking Your Trip | HENRY H. HARTEVELDT knows a whole lot more about online travel booking than I'll ever know, but on the other hand Mr. Harteveldt doesn't have to wade through my e-mail in basket. For example, I was traveling most of last week. When I got back, I spent two hours sorting out the e-mail messages I wanted to read from a five-day accumulation of spam, working my delete key like a machine-gun trigger. In all, there were more than 900 desperate junk-mail spams, ranging from those with message lines that wink with coquettish come-ons (''I really enjoyed last night!'') to those that, taken together, seem to imply that the receiver is a swashbuckling sybarite, as well a prime candidate for male and female anatomical enlargements and/or reductions, not to mention a debt-ridden, obese loner who gambles excessively but is nevertheless sufficiently flush to attract trusting offers from various relatives of Mobuto Sese Seko who require help in laundering $70 million in cash that's been laying around since the fall of Kinshasha. So the old eyebrow shot up recently at a travel industry conference when I heard Mr. Harteveldt, the principal travel analyst at Forrester Research, assert, ''E-mail is the most important tool in the travel industry's recovery.'' Sure, I thought. And the Three Tenors? Those guys are all at the top of their game. But then I remembered the last e-mail sort-through I'd done, dispatching all those spams to the delete bin. When I was finished, the only advertising e-mail messages that remained were a handful of promotional offers, or heads-up messages about travel, from various airlines and hotels. According to Mr. Harteveldt, airlines, hotels and other travel suppliers have discovered something remarkable about frequent travelers, who tend to be people who are also high users of the Internet (and subscribers to broadband Internet services). We actually want to get e-mail messages from these companies. E-mail is proving to be ''the most immediate vehicle you have to reach out to customers, to segment and communicate with customers in a relevant, compelling and timely manner,'' Mr. Harteveldt told industry suppliers at the Travel Commerce conference in New York earlier this month. ''The e-mail-engaged traveler,'' said Mr. Harteveldt, doesn't much like pop-up ads or big ad displays that eat up the whole screen. These travelers want marketing information, not jive. They are, he said, people who book a lot of travel online and |
1481178_0 | World Briefing | Europe: Northern Ireland: I.R.A. Outline Studied | The British and Irish governments, sponsors of the Northern Ireland peace agreement, welcomed a confidential statement from the Irish Republican Army outlining steps it would take to save the accord, but Paul Murphy, the Northern Ireland secretary, told the House of Commons that further clarification was needed on several aspects. The I.R.A., under pressure to disarm, issued its statement on Sunday after Prime Minister Tony Blair and his Irish counterpart, Bertie Ahern, called off a trip to Belfast when the group's first declaration fell far short of expectations. London and Dublin are calling on the I.R.A. to declare its 30-year war with the British over, plan its disbandment and give up its weapons as necessary steps to reviving the suspended Northern Ireland Assembly that balances power between Catholics and Protestants. Warren Hoge (NYT) |
1481127_0 | Cases of Lethal New Illness Rise Sharply in Interior Region | Reported cases of severe acute respiratory syndrome rose sharply today in an interior province of northern China, heralding the possible spread of the disease through the country's vast, medically underserved hinterlands. A report last week that 32 people in Shanxi Province, a region of coal mines and factory towns, had been diagnosed with the disease, known as SARS, had already raised concerns among health experts. The disease, which has been fatal in about 4 percent of cases, has been concentrated in the prosperous, urbanized southeastern province of Guangdong and in neighboring Hong Kong, with small numbers of cases appearing in other Chinese cities. The worry deepened today when the ministry of health, in its daily update to the World Health Organization, said 47 more cases had been reported from Shanxi on Sunday. ''We're very concerned about what may be happening out in the provinces,'' Henk Bekedan, director of the W.H.O. office here, said in an interview. The Shanxi cases are concentrated in the provincial capital of Taiyuan, where SARS was apparently introduced several weeks ago by a traveler returning from Guangdong. The new figures bring reported cases in the Taiyuan area to 79. This is a small number in a metropolitan region of 3.3 million, but it is more than double the 37 cases reported as of today here in Beijing, the capital, with a metropolitan area population of about 14 million. Public fears are being expressed here that the government says are overblown. Nationwide, China now has reported 1,418 cases of the disease, with 64 deaths, out of a worldwide total of 3,619 cases and 144 deaths. In the last few days, in what international officials call a helpful step, China's top leaders have expressed strong new concern about SARS and called for greater openness and stronger control measures. In weekend meetings that were featured in news reports today, Prime Minister Wen Jiabao described the threat of SARS as ''grave'' and called for all-out efforts to overcome it. He did not describe the disease as ''under effective control'' -- as senior health officials had last week in an effort to reassure the public and head off the mass cancellation of foreign tourist and business visits to China. Mr. Bekedan said the surge in Shanxi might reflect an expectable second wave of infections as the initial patients exposed others before they were diagnosed and isolated. What happens next will depend |
1478775_0 | Seeing the Voice of the Lord | THE SPIRIT OF EARLY CHRISTIAN THOUGHT Seeking the Face of God. By Robert Louis Wilken. 368 pp. New Haven: Yale University Press. $29.95. I ONCE heard the eminent German classicist Eduard Fraenkel declare that the greatest masters of Latin prose were Cicero, Petronius and Tertullian. These three people would probably have had little to say to one another, and yet they shared a common classical culture. The last of them was the first great expositor of Christianity in Latin, a Father of the Church, with visible roots in the oratory of Cicero if not in the racy novel of Petronius. The early Christian Fathers were a formidable crew. From the second century onward they served as the intellectual aristocracy of the young religion. Some, like Tertullian and St. Augustine, wrote in Latin, many others in Greek, but all were steeped in the traditional classical culture of their time. They knew Plato, as well as the work of later Platonists, and they manipulated the tropes of contemporary rhetoric in their sermons. Their dialectical and exegetical skills were sharpened by endless quarrels among themselves over the subtlest points of theology. Theirs was at first a pagan world in which they represented a minority of the population around the ancient Mediterranean, but later, after Constantine, they spoke from the comfortable position of representatives of a state-supported religion. Yet this was a security that only made internecine struggles sharper. According to the historian Ammianus Marcellinus, the Emperor Julian, who was raised a Christian but became a zealous pagan, knew from experience that no wild beasts were so hostile to humans as most Christians were in their savagery toward one another. Nevertheless, Julian grossly underestimated the Fathers, who may have disagreed on theology but came together in an irresistible phalanx to defend and interpret the teaching of Christ. The Fathers, all male as their designation indicates, left behind an immense body of writing, known collectively as the Greek and Latin patrology. Study of their works has been a thriving business for centuries under the name of patristics, although until recently these studies were largely the domain of seminaries, schools of divinity and departments of religion. Patristic literature is to Christianity what Talmud is to Judaism and Hadith to Islam -- the written record of learned debate and commentary on sacred texts. These men did not work in an ivory tower. All of them confronted violence |
1478590_5 | The Nation; Stop-and-Go Traffic on a Global Scale | So far, no treatment has been found for SARS. Scientists also have not come up with a test for the disease, so the best airport screening method now -- if a highly inefficient one -- is for workers to question travelers. If a test were devised, then health workers might be able to better examine passengers, but that would likely pose significant logistical problems. ''There are turnaround times of an hour at least,'' said Dr. Roger E. Wetherbee, an infectious-disease specialist at New York University Medical Center. ''It would certainly be very cumbersome. The travelers would object to it certainly. And if they were trying to make connections, it would screw that up.'' Some might argue that airports should be turned into quarantine stations for potential SARS carriers. Travelers coming from regions of epidemic yellow fever without proof of immunization have been kept for days at ports of entry until the incubation period passed. The problem with this new disease is that its incubation period may be as long as 10 days, there are huge numbers of travelers from countries with the illness, and detaining so many people for so long runs counter to the way the global travel network operates. If governments devise far-reaching ways of screening or detaining travelers, then that will undoubtedly heighten concerns over civil liberties. Even now, many people are calling the Swiss government's actions last week heavy-handed and possibly racist, though government officials said they were acting to ensure public safety. The same debate has been raging here since the 9/11 terrorist attacks over detention of Muslims. Casino-style surveillance and facial-recognition technology could soon be installed at airports to allow less disruptive ways of monitoring threats, but critics still raise ethical concerns over these. THE Transportation Security Administration is working on an invisible step that would tighten the flow at airports: a computer database called CAPPS II that has background information -- and a risk score -- on anyone flying. The agency has declined to give details on the system. Privacy groups decry it as a step toward Big Brother. Agency officials say they just want to ensure that travelers are, as they put it, rooted in the community. But in a world made smaller by planes and other technologies, where mobility and commerce go hand in hand, where Toronto virtually exists next to Hong Kong and Detroit to Baghdad, what community is that? |
1478723_0 | March 30-April 5: INTERNATIONAL; CUBA HIJACKINGS | For the third time in two weeks, hijackers in Cuba took hostages and demanded to be taken to Florida. On March 19, six men with knives overtook an airplane in Havana and redirected it to Key West. On Tuesday, a man with what turned out to be fake grenades redirected another plane to Key West. No hostages were harmed. On Wednesday, two armed men hijacked a ferry but surrendered on Friday to Cuban authorities. Dana Canedy |
1478338_0 | Television/Radio; Not Greek, And Only A Little Fat | AS middle age approaches, sexy leading men often seek refuge in character roles. It's rare for someone to go in the opposite direction. But that's exactly what happened to John Corbett, who turns 42 next month. In 1990, he landed a supporting role as a philosophy-spewing disc jockey on CBS's ''Northern Exposure.'' But when the series ended in 1995, Mr. Corbett moved on to a string of unmemorable TV movies and a three-year stint as a pitchman for Ford Motor Co. Then came ''Sex and the City.'' In 2000, he was cast as Aidan Shaw, the big-hearted furniture designer with whom Carrie Bradshaw (Sarah Jessica Parker) has an on-again, off-again romance. Women swooned at his lazy, good-natured sensuality. That charm was transferred intact to the big screen in last year's surprise blockbuster ''My Big Fat Greek Wedding,'' in which he played Nia Vardalos's idealized, WASP-y love interest. Now Mr. Corbett is center stage, starring in ''Lucky,'' a new series which begins Tuesday at 10 p.m. on FX. He plays Michael (Lucky) Linkletter, a Las Vegas gambler whose skill inside the casino is balanced by his misfortune outside it. (''Lucky'' precluded his joining the cast of the CBS series ''My Big Fat Greek Life,'' though he said he would have declined anyway: ''I don't like sitcoms.'') This week Mr. Corbett wraps production on the feature ''Raising Helen'' opposite Kate Hudson, further solidifying his leading-man status. Yet when he was offered the role of Lucky, he expressed little interest in returning to television full time. Ever since ''Northern Exposure,'' he said, he has had an aversion to the long days of series production. ''I'm lazy,'' he said during an interview at the Peninsula Hotel here, his gray-green eyes peering out from under a straw cowboy hat. Most working actors in Hollywood are in full makeup by 6 a.m.; Mr. Corbett would rather ''wake up at 10, have my breakfast, and read the paper. I just don't want to work that hard.'' In the amoral Lucky, however, Mr. Corbett saw an opportunity to break free of the good-guy mold. ''I never was asked to play a moody or darker role,'' he said. ''So I started to believe I wasn't right for them.'' In casting Lucky, the brothers Mark and Rob Cullen, who created the series, said they were looking for a latter-day Steve McQueen. Like McQueen, they contend, the 6-foot-5-inch Mr. Corbett appeals |
1478560_0 | Personal Business; Some Travel Bargains by Air, but Even More by Sea | TRAVEL companies have been cutting prices for months, but more bargains are surfacing this spring, especially for cruises. Many people had been reluctant to travel because of the economy and lingering fears of terrorism. But the war in Iraq and concerns about severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS, have increased their travel jitters. ''The cruise business was already softening leading up to the war,'' said Scott Barry, who tracks the industry for Credit Suisse First Boston. Mr. Barry said that while many cruises have already been discounted, cruise operators have been under pressure to cut rates further. ''Regardless of the environment, cruise lines always sail full,'' he said, explaining that as much as one-fifth of their revenue comes from passengers' on-board spending. Many cruise deals can be found on the Internet, at sites like Cruise411.com and Icruise.com. Some discounts are available only through late spring, though many, like those from Windstar, Royal Caribbean International and Celebrity, will be around through fall. Among the discounts available last week for Caribbean cruises was an 11-night trip, leaving April 23 from New York, in an inside cabin on the Queen Elizabeth 2; it was offered on Icruise at $872 a person, double occupancy, reduced from $1,820.80. Icruise also had eight-night Caribbean cruises, leaving April 11 and April 19 from Fort Lauderdale, Fla., in an inside cabin on Carnival's Legend, for $351 a person, double occupancy, from $760. Cruise411 was selling a seven-night Alaska cruise leaving May 23 from Vancouver, British Columbia, in a cabin with balcony on the Celebrity Summit, at $1,145.75, a person, double occupancy, reduced from $1,425. All these rates do not include port charges, taxes or air fare. Royal Caribbean has cut the rate for an inside cabin on its 12-night Mediterranean cruises on its Brilliance of the Seas ship, leaving from Barcelona from May through October (www.royalcaribbean.com). The cruises are now available at $999, down from $1,599; the price does not include taxes or air fare. Windstar (www.windstarcruises.com), cut rates on March 1 on most of its cruises through 2003. But it reduced many rates even more last week. A seven-night Mediterranean cruise leaving June 1 from Venice, was reduced by an additional 33 percent, to $1,595 a person, double occupancy, in an outside cabin on the Wind Surf; the price does not include air fare, though it does include port charges and taxes. The rate for the same |
1478784_4 | Chaos Theory | and his belief in personal autonomy leads to work that is profoundly skeptical of big ideas, even as it can't stop bringing them up. ''A Letter'' begins: Dear philosophers, I get sad when I think. Is it the same with you? Just as I'm about to sink my teeth into the noumenon, Some old girlfriend comes to distract me. 'She's not even alive!' I yell to the skies. Simic is making fun of philosophy, true, but he isn't dismissing it. On the contrary, you get the feeling that he has great affection for the thinkers he teases -- philosophy is the stone against which he sharpens and tests his own disbelief. Simic has less sympathy for organized politics. When his poems take up political themes, his sympathy is never with the leaders who champion certain ideals but the people who are at the mercy of their proclamations. In ''Cameo Appearance,'' for example, Simic casts himself as an extra in ''a bloody epic'' -- a part of the ''gray crowd'' of ''bombed and fleeing humanity.'' Simic may not believe in theories, but he does believe in people -- a faith that makes him a surprisingly effective love poet. In Simic's universe, love is domestic, practical, daily; as a woman cooks shrimp, a man reflects: How good the wine tastes That has run red Out of a laughing mouth! Down her chin. . . . ''I'm getting fat,'' she says, Turning this way and that way Before the mirror. ''I'm crazy about her shrimp!'' I shout to the gods above. He really is crazy about her shrimp; this clumsy, everyday joy is as worthy as the grand passions we associate with ''the gods above.'' Against Yeats's identification of his beloved with Helen of Troy, Simic sets his defiantly earthly love song to the ordinary. It's not necessarily an original point, but it's a good one, and he makes it well. Simic has been accused, however, of making the same handful of good points over and over again in the same flat language. There's some justice to this criticism: though many of the new poems here are interesting, almost all of them could easily have appeared 20 years ago. But this poet's repetitiveness is a complicated matter, because it's intimately related to the themes around which his poetry revolves. Simic can't quite believe in anything, and he can't quite not believe in anything; |
1478685_2 | Public Confronts New Virus on Laymen's Terms | been fielding a barrage of e-mail messages about the illness, many of them anti-Chinese (that the disease originated with people in Hong Kong eating dogs that had it, that workers at Chinese restaurants have the disease, and so on). A favorite Internet rumor, that the disease is the result of a genetic engineering experiment run amok, fits the template of similar rumors that circulated about AIDS and hantavirus. Perhaps easily dismissed as a standard conspiracy theory, it may speak to a desire to predict and manipulate the world that biological reality does not always provide. ''For a lot of people, it's more comfortable to believe that the C.I.A. cooked something up in a secret lab somewhere and it got out than to realize that new diseases come into being all the time,'' said Barbara Mikkelson, who runs Snopes.com. ''You can just fire the C.I.A., or get a better government. What are you going to do about nature?'' As anxiety -- or at least fixation -- on the illness intensifies, public health officials are seeking to calm fears and avoid the kind of panic behavior that occurred in October 2001, when several letters containing anthrax were sent through the mail. Some people ended up microwaving their mail and sought to corner the supplies of the antibiotic Cipro at their local pharmacies. ''You don't want people to hurt themselves in some other way in an effort to avoid an infection like this,'' said Vicky Freimuth, associate director for communications at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. ''It's critical that a credible source out there is giving information about what we know so people don't turn to other sources that might be more alarmist.'' The C.D.C.'s efforts include significantly stepped-up communication with news organizations, which it hopes in turn will convey accurate information to the public. As of April 1, the agency had held 1,300 interviews and eight news conferences, set up for television outlets, which had complained during the anthrax scare when the telephone conference calls were the chosen communications mechanism. Worldwide, health officials have reported more than 2,000 cases and more than 80 deaths. But of the 100 suspected cases in the United States, no one has died, and C.D.C. officials emphasize that most Americans do not have to worry about catching the disease. Such increased public outreach does not appear to have quelled the furor: the agency's hot line |
1476599_2 | Whereas, Lawmakers Seem to Be Bored . . . | from intentionally feeding the marauding pests. Someone decided that a Subsection B was needed to clarify that the act ''shall not apply in the case of an unintentional feeding of a black bear.'' This is good news for anyone who has, say, put food out to attract grizzlies or pandas. ''Yes, officer, I do see that I've attracted a black bear, but that was unintentional.'' Someone also did some clarifying on a measure making it illegal to release ''exotic animals'' into the New Jersey ecosystem. Each individual release of an animal constitutes a separate offense, with one exception: ''in the case of the unlawful possession or release of the eggs of an amphibian, fish, mollusk or crustacean, each egg mass shall constitute an additional, separate and distinct offense.'' That's quick thinking on someone's part. Imagine the logistics of trying to make a separate case against an egg-mass releaser for each of the zillions of eggs in the mass. Imagine that the suspect demanded a separate hearing for each offense. Animals get more legislative attention in New Jersey than you might think, almost all of it with a Guscioralish tint. One measure, for instance, deals with adding ''animal'' to the list of things that can be considered ''deadly weapons.'' I'll pause while you get that image of being whacked over the head with a cat out of your mind. Also, given lawmakers' apparent fascination with animal matters, we might well wonder how long animal mascots at schools will survive: ''Whereas newspapers' sports pages may offend animal lovers by reporting, Buffalos Stampede Scorpions' or 'Cannibalistic Mating Dance Could Not Save Mantises' '' Of course, the funniest animal is the human one, as becomes evident from the painstaking definitions in a bill involving licenses for various types of cosmetologists and hairstylists. The phrase ''beauty culture,'' the bill tells us, can mean ''any one or combination of the following practices,'' and then it gives seven formidable entries, including ''removing superfluous hair from the face, neck, arms, legs or abdomen by the use of depilatories, waxing or tweezers, but not by the use of electrolysis.'' Whew. Did I ever locate the telemarketing bill? Yeah. It seeks to cut down on nuisance calls because, among other things, they often come at mealtime, ''when food may, during the interruption, cool, melt, thicken, dry or undergo a change in its palatability.'' I'm glad we cleared that up. JERSEY |
1476485_0 | Missile Threat Is Bringing Stricter Rules for Airports | Federal authorities will order major security improvements at several of the nation's largest airports after inspections showed that passenger planes taking off or landing at those airports would be vulnerable to attack by terrorists using shoulder-fired missiles, senior Bush administration officials said. The inspections, which began several weeks ago, are being conducted by a federal task force created by the White House late last year after terrorists linked to Al Qaeda tried to shoot down an Israeli passenger plane on takeoff from an airport in Kenya in November. The two small, shoulder-fired missiles barely missed the plane. Administration officials would not identify the airports that would be required to make major safety improvements, citing security reasons. But they said the list included several of the nation's busiest, and that the improvements would include new, round-the-clock security patrols and tightened electronic surveillance of the flight paths used for takeoffs and landings. This week, dozens of National Guard troops were deployed to the Los Angeles International Airport to patrol the perimeter and road checkpoints, in part because of what officials acknowledged was concern about shoulder-fired missiles. A spokesman for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which manages Kennedy, La Guardia and Newark Liberty International airports, said it was aware of the missile threat and was responding to it. The spokesman, Pasquale DiFulco, said the port authority had a policy of not discussing details of its security planning. ''But we have certainly taken the necessary steps and precautions to address these issues,'' Mr. DiFulco said. Bush administration officials said that nationwide inspections, which have been carried out at roughly 80 airports by officials of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Department of Homeland Security and other federal agencies, demonstrated that a terrorist with a shoulder-fired antiaircraft missile weighing as little 30 pounds would find it relatively easy to evade security at many large airports and fire a missile that could bring down a passenger plane. American intelligence and law enforcement agencies say that Al Qaeda and affiliated terrorist groups are believed to have an arsenal overseas of dozens of shoulder-fired missiles, including the American-made Stinger and the Russian SA-7, and that others can be bought by terrorists on the black market for several thousand dollars each. Many of the Stingers available on the black market are left over from the American-backed guerrilla effort in Afghanistan to force out Soviet troops |
1476782_2 | Cutting Through Angkor's Wats Politics and Banyans | Royal Palace. By this time, the New York-based World Monuments Fund had already beaten a path to Preah Khan, a partly collapsed 12th-century structure outside the main complex. But it was the Japanese, Cambodia's most generous donor, who came to dominate the effort through the presence of what now amounts to four restoration teams. Since arriving in Cambodia in 1994, the Japanese government team for safeguarding Angkor (J.S.A.) has already spent $21 million and currently oversees the largest concentration of monuments within the walled city of Angkor Thom, less than a half mile from Angkor Wat. But around a dozen nations have staked claims to other prestigious sites. As the Monuments Fund toils away on its three temples, a Chinese government team is rebuilding the intimate Chau Sey Tevoda and an Italian team stabilizes the brick towers of the ninth-century Pre Rup. Switzerland has just begun work on the exquisite sandstone Banteay Srei. The jewel in the crown and the focus of international ambitions remains Suryavarman II's glorious Angkor Wat, which at three-quarters of a square mile is the world's largest ancient temple. While Germany's Cologne University monitors its many apsaras (friezes of celestial dancers) and an Italian team restores a collapsed embankment, Sophia University in Tokyo works on the western causeway, a stone's throw from J.S.A.'s reconstruction of the northern library. With major backing from the New York businessman Peter Stern, the World Monuments Fund is eager to lay its hands on the Churning of the Sea of Milk bas-relief, an Asian equivalent of the Parthenon friezes. Restoring a Khmer ruin is a bit like attempting a nightmare jigsaw puzzle. Faced with collapsed or collapsing structures, should one rebuild, restore or simply conserve? Whether to fill lacunae with newly quarried or recycled stone, and how much to decorate them, are all crucial questions. Ta Prohm's voracious trees present a further problem: to chop or not to chop? The fate of each tree will be debated before chain saws arrive. At the heart of all current arguments on restoration is a paradox: the less you notice it, the better the job. Over many years the French used concrete beams to shore up temples in imminent danger of collapse -- a sensible and pragmatic approach -- but simultaneously rebuilt others, using anastylosis, a controversial process, pioneered by the Dutch at Borobudur in Indonesia, of dismantling and reassembling stones already on site. |
1476782_3 | Cutting Through Angkor's Wats Politics and Banyans | a collapsed embankment, Sophia University in Tokyo works on the western causeway, a stone's throw from J.S.A.'s reconstruction of the northern library. With major backing from the New York businessman Peter Stern, the World Monuments Fund is eager to lay its hands on the Churning of the Sea of Milk bas-relief, an Asian equivalent of the Parthenon friezes. Restoring a Khmer ruin is a bit like attempting a nightmare jigsaw puzzle. Faced with collapsed or collapsing structures, should one rebuild, restore or simply conserve? Whether to fill lacunae with newly quarried or recycled stone, and how much to decorate them, are all crucial questions. Ta Prohm's voracious trees present a further problem: to chop or not to chop? The fate of each tree will be debated before chain saws arrive. At the heart of all current arguments on restoration is a paradox: the less you notice it, the better the job. Over many years the French used concrete beams to shore up temples in imminent danger of collapse -- a sensible and pragmatic approach -- but simultaneously rebuilt others, using anastylosis, a controversial process, pioneered by the Dutch at Borobudur in Indonesia, of dismantling and reassembling stones already on site. This ''trial and error'' is inherently flawed, according to World Monuments Fund philosophy, but also far too intrusive: overzealous rebuilding sacrifices a monument's natural history, and its beauty. ''We do not think we have the right to reverse the course of history,'' said the organization's chief architect, John Sanday. A ruddy-faced Englishman who likes to dress in Indiana Jones attire, Mr. Sanday draws a clear distinction between the views of eminent Victorians like John Ruskin, the British critic who led a generation's passion for classical ruins, and the approach of his French contemporary Viollet-le-Duc, who loved to indulge French taste in reconstructed medievalism even to the point of creating fake features. One French project that drew widespread criticism, Mr. Sanday said, was the rebuilding of Angkor Thom's famous Terrace of Apsaras. When, centuries ago, the first terrace began to crumble, the Khmers simply built another on top, but the French decided to restore both walls, creating a passageway between the two that never existed. The Japanese take another view: authenticity is in the rebuilding. They don't share the Western insistence, set out in the 1954 Venice Charter on European restoration, on differentiating the old from the new or restored. For |
1476381_1 | A Mission of Hope on a Mountain in Russia | as the rescue mission here. Perhaps none is more quixotic. For the Karmadon avalanche occurred last Sept. 20 -- more than six months ago. Of the 125 people who vanished in the Karmadon Gorge avalanche, 19 have been found. All were dead. The most recent discovery, a month and a half ago, was that of a shepherd high in the peaks, his head barely protruding from the muck. ''We still think that there may be someone alive down there,'' Mr. Dzherapov said. It is hard to say what moves people to defy both logic and science, betting that faith and hard work will produce a miracle. But the amazing quest of about 40 volunteers has managed not only to persevere beyond all reason, but to win sympathy and support from local officials and even the Russian government. About 4,000 feet up the mountains, in the narrows of the Karmadon Gorge, where the disaster occurred, the North Ossetian Emergencies Ministry has cobbled together workers and equipment to help in the search. Federal highway officials have lent an aged drilling rig. Ten-member work crews from North Ossetia and neighboring republics rotate, keeping the rig going around the clock, sinking the shaft a few yards more on a good day, hardly at all on a bad one. Perhaps a mile north of the drilling rig, beneath hundreds of feet of black, deeply fissured avalanche debris, lies the hamlet of Nizhny Karmadon. Villagers there were holding a celebration at the end of a year's mourning for a departed townsman when the ice and mud rolled in. No one is searching there. ''It's pointless,'' said Mairbek Butiyev, 45, North Ossetia's deputy emergencies minister for operative issues. Asked whether the drilling operation was not equally pointless, Mr. Butiyev paused and looked away. ''We cannot say if bodies are there -- nobody knows,'' he finally said. ''Six months have passed.'' What keeps the rig drilling, and hope alive, is a wild, even fantastic theory: that somehow, survivors found refuge in a highway tunnel that bores through the gorge, and lies now beneath about 230 feet of debris and solid rock. That theory revolves around Sergei Bodrov Jr., the 30-year-old screen idol who is among the missing. Mr. Bodrov was filming his latest movie, an action film tentatively called ''Messenger'' in the Karmadon Gorge that fateful evening. Minutes before the avalanche roared through, a handful of his 27-member |
1476526_1 | French Rallies Against War Shift Focus To Israel | anti-Semitism'' on the Place de la Concorde near the heavily guarded American Embassy, one huge banner read ''Hitler, Bush, Sharon, in the name of God we kill.'' Young French Arab teenagers from the poor suburbs chanted slogans pledging war and martyrdom in the name of both Palestinians and Iraqis and against Israel. ''We are all Palestinians, we are all Iraqis, we are all kamikazes!'' chanted one group of teenagers, no older than 14 or 15, from the suburb of Garges-les-Gonesses. Others chanted: ''We are all martyrs! Allahu akbar! God is more powerful than the United States.'' Both boys and girls wore the Palestinian scarf known as the kaffiyeh. One Moroccan-born man stepped on an image of the Israeli flag. Another French Arab pointed to a group of protesters from a Jewish student association, and said: ''They are targets. They are not welcome here because of what they did to our Palestinian brothers.'' It is easy for the lines to be blurred between protests against Israel's treatment of the Palestinians and anti-Semitism. The center-right French government is extremely sensitive to charges that anti-Semitism lurks in France, and both French officials and organizers of the protest quickly condemned the attack last Saturday. ''In the name of Parisians, I want to condemn, as strongly as possible, these unacceptable acts,'' Mayor Bertrand Delanoe said in a statement on Monday. ''This is not our war,'' Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy told Parliament on Tuesday. Warning disaffected French Muslim youths not to use the war in Iraq as a pretext for raising tensions at home, he added, ''Whether it's the Muslims of France, or the Jews of France, each has the right to pray, believe or live his faith as he sees fit.'' The Paris police chief, Jean-Paul Proust, announced plans to set up a special police detective unit in Paris to deal with crimes deemed racist and anti-Semitic. Mr. Proust told the Jewish weekly newspaper Actualité Juive that the new unit would investigate ''all complaints concerning racist or anti-Semitic acts,'' adding, ''The Jewish community needs to know that it can file complaints.'' The increased tension comes as a government watchdog organization released a report on Thursday that there had been an ''explosion'' in anti-Semitic incidents in France in 2002 as a result of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and military preparations for a war in Iraq. In its annual report on racism in France, the National Consultative Committee |
1468851_8 | Bring Back the Sabbath | play, no idle strolling was known; no sign of human life or motion was seen except the necessary care of the patient cattle and other dumb beasts, the orderly and quiet going to and from the meeting, and at the nooning, a visit to the churchyard to stand by the side of the silent dead.'' Anyone who has experienced the eerie serenity of the ultra-Orthodox sections of Jerusalem or Brooklyn on Saturdays would be in a position to conjure a Puritan Sunday. Americans, of course, no longer cherish obedience as a virtue. We have become individualists, even libertarians. We will no longer put up with being told how to dispose of our free time. But our unwillingness to suffer constraint shouldn't blind us to the possibility that Sabbath discipline may have real benefits. For one thing, it reflects a paradoxical insight: only a Sabbath that you have to work for will appear worth keeping, just as, in psychoanalysis, a patient will value only those sessions for which he pays. Anything gotten for nothing will be treated as such. After all, as in therapy, the good that comes from the Sabbath is mostly intangible. We don't produce anything when we don't work. So counterintuitive is the idea of organized nonproductivity, given the force and universality of the human urge to make things, that you can't believe anyone ever managed to lift his head from his workbench or plow long enough to think of it. To the first-century Stoic philosopher Seneca, the Sabbath was absurd, a way for Rome's backward Jewish subjects to waste ''almost a seventh of their life in inactivity.'' But when (or if), perhaps a millennium earlier, the Jews took over an old Mesopotamian day of taboo and transformed it into one of holy rest, they brought into the world not just the Sabbath but something just as precious, and surprisingly closely linked. They invented the idea of social equality. The Israelite Sabbath institutionalized an astonishing, hitherto undreamed-of notion: that every single creature has the right to rest, not just the rich and the privileged. Covered under the Fourth Commandment are women, slaves, strangers and, improbably, animals. The verse in Deuteronomy that elaborates on this aspect of the Sabbath repeats, twice, that slaves were not to work, as if to drive home what must have been very hard to understand in the ancient world. The Jews were meant to |
1469074_2 | Democratic Hopes Test China's Political Limits | insiders, not dissidents. Mr. Hu, 49, is a Communist Party member and a teacher at the Shanghai branch of the party's school system. His ambitions are modest: to be allowed to run for office as Chinese law says he can, and to urge the legislature to talk to people before passing laws that affect them. He even takes the harassment he receives in stride, attributing it to locals who have not yet absorbed elite calls for more openness. ''We have done so much to improve the economy in this country and so little to improve the political system,'' Mr. Hu said. ''Educated people all talk about the need to improve it. But until people start exercising their rights, theory will never meet practice.'' Mr. Hu is following a trail blazed by Yao Lifa, an education official who is not a party member and who lives near the central Chinese city of Wuhan. Mr. Yao's decade-long quest to win election to his local legislature by directly appealing to voters, rather than the party hierarchy, made him a model for incremental political change. He was finally elected in 1998. The political atmosphere has also become a bit more accommodating since Vice President Hu Jintao took over the leadership of the Communist Party last fall. The new party leader, who is expected to be named president at the parliamentary session that begins this week, has promised to improve the party's effectiveness and rein in corruption, which top leaders fear will cripple the party. He has spoken repeatedly about the need to respect China's liberally worded Constitution, which is routinely ignored whenever the Communist Party considers its interests threatened. He has backed calls to build a new ''political civilization,'' a vague notion some optimists believe means more democracy. As the legislative session approaches, progressive newspapers and magazines like Beijing Youth Daily and Southern Breeze have opened their opinion pages to elder party intellectuals calling for political modernization. ''In the past we regularly treated politics as a means of rule, a tool for struggle,'' Yuan Geng, a retired official from Guangdong Province, wrote in Southern Breeze last week. ''Now we need to actively build democracy and the rule of law. This expression 'political civilization' has major practical, even historic, significance.'' Progress is evident in Guangdong and Jiangsu, two of China wealthiest coastal provinces. Officials in Jiangsu's capital, Nanjing, have experimented with referendums to identify and |
1468903_6 | RIDING THE WILD BRAHMAPUTRA | crescent of white sand, it was an idyllic spot. I hade never seen such a profusion of wild vegetation. Giant plantains loomed out of the mist like ghostly green spiders, their leafy tendrils drooping to the earth. Others were dotted across the hillside, exploding into view like silent green fireworks from the surrounding forest cover. Reassured by the scouting expedition, we left early the next morning only to be shaken wide awake by the spray from Class III rapids (the international rating system classifies rapids from Class I, easy, to Class VI, extreme), which guarded the entrance to the gorge. ''Riding the wave train down that big green highway'' is what Jed called it. I lacked his easy nonchalance, but appreciated his mixed metaphors as we lurched and plunged our way through the giant rapids. A shaft of sunlight illuminated our colorful little flotilla -- four rafts, nine kayaks and a cataraft (a cross between a catamaran and a raft) -- as we entered the gorge. It was a spectacular place: the sheer rock walls towered above us, crowned by the dense forest; graceful little waterfalls plunged from the heights, the kayakers reveling in their glittering spray. It was easy to imagine that no one had ever been here before. But someone -- or something -- clearly had. Two hundred feet above the river, the vegetation came to an abrupt end, sliced off in a clean line as if by a dao. This was the high water mark of the flood of June 2000, when a great wall of water swept down from the Himalayas, wiping out people, houses, bridges and the forest. I tried but failed to imagine what that immense force would have been like in the narrow confines of this rocky gorge. Later that afternoon, we were presented with a chilling reminder. Deep in the heart of the gorge, the river had changed its course and rolled giant boulders about on its bed. It now ran right to left, right across the valley, gathering power and speed until it crashed against a sheer rock wall in an awesome spectacle of turbulent white foam. It was the paddler's nightmare -- a Class VI -- certain death for those who would defy it, and we portaged it the next morning. After the adrenaline rush of those first three days, the rest of the trip was less eventful; the rapids |
1469201_0 | Rolling With 'Better for You' Food Bandwagon | AMERICANS may be paying more attention to nutrition, but they still reach for plenty of processed foods at the market. One byproduct of this paradox is the popularity of so-called ''better for you'' foods, which mimic the taste of conventional snacks and other packaged foods but lack the customary preservatives, additives, cholesterol and sugar. Perhaps no one has catered to America's contradictory appetites as successfully as Irwin D. Simon. A former sales and marketing executive at both Häagen-Dazs and SlimFast, Mr. Simon has spent the last decade cobbling together more than two dozen natural and organic food companies into the Hain Celestial Group in Melville. Revenues at Hain, perhaps best known for its Celestial Seasonings herbal teas and its Terra Chips line of vegetable chips, approached $400 million last year. In December, Hain Celestial spent $52 million to buy Imagine Foods, an organic-food company that specializes in soy-milk and rice-milk products. Hain was already the world's largest producer of natural foods, an industry term for those made without additives or artificial ingredients. After the Imagine Foods deal, it also became the world's largest producer of organic foods, the term usually used for foods grown without pesticides. Mr. Simon, who is from Nova Scotia, founded Hain Celestial's predecessor, Kineret Foods, 10 years ago. While he does not describe himself as a health-food fan, he recalls having grown disenchanted with the products and values of corporate America. He believed there was a growing mass market for healthier foods. ''I decided after leaving SlimFast to set up my own food company and build up from there,'' said Mr. Simon, who is Hain's president as well as its chairman and chief executive. In 1993, he founded Kineret, a kosher frozen-food company in Jericho. In its first year Kineret offered its stock to the public, raising about $3 million, Mr. Simon said, and that financed a series of acquisitions that brought in Farm Foods, Pizsoy and Hain Pure Foods. Mr. Simon acknowledged one inherent contradiction in using a kosher food company to build a ''better for you'' food empire: kosher food, while it is often perceived as being healthful, is not necessarily low in fat. ''A lot of kosher food is fried in the highest fat content going,'' he said. ''But people think of kosher food as safe, and we built on that perception.'' Following the Hain acquisition, Mr. Simon changed Kineret's name to Hain |
1470536_0 | It Will Be a Smaller World After All | Remember the number 1.85. It is the lodestar of a new demography that will lead us to a different world. It should change the way we think about economics, geopolitics, the environment, culture -- and about ourselves. To make their calculations orderly, demographers have typically worked on the assumption that the ''total fertility rate'' -- the number of children born per woman -- would eventually average out to 2.1. Why 2.1? At that rate the population stabilizes over time: a couple has two children, the parents eventually die, and their children ''replace'' them. (The 0.1 accounts for children who die before reaching the age of reproduction.) Now, in a new report, United Nations demographers have bowed to reality and changed this standard 2.1 assumption. For the last five years they have been examining one of the most momentous trends in world history: the startling decline in fertility rates over the last several decades. In the United Nations' most recent population report, the fertility rate is assumed to be 1.85, not 2.1. This will lead, later in this century, to global population decline. In a world brought up on the idea of a ''population explosion,'' this is a radical notion. The world's population is still growing -- it will take some time for it to actually start shrinking -- but the next crisis is depopulation. The implications of lower fertility rates are far-reaching. One of the most profound is their potential to reduce economic inequality around the world and alter the balance of power among nations. The United Nations divides the world into two groups, less developed countries and more developed countries. The most surprising news comes from the poorer countries. In the late 1960's, these countries had an average fertility rate of 6.0 children per woman. Today it is 2.9 -- and still falling. Huge and continuing declines have been seen in countries like Brazil, China, India, Indonesia, Iran, Turkey and (of great importance to the United States) Mexico. The more developed countries, in contrast, have seen their fertility rates fall from low to unsustainable. Every developed nation is now below replacement level. In the early 1960's, Europe's fertility rate was 2.6. Today the rate is 1.4, and has been sinking for half a century. In Japan the rate is 1.3. These changes give poorer countries a demographic dividend. For several decades the bulk of their population will be of |
1470531_2 | Ethical War? Do the Good Guys Finish First? | Stauffenberg, the German Army officer who was executed for trying to assassinate Hitler, and Hugh C. Thompson, the American helicopter pilot who, seeing the My Lai massacre in progress, ordered his door gunner to aim his weapon at United States troops. Those facts don't excuse the captain's conduct, Mr. Wrage suggests, but they help make his case rich fodder for ethics classes at American military academies, where it is routinely taught. Determined skeptics -- like Groucho Marx, who joked that ''military justice is to justice what military music is to music'' -- can roll their eyes. But serious talk about the proper moral conduct of combat has been around almost as long as war itself. The immediate impetus for the journal, which made its debut last spring, was the 1999 NATO intervention in Kosovo. Observing the ethics controversy that the NATO bombing provoked, Bard Maeland, a chaplain in the Norwegian army, decided that a scholarly forum for such debate was urgently needed. ''I found there was nothing like a journal of military ethics in English,'' said Dr. Maeland, who became the journal's co-editor after persuading an Oslo publisher to take on the project and the Norwegian Ministries of Defense and Foreign Affairs to provide financial support. The first two issues -- a third has just been published -- are awash in references to ancient Greeks: Plato, Alcibiades, Thucydides, Laches, Nicias. And when it comes to the ground rules for military uses of deception, Hugo Grotius's 1625 treatise, ''On the Law of War and Peace,'' remains a standard reference. (His view is essentially that spelled out by the Geneva Convention more than 300 years later: '' 'Ruses of war,' such as involve the use of camouflage, decoys, mock operations and misinformation are not prohibited because, while they may cause an adversary to act recklessly, they do not constitute acts that an adversary should not expect to occur as part and parcel of war.'') Occasionally, Greek terminology gives the journal an archaic air. ''Did NATO's air strikes against Yugoslavia, undertaken without a mandate from the Security Council, constitute a valid instance of epieikeia?'' asks Gregory Reichberg, a senior researcher at the International Peace Research Institute in Oslo, in one essay. (Epieikeia, Greek for equity, was used by Thomas Aquinas to designate a ruler's right to exercise moral authority in the absence of legal imperatives.) ''We are consciously committed to showing the moral |
1470554_0 | Bear Hunt Is Proposed In New Jersey | The agency that writes New Jersey's hunting regulations today proposed the state's first bear hunt since 1970 to thin a bear population that has been moving into more suburban areas and frightening people as they spread. But before the day was out, the proposal for a six-day black bear hunt in December was already getting tangled in the same kind of squabbling and opposition that doomed the last proposed hunt, in 2000. Gov. James E. McGreevey's environmental commissioner, Bradley M. Campbell, seemed to waffle over the proposal by the state agency, the Fish and Wildlife Council. In a late afternoon news conference, he offered tepid support for a December hunt, but said there were varying estimates on the actual number of bears in New Jersey, and said more analysis of the figures was needed before he would fully endorse a hunt. An animal rights group that helped defeat the hunt proposal in 2000 vowed similar opposition to a new one. ''We see this as really a call for a trophy hunt,'' said Barbara Dyer, a regional program coordinator for the Humane Society of the United States. ''We stopped the hunt before, and we pledge to stop it again.'' She said the society could call on about 270,000 New Jersey members and supporters to fight the proposal. The Fish and Wildlife Council canceled its hunt in 2000 after an appeal from Gov. Christie Whitman, who was responding to an outcry from opponents. The state instead spent about $1 million on campaigns to teach people how to avoid bears and to train police officers how to respond to bear complaints. But problems with the animals have grown. In the last two years, 59 bears considered immediate threats to people or property were killed by animal control officers. Last year, 55 bears broke into homes, up from 29 in 2001, and another 25 tried to enter houses, up from 5, according to state figures. At today's council meeting, one member, Jane Morton Galetto, invoked the fatal bear attack on a 5-month-old girl in the Catskill Mountains last August. ''It's just a matter of time before a child is killed or an adult is killed here, and people start to say they want to see every bear wiped off the face of New Jersey,'' Ms. Galetto said. The council tentatively scheduled a public hearing on the proposal for late May and a final vote |
1470566_1 | Strained Relations, And Spilled Merlot; Restaurateur Shows Displeasure Over French Leaders' Stance on Iraq | them longtime patrons who vowed never to return. One man left a message calling him ''foul and vicious.'' Another vowed to picket for peace outside his restaurant and drive him out of business. As they drifted into the restaurant this afternoon and learned about his protest, some of his customers voiced support, while many said they had no gripe with the French or their resistance to an American-led war. Others simply had a visceral response to the image of good booze going down the drain. ''What a ridiculous waste,'' said Phil Kriser, a 21-year-old student at Rutgers University. ''I wish he had poured it into a funnel and into my mouth.'' But once they moved beyond the splashy symbolism of Mr. Tola's act, and got used to his decision to replace the French cabernet sauvignons with Napa Valley zinfandels, patrons expressed a range of opinions, their emotions raw and vehement. Rick Klacik, 53, a Verizon employee who eats lunch at The Old Bay five days a week, was furious about the French, saying they had shown a consistent lack of loyalty and respect for the United States. ''They haven't backed us in any conflict,'' Mr. Klacik said. ''Even if someone gave me a bottle of French wine, which has never happened, I wouldn't drink it.'' Sipping a glass of Chivas Regal -- Scottish, despite the French-sounding name -- Mr. Klacik was so enraged that he suggested the French could use a taste of the horrors that had visited the United States on Sept. 11, 2001. ''For instance, if something happened to the Eiffel Tower, maybe they would see what we're going through,'' he said. Catherine Shrope-Mok, 47, a Merrill Lynch employee from Princeton, nearly tossed her quiche in the garbage when told about Mr. Tola's actions. ''If I had known, I would have gone to the nice Irish pub around the corner instead,'' she said. An opponent of war and a proud Francophile, Ms. Shrope-Mok said she thought that the anti-French animus was misguided. ''I think the hostility comes from Americans who go to Paris and expect the French to speak English to them,'' she said. Mr. Tola, for one, said he had never been to France, nor has he ever made the acquaintance of a Frenchman. (He did, however, once have a Belgian friend, he said.) To amplify his anguished opposition to the French government, Mr. Tola sought the |
1476158_0 | Science of Hormones | To the Editor: As a 54-year-old woman with hot flashes of my own, I was saddened to see the March 22 letters about hormone replacement therapy that blame the scientific messenger for what are in fact long overdue research results. As someone who may be saved from invasive breast cancer, stroke or heart attack, I applaud the search for truth where my health is concerned, and value it much more highly than I do pro-hormone anecdotes from well-meaning doctors and friends. LANE SINGER Los Altos, Calif., March 22, 2003 |
1474828_0 | Is the Future Older, Smaller and Better? | To the Editor: A March 17 editorial mentions my book ''The Population Bomb,'' and its warnings about shortages of resources. In the book, and many later publications, I also discussed the unhappy connections of population growth to the deterioration of our epidemiological environment. I warned of the emergence of plagues like AIDS that could bring a hideous ''solution'' to the population problem. As larger human populations have closer contact with animal reservoirs of diseases, the odds increase that AIDS will not be the last lethal epidemic. Let's hope that the new Asian pneumonia is not a long-feared deadly flu produced by close contact with swine and fowl. But surely, with President Bush starting another resource war, you don't really think that America's economic prospects will be ''improved'' by population growth! PAUL R. EHRLICH Stanford, Calif., March 17, 2003 The writer is a professor of population studies at Stanford University. |
1474826_0 | Is the Future Older, Smaller and Better? | To the Editor: Re ''Humanity's Slowing Growth'' (editorial, March 17): The freedom of women and men to make decisions on family size is contributing to slower population growth. The decisions, especially by women, are helping not only individuals, but also families, communities and countries. But population is still growing, especially in the 49 poorest countries. The international community should help ensure that there is access to family planning in poor countries. Also, the fight against AIDS should be intensified to slow its spread. STIRLING D. SCRUGGS Director, Information Division United Nations Population Fund New York, March 17, 2003 |
1474684_4 | Isolated Bangladeshi Area Proves an Ideal Lab | and has an annual budget of $16 million. The basic data collection is done by community health research workers like Rabeya Khatun, 45 and a mother of two. She walks from house to house, 351 in all, moving by country boat in monsoon season, when much of the area comes under water. She inquires about everything from births and breast-feeding to deaths and their cause, meticulously recording it all in heavy black census books. She asks if anyone has a cough, so she can report possible tuberculosis cases. She also holds bimonthly ''clinic hours'' at her home, where she dispenses contraception and immunizations. Seventy percent of the families in her area now practice family planning. Through such work, Bangladesh has been able to demonstrate a surprising amount of progress in many areas. In the 1970's, with a fertility rate of more than 6.5 births per woman and a conservative Muslim culture, the country seemed doomed to a population explosion. But an approach to population control developed and tested at Matlab increased national contraceptive use to 50 percent from 4 percent, and brought the fertility rate down to 3.3. Finding ways to combat diarrhea, pneumonia and other child diseases, meanwhile, reduced infant mortality to 66 deaths per 1,000 births, from 150. Still, there is more work to be done. Forty-five percent of Bangladesh's babies are born with low birth weight, and the center is undertaking one of the most comprehensive studies ever done on the problem, one that will probably continue for 20 to 30 years. To doctors' surprise, the people of Matlab have never shied from the most intrusive requests, whether for personal data or biological specimens. All research proposals are reviewed by an ethics committee. Dr. Muhammad Yunus, senior scientist and head of the Matlab Health Research Center, speculated that it was because the center, which runs hospitals in both Matlab and Dhaka, had always given solid clinic care regardless of what studies were continuing. Matlab's residents have also seen the benefits of the research. ''Whatever we're doing, we're doing to improve the health of the people,'' said Dr. Yunus, who has worked at Matlab for 35 years. Mrs. Khatun, the health worker, agreed. ''They saw we could treat pneumonia, that we could prevent tetanus with a vaccine,'' she said, referring to diseases once thought here to be caused by evil spirits. ''They began to have faith in us.'' |
1474677_0 | The Western Front | There are three fronts in this Iraq war: one in Iraq, one between America and its Western allies, and one between America and the Arab world. They are all being affected by this unilateral exercise of U.S. power. For now, I've embedded myself on the Western front, where, I can report, all is quiet. France is shocked and awed. No, there is no massive retreat here from the position staked out by the French government and public opinion against the war in Iraq. But the angry chasm this has opened between Paris and both London and Washington has shocked many people here and prompted some to ask whether France went too far. The title of the latest cover story in the French newsmagazine Le Point said it all: ''Have They Gone Overboard?'' The ''they'' are President Jacques Chirac and his foreign minister, Dominique de Villepin. Messrs. Chirac and de Villepin continue to insist that theirs was a principled opposition that will be vindicated. But some voices within the French foreign policy elite and the business community -- which depends heavily on the U.S. for trade and investment -- are now saying that Messrs. Chirac and de Villepin did indeed go too far. The term you hear most often is ''intoxicated.'' These two became so intoxicated by how popular their anti-U.S., antiwar stand became across Europe, and in the whole world, that they went from legitimately demanding U.N. endorsement for any use of force in Iraq to blocking any U.N.-approved use of force -- effectively making France Saddam's lawyer and protector. ''People here are a little lost now,'' said Alain Frachon, the senior editor of Le Monde. ''They like that their country stood up for a principle, but they don't like the rift with the U.S. They are embarrassed by it.'' French officials insist that their dispute with the U.S. was about means, not ends, but that is not true. It was about the huge disparity in power that has emerged between the U.S. and Europe since the end of the cold war, thanks to the vast infusion of technology and money into the U.S. military. That disparity was disguised for a decade by the softer touch of the Clinton team and by the cooperation over second-order issues, such as Kosovo and Bosnia. But 9/11 posed a first-order threat to America. That, combined with the unilateralist instincts of the Bush team, |
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